The streams of their lights bounced across the tunnel as they approached.
"Okaaaay...it sounds like the RF reader is strongest here whenever we get close to the «Howling Tunnels»."
The silver-haired Kyouji glanced distractedly between the scanner to the walkway, then briefly to his companion following close behind. Another shrill beep sounded at him, and his eyes were back on the frequency scanner. His comment came off as a bit nervous, but it belied a certain eager energy that she could almost feel radiating off of him.
She followed her friend and classmate down the damp concrete path—though, the person who looked back at her was like a stranger in her eyes. Not just in his appearance either, though that had been no small surprise to Shino in itself. Silver hair, silver eyes. Just like a hero in a fantasy anime. Slim build, green fatigues, and a wrap-around armored vest that he moved around in as if he didn't recognize it was there.
There was very little trace of the uncertain and standoffish boy she'd met for tea earlier in the week, but rather, the look of a young man with a confident stride and a disarming smile—which belied his disarming lack of confidence in matters outside of this.
It was a bit...burdensome...but he meant well, Shino thought to herself. "An earnest sort" had been her total assessment of Kyouji-kun so far, if not more than a little awkward at times. But he was good company, regardless; certainly more likeable than the usual crowd she was surrounded by in that asylum-like school where they'd met each other.
'Although, I never would've imagined our meeting in the library would've eventually led to...whatever in the world this is.'
Shino glanced behind the way they came. She partially thumbed the hammer on her revolver, a Colt Python she got off of the second-hand market with her starting funds. It was heavy. That, too, had been one of her assessments so far: It was a cold, heavy thing, that pulled uncomfortably at the equipment belt wrapped tightly around her waist. It wasn't «that gun», and she was older now...but even a fake, virtual one still surprised Shino by the weight of a weapon meant only for...
Shino pressed her lips together. She still wasn't sure if the tingling she felt in her hand and in her heart was the usual fear, or a different sort of sensation she had yet put a name to.
She looked forward, her free hand still pointing the flashlight down the hallway, casting a long, ghostly shadow as the light swept across Kyouji's back. She couldn't have been that scared, she decided. If she was afraid, she thought, the light would be shivering with her hand, but it wasn't.
«Gun Gale Online» as the box cover had said. Or GGO for short as she'd heard other players refer to it. It was a so-called "virtual reality MMO" game in the cyberpunk/scifi genre. An unfriendly and dangerous world of guns where players carved out a bloody reputation for themselves, be it as mercenary «Contractors» taking up jobs around the city and the outlying wilderness, or as a top competitor in a special competition called—if she remembered what Kyouji said correctly—the «Bullet of Bullets».
Those were two things she normally never would've considered getting involved in: video games and firearms. Reading or seeing pictures was one matter, but this...virtual reality was something else entirely. Here they weren't just images or words; here, this was something she was experiencing, right there. A whirl of experiences and sights that were far too much for her to recall, a wild ride of new sensations that swept her along to the place she now found herself. A stinking sewer, deep beneath the world she could almost relate to. But down here, this was alien.
Shino read off the graffiti on the wall. That was another thing about this world the girl wasn't used to, neither in her hometown or when she started living in Tokyo—though now with everything she'd seen, that was almost quaint by comparison. There was an assortment of messages below the amber-lit glow of the service lights: some legible, most were not.
「Those things use the ceiling!」
「Fire scares them! Rest easy, Stelios.」
「If you want to piss off the Nest Queen, be my guest. We're not retrieving bodies anymore.」
「Turn around! Your life isn't worth whatever they offered!」
「Contractors—remind yourselves that overconfidence is a slow killer.」
"And...are you sure it's fine to do things out of order? With only two of us?"
"Aha. Always the model student, aren't we, Sinon-san?" Kyouji said, lightly. Partly to ease his friend's obvious nerves with idle conversation, partly to fill the still air with noise.
Shino winced slightly at that...and narrowed her eyes in scrutiny.
While Shino was aware that Kyouji-san meant well by it, she couldn't help but entertain that voice of lingering doubt, always at the back of her mind. She tugged at and buried her mouth into the collar of her light-gray beginner jacket to hide her expression, and away from the attention she was receiving.
