At 12:49, Kureha and her team await the next scan.

The truck took them from the switchyard to a grassy plain safe and sound. The blades of dark-green grass rise up to two feet high enough to hide a prone soldier. The field is void of man-made structures, so the only places one could hide is the bulges and divots spread across the landscape. There's a slight incline, barely noticeable, as they continue toward the island's center.

At this point in their travels, M issues a command. "Everyone get ready to disembark. Watch the perimeter after that."

"Come on, M, drop us off at the house on top of the hill. You really want to force all these girls to walk?" Fukaziroh complains.

"We're almost out of gas."

"You can move it with spirit, right? That's a thing, isn't it?"

"I didn't bring any with me today."

"Guess we'll just have to spin the pedals, then. They put those on all trucks, don't they?"

"This one must be defective."

"Captain, I have a complaint."

"I didn't put this together," Jaymes refutes.

"Damn. Gotta complain to the event hosts after this is over."

"All set...and out!" In the walled truck bed, Kureha, Fukaziroh, and the other two women jump out the rear while the truck is in motion. M asks this of them so that they'll continue to be a moving target rather than exit a stationary truck and become a stationary target. As they hopped out, the four went low and prone, finding recesses in the ground to make themselves harder to target.

Jaymes and M are the last to escape. Jaymes, being that he has the reaction speed to read bullet lines and counter with his photon sword or Hyper Awareness, waits until M stops the truck before hopping out and flattening himself on the ground. M tosses his backpack out first, then leaps down to the ground into a prone position, then they wait until M checks the fifth scan.

When 12:50 arrives, M's voice courses through the earpiece in Kureha's ear. "Seven surviving teams. Not one within fifteen hundred. You can all look at the scan."

"All right! Time to check this out!"

At fifteen hundred meters, or just short of a mile, that would put them within the extremes of sniping range. A .50 caliber sniper rifle or SHINC's anti-tank rifle is effective here, but someone skilled like Sinon could probably hit someone at this range, even if it is ineffective.

"Yipes! Look how small it is now!" Kureha had delayed grabbing her scanner terminal after Fuka's cheer, but Llenn's yelp drove her to open the map. Crimson Squad - sorry, LPFM - sits in the southwest corner of the map. Indeed, the former six-mile square had shrunk to maybe two in a half. The southwestern switchyard, the northern city, the eastern woods, and the southeastern rocky areas are all submerged in the ocean. The UNKNOWN area in the middle remains the same.

As M said, seven teams remain. SHINC, Llenn's rivals, are present in the southeast portion of the map, about two miles away, and no one between them. In the northeast corner sits Memento Mori, their other rival. At the map's northernmost portion sits another Squad Jams mainstay, the machine-gun-loving ZEMAL. North of LPFM is a trio of teams no more than two-thirds of a mile apart, close enough to engage in combat presently or soon enough.

From left to right, the teams are DEVA, a relatively new group; DDL, a team that Kureha recalls from SJ1's tape but did not participate in SJ2. In the middle, their dot over a submerged portion of the city, is T-S, the previous second-placers. In SJ2, the sci-fi armored soldiers rode cycles on top of a fortress, avoiding the competition and picking them off from a distance. They must've thought they won last time when they eliminated Llenn and Fukaziroh after their battle with Pitohiu, but Jaymes and Kureha wiped them out with a surprise attack.

Kureha wouldn't be surprised if T-S were looking to redeem themselves by personally defeating Jaymes and herself, but it doesn't look like they'll get the chance.

"The people stuck out on the ocean can't move from there, right?"

"Those were the near-champions from last time! What are they doing?!"

Kureha can only glance at Llenn while a confused Fukaziroh and an incensed Pitohui wonder what the hell T-S is doing...and Kureha wonders if they can do anything at all. T-S must've taken a high position in the town, unaware of the incoming sea, and got stuck there without means of escape. As M said earlier, there was a high chance there were no boats present in the harbor in the city.

"Uh-oh, there goes one! Man, can't people just calm down and take it easy during the scan?" As Fukaziroh says, DDL had vanished from the map, leaving six teams remaining.

"That's sure to kickstart this special rule, then. I wonder what it is," Pitohui eagerly states. Unfortunately, Kureha mildly shares that same excitement. The gamer in her prefers a challenge to prove her mettle, and while some aspects of SJ and BoB are annoying, adding a game-changing rule is enticing.

As long as it is not annoying.

Breeeep!

Maybe she spoke too soon as the Satellite Scanner emits a new, obnoxious sound. Kureha hadn't put it away, so the map displayed a new message. "In thirty seconds, the special rule will be announced on this screen and go into immediate effect."

"Oh! Here it comes! Yeah, baby, about freakin' time!" Fukaziroh's anger dissipates with the announcement. She, too, is a gamer at heart, so like Kureha, Pitohui, and Jaymes, she is excited about what's to come. He might not have said anything, but Kureha knows her childhood friend well - even the surprises of SAO, even though they posed a danger to him, invigorated his gamer blood.

