2712/GGO: The Bullet of Bullets

GGO: The Bullet of Bullets
Date of Scene:	01 August 2015
Location:	Alfheim Online <ALO>
Synopsis:	The main event.
Cast of Characters:	Kirito, Tomoe, 9, Arthur Lowell, Staren, 215, Theo Morrison, 395, Karian Icefang, 631, 649, 707

---

Kirito has posed:
    WELCOME TO THE 3RD BULLET OF BULLETS!

    SBC Glocken is abuzz with activity. Neon lights flashing, spotlights illuminating the heavens, and every pub, cafe, and bar in-game packed to the brim with fans! Every in-game monitor shows the proceedings. Right now? That's a cute catgirl in yellow against a background that shows off a sky-view of the enormous arena in which the Bullet of Bullets takes place.

    "Aaaaaaaare you all ready? Because the time we've all been waiting for is finally here! The final round! For those of you who slept in and didn't read the emails - lazy lazies - all the finalists will be transferred to the final battlefield, RAGNAROK ISLAND, which is 10 kilometers in diameter. All participants will be separated by at least 1 kilometer."

    The background changes to show a top-down view. The west is a lonely prairie, the east has rural housing. In the southwest, a heavy forest. A river splits it off from the southern mountainous area. The north is a vast desert, and in the center... an enormous ruined city, filled with skyscrapers and a colosseum-like structure in the center.

    "Participants are equipped with a Satellite Scan Terminal. Every 15 minutes, a spy sattellite reveals everyone's locations. The only rules are the ones you can enforce at the end of a gun! The last one standing wins. And now... let's hear it! Starting in T-minus 10! 9! 8! 7..."

    The countdown's echoed ALl through SBC Glocken with fans shouting it down, thumping their feet, and pumping their arms.

    All of the participants are transported before the countdown's over with though.

    Then... everyone comes to.

Sinon (649) has posed:
    Prone between a rock and some shrubs, Sinon is here, doing what she does best:

    Player killing and feeding her unstable, fucked-up emotions.

    After meeting with Kirito, she has become even more driven to repress Asada Shino, convinced that defeating the dead man 'Death Gun' will be what she needs to finally become the strong person 'Sinon'.

    And a very small part of her is considering her own death.

    A greater part of her is considering the death of <<Shisigane>>, a man with a boar-like mask and optical camo who she has just killed in one shot with her anti-material tank-busting sniper rifle, the <<PGM Ultima Ration Hecate II>>.

    She leaves the falling trees and fire behind from where she detonated the plasma grenades on his hip, quickly making her way away from the action.

As the satellite scan data comes through to her, she sees the names of several of the Gatecrashers, the people she has learned are a group of people from various different parallel worlds, here to fight Death Gun. And...

    "...If he enters my range, I should just..."

Eliminate him. Aim, fire, and end his life immediately without any feelings.

    Kill Kirito first, before Death Gun does.

Iria (215) has posed:
    Iria's been practicing when she can. Being a bounty hunter takes time out of things. Namely since she's going to be taking part in the WMAT as well as hunting bounties. But she's found time to practice in here.

    Although she may have become a bit too engaged in her practice. When she fights against others, she seems a bit more aggressive than usual. Could it be she's getting too into this, or is there something else on her mind?

    Crouched behind a large rock, Iria scowls as she runs through her mental blueprints and remembers what she's here for. "Kill or be killed... except this time it ain't some huge alien that's looking to kick my ass!" She grits her teeth.

Karian Icefang has posed:
    Karian carefully took in his surroundings from a cave in the desert area. "Just like the trials back home. Alone with your wits and instincts while the world's just trying to kill you..." He says to himself. He gives a quick check over the ammo he brought with him. Plenty for his old school winchester and lots for his pistols. "Right...time to start this hunt."

Xiaomu (707) has posed:
A ten-kiometers-in-diameter island is a lot of space to get lost in, particularly if you don't know where you're starting from when you get there. And starting at a kilometer away from anyone else is likely to mean snipers have the advantage.

When Kanokon spawns in, she gets her bearings within the 'village' - either a farming village or an old gold-rush town; could be either from her initial glance around the buildings - and hurries into a cottage as she considers the satellite intel. If she'd known what the ranges were going to be like, she would've brushed up on her sniping ... but instead, she's got her usual pair of handguns (probably upgraded since the fight with the Ironclad spider-tank boss fight), some grenades, and plenty of reloads. Anyone who gets a look at her might notice that the bodysuit and vest she sports are also not quite the same as from the Ironclad fight.

Hey, why play an MMORPG (VR or not) if you don't upgrade your equipment when you can?

She's going to check things out a little further in the town before she starts heading inland. She might also bag some opposition first.

