Date posted: 30th September 2023

We ballin', ye of little faith.


Chapter 27: Backtracking

Somewhere, on the outskirts of Corinth, three men sat around a table in a basement.

It used to be a butcher's shop, what with all the hanging racks and the large freezers. No one had found where the switch for the temperature was so all of them were decked in cold weather gear.

General Khalid of the Mobile Guard looked at his cards and frowned. "Ugh, I never get a good hand. Maybe the wife is right."

"Aren't you like, forbidden to gamble?" asked General Toyotomi of the Ashigaru Corps.

"Oh, I am. Just a bad habit I can't seem quite kick." He put his cards down. "I'm out."

"Naisu," General FaDe of FaDe Clan grinned. "This baby is mine. Will look nice besides the Conquistador armour in my chambers."

Said reward was a most rare 16th century hand mortar. Completely useless in GGO's pseudo-modern combat but it looked nice as a trophy. Someone had found it in the ruins of some old museum and the three commanders were playing cards of who was to win it.

All three men were glad that General Wroth of Black Arrow weren't here. She was easily the best hand at cards of the entire guilds. Thankfully she had got her head smashed apart by a Thunder Warrior and her men were the most behind in the assault of Corinth. While gambling was still very much illegal in Japan, the betting of rewards for the most part was still a grey area, especially in cyberspace.

Khalid excused himself before things got ugly, as any game with FaDe tended to be. He exited the basement for a smoke of his pipe when a runner came. "Sir, intel says a massive group of aircraft are heading this way. They just entered the far end of Turkish airspace."

He cursed. "Is it more jet-dragons?!" If there was one thing the Mobile Guard was lacking compared to everyone else, it was a real airforce, but that was arguably true for most guilds.

"No, sir. It's aircraft. We believe it's coming from a player."

The two returned to the comms station where Khalid spoke into a handset. "This is General Khalid of the Mobile Guard, identity yourself or we'll shoot you down."

The radio on the other end buzzed before a friendly voice came through. "Oh come on, Kaito-kun. You wouldn't shoot an old friend, would ya'?"

Khalid's eyes widened. "It's ... it's you! I thought you were in Russia!"

"Damn right it is, and we're here to save the damn. Ah, speaking of which, can you give us the down-low what the hell's happening there in Greece?"


"You know, this reminds me of something."

"What reminds you of something?"

"This! Sneaking around and stuff! Look, I even have an MP4."

"It's an MP5, Kirito. And no, it's nothing like -"

"Yes, it is! We're in a vent (that somehow is able to hold up the weight of two grown adults with all their gear), a lighter in hand cause my NVGs broke, stuck in hostile territory, and extremely outnumbered. It's only think to our ingenuity, skill, luck and -"

"Drugs."

"I was gonna say grit, but yes, drugs helped. Lots of drugs."

"Don't forget swords and .50 BMG."

"The movie would have been shorter if he had either. The only thing missing is that neither of our feet are busted up."

She paused mid-crawl. "Why? Do you like -"

"N-no!" he stammered before returning to telepathy. "I mean, his feet are bleeding all over the place! Gross! That's why I've got these fantastic boots."

"Kirito, you spent more money on those boots than you have on ammo."

"Tooth and tail, Sinonon. You said it yourself, wars are won on the battlefield as much as they're won in the factories."

"I guess you're right."

"Have you ever -"

"No, Kirito, I have never been trapped in an office building during Christmas and killed 13 terrorists by myself."

Even in the darkness of the vent and her being in front of him, she could see his confusion. "He only killed 13 people? I thought it was more."

"Yeah, I was surprised too."

"We can definitely kill more than that. We killed 30 people on the way here!"

"It was the claymores that did that." They had been carrying the claymores for such a long time, both of them forgot they had them.

"Same thing!"

"Now shush, I see an opening."

It would have been much easier had Sinon went cat form but she was either too stressed nor too chill to transform, but that would mean Kirito would have to carry her gear, as well as inability to open vents. Toe beans were very cute but not very practical when it came to operating hinges, doors, screens or triggers.

The flight from the Killbox was nothing short of disastrous. It made the British retreat from Kabul look like an orderly emergency escape during a routine fire drill. To be fair to the Clearer force, the Afghans didn't have a bunch of demigods that could cut through tank armour with spears.

It was only thanks to luck, quick thinking (and drugs) that either of them made it out alive, escaping through a side-door guarded by a squad of shotgunners. Kirito had to burn through two of his «Detox» to even get through while Sinon sniped enemy sharpshooters as the others laid down covering fire.

They ran into a motorpool where even the mechanics picked up their tools to kill them and the Stormtroopers were on them like vultures to a corpse. They were almost player equivalent in terms of equipment and skill, whittling down a dozen strong players until only they were left.

When one of those golden bastards came through with their spears, one of the Warhawks bravely sacrificed themselves by launching themselves onto them, strapped with all the grenades everyone was carrying.

It did nothing.

A Mobile Guardsman hotwired a truck and ran into them full throttle, which was kicked away as easily as a soccer ball.

Then finally, someone rigged the entire room to detonate, with all the chemfuel inside it. The room was completely engulfed in flame, just in time for Kirito to find the vent to escape, dragging Sinon along with him. Neither saw the aftermath, but they can guess it wasn't as effective either. What did they have to do for an anti-rain warhead around here?

It took another few minutes of crawling and arguing which movie (aside from the first) was the best one until they found am opening that wasn't crawling with guards. Sinon carefully pretzelled herself around, placing her feet towards the vent cover before pushing it with her mighty legs. The cover dropped with a clang as both players crawled out.

