"We're not done yet!"

The surviving twelve players of LPFM's counterattack gather behind an off-railed diesel locomotive. No one's injured, having escaped with their lives, but none were okay. No one is with a complete six-member team. Some are the only survivors of their team. The alliance remains with these twelve men but could fall apart with only fear of the top team keeping them together.

"Not done yet...? Dude, we're a wreck now... I'm the only one left on my team!"

"We really showed our asses there... She popped her head out as a trap, to get us thinking about shooting and surrounding them. And they did the whole shoot-outta-the-hole thing last time... Can't believe we didn't consider that."

"And two of them flanked us. That guy was deflecting our bullets!"

"We just can't win."

While some were demoralized, others were not. One of the men shoots up a red flare, saying, "We haven't lost until all of us are dead! Don't lose hope! They can't increase their numbers, but we can!" He's banking on a prayer. The previous scan showed nine teams surrounding LPFM's position, but only seven were assembled. That means the last two teams should still be en route. If they're aware of the flares, they should be arriving soon.

And heaven delivers them reinforcements. Surrounding a moving locomotive are twelve men, one set of six in desert camo and another in civilian-styled clothing. The twelve survivors cheer as the newcomers join them. Twenty-four men in total, their strength had doubled immediately that the downcast soldiers were perked up.

"They're all in that car!" the leader of the alliance and the red camo team points out to the new teams, gesturing to the black freight car that four of six LPFM members hide within. "They'll shoot right out of the holes they made! We can't get any closer because our weapons can't punch through the walls! And the damn swordsman is standing outside of it with his sword too!"

"All right," the civilian team's leader said. "If only we'd caught up a bit sooner."

"But at least it's not over yet. Let's give 'em hell!" The desert camo team's leader waves his hand to bring up his menu. Seconds later, a magnificent weapon appears in his hands, much to the adoration of the others. It's a grenade launcher, the Heckler and Koch HK69A1. It is a single-shot launcher that doesn't possess the rapid firepower of Fukaziroh's MGL-140s, but it has just as much power. "I'll shoot a couple from the tip of the locomotive. If any explode inside the car, rush them and clean up." He loads up a grenade in the round barrel, then closes the barrel back inside the rectangular body and cocks the weapon.

"You got this!"

"Blow 'em up!"

"We believe in you!"

The desert camo leader walks to the front of the end and gets prone before reaching the tip. Peering around it, he gets a good look at the perpendicular black freight car. No sniper fire is received; whether it is because they haven't seen him or the angle isn't right is unknown. Furthermore, two members of LPFM stand behind the car, partially hidden, and the male has his photon sword out. He's not going to deny grace. "Okay, we're good."

Behind him, his teammate uses a monocular to spot him. "Six hundred and fifty-three feet. Make it an even six sixty if you want to hit the back wall."

"I want to finish them in one." Stock to his shoulder, he brings a finger to the trigger, eliciting the green bullet circle. With only ten feet to land the grenade in the black car, he relies on the more accurate angled circle. Currently, its twenty yards short of the car, so he moves it until the circle intersects the car, then shoots out a grenade. "Got it!" The grenade becomes a black dot as it sails through the air in a parabolic arc, reaching its peak and beginning its descent. To the desert camo man, it was the beginning of the end.

That is, until the grenade exploded twenty yards above the freight car.

Kureha

"Damn, Pito! Nice shot!"

"Ooooh, that actually worked. First time trying it, and I pulled it off. Way to go, me! Gotta give myself a hand on that one!" Pitohui shot the grenade out of the air with her M870 Breacher shotgun. It only took one shot of a hundred or more pellets scattering like a net in the air. The Breacher is meant as a hunting weapon for birds and forest animals, so it was an easy shot for Pitohui. However many pellets touched the grenade, it was enough to trip the pressure sensor and cause it to explode.

Typically, it would require practice to hit a grenade, but in GGO, it's as easy as lining your shot with the grenade's bullet line and timing the shot. It sounds complicated, but she remembers very well how a swordsman in black did the impossible by deflecting bullets just by using the bullet lines to predict their routes.

Kureha, crouching behind Jaymes, raises her monocular, aiming it toward the enemy's predicted position. "Fuka, you're up. I'll spot you."

"Righty-oh!"

Fukaziroh was not an absent member in M's grand scheme. Her part was watching the skies for this moment, a grenade launcher's bullet line. She was to warn Pitohui, Pitohui would shoot it down, and Fukaziroh would counterattack if Jaymes and Kureha couldn't. No one had a launcher until now, so it's the little blonde's time to shine.

