Koharu
"According to my ancestors, the wasps always attacked towns where there were a great many prey located in one place. While the soil decayed their corpses, the wasps grew large flowers call gargamols. The nectar within those flowers supplied the nest with food and allowed them to grow their numbers."
"...Meaning if the nest gets too big, some of the wasps will leave to build a new one," Silica muttered.
Klein added, "That process is called swarming!"
"Thanks, but we don't need random animal facts right now," Lisbeth said. "If that's true, then they might attack Ruis na Ríg next. That's another reason we don't have time to waste. And with the durability of the poison being very limited, we need to make this snappy."
"The wasps feed off the nectar of those flowers underneath the nest... Then that's our first plan of action. We'll use the lobelia poison."
"We're going to poison their food source? That's very assassin-ny of you, Koharu."
"Thank you, Klein. There's twenty-six of us, so split into groups of three to five, and we'll divide the twenty bottles of poison amongst the groups. Our strength-based players will hold the logs for the hut. As for who will do the poisoning...our six smallest and most nimble members."
From the wooden bridgehead at the dome's entrance, Koharu watches as six figures in ghillie suits went deeper in the dome. The six who were to undertake this task are five players who excelled in stealth, which is part of the Swiftness skill tree — Dikkos, Friscoll, a tiger-beetle named Ceecee, Argo, and Silica — plus the self-volunteering Chett. While putitng NPCs in danger isn't something Koharu preferred to do, Chett insisted she takes part in the poisoning phase of the plan. Given all the preparations were due to Chett's knowledge, Koharu found no reason to say no.
"Sinon, keep your gun on Chett," Koharu whispered to the sniper, who positioned herself with her musket pointed in the direction of the nest. In the coming battle, Sinon will be second in command, a failsafe in case Koharu freezes up. "I'll go oversee things, make sure things proceed fine. Once I give the signal, we'll move to the second phase."
"You think this will go well?" Lisbeth, standing to Koharu's left. Part of her wanted to scold the older girl for raising a flag. However, experience favored Lisbeth's thoughts. When hadn't a boss fight gone wrong in Sword Art Online. Sure, most times the Assault Team wouldn't lose anyone, but there was always some information about the boss missing, no matter how prepared they were.
"It's not will it go wrong, but when."
Liz laughs with her grin. "In that case, you'll pull us out of it, right?" Koharu's purple eyes angle in the pink-haired girl's direction. For once, she wished Liz was teasing her or trying to provoke her in jealousy, but Lisbeth is doing none of the sort. Try to hide it as well as s can, Koharu can tell that Lisbeth is visibly nervous.
Seeing that sort of calms Koharu's own nerves. This may be the first time they're conducting a major boss raid without Kirito, Asuna, or Jaymes present, but that doesn't mean they can't do it themselves. They're every bit the gamer their friends are. "I'm not that heroic, but I'll lead us as best I can. We'll pull through this together."
"Hmm, that's nice... Doesn't have the same effect as Kirito saying it. Missing some old-fashioned recklessness in your voice."
"If you really want to inspire people," Sinon murmurs, "sound overly confident. Works wonders in the squad, no matter who's giving the pep talk." The three chuckle to themselves, then Koharu takes a deep breath and ventures to the nest. Crouching down and settling down at the outer edge of the nest, Koharu quickly scans the area.
It's been less than two minutes since the six volunteers left the bridgehead. Ceecee and Argo crawl towards the middle of the dome, their assigned areas farthest from the exit. Chett, Dikkos, and Friscoll had either reached their positions or were close to it. Silica, heading to the nine o'clock position of the dome, is close to hers as well, However, she's pauses in place as a green wasp descends on her position.
Swallowing her innate fear of bugs is much harder than it seemed, but she can't complain when Silica has a wasp hovering over her. Since it doesn't attack her, the wasp hasn't seen through the ghillie suit, so there's another reason why it's over the beast tamer. If it does attack, Koharu has her own little exterminator.
Poison laced picks, courtesy of the nails she had in her inventory and coated with the lobelia poison. She has ten of them, all kept them in a pouch. Hopefully they work without literally stirring the nest.
But so far, everything is progressing smoothly. It only has to last...and deep down, she knows it won't.
Silica
When Silica gets to see Koharu again, she's going to wring her neck. She may be the raid leader and Sililca may have volunteered to set the poison, but it was more out of consideration that Koharu's scared of bugs. That's what friends do, and she owes Koharu plenty for their SAO days that she never thought she'd repay.
