Something preposterous—a tower.
A structure with the exact same appearance as the one where she’d gone through so much hassle, just ahead and on the right. And that meant one thing…
“Fuka! We’re going to fall up ahead!”
Somehow, they had come to the edge of the central keep arena. There were no barricades to block them up ahead.
Llenn tilted her head, and Vivi craned her neck to see the direction they were heading.
In another sixty feet, the vehicle was going to plunge ten thousand feet downward.
“Fuka! Stop, stop, stop! The cliff’s ahead! Danger, watch out!” Llenn shrieked.
“I will triuuuuuumph! Now is the time to avenge yeaaaaaars of hatred!” Fukaziroh bellowed back.
Realizing what she was about to do, Llenn screamed, “No, dummy, doooooooooon’t!”
But the car was not stopping. Sixty feet to go.
The next moment, a hand shot up from below.
It was Fukaziroh’s little hand, clenching Vivi’s wrist.
“Urgh!”
She fixed it in place with an iron grip. Llenn could withdraw her hand and not get shot.
Thirty feet to the cliff.
Now Llenn understood what Fukaziroh really wanted to do.
“Thank you, Fuka…”
She retracted the glowing blade and jumped. Her feet launched up off the pipe frame inside the vehicle, hurtling her upward. The lid on top came off and flew with her into the air. Llenn was clear of danger.
From her position above it all, Llenn could look down to see the topless PM accelerating even more, rushing ahead with Vivi held captive on the side.
There was a cliff just ahead, which the vehicle charged toward.
All the way to the end, Vivi tried to keep her pistol pointed at Llenn. But Fukaziroh’s firm hand kept its grip steady.
The PM’s wheels hit air at the same time that Llenn’s feet hit ground.
The soles of her boots landed ten feet from the edge of the cliff.
“!”
Then she did a somersault, on purpose. Llenn ended up on her stomach, clinging to the ground with every inch of her that she could, using her entire body as a brake.
“Stoppppp!” she willed, with every ounce of her being, praying to the god of Gun Gale.
The prayer was heard, and she came to a stop. Her face was over the edge of the cliff, giving her a perfect view of the plummeting PM below.
“Fukaaaa!” she cried, mourning the loss of her partner.
“Hey, what the—? Llenn! No! What?! You jumped off? Why did you do that?! C’mon! This was my chance to kill you and Vivi at the same time! My hundred million crediiiits!” Fukaziroh wailed a cry from the soul, reaching Llenn’s ears through the comm.
“Huh? Oh, uh, happy travels! Glad you could beat Vivi at last,” Llenn replied. It was the only thing she could say.
As the PM got smaller and smaller, she spotted some bright flashes of light.
The sound of faint gunshots rose upward, and through the comm, Fukaziroh shouted, “You biiiitch!”
As they fell, Fukaziroh and Vivi were engaged in a pistol shoot-out.
“Oh geez…”
There was nothing more to say. Llenn kept her head poked over the edge so she could watch. Even after the vehicle was completely out of sight, she could hear Fukaziroh in her ear shouting “I’ll beat you! I swear to God I’ll beat you! This day has been a hundred years in the making!”
Llenn recalled a Japanese class lecture in which she’d learned that the previous stereotypical saying, often used when confronting a nemesis, used “a hundred years” as a metaphor for the human life span. In other words, “This is to be your dying day.”
On the left edge of her vision, Fukaziroh’s hit points emptied out and were accompanied by a little X, exactly sixty seconds after she plunged over the cliff.
✦ ✦ ✦
Llenn sighed, pulled herself up to a sitting position, and turned around.
“Yo.”
“Hey.”
“Yeep!” she shrieked. A hundred feet away stood the two survivors from ZEMAL.
Huey and Max had their black imposing machine guns readied at waist height. Bullet lines extended from their muzzles, and the other ends were pointed right at Llenn.
They did not shoot her right away, however.
Mohawked Huey said somewhat sadly, “I’d demand revenge for our goddess and shoot you right here and now, Pink Devil…but you actually saved our leader’s life near the start of the game, didn’t you?”