The memory of the snide comments her peers would make of her loomed large in Shino's mind. An ordinary-looking, friendless, glasses-wearing girl seemed easy prey, after all, for bored school students.
'Even those I thought I could get along with. Especially after...'
Albeit—in the case of Endou and the others...Shino would be the first to admit to a certain desperation and loneliness guiding her actions. Despite her otherwise marked disinterest in what her former friends spent their time on.
'But...can I say I'm not as desperate now, as I was back then?'
Shino buried her face deeper into her collar, not wanting to follow that train of thought to the end.
The hand on her revolver found the sleeve of her other arm, and tugged at the fabric before she forced the next words out in defiance of the fear she found weighing at the back of her throat.
"...It's more that I'm leery of wasting my time on a task I don't have the ability to complete..." Shino said softly as she shook her head, being very careful in her word selection.
Although she didn't have much "game sense," it was not lost on her how abnormal the previous chain of events were. Skipping several marked [Beginner] quests, and then partying up to tackle an area several levels above her own with little more than the most basic of equipment she could barely afford?
"...It feels like I'm skipping the Prologue straight to the middle, as if I can't be bothered to appreciate the rest of the book," she said, trying to put the unfamiliar environment in words she could understand. Then, she looked to the side. "...And my grades are normal, Kyouji-san. It's just that...some people in my homeroom don't take things as seriously. So I look more dependable in comparison."
"Pffft!"
Kyouji chuckled unexpectedly.
Shino turned her eyes forward, her expression set in a frown. "What?"
"Oh! ...Sorry, Sinon-san. I just wasn't expecting you to answer like that. Normally you'd say something short like 'Ah, I guess so.' or 'Sure, that works,' and brush the whole thing off. It's like I'm seeing another side of you today."
"...It's just your imagination." Shino muttered in a half-voice. Her voice was as calm and subdued as usual, but in contrast her manner was that slightest bit less tense. Embarrassed...but, less tense.
Kyouji coughed and scratched his cheek. "And, uh, it's 'Spiegel' here, Sinon-san. Not Kyouji. We shouldn't be using our real names online."
"..."
Sinon buried her face deeper into her collar in embarrassment at the memory of how she came up with her username.
'...Maybe I should've gone ahead and scrap the account for a new one, after all?'
"Let's just get back on topic," Sinon said to end the conversation immediately, mustering up a quick flash of irritability to get the words out. "So this quest is a good starting point for sniping?"
Noticing the sudden shift in Sinon's mood, Spiegel stopped his laughter and crossed his arms respectfully. "Ke-hum! Err, yes, this mission has a pretty decent payout for how early it's available. I assure you, you aren't missing out on much with the beginner mission line. There's not much related to the main story lore of GGO in those missions and the rewards are lackluster, it's mostly just an angry blonde woman yelling at you for having bad aim or doing busy work around the city."
"...Okay...Different question, Spiegel-san: wandering around this cramped maze with a pistol I haven't used yet, is going to help me with becoming a long-range sniper later?"
"I, err..." Words suddenly failing him, Spiegel smiled politely and shrugged in response.
A reply as dull as could be, Sinon thought. But maybe that's why she enjoyed his company. He wasn't someone who shared her interests, but at least he seemed earnest and honest enough. After being tricked all the times before, having someone she could read was a welcome change.
—The silence that fell between the two was interrupted by a low clang deeper within the tunnel. That brought them both back to the present, a hazardous sewer that was infested by monstrous aberrations that some twisted soul created as an affront to God. Or horrid mutations of what used to be the local wildlife.
Spiegel's short silver ponytail—another sight Sinon still wasn't used to—whipped around quickly as he unslung the submachine gun from his shoulder. The RF scanner beeped at him, the signal holding steady...then inexplicably, a half-second faster than before.
"That's not good..." He murmured to himself.
Sinon felt a cold clamminess spreading from her heart down to her hand...no, that wasn't her imagination. She gripped her hand firmly this time; her fingers tensed around the cold wooden grip of her revolver.
