Sword Art Online Alternative – Gun Gale Online - Volume 9 - Chapter 21

CHAPTER 21 

Battle of the Mall II 

An enormous ball of fire exploded in Shirley’s face. 

Brilliant orange flooded her eyes, and heat pounded her skin. 

“Aaaah!” She pulled back in a panic. 

Human beings have an instinctual fear of fire, so flames were frightening even in a virtual setting. Although it might vary by individual, most people in GGO found fire much scarier than a knife or gun attack. 

The flames had come from the side of the electric cart. They were growing in strength by the moment, threatening to engulf their fuel source. 

The pillar of fire was soon ten feet tall, looming like some ghastly Christmas tree. There was a deep, bass roar, like someone blowing into a conch shell. 

The rifle round had hit the vehicle’s battery and set it on fire. Ironically, that had saved Shirley’s life. If not for the battery, it would have passed through the cart’s body and struck her. 

She backed away from the vehicle, pushing tables aside, and reloaded the XP-100. 

“Wait, you aren’t going to run?” asked Fukaziroh, who was already sixty feet away at this point. 

“Not until I’m sure he’s dead!” Shirley pressed the XP-100 against a pillar and looked through her scope. She could no longer find anyone across the courtyard. 

Then she looked lower and saw a floating tag reading DEAD near a bunch of tables and chairs. 

“Yeah! Eat it!” 

As a matter of fact, Shirley’s desperation shot had not actually hit Beralto. 

It had struck the pillar, and the explosion had snapped the rope he was holding to keep himself steady. Since he’d just fired his own weapon, he naturally fell toward the ground back-first. 

“Whoo-hoo-hoo!” he shrieked happily, and he kicked off the pillar with both feet, shifting his movement vector from straight down to diagonal. That helped him avoid landing directly with full force. Instead, he crashed through some of the tables and chairs on the way down. 

The plummet took 30 percent of his HP, but it was better than dying. He could still fight. What’s more, he had all three med kits, too. 

“Hoh-hoh! I’m not dead yet!” Beralto smirked, staring up at the ceiling. 

“That’s right. And that’s why I have to kill you,” came a man’s voice. A knife plunged into the sniper’s sunglasses. 

David killed the masked man with a stab of his combat knife, then stayed crouched behind the tables for cover. 

Moments later, Kenta said, “All clear, Leader. They both went for the north side,” and David stood up. LPFM’s sniper and the blond shrimp were no longer in the open on the mall’s far side. 

David quickly wove his way through the tables toward the north edge of the food court where Kenta was. The two reunited in front of a burrito shop. 

“So far, so good,” David remarked. 

As a two-man team, MMTM had a strategy code-named (by David) Operation Sneaky Sneakers. 

Because they were just a duo, going toe to toe with the surviving teams, which totaled up to a possible eighteen combatants, would be suicide. Thus their plan was to sneak and hide as best they could while looking for chances to pick off one or two opponents at a time. 

Taking out a man busy sniping while also avoiding being spotted by Shirley was as good a result as they could have hoped for. 

“What next?” asked Kenta, who was keeping an eye out with an APX in hand. 

David replied, “Go down to the right and sneak up behind that battle. Let’s be dirty as hell.” 

In the distance, the mall echoed with the clatter of gunfire. 

“Why did you come back?” asked Shirley as Fukaziroh’s tiny figure up ahead hurried east down the hallway. 

Fukaziroh glanced over her shoulder, holding the pistol she couldn’t hit a single target with, and answered, “I ran away because I was going to die.” 

“Oh. Okay.” Shirley figured that she was lying as a way to avoid admitting that she was concerned about her teammate. 

But then the sound of a fierce firefight filled their ears, and Fukaziroh fumed, “They’re still at it!” 

“Oh, you were telling the truth,” Shirley said. 

Moments earlier, the LPFM group had made their way down a passage leading from the south side’s food court on the third floor, expecting to run into enemies along the way. 

If hostiles were approaching them from both east and west, it was better to strike out in one direction to meet them directly—so they chose to run to the east. 

And on the southeast curve of the mall’s thoroughfare, when they were halfway around the angle, M called out, “Enemy! Straight ahead!” and crouched in the middle of the open avenue. His shield covered his body from exposure to gunfire. 

Instantly, things descended into an explosion of shooting. 

Prrrrraaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa! 

It was continuous, full-auto fire, with no audible pauses between the shots to make it percussive, just like a submachine gun. 

Kshaaaaaaaaaaaakkkk! 

Just as fast as the shots themselves, the sound of bullets hitting M’s shield was a ceaseless stream of noise. There was no way for the human ear to distinguish individual sounds in that flow. 

Pitohui slid down behind M’s shield and snapped an order to Llenn and Boss as they approached from the rear: “Get off this floor! You’ll only be collateral!” 

“Got it!” replied Boss. She stopped at once and rushed over to the stationary escalator nearby, leaping over the handrail to get on. 

