Date published: 6th June 2022

Sorry for not getting this out in May. Now, this was supposed to be a short chapter but - *gestures to chapter length*

Explanations will be posted at the end of the chapter.

Chapter 15: Bubblegum Crisis

Email subject: GGO Report Draft 1

From: RidwanMason-at-HonestGamingStaff dot com

To: AdrianGervais-at-HonestGamingEditorial dot com

Adrian,

Sorry if the content is too short. It was a long day and I barely had enough sleep. I'll try to get more tomorrow, assuming the general lets accompany him. You know how these guilds are.

Ridwan

Attachment, PDF:

I stepped out into the city and my senses were assaulted with the smell of garbage and piss, blinded by obnoxious holograms of scantily dressed women holding thousand dollar firearms. The sky above flickered sporadically to allow rain to pour into this urban hell, like the static of a dead channel.

I still remember the time where I asked my dad why the save icon in video games looked like a vending machine, and I kid you not, I could have sworn his beard sprouted a few dozen grey hairs in an instant.

But I'm digressing. You're not here to read about the hieroglyphics of the past, you're here to learn one thing: What is Gun Gale Online: Mutant Horrors of Old Earth?

Gun Gale Online is the fourth VRMMORPG ever made, released back three years ago in 2036. The game has earned a reputation of being a hardcore, gritty, realistic, grimdark world, with its hellish post-apocalyptic setting, horribly mutated monsters and grimdark concept of being clone soldiers for space oligarchs. Originally a mod for SAO, the mod team for it, partnering with the mod team for Motor City Extreme, became Zaskar. The hundred or so developers worked for four years to produce the game.

SEED games are still the outlier when it comes to VR gaming, on the account of its high price for both console and game. VRMMORPGs are the rarest of all, due to aforementioned prices and an infrastructure for high speed Internet which is absent in most nations. Of the VRMMORPGs, there was the original SAO, Alfheim Online, and Asuka Empire. The cost of even making such a game could easily cost hundreds of millions; with SAO being the first ever game that cost a billion dollars to make. Thankfully for other developers, the SEED engine is far cheaper to license and dev tools are easy to make.

In the setting, the Glocken Corporation, the leading corporation of the time in matters of military and gene-cloning, created the perfect test tube soldier for the battlefield. The Clone Corps were first deployed at the tail of the 21st century, when the world experienced dramatic climate change before departing for the stars. Bio-organic weapons, cheaply made, but extremely simple minded.

After character creation, I stepped out of my cloning pod and into the reception area where an NPC officer greeted me. There I was given lore exposition: all players are clone soldiers from the distant past, a DNA-Cortex template of somebody from the 21st century. Giving the clones a personality of a real person solved the problem of not needing to have a professional class of NCOs and COs. These were the Vatborn Mk. II, bred for the harsh combat on Mars.

For unknown reasons, the SBC Glocken, returned to earth to liberate humanity and guide us to the future, landing on the outskirts of Istanbul. Whatever happened to Mars with all the other megacorps? No one really knew.

The officer told me this in a way that was very patriotic, nationalist, and on the right, with just the thinnest veneer of cover hiding the fascism. And that I, clone warrior serial ID-(numbers removed to protect the writer of the article), will bring civilisation to the savages. The anthem being played in the background sounded like an off tune rendition of the Star-Spangled Banner with the lyrics rewritten. Even the NPC officer kinda looked like the late R. Lee Ermey.

The officer patted me on the shoulder, gave me my PDA and a couple thousand credits, pointed at the door and said, "Go out there and raise hell on the natives, son."

To my non-surprise, the working title of Gun Gale Online was actually Eagle Expeditionary Force! Manifest Destiny in a Post-Apocalyptic Earth - A VRMMORPG.

It was something of a practical joke given this assignment. But Adrian, the editor of this piece you're reading, probably thought it was absolutely hilarious.

"You've been in wars Mason, you should definitely cover this! It's the same thing!"

I should note that I haven't actually covered any wars. The closest I came was being at Magadan where relief efforts were being carried out by the UN, interviewing Blue Helmets on the ground who had the boring job of securing the stockpile of aid sent by numerous countries during the current civil war in Russia.

That, and I speak fluent Japanese. Thus my overnight flight to Tokyo.

So here I am, in those tacky bulletproof vests with the word PRESS emboldened in all capital and white, waiting by a ramen cart for my contact to arrive. Like all SEED games, the food was delicious and real, though I never liked eating food in-game; they tended to make me seek munchies.

My contact arrived riding a soup-up humvee, opening the door and telling me to get in.

"What the hell are you wearing?!" said my contact. "You want to die wearing that?"