Six bullet lines arc in the sky from the freight car to the area where a locomotive engine is. That's where the previous grenade came from. Fukaziroh was precise in her aiming without Kureha saying anything. Fuka already knew the direction and distance of the enemy; she just needed a second set of eyes. "Right there. Fire."

Pom-pom-pom-pom-pom-pom. There was no reason for Fukaziroh to fire all six grenades from one of her launchers at once, but Kureha didn't see any reason for her not to sow destruction on the enemy.

The first blast comes from the top of the engine. From six hundred feet away, Kureha sees a man on top of the engine get torn in half by the shrapnel, a sniper by the looks of times. All except the fifth blast claims lives, based on Kureha's predictions, and no return shots are received. Fuka got the grenadier too.

"Hold," Jaymes calls out. Wary of counterfire, he and Kureha kneel perpendicular to the freight car, his light sword still activated (probably one of the reasons why the sniper never shot them). He checks his watch and says, "M, it's almost time."

"Ahhh, this is really an ideal position. Wish we could stay here forever. But that's not gonna happen."

"That's right, Pito. Are you going to live in here until the end of SJ3?"

"Aww, c'mon! Let's just live here! When you're home, you're home!"

"We can't," M declares, silencing the women's wishes with him on the inside.

"Why not?"

"How come?"

"Haven't you three forgotten already?" Jaymes calls out. From behind him, she watches as he turns his head away from the train car to the distant horizon. "This area will soon be underwater."

"Dwah! I totally forgot about the ocean!"

"So did I..."

"Hey, I wonder if this freight car will float. Maybe not, since we already bore a couple of holes in it."

"Watch for more grenades, Fuka," M commands. "The rest of up can check the map." Jaymes takes out his scanner on cue and projects the map for him and Kureha. Sweeping east to west, the scan showed bright and grey dots, indicating alive and eliminated teams, respectively. Curious, Kureha taps on two dots at the eastern corners of the map. The lower right was the location of the rocky area and of SHINC, surrounded by dark dots; north of them, MMTM is in the same situation in the forests. As they expected, they were assaulted as well. That means when the scan reaches the island's west side, T-S and LPFM will have a similar look.

"Ah-ha-ha-ha!" That was Pitohui's laughter, for whatever reason. Knowing Pitohui, she doesn't need a reason to burst out in laughter randomly, but Kureha also believes there's a method to her madness. Llenn questions it, to which Pito replies, "You'll see soon. Once the scan gets to us."

What Pitohui (and everyone else looking at the map besides Llenn) noticed is the shrinkage of the map. Thirty minutes ago, before the first scan, the switchyard and the ocean were separated by a wide margin; the yard itself covered a vast amount of the southwestern island. But now the shoreline and the train tracks were meeting. The city at the north-northeast section of the map was halfway to becoming Atlantis, with a single bright dot in the middle of the water. Is that team trapped on top of a skyscraper, or are they mobile on a boat?

As for LPFM's position, they're no more than a few hundred yards from the southern shoreline. In a few minutes, they'll be one with the tide.

"Uh-oh, that's not good!" Llenn shouts. "We don't have inner tubes!"

"Be nice to have an inner tube," Jaymes says, "but I don't want that experience again. That was a troublesome time on the fourth floor." He glances at his hand, then aimlessly turns his attention to Kureha...below her face. He must be remembering something from SAO, the fourth floor in particular. From the book about the incident from the perspective of a self-proclaimed "muse," the front lines had to use items that acted like inner tubes when they stepped on the fourth floor from the third-floor labyrinth tower. It would be nice to have an item like that now; because being in water does damage over time, they avoid swimming as best as possible in GGO. But she doesn't let the momentary lapse in his character go unpunished. She slugs him on the shoulder.

"Now, now, Llenn, calm down."

"This area is flat and wide, so it's going to fill in slow and shallow. It's not going to cause much damage, only coming up to our ankles. We just have to watch for dips in the ground."

"Ah yes, that's no good. We can't stay here long. It's a shame to leave such a lovely home, with so much natural light... I suppose we'll have to move to higher ground."

"What 'natural light' are you talking about?" Kureha responds to Fuka, looking up at the dense cloud cover. There's barely any sunlight poking through, enough for them to determine that it is daytime. Sighing, she returns her attention to the scan. Before the scan ends, Kureha reads that six teams are huddled up just northeast of her team, with another team to the north moving towards them.