Llenn followed her a beat later. Pito, M, stay safe! 

She wished she could stay to support her friends, but Pitohui was right. If they tried to get any closer to help, they’d just get shot. Going the other way would only expose their backs to incoming bullets, too. The best choice was to rush to a different floor. 

The sound of automatic gunfire prompted Llenn to ask Boss as they ran, “Is that legal?” 

“It is if it belongs in the Handgun category! I’m sure some handguns are fully automatic.” 

“Damn, that’s not fair!” 

“If there’s ever another one of these, we’ll have to study up. Where’s Fukaziroh?” 

“Huh?” 

Llenn turned back, nearly to the fourth floor by now, but saw no one behind her. So she answered the question as honestly as she could. 

“She ran.” 

The bullets smashed against M’s shield without rest. 

These were no fools, so they did not only focus on the shield. By shifting aim to the sides and top of the barrier, they could ensure that Pitohui had no time to pop up and shoot back. 

Bullet lines glimmered around the shield, then vanished as the bullets came. 

Pitohui had an XDM in either hand but found herself without a chance to use them. The enemy never gave her a turn. Their continuous fire was incredible. 

“What is that? How many are there?” 

“I only spotted two. Just one is firing,” M replied. He could tell it was a single player based on the incoming projectiles. If there were two, the lines would be coming from different directions, but the stream of bullets had only a single mouth. 

“Guess I gotta use it,” Pitohui stated, resigned. She went into her inventory and produced the mirror she used to peer around corners. 

A corner mirror was a common tool in GGO. She pulled out the extendable rod with the reflective bit on the end and poked it around the shield, hoping for a glimpse of the enemy—only to lose the mirror in that very instant. Even the extendable rod turned into light particles and vanished. 

“Ugh, this is why I didn’t want to use that stupid thing. Enemy confirmed: a man in heavy protective armor in the middle of the hall. Probably has Glock 18Cs in each hand. Behind him is his dedicated reloader,” Pitohui detailed, having deciphered the enemy’s strength from a single glance. 

The man shooting at M from about twenty meters away was nearly as large as his target. 

He was tall and broad, and he looked absolutely terrible in his blue tracksuit. He was wearing a vest with room for armored plates over his chest and stomach and padded guards over his thighs, knees, and shins, like a baseball catcher. These were designed for combat, however. 

A sturdy helmet protected his head. A thick face shield was attached to the headgear, going over the usual mask and sunglasses. This was a protector that police special forces around the world used, and it would deflect any pistol bullet. 

Just as Pitohui had surmised from her brief glimpse, he was using Glock 18Cs. The Glock 17 was a famous automatic pistol, and the 18C was its fully automatic special version. It was technically in the Handgun category. 

The selector on the side of the slide allowed for switching between semi-auto and full auto. The latter had a speed of 1,200 shots per minute—twenty per second. 

There was a thirty-three-round magazine sticking far out of the bottom of the grip, but that would only take 1.7 seconds to empty. 

The man had one Glock in each hand and was firing them on full auto, one at a time. His Strength stat alone was keeping the tremendous recoil in check. He was a monster. Once he had fired all the bullets from his right gun, he started firing the left. Once that was over, he fired from the right again. 

The secret of this seemingly endless stream of bullets, as Pitohui had guessed, was a dedicated reloader standing behind him—another man in a blue tracksuit. 

He was short and skinny. He wore nothing over his tracksuit and had only a single holster attached sideways to his lower back above the waist. 

After the large man shot one gun until it was out of bullets, the magazine dropped from the bottom of the Glock 18C, and he pulled that arm behind his back. Then the small man in waiting stuck a new magazine in its place. 

There was a bag on the large man’s back that was stuffed with munitions. So their battle style was to combine two people into one ultra-efficient, high-speed shooting machine. 

The strategy had M and Pitohui wholly pinned. 

“Penebia here. I’ve got the shield man and the ponytail woman trapped on the third-floor walkway, southeast corner. I’m with Ron,” said the man shooting the Glock 18Cs. 

Penebia took a heavy step forward. The small player named Ron followed, sticking in the next ammo mag. 

Shoot, shoot, shoot, then step. Rinse and repeat. 

Slowly but surely, they got closer and closer to M and Pitohui. 

While he was firing the Glocks, Penebia spoke into his comm. “The pink girl and gorilla-woman ran to the fourth floor. Can we leave them to someone else and have fun with these two?” he asked. 

Three seconds later, he got his answer. 

“Roger that. Then we’ll enjoy things here. Squad Jam heroes should make for some fun opponents.” 

Prrrraaaaaaaaa! 

Kshaaaaaakkkk! 

The combination of gunshots and bullets bouncing off metal made for an unearthly din. What had once been a place for peaceful, relaxing shopping was now a battlefield of flying lead. 

Through the clattering against the shield, Pitohui said, “Ugh, this is annoying. The day’s going to be over by the time we’re done dealing with these two.” 