However, that was before the four inch long Amber Honeysucker Tick was squeezed by Silica. She heard the yellow-bellied arachnid scraping by her left ear, and since it differed from the buzzing of the hovering wasp, she sought to investigate the source. She didn't expect a tick, but she's glad she held in her scream.
Feeling disgusted, she tossed the tick to her left and watched as the green wasp descended on it. That was its target the entire time, and it grabs the tick with its six legs then ascends the dome.
Taking a moment to survey the area, there are more ticks around the place. Considering how close Silica was to not noticing them, they must be traps intended for sneaky players. If a tick got on someone and wasn't removed quickly, they could be captured by the wasps. Unfortunately, Silica can't warn everyone with a player message, as Chett wouldn't receive it.
She'll have to trust their experience and skill as warriors to notice the ticks. Just as Koharu and the others are trusting them to poison the gargamol flowers.
Back on the move, Silica enters her sector. There's six reddish-purple gargamol flowers around her, so to make effective use of the three bottles in her possession, she'll use one bottle per two gargamols. She'll have to be careful, though. According to Friscoll, who scouted the nest before the girls arrived, he noticed that the wasps land and feed from the gargamols at irregular intervals, but in general, a minimum of thirty seconds would pass before another wasp came to feed on the nectar.
Facing the nest-covered tree in the center, there had to be at least a hundred of those unnamed wasps. That thirty second window is cutting things close. The best strategy might be to wait on a wasp to feed and poison the flower during the cooldown period.
The closest gargamol is ten feet away, and Silica hunkered down as a wasp descended on it. Like the honeysuckers attached to the twenty inch trunk holding up the flower, it stuck its head inside the center of the flower and consumed the nectar. Silica marveled at the movements of the thorax as it stretched and contracted like the wasp itself was real. It drank for ten seconds, cleaned its mandibles with its arms, then fluttered off with its brown wings.
Silica quietly runs to the flower. Pulling the cork, she pours the blue poison into the center of the flower. She's too rough with uprighting the bottle as some of it drips on the petals, but she still had about half of the poison and ten seconds to spare. She corks the bottle and remain crouched until she returns to the patch of grass she emerged from.
She sighs now that she had successfully poisoned a gargamol. She almost paralyzed herself, but otherwise she did good. One down, five to go.
Fifteen minutes after the lobelia poison was finished, Silica had filled four of the six flowers with poison She is about to head to the fifth after another wasp finished feeding when a high-pitched "Squeeeeeee!" comes from somewhere else in the dome. Fifteen yards away, she sees a massive wasp lift off from the ground.
Scratch that, that's two wasps working together to carry a grassy plant...no, that's a ghillie suit...and that's from Chett's part of the dome. Carried by her head and back, the Patter isn't moving. A quick look at her cursor indicates she'll alive but paralyzed by poison, which explains why she looks so lifeless in the limbs of the wasps.
Placing the bottle on the ground and grabbing her dagger, Silica calculates that there's no jumping sword skill that will lift her twenty feet. Sinon, who was supposed to protect Chett with musket fire, hadn't done so, and it becomes apparent to Silica why. As good as a shot Sinon is, she doesn't have a clean shot at the wasps. If they didn't care about the Patter's wellbeing as much as they did, maybe she would do so.
Koharu is present at the dome's entrance, her right hand drawn back as if she's about to throw something. But even the powerful Koharu is powerless to save the Patter in this situation.
If Kirito or Asuna were here, they might have a solution for this. If Jaymes was here and leading the charge, Sinon would have taken the shot by now. But right now, those three are in the Underworld. Silica had to rely on Koharu's experiences and her own thinking.
Finally, Koharu acts: she looks at the Silica and the others and mouths, "Keep going." Silica did expect Koharu to pull from her partner's playbook of strategies. "The ends can justify the means, as long as you don't sell your soul," he told her and Lisbeth in a quest once, and Silica wondered if Koharu will adhere to that. She's nicer to NPCs than he is — and considering Yui, Strea, Rei and the other NPCs they've befriended, he's much nicer to NPCs now than when she met him in SAO.
No, Koharu isn't sacrificing Chett. No other wasp has targeted the Patter or anyone else, so they see her as prey, not an enemy. Whatever they do, they have time to wipe the colony out and rescue Chett before she becomes food.
Trusting her friend judgement and her own, Silica quickly drowns the two remaining gargamols with poison, then makes her way back to the bridgehead when the first of the wasps collapses to the ground. Their names visible ever since Chett was captured, Silica notices that on the right side of the Gilnaris Worker Hornet is the same symbol that appeared over Dikkos earlier. A blue flower on a black background — the lobelia poison is taking effect.