Amalthea (395) has posed:
    Some time ago, Amalie was in the waiting area, serving digital RP tea to other contestants and further coming up with new things to add to her character's not-all-that-brooding backstory.
    Sometime shortly after that she was accosted by a gaggle of players asking her for her email or to marry them in game.
    ... Some time not too long after sending her fan base to their respawn points with a bullet and a smile for each... Amalie is on the field. Tugging her white scarf and mantle tighter, the perfect elegant robotic combat maid trudges along the eastern fringe of the map, wandering through the shanty town of huts and small rural buildings, ballistic shield clutched in her off hand, MG42 held in an easy one-handed grasp.
    "Time to clean up the competition." Mused aloud for the audience. But more to herself a smaller whisper, "And to see if we can find this bastard."

Theo Morrison has posed:
For weeks -- months, even -- Theo has been grinding hard and climbing the ranks. The fact that he made it to the final round is as much a surprise to him as it is to everyone else, being one unknown among many. Then again, gaming is kind of his superpower, and this is just another form of it.

'Theodotus,' his avatar a white-haired young man in a wide, heavy mantle and a long camo-cloak, materializes near the middle of the island on a run-down building between two higher-rises. He stops and looks around, frowning at the terrain. He'd rather something a little more open for him to spot people out in...

Without delay, Theodotus moves into the buildings, keeping to the upper floors, moving quietly and cradling what looks like an FN P90. He must be looking for a place to setup. While he's not /quite/ a sniper...

Kirito has posed:
    IRIA:
    Iria finds herself to be the second person in the match to be coming under fire. After the first satellite scan, a ROCKET slams into her boulder, shattering it to pieces and probably knocking her soaring for a bit. On a dune nearby is one KAKAMEPOSU THE II, a male avatar in ragged, bright colored robes... toting a ROCKET LAUNCHER.

Arthur Lowell has posed:
    Arthur Lowell has arrived. Unlike the others, he's not here via avatar, but here in-person. Spawning in, profoundBadness has found himself at a busted amphitheatre within the city. With a flicker, sunglasses appear over his face; wordlessly and hands-free, Arthur speaks his own communications over the radio, via the profoundBadness pesterchumming.

    "ALRIGHT KIDS. You know HOW THIS GOES. You KILL ANY OTHER COMPETITOR before HE KILLS THEM, we're COMIN' OUT OF THIS ON TOP. We kill HIM, we can lock in on his USERNAME. You keep an eye out for SHIMMERY FLICKERY BULLSHIT. Keep EYES OUT and we'll be takin' home PRIZES and that bastard's SHITTY SKELETOR MASK."

    Wandering through the amphitheatre, he eventually gets to a spot to look out over the rest of the environment, up atop the structure itself, in the stage crew areas. He's not making any secret of his presence; his hope is to draw out the actor in Death Gun. If the city's got power and function to its props, he'll be turning on spotlights and suchlike too.

Staren has posed:
    Staren, used to abusing overwhelming high-tech firepower, has had to adjust his fighting style somewhat in GGO. Picking up the HK MP7, as useful as an armor-piercing submachinegun is, did not solve all his problems. He's had to rely on guerilla tactics, or getting into close range where he can just spray with the MP7, or even melee. He'd love photon swords but they're just too expensive, so he's had to settle for daggers, or maybe something else like monoblades. He's also invested in a wide variety of grenades for various situations, the best he can do to approximate the bag of tricks he's become accustomed to.

    Staren's avatar, a permastubbled sci fi cowboy, appears near the edge of the forest. Staren furrows his brow. Wide open environments are a pain, though a forest is better than a wasteland. Still snipers, or anyone who can throw a hail of bullets at him without much cover, are his weaknesses, so he decides he'd much rather fight in the city. A better place to use guerilla tactics, make a stand, or even just get a view of the map from a high skyscraper.

    Staren decides to run for the city before the satellite reveals his location. At least his avatar doesn't get tired...

Reker (631) has posed:
    It's a good thing that they allow vehicle spawns on this island. It allows Reker to move a lot faster than he would be able to do normally, but at the risk of revealing his location to other players nearby from the sound his vehicle was making.

    He's actually made his way away from the city. He was in the Bullet of Bullets last year, and he knows full well the city tends to become a major killbox. Plus if he knows his opponents, that fucking camper Richie is going to set up somewhere high with a crew served machine gun and dig in. Reker stops his vehicle and despawns it, rushing over to cover nearby and hunkering down, pulling out the spy device to wait for the first sweep.

Kirito has posed:
    KARIAN ICEFANG:
    Besides being aware of the proximity of IRIA and KAKAMEPOSU THE II, a player named Pancho shows up on the map. They're rapidly closing in on Karian's location.

    XIAOMU:
    Everyone's favorite sage fox is in the rural village to the east. She's not alone. To the west by a few kilometers is DYNE and PALE RIDER, the latter chasing the former towards the IRON BRIDGE in the south, near where Sinon is. Closer to her is someone named SUBTILIZER, in the southern reaches of the village.

