While the two girls were holding a strategy meeting, ZEMAL’s two ghosts were having a strategy meeting of their own—if you could really call it that.
“Save us! Save our goddess!”
Having left Vivi’s side, Tomtom and Shinohara were now firing their machine guns into the sky and rounding up more ghosts to speak to them.
It really wasn’t any way to ask people for help, but the other ghosts decided they would rather hear out their story than fight them and die. They had gathered over seventy players, easily, from across the southern half of the arena. More were coming up every moment.
Maybe some of them were hoping to get a closer glimpse of the pair’s beautiful teammate, Vivi, but that was neither here nor there.
“Our goddess and our squadmates, as of this moment…”
Shinohara began to deliver a speech to the gathering of ghosts. So he had a means of speaking with others aside from bullets, after all.
“…are about to defeat the pink shrimp and her alliance! What do all of you ghosts want to do with your time? You’re back in the game. Do you want to go searching for cheap trinkets or get into shoot-outs with other ghosts, fighting over them? Would that really be fun for you? Yes—yes it would! You get to shoot like hell, and it takes forever to die now!”
Tomtom jabbed Shinohara with an elbow to stop him from digressing even further. He took over the speech.
“But why not choose a more satisfying battle to take part in? I want you to follow us, then throw yourselves at that pink shrimp! There are ghosts on the other side who have been misled by the devil woman Pitohui! You can’t beat the living, but you can beat other ghosts, block the enemy’s line of sight, and help support our goddess!”
This one was much more effective and persuasive.
“All right, then! I’m in! I’m not coming back as a ghost to go scraping together chump change or sit around on my ass!”
“Exactly! I don’t care about the hundred million credits anymore. I want to have a fight with meaning behind it, man!”
With two players loudly coming forward to voice their support, a number of other men in the crowd reluctantly offered their support, too. This sentiment spread until the entire crowd was more or less committed to the cause.
What the rest of them didn’t know was that the first two to speak up had been bought off by Tomtom back in the pub. The reward he promised them was the location of a hunting ground that ZEMAL favored because of its high rate of machine gun drops.
Of course, he didn’t tell them it would be easy to get those guns.
✦ ✦ ✦
“I am a ghost! A ne’er-do-well rascal of a ghost! When I make threats, the storm winds blow to make good on them!”
Among this group was Thane, the live-commentator player, who was thoroughly enjoying himself.
“Can one bloom after death? I will show you what is possible! Prepare for commentary from the perspective of an apparition from beyond the grave! I have not a shred of anger toward Llenn for cutting off my head, but my allegiance and utmost efforts will belong to this side!”
It sounded like he was holding a grudge.
✦ ✦ ✦
At 3:04 PM, both teams had come up with their tactics, their plan, or to be as broad as possible, their strategy.
“Oooh, there they go!”
The screens showed a pack of ghosts charging forth.
The final battlefield remaining of SJ5 was a round arena a mile and a quarter across.
A grouping of players on the north side started running toward a different group on the south side.
✦ ✦ ✦
“There we go! Run, run, run!”
Standing at the lead of the eighty-ish ghosts on Llenn’s side was, of course, Pitohui.
With a KTR-09 in her left hand and a photon sword with blade extended in her right, she cut a bold figure at the head of the pack.
The striking nature of her pose was reminiscent of that classical painting of a charging woman leading her people into a glorious revolution. But not with her chest bared, of course.
The swarm of men outfitted in various gear rushed after her, eager not to be left behind.
Pitohui bellowed into the sky, “Come one, come all! If ye be distant, hear the sound! If ye be close, see the sight! For we are the No One Gets the Million Yen Friends! Or in abbreviated form, the Pitohui Army!”
No one there was going to make fun of the fact that there was no way that title abbreviated that way.
“Yaaaah!”
“Let’s goooo!”
“If I don’t get to be rich, no one gets to be rich!”
“That’s right! If we’re all miserable, we have nothing to fear!”
They were all too busy yelling and joining the charge to care. These people were in it for a good time, not for grammar and logic.
M was not present in the Pitohui Army.
So where was he? He had climbed up the tower where Lux was hiding earlier and readied his monstrous six-foot gun, the Alligator antimateriel rifle. Its effective range was over the full length of the arena, so he could hit anyone across the map from there.
“Pito, proceed south. There’s about ninety of them. Three hundred yards to go,” he said through the comm, which ghosts could use as well.
“You got it!”
The Pitohui Army started a ferocious charge, slowing down only to weave around any barricades in their way. Like an arrowhead, some of the members naturally wound up ahead of all the others, and they tore right into the enemy.
✦ ✦ ✦
“Enemy troops incoming! Stay put and shoot back!” Tomtom instructed his companions.
From the gaps between barricades, they could see the enemy ghost army on their way. They took positions shoulder to shoulder, ready to fight. They would stay here and shoot as much as they could, rather than turning to run, leaving their backs exposed.
“This is where we hold the line!” Shinohara called out.
“If you want our machine guns, you’ll have to come over here and take them from us!” Tomtom added bravely. No one had actually said they wanted the guns.
The group of ninety or so ghosts spread out laterally. They were lying down, crouching, or standing as needed, ready to fire. They were shoulder to shoulder, ready to deliver the maximum firepower to the enemy.
“The battle is set to begin!” Thane said, filming unsteadily as he walked in front of the lineup. “It’s just like the setup to fight off the famed Takeda cavalry at the Battle of Nagashino! The alliance of Oda Nobunaga and Tokugawa Ieyasu! Ie-yes-u, I say! Our victory is guaranteed! Look at how tight-knit our group is!”
One of the ghosts looked at the capering Thane and asked, “Can I shoot him?”
But the person next to him warned him not to.
At the very ends of the line were Tomtom and Shinohara, whose 7.62 mm machine guns could shoot over eight hundred bullets each.
The formation was complete.