"What are you talking about?" I asked. At that point, he was already speeding down the street, knocking the odd poor pedestrian out of the way.

"That!" he pointed at my vest. "You can't wear that! Players here love killing game journalists!"

I understood then, feeling quite silly about myself. There had always been tension between the gamer and the journalist, one I myself don't fully understand even now.

My contact pointed to the back where a spare flak vest and helmet lay, alongside a machine gun and a grenade launcher of some kind. I signed the air to bring up the menu to Equip them, only to realise that the inventory window isn't available.

"Oh right, you're a new guy, aren't ya? You gotta put it on, like, manually."

"Of course, hardcore grimdark realistic shooter right?"

He flashed a toothy smile. "You know it!"

My contract introduced himself as StonedScientizt ("Just Stone for short!"), a corporal in the Mobile Guard. He told me he had been playing GGO a year after launch, right around when the Warlords of Syria DLC dropped back in 37'.

The corporal was a motormouth, words came to him as naturally as he breathed. He talked about the bad weather one moment, switching to needing new tires for his humvee, the price of ammo going up ("Zaskar hates us FN fans, you know!") and then some.

We reached the compound belonging to his guild, or PMC as the game calls it. Like its predecessor, GGO didn't have instances so common in most traditional MMOs, as having multiple variant dungeons and areas would necessitate a complete overhaul of the SEED engine.

There were seventeen servers in total: Japan had three, Korea four, Singapore had three (shared with Indonesia and Malaysia) and China had seven. It was a strange arrangement considering Zaskar itself is an American company with its headquarters in Hong Kong. The CEO of Zaskar, Richard Zhang, is said to have ties with the PLA, USAF and JSDF. It was entirely possible that a popular mod turned MMO had become something of a training module for military forces. The US Army did the same with America's Army way back in 2002.

I asked Stone what his opinion was about the whole "GGO was actually designed as future soldier training" thing and he shrugged.

"Oh that? Nah, I don't think so." He bumped into someone's very bike as he turned a corner and ran a red light. "The game's mostly PvE, fighting enemies we won't ever fight. What, we got bedouin tribes with railguns, union busting work in Istanbul, and giant monsters in the desert. Besides, like 80% of players like to do the whole adventurer thing. PMCs exist mostly for dungeon diving, not to fight other players."

We arrived at the Mobile Guard's HQ. The front gate had serious looking sentries with AR-15s, clad in black fatigues and tanned flak vests. Their banners hung from the prefab walls, a completely blank black banner.

The compound was massive, situated outside the outer ring of Glocken's city limits. Space was both a luxury and wasn't - you can fit as many firearms into your underwear drawer as you please in the city, but vehicles were different. They were far more complex assets, with realistic working engines and systems. Player numbers often peaked at 80k to 110k players on weekends, and there were around three million logged in accounts in total. Still, a tiny number all things considered. Forum and subreddit rumours say it's much higher with all the black ops conspiracy training going in the background.

I was quickly escorted to the commander's office. The sign outside was written in Japanese, English and Arabic, of one General Khalid. Stone waited outside.

General Khalid was arguing with someone over the phone but quickly hung up as he saw me. "Ah, come in! You must be the journalist, Mason, yes?"

We shook hands. General Khalid looked like some mighty Arab warrior from the 6th century. A tanned face and a bushy black beard, but the skelature of his face betrayed his Japanese heritage. Black fatigues like the rest of the troops, minus the vest. Like himself, the office was utilitarian and spartan.

He was armed with only a silver pen which he twirled in his hands as he started writing. "Pardon me, Mister Mason, but running a guild takes a lot of work," he apologised in perfect English.

That was one thing that made it hard to research the game, the lack of English speakers. The lingua franca varied from server to server, but it wasn't uncommon to see Mandarin or Cantonese spoken in any of them. Being the Japanese server, this was less of an issue.

There were some people who treated their MMO pastime like careers. One of the most popular and most difficult to get into games was a space sim that was entirely spreadsheets. He must have noticed my staring. "Troop wages, you know how it is."

Our talk began with Khalid himself. Honest Gaming had been looking for players to interview in regards to the PVP side of the game. Content creation in forms of Let's Plays was few and far between, mostly text based due to lack of easy footage capture tools.

General Khalid, or Saito to his friends, was an accountant who worked with the nation's major banks with a branch in Singapore. He met his wife there and returned to Japan later. He got into GGO early on in the game's life, and after years of hard work (and a very loving and patient wife, he bragged), he and his friends had turned their little mercenary band to one of the most elite PMCs in Japanese server.