Her lips set themselves in a tight frown, eyes narrowed on the mouth of the entrance.
Sinon knew she was being unfair to Spiegel-san. She remembered now, why they were here. A quick way to get her past early levels by completing quests he could escort her through, although he was still new himself and his level barely matched the things they were fighting—in his words. She knew it was a game, she reminded herself again, so why did she feel her fear creeping up her throat and her palms sweat as her hand tensed around the handgun? That, is what astounded her. Rather than heart stopping fear, she was actually relying on the thing strapped to her waist to safeguard her virtual life. After all—pain was pain. Regardless of imagined or virtual and she didn't want to imagine what terrible fate could befall her in a place she was given system warnings to not enter.
'Of all the things in this world,' Sinon thought to herself, her thumb finding and resting itself again on the back of the revolver hammer. 'Of all the things...cold comfort that this is."
Sinon's blue eyes followed the curve that Spiegel's hair drew in the air—waiting, for a moment. With a pale hand she reached up and touched the ends of her own hair, and twirled the end of her bangs around her fingertips.
'...It's blue, too.' It was a strange notion: in VR you could be any kind of person you wanted to be, Spiegel had told her. Now, not only was she in a predicament she'd only read about characters encountering in books, she looked the part as well.
'...At least it's a pretty color.'
She loosened her grip and let the hair unwind itself back into place.
Her left finger wrapping around the flashlight's tailcap, Sinon clenched her hand tight around it and faced forward. At the same time, she drew her revolver. She rested her finger on the side of the frame instead of on the trigger, just like she'd been taught.
"...Spiegel-san," Sinon began, taking a heavy, squelching step forward. Spiegel turned to the side to glance at her. "...When I said I wanted to be a sniper...that I wanted to be able to fi-...that I wanted to be able to kill people, from as far away as possible...you mentioned something about them being different from other player builds. What did you mean by that?"
Spiegel furrowed his eyes as if to ask her what she was talking about. But, when she saw a slight widening to his eyes, she knew what it meant. "Aha...well. Snipers are strong, but they don't have a lot of firepower at close range compared to other player builds. AGI players like me can overwhelm them pretty fast, for example, if we have enough space to close in. So one of the most important things for snipers to learn, is how to maneuver and choose their fights."
Spiegel flashed his light down the tunnel. "Tunnels like these are usually pretty bad for snipers if you think about it." He gestured his light back and forth along the floor in a straight line. "There's very little room to maneuver compared to open fields, and only one direction you can go: forward or backward. Not to mention, there's all kinds of hazards that can give your position away, like the sewer sludge we've been stepping in. In theory, these corridors are long and clear enough that you could snipe someone on the other end, but that goes both ways and it doesn't really do you any good if you have no cover to hide behind, right?
"But! That's only if you move the way most players are expected to."
With that, he tilted his light to the ceiling. She could see there was a tightly packed network of pipes running along the top, ferrying whatever gas or liquid through the sewage system...and, just enough space for someone small to climb up and squeeze themselves in lying down. As his light swept further along the top, she realized that there was quite a long distance someone could crawl along the platform the tangle of pipes formed, all without ever needing to touch the ground.
"And that," Spiegel continued, "is one of the key skills of being a sniper. Avoiding fights by being in places you're not expected to be. From up there, you can travel for a very long distance and avoid a lot of hazards at the ground level, including monsters. And since it's not an obvious hiding place and in a dark environment, nobody is ever going to notice you're up there until you're ready for a shot. Neat, right?"
Sinon nodded as she followed along. "And if we do get spotted?"
"Er...better we don't really. So, try to keep low and quiet. All we have to do, is find the corpse of the NPC down here and retrieve the tablet for the mission off of him...is what I'd normally say, but the way the scanner was beeping earlier makes me think whatever ate him probably also ate the tablet. So we're going to have a live practice on how to set up an ambush."
Sinon felt a slight tug at the corner of her mouth as she saw her friend regain a little bit of his confidence. She quickly corrected her mistake by burying her face in her collar once more, a slightly red flush coloring her normally pallid complexion.