"Where are we?" asked Kirito as he finagled their gear out of the vent. He groped the wall and his fingers brushed a switch, lighting up the room. "Hmm, looks like a workshop of some kind …"

The workshop looked to be long abandoned, with much of the surfaces dusty, cobwebs in every corner and even the ceiling lights barely illuminating the room. What few tools there were were rusted, broken, the wooden handles rotten and the liquids and chemicals giving off a suspicious smell. Sinon tried to open the door only to feel something blocking it, either furniture or boarding. Well, better than nothing she supposed.

Both players sat themselves at the table in the middle of the room. They examined each other and said, "You look like shit."

Sinon recovered first. "Kirito, you're shaking like a leaf in the wind. Are you going through withdrawal?"

"Believe it or not, no. I'm just shaken from what happened. I only got one Detox left and way too much Davai to kill myself with." He blew a raspberry. "Pretty awesome fight though. Not sure if I'd call it balanced."

"Yeaaaah." She looked around the room and considered their situation: they were in the belly of the beast, likely the highest level dungeon they've faced so far, facing a small army of elites and being hunted down by even tougher Thunder Warriors. Thunderer Warriors? "You wanna log out and chill?"

Kirito considered it. "No, I think I'm fine. We should probably clean ourselves up."

They did just so in comfortable silence, despite the predicament they were in, engaging in a ritual that they had perfected in their hundreds of hours of playing together.

Despite Kirito's disinterest in firearms over swords, he knew what to do. He disassembled his M4, cleaned it up nicely with the cleaning kit he brought alone. Sinon herself would usually patch up their flak plates (which, despite the name, were not actually flak plates), with her higher Crafting guillemet skills. There was something comfortable with the click-clack of taking and putting apart firearms, the soothing smell of gun oil on metal and the almost therapeutic business of inserting a bullet into a mag one by one. Sometimes silence with company was all that was needed.

He found a plug in the wall and used it to charge the batteries for his electronics, which primarily consisted of the battery of his reflex sight. The PDA, like all mission critical equipment, seemed to run on a magic never-ending battery. He unsheathed his arming sword and found, despite his best attempt to turn it into a shortsword, it was unsatisfactory. An ugly thing, with its too-short blade with its too-long handle. The blade itself was more long knife than anything, just a bit shy of the length of his forearm. Wait, hold on …

He looked around and scavenged through the nearby shelves, found what he needed and smiled. "Sinon, keep an ear out! I'm doing a crafting!"

"Uhuh." Sinon didn't even bother to look up from her Lynx. When Kirito 'did a crafting', it usually meant something absolutely ingenious like taping two mags together or two pegs at the end of each rope or sticking cans of soda in a rocket tube or sticking a claymore atop a cleaning Menhir - in short, something soldiers had been doing for ages. For someone who can be pretty creative when it came to the art of war, he was less creative at the art of crafting.

But when he produced and showed off his latest arts-and-crafts project with an almost innocent childlike wonder, it took a lot of willpower not to cup his face and call him a smart boy.

Sinon wasn't creative either but what she lacked in the creative process she made up in technical know-how, finding the familiar process of cleaning and checking equipment in an almost mechanical detached manner. That wasn't to say she wasn't a creative problem solver.

Their flak plates were ruined and there were no nearby merchants or vending machines that they could stock up on. Kirito usually carried an extra few with him thanks to his aggressive melee but in the panic of the retreat, most of their kits were left in the Killbox. It would be suicide to return to them and neither of them had time to loot plates from the enemy. Repairing them was the only option.

Realistically, reusing kevlar plates was a terrible idea. But they weren't kevlar, and they weren't flak either despite the name, it was a misnomer. They were advanced sci-fi composite materials, tough enough to take twice or even thrice more abuse than current modern materials. And unlike modern kevlar, they were repairable.

Being a sniper most of the time, Sinon didn't invest as much into body armour as the average grunt but she didn't ignore it entirely. With her transformation into a catgirl, she actually wore even heavier armour than Kirito. Slipping one plate out of her ballistic vest, she examined the damage:

It was bad, but not too bad. She was familiar enough with the game to know this one took two shots of 9mm and one shot from a 5.56. The fabrics beneath the cover were frayed. Had this been real life, she would have immediately ditched it, modern kevlar having more DNA with car tires and was similarly hard to repair. Using banged up plates was a quick way to get yourself killed, this wasn't medieval times where you just patch a few holes in your mail -

"Sinooon! Do you have any pliers?"

"Yeah, look in my belt over there."

"Thank you, babe!"

She really should think up some pet names for Kazuto. It's always been him who's doing the sweet boyfriend thing.

Sinon took out her tube of «Flakpaste». As the name implied, it was a sort of glue for armour. She also tore apart a piece of «Flak Tape» and did her best to cover the weak spots as well as the torn parts of her vest. It took a while to do all of hers and Kirito's, but it was done: the most pathetic set of repaired armour in existence.

It was Good Enough. She just hoped it was Good Enough for the rest of the dungeon, or at least until she looted from one of those Argyraspides. Shame the whole silver thing super clashed with her fashion.

Sinon put on her armour and checked a nearby mirror; further evidence to suggest this was a standard armour workshop in the past, alongside all the mannequin torsos in the room. A curious thing, her current getup: desert tan vest and gloves; black helmet courtesy of Black Dog; black boots magically spawned when emerged from the vat, somehow still holding up; and of course - the green bodysuit.

It wasn't a bad suit by any means, it was actually quite tastefully done. Light green all over, with darker green on the shoulder/knee paddings. There was a white lining around the waist and across the torso where the zip was. But the combination of the rest of her kit, which was designed to go for Wasteland warfare, clashed terribly with it all. She was a walking fashion disaster.