Kirito has posed:
    THEO MORRISON and ARTHUR LOWELL:    The only other person in the city right now is someone named MUSKETEER X. She is moving away from their locations and towards the southeast. Another person named KAEEEEDE is approaching Arthur's location, while one BLACKWOOD is heading to Theo. Both are sneaking through alleys and seem aware of each other. It's quite a mess because periodically they both run out of alleys and engage with potshots.

    STAREN:
    STAREN finds himself ALMOST in the path of DYNE and PALE RIDER, who've just blitzed past on their way to the IRON BRIDGE in the south. On the way to the city howwever, he comes under fire from a rock behind a hill. JACK REACHER has a minimi and is pelting Staren's location with burst fire!

Kirito has posed:
    JACK REACHER is a male avatar, wearing camouflage and tons of throwing knives in easy reach. Definitely not Death Gun.

Karian Icefang has posed:
    A quick glance at the scanner alerts Karian of the approaching Pancho, and how he was closing in fast. The old soldier had a few tricks up his sleeve, namely that he would set an ambush for his opponent, and if he was lucky, take him down before Pancho knew what was going on.

Kirito has posed:
    BLACKWOOD is wearing some sort of green-black cyber suit, full body armor, with glowing red eyes. It's similar to Death Gun, but lacks the cloak.

    KAEEEEDE is a woman with long green hair and dual pistols, lots of grenades.

Tomoe has posed:
Even with Death Gun? Eisen is excited about this whole tournament she really was. With this and the WMAT the red headed woman was quite chipper about things. however for now she's going to be just having to get her game face on as she's going to be dropping into the fight and now she's there she has no idea where it's going to be. She still was having a hard time working though the thought Death Gun was here, maybe her happyness about the tournament was just a mask for the fear of that one man. Could you even call someone like that a Man? A good number of the people in the tournament were hunting Death Gun, still? That nagging fear and the memories of what had happened to her claw at her. She hears Arthur over the radio. She'll end up arriving near a old bridge and thusly she starts looking about for cover, also kicking in her stealth system as she does so. It was time to hunt.

Xiaomu (707) has posed:
Subtilizer sounds like a worthwhile target to go after; Kanokon takes a moment to try and narrow down which of those houses he might be in, then skulks out of her initial hidey-hole. If she spots Amalie the Deathmeido, Kanokon waves quickly to her, then indicates the southerly huts.

Then she drops to the ground and starts speed-crawling commando-style towards a likely-looking house. In hindsight, maybe she should have picked armor/clothes with something a little more like a camouflage pattern, instead of going with relatively solid colors ... well, too late now.

If the sides of the house are relatively climbable without exposing herself to being seen through a window or something, she clambers up to the roof, tip-toeing rapidly across and taking as good of a listen as she can at the chimney. Of course, if she makes enough noise that Subtilizer defies his name and tries shooting through the roof at her, she won't NEED to listen to know somebody's in there - and she'll just pull the pin on a grenade and pitch it down the chimney, hopefully with enough english on it to roll out of the fireplace before it explodes.

Kirito has posed:
    REKER:
    SURE ENOUGH, LION KING RICHIE has setup in the southern mountains near where SINON was, and he has his machine gun and he's currently raining down HELL on one LICOCO, a slim male avatar in heavy tan clothing. LICOCO lobs grenades up at Richie, but Richie expertly shoots them out of the sky. that's not going anywhere fast.

Theo Morrison has posed:
Theo lets MUSKETEER X go. She's not his quarry, and he isn't fast enough to keep up with someone who really wants to get away, anyway. Strength is his primary go-to stat here, for reasons that have yet to become obvious.

He takes note of the approaching BLACKWOOD, though. Theodotus glances out a hole in the crumbling wall, a brief, subtle glance that gives him the general direction and location of his enemy. Theo keeps low and moves slowly and quietly, leaving the immediate vicinity of his starting location to try and shadow Blackwood. His build is suited for it; he seems to be geared for stealth.

He rounds a corner and looks down from a ramshackle skybridge linking two buildings. He's looking towards the top of a T-intersection of alleyways. Blackwood should be dodging through here. He raises his P90 and keeps low against the wall, and the moment he sees him, fires a couple bursts down-range to try and nail him or -- more likely -- drive him down the other path of the intersection and towards the open streets.

Staren has posed:
    Oh, the sattelite comes on right away! Staren must have misread the rules. He sees DYNE and PALE RIDER go by, and stops to consider chasing them... only for one of his weaknesses, a man with a machinegun, to show up! Staren runs just ahead of the hail of bullets, a few tearing his coat and clipping his armored vest, while grabbing a smoke grenade from his belt and throwing it ahead. Once behind the smoke, he can use the sight lines to just dodge, dive under, or jump over the bullets. But he can't just /sit/ there: He pulls a flashbang from his belt, waits, timing the explosion, and hurls it through the smoke at JACK REACHER's location. Then he charges through the smoke, planning to attack Jack with a series of short, controlled bursts from the MP7 and close in for the melee kill if that's not enough. At least, that's his plan...