More and more wasps fall to the ground, while the wasps that hadn't drank from the poisoned flowers fly in a state of alarm. Soon, the battle against the remaining wasps will begin. once that occurs, she'll have to fight as hard as she can while thinking on her feet. Without Kirito, Jaymes, or Asuna to give proper leadership, she'll have to emulate them in her own way. Just as Koharu is doing to the best of her ability.
As she reaches the bridgehead, Silica looks back at the dome though a peephole. The wasps hoist Chett into the nest. Silenlty Silica swears to save the Patter from the hornets.
"Good work so far. Phase Two begins now," Koharu commands.
"Initiate construction!" Sinon shouts. "Construction team, protection team, onward!"
Sinon
"Bunker B, durability forty percent!"
"I'll repair it right away. Just hang in there!"
The second phase of the plan was simple. Three wooden A-frame shelters would be used to house anyone who needed to heal and served as a gnawing distraction for the Gilnaris Worker Hornets. The shelters took continuous damage from the chewing, but all it took was thirty seconds to repair it from the properties window.
In execution, it was much more trouble, but for the last five minutes, it has proven successful. Dikkos had to stand in place for those thirty seconds to complete the repair job on Bunker B, but Holgar had his back, protecting him from any of the flying wasps. The ten wasps on Bunker B's wall and those on A's were ignored for the time being. Once B's durability returned to four thousand, Dikkos was done, free to return to A. For the moment, Ceecee the tiger beetle was repairing Bunker C.
"All loaded!" Reloading her musket after taking out a wasp, Sinon mentally counted she has forty more uses of the blasting power. Even with plentiful bullets, that wouldn't be enough to dent the wasps' numbers. The main attackers weren't having much success on thinning them out either.
Koharu leads the main attack team while Sinon handles the back team. With Koharu currently is Agil, Klein, Leafa, a couple others from ALO, the stag beetle Beeming and the rhinoceros beetle Zarion, and the Bashin warriors. No one, not even the lightly armored Bashin, had fallen to the sting of the wasps, but they couldn't avoid all the bites and rammings from the aerial enemies.
"Tomoshin, pull back and heal!" Sinon calls out to the spearman from Dikkos' group. While Tomoshin retreats to Bunker C, the cricket Needy comes out of Bunker B, ready to rejoin the fight.
"I'm in."
"Okay, to the left," she responds in English. She takes a second to feel relieved she was able to communicate with the cricket in English, even though her skill isn't on par with Asuna's and far surpassed by the three American-born friends in Agil, Jaymes, and Kureha. It occassionally pisses her off when Jaymes and Kureha communicate in English when they want to keep something amongst themselves, but she has been practicing the language with them.
If she had joined the North American GGO server when she started playing that game, maybe things would be different for her skills, but then she would have never met Jaymes almost exactly a year ago. She would have never met Kureha, Rei, and the rest of Crimson Squad through him. She would have never met Kirito in the Japanese BoB tournament and become friends with Asuna and the others. She wouldn't have followed either boy into Unital Ring and fight giant wasps.
That reminds her of Spiegel, real name Kyouji Shinkawa, the friend who invited her to GGO in the first place. A secondary figure in last year's Death Gun incident, he was taken to a juvenile correction facility three months ago, where he'll remain as part of his long sentence for being complicit in the deaths of four people. Sinon, with Jaymes in tow, tried to visit him. She wonders if, had his brother not had his experience in SAO as Red-Eyed XaXa, would Kyouji had a different course in life? Could they had been actual friends?
Sword Art Online. For better or worse, it is always the center of everything. Death Gun, SA:O, Ordinal Scale, Project Alicization, and now Unital Ring. Is this the finale of a long play, or another act before a brief intermission?
To find out, Sinon voids the distractions in her head and readies her musket. Her focus has to be winning this battle.
The wasps keep pouring out the tunnel with seemingly endless numbers, but half of them had been paralyzed by the poison. Silica and company had done their job well, but now they're on a race against the clock for Chett's life. Her status hasn't changed as her health remains around 80 percent, but that can change at any moment. That moment is what Sinon is waiting for so she can warn Koharu. Hopefully by that time, Koharu will have some idea of what to do.
For now, Koharu commanded that they deal with the unaffected wasps first, then neutralize the paralyzed wasps, then save Chett. That, of course, is on the basis the paralyzed hornets don't recover first.
"Thanks for waiting," Lisbeth calls as she exits Bunker B.
"Go to the middle! Klein, pull back!"