Yet the suit held. She had been shot, punched and stabbed throughout this entire campaign yet the suit held on. It was a miracle that she hadn't torn it apart through sheer flexing alone. Bulletproof clothes weren't exactly new, militaries around the world were experimenting with them as of late, giving them to special forces. And of course, tight revealing bodysuits had been a staple of sci-fi since forever.

At some point, she did want to change to her standard desert tan fatigues but Kirito looked like he was going to cry on the spot so she did not. Still, it wasn't an uncomfortable experience. If only he wore something similar. Now that would be a sight to behold. All that jogging did give a shapely rump.

So engrossed she was in her naughty thoughts, she didn't hear Kirito calling her out. "Sinon! Look!"

She pulled out her tomahawk, internally facepalmed instead of grabbing her Lynx and aimed it at the door. "Hostiles?"

"No! Look! I did a crafting!"

It was a strange contraption, what appeared to be a vambrace on the underside of his forearm, with some sort of battery piston thingamajig near the elbow. "Oh cool! What is it?"

With a twist of his wrist, a plasteel blade popped from underneath. "Now I can swing my chainsword and stab people with my other sword! Whadayya think? Pretty cool, huh? Didn't even need to cut off my ring finger to use it."

What did she think? Well, she could think of a few things. Like why he didn't spend his time making something important like grenades, or helping her fix their armour, or finding a way to get the hell out of here?

But those eyes. Those big brown puppy eyes. "It's great, Kirito," she said, patting him on the head. His smile could have lit up the room.

"Hah! I knew you'd like it! Also, I fixed that radio over there."

"There's a radio?"

It was an ancient thing, looking something straight out of World War 2. Fortunately for the both of them, Sinon was on the radio enough to invest a perk or two into «Communications» and she had the Clearer encryption to safeguard from enemy spies. It took some finangling, and Kirito had to hold the ancient headset and position it around the cat ears atop her head.

"Coming in. Coming in. This is Lieutenant Makarov. Broadcasting Clearer response signal, please respond. Over."

Sinon clicked the radio. "This is Sinon, LT. Alive and kicking."

There was a pause as if Makarov was startled. "Oh good. At least someone made it out alive." His relief was audible over the static. "Please tell me you've got a dozen men with you."

"Well, we had a dozen men … "

"Nevermind. Too much to hope for. Where are you? Last we heard you were in Keel Motorpool 05. "

"No idea. Somewhere abandoned?"

"Well look for a map, these big ships always have those handy ones on the walls."

Kirito finally found one by the door, hidden under at least a decade of dust and left him coughing a bit too loud for either of their comfort. It took a moment to piece together where they were as the ship had been built on with new habs and rooms, old rooms demolished and entire hallways being remade over the years.

"Huh. Looks like you're near the belly of the ship, a bit southwest of here You may not be too far from what I think is a destroyed hospital. I need you two to go there and rendezvous with Major Nikita and the other survivors. It's a bit of trek, but you're the only people I've been in contact with in the area."

Sinon stared at the map. "Hmm, this place looks familiar."

"Are there others en route?" asked Kirito.

"No clue, but if you can save them, try. We need Major Nikita or any other officer to help round up everyone for a final plan of attack. You should pass an area called the Bastille, maybe you'll find some survivors there. I've sent another team to find others, but they'll be too far from here."

"Lieutenant, you cannot just expect me and Kirito to save the others all by ourselves. Have you seen those Super Thunder Warriors?"

"Oh, come on. It'll be fine. Think to all the XP. Anyway, gotta go, I'll send you the coordinates where we're staying, over and out."

Sinon replaced the headset on the table. "Guess we gotta gotta yippee ki-yay our way out of this."

"Oooh, I thought we were talking about Home Alone."

Sinon swung her tomahawk fast with her enhanced speed but Kirito was faster with his experience as he parried the axehead with a flick of his wrist. The plasteel blade looked more at home in the vambrace than it did in its awkward broken blade shape.

He shot her a boyish grin. "See, told ya' it was neat."


This part of the Ark was once upon a time called the Conservatory, now renamed to the Bastille for more nefarious purposes.

Once, ages ago, it used to hold a variety of animals from earth to transport to Mars. One male and one female from some one thousand species, a pittance compared to the literal millions of species on Earth. The board that had to decide the fate of animals had ten years to choose from tens of thousands of experts. Many a scientist fell into a great sorrow knowing their beloved animals would not make the trip off world.

Now the Conservatory had become without purpose in the flight from Mars. When shipfall was made, any and all research was done in the animals' natural habitat, and the Conservatory was transformed into a great dunjon for the enemies of Marxism, mainly class traitors and Jannisaries. In one cell, two men were being taught a lesson in Socialism. The wardens and guards were recruited from the cruelest of men and women, victims of cruelty inflicted upon them by the vatborn.

This was neither the first nor the last time that Tadao the Tornado, Commissar of 2nd Company of the Zakon i Dolg, had been bound and tied to a metal chair.

It was a classic situation: dark and dank room, a single flickering led filament lightbulb above him, turned on and off with a pull chain (he was pretty sure no one made them anymore). The chair was a folding type, cheap and ubiquitous. The tiles under him were red, no amount of scrubbing could have gotten the stains out, a tray of rusty surgical tools, classic, and it smelled vaguely of piss.

It occurred to him that someone, somewhere, had to bring it up in a meeting, it had to be approved by the committee. Hundreds of man hours were invested into making the most accurate smell of piss. He could not even fathom the amount of work they had to do to get it just right. Truly, smelling human excrement was the logical end point of video game design.

