"What? Eva's on Deck Ten. Port side, near the stern, two hundred yards ahead of us. Llenn's on the same dekc, two hundred yards behind us. Right at the tip of the courtyard! And another fifty yards in front of her is Annihilator, moving towards you fast from starboard, Kureha."
Yeah, Kureha knew that.
Her eyes narrow as the crimson-eyed woman runs towards Kureha's position from the described position, then to a flash of pink fifty yards behind her. When the hell did Llenn get to the tip of the courtyard...and why didn't Kureha, who had been facing the prow end of the courtyard for the last four minutes, notice Llenn cross the courtyard?
In her ears, Pitohui's spill distracted her, and her eyes were locked on Devesta who showed up at the other prow end of the courtyard two minutes ago. She appeared first from the port side, photon sword ignited, and strolled across the length of the courtyard, twirling her yellow blade in front of her.
Somehow she hid the shrimp behind that yellow light. But as soon as she hit the starboard side, Devesta turned her blade off and took off for the stern of the ship in a hurry.
It doesn't make sense why Devesta and Llenn acted the way she did at the prow. There's no reason Llenn came to the prow. There's no reason Devesta didn't cross the courtyard lengthwise towards Kureha. She and Llenn could have attacked LPFM and took out Kureha and Pitohui at most. It doesn't make sense they're coming to the stern end as they are.
"Be careful, Kureha and Fuka. They're planning something big."
Kureha reaches for her waist as Devesta comes within fifty yards. "Got it."
"Okay, will do. You seem to be enjoying yourself, Pito."
"Oh, you can tell?"
Devesta continues running directly towards Kureha, then flicks her right hand. Noticing a small, spherical silver object bounce off the floor, Kureha immediately leaps to her left, right as a blast of smoke overcomes her. Rolling to her knees, Kureha grabs her SMG from her back and points it at the cloud of smoke.
Then a blast catches her attention. Pitohui and fukaziroh shout in surprise in her right ear, and on instinct, Kureha gets down flat on the ground. Unlike her teammates, who have protective covering to get low and lessen the potential for shrapnel damage, Kureha can only make herself a smaller target.
Her eyes lingers on the wrathful blue flame down the slope of the courtyard, where Llenn and Devesta were present moments ago. One after the other, a burst of blue light went off when the previous light was beginning to fade.
"Could that be..."
"Yes, it could... They did it, dammit! Kureha, get out of there!"
"No need to tell me twi—Gaaah!" Kureha gags as a glowing rope wraps around and presses against her throat. Devesta took her by surprise, using the blasts as a distraction, and started to choke her out while tugging her towards the prow side of the ship. With the explosions and the screeching of the breaking ship in her ears, she could barely hear Devesta's words.
"May you drown with the ship."
Ahead of her is a gaping hole in the courtyard, with the layers of the ship exposed for all to see. Water pours through the hull, rapidly damaging the tilted ship's integrity. It's about to snap in two...and Kureha is about to be tossed into the flooding sea.
No, she's too prideful to go out like this. She fights back, first trying to wrestle the rope away from her throat before her breathing is stopped, then starts to turn her back to the hole. Devesta does try wrangling kureha back towards the hole, yet it seems Kureha's STR stat is much higher. She can't completely tug the rope away, but she gets enough air in her system to turn perpendicular to the groaning hole.
Pow! Pow! Pow!
"Ah!" Devesta suddenly lets go, just as the fissures climbing the sides of the ship snap the ship in two. The two women fall on on the ground as it levels out after the snap. The front portion, about five hundred of the 1,600 yards of the ship, begins to rapidly sink as more water influx inward. The remaining 1,100 yards temporarily stayed level, but the water now rushes into the portion where it snapped with the front, drawing it back to an incline.
Devesta recovers first and darts off for the stern. Kureha remains on her knees still trying to catch her breath when a voice plays in her ear. "Kureha!" She gasps and looks across the hole of the other half of the ship. Quite high up, around Deck 17, is Jaymes. With that portion descending to the ocean, he throws a pouch towards Kureha. She catches it, and takes stock of the contents inside. The Ultra Fiber Gauntlet, the blue-bladed Ameno Murakumo G9, and a couple of batteries for the lightsword.
