It was a fantastic effect, as though the air around him had become a giant ball of rubber that repelled them. Pitohui and M soared a good five yards away. M was pushed to the left and very nearly flew right off of the castle edge.
“These ghosts ain’t sh—”
He wasn’t able to finish that sentence. Right behind the ghosts was what looked like a large trash can placed upside down. In the slim crack near the bottom, two spots flashed with light.
Then he couldn’t see anything.
It was only later that Summon learned he was looking at the Pseudo-Trash-Can Two-Man Human-Powered Armored Vehicle, also known as the PM; that Llenn had shot her two Vorpal Bunnies from the slightly ajar lid; and that her 45-caliber pistol rounds had hit both of his eyes.
“Screw this!”
Jake’s HK21 roared in anger at the defeat of his teammates. True to its German precision, the gun slammed the trash can with powerful 7.62 × 51 mm NATO rounds. And every shot that hit the can simply bounced off.
“What?! Is that the same as M’s shield?!” he realized promptly, although it didn’t cause him to stop shooting. As long as he was firing, they couldn’t pop out of the crack to hit him back.
But that only left him vulnerable from another direction.
Boss descended the mountain of stone, opening herself up to attack from David or ZEMAL, swung around to the right of Jake, and put a clean, well-aimed shot from her Vintorez into his head. There was no sound.
ZEMAL was not shooting at them.
The moment his mates started dying, David stilled and clutched the STM-556’s magazine. In front of it was the trigger to the grenade launcher stuck underneath the gun barrel.
However tough the armor on that suspicious box was, a direct hit from a grenade would flip it over. And once it was overturned, he could just shoot whoever was there.
But the next moment, David’s vision went dark.
“Huh?”
Actually, the world went dark.
Coming up behind him on a diagonal in his blind spot was a gang of about fifty ghosts, circling around in front of him, on the sides, and behind, completely surrounding him from a distance of just over four yards.
On top of the scrum of men surrounding him, more men climbed up, followed by even more. The pyramid structure began to topple toward David.
Ordinarily, this meant they would simply fall on their faces near him, but the special ghost rules prevented that from happening.
“Approaching within twelve feet of the living will generate an optical defense field that slows and impedes the ghost’s movement.”
The ghosts at the top of the pyramid covered the dome of space around David and came to a stop in the air.
As a matter of fact, they were falling—but very slowly, and the closer they got, the slower it went. So it looked like they were simply freezing in midair as they covered him.
Physically, this arrangement was simply impossible, but because of the ghost rules, this was the only way it could play out.
“But so what?!” David roared, surrounded by ghosts. That was the extent of what they could do to him. They had temporarily blocked his view. They couldn’t even inflict any damage on him.
However, if he couldn’t see past them, he couldn’t shoot his grenades.
“Move it!”
He rushed forward. The instant he was within nine feet, the base of the scrum and the ones standing on their shoulders were yeeted clean out of the way.
In the moment that the world became bright again, there was a small watermelon rolling on the ground before him.
Well, it was similar in size and shape to a melon, but it wasn’t one. It was a large plasma grenade.
“But how…?”
He looked up and was surprised to find that the rubble heap and the trash can were a hundred feet away. Was there anyone left alive with the strength to throw such a heavy item that far?
The grand grenade rolled to within six feet of David’s right side and exploded about twelve feet behind him.
As the blue plasma obliterated him, all of the many ghosts choking the area suffered nothing more than a bright light in their eyes.
✦ ✦ ✦
After the grand grenade blast died down, Llenn quietly peeked out of the PM and saw five whole DEAD tags around her.
“Wow! We completely wiped out MMTM!”
Because the grenade explosion removed the barricades, too, there was nothing but a wide area of flat, empty ground, decorated by five fresh bodies and the tags hovering over them.
“You okay, Boss?” she asked. Boss had rushed in from the left on her own.
“I’m okay! Looks like ZEMAL pulled back. I’ll stay on the lookout!” she replied thankfully.
This made it seem like ZEMAL had escaped from them, but Llenn did not think they could have beaten the machine gunners in a direct fight, so this was a welcome outcome. Now they had a chance to regroup and reset.
Then she yelled, “Fuka! Nice kick! That was brilliant!”
It was the answer to David’s mystery: how that huge, heavy grand grenade moved a hundred feet to land right next to him.
With her powerful legs, Fukaziroh kicked the timer-activated grand grenade from the edge of the PM. Throwing it might be impossible, but kicking was different. The legs are three to five times more powerful than the arms.
The grenade rolled over the flat surface, a long pass to David. Although it wasn’t perfectly on target, it was close enough. Thanks to the ghosts blocking David’s sight line, he didn’t see it until just before it went off.
Fukaziroh replied, “No big deal. I played some full-dive soccer games on an alt account.”
“How many games do you play?!”
“Listen, sports are great.”
“Spoken like a former tennis team member!”
“Don’t you wanna try, Llenn? People are really into this one game where all the avatars are giant bugs.”
“What happened to sports?”
“At any rate, long live the ghosts.”
“Agreed.”
Llenn popped her face out of the PM and gave the fifty ghosts milling around the area an adorable little bow of her head.
They returned a collection of smiles that indicated some very conflicted feelings.
✦ ✦ ✦
A few dozen minutes earlier, in the Graveyard where the ghosts waited to return, Pitohui shouted, “Hey, everybody, listen up! Attention please!”
The space was built to the exact same specifications as the familiar pub in Glocken.
In other words, it was reused assets. It was easy to forget which of the two you were in if you weren’t paying attention. On the familiar monitors, Llenn and her teammates were wandering aimlessly through the maze.
Pitohui was a well-known face around Squad Jam, so more or less all the men turned to look at her. Some of them had gone through agony in past Squad Jams because of her, or torment, or fire and brimstone. But all of that was in the past. There was no point feeling hatred toward her now. Just play it cool.
Anyway, you couldn’t attack anyone else in the pub, and even if you could, there was no guarantee you’d actually win.
“Listen up, people! You died! Too bad!”
“Yeaaah!” some celebrated.
“So did you!” others jeered.
Who among them would have guessed that Pitohui, of all people, would be dead, too, at this point?
“Yeah, yeah! It happens to me, too!” She smirked, facial tattoos dimpling. “But more importantly, too bad about those hundred million credits! Or the million yen!”
It was like she’d shot them all with an arrow.
“Shuddup!”
“Do you really feel sorry about that?!” they yelled back.
“So I’ve got a deal to discuss with you. All you guys whose teams are wiped out or aren’t likely to last to the final seventeen! Aren’t you angry? Doesn’t it frustrate you to know that someone else is gonna make off with that prize?”
Their eyes glinted savagely. It was an unmistakable answer: Of course we’re angry!
“In that case, once we’re ghosts, why don’t you ignore these cheap little points competitions and offer your full support to Llenn instead? You want some other jabroni to make off with those hundred million credits? Well, if you help Llenn survive and win the event, then no one’s going to end up with that bounty money!”
The men gulped loudly.
“Not that I’m gonna force ya!” she said, completing the sabotage.