M replied, “I know.” 

“Then I’ll leave him to you.” 

“………Got it.” 

Pitohui promptly swung her right arm outward. She was holding the magazine catch on the XDM, so it sent the magazine flying away to the right. The bullets immediately targeted it, hitting the pack in midair. 

At the same time, Pitohui darted left and used her other gun to shoot at Penebia, the large man, while crossing the hallway toward the nearest store. 

His left Glock 18C spat full auto bullets at Pitohui, getting close to her back—but just before he struck her backpack, she dived into the store and was out of sight. 

“I’m your opponent here.” 

M picked up the shield and started to sprint forward. 

Penebia shot with his reloaded right-hand gun, but the projectiles bounced off the metal barrier and did nothing to stop M’s advance. 

“Heh! Very well.” Penebia grinned beneath his mask. “Ron! You get the woman! Enjoy the indoor battle you’ve always wanted!” he exclaimed to the small man behind him. 

“Just what I’ve been waiting for!” answered the reloader, smiling so broadly that it moved his mask. As he leaped out into the open, Ron grunted under his breath, “For Fire.” 

“For Fire,” Penebia echoed. 

The audience in the bar saw the two giants clash in the middle of the mall thoroughfare. 

One was M. The other was in a blue tracksuit. 

Once the man shooting Glock 18Cs at M was out of ammo, he simply tossed his weapons aside. As M rushed closer, shield up for a body blow, his opponent held out his arms in preparation for the impact. 

The little man slipped away to the right and hurried past M, who surely saw it happen but did nothing. 

“Little one went your way. Have fun,” M informed Pitohui. He continued his charge, his thick, heavy legs thudding on the floor, pushing off the carpet. 

Now that he knew the other man wasn’t shooting, he pulled apart his shields a crack so he could see ahead. When he spotted his opponent with arms spread in waiting, he chuckled. 

“Haah!” 

The big tracksuit man had bulletproof armor, a helmet, and a thick defensive visor over his face. 

M chose not to use his HK45 pistol. Instead, he lifted his arms, still holding the halves of the shield, and pointed the halves at his opponent. He was going to bash the enemy with them like cudgels. 

Naturally, the other man narrowed his arms slightly, preparing to block. 

The two giants collided. 

The moment Penebia caught the heavy pieces of metal with his hands, M released them. While his opponent was still gripping the things, M lowered his left shoulder for a charge, making full use of the momentum he’d built up running over. 

He made contact with Penebia’s defensive helmet and armor and pushed with all his leg power. 

“Mrgh!” 

The force of the impact caused Penebia to buckle. He let the shields fall to the carpet below. 

With his arms free, Penebia grabbed M low around the waist to gain control of his center of gravity. It was like sumo wrestling. 

M did not pull back. “Nrrrrh!” he growled, pushing and pushing, until— 

“Guh!” Penebia could not hold his ground and tottered backward, taking step after step until he met a glass window thirty feet away and smashed through it. The two men had picked the most dynamic possible way to enter the store. 

Then they fell. 

“Oh?” 

“Huh?” 

Penebia and M plummeted downward. 

It was so dark that they hadn’t seen that there was no floor beneath them. There was no floor beyond the storefront’s window. Entangled, the two men dropped around twelve feet, from the third floor to the second. 

“Gaah!” 

“Guhh!” 

Penebia suffered more damage in the fall, having landed directly on his back. Because of the human cushion, M got away with only light bruises. 

The shock and bounce of the impact threw the two apart. Both scrambled to their feet. 

“They’re falling!” 

The crowd in the pub watched on the screen as two large avatars smashed through a pane and dropped through the empty space beyond. 

And they landed on…an airport. 

The two men fell into the middle of a runway, warping its straight lines. 

“Huh?” 

“What the—?” 

For a moment, the spectators thought there had been a bug. 

Had the two combatants somehow warped to the airfield in the northeast section of the map while at the same time becoming giants? 

Obviously, that wasn’t the case. 

The room they had crashed into was large—one hundred feet to a side, with another square, sixty-five feet to a side, situated in the center. 

“Oh, I get it. It’s a miniature of the city!” 

The room was not a store, but an exhibition. The smaller area in the center of the chamber was a miniaturized display of the map they were fighting on—before it had fallen into disrepair, of course. 

The model city had to be one five-hundredth the size of the real one. The details were so intricately re-created that looking down on it felt like watching from an aerial drone. 

The camera angle dipped down until the second-story entrance to the room was visible. 

There were signs in English explaining that this room held a miniature re-creation of the area, that entry and photography were free, that visitors should move clockwise around the model, and that it had taken locals several years to put it all together. 

The miniatures were indeed laboriously meticulous. Someone had cut out tiny pieces of translucent plastic for each window on the airport terminal one by one. Colorful planes in one-five-hundredth scale lined up at the gates, and the twenty-inch control tower still had vibrant paint color. 