"And...are you sure you're fine with this being your first mission, Sinon-san? I know I suggested it first, but..."
—We could always go the safe route.
For the first time that day, Sinon's vibrant blue eyes met Spiegel's silver head-on. A chilling gaze cast through him.
"Monsters can be killed, Spiegel-san. And there are more terrifying things to me than monsters in the dark."
'Nothing more terrifying,' Sinon thought to herself. She racked the hammer all the way to the rear, the strange familiarity stirring that long-buried memory which hung at the back of her mind, 'than what I experienced that day.'
—
It was dark. The sort of total blackness that in the open, stale air of the tunnels, made one imagine that the distant sounds of those long corridors were closer than they seemed.
Plip. Plop.
Water dripped from the ceiling like rain. Fetid creeks of runoff and sewage babbled calmly like they were streams in Autumn.
Pipes groaned. Unknown beasts that inhabited these sewers answered in reply. Claws clicked and skittered across the hard floor, walls, even the ceiling—but mostly the floor.
'I thought this shitty game was an FPS, not a Horror genre.'
Plip... Plip...
Droplets splashed against the still-warm barrel of Argo's shotgun.
Argo and Sinon were as still as statues, kneeling. Both had their large caliber firearms trained down the tunnel, the main avenue of approach if they were to be attacked. It was a good position; the juncture of an L-shaped corridor where a smaller tunnel met into the larger main one, and with a minimum amount of cover to hide behind.
Neither had their weapon-mounted lights on. Argo's vision was dyed a fuzzy green color as she stared through her single-tube, Gen 2 night vision goggle. Sinon's vision was an even more mottled—yet still serviceable—gray color, relying mainly on her «Cat's Eye» passive skill.
"...I don' think they're followin' us." Argo commented. "Else we would'a heard splashes or footfalls already."
"...Yeah." Sinon agreed, not seeing any movement either.
Still, neither of them adjusted position.
"I'm more worried about what I don't hear," Sinon said. "I'm not sure what kind of monsters we might've aggro'd with those muzzle reports. There could be things stalking us from the walls and ceiling right now. At least with good audio contact, we'd have an idea what we're dealing with."
One of the unique factors that GGO boasted as a hardcore open-world FPS: a lot of the "ambient" audio they were hearing—wasn't. Unlike other games, if they heard a sound like distant gunfire or a monster's growling, something in the world really was causing that noise. They were even free to investigate the source, too—at their own peril of course.
Hence, the term «audio contact». For potential threats they could hear, but haven't seen yet.
"...Ya have a point." Argo's hood shifted slightly as she nodded her head in agreement. It only occurred to Sinon, then, that she still hadn't seen what Argo looked like.
"..."
Another beat. Time passed slowly between them.
Notably, Sinon still had her sightless Hecate aimed straight down the tunnel, bracing the forend with her elbow against her knee. She hadn't taken the chance to switch to a backup, or to repack ammo into her spent magazines; the atmosphere was simply too tense for it.
Every now and then Sinon's blue eyes would glance away from her point of aim towards Argo's exposed backside.
Even with being in the same squad and the negotiation earlier, there was still an air of mutual distrust between the strangers. The moreso now that the circumstances of their temporary alliance was gone. Although there were reputational penalties in the game's «System» from team-killing, which carried the drawback of finding it much harder to form parties in a game where teamwork was a major component—Gun Gale Online was not so kind as to disable friendly fire.
One of the other unique quirks to GGO from other MMOs...as well as the other primary reason for the tension, the moreso in a game whose players had a reputation for "enthusiastically" prioritizing loot drops. Far from the lights and noise of the cramped shanty town, a different kind of discomfort enveloped them in the dark of the adjacent tunnel system.
Argo nervously tapped the side of the shotgun's receiver with her trigger finger.
It was not lost on Argo, either, about where Sinon had positioned herself—directly behind her, around the corner of an adjacent side tunnel for cover. With enough clearance to swing the muzzle onto the spy and fire if Sinon needed to. Or if she wanted to.
A shotgunner and a sniper in close proximity: Argo was fully aware that the mere fact she was armed with a shotgun and was obviously specialized for that kind of close-range fight was in itself a mutual threat to Sinon, too.