"Okay, M. Give us orders," Pitohui demands.

"Prepare to move out."

"Okeydoke. Where to?"

"Northeast. We're plunging straight through where the enemies are now."

"We are?" Llenn says in disbelief.

"If we run east or north and get blocked off by the water, we're done for. Instead, let's choose what gives us the best chance at survival. If the other teams get in our way, we've got the skill to deal with them."

Kureha looks at her partner, and he looks at her. She isn't against M's plan, but if anyone needs to second it, it has to be the one who truly leads this group. Even Pitohui respects him in her own way. Jaymes catches the message Kureha silently conveys and nods his head. "Okay, let's do it, M."

"Ugh..." comes the sigh of Llenn. Before conceding, she may argue a bit with M, someone who's older than her, but she'll never counter the slightly younger Jaymes. After all, if one of the survivors and leading frontier players of the death game Sword Art Online says, "We're rushing into what can be our deaths," they either need to be diagnosed as clinically insane or confident without a doubt that they'll live. Her childhood friend happens to be a bit of both.

"Yep, that sounds best. Let's do it," rings in Fukaziroh.

"All right, fine... Let's hurry!"

"No, wait. Not quite yet. We're going to wait for the waves hit this spot."

Zeliska

"Oh god." While her friends in the tournament come up with a plan to deal with the waves, Zeliska's brow drops as the surviving fourteen enemy players, previously stunned by their grenade launcher plan falling to pieces and scrambling because of the rush of the incoming sea, are joined by a new pair of gunmen. It's not that the players were reinforced (though they look shell-shocked that it was only two people instead of a whole squad), but it's who is reinforcing.

One of the newcomers is a tanned man in camo toting the French-made FA-MAS assault rifle. It's a short, easy-to-control gun because the magazine is behind the grip and trigger, especially when firing its 5.56 mm caliber in bursts. But Zeliska's eyes are not locked on the tanned man but the man who leads this pair.

He's a handsome, easy-going, short-haired fellow dressed in all-black combat gear and an equipment vest on top with several magazine pouches. Carried in his arms is his primary weapon, the AR-57. Holstered on his right side is an FN Five-Seven pistol. Both guns use the same ammo as Llenn's P90. A pouch on the left side holds grenades.

To those unfamiliar with the person, like the men in the tournament possibly explaining the situation to the pair, it's a correct assumption to believe the black-haired person is some guy. The handsome man is quite the subject matter for those familiar with Squad Jam.

"Oh! That's the guy who got beat up by Llenn in the dome last time and gave her all the ammo."

"Ahhh, yeah, the handsome one. And that gift ended up saving Llenn."

"If they're just arriving now, they must've come from a long way away. Is he gonna fight Llenn for sure this time?"

"A revenge match! How exciting!"

While the watch partiers get excited, Crimson Squad's corner of the pub is exasperated, especially Zeliska. She knows this player as she participated in SJ2 with Jaymes, Kureha, Llenn, and Fukaziroh. She knows this player because he's been part of a few of Crimson Squad expeditions. She knows this player because of one significant detail not many people would know.

The player's name is Clarence, and "he's" truly a she.

"I see... Wow, what a horrible map this time. I don't want to drown," Clarence says as she receives the debrief of the situation. "But we've still got the advantage, right? We're totally still in this!"

"But how?"

"The space between the train cars around here is flat and has no cover, right? We'll have plenty of chances to shoot at them. And there's only six of them."

"Yeah, we know. But they're not six typical players."

"True, but if you don't mind me giving you some painful advice, you're not making use of your numerical superiority. You were around the side of a train engine earlier? Why were you all in one place? I would have split us up into pairs and set up a net just within visible range of the black freight car. Then I wouldn't move. The enemy has to move to get away from the waves, so you shoot them when they do. And if they start to push you aside, fall back and let the other teams attack from the sides."

"Oh, yeah, I suppose."

"That might work."

"Okay! It's too early to give up!"

"Let's go with that plan!"

"Yeah! And we can continue healing hit points while we're waiting!"

"We're gonna go with your plan, Clarence!"

"Yeah, go right ahead! I'm glad to hear it! Let us join you!" With morale restored, sixteen men (make that fifteen men and one woman) rallied to put an end to LPFM before the sea sweeps in.

Unfortunately for them, it wouldn't be LPFM who'll be their downfall.