“Huh? Oh yeah. Just kind of happened that way.”
“While you may be our foe, we will repay your good deed. This is an obligation that every machine gunner must fulfill in order to be beloved by the machine gun. You understand that, of course.”
She did not.
“I sure do,” she said.
“So we will not shoot until you have gotten to your feet, brandished your weapon, and taken a fighting pose.”
“That’s it?”
“Isn’t that enough?”
“Well, I’m grateful that you didn’t just shoot me right on the spot. But I mean…”
“What? What do you mean?”
“I still have teammates left. You know that, right?”
Two Dragunovs fired in unison, high-pitched and crisp.
Their bullets pierced the heads of the two men standing across from her.
✦ ✦ ✦
At the edge of the map, beside a tower, and facing the bodies of the last two members of ZEMAL, Llenn slumped to the ground.
“Ugh… I’m exhausted…”
Even the photon sword that slipped from her fingers muttered, “Yesss! Berry, berry tired!”
“Thanks for your help, Pho-chan.”
Llenn was nothing if not consistent in her naming standards.
Three women came strolling up on the right, bold and proud, in the open.
“Well done! A brilliant plan!” said the gorilla in pigtails, favoring her with a smile that would make little children burst into tears. The sniper pair of Anna and Tohma beamed at her, too.
It had been Llenn’s plan to keep these three out of direct combat, to hold in reserve as backup power if needed.
So she’d had her comm hooked up to them the entire time, and each had heard everything the other said.
“So what now? The ghosts seem to be enjoying themselves, but they’ve really got nothing to do with us,” Boss said, walking up to Llenn.
“Good point. I say, let’s settle this with a normal duel—but with one condition.”
“What’s that?”
“I don’t care how we do it, but it should be a one-on-one with you and me. And if I win, I want either Anna or Tohma to shoot me.”
“That’s not—”
“I don’t know who placed the hundred-million-credit bounty on me, but I want to make sure they’re out a lot of money! Your whole team can split the prize!”
“Hrmmm,” grunted the pigtailed gorilla.
“And I won’t go easy on you, of course!” The pink demon grinned.
“Um… Do you think I could join in, too?” said the man.
He stepped right out of the tower.
The tower he’d been hiding in the entire time.
The man’s whole body was covered in protective armor, looking like a tin robot toy.
Over his shoulders was a gigantic backpack.
And he was holding a string that went into the pack…
“Nwaaah!” Boss roared, launching into a forward kick.
“Glurgbh!” It slammed into Llenn’s stomach.
Her little body hurtled backward. The impact was strong enough to inflict damage equivalent to about 30 percent of her health.
“Aaaaahhh!”
Llenn flew over the edge of the cliff and began to plummet the ten thousand feet to the surface below.
The pull of freefall gravity tugged her downward, bottom toward the ground and feet pointed at the cliff. Right beyond her feet, the cliff climbed upward, going thirty-two feet faster every second.
Of course, she was the one who was falling, but in terms of how it looked to her, the surface beside her was shooting upward, faster and faster.
There was a bright-orange light on top of the cliff.
Llenn understood what it was, of course. It was an explosion from the self-detonating team. The one member who had survived was hiding inside the tower the whole time, then popped out just so he could blow himself up.
Boss had recognized who he was and kicked Llenn to knock her off the arena. To ensure she wouldn’t die.
“Boss…you saved me again… Thank you…,” she murmured, gazing at the orange light in the sky.
And then, just as loud and flashy, accompanied by a musical fanfare, a message appeared in front of all of that:
Congratulations!! Winner: LPFM!
The orange light promptly went out. There was no blast wind, no sound. The center of the castle just kept shooting upward, faster every second.
“Oh, right…”
With the last survivor of the suicide bomb team, there had been five players left, including Llenn. Four of them had just died in that blast, so Llenn was the last person alive. The winning team was LPFM.
SJ5 was over, and no one had successfully claimed the hundred-million-credit bounty.
As she dropped, Llenn had only one question on her mind.
How long am I going to keep falling?
✦ ✦ ✦