It took all of a second for one of four burly legs stomping around to flatten the terminal. 

At well over six feet tall, M and Penebia loomed over the tiny world as three-thousand-foot monsters. 

M’s right foot crushed the airport’s passenger terminal with one stray step, leaving a gigantic footprint on the runway. Penebia stomped forward, the impact traveling through the ground and bouncing the little planes up into the air like popcorn on a frying pan. 

“It’s like a kaiju movie.” 

“Even kaiju aren’t that big, though.” 

The audience had an aerial view of the two giants struggling. 

Penebia threw a right hook at M. His opponent took a half step back for distance, grabbed Penebia’s outstretched arm, and twisted it left, going for a takedown. Penebia jumped in that direction, bending his body around the axle of that arm into a flip and flattening the highway with both feet as he stood firm. 

As soon as the other man started to rotate, M let go. He retreated slightly, putting a few meters between them. In the process, his foot kicked the control tower into pieces. 

“Ooh. Can that tracksuit do MMA?” 

“This seems like a tough fight.” 

M drew his HK45 pistol. Even if the bullets were going to be deflected, it was a means to keep the opposing player at a distance. 

However, the moment he pointed the muzzle at the enemy, Penebia’s large right foot kicked M’s hand with a long-distance roundhouse. Naturally, that was not an in-game skill in GGO. 

It knocked the HK45 loose, sending it flying over the freeway junction in the center of the map and into the town, where it smashed tiny houses. 

Penebia jumped, going high in the air with his knee outstretched. The pointed end smashed against the left side of M’s face from above. 

“Urgh!” 

M’s hefty body lurched to the right while another kick from Penebia pounded his side. This one was a clean blow to M’s side, like something a kickboxer would do. 

The tip of Penebia’s boot jammed into unguarded flesh. M toppled onto the highway, demolishing it instantly. 

And then he was on his feet again. 

“You’re a pretty good fighter,” praised Penebia, pausing his assault. If he had persisted without talking, he might have gotten knocked back by M when he bounced back up. 

Penebia’s eyes darted away for a split second, looking up to the left. 

He was on the airport, while M was standing on the other side of the east-west highway. That put the model of the mall, where they were actually located right now, just behind M’s foot. 

“Your name is M, right? I saw you on the Squad Jam replays,” Penebia continued, waving his left hand. It brought up his window, which he used to remove his armor. The heavy helmet and guards vanished, leaving him light and nimble in his tracksuit. 

He was clearly ready and willing to finish this fight in hand-to-hand combat—if not face-to-face; his mask and sunglasses were still on. 

“……” 

M spread his feet in a stance and warily shed his backpack. It fell onto the model of the mall and squashed it, along with several other buildings in the vicinity. 

With evident excitement, Penebia stated, “You’re used to getting hit, I can tell. Very good at deflecting the force of each blow.” 

M maintained his silence. 

“I’ve been practicing fighting my whole life in the real world. I was expecting to take you easily.” 

For the first time, M spoke. “I’m sorry to have disappointed you.” 

“No, not at all! It’s more fun when I can’t win the easy way!” 

“Glad to hear it. You’re pretty tough, too. Fire hired the right mercenaries.” 

“Mercenaries…? Ah, I see. Good point. In the sense that we’re fighting for his wishes, I suppose that word is appropriate,” Penebia muttered, briefly confused. 

“…?” 

So was M. 

But roughly two minutes before M stood amid the model city with a confused expression, Pitohui had leaped into a men’s clothing store. 

The 130-foot store interior was packed with suits. There was nothing fancy about the display; they were just lines of ensembles on hangers. Now and then, just for good measure, there was a full-length mirror and a mannequin, but for the most part, it was so austere that it might as well have been a factory. 

Would anyone actually want to buy a suit in a place like this? Pitohui glanced at the tags; the suits were all the same size and color. Every outfit was a men’s medium in navy blue. 

It was obvious that when designing the assets for this store, the artists had cut corners and copied and pasted the same suit and mannequin over and over to fill it out. By GGO’s usual intensely detailed standards, this was a hack job. 

“Little one went your way. Have fun,” M’s voice informed her over the comm. Pitohui pointed her reloaded XDMs back toward the entrance. 

Ron, the small man in the tracksuit, pulled his pistol out before rushing into the store after Pitohui. 

His weapon was a Sturm, Ruger & Co. MK III pistol from the United States with a fused silencer attached. With Japanese pronunciation, it sounded the same as the famous German Luger, but this was a different armament. 

The MK III had a thin barrel that shot .22-caliber Long Rifle bullets, which were no larger than beans. However, the gun possessed excellent accuracy, and the efficiency of the built-in silencer made it an ideal weapon for assassins. 

Ron rushed into the store, black gun in hand, and promptly leaped into the air. His quick jump carried him over a line of suits, as well as the bullets that Pitohui shot in his direction. 