'She's a stranger. She should have no reservations against shooting me dead. A scout, no, a sniper, and I'm a shotgunner within range. It would be cleaner to just kill her and move on. But...'
Argo contemplated, but then swiftly dismissed the idea.
First of all, it didn't sit right with her to shoot Sinon without provocation. She might be a cheat and a jerk, but if there was one thing the former info broker took very seriously it was honoring her deals. Just as well that Sinon also hadn't been overtly hostile.
Suspicious, yes... but that attitude was to be expected in this setting. And the blue-haired girl otherwise didn't seem interested in shooting her.
'And honestly, after what happened earlier today, it would kind of prick my conscience to shoot someone else who's helped me. Even if our meeting was...kind of rough.'
And second of all: Argo wasn't confident about fighting Sinon in any case. The blue girl may be a sniper build, but Sinon was also obviously a very high-tier shooter. Her armor was high quality enough that she hadn't taken as much damage as Argo expected from a fight like that, and she had fought exosuits off while under-gunned. She wasn't sure they wouldn't exchange a mutual kill here if it came to it.
'Not to mention, both of us are low on ammo, and the girl still has my knives. I'm not interested in doing an SAO style solo dungeon crawl if I don't have to.'
—Argo breathed hard through her nose in thought. 'Not if I can have backup doing it.' But she wasn't so brash as to explicitly address this situation, either.
"..."
Argo started to shift her posture. She heard the slight rattle of metal behind her in response.
"...Slugs're gonna be overkill here for PvE." Argo explained, still facing forward.
She planted the stock of her Benelli M4 against the ground with the muzzle up. She reached her fingers in through the loading gate at the bottom and pressed on the shell-stop lever; the squeaking sound of the magazine spring decompressing echoed through the tunnel as Argo slowly unloaded the slugs from her shotgun and placed them into a pocket, or slipped them into the shell holders mounted on the gun. One shell at a time.
Sinon observed this quietly for a moment, still a bit wary. Finally, she lowered and then dismissed her Hecate rifle, which disappeared in a flash of blue. She unholstered her sidearms and placed them side-by-side in front of her.
The Glock she kept loaded, but the MP7 she ejected the empty magazine from. All of her full-sized 40-round magazines had been expended.
'I still have a handful of 20-round flush-fits left... No, I'd be better off consolidating those into the full-sized 40-rounders after I empty the ammo boxes in my inventory. The MP7 is the primary now, not the Hecate.'
Wordlessly the two girls rearmed their weapon systems. The only sounds were the dripping of water; the soft click of brass as Sinon repacked ammo into her large magazines. The soft creaking of a spring as Argo fed shells into the semi-auto.
Ker-chak!
Sinon racked the charging handle on her MP7. She looked up and saw Argo's pale gold eyes patiently staring at her from under the hood, the mono-goggle temporarily flipped out of the way to preserve battery. Even in Sinon's altered vision, the cloaked girl's eyes seemed to glimmer slightly with an unknown light.
"Not gonna use medical?"
Sinon shook her head lightly. "Don't need it," she said in her usual unaffected tone.
Argo shrugged as if it didn't matter to her. "Suit yerself," and depressed the bolt-release tab on her shotgun. She got up to a standing position.
"Alright, blue girl. Ya ready for more of the underground tour experience?" She snapped the mono-goggle back down, and a green halo of light cast itself over her eye.
"You're oddly careless about trusting a stranger," Sinon observed, but standing up to follow nonetheless. "I could just shoot you in the back for all you know."
Argo pursed her lips in a strange expression, but quickly turned the corners of her lips upward into a smile.
"What's the benefit of partyin' up? Teamwork, aint't it?" She turned. "Ya've had every opportunity to blow a fifty-cal hole through my back. Seein' how ya haven't turned my avatar into paste yet, I figure yer safe enough to be 'round."
『[System Window]
[Successfully managed to finish the exclusive sub-mission for the ~Antagonist of the Underworld~ mission line!]