"We're always in the top guilds in the game," he said. "And it's all thanks to our doctrine. Come, let us take a stroll. Better to show you than tell."

We rode in Stone's humvee. The compound was massive on account of the heavy armor, light tanks, APCs and IFVs in them. Many of them were being worked on by player mechanics. Khalid explained to me that the Mobile Guard invested heavily into speed, as befitting the name.

The corporal was going on about procuring more weapons until the general finally snapped, "No! We are sticking to ARs and NATO weapons. FN gear's too expensive."

"But NATO uses FN weapons -"

"No, corporal. Don't ask me this again." He turned to me. "He asks me about this every couple weeks."

The redhead pouted all the way.

Khalid gestured to a row of tanks out of the window, many of them of the light variant. Hard to tell, because it was dark outside. "We've got Abrams like everyone else, but we also have a fair amount of Type 90s. In fact, we've got the most light tanks of any guild in the server!"

He went on to explain that the Mobile Guard named themselves after the al-Mutaharikkah cavalry unit of the First Caliphate. While they were guilds that were much faster than them, using IFVs, light tanks and even motorcycles, none combined all of them into one guild, and none of them had the doctrine to back them up. He said that every member of the Mobile Guard had at least some points into the «Piloting» skill - a catch all skill for every vehicle in the game.

"But times are changing," said Khalid. "Now there's more of an emphasis on urban combat. Field battles are the most common type of PVP but we predict that will change in the future. We need to adapt. Corporal, to Gun Range 4, please."

Calling it a gun range was understating it, it was a warehouse with a small fake town built into. General Khalid, Corporal Stone and I were overlooking a training session with three squads of players in a hostage situation. An instructor by the name of Lieutenant Khawla was overlooking the exercise. Curiously, they had a combat robot in the lead, a big metal thing on tank threads dual-wielding automatic shotguns.

"Strange to have a guild based on extremely mobile doctrine to practice house raids," I said. One of the troopers blasted a door's hinges before kicking it in, followed by the robot charging in like Robocop on steroids.

Khawla explained. "We've found out that a lot of future content will be taking place in urban areas. The devs have added more quests taking place in dead cities ever since the Warlords DLC dropped."

"I thought that DLC added more armour-based combat?"

There was a slightly small controversy regarding that DLC with the devs bragging how their technicals, mostly of Toyota-make, were based on 'real world insurgents and terrorist groups!" Zaskar apologised for that and Toyota refused to give the game licenses for their products' likeness Technically they were in-game, just with the serial numbers filed off.

"They did," Khawla explained. The breach squads below were clearing rooms with professional speed. It was like a small army of John Wicks down there. "But with the technicals and new armour, also came Wasteland factories situated in dead cities. You can't take over a factory with tanks alone. You want the factories intact and you need good infantry for that."

"And you have robots because you don't have good infantry."

Khawla smiled dangerously at my comment. "We may not be Black Arrow's pilots or Ashigaru Corps' horde of low levels, but we're pretty good."

"And how many factories does the Mobile Guard operate?"

Khawla did a zipping motion on her mouth. Khalid slapped me on the back. "Nice try though."

"You did show me your armour," I countered.

"Yes, with our outdated inventory in view. Why do you think I invited you to come here at night?"

"It seems you take your security very seriously."

He beamed with pride. "We don't want our members leaking our military's secrets. What do you think this is, the War Thunder forums?" Then he laughed heartily and slapped his knee.

I guess it shouldn't surprise me that the man leading one of the best guilds in the game knew basic counter-intelligence. "So, what now?"

"We're heading to the Frontlines! Stone, prep my ride and summon the 3rd Armoured Regiment. We'll be leaving in twenty."

The Mobile Guard numbered about 9,500 members in total, though in practice, usually only half of that on weekends, a quarter of it during weekdays. Some of the Mobile Guard's battalions were in Syria, doing PVP battles against other guilds like the Zakon i Dolg (a more generalist type of PMC). These were pricey fights, because ammo had to be bought or scavenged. It was why there weren't that many large player run PMCs in-game. The big PMCs were either successful, rich in real life, or a combination of both.

"I heard that you can exchange in-game credits for real world currency, is that true?" It was legitimately hard to find any info on that, and the game's official website doesn't mention anything of the like.

"Oh, that. That was planned during beta, but was dropped at launch," said Stone. He was driving at top speed like a madman; thankfully we were in the Wastes at that point. "Can you imagine though? Being good enough at video games to get money to play for a living?"

"Those are streamers." Let's Plays were rare enough, streaming SEED games are non-existent.

He sighed. "I'm not as pretty in real life as I am in-game."