Speaking of video game design -

Tadao saw the slap coming and didn't even bother to dodge it, not that he could thanks to the aforementioned being tied to a chair thing. It was a good slap, left an ear ringing, and enough to draw blood. -3HP, not bad.

His torturer was a burly Stormtrooper with hairy arms and a forehead that could stop a bullet; one of the many mutant types in the Wasteland. There were other Stormtroopers in the room too, no doubt seething with hatred against the slave-soldiers of the ruling class.

"You will tell me what I want, jannisary," he said with barely contained glee. "Or your friend will get his eyes scooped out."

"FRIEND COMMISSAR, DO NOT LET THE EVIL MAN SCOOP OUT THE WALL'S BEAUTIFUL EYES LIKE DELICIOUS ICE CREAM."

"Relax, Wall. You realise torture is actually forbidden in the game right?"

It had been a while since the commissar himself performed an interrogation. The early days of FullDive gaming had players try to kill NPCs, but SAO had made them invincible. When mods came to, the first thing they did was disable the essential status of NPCs, which led to some very … creative exercises. But for all the realisticness of FullDive gaming, all NPCs were essentially fancy puppets, and you can't actually, for example, harvest every single usable organ from an NPC.

The GGO devs, realising the depravity of the worst of humankind (gamers), ensured that no such thing happened and threatened suspensions and bans for such things. Many a player, not unrightfully, complained that a bunch of capitalists have no issue torturing the peasants, which was why it was only implied in the lore, in the background, instead of something allowed in normal gameplay. Aside from the odd roughing up and tar and feathers, there was no such thing as real torture.

Sure, the Vatborn may be brainwashed clone capitalists-fascist slave soldiers who would kill their own mother and set an orphanage on fire for 20 credits, but at least they weren't RimWorld players.

"BUT TADAO," pleaded the Wall. "THESE AREN'T PLAYERS, THEY'RE NPCS."

Well shit, that didn't occur to him. Thinking hard, had there been an instance of NPCs torturing players? NPCs could actually arrest and capture players, usually for ransom, but this … this had never happened before.

He was too deep in thought to notice the punch coming at him. It sent him sprawling to the ground, his head bumping on the tiles.

"PICK ON SOMEBODY YA' OWN SIZE, YA' DIRTY COMMIES!"

He was seeing white, hear them all laugh. Now, he understood the previous Warlords of Syria DLC kind of played it safe but this was pushing it. It wasn't pain, but it was … discomforting. It felt as if his face had gone asleep.

The torturer dragged him back up, the leg of the chair making an awful scraping sound. "Now, you'll tell me where your friends are or else you'll lose all that experience."

NPCS, in-lore, did know about the XP reset after death thing. They also were smart enough not to kill either of them. Tadao spat blood in his face. "Go ahead, kill me! I'll bring the intel right back to my superiors!"

Before the Stormtrooper could say more, the laughing in the room ceased, replaced by a pregnant silence. These grizzled Socialists, hard living mutants, veterans of the Long War, suddenly looked afraid and worried. They stood at rest, arms behind their back. The ones who had taken off their flak armour were quickly putting them back on. Even Tadao's torturer went from sadist to professional soldier in an instant.

Neither player heard them coming but it chilled Tadao to the bone all the same. First was the psycaster, floating three feet off the ground, a small misshapen thing swaddled in blue eltex robes. Her staff was taller than she was, the purple crystal at the top glowing with psychic power. The «The Mind Boggler» had been the most annoying enemy he had fought in the entire expansion. But it was nothing compared to what came next.

Then there was the other one, and its presence chilled Tadao to its very bone. How this hulking giant was able to move so quietly with all that golden armour, he did not know. He couldn't even hear the soft servos or the hum of the power pack. It didn't even look like it had a power pack under that crimson half-cape.

The top of its helm almost scratched the ceiling and it had to carry its spear at an awkward angle, head downwards and cradled in one arm. Tadao could have appreciated the character design had it not meant his probably death.

The Argyraspides knelt. "Comrade-Heiteros," said the torturer.

"Rise, sergeant," said the giant, his voice soft and regal. "What information have you gleaned from this class traitor?"

"N-none, comrade. The capitalists have trained their slaves well."

He nodded, an effort with all that metal on his head. "There are still survivors in the Ark, deep down underneath the ship. Hunt them down. Comrade-psycaster here shall perform interrogations. My golden comrades will continue to guard the Good Doctor as he finishes his project."

"Sir!" he snapped a salute and the Stormtroopers immediately trailed out of the room.

The golden giant deign not even spare Tadao or the Wall a look as he turned away. "Act haste. The project cannot be disturbed."

"All will be done, comrade," she said, voice tinged with excitement.

Now, alone with just the two of them, both players kept their mouths shut. It was well known throughout all human history and literature that wizards had no sense of right and wrong.

The hag shot both of them a toothless smile, placing her staff across her lap. "Which one of you shall I interrogate first? This one, with the terrible cowboy cosplay, not even a stetson on your hat. Tsk tsk, very un-howdy of you."

"Hey!"

The GI laughed. "SHE'S GOT YOU THERE, COMMISSAR."

"And this one, with the tacky grunt get-up. The 1940s want their olive wool back. I suppose you carry a 1911 too? John Browning was an overrated gun designer."

"THE WIZARD IS BETTER PUNCTURING THE WALL'S EARDRUMS THAN TO LET HIM SUFFER THIS BLASPHEMY AGAINST SAINT BROWNING."

With but a twitch of a finger, both men found themselves floating upside-down, weightless as bubbles.