“What are you, an acrobat?” she snapped as she ducked and hid amid the forest of fabric. 

Ron landed on the shoulders of a dummy and jumped even higher from there. With his Acrobat skill at an extremely high level, it was like he didn’t weigh anything at all. According to players who built their skills out this way, it felt like gravity didn’t exist. 

He dangled by one arm from the lighting hanging from the ceiling, then started to fire the MK III in the direction he thought the enemy had shot from. 

The .22-caliber bullets might be small, but they were deadly projectiles nonetheless. A suit offered no protection from them. Three rounds caught Pitohui’s body, certainly by coincidence, and left small glowing marks on her. She lost about 10 percent of her hit points, which brought her down to 40. 

“Tch! Damn street performer!” Pitohui swore, and she operated her inventory while she tumbled away, a rather impressive bit of dexterity on her own part. She came to a stop and grabbed what had appeared before her. 

Ron let go of the light and landed silently amid the rows of outfits. 

An object came over a few rows toward him. He did a back handspring using only his open left hand to distance himself from the thing, moving as quickly and precisely as a gymnast. 

It was a grenade that had been lobbed at him, though not an explosive one. Gray clouds began to fill the large store. Since there was no wind inside, nothing pushed the fog in any direction. 

“Haah!” Once Ron had given himself plenty of distance, he opened his menu with his free hand. He had a plasma grenade stored, which he quickly called up and hurled into the sea of gray vapor. 

The surge and blast of the explosive instantly cleared the smoke cover. 

Ron jumped again. Bounding like a flea, he went from row to row over the suits, looking for Pitohui from above. 

“Hmm?” 

She wasn’t there. 

All he saw were clothes and hangers that had been toppled by the grenade, some hangers that were still upright, and well-dressed mannequins. 

By the time he noticed that one of the mannequins was pointing a gun at him, it was just a bit too late. 

The bullet struck Ron right in the forehead as he landed, just before he could jump again. Yet his hit points didn’t reach zero until after his feet left the floor once more, and he became a corpse in midjump. 

Ron fell into the fabric with his DEAD tag. Pitohui, dressed in one of the suits, looked at him with satisfaction and said to M, “I got it done. How about you?” 

M was getting kicked and could not respond. 

“Hya!” Penebia howled, and he reached to grab him. 

M used his palm to block the other man’s hand. 

Two massive men were grappling in a contest of strength atop the highway. Despite their incredible investment in the Strength stat, they had reached a stalemate. Their thick arms paused, frozen, trembling with effort. 

“Aaaah!” Penebia exhaled happily. 

“Hrrgh!” M grunted, summoning more force. But it was Penebia who was gaining the upper hand. 

M’s arms were getting closer and closer to his chest. His back began to arch. Then it buckled, and Penebia was leaning over M, leaving his stomach vulnerable to a sudden kick. 

M was trying a judo throw called a tomoe nage, rolling onto his back with his foot against the opponent, but Penebia saw it all coming. He lifted his knee to block M’s foot and slammed him to the ground. 

The half-destroyed mall was now completely flattened under M’s back. Penebia was straddling his stomach. He reared back and threw a ferocious punch at M’s exposed face. 

Crunch! 

It was a nasty sound. M’s face began to glow with a damage indication light. 

Another punch came swinging down before M could grab Penebia’s arm, and his face glowed even brighter. 

“Gah! Guh!” 

Then a third. 

M might have been good at shrugging off blows, but there was nothing he could do about punches from directly overhead. With each hammer blow, M’s body crunched farther down through the wreckage of the model mall. The fourth one caused his hands to go limp, and he collapsed against the ground. 

“Hmm. Was hoping you’d hold out a bit more,” Penebia grunted before lifting his fist for the final blow. Down it went. 

However, the strike only caught a mass of green nylon. 

M had grabbed his backpack to protect himself. It was still holding the shield plates, and it absorbed all of the blow. 

“Hng!” Penebia grunted again, surprised at the sudden deflection of his blow. “So what?” 

Whud. 

He continued punching, deciding to smash M through the backpack. If he persisted, the metal plates would eventually slam against M’s face and squash it. 

Whud. 

After the sixth punch, as Penebia raised his fist for another, he caught sight of M’s left hand. 

It was clenching something, right in front of the backpack. A round metal object… 

“Wha—?!” 

It exploded the instant he realized it was a shrapnel grenade. 

The grenade blew while still in M’s grip—completely obliterating his upper arm. 

It tore a hole in the nylon backpack but did not pass through a single layer of the special shield. 

Almost all the shrapnel burrowed into Penebia’s upper half, and the force of the blast blew him backward. 

“You got me! Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!” 

Penebia died laughing, his entire torso glowing red. 

“Oh! M’s almost dead!” 

Llenn was alarmed to see her teammate’s HP dwindling to nearly nothing. Even she could finish him off with a punch at this point. 

“That doesn’t matter! Focus here!” 