The ride was, unexpectedly, not a ground vehicle, but a chopper. I didn't recognise it, but it was big enough to fit me, Stone, Khalid, Khawla and the entire breaching squad. There was nothing to see outside, it was pitch black like expected. It was one of the few video games in general where you can't see anything in front of your face. One of the soldiers gave me a red flashlight.

"You want a gun?"

"Nah, I'm fine." Apparently that was the wrong answer to give with how the atmosphere suddenly shifted in the chopper.

"You sure this guy's American?" said another, a female by the voice. "I thought all Americans owned guns."

"Well, I'm from New York …"

"What's your favourite pistol, American?" asked another.

Now, you must understand, the stereotype of a cowboy hat wearing, gun toting Yankee wasn't true across the nation any more than every Japanese person knew how to use the katana. With the Handgun Ban of 27', pistols were the most uncommon type of firearms. But I guess that's why it was a stereotype.

So I said the first thing that came to mind, "The 1911."

It must be the correct answer with how the Mubarizun nodded their heads. Some mumbled about my choice as a "boomer gun" and "muh World Wars."

I should mention the next reason I wasn't the best person for this job: I didn't know much about guns aside from sheer osmosis from playing video games and pop culture over the years. The lieutenant scolded the troops for being rude.

Nothing made them stand out from the guards at the gates but according to the lieutenant, they were the guild's Mubarizun squad - the best of the best. At a glance, they weren't so special, but I was told their guns, optics and ballistic plates were top of the line. Each of them had a face covering helmet designed for CQC.

"There are idiots who wear garish coloured gear. Bright pink P90s, golden AKs, their favourite Vtubers hanging off the side. I hate it," Khawla confided in me. "If a player doesn't look anything special, then they're not a big target."

I asked about air combat and was told that it wasn't that major part of a game. There were the odd fighter jets (which were ruinously expensive to purchase and maintain), and choppers, but they were not very popular. Air vehicles mostly acted as troop transport and support, and any guild worth their salt would already invest in anti-air capabilities. It may be the next DLC focus, one of the Mubarizun hoped.

"No way, they're gonna invest in naval combat," said another. "Why would the devs put that much effort into making sea monsters in the first place?"

"But there are dragons around the world. The Republic is using jet-dragons."

"A statistical anomaly. Most dragons in the Wastes can't actually fly? Hey American, what's the best gun for fighting dragons?"

"The humble FAL," Stone quipped. Everyone told him to shut up.

The argument of gunslaying dragons continued as we landed at the port city of Volos.

War is mostly auditory. Back in Magadan, even far away from the border where the separatists and Russian army fought, you could hear the distant gunfire and the booming of artillery on a daily basis. I legitimately thought there was an earthquake when one of those massive howitzers started their barrages.

Gun Gale Online captured that beautifully. We came just at the end of the battle, where the players held the port city for three long days. The battlefield was littered with the corpses of the dead, mutants and Vatborn alike. Players hitched rides on trucks, tanks and IFVs, lest they want to make the long trek to Corinth on foot instead.

The anxiousness of hearing gunshots, but not knowing or seeing where they were from, was exhausting. And I was staying in a nice hotel with the rest of my colleagues, not out there in the trenches.

One of the Mubarizun handed me one of his backup guns, a 1911 surprise, surprise. "Don't look like a noob, American."

We made contact with the Mobile Guard's 5th Armoured Regiment, led by one Captain Ali. The scorched marks on their MBTs spoke of hard fighting. Khalid excused himself to 'boring general stuff' as I hung out with Corporal Stone.

In the ruins of what might have been a nice cafe, someone was making coffee. The Mobile Guard's troopers looked like they went through hell, with some of the missing limbs. One player even had half her face burned off, thanks to an attack by something called a Flesh Pupper vomiting on her. They were stiff at first, the outsider in their ranks, but a couple packs of cigarettes and we became BFFs - one of the lessons I learned back in Russia.

"I'm a recovering addict," said Corporal Farah, who was missing her nose. As she puffed, instead of two streams of smoke, it came out of the hole in her face like the barrel of a smoking gun. "But my doctor says virtual nicotine helps whet my appetite."

A green haired girl tapped me on the shoulder. "You think that's gnarly? Check this out!" she said, pulling back the bandages on her cheek where a large gaping hole was, lovingly rendered in an ultra-realistic engine. "Look, you can even see my tonsils! Pretty cool, huh?"

"Those are tonsils, alright," I said.

"Private Sakura, please don't disgust our guests with your weird wounds," said the nose-less Farah.