"I am not so egotistical like my fellow psychics. Indeed, this torture business is too brutish, takes too long to get anything useful. Tsk tsk, away with these rusty tools." Said surgical tools were flung from the tray into a nearby bucket. "Better to lock you up for ransoms, thanks to the ruined families your army has exacted upon us."

Ah, so the game doesn't allow torture. That would be bad, and probably grounds for lawsuit if that happened.

There was a lawsuit not too long ago of someone drowning in SAO, which activated the player's PTSD. However, Argus' lawyers beat it back, and ever since that, too high of a heart rate would immediately eject a player from the game world. There were more label warnings and most FullDive games narrowly avoided the dreaded R18+ rating in Japan, and the Adult Only ratings overseas.

She gave both of them the sweetest old lady smile they had ever seen. "Instead, I am just going to read your minds."

Both players blinked. "What/WHAT?" they said.

The Wall was first, the psycaster's staff dropping and softly landing on the forehead. The Mind Boggler closed her eyes and raised her gnarled hand towards him as the gem grew purple.

"I will now begin the process of delving into your deepest darkest secrets."

Tadao had never seen the Wall so afraid. The game couldn't actually read their minds, could it?

"You are … in your early twenties. Twenty-two, to be exact."

"THE WALL HATES WIZARDS THE WALL HATES WIZARDS THE WALL HATES WIZARDS -"

"You were birthed from your vat … 798 days ago …"

"THAT'S WHEN THE WALL BOUGHT THE GAME!"

"And your favourite Pokemon is Totodile."

The Wall's frightful features turned into something akin to childlike wonder. "HOW DOES GRANNY KNOW?!"

"Wall, you idiot. She's reading your saved files. Wait, why do you even have Pokemon saves in your console anyway?" There was no way in hell a company like GameFreak or Nintendo would even try and bother to put a game on a rival studio's console. That, and well, have you seen Game Freak's games as of late?

"THE WALL WILL RATHER NOT SAY WHAT SORT OF FANGAMES HE HAS BEEN PLAYING AS OF LATE LEST HE INCUR THE WRATH OF LAWYERS."

"Fair." Tadao didn't care much for that, but he understood some folks liked to really tinker with their FullDive consoles.

"Hmm, what else?" She probed the Wall's head with staff and hand as a lady would through a handbag. "Aaah, unfortunate. This one only has an unnecessary amount of information regarding the American military in his head."

"Wall, you're not supposed to save PDFs in your console. Use your phone for crying out loud." It wasn't really not that an uncommon of a practice, players need to read and watch things in-game and there was an extension to use them on in-game PDAs.

"THE WALL DOES NOT SAVE PDF IN HIS GAME CONSOLE. THE WALL SAVES THEM IN EPUB FORMAT."

"Enough of this," said the Mind Boggler, flicking the Wall against his namesake as easily as one throws litter. "What secrets do you have in your head?"

The cowboy was of two minds of this: for one, he was extremely relieved the game did not actually read his mind, for his college age mind was filled with things not meant for mortal minds. On the other hand, he had purchased some very … questionable material.

The staff was placed upon his forehead. It was cold, deathly cold. The kind that would give a man instant hypothermia. He felt a light buzz, as if had just drank something far too strong for him.

"Hmm, I sense … a hierarchy. Troop numbers, weapon configs, and battle plans."

He gulped. He was 100% sure he didn't have any sort of documents saved on his console … did he?

Then just as quickly, he remembered he was on payroll duty and he had used a popular mod that installed Microsoft Excel onto his console. "Shit."

"Ah, most useful. Security would be interested in all of this. Ah, but what's this? Ohoho!"

Shitshitshitshitshit-

Like many young men, Tadao had struggled with his desires These weren't the vanilla hentai games you could get for a handful of Yen. No, these were specialised products for niche tastes. Things that he would not have revealed to his parents or even to his closest comrades in the Zakon i Dolg. Not even Batman could have beaten these secrets out of him.

All glee and happiness disappeared from granny's face. "Really?"

He was caught. "Really."

"Centaur Rodeo Palooza Simulator 4000?"

"I-I like horsies …"

"Mister Commissar, these are centaurs. With big breasts. And accurate anatomy."

He felt like he was punched in the gut. "All women are beautiful," he said, throat suddenly dry.

"By Marx, there's two terrabytes worth of content in there … also, who is Lyubimaya-chan?"

He needed to kill this woman right now. He didn't care if he died in the process. Fuck the XP, fuck the mission, fuck Zakon. No one must know.

He didn't know how accurate the movies were when it came to these sorts of things but he took the chance. The telekenetic grasp on his person was loose, more akin to zero-G than anything, so when Tadao rocked himself back, putting all his weight into it, and threw himself forward. His forehead batted away the staff and crashed into her nose with a sickening crunch.

The psycaster screeched in pain as she was flung backwards and Tadao crashed onto the floor, the impact shattering the chair.

He took his chance and pounced on the psycaster with the speed and grace of an overweight and sedated cat, immediately tripping over himself and hurling himself onto the Wall. "OOF! WHAT IS HAPPENING?!"

The old lady recovered. Hood down, her massive cranium pulsed with psychic might as she summoned her staff. Tadao's fingers brushed against the shaft and threw it off balance as it flew passed behind her and into the wall. Now mentally recovered, the commissar leapt (read: stumbled) to action.

His efforts were for naught as he was flung to the wall, bruising skull and spine. He was mere moments from his neck snapped had the Wall not regained second wind and tackled the old lady onto the floor.