Iria (215) has posed:
    So who is this PANCHO person? Iria doesn't know, but she's about to find out. She'd rush in guns-a-blazing, but she doesn't. Instead, she keeps an eye on them from behind her rock, then slowly tries to trail them, keeping an eye on them. All the while, she's scowling harder than before. "You better watch out! First bad move you make, I'm gonna make you regret it!"

Arthur Lowell has posed:
    Arthur catches the info on that scan. Here comes KAAAAAAAAEEEEEDE!! who Arthur has not experienced but who he's looking forward to. For now, he makes use of a little subtle magic. Literally a magical spell, in fact! The boy snaps and the magic goes off, working a nearby control booth. Sound systems, lights, and big holoscreens will flicker to life elsewhere, displaying Arthur's face. Wherever the city's communications infrastructure might extend, Arthur, in the Amphitheatre, is here to transmit to them, his face onscreen and his voice on-air.

    "ALRIGHT KIDS! It's time for the PROFOUND BADNESS SHOW, where YOURS TRULY is 'bout to give NO FUCKS about bein' LAST MAN STANDING. I'm here to get a BODYCOUNT. HIGH SCORE, BABY! Any of you COWARDS wanna be the LAST MAN STANDING, stick to staying in your BABY HOLES for LITTLE GIRLS, but anyone wanting to BEAT the HIGH SCORE, best get DOWN HERE. It's SHOWTIME!"

    He then jumps onto the stage and gets into the obvious killbox, looking to draw his hunter out. Hopefully Theo can back him up after dealing with Blackwood, if necessary!

Kirito has posed:
    AMALTHEA and XIAOMU:
    In the east, AMALTHEA is in the same area as KANOKON and SUBTILIZER. Someone named DA*LU was last seen approaching the village from the north, but doesn't show up on another radar scan.

    Until Amalie finds herself coming under fire, anyawys, from a cellar door, people will have no idea where that person went. SILENCED PISTOL SHOTS fly for Amalie's head! Hope she's got good reflexes.

    KANOKON's plan works fairly well. She drives Subtilizer out of the house and into the open, but he ducks and dives for an alley for cover. Amelie can plainly see a tall, broad-shouldered, blonde man in full-out military doing said acrobatics. KANOKON comes under fire from... a throwing knife? But it's mostly a distraction. SUBTILIZER is on the move northwards, where STAREN is.

Reker (631) has posed:
    Reker thinks he could take Richie out with his grenade launcher, those travel a lot faster than the thrown hand grenades by Licoco. Really, though, he may have a better way to do it. Once the scan has passed, he starts off on foot towards the mountain where Richie and his opponent are doing battle.

    Reker has been holding off on using it in game, not wanting to reveal it until the big day, and now it's time. He breaks out the Devastator, the huge rifle getting a round racked into place, as Reker swaps ammo types. With ammo swapped to explosive tipped, he sets up a position not far from Licoco, waiting for him to get Richie to stick his head out, before Reker will open up on the machine gun nest with explosive tipped .30-06 rounds.

Amalthea (395) has posed:
    Wandering out in the open is like just asking to get shot, blown up, attacked, sniped, or generally ambushed. But Amalie bazenly keeps going right at it. Though she pretends to ignore Kanokon's wave, the murderous Maid flashes a few arcane and professional tactical handsignals. A universal and wordless gesture of 'I leave it in your hands', as the sage fox heads to investigate Subtilizer.
    She's heading Westward with every step until she barely perceives something. Little more than a whispered cough, and her eats still catch it, the heavily armed and armored maid throws herself in a tumble, earning only a few grazes for her effort rather than the critical headshots that were intended. She curses herself for her radar's lack of being helpful, she promptly does what any sane, rational and reasonable person would do when getting shot. She holds up her shield.
    And runs snarling in the direction it came from.
    "YOU RUINED MY FRILLS! I AM GOING TO FIND YOU AND MAKE YOUR SKIN INTO A NEW PAIR OF WINTER GLOVES, AND WEAVE A NEW RIBBON FROM YOUR CHEST HAIR!"
    Wild it may seem, but it's actually a calculated attempt to try and make a pro player panic and do something stupid like come out of hiding, so she can mulch them with her heavy machinegun.
    That's the plan at least.

Xiaomu (707) has posed:
Kanokon giggles briefly, dodging the knife (and making an attempt to grab it out of the air; you can always use a good knife but the game might not let her do that) ...

Then she draws her handguns and goes after her Subtilizer, already shooting with both handguns as she leaps off the roof, actually doing a double somersault through the air ... WITHOUT letting the acrobatics screw up her aim, which is probably quite a feat even if the game IS helping her a little (If it's even programmed to do that.)