They talked about a lot of things: the generator powering the city wide shield had given up the ghost after being maintained with a combination of prayer, duct tape, and bubble gum. Stranded ships by the beach, players foolishly attempting to get to Corinth by water. It was strangely relaxing, not unlike going camping.

"So you heard that Zaska is looking to sell?"

"What? No way. They're making record profits this year."

"I'm just saying," said Sakura, "that SEED games aren't that profitable, VRMMORPGs even less so. That's what my boyfriend working as a game dev says."

"Not to be a dick about it, Sakura," said Yazidi. "But your boyfriend is a phone game dev."

"Yeah, the most profitable platform ever. A lot of players don't even own Warlords."

I was no GGO expert, but I had played my fair share of milsims. There was always a period of not fighting, where players would just sit around and discuss serious tactics. At least that was the idea. In practice, it was as mindless and inane like any Discord server, talking about life, anime, and memes. Mostly memes.

"So, American," said one of the soldiers. He sat on a chair while the rest sat or squatted on the floor, a Sergeant Yazidi. "How are you enjoying Greece?"

"It's … relaxing." And the coffee was good. I'd have given up getting these people to call me by my name.

"You've shot guns right? Like real guns?" said Yazidi. "You must be, in America, everyone has guns."

"I wished Japan has looser gun laws," said Sakura. "I'd kill for a nice rifle. A nice AR-15, with wood furnishing!"

"But you're using an AK-47." Everyone was, some short-barrelled, with various optics and the like, all customised with a mish mash of attachments. The sergeant was the only one with an M16/grenade launcher combo.

"It's not an AK-47, that's clearly an AK-74u," said another soldier, a man missing his left hand. "Damn journalists, it's basic gun knowledge."

"AK fanboys are always anal about that, don't worry about him, American-san," said Sakura, grinning white teeth, half of which were missing. "Lost our guns, got melted. Picked this AK off some mutie."

"See, if the Guard were to invest in SCARs," Stone began, which immediately made everyone groan. He was not dissuaded, "We'd have won this war by now."

"Don't you mean SOFCARs?" said the sergeant, chuckling. "That shit's too expensive, man. You can't win wars with overpriced AR-15s."

"They're not expensive AR-15s, they're Superior Belgian Engineering!" protested Stone.

"Why does Stone get to use his own rifle?" I asked.

"Guild privileges. I'm the one of the few clone vat technicians this outfit has," he said with an air of smugness.

"Clone vats, huh?"

Stone explained that there were clone vats all around the game world usually in the form of inns. All around Volos, I could see portable clone vat stations, usually shackled to flatbeds, belonging to a guild, belonging to the Glocken itself, or belonging to some enterprising businessman. Only the clone vats at Glocken were free, but only there.

"There's a few deets that people don't get about cloning vats," Stone explained. "The higher your level, the higher the respawn cost. You've got bionics, that costs even more. You can choose to not respawn with your bionic and hunt down your own corpse, pry it off yourself, but most people don't do that. Everything costs you: ammo, armour, repairs, guns, vehicles, chemfuel, even your life."

"Wouldn't it make more sense for Glocken Corp to pay for troops themselves instead of getting their own soldiers to pay for their gear?"

"Lorewise, you're right, but well, you've seen what this game's genre is tagged under right?"

To save you a trip to the game's storepage, it's: VRMMORPG, first person shooter, post-apocalypse, sci-fi and cyberpunk.

"Hooray, capitalism," Sakura cheered without any mirth.

"Hey, it's not that bad," Yazidi said as he finished his coffee. "At least this game doesn't have gacha mechanics, just plain ol' skin purchases. Needing to pay just go into character creation again is dumb, but it's the worst of their sins it's not that bad."

"It must be difficult then, if your doctrine requires you to traverse great distances with so few respawning checkpoints."

"Not exactly," said Stone, with a mischievous smile.

Some time later, the Mobile Guard's 4th Mechanised Battalion came to the outskirts of the city. Most of them were Japanese Type-90s, a few Abrams, and curiously APCs with a blue cross on it. The sun had risen, bathing the battlefield in an orange glow. It was like looking into a vision of Hell, yet beautiful in its destruction - a painting capturing a moment in time.

Stone brought me to one of them, a trooper bedecked in medical gear was preparing a table of medical supplies. Already, the squad of injured troops were lining up.

"These are M113A4 Armored Medical Evacuation Vehicle, or AMEVs for short. Think of them as ambulances with a machine gun. The E in AMEV is a bit of a misnomer though. We don't tend to evacuate if at all."

"Ah, you must be the journalist the general was talking about. Mason, right? I'm Ripper," said the trooper as we shook hands. Finally, someone with manners.