"Jaymes..."
"Don't say it. But this is the least I can do... While I got you connected to a private channel, I'm going to speak freely. I'm not going to wait those ten minutes. Once I'm gone, i'm going back to my duties. I'm going to give my full attention to Kazuto's recovery. But I have one more command for you; Finish the fight."
"What does that mean?"
"What I said. Finish the fight. Beat Devesta's ass for me. Don't come home if you lose."
"Huh? I'm already at home. I should be saying that to you, you bastard! I hope Asuna kills you later!"
"What you mean by that? I mean, she might once we return to the mainland, haha..." Oh, she's not going to spoil that for him. He'll figure it out later. "Anyway, Momiji...I'm putting everything I got on you. Don't let me down, partner."
Putting the pouch in her inventory, Kureha stands up as the two sinking halves of the ship put the two friends on equal level. It's only for a second, maybe two, but in that small amount of time, she saw his right hand held up, pinky out towards her. She imitated him, and though the distance is great, she could feel his pinky wrapping around hers.
"See you soon, Momiji."
"See you soon, Joshua."
The connection between them ends there, and Kureha turns toward the courtyard. Switching the channel back to being able to communicate with Pitohui and the others, she sprints as fast as she can up the incline to her companions. Explosions go off in the distance, meaning Fukaziroh is firing from her launchers towards the stern.
"How was that? Did I get her?"
"Probably not. All Eva wants to do is slow us down."
"So she can meet up with Llenn again, huh? Dammit. Should we go into a cabin?"
"If we surround ourselves with walls, we'll be helpless once the water gets to us. And we can't make use of your offensive firepower. Don't worry, we'll keep moving forward. I'm sure Llenn will show up again. Kureha, are you still alive?"
"Of course I am. Sorry you missed my voice, but I was speaking to Jaymes..."
"Where is he... Oh."
"...What did he say?"
"...Finish the fight"
"Then you get to Devesta. I don't know if she's working with Llenn and Eva, but she went towards the stern from port side, possibly to the theater. Leave the others to us."
What Llenn did could only be called pure insanity.
While the women of LPFM took their positions in the courtyard, Llenn traded her P90 for Boss' six watermelon-sized grand grenades and a dozen of the hand-tossed plasmas. Stocked in her inventory, Llenn darted down the port side of Deck 10 until she arrived at the anterior side of the courtyard. At that point, she saw the third member of Team Betrayer, who's name she hadn't paid much attention to until now. But an new factor she hadn't accounted for yet — Kureha — had appeared.
She wasn't sure why Jaymes and Kureha had to take down Annihilator earlier, but at this point, the enemy of Llenn's enemy is her friend. Anni proved to be valuable.
Llenn took the grand grenades from her inventory and set a timer for them for the first to go off thirty seconds after 1:50, then the following grand grenades at three second increments. Then, with Anni's lightsword acting as a shield and Kureha's attention on the masked woman, she set the grand grenades across the width of the courtyard, with a plasma between them. When they reached the starboard side, Llenn high-tailed it out of there down the corridor.
As Llenn made her return, she could hear Boss, Pitohui, and Fuka's weapons go off in that order. Boss took position at the outside theater at the end of the ship, and it seems Fukaziroh had shot grenades in that direction.
She ran against the rocking ship up to the theater, meeting with Boss and Anni. "We did it, Llenn!"
"We did it, Boss! And thank you for the assist, Anni."
"Mhm."
"Here. This is yours." Boss says, handing Llenn's P90 back to her. "And you don't have to give the other thing back. Keep it."
"Thanks..."
"What's the matter? Don't worry — I didn't take a bite."
Llenn stares at her beloved SMG and sadly notes, "Oh, uh... Just noticing that P-chan isn't talking this time." Close to the end of the previous Squad Jams, Llenn would have a sensation that P-chan would speak to her when she got fired up. Of course, it's just an internal feeling, not an actual occurrence.
"Oh. You mean when you talk to it while in a kind of trance?"
"My gun is not an 'it'! My gun is P-chan!"
"Ha-ha-ha. Maybe that's a sign that you're keeping your cool better this time? Or maybe..."
