“Shall we put on the finishing touches?”
Vivi and the rest of ZEMAL made their appearance near David.
She chose not to call it “the final battle” to make it painfully obvious that they were ready to fight MMTM, too. It was practically a challenge.
The team had regrouped behind a barricade about three yards south of the tower. Only Bold was nearby to serve as David’s defense.
The other MMTM members were spread out laterally, watching the tower. They were on their feet and vigilant, so that they could move instantly if their barricades disappeared.
“Let’s go,” David told Bold. Then he mentioned to Vivi, “That reminds me, I didn’t get to hear about your ‘special attack.’”
In a display of etiquette, he started to trade second loadouts with Bold—in order to show his off first.
Bold’s ARX160 disappeared. It was replaced by a large weapon that resembled a three-foot-long narrow tube with a cone shape stuck to the end.
“We brought this,” David said, taking it from Bold and resting it on his shoulder.
“An RPG-7. That’s an antitank rocket. It must have been expensive,” Vivi said, identifying it at a glance.
The RPG-7 was one of the most powerful weapons in GGO, in particular for its rocket range and power. The projectile was an antitank rocket meant to blow holes in the thick armor plating of military vehicles. There were different kinds of grenades that could be fired from it, such as the classic exploding shrapnel heads, and they could be switched out as needed for tactical purposes.
Naturally, with all that incredible power came an equally hefty price tag. In response to her concern over his budget, David chuckled and said, “I really want to win one of these things.”
The RPG-7’s existence in GGO was confirmed in the playtest the previous month, and there was a team in SJ4 that was completely equipped with a set of them—the ammo refilling had helped them go crazy blasting people. The price was indeed laughable.
The launcher was expensive to begin with, and so were the rockets. Each one was equal in price to a cheaper SMG or pistol. It was like firing disposable weapons.
Vivi did not ask what happened with MMTM or how they were able to afford such a thing. Instead, she said, “I don’t want to make an enemy out of you. I suppose it’s our turn to show off.”
She turned to the three machine gunners behind her and said, “Summon the Big Mama, boys.”
The surviving members of ZEMAL traded loadouts, and the three aside from Vivi materialized their alternate gear.
Four separate things, roughly speaking, appeared.
A mammoth gun receiver—a hunk of metal well over a foot long, with two vertical grips coming off the rear. That was Huey’s alternate weapon.
A mammoth gun barrel—a thick and sturdy metal pipe with a grip along the middle, ready to bludgeon someone to death. And not just one, but a collection of ten of them. This was Peter’s alternate.
A mammoth tripod—big and low enough that it could probably support an elephant’s front legs.
And several large, metal ammunition boxes, the size of rice bins. The tripod and ammo were Max’s alternate gear.
“……I’ll be damned…”
David recognized what they were putting together. He could only watch in amazement.
Max handily spread out the tripod while Huey affixed the base of the receiver to the tripod. Lastly, Peter stuck a barrel into the receiver and jammed it into place by pushing on the muzzle end. The gun was complete.
“An M2…” David gasped, offering his shock as a return gift for earlier. And he was, in fact, shocked. Completely bowled over. “And it’s the M2HB-QCB model for easier barrel replacement!”
The M2 was a Browning machine gun made for the American military, starting all the way back in 1933. It used 50-caliber (12.7 mm) rounds, which is why it was called a heavy machine gun.
Despite its long history, it was a perennial bestselling heavy machine gun, excellent in both form and function and used all over the world. The Western powers, including Japan, liked to put these on their military vehicles.
The M2HB-QCB that David mentioned was the Quick Change Barrel model, which was the most popular model that everyone was switching to now.
The barrel exchange, which had taken too long due to the ancient modeling, was much easier with this model. It was Belgium’s FN Herstal that had produced the QCB—the same company that made Llenn’s P90.
Vivi pulled a—you guessed it, mammoth—ammo belt out of the ammo box and declared, “Correct.”
She was holding 12.7 mm rounds for machine guns known as .50 BMGs. That was the same ammo that Pitohui’s M107 antimateriel rifle from SJ2 used. Or to be more accurate, antimateriel rifles took the huge bullets designed for the M2 and put them in a high-powered, long-range gun that a single person could carry and operate.
The power of each shot was out of this world and could easily shoot through objects that an ordinary assault rifle could not penetrate. Its effective range was devastating as well, at well over a thousand yards. Two thousand, if your visibility was good. And if you didn’t care about accuracy, it could go even farther.