"Nice set up here. I don't see many medics around here."

Ripper shook his head. "Most players working in small groups don't use them. If you die, you just respawn with all your limbs fixed. But that's not our doctrine -"

"Go Long!" said Sakura.

"Go Fast!" said another.

"Go Hard!" said Yazidi.

"Mobile Guard!" everyone shouted and cheered. Morale was high, for a group of zombies, I admit.

Ripper excused himself to treat his comrades while Stone brought me to one of the APCs, more heavily armed than the others if the double M2 Brownings and iron cages strapped to it. He opened the hatch and I beheld a collection of organs floating glowing green vats, the same gunk that filled a clone vat. "Whoa."

"That's right, we're home cloning extra body parts, pretty cool, huh?" He then went into lots of technical detail and how the guild had resources to run them, which General Khalid nicely asked to not mention in this article. "Beats using bionics that's for sure."

"Wouldn't it be easier to use those flatbeds with the vats?"

"We crunched the numbers, but nope. We get players like Ripper to invest into their «Medical» skill, and the raw resources to make our own, and presto: an affordable method that lets us go long stretches without needing to respawn. We don't have whales in the FaDe Corp to keep us afloat, we actually need to be smart about it."

I was impressed. "Seems like you guys are running an actual military. Very professional."

"I can shoot your hand off and stitch a fresh new one," he said, excitedly pointing to a smaller tube that held an infant-size hand. "Wanna try?"

"No thanks.'

Witnessing the fall of Corinth's great walls was like being a part of history, like the fall of the Berlin Wall. Maybe that's a bit pretentious, but it did speak to the sheer potential of SEED games over traditional video games. It was infinitely more impressive than what special event SAO had in its eight years of existence.

It took the might of 60,000 players to bring them down: The Ashigaru Corp's impressive artillery bombarded for literal days, spending millions of credits on shells; Black Arrow's jets continued to dogfight with the city's jet dragons; while smaller bands engaged in small arms with the Republic defenders. The great walls collapsed leaving gaping holes, bathing the entire battlefield in concrete dust. I was unfortunate enough to be far away from any cover and found myself completely buried in a landslide of dust.

When someone dug me out of my shallow grave, I couldn't tell which player belonged to which guild. All shooting had stopped, we couldn't even tell the mutants from the players. The shooting resumed. There had to be half a dozen of the holes.

Republic troops were routed locking the gates behind them. It was useless, as the Mobile Guard was the first reacted. Abrams rushed forward, as did black painted BMPT Terminators with their double autocannons and grenade launchers, designed specifically for urban combat. They were followed by Lieutenant Khawla and her Mubarizun squads with their Iron Cog, its treads keeping up with the rest.

No one guild could beat the DLC, which spoke to the complexity of GGO's design. It needed a concentrated effort of players from various guilds, officers to reel in overeager or scared soldiers, and the logistic trains to supply them with the equipment they need.

Or at least that's what the romantic ideal of a GGO campaign was. In truth, Khalid had told me, it was actually bickering guilds, refusal to share intel or supplies, a bunch of barbarians marauding across the lands to sack the golden city of Rome/Constantinople/Beijing/Baghdad. Whatever discipline that held the rest of the Clearers together seemed to collapse as everyone sprinted towards the gaping holes within the walls, a horde of dust covered blood thirsty berserkers ready to pillage and plunder.

"You don't think your men are capable?" I asked, as Stone helpfully poured his canteen of water over me; it just turned dust into wet concrete.

"I do, they're the best of the best," said Khalid, mercifully clean. "But they aren't soldiers. We're a bunch of LArpers playing at soldier. Any actual military can destroy us. You get the Pope's Swiss Guard here and they'll probably beat us with their halberds no less."

I asked him whether there were veterans in the game. "Of course there are, but how many? Not much. We have a few JSDF veterans, sure, but most of them are more valuable in the office than the field. The superior army needs superior logistics."

"Tooth and tail."

He smiled. "Exactly."

Then something buzzed in his headset. His eyes bulged. "Dammit!" Khalid shouted, slamming his fist on the dashboard. He issued quick orders, using jargon I couldn't fathom. "Get out! Retreat! Khawla, pull back!"

"What's happening, sir?" asked Stone.

"It's -"

"You know, when CHAD said he had other duties for us, I was kinda expecting more …"

"Shooting? Stabbing?"

"Well yeah. I feel like … working retail."

"You worked retail?"

"I've worked a lot of jobs." Kirito yawned. "This is boring. Wanna spar?"

Shino's ears twitched, which was very awkward because she was using earphones instead of a headset, what with lacking ears by the side of her face. "We can't do that here," she said under her breath. "People can see!"