"Maybe?"
"Heads up." Anni, who had been silent and uninterested in the conversation, speaks up as a fat red line lands in the middle of the trio.
"Maybe the third P-chan just happens to be the silent type."
"Yeah. I like that idea." They split off left, right, and backward from the line, right before the explosive result of the line's appearance arrives.
"Dammit. Didn't feel that one hit!"
On the other side, Fukaziroh laments her missed shot as she, Pitohui, and Kureha move forward towards the theater. Five hundred feet of obstacle-free space separates them from the theater, meaning that they couldn't engage in close-quarters firefight under cover. Furthermore, if they accounted for the computer-generated gravity effect, only Fukaziroh would have a chance of hitting anyone as Kureha and Pitohui's bullets shoot straight.
Meanwhile, Llenn, Eva, and Annihilator have the height advantage with the theater being higher ground due to the ship's tilt. They had the advantage of cover due to seating of the theater. The only reason they hadn't taken much damage is because of the shields the trio walk behind.
"Whoa."
"Get down!" The three kneel down and hide behind the shields as a shower of bullet lines and trailing bullets. The long, narrow bullet's of Llenn's P90 hail down on the space around them, and despite the fact Llenn's magazines only hold about fifty bullets, that shrimp's reload speed is so great it didn't seem she reloaded the weapon at all.
"Arrrgh, damn her!" Fukaziroh snaps. The attack prevented her from taking shots with her MGL-140s from the sides of her shield and she was too close to the theater to lob a shot from the top blindly.
"If only Jaymes was here. She wouldn't dare like this, and if she did, she would be dead!"
A few yards away hiding behind a shield together, is a smirking Pitohui and a grimacing Kureha. "You seem to be enjoying yourself, Pito."
"Yes, I am. I'm thinking of nothing but how I'm going to kill the person who's shooting at me now. In fact, it's very similar to the feeling I get onstage when my mind is occupied with singing."
"Ooh, why, that's just—" Fukaziroh drops her head and lifts her shield a little higher to block a single red line from the top of her head. The bullet that follows bounces off the top of her helmet. "—lovely! Yaaaah!" She pokes Leftania out and points it to the port side of the stern where that sniper's bullet line originated from. She aims it to a balcony near the stern, where Eva is. The destruction shatters glass and drops debris on the courtyard below, but none of it is Eva's destroyed corpse.
"Tsk. Missed again. Reloading!"
"I knew it."
"You knew it?"
"What do you know, Pitohui?"
"It might've been difficult for Eva to shoot me or Kureha at that angle — but not impossible."
Pitohui has a point. Eva could shoot at the two larger targets, but in doing so means Eva would have to expose herself more, inviting a counterattack. At the same time, Llenn hadn't let up on her attack, and it doesn't seem Devesta is joining in right now.
"Uh-huh. Meaning?" Fukaziroh inquires as she plants more grenades into Rightony's cylinder.
"They must've agreed that ito would be Llenn who kills me. Perhaps out of Llenn's sense of duty? Either that or a personal grudge. And speaking of personal grudges, that Anni chick must've marked you as her target, Kureha."
"What a brat!"
"My goodness! At the end of they match and still choosing their targets! Talk about confidence! Talk about arrogance!"
"So I'm going to take advantage of that mind-set. I'll go into the cabins. I'll go after Eva — pretend to, at least."
"It's certainly a trap... Ah, hell, let's spring it anyway. We'll split off here, then. Pito, go port, I'll go starboard. Fukaziroh, look pretty."
"Ha ha ha! Gotcha!" Fukaziroh stands up, shield over her. As expected, the bullets hail down on her. Most of them batter the sturdy shield, but one hits the tiles on the ground and bounces into her leg. "Dammit, that hurt!"
Fukaziroh might've gotten wounded, but the distraction proved successful. Pitohui made her way to the cabins to the left, while Kureha headed right. Moments afterwards, Llenn stops firing. At this point, she'll go after Pito, Devesta will go after Kureha, and Fuka will wait for further commands.
That was the plan, at least, until a pink shrimp made her way to the courtyard.
"Fukaaaaaaa! Fight meeeeeeeee!"