It would have been a humorous image, to watch a bull of a man pummeling a little old lady with his brick sized fists had they not been in danger of death and losing their hard earned XP. The GI's rapid fisticuffs did nothing as he struck an invisible forcefield the psycaster had erected before her. For his trouble, the Wall found himself transforming into the Ceiling, hanging up there like a fan.

Tadao's hands scrambled for something solid. He found something and threw it at her, not knowing what it was. Her defenses must have been weakened from Wall's attack as the scalpel dug deeply into her arm. Her focus shattered, the Wall dropped from the ceiling, all 180 pounds of him onto the tiny, frail old woman with a crack and a splat, making Tadao wince.

The room was once again filled with silence as the Wall picked himself back up, brushing off the blood and bone off him. "THE WALL THINKS WE SHOULD ESCAPE."

"Agreed."

It paid to have a little Security (guilemets) on him as Tadao produced a lockpick from somewhere he'd rather not say and opened the door. Along the way, they freed many a survivor, remnants of the Warhawks here, a Mobile Guardsman there, and a handful of Zakon. They released some pent-up stress by stabbing a Stormtrooper one or two many times with whatever they got their hands on, looting what armour and weapon they had. Some of the freed prisoners even pried a pipe or three from the walls to use as improvised weapons. It was a mad plan, one made on the fly, and completely unlike the doctrine Zakon had instilled in every player.

Their numbers swelled to a dozen or so soldiers, beaten and battered, broken in body but not in spirit. The Wall raised a fist in the air. "ONE WAY OUT!"

"Quiet!" someone hissed.

"SORRY."

They overwhelmed the security booth, the guards clearly not expecting any sort of resistance. An unlucky Mobile Guardsman ate buckshot and her killer ate lead pipe, chair leg and boot sole in return. Bazalt the Boomer had survived the ordeal and used some sort of alchemical magic to create a fast burning agent to destroy the lock where their weapons and kit were stored.

The Wall had a mad grin on his face as he kissed his BAR. "HAH! NOW WE CAN TAKE ON THE WORLD!"

At that mention, three squads of Argyraspides could be seen outside the main doors of the Bastille.

"Lock the doors!" ordered Tadao.

"Can't! They're hacking the controls and we don't have any deckers!" said Bazalt.

"Any explosives in the armoury?!" asked the commissar, now cursing at his antiquated hardware. Sometimes he wished there was a repeater grenade launcher or something. He'd even take a ye olde gatling gun right about now.

"Just a bunch of flashbangs!" said some Warhawk.

"Shut up, Wall! Okay, okay. Everyone, take positions by the door, use any furniture for cover. Saito, pick up that rifle and shoot any -"

Before he could save the day with his tactical acumen, a hail of gunfire came from behind the Stormtroopers, dropping them instantly. As the prisoners watched the screens, there came the familiar face of the Virtues and Mason.

Tadao clasped arms with Wahyu and Mason "Came here just in time, eh?" said Mason.

"Glad you saved our asses, I'd think I'd rage quit if I lost all this XP."

"You were on the way, speaking of which, do you know where the Major is? Or even CHAD?" asked Wahyu.

"I have no goddamn idea."


Surprisingly enough, this was not the first nor the last time Major Chie Nikita fell for a trap door. She just didn't expect them to be big enough to swallow thirty something men.

She also didn't expect to be saved by a slime. It was usually the slime that killed her and the entire party. First time for everything she guessed.

"Hmm, fascinating," said Vladimir, brushing a hand against the dirty wall. Around his shoulders was Pinky-chan, dramatically reduced in-size from all the gunfire she ate, and very much avoiding the suspect water they were wading through. "The walls seem to be made of concrete instead of whatever metal the ship is made of. I believe we're underground."

"Yeah, no shit," said StonedScientist, leaning against his CAMEL thanks to a blown off leg, hastily bandaged. "What other great insights do you have?"

"Easy there, Stone. We're all in a bad mood, no need to be feisty," said Doc VicVek, one of the few of that group that survived with nary a scratch. "What do you mean by that, Vladimir-san? We've been underground for half the time we're in Corinth."

"No, we are technically closer to the surface. No Deep Dwellers will bother us here. If I had to hazard a guess, maybe ten to twelve feet below ground. If we can find our way, we could find ourselves back to friendly lines and recuperate -"

"You keep your mouth shut. Not one more word from you," Nikita snapped. "I have a job I've been avoiding, I haven't seen my husband for days, and I need to visit my in-laws later this week. There are no do-overs. We are finishing this stupid campaign today."

Vladimir nodded nervously. "Yes, sir."

So trudged they did, the water seeping into their boots as this sorry ragtag group of soldiers went on their merry way. Where they were going, no one really knew, and Nikita only had a vague reference of what to do. The whole ordeal had been mentally exhausting and she was only walking because it was the only thing to do.

Why was she here again? She could have gone out and had that date with her husband, visited her kids or caught up on her dozens of unread books. She was going to leave such a long review on this DLC when she was done, maybe ask that American journo for help. The March of the Ten Thousand this was not, more like the Pathetic Retreat of Thirty Something Idiots.

After what felt like an eternity of walking, they came to a junction. "Where to, sir?" asked Corporal Dave.

"Hold on, let me think." In actuality, thinking was the last thing she wanted to do. "Everyone, take five. Go take a piss or something."

Usually, Nikita would have kicked the ass of anyone who decided to logout in a dungeon but sometimes she let standards slip. She gestured to Corporal Dave to come over. "Who are our best scouts?"

"No idea."

"What do you mean, you don't know? Where's Skirmisher-chan?"

"Dead. Got speared in half, head to groin."

"That girl's always dying. Tadao's not around is he?"

"No sir, he's MIA."