Kirito's mouth opened and closed until he finally understood what she meant. "Shino, you can't … do that in VR. Well, there was that 16.5 mod for SAO but that's an urban myth and never existed. And why did you think that sparring is a euphemism?"

"It isn't? But my doujins …"

Oh my God. "Doujins aren't real life! We can just do it when we're logged out."

"Why haven't we, actually?"

The answer was clear to both of them: it was mentally exhausting. "Sex is finite, video games are forever," he answered.

"Hmm, you're right about that."

"Less chattering, more listening, please," CHAD said camly. It sent a shiver down their spines. Even Sinon's tail stood straight for a second.

The comms room was large designed to hold dozens of officers to strategise and feed intel to the commander created by Greece's pre-war government. Currently, it only held a handful of people, Sinon and Kirito included. CHAD sat in a vintage leather armchair, extremely out of place in the concrete and metal-plated room, drinking hot tea through the filter of his gasmask. Lieutenant Makarov and a heavily bandaged Commissar Tadao were comparing notes in one corner. For once, Kirito saw that Nikita was logged out. There were some people in SEED games (him included) that seemed only to live in the virtual world.

"I understand you two would rather be out slaying, but I am short on comms officers and the rest of the guilds in our operation are doing a fine enough job," he said.

"I wanna stab more of the Mimic bastards," said Kirito.

"Patience, the Republic will fall soon. Reports?"

Sinon checked her clipboard - one of the most dangerous tools in modern warfare. "Sergeant Gregory and the Virtues have secured the vats and are on their way back. Black Dog and Skirmisher-chan's team are almost back to HQ and the Warhawks are halfway done clearing the caverns for the vats." Sure, some of the old Corinthian ruling class had to be kicked out but that was a plus in her mind.

"Also," she added, "we've got a message from the Parnassus Mountain Base. Vladimir says he's currently making a new batch of «Anti-Mutie» rounds." Perhaps the scientist's death was a silver lining after all. "And Wall-san says hi."

CHAD nodded. "Very well. All is according to -"

They all felt a sudden earthquake. Chairs shook, paranephelia dropped to the floor, one of the screens hanging on the walls fell with a crash.

One of the radios came to life. "FuurinKazan to HQ, the eastern walls have fallen! I repeat, the eastern walls have fallen!"

"The walls have fallen?!" Captain Loot repeated; conscripted as a comms officer at Colonel Honshu's insistence. "Those fuckers! We're supposed to get to the Ark first!"

At this, the Turtle Man bursted into the room. "What's going on here?"

"It seems the eastern wall has, indeed, fallen," said CHAD, adding sugar to his tea. "Good for the war effort, less so for us. They're a week earlier than my estimates."

"Then what are we waiting for?" said Honshu, slamming his armoured fist on the table. "We need to get out there and make sure whichever guild that comes through the walls doesn't get there first."

The gas-masked man ignored him. "Kirito, turn on Camera E5."

The swordsman flicked a switch. On the large main screen, the picture of the map switched to a camera view of one of Ginrou's many drones. They could barely see anything through the sheer amount of dust and smoke. Kirito flicked another switch and the drone turned on its thermal sensors turning the suffocating grey to a riot of colours.

A tank was the first through the rubble, crunching debris and unfortunate militia alike. It was followed by some hulking beast and squad of soldiers, already laying down fire. Neither Kirito and Sinon could tell what they were.

"Huh. An Abrams with an Iron Cog, Sentry Assault model. AR-15s by the sound of it. That's either Black Arrow or the Mobile Guard, probably the latter; they love their Abrams," said Honshu.

Sinon turned to look at him. "How -"

The Warhawk tapped the side of his helmet. "You don't get to be a high ranking leader without knowing these things."

"Something's wrong," said CHAD.

"Of course something's wrong, we need to strike first." He pointed to Lootz. "Captain, gather your company. We need to -"

"Wait."

Suddenly, the handle of CHAD's tea cup broke, falling on the command room's floor with a loud crack.

There was a brief silence as eyes turned to him. CHAD's posture changed completely.

"Something's very wrong," he repeated and everyone in the room panicked.

Then the comms came to life.

"Command, command! This is FuurinKazan! There's a ….. pink thing coming down the streets!"

"All friendly units, this is Sgt. Gregory! A piece of bubble gum just tore off of my corporal's leg! Be advised, hostile bubble gum on the loose!"

"This is Black Dog. Some abomination just ate Corporal Skirmisher-chan's face. Requesting more Anti-Mutant rounds, if available, over."