She doesn't seem to mind that Amalie is shooting at the same target, nor to care if Amalie scores the kill instead of collecting it herself.

Kirito has posed:
    THE IRON BRIDGE (SINON, KIRITO, EISEN/TOMOE, PALE RIDER, DYNE):

    DYNE charges across the bridge. He goes prone and turns his back on a rock outcropping just as PALE RIDER emerges near where Eisen's ready in ambush.

    PALE RIDER is a tall, slim man with a long rifle. He's wearing flasy white-silver full-body attire, with an odd helmet featuring a blank, green faceplate. Utterly faceless, and rather like a certain Silver-Winged avatar that might appear in the far future.

    DYNE, on the other hand, is a classical cowboy style gunslinger with a semi-auto rifle.

    ABOUT ONE MINUTE EARLIER:
    KIRITO, for whatever reason, did not show up on the second satellite scan. But SINON, who is currently setup in a sniping position on Dyne's side of the Iron Bridge, atop that outcropping, learns of his presence quite quickly enough. Because the boy moves quickly up behind her as if from nowhere and performs a FULL BODY DROP to pin her, half-seated atop her back. "Sssssssssshhhhhh! Keep it down Sinon. Please listen. I need a favor." His voice is trembling and desperate. "Don't let those guys know we're here just yet. I want to see if Pale Rider's Death Gun."

Sinon (649) has posed:
    Sinon forgot to watch her back! Voices of chastisement practically screaming in her head, she tries to pull her <<MP7>> submachine gun from her inventory, turning like her body's set on a spring-

    And sees waist-length, glamorous black hair, white tender skin and long, sparkling narrow eyes.
    Of course, it couldn't be anyone that gets the drop on her but Kirito.

    And now he's practically straddling her, with a gun in a very awkward position...

    "...we're only waiting to see who dies first, you know," she replies, a soft voice filled with killing intent.
    "We have to watch the situation... stay here. I won't attack you," Kirito replies, voice abnormally full of tension.
    "But I may snipe you from behind, you know?"
    "Why are you still concentrated on that?"
    "...because! If I take you out, then Death Gun won't be able to hu-"
    "...please understand, Sinon. ...it's starting!"

Tomoe has posed:
Esien had spotted Dyne, for all the antics in open world PVP? He was a hell of a duellist and actually quite good with tactics in PVP. She knew he'd be an issue but she'd spotted someone else. She noticed Pale Rider and there's a bit of a grin on her face. She might have to move in soon, she's already moving to stalk Pale Rider, she's cloaked and trying to keep a good pace, given Pale Rider's build? Is a lot like her own, it's gong to be fast and up close. So getting a chance to close would be the best chance she's got to get into a good fight with this other player.

Kirito has posed:
    IRIA AND KARIAN:
    KAKAMEPOSU THE II has one hell of an armory in play. It's normally impractical to wield such weapons in the BOB without a solid strategy, and this guy has it. The rocket launcher has an ARMORED SIDE, courtesy of some heavy modifications, and KAKAMEPOSU THE II would use it as a shield! except he doesn't need to because for whatever baffling reason, Iria ignores him. So he stalks her, being slowed down.

    PANCHO turns out to be a Mexican-themed gunman with twin revolvers, and a garishly colorful outfit complete with comical sombrero! Pancho is no fool however. The trouble with putting yourself in a cave is that there's really only one way in or out. Veterans of the BoB are well aware of this.

    Which is why KARIAN finds an errant hand passing into his vision. A hand that tosses a grenade his way, then withdraws.

    Well, that's one way to turn an ambush around.

    Except things get really weird because IRIA manages to get up behind him. She finds a revolver being quick-drawed in her face and being fired. "Girlie, you better get some horseradish. I'm makin' you eat those words!"

    Then things get even MORE CHAOTIC because while the grenade's going into the cave, Iria's threatening Pancho, Pancho's opening fire...

    the ENTIRE cave entrance comes under fire from KAKEMEPOSU THE II's missile launcher. KABOOM!

Kirito has posed:
    THEODOTUS, PROFOUNDBADNESS in the CITY:
    Reker's right about the city becoming a KILLBOX. And with these two setup there, that might be an UNDERSTATEMENT. Kaeeeede and Blackwood continue exchanging shots, having given up on their original quarries. They now emerge periodically from cover to take more potshots or toss a grenade. Their actions and tactics are mirrors of each other and the fact that neither's getting the upper hand is clearly aggravating.

    Eventually, something REALLY STUPIDLY UNBELIEVABLY happens. After Theo manages to hit Blackwood with a few rounds and get them off their Rhytthm... both of them hurl grenades around the corner blindly. Both grenades go off at once after penetrating each other's cover. Both players go down, insta-killed. A 'DEAD' icon appears over their avatars, which have been blown into several pieces.

    Well. That was a thing.