“Yeah, I know, but—!” 

Boss and Llenn were fleeing. They were rushing down the mall hallway on the fourth floor, running to the west from the southeast corner. As it happened, that was where they’d come from, but circumstances had forced them to double back. 

There’d been no other option. 

A small explosion roared behind them. It didn’t cause them any damage, but the force of the blast shook Llenn and Boss. Bits of debris struck their backs and heads. 

“Yeep!” Llenn shrieked. 

“What is that thing?!” Boss demanded, but no one volunteered an answer. 

Llenn’s speed was her strength, and Boss was quite nimble, too, for her size, but the man in the blue tracksuit behind them was keeping pace fifty meters behind. 

Over his clothes, he wore a vest packed with small pouches. And in his right hand was a black pistol. 

From the shape of the gun and the grip’s angle, it looked like a revolver, but it didn’t have that iconic rotating chamber, and the barrel looked abnormally wide. 

The man stopped running, took aim at Llenn and Boss, and fired. 

His weapon loosed a silver shell that was 68 mm across and over 250 mm long. 

It was the spitting image of a shell with wings, but it was much too small to be something like that. 

The object raced down the corridor, struck a pillar, and exploded. 

“Shit!” 

Boss managed to avoid the blast and shrapnel by hiding behind a bench. With her Strizh in hand, she returned fire. 

That said, her target was fifty meters away. Just because he was visible didn’t mean Boss could reliably hit him. Still, she got off a few rounds, hoping for a lucky hit. Unfortunately, the man watched for her bullet lines, dodging and dropping to the floor. All of Boss’s shots went to waste. 

Llenn pointed both Vorpal Bunnies at her pursuer and opened fire, covering for Boss as she exchanged her gun’s magazine. The heavy .45-caliber shots echoed off the exterior of shop fronts displaying mugs and frying pans. Her volley was as successful as Boss’s. 

If only I had P-chan right now… 

Llenn swiped her hands behind her back to reload. If she had access to her usual armaments, the enemy would assuredly have a rifle or a 40 mm grenade launcher. It was because of the pistol restriction that the pink-dressed girl was still alive. 

The slides clicked back into place. 

I need to master using these… 

“That’s right! You have to help us shine in the spotlight!” 

“Close combat is where handguns are the star! C’mon, get us closer!” 

Llenn could have sworn she heard her Vor-chans talking to her but chose to believe that hadn’t been the case. 

While stray bullets whizzed past the man in the tracksuit, he bent his gun in half. 

It was a folding-type weapon. The front half of the gun collapsed forward like it was bowing, exposing the thicker rear part of the pistol. A fat golden cartridge popped up and fell to the floor. 

Then the man extracted a golden tube from a pouch and stuck it in. He pulled the bent gun back into place, took aim, and fired again. 

“A grenade launcher? That’s no fair!” fumed Llenn, ducking away from the blast. Despite her protests, the thing was a handgun. 

The tracksuit man was wielding a Walther Kampfpistole. It was a small grenade-launching pistol used by the German army in World War II. Initially, it was meant to fire 65 mm flares. But over time, it had been improved to launch grenades, which was the source of its eventual name, which translated to “combat pistol.” 

It was probably the world’s smallest grenade launcher, and like so many other strange weapons, it was classified as a handgun in GGO. 

Since his appearance, the man had kept Llenn and Boss on the run. The Kampfpistole had a range of over fifty meters, and when the projectile finished its ballistic flight, it exploded upon contact. The shrapnel had a splash radius of about two meters. 

It was a single-shot gun that took time to reload, so Llenn and Boss might have stood a chance if they’d found time to rush their opponent. However, with the way he was shooting off grenades at them, it was too dangerous to approach. 

The pair considered hiding in the stores on either side of the hall, but if the tracksuit man continued launching explosives into the interiors, they’d only get blown up without a fair chance to fight back. Since they were now hiding behind a pillar, he couldn’t risk drawing too near. It seemed he planned to maintain a certain distance, keep Llenn and Boss in his sights, and steadily track them down. He was a nasty opponent—a real piece of work. 

“Dammit, why are all of Fire’s henchmen so tough? And they’re packing the perfect weapons for a pistol fight!” Boss swore. 

Then she realized something and gasped, “Wait…maybe these people were chosen because they would fight here, with this gear… Perhaps the fact that they never used any long guns outside was because they weren’t packing any in the first place…” 

WEEI had prepared for the pistol battle better than anyone else. They’d selected specialized weapons and split up their team to fight individually. LPFM had been led into this situation by none other than… 

“Hey, Llenn, do you think—?” 

“Not now! Just focus on trying to beat him!” Llenn snapped back. 

“Fine. Got it. You’re right.” 

This was no time to get distracted, especially by thoughts about how Pitohui had skillfully led the group through a series of events that ended with them in the mall. 

Doubts wouldn’t stop the enemy’s bombardment. 