All eyes were on the screen as a great wave of heat flooded the street like a great wave. Kirito turned on the other drones, uncaring for detection as more screens came to life. The mass came from the manholes and the sewer grates. It was like a semi-solid tsunami with a mind of its own.

"Heat signatures suggest it's coming from directly under the Ark itself. A new enemy type?" asked Sinon, trying to make herself useful.

"No, it's more than that," said CHAD. "Lootz, recall all units as quickly as possible. We need those vats immediately."

"I'll go rendevouz with Sergeant Gregory." With that Honshu left, not waiting for an answer.

The rest of the command room could only watch in horror as the great pink wave crashed into the Clearers like the Hammer of God. Entire tanks, scores of men, were buried under its fleshy wrath. The Abrams at the lead exploded, yet the fireball was contained. Even in a world of fantastical mutants and dead wastes, to see something as large as tanks be consumed in an instant was to behold not a man-made weapon, but a force of nature.

"Ah shit, ah fuck!" came Klein's voice. "The thing's crawling up the walls!"

The flesh hit the wall like a wave and solidified. Pink gum turned to red concrete as the creature plugged itself into the wall, stretching up and up into the heavens with amazing speed. Finally, it ceased to writhe and settled in place. The streets were cleared of its trails, leaving behind only melted skeletons, guns and corpses of armour. The same process repeated at the half a dozen breakpoints in the entire eastern wall.

There were some survivors on the player side, a few APCs and soldiers that got out of the way before being hit by the wave. They were running around like headless chickens as the Republic soldiers rallied to hunt them down.

The artillery completely stopped. If Kirito had to guess, the generals on the other side were conveying for a meeting on the new threat.

"Hmm, fascinating," said CHAD.

"Fascinating?!" Tadao shouted. He too had watched the unfolding scene in rapt horror. "The enemy just unleashed sentient bubble gum -"

"Pink Pudding," he corrected. "I believe it's an enemy mob transported from Asuka Empire, but with the size scale increased … a thousandfold? SEED mobs are very easy to transport between games."

"Whatever! The entire process just halted, again! The Republic's gonna push us back to Volos like they did weeks before!"

Lootz checked her PDA. "There's been ten new threads in the past eight minutes on the forums. People are pissed."

"Uh, this is Klein again," came the radio. "Tried to take a shot at it. Did no damage. Threw a grenade too, nada. Actually, now we're checking it again - it is taking damage. But it's healing at an amazing rate."

CHAD picked up his broken tea cup and threw it in the trash bin. "Kirito, Sinon, Lootz, recall all units. The quicker the better. We're going to scrap the old plan. It's going to be a long weekend."

Everyone in the comms room sighed. Not for the first time Sinon ached for a smoke. Sinon and Kirito looked at each other, and due to their strong bond said to each other telepathically, without the use of their psycaster bracelets:

"We're gonna order takeout."

In the corner of the room, Nikita woke up. She ran a hand through her hair and dusted herself. "Did I miss anything?"

Ridwan,

Good shit, as always. And who says you don't know how to cover wars? Now, I heard even crazier stuff is going on Corinth so you need to get in there and get me more news. Don't worry with Khalid, I'll talk to him about it.

Adrian

Adrian,

You can't expect me to go into that death trap. I'm only level 1, with hand-me-down kevlar. I doubt the devs are gonna flag me as non-hostile and invincible. This is the equivalent of a complete newbie heading into an end-game dungeon.

Ridwan

Ridwan,

We don't have enough stuff for a good article. We need a long ass one, the stuff you see on the New York Times. You need to get into that city and get some footage! I talked to the devs and they agreed to give you some capture software. Next time you log back in, you'll have a camera in your inventory. Come on, man. If you do, I'll talk to the boss and get him to give you a raise.

Speaking of which, I hear there's rumours of some blue cat girl running around? If you can find and interview her, I'll even take you out to that favourite steakhouse of yours! Pinky promise!

Adrian.

Adrian,

Fine. I'll try my best to get into the city. No promises in regards to the cat girl. You're quick to follow dumb rumours and watch too much anime, man. And wasn't that the premise of that fan fic you wrote awhile ago?

And it better be a tenderloin cut too.

Ridwan

So as some of you may know,I had a lot of trouble writing the last chapter of Merchant Prince due to IRL reasons. And now I kinda feel bad for this chapter coming out in June.

To make up for it, the next chapter will be that of Sinonon. Sadly I'll be away for a few days travelling a week down the line. Does this mean no chapter for MP for June? Likely! But it is what it is. Thank you for your patience. Leave a review, bla bla bla, check the Discord, bla bla bla.