Theo Morrison has posed:
THEODOTUS tracks Blackwood down his sights, watching him duck behind cover and get ready with the grenade. He himself ducks and moves, unsure if he got spotted, and then --

KA-BOOOOM

-- two dead avatars, by Theo's reckoning. He stares through a gap in the ramshackle wall in near disbelief. "Well," he murmurs, "that just happened."

Theo pulls himself up and starts moving through the city towards the big and obvious position Arthur's taken up. He keeps the bodies in sight, finding an angular corner perch with a blown-out window and watching over it with a handy mirror on a stick. He's got all kinds of tricks.

Apparently, so does Arthur. Let's see how this goes.

Arthur Lowell has posed:
    Okay, let's do this.

    Arthur Lowell remains un-confronted. So, he does the logical thing that anyone would do while trying to goad out DEATH GUN. He takes credit for the kill, like a giant jackass. Theo calls out those coordinates. Arthur dashes off the stage, and then... Comes back with the corpse giblets. A pair of heads under each arm, both shimmering with the bright red DAMAGE indicators under their necks. Normally, Arthur Lowell has an EXTREME disgust reaction when dealing with corpses and mutilation, but this videogame isn't rated X and so the gore is managable.

    He scavenges around for pipes and sticks both heads on top, and then aggressively planting them onto the stage. once more, he uses his magic to operate the cameras once more. "TWO CUSTOMERS DOWN. I wonder who ELSE thinks they're a LUCKY SON OF A BITCH?" He calls out, showing no wounding on his body with the broad gestures he makes to his collected heads, and proudly displaying them. "WHO ELSE wants some? You best get RIGHT UP IN THIS CITY, kids, or else I'm about to take the HIGH SCORE!"

Karian Icefang has posed:
    "hmph, well played." Karian says softly. But he isn't taken out so easily. He takes off from the cave, trying to beat the explosion. Of course, Pancho would find some lead flying his way. Then comes the rocket launcher. "Damn...never easy, is it?" He asks aloud. But that doesn't stop him from turning and letting some lead fly right for Kakameposu. "Cover my back. We have the edge here." He says to Iria, offering up a sly smile to her.

Kirito has posed:
    AMALIE:
    Getting CHARGED is the last thing that DA*LU was expecting. As Amalie nears the cave, she sees that DA*LU is at the very least not death gun. It's (again) a male avatar, surprisingly OLD in appearance, with an enormous split beard, in a skintight suit that shows off ALL the wrinkles. "GYRRRRYAAAAGH!!" He panics and brings out a MAGNUM REVOLVER with way more punching power. Amalie's shield will get banged up, she'll probably take some damage, but in the end DA*LU's struck and goes down hard, slammed into a wall and depleted to a quarter of his HP in one go. He groans, but is fumbling to get up and retaliate.

    KANOKON and STAREN:
    KANOKON finds that she can indeed pick up the tossed weapon if she's swift enough. It's a standard combat knife, with enough balance for throwing if you're good. Which Subtilizer apparently really is. If she checked, SUBTILIZER won the 1st BoB using nothing but martial arts, a knife, and weaponry he stole from people he kung fu'd to death. He was a last minute entrant who used these same tactics for his qualifying matches. Without even looking her way, Subtilizer somehow manages to zig and zag, narrowly avoiding most of Kanokon's shots. Graze after graze until Kanokon's nearly upon him. He's down to half hp from the shots!

    And he also executes an astounding LEAP TACKLE, aiming to SLAM Kanokon into a tree and knock the guns from her hands. "Checkmate."

    STAREN's flashbang disorients JACK REACHER, leaving him shooting a bit wildly through the mess. A few shots might clip Staren, but would do minimal damage. Staren, however, has a much better idea of where Jack REACHER is because of the bullet lines. His retaliation is right ont he mark. Most of Jack's Hp is depleted and a stray shot pegs one of his grenades. Staren will probably want to ROLL AWAY at the last moment because the ensuing explosion sends EVERYTHING skyhigh and is quite visible to Kanokon.

Iria (215) has posed:
    At first, Iria is still scowling when Karian speaks to her, but the frown turns into an evil smirk. "With pleasure," She says with a nod. She draws her weapon and opens fire as well, providing a little covering fire from her automatic rifle. "The more the merrier... especially in terms of firepower, right?"

Kirito has posed:
    REKER:
    The DEVASTATOR is one of the best weapons in the game and a complete unknown. Had LION KING RICHIE known someone would have that and what it did, Reker might be at a disadvantage. But instead when Licoco comes under fire again, Lion King Richie's in for a surprise. Dozens of explosive rounds rain upon him from nowhere. He dives backwards thanks to a few split seconds of warning from the bullet lines, but his torso's still peppered with them.

    He doesn't re-emerge and the machine gun's still on the cliff's edge. It's hard to say if he's actually dead or not from this angle.