"Gregory?"

"Ditto."

Nikita closed her eyes, exhaled through her nose and counted to ten. "Alright. You and I are going. Bring our men along too and Vlad."

"Uh, us? Can't we … you know …" He gestured his head at the group behind him. "Use the other guilds?"

"Dave, how many times do I have to tell you: Zakon -"

"Lead by example, Honour and Duty, yeah yeah." He remembered himself. "Sir."

"Go ask around if anyone can spare any ammo and supplies. I'll have a chat with the Warhawks and Mobile Guard."

Being the highest leveled player often conferred authority in GGO, but not always. However, she was the most experienced player in the group which gave her enough sway. The Warhawks elected Stone in charge of their group and the Mobile Guard one Corporal Qadriyah. Both of them will decide who would scout the other route and who would stay in reserve.

Nikita spun a bullet: she took left.

What semblance of discipline was on the verge of collapsing. Dave looked like he'd rather be anywhere else but here, someone had started to sing some anime OP, and the line had become long and fragmented. Not even she could have mustered the will and anger to get them back in line. If they wanted to be picked off by what horrors lurked in the dark, let them.

They finally reached a door: firetruck red, pristine and clean. The words: WARNING! DO NOT OPEN! written in English and Greek. That got everyone's attention. "Right. Dave, get this open."

"Uh, sir. We don't have any explosives."

Where was Bazalt when you needed him? "How about a blowtorch?"

"That'd be more of a hassle than carrying explosives."

"Ugh, do I have to do everything? Everyone, give me your grenades. I'll jury rig something."

"We ain't got no grenades, either."

"Oh for crying out -" She absolutely didn't want to use the few grenades she had for her grenade pistol unless she needed to.

Vladimir cleared his throat. "Allow me."

No matter how many times Nikita saw it, it still impressed her. The slime attaching itself to the metal, how it disintegrate before her eyes, hard steel dissolving into nothing. According to Vladimir, Zaskar one-upped the original slime mob from SAO to make it even more deadly and the corrosive effects more gnarly. Pinky-chan even ate the hinges as it grew from the size of a cat to the size of a small dog.

They entered the room, rifles raised, and heard something in the distance. They filed out into a large chamber. It was filled with rubble, large cylindrical things sticking out of the debris, and the ceiling above was strangely flat, as if recently covered and fixed with cement. What truly caught their eye however was the thing resting in the middle of the chamber.

It was massive, almost covering the entirety of the floor. There had to be at least half a dozen gator and rat heads, a hundred limbs from who knew how many corpses, green like putty. Its snoring was like the sound of a chopper engine.

A name hovered above the beast: «The Wizard's Pet». There in the corner was what remained of a ladder leading to who knew where.

"Huh," said Vladimir. "This looks familiar. Someone mentioned this before, can't remember who …"

Squinting harder, she recognised what the cylinders were. "Those are cloning vats. We can use them."

Nikita had never seen Dave go so white. "Major, you can't expect us to … kill that thing, can you? It's got 40,000 HP! And who knows where we can even set them up!"

"Lt. Makarov has a safe spot somewhere on the ship. If we can divert even some of the vats there, it'd be worth it." Now, how the hell they were going to dig all of that stuff out of the rubble, well they'll figure it out later.

Dave let out a sigh. "I'll get everyone in position."

Standard tactical doctrine: machine gunners the primary damage dealers, one of the Zakon even somehow detaching an M2 Browning from the Leonidas-2, riflemen lined up far away from each other. Nikita took the first shot with the grenade pistol and the 40mm soared through the air before it took off at least three limbs from the beast.

«The Wizard's Pet» swallowed the thing with an audible 'glunk', the explosion detonated inside it. It did a pitiful 2000 DMG. "Shit."

The M2 Browning was doing most of the heavy lifting, as were the few RPKs in the group. The «Enhanced Anti-Mutie Round» was the biggest advantage to the Clearers. It tore at the thing like explosive rounds on an unarmoured target, as was the tranq darts Vladimir was shooting from his Vintorez, some sort of posion making it slow and sluggish to react. She stopped firing with her grenade pistol and switched to her Krinkov.

The thing was missing a quarter of its health when the limbs started to convulsed and things came out of it. Barely finished humanoids escaped from its slimy prison and started to climb the rubble at the players with alarming speed.

"Machine gunners, don't stop! Zakon, with me! Pick them off!"

Nikita burned through two magazines before realising she was out. "Fix bayonets!"

In the seven hundred hours Nikita played the game, this was the second time she used her bayonet. The first was for shits and giggles, stabbing some strikers in the early days of the game. She didn't even carry a bayonet until she formed Zakon i Dolg with Zenkou and he mandated every trooper to carry one. She used her bayonet more of a standard duty utility knife and wire cutter than she had for actual combat. Despite her insistence that Zenkou drop the bayonet program, he overruled it.

"Chie-chan," he had said, and he was one of the few people aside from her husband who got away calling her that, "One day, maybe not tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow, but one day, you and the lads will be out of ammo, away from any supply lines, and you'll be thankful we trained bayonets."

"We will never need it," she retorted. "My men will never find ourselves in that sort of situation."

He grinned. "Wanna bet?"

She was going to make sure news of this won't come out and have everyone provide a vow of silence.

The claws of the misshapen man-thing scratched her left arm, shredding what was left of her vambrace. She yelled, more in anger than in pain, and swung the butt of her Krinkov so hard it bent and buried her bayonet in its belly before kicking it off.

The fighting was brutal as the slime spat out monster after monster, from vaguely shaped humans to misshapen gators, but the tide was turning. The «The Wizard's Pet» was dying and it was roaring in anger and pain. It had run out of misshapen creatures and its health bar was in the red.