[Rather than hold your ground, you succeeded in escaping the Enforcer kill team sent by one of Glocken's major criminal factions. Although not a decisive victory, you still prevented them from disrupting you and your Company's activities.]
[Severe casualties inflicted! Despite being outnumbered and undergunned, you still managed to eliminate a substantial number of the Black Tower Organization's elite units.
[Adjusting rewards...]
[Players involved: Argo (PMC: WolfHounds), Sinon (unaffiliated)]
[Warning! Due to the special nature of the mission and the «no faction» status of one or more contributing players, a different reward will be calculated for these players at a later time.
[Rewards:
PMC members - All «Black Tower» reinforcement timers disabled for related missions during the remainder of the «Old City Riots» local event!
Received – 'Battlefield Pickups' loot from the previous fight! (See «System Log» for full list of items)
Received – EXP!
Received –...』
Argo glanced at the gray screen in her vision, confirming the details. Then, having read what she needed, swiped it away in an obvious motion.
"It's been a while since we escaped our pursuers. And 'sides—as a sniper, do ya really want ta do an urban exploration without a partner, 'specially if they're a CQB expert as generous an' charmin' as myself?"
Sinon stared at the girl for a moment, reading little from her hooded expression other than the strange glint in her eyes. And that annoying smirk.
Then she sighed, and followed suit. Shouldering the MP7.
"You close-range types... Always deciding things on your own..." She muttered ambiguously.
"Great!" Argo said, ignoring that remark. "I'll be takin' point. Back me up, won'tcha?"
Their boots echoed emptily in the tunnel. Steady, purposeful thumps as they scanned for targets; quite unlike the frantic sprint from earlier.
To be honest, seeing the familiar sight of a Metamaterial Cloak again made Sinon just the tiniest bit antsy. Nonetheless she had to admit Argo made a good point.
Belatedly, she realized she'd been swept up into Argo's pace. They hadn't agreed or plotted a route; the shotgunner just started walking in a direction and Sinon naturally followed behind.
"...Do you even know where you're going?"
"Vaguely."
"..."
"Ah...right, sorry. Where ya headed? Might be goin' the same way."
"...Zulu Compound." Sinon said, hesitant at first, but then giving up on discretion. "Do you know the location?"
A low chuckle. "In a way, yea. We'll need ta take a detour real close to the «Howling Tunnels», but I got a route in mind."
"The «Howling Tunnels»...huh." Sinon repeated. She frowned at the the name, and brought her map up.
Much of it was darkened, reflecting that she hadn't explored much of the area. It was expected; Sinon rarely took indoor-type missions unless she had to, preferring the longer ranges of fields or the open attack angles of cities. The same reason she avoided fighting in Aincrad's cramped floor dungeons unless her friends invited her.
She could trace the exact route she and Argo had taken by following the zig-zag line of highlighted corridors on the map... Up until one bright, light blue maze of corridors on the map.
Sinon looked off to the right as they passed a familiar looking hallway. An orange service light gave enough illumination between flickers to read the graffitied warnings on the wall.
'—Aha. Always the model student, aren't we, Sinon-san...'
". . ."
Sinon's ice-blue eyes sank, and turned down to the floor. Her hand unconsciously touched the spot on her belt where her revolver used to be, as old memories played themselves back in her mind.
—Thwump!
The sewer shuddered from an explosion above-ground. Sinon's vision snapped up to watch the dust and droplets floating down from the ceiling, and then away.
'...It's not the time for this.'
She saw Argo had dropped into a crouch a short distance away. She moved quickly to accompany her.
"Sounds like someone up there's havin' fun, don't it." The girl commented in her familiar Osaka twang as soon as she saw Sinon's dot on the mini-map catch up to her. "Ya got anythin' down that tunnel? You were starin' for a bit."
"Just a dead end." Sinon said, shortly.
"That so?"
"It is. Unless you want to farm spider carapace, venom glands, and reptile meat."
"—Hell no. I'm feelin' allergic to spiders today." Sinon watched the back of the cloak's hood shake quickly side to side.
They got up and started moving again at a slightly heightened pace.
Although...
'...Is there a polite way for me to say 'Please shut up' without sounding rude?'