Xiaomu (707) has posed:
"Eep - !!" And then Kanokon is being pushed against a tree, very roughly. She's really inclined to tease or taunt or something, but she's a bit unnerved by how readily her opponent did that.

She's not going to give him time to relish the small triumph, though. Her legs come up quickly, tucking into a ball except for her arms, and then she *PUSHES* as hard and as violently as she can to try and kick Subtilizer away from her ... and if that works, her feet barely touch the ground before she charges at him, trying to slice open his throat with the very same knife that he threw at her a handful of seconds ago. If that's not a fatal injury right away, she'll follow up with her own martial arts to try and finish Subby off.

"I guess 'Domitilizer' just doesn't have the same ring, does it?" she spares a moment to quip.

Amalthea (395) has posed:
    When you spend all your time and put all your build points into the two status of STR and END two things happen.
    You become a wandering calamity.
    You fear no weapon.
    Amalie's bull rush has just the result she had hoped for when DA*LU breaks cover. Her shield comes up. Though the magnum slug punches through the heavy ballistic plating and slams her in the chest, what mighty be horrifying is the fact that she's still coming. Her health chugs downward slowly from the impact, shock, and subsequent bleed damage over time from the high armor piercing round, but what might be most horrifying is the fact that it did not STOP her as she simply continues on with her momentum. No sooner than DA*LU hits the wall, Amalie is upon him, and as he tries to get up, she swings her heavy machinegun like a club before aiming point blank.
    "My my... Who let such a heinously ugly antique like you out? I'll just clean up this mess..." Mused as she pulls the trigger, intending to unload her MG42 point blank, the BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR sound from up close is enough to give a horrifying testament to why the gun was named the German Buzzsaw.

Staren has posed:
    Yeah, bullet lines make dodging blind shots /even easier/. Still, as Staren gets close, a lucky shot hits his vest. Good thing they're using an HP system, that would probably be a nasty wound.

    And then he shoots a grenade, and hits the deck as the explosion goes off.

    And now there's some kind of conflict in the distance, away from where he wanted to go. Who is that? He needs to at least see and report to the others... he starts to run closer, then stops and looks through binoculars. "Xiaomu!" He ejects his magazine, pockets it, and loads a new one as he starts running towards them, looking for an opportunity to draw a bead on SUBTILIZER.

Kirito has posed:
    THE IRON BRIDGE (realm of drama):
    Kirito has to hurry off of Sinon and grab his binocs. if Sinon wants to shoot him, his head's RIGHT THERE IN VIEW and he's not paying her any further attention. What a show of deep trust!

    PALE RIDER has two problems. One is EISEN, the other is DYNE. He's caught between a rock and a hard place and he dodges by going STRAIGHT UP the moment he hears a peep out of Eisen's movement. He engages in an amazing series of acrobatics, swiging from the suspension bridge's many cables and bars, and DYNE panics. The expert PVP'ist opens fire, but from his prone position he's finding it hard landing any shots. Pale Rider's swiftly moving away from Eisen, but he casts a glance back towards her direction once in a while. Pale Rider moves to take the high ground however, and once up there he takes a shot from afar that pegs Dyne in the weapon arm. The man curses as it happens just as he's switching magazines, and it made him drop the new one! ... And also depleted his HP by a third. Tomoe's got quite a climb ahead of her.

Sinon (649) has posed:
    At this moment, Sinon forces herself to stop thinking. It's easy to do by now- she's been doing it since the meeting in Glocken with Kirito, choking off her concious thought, repressing the true depth of the situation, thinking only in the barest terms. She has frozen herself into the form of 'the machine made of ice', thinking only of killing and hunting.

    Kirito is not a meaningful threat. This is the reason why she is not killing him here and now. There is something more relevant happening... and besides, he has his own problems. Nobody else had a way, nor should they bear responsibility for it.

    She has to take control. She has to eliminate her doubt, she has to overcome her fear.

    "I'm going to snipe that guy," she says, blithely, placing Pale Rider in her crosshairs, putting her finger on the trigger...

Tomoe has posed:
Tomoe she knows Dyne he's good but he's not as up there as some. To not sell his skill would be a lie, he has made it to this round before after all. Pale Rider? She's go no idea whom his player is but she's gtot an idea about it. She watches as they are now engaging. She's pretty good to chase after him however as given her inate Parkour training? On top of her avatar? Well she gets to bounding after Pale Rider using the terrain to get to him, not treating it as something in her way. She might be exposed from stealth however given the speed she's moving at.

Reker (631) has posed:
    There's a pause between the two still standing gunfighters as the smoke from the explosive rounds clears on the top of the hill. It takes a few moments, before DEAD pops up over the spot where Lion King Richie had been at.

    Reker and Licoco look towards each other, and the other fighter pulls another grenade, turning towards Reker to throw. Reker knows he'll have to be quick, as he drops the Devastator onto it's sling, which makes the weapon appear behind his back as he draws his Operator from it's holster on his hip.