A thick bullet line curved downward right in their vicinity, so Llenn leaped away. She ran diagonally down the hall and had just reached the edge of the stairs when she felt the blast on her back. Black smoke filled the space where she had just been standing. 

“Yo! You seem to be having trouble!” came a loud voice from the bottom of the stairs. 

Llenn turned on pure reflex and pointed both Vorpal Bunnies at the newcomer. 

“Eep! Don’t shoot!” yelped Fukaziroh. 

“Fuka! You’re all right?” 

“Somehow. Beat the sniper on Fire’s team,” said Fukaziroh, hopping up the steps. And she wasn’t alone. 

“Shirley! Please help! There’s a tough enemy up here! Shoot him!” she said, calling upon her handgun sniper of a teammate. 

“Who is it? I’ll mop the floor with him.” 

Shirley could pick off a target at over three hundred meters. A guy wandering around less than seventy meters away was a sitting duck to her. 

Watchful for bullet lines, Llenn beckoned Shirley up the stairs. Once she was just a few steps away from the fourth floor, Llenn popped her head up to see into the walkway and said, “There!” 

The grenade pistoleer was standing smack in the middle of the mall, like a bronze statue. 

Shirley was hiding right beside Llenn at the top of the stairs. She placed the XP-100 on the carpet to keep it steady and looked through the scope. 

“Can you get him?” Llenn asked. 

“Easily. Just a standing target,” said Shirley. She took steady aim and put her finger against the trigger. There was a loud gunshot. 

“Gaah!” 

A bright-red bullet effect formed on Shirley’s back. 

“Huh?” 

Someone pushed Llenn up the stairs and back to the fourth floor. When she turned around, she saw them, two men firing pistols up from the third-floor hallway below. 

She recognized the angular green camo, as well as their sharp, mean faces. 

“MMTM!” 

The two who had survived the airport had finally come back to haunt them. 

Shirley’s HP had been recovering but was now going down again after that hit in the back. She had less than 20 percent remaining. Llenn was struck twice as well, only surviving thanks to her armored backpack. 

Even so, the impact pushed light little Llenn off the stairs. That ensured that the next shots did not hit her. 

“Shit…” 

Shirley stayed prone on the steps and focused again on aiming her XP-100 at the man in the tracksuit. Normally, she would have stood up and made a break for safety. Her legs were still fine, after all. 

Curiously, that was not what Shirley chose to do. 

The instant she caught the tracksuit player in her crosshairs, she pulled the trigger. The XP-100 roared, and a lethal explosive bullet lanced forth. 

A moment later, more 9 mm bullets met Shirley’s back, dropping her to zero HP. 

That’s weird. Why didn’t I run away? she wondered as she died, but there would be no answer for her in Squad Jam 4. 

The 7.62 mm explosive round Shirley had fired for her team’s sake found purchase in the man wearing a blue tracksuit. 

He just so happened to have his left arm placed in front of his stomach at the moment. He had been reaching across his body for a new grenade on his right hip. 

Shirley’s bullet struck his arm and exploded. 

“Hng!” 

Instantly, his left arm from the elbow downward exploded into polygonal pieces, but that ensured that he stayed alive. 

“Dammit!” Llenn swore, watching the DEAD tag gleam over Shirley’s body. 

She lay flat on the ground in front of the stairs, sticking just the Vorpal Bunnies over the top step to fire downward. She didn’t care about the probability of landing those shots. She just needed to make sure the enemy couldn’t climb up. 

After a dozen rounds, she stuck her hands into her backpack for a reload and popped her face up just a bit. David had managed to find a favorable angle for cover at the bottom of the stairs and was poking one eye and his gun out. He fired up at Llenn. 

“Eek!” 

She pulled her head back, and the projectile sped through where her skull had been a second earlier. 

The shooting stopped there. Llenn prepared herself for an enemy assault, but he wasn’t charging up the steps for the moment. 

“One MMTM on the floor below!” Llenn called to her remaining teammates over the comms. 

From behind her, Boss replied, “Got it! The grenadier’s still alive!” 

“All right. Where’s Fuka?” 

“I’m here. Look up.” 

Llenn did just that and spied her friend on the stairs leading from the fourth level to the fifth. The angle kept her safe from both the grenadier and MMTM. 

“So they got Shirley… Everyone, come up here for now. There’s no shame in running for your life, ya know?” 

It hurts to lose sight of the enemy, but I guess it’s our only choice, Llenn thought, and then she heard fierce fighting erupt on the floor above. 

“Hyee! Oohoop!” Fukaziroh gurgled mysteriously, and she slid down the stairs on her butt. 

Dakoom! There was a heavy gunshot, and a bullet cracked against the metal of the handrail on the stairs, bending it in half. That had to be the most powerful pistol bullet class there was. 

Fukaziroh flopped down beside Llenn and said, “Never mind, there’s a tracksuit up there, too! He saw me! If you pop out, you’ll get shot!” 