Unfortunately for Sinon—Argo's mouth was also moving, too.
"Been meanin' to ask for a while. But what brings a sniper like ya down in the underground? Normally someone of yer build would want ta travel where there's, ya know, space to shoot at people further than 'I can hear 'em breathin' range."
Sinon would've been absolutely fine with them saying nothing to each other and have the whole trip pass in silence. Chatterboxes historically had very poor compatibility with someone like her, a major fact that her last squad highlighted to her.
But Sinon was also well aware that neither of them had come here to socialize and make friends. 'Maybe I should be glad that she doesn't care enough to ask why I stopped earlier. If it's just small talk...it's annoying, but I can deal with it.' Calming her emotions, and trying not to breathe in a sigh because of the sewer, Sinon responded.
"...You're right. I would prefer to be up stalking through that urban forest, rather than wandering around in an impromptu dungeon dive without the gear I'd normally bring for a labyrinth this size. Especially not without a respirator." The scarf-wrapped sniper finished, tugging at the fabric on the lower half of her face for emphasis.
Argo chuckled to herself as a thought suddenly crossed her mind. "Oohoo~. Then aren't ya lucky ya got an Argonaut taggin' along? Underground locations like these labyrinths are full of dirty, close-range types of fights with monsters."
Sinon blew hard out her nose. "Hm! Well, Argo-san, with a legacy like that I'll leave any lizards and winged monsters to your care. Just warn me if you spot a minotaur rounding the corner. It wouldn't be my first time today murdering one at close range."
"Nihihihi!" Argo laughed, much more amused at Sinon's literary response than she should've been. She had been expecting a reply, certainly, but she hadn't been expecting one like that.
"Nihi! You are a bold one, aren't ya Sinon-san?"
Must've been a bookworm in her other life. A college student, perhaps?
"Well, I haven' seen many creatures remain much of a threat after gettin' hit by more than a handful of buckshot rounds. Unless they were a boss... mind if I defer the rest of the damage to ya?"
"If we find anything down here that can tank a tube of 12 gauge, I'm sure it's invincible." Sinon said, again in her usual unaffected tone. "...But I'll give it a shot."
With that mature, cool air about her, she must've been. There were vanishingly few people, most from SAO, who came to mind that were quick enough to throw Argo off-guard like that. Least of all in the kind of audience GGO catered to.
"Then, I can't complain~. We gotta stick ta what we're good at, eh?"
—Thwump!
A troubled flash of emotion flashed across Sinon's face under her muffler as the ceiling shook again; melancholy, as she glanced at the tunnel behind, wondering if those strikes were enough to attract anything familiar to her.
Argo continued with her own response. "Used ta do this kinda work a lot too, ya know. Damn good at it, but frankly, I'm sick of these sorta places."
Argo leaned and pie-d around the corner on the right to clear it as they approached. She even switched her grip to fire left-handed to minimize exposure. She flashed her weapon light for a few seconds to scan; when nothing opened fire or growled at her, she moved on.
"But, I always seem ta keep puttin' myself in situations tha' force me back." She finished.
Ahead, they saw the outline of a ladder built into the wall, leading upward: ground-level sewer access.
Argo looked at the ladder and the dimly illuminated manhole cover above, considering her options for a moment.
Argo slung her shotgun across her back and planted a boot on the lower-most rung.
Tink.
"Gonna have a look 'round. See if there's a route topside."
Tink.
THWUMP BOOM THWUMP THWUMP THWUMP—
Just as she finished the thought, the tunnel shook terribly from a series of large, muffled explosions aboveground.
Argo instantly hopped off the ladder with a "No, nevermind," and unslung her shotgun.
"Sounds like yer 'friends' are still havin' quite the party up there," Argo quipped to Sinon, who remained silent in response.
In truth, Argo knew what that sound was. That was the sound of an Mi-24 gunship plastering some poor unfortunate souls with its rocket pods in a strafing run.
She knew, because she was the one who ordered them down here. If she checked her «area map» against the «world map», she had little doubt she'd find herself directly under their AO near Glass Bank.