Thanks to the sturdy and heavy receiver and barrel, the M2 could shoot ten times a second. This was surely one of the most powerful guns found in GGO, alongside the M134 Minigun from SJ4 and the 7.62 mm Gatling gun.
There were downsides, too, of course. When you included the tripod, it was tremendously heavy; a single person could not carry all the parts together.
You had to dismantle it and split up the parts among different people, then assemble it when you were going to use it and carry the assembled gun with several people at once. It was very difficult to use when completing routine GGO quests.
But David broke into a grin. “It’s perfect!”
It was indeed the ideal gun for shooting at a group of people staying hidden inside a tower.
But he had to wonder something: “Did you see this situation coming?”
They had prepped their RPG-7 because there were many usable vehicles in Squad Jam, and they wanted a weapon against that. After watching the video for SJ4, they saw that another team had used them to devastating effect on the diesel train as M was driving it.
RPG-7s were not especially heavy and could be carried as you moved, so the negative effects they had on the team’s strategic options was negligible.
At the same time, MMTM did not select the option of preparing a different set of guns as their second loadout. They were used to the weapons they had now, and they liked it that way.
So where had ZEMAL come up with the decision to have the entire team carry an M2 as their alternate? Certainly there would be some level of the usual We love machine guns! We wanna have the biggest one there is! but that alone would not be enough for Vivi the tactician to choose it.
She gave him a little grin and said, “Oh, you know. It’s that sponsor’s—”
“That damned excuse for a writer! It’s from one of his crappy books!”
“Yes. If there’s one thing I have, it’s time. So I read all of them that I could find. There’s one where a high schooler barricades himself in a tower and starts shooting a gun wildly and making all these absurd demands, like Bring me twelve beautiful girls to be my little sisters and Force NHK to re-air all of my favorite anime and shows, and in the end, the SDF sends a tank that shoots the tower with a cannon and blows him up. It’s called Totally Toppled Tower: My Seven-Hour War.”
“And this is…a comedy?”
“No, it’s dead serious. Actually, there’s a whole explanation about the reason he turned to violence, and his hidden true identity subplot really gets paid off in the end. I thought it was pretty tragic.”
“Well, setting that aside… So that’s how you got the idea. And since everyone’s got the parts, you couldn’t afford to lose a single one of them. Though I know your love for them extends beyond this strategy,” David added hastily. He wanted to make it clear that he knew she wasn’t just mad about Shinohara and Tomtom dying because of the tactical deficit of losing their alternate gear. She was very team-oriented.
“Shinohara had ammo, and his partner Tomtom was in charge of spare barrels, so the silver lining is that they didn’t leave the gun unusable,” Vivi said sadly. It was a coincidence that the two of the six members who died just happened to be carrying spare equipment, but that didn’t make it a happy one.
“I see… Well, shall we go? Time to go beat the people we were allied with an hour ago.”
“Let’s do it.”
✦ ✦ ✦
“An M2 heavy machine gun! No way! They have one?!”
The excitement of the audience over the appearance of the big guns for the finale of SJ5 was reaching a fever pitch. Because they were gun freaks. Emphasis on freaks.
“I’ve seen one of those attached to an enemy robot’s arm. Can’t believe they’re playable now.”
“I heard they showed up at an underground shop a few days back, but they sold out in minutes. For astronomical prices, of course…”
“ZEMAL made a bunch of cash for winning the last one… I bet all that prize stuff they got would make a nice pile of change if you sold it all.”
“The point is: This isn’t an item you can just decide to buy like that!”
“I hear you can see Vivi in Glocken at all hours of the day. Of course, you’re bound to notice. Because she’s hot.”
“I bet she’s diving all day long. Must be raking in the credits. Or else she hemorrhages real money…”
“It’s like, who the hell is she…?”
On the screen, the ZEMAL men lifted up the M2, tripod and all, and with covering help from Jake and Bold of MMTM, they started making their way toward the tower.
David had his RPG-7, and Kenta was watching the rear. Summon continued to monitor the tower closely. Though they were two separate squads without their comms hooked up, their distribution of roles was perfect. This was a benefit of having good leadership.
“So they’re gonna attack the tower with RPG-7s and an M2. Either that or—”
“No, they’re gonna blow it up, along with the people inside.”
“Brutal…”
“But the ideal option, right?”
✦ ✦ ✦
“So? What next?” Shirley asked, having gotten out her rope near the bottom of the spiral stairs.
“We do this!” Llenn said, activating her photon swords—having traded with Fukaziroh yet again—and illuminating the gloom.
✦ ✦ ✦