"Let's check it out before we move. Everyone, together." M's command is answered by Pitohui waving her KTR-09 around like a flag to gather everyone around here. Kureha and the others follow around and join Pitohui in a five-yard-long hollow. They wait in silence as the buzzing sound returns, and a message again plays out on the scanner screen.

"Special rule announcement and activation. At the end of this message, one person will be designated from each surviving team. The designation will be spelled out on the terminal of the chosen player. The designation is not by random, but chosen for the purposes of game balance by the staff and sponsor observing the event."

Someone from each team, chosen by the staff and sponsor of the event, will be designated to do what? Zeliska did not speak of anything regarding SJ3, so it is unknown if she had any involvement in its development. But she did deny entering the tournament, so there's that.

"Victory conditions will be altered for the chosen players. The chosen players will leave their teams as betrayers. The betrayers will form a new team that will fight together from this point onward. For a period of time, all weapons will be locked. Transportation will be provided to send the betrayers to convene with the rest of their team, opening up travel to the UNKNOWN area."

...What?

"Whoo! Ooooh! Llenn, I've never seen you make that stupid of a face! You too, Kureha! Damn, wish I could take a picture!"

"I see. So that's why they set up that central area and submerged the island. The teams left over have no choice but to go there," M calmly states.

Llenn recovered enough of her wits to speak again. "Hey! Wait a second! This is messed up! What about the team?! What about our inseparable bond of friendship?!" Llenn laments.

"But rules are rules. They're meant to be followed," Fukaziroh says with the most serious expression Fuka has ever expressed. That is picture worthy...and that's seen in Kureha's peripheral. Her eyes are honed in on Jaymes and Pitohui. For whatever reason, Kureha knows that one of them is the "traitor." Pitohui might make the most sense. She's quite the competition when she puts her mind to it. SJ2 is proof of it. If she had to choose who the traitor of their team is, it is 99% Pitohui.

But if the sponsor wanted to change things up, Jaymes would have been chosen. Kureha knows his resume as a VRMMO gamer, which puts him among the top players of GGO. His skills in GGO are fearsome, and only one team could manage to defeat him: Kureha and LPFM.

Kureha knows that's nearly impossible. Once in effect, Hyper Awareness lasts for three minutes, long enough for him to advance and easily wipe out a team. It has two drawbacks: the inability to attack while dodging (and vice versa) and a lengthy recharge time of five minutes, but for Lucky Red - no, the Crimson Warrior - that means nothing. But for the Pink Princess...for Momiji Takemine, it would be glorious to take down her childhood friend. After losing to him in BoB IV, she will never let that go.

"Now go forth and kill. Your former comrades are now your enemies." As that message scrolls away, seconds silently pass. Then another message appears over one of the terminals. Kureha only gets to look at her terminal and a quick glance at Jaymes'. Neither one are the traitor, so that means...

"Whoo-hoo! Yeah! It's meeee! Now I get to fight Llenn!"

It's Pitohui.

?

"So this is how it will go down. Works for me. Makes things faster."

In the northwest corner of the map, just outside of the submerged city. a female player watches the message on the scanner like a hawk eyeing her prey. The team she leads, DEVA, has fought sparingly in the match, recently eliminating DDL with ease. Call it taking it easy, but the goal of DEVA is not to win the Squad Jam. If they do, it'll be an excellent bonus.

Their goal is the humiliation of one player: Jaymes of LPFM, more famously known as Crimson Squad.

The special rule, taking six to eight players from the respective number of remaining teams to form one of their own, just brings her one step closer to her goal. She figured the special rule would change the tournament's landscape, but not as convenient as putting a new team together. It didn't affect her plans, for DEVA had already accounted for the special rule in it.

Phase 1 of the plan was to eliminate Jaymes and his team by using the other teams. It was drawn up by another person, a member of their team left behind to watch the games in the audience. He masterminded the smoke screen plot, even using the other three top teams as a cover so it wouldn't be obvious who the true target was.

Plan A failed, though it was expected: Jaymes is a formidable opponent. She knows that all too well. But he isn't invincible. She knows his greatest weakness, and Plan B will work in her favor.

"So you got chosen. Our orders?"

She turns to the group of three behind her. All are dressed in their individual gear, so in appearance, they look like a mismatched group of players. But they're all united in their goal to play VRMMOs their way: terrorizing other players. They worship the deeds of a particular organization that took that idea and turned the death game Sword Art Online into their playground. They've sought every opportunity to eliminate players, no matter whether they're a newbie or high-ranking. They'll be instantly famous if they take care of Crimson Squad and win SJ3 in their place.

"Big Mouth's plan has failed, so we'll use the chaos of the special rule to conquer the rest. From this moment on, you're on your own."

"How will you get to Jaymes?"

"If I had to guess, it's simple. One of his teammates, the crazy one, will challenge her team as she did in SJ2. She'll lead me straight to Jaymes. But if you see his team first, use the signals."

And straight to revenge for what he took from her two years ago.