'Getting PK-d by my own kids aside, I don't need to make this journey more complicated than it needs to be for a temporary party. I don't need to pop us into that cauldron, and I sure as hell don't want the sniper girl asking unnecessary questions.'
Sinon, as was her habit, continued to observe silently.
She didn't know about corporate warfare, the Glocken criminal underworld; why there was a player guild waging war with seemingly half an entire city district, nor the purpose for why the girl, Argo, was conducting an assassination.
None of these things had anything to do with Sinon either, beyond being the flavored backdrop for her. And frankly, she would prefer a simple explanation, or at least one that didn't require a tech hobbyist's expertise.
But, she still couldn't shake the feeling that whatever was happening here, was giving her the same strange atmosphere the «Caliber» quest had. Like there was a great force of nature that dictated that this conflagration should happen even if she knew it was coming ahead of time.
A warm surge of anxiety tugged at Sinon's mind.
She briefly watched the ceiling, noticing how bright the light looked to her, leaking through the holes and the cracks in the ceiling above.
[Passive Skill «Cat's Eye»: Status "OFF"]
Sinon switched on the white light on her MP7 to scan forward.
Argo snapped around to Sinon with a questioning look. In the spill of the light, Sinon could see stray locks of dirty blonde hair peeking around the edges of the hood, framing the girl's youthful face.
"Any creature living underground here is going to detect us by noise long before the lights will be an issue," Sinon explained, "They rely on their other senses more than sight."
Argo silently ascented to that, shrugging visibly before moving on.
Night-vision was a useful tool; there was no substitute for being able to see in the dark when the enemy couldn't. However, the drawback was that the image quality was objectively inferior to regular vision.
Grainy image, no depth perception, limited visual range; not to mention it was hell finding aiming accessories that were night-vision compatible, especially when the tube floating in front of her face seemed intent on bumping itself into everything.
Argo flipped her goggle out of the way and flipped on her weapon light via the pressure-activated switch. Nevertheless, the two practiced light discipline. Both on account of the battery drain and that they didn't know when they might encounter a two-legged predator, rather than the usual four-legged variety.
"...Argo-san."
"Hmmn~?" Argo hummed curiously in way of a response.
"You...are a girl, right?"
"?" Argo furrowed her brow. "Yes? Why wouldn' I be?"
"...Nevermind. Not important." Sinon briefly shut her eyes in an expression of relief. "Just making sure."
"? Err...sure thing, blue girl."
The only cost, sadly, was Argo's confusion at the remark.
[—]
Glossary:
None (TBD)
A/N:
Merry Christmas!
Been a while, hasn't it? Apologies, I didn't have much free time to sit down and write until very recently, around November.
Had a bit of fun writing this. The intro with Spiegel and Sinon as a beginner, in particular, was an interesting case. I showed the initial draft to a couple of my old friends, and they both ended up writing their own versions of the scene based on the central concept. I ended up going back in to incorporate bits and pieces of what they both wrote into the final draft, since they each ended up covering angles of Spiegel's and Sinon's characters that I hadn't considered.
I might have to upload their versions later as an "intermission," since they were nice to read. Festus and Ryu both said that they think their writing skills are a bit rough after so long not doing fanfiction, but I still think they're worth a read.
Writing these dialogue exchanges between Argo and Sinon are also fun. Though, I did have a few spots where I had trouble making some exchanges sound natural.
Also doing some preliminary research into the "GGO: Alternative" spinoff, after a reader brought it to my attention. I still lack knowledge unfortunately, but I already have some ideas. I may need to retroactively add scenes involving the characters from the Alternative cast after I am done gathering information; I will inform you all via an Author's Note if that ends up happening.
—Anyway. I'm working on a few more outlines. I'm still trying to find a balance with chapter length, though. Most of these chapters keep hitting 5-6k word counts, which is almost double what I initially intended for, but have thus far been unavoidable because of how the scenes interact with each other. I think this level of content per chapter is actually a good amount, but it also affects my writing rate since I always have to fully complete two scenes each chapter. In any case, hopefully I can get things finished off soon so I can publish more, at least by January is the goal.
Cheers!