“Argh! Is it Fire?” Llenn asked. If he was there, she had a mind to jump up and try to take him out with her. 

“No, it wasn’t a tall, skinny guy. He had a huge freakin’ gun on him.” 

Behind a pillar, at a store about twenty meters to the east of the stairs on the fifth-floor hall, stood a man in a blue tracksuit. He had been sneaking nearer and was the one who’d fired when he’d spotted Fukaziroh climbing the stairs. 

From behind the pillar outside a highly regarded pillow store, he extended a large black automatic pistol: the Desert Eagle. 

That name had become synonymous with any automatic pistol that could fire Magnum rounds, like .357 and .44 Magnums. It was large, simple, and powerful, qualities that gave it great popularity. 

This member of WEEI carried a model that launched the most potent and largest-caliber bullet of them all, the .50 Action Express (AE). When shot at close range, those projectiles delivered as much kinetic energy as an AK-47 rifle round. Since the Desert Eagle was a pistol, it couldn’t aim long distances, and the bullet itself was large and heavy and had poor air resistance, which hurt its range. 

However, in a mall, the weapon might as well have been the Grim Reaper. 

“Let’s go west then, Fuka!” 

“Okay!” 

The east side of the hallway was a no go. Death awaited on the stairs going up and down. So the only option was to run west on this floor. Llenn decided to roll the dice on the one possibility to turn the situation around. 

“Aiee!” 

But then Fukaziroh got shot again, right before Llenn’s eyes. 

Running down in a zigzag pattern from the far side of the corridor was the other MMTM member, Kenta. 

As the quickest member of his squad, he had run back across the third-floor hall, then darted up an escalator so he could surprise them from the fourth floor in a pincer attack from the west. 

His APX bullet caught Fukaziroh’s right leg as she got up to run. 

“Bwehf!” She toppled to the floor on the spot. Her hit points were down to 50 percent. “You filthy bastard!” she swore, taking aim from the carpet with her M&P and firing. If you could call it “taking aim.” 

She was just shooting at random, not expecting to hit him, necessarily. The spread of random projectiles was actually more difficult to dodge than accurately aimed bullets. 

Kenta gave up on getting closer and leaped toward a fancy women’s lingerie store to their left—his right—on the south side of the corridor. He was about thirty-five meters from Llenn and Fukaziroh. 

He thrust a mirror on a stick past a mannequin wearing a pink brassiere to get a look at the rest of the hall. Then he passed on the information he found to the only surviving teammate he had, David. 

“I’m on the west side of the fourth floor! The sniper woman’s dead. Only Pink, Blondie, and Gorilla left. Enemies somewhere on the fifth level and the east side of the fourth, one each!” 

“Got it! No M and poisonous bird, eh…? No use being aggressive here, then. Let the enemies do the heavy lifting. If they run your way, ice ’em!” 

The gunshots ceased, and a period of silence settled in. 

“There’s no…escape…,” Llenn muttered. 

She was on the floor in the fourth-floor hall. Right near the stairs. 

Fifty meters to the east was an enemy with a grenade pistol. 

David waited at the bottom of the steps. 

Above the stairs was an enemy with a powerful pistol. 

Thirty meters to Llenn’s west was Kenta, hiding inside a shop. 

Whichever way she went, she was going to get shot. 

Whichever way she attacked, she was going to get hit from behind. 

“It’s no good…” 

“Llenn! Don’t give up!” shouted Boss, who was in cover behind a pillar ten meters away. 

She popped off a few shots with her Strizh, but the one-armed grenade pistoleer nimbly dodged her bullets. Thankfully, having one hand made it much harder to reload, so he wasn’t shooting back nearly as often. It seemed more like he was content to keep a watchful eye for now. 

Llenn glanced at her team’s health bars. M was nearly dead. Pitohui had about 40 percent left. Fukaziroh was at 50. Her own healing had finished, putting her at max life. 

“Ugh! But…” 

Despite Boss’s reprimand, Llenn couldn’t conjure up a solution to her predicament. 

Then she heard an airy, aloof voice say, “Oh, good grief. Is this where the cool, cute one steps in?” 

“Fuka?” 

“I’ve lost Rightony and Leftania. But I’ve still got plasma grenades to spare. All the pouches over my vest are filled with them.” 

“And?” Llenn pressed, not getting the picture. 

From somewhere else in the mall, Pitohui’s voice rang in her ear. “Sounds good! Then let’s go with that in ten seconds!” 

“Pito?” 

“Got it! Hey, Eva! You know what to do! We need your pistol skill. Not the forehead this time!” Fukaziroh replied. 

“You bet!” answered Boss, spinning around from behind the pillar with a smile. 

“Okay! I’ll leave what I borrowed from you on the floor!” 

Huh? Llenn still had no clue what was happening. 

“Five, four, three,” Pitohui began to count, “two, one, go!” 

Before Llenn had time to ponder further, the final battle commenced.