"You got it!" Klein leaves the line, chased by a wasp. Holgar slices it to bits in one leaping slash. No need to use her gun, Sinon watches as Klein begins drinking hi potion at the bunker's entrance. "Hey, Sino-Sino, you think things are going well so far, too?"
"I warned you, if you call me that again, I'll light you on fire." Despite a finger pointed threateningly in his direction, Klein smiles briefly. He eyes the wasps chewing up Bunker B, then his own HP bar, then the nest twenty or so yards away.
If her captain or either lieutenants of Crimson Squad were here, they might have had her destroy the nest with the Hecate II. She might have too if they're in a pinch. She just didn't want to waste the five 12.7 mm bullets she has left, and possibly hit Chett's location in the nest.
No, not even they would take that course of action immediately. As tough the hornets are, there will be greater challenges as they come closer to the center of the world. Team Kirito and Crimson Squad always faced the challenges in front of them head-on, albeit in different ways, as they had the strength to do so. With the leaders of those groups gone, Sinon and her allies had to prove they had the power to match those of the likes of Asuka Empire and Apocalyptic Date.
They're fine. They will win.
Koharu
"Adds are finished! Wipe oout the ones flying now, then the ones stuck to the bunkers, followed by the paralyzed hornets on the ground!" Sinon shouts. That's the good news Koharu was waiting for.
Ten minutes had passed since Silica's team escaped the nest. They've successfully poisoned the lobelia plants and held off the attacking wasps without anyone getting poisoned. It was Koharu who noticed the attack pattern of the stinger attack and relayed it to the others in the attack line at the time. The tell was the retraction of the abdomen right before a short jabbing motion to sting. The attack range was short and blockable with a shield or avoidable with a back step.
Maybe her many experiences were paying off. Before the battle, she was copying Asuna, Kirito, and Jaymes; now she's thinking on her feet with her friends. That is the great weapon of Koharu and those in Team Kirito — experience of being through many trials together in the past. Koharu might not have the camaraderie with Leafa, Sinon, and Lux as she does with Klein, Argo, and Agil and to a lesser degree Lisbeth and Silica, but they all have fought together one way or another. The bonds that connect them has grown since Sword Art Online and will only grown stronger with each trial passed.
Speaking of experience, Koharu mentally pats herself on the back for expecting what came next.
Barely a moment after Sinon barked those orders, activity resumes in the nest. Out of the highest and largest hole in the nest, the same one Chett was passed through, emerges an enormous wasp head with three compound head and frightening mandibles. What followed is the shiny emerald thorax, the pulsating abdomen, and a sharp stinger the size of a sword. If she had to estimate, it's six feet in length. It crawls down the nest, keeping its orange wings folded. Its cursor is already visible, showcasing three HP bars and its name: Gilnaris Queen Hornet.
"There you are, queen bee," Klein says with grinning excitement. Koharu can't say she shares his excitement, given this is expected, but her adrenaline does soar. The attack pattern of this boss should reflect those of the worker hornets on a grander scale, so if they're careful and there aren't any surprises, they can dethrone the queen.
Yet her purple eyes catch more activity in the nest. Then again, what would be a ruler without her soldiers?
The queen and the four smaller Gilnaris Soldier Hornets, possessing more developed jaws and sharper forms than the other types, all take flight at once. They spiral around the dome, ascending higher while their combined buzzing irritates Koharu's eardrums. That's in addition to the workers that are still being eliminated in the air and the near hundred paralyzed on the ground. That poison will wear in the next two minutes, and that will reinforce the queen and her guard.
It's time for get rid of the nuisances. Koharu whips her head around, eyeing Sinon behind her at the bunkers. "Now!"
"Right!" Sinon mimics the same motion to look further back in the tunnel. "Silica, it's time!"
"Right!" From the safety of the tunnel enters Misha and Silica. Koharu had kept the beast tamer and her thornspike bear from danger the entire time, waiting for this exact signal from Koharu. In case the queen appeared before they cleaned up the worker hornets, they'd have a powerful force to grab its attention in Misha.
This is the critical final phase. "Silica, you and Misha grab the queen's attention and get a read on her. Agil and Klein, Zarion and Beeming, Liz and Leafa, work in those teams and take on a guard. Lux, you're with me on that. Everyone else, take out the workers!"
"Yes!"
Reaching into her pouch, she counts two poison-laced nails left. One for the assigned guard, one for the queen. With a smirk on her face, Koharu leads the charge against the queen and her soldiers.
This battle will be hers...or so she thought until the flying queen destroyed her ears with a screech...