Finally, the slime moved upwards, slowly, like the tide of a green ocean, up and up the rubble. "Sir, permission to sound a retreat!" said Corporal Dave.

"Negative! It's almost dead! Pour more ammo into it!"

"The machine guns run dry, sir! We need to retreat and call for reinforcements!"

"I'm all out of darts too!" yelled Vladimir.

"And proc its health regen? Absolutely not! Zakon, stand!" It was foolish pride, to not ask the other guilds for help. But she had something to prove to herself. If she had to charge the thing with nothing but her grit and blade, she would damn well do it.

Fortunately, she didn't need to.

A rush of wind moved past her and the figure jumped onto it with the madness of a berserker. The chainsword roared as it cut slime, limbs, head and snouts, a flashing blade from his wrist pulling double duty. Besides Nikita, the AMR boomed and thundered with lightning precision.

It was dying. They were winning.

No order given as she led by example. She found herself descending the rubble, rifle in hand, alongside the rest of Zakon. All ammo had run out save for the catwoman's Lynx. They clubbed, stabbed, punched, and screamed the slime to death. Finally, it gasped its last breath as the slime turned from semi-solid to liquid.

It took a bit for Nikita to collect herself, body shaking from the adrenaline. She jumped a bit as she felt a hand on her shoulder. "Yo, major! Looks like we came just in time!"

"Thanks for the assist." Damn, she really needed her rest. "Where did you come from? Didn't you pass the others?"

Kirito snapped his fingers. "Oh yeah! They went to the other side and found a bunch of loading equipment, forklifts and MULEs and stuff. Good thing too, makes it easier to haul these cloning vats."

She narrowed her eyes. "Wait, do you know about this place?"

"What, no, of course not. Anyway, get your men together and we'll find our way back to HQ."

Kirito walked away to speak to the sniper and she could just overhear them speak to each other. "I thought you killed the damn thing in the first place!"

"I totally did! This is clearly a new boss!"

"Hell, it is. I bought you pizza, Kaz. With the cheesy crust."

"Hey, I still helped with the dishes, didn't I?"

Nikita shook her head and smiled, the couple's arguing reminding herself of past days. She really needed to go on another date with her husband.


When Kirito and Sinon logged back in after a heartfelt apology and discussion about honesty in relationships (read: Sinon had browbeaten Kirito to do dishes for two weeks), the hydroponics lab had transformed into a functioning HQ.

It wasn't as good as the one at Under-Corinth or the parking lot, easily the smallest and most cramped HQ so far, and to call it an HQ was stretching the truth, but it was better than nothing. The three hundred some players had whittled down to ninety something, no armour, no vehicles, and a whole lot less ammo. Lieutenant Makarov was in charge, doing his best to fix the sand castle and ignoring the incoming tide.

If Kirito and Sinon had a credit every time they lost and moved a base thanks to an attack, they'd have three credits, which wasn't much but it was weird it happened thrice. Hopefully, this would be the last one.

"Do you want us to look for CHAD-san?" asked Sinon. There was a very noticeable lack of people in the labs.

Makarov shook his head. "Nah, it's fine. Knowing CHAD, he'll walk through the door with crates of ammo and a bunch of survivors."

It was at that moment CHAD walked through the door with crates of ammo and a bunch of survivors, most notable were members of FuurinKazan and Black Dog.

"I have returned," he stated as easily as one would state the weather.

A cheer went up before immediately dying in everyone's throat as the gasmasked man shushed them. "Where the hell were you?" asked Major Nikita.

"Oh, around. Had to kill a Hetairoi to get here."

Klein proudly showed off the spear, more like a log than a polearm. "It's not just a spear, it's also a gun!"

"Yo, Klein. Maybe we could -"

"I am not sharing this spear with you, Kirito."

"Aww."

CHAD raised a hand, silencing all questions. "We have the location of Doctor Aclepius."

CHAD and his Virtues set up a presentation and everyone was all ears. A complete holographic detail of the ship was shown, right down to where the hydroponics were as was a route to where the Doctor was: right atop the Ark's deck.

"We found the intel where during our flight from the Killbox. The Doctor is planning to launch something. What it is, we don't know." He pointed at the map with a laser. "Here, the remaining jet-dragons stay in waiting, as are a bunch of old but still functioning aircraft. We will need to destroy the opposition, including the remaining nine Heitairoi. It will not be an easy battle. In fact, it would be the hardest battle so far.

"As Black Dog and FuurinKazan have done battle against a Heitairoi, and survived, they will be appointed as Heitairoi-killers. The rest of you will have to face a force of at least three hundred Argyraspides. The best of the best. You'd think surviving the Killbox was hard? Think again.

"But in doing so, we will be the first players to finish the campaign. No one from any other of GGO's servers have done it. We've come this far, let's write our names down in history. If anyone wants to log out now, or do something easier, say it now and be not ashamed."

There were no quitters. "We move out in an hour."

Kirito looked at Sinon and squeezed her hand and smiled. "After this," he said, "I'm not going to touch this game for another six months."

"I think there's something else you can touch for six months," she said, voice deep and low, face red.

Kirito cocked his head. "Like what?"

Sinon's mouth gaped like a fish. "Oh, you're joking. I'm going to kill you when this is all over."

He scratched her ears. "Hopefully with those legs of yours, thunder thighs."

"You are so putting on cat ears when this is all over."


Been very busy as of late, and this is the first time since forever I finished a chapter without waiting a day or two before posting it. Pardon any and all rushed writing. See you next month.