    As the grenade gets activated, Reker raises the pistol, but instead of firing at his opponent, the bullet line from Reker's pistol shifts onto the grenade itself. It leaves his opponent's hand, but only makes it about two feet before Reker fires, the bullet striking the grenade in midair and detonating it.

    The smoke clears, and DEAD appears over Licoco's body, or at least where it had been.

Kirito has posed:
    AMALIE:
    The brutal assault is met with DA*LU gurgling a few times and then sprouting a 'DEAD' icon over his head. Brute!

    His face is frozen in a show of real, profound terror and panic. Wide-open, bloodshot eyes complete the show.

    KARIAN, IRIA: Pancho's taken by surprise, blown to bits by the rocket! His dead body goes flying while his twin guns fall to the ground near Iria.

    BOTH IRIA AND KARIAN are showered with shrapnel and debris that willd rop them easily down to 1/3rd health, and that only because karian's placement shields Iria from the worst of the rocket. KAKAMEPOSU now goes on a charge, using his weapon as a shield, intending to RAM Karian into Iria and knock them BOTH down for an easy kill.

Tomoe has posed:
Once Eisen is in range she'll drop stealth and open fire with a shotgun blast at Pale Rider.

"So your the one person in this game that might be more agile than I am! Let's see if it's true!"

Karian Icefang has posed:
    Karian grits his teeth as the rocket sends shrapnel and debris up and notes the drop in their health. "Not good.." He muses softly. But then he looks over and his avatar's good eye spies Kakameposu running at them full bore. He grabs Iria and pushes her out of the way. As for himself...a 'preacher' puts faith into his lord, right? So, he throws the one grenade he had in the charging path, and waits....until both his bullet line AND Kakameposu were in perfect alignment. Then he pulls one of his pistols and takes a shot for the grenade.

Iria (215) has posed:
    Iria gasps as she's pushed out of the way. At first, she thinks he's trying to treat her like a child, but then she realizes that he's trying to keep her from being blown up. And then there's the issue of her health being reduced severely. "Ugh, dammit!" She yells as she opens fire on Kakameposu. Whether or not he's their target is irrelevant. He's gonna pay for what he did to her health!

Kirito has posed:
    THE IRON BRIDGE:
    While Dyne fumbles with an arm that's movement-penalized from the insanely lucky hit, Pale Rider moves like a stick-figure ghost along the suspension bridge. He never stops, making it quite hard for Sinon to line up a shot. Agility is indeed Pale Rider's greatest asset. So might be silence. Tomoe's challenge is met with a blank stare from the empty faceplate but somehow, she'll get the message from it. 'Challenge accepted.'

    He takes a few grazing blows from the shutgun but eventually goes skidding down one of the cables, with Eisen in pursuit. At this point, Eisen falls under fire from Dyne! Who's cursing and starting to get up, heading right - back towards the Mountains. He's not going to get in the way of those two crazy people!

    Sinon will detect Kirito suddenly gasping, flipping back to his feet and igniting the beam saber BEHIND HER. But she doesn't come under attack. Instead... she'll also hear GUNFIRE and the clear sound of bullets spanging off of Kirito's saber. Bullets that would've hit Sinon in the back of the head.

    "I've got this guy...!" Kirito hisses.

    The boy goes on a desperate charge through the underbrush behind their position, taking KAKOUTON by surprise! His saber cleaves straight through the surprised Samurai-armored man's weapon, who gurgles and howls out "No way...!" Before dashing back. He's retreating, and Kirito runs after him, swearing quietly to himself about having to relocate.

    At about that time, Sinon feels something sting her in the side. A paralysis effect takes over, making it difficult to move at all. And the air nearby her, where Kirito just vacated, ripples. An ominous figure appears from thin air. A cloaked avatar with a fearsome metal skull mask and glowing red eyes. One glows slightly more intensely than the other.

    "Now. The Goddess of the Underworld. Learns what real death means. Real power." His voice is tinny and reverberating, as if not even a human voice at all. Steam hisses from the man's mask and amidst all the chaos he draws forth his weapon of death, a Type 54 'Black Star,' while his free hand slowly makes the sign of the cross over his chest.

    And his finger tightens on the trigger...

Sinon (649) has posed:
Sinon almost flinches as she realizes- with all of this time Kirito wasted insisting they observe what's going on, someone has crept up on them. They're under attack! And that means her preparation to attack Pale Rider is wasted.

    "Why are you so..." 'devoted to me', are the words Sinon can't say. "...I'll leave it to you, then, partner..."

And so it's time to move. She needs to make her way away from this vantage point. They still have no idea where Death Gun is, and she's a known factor, so perhaps if she moves out of this wooded area and--

    This is the point where Sinon notices the silvery needle-like thing, spreading sparks out into her entire body.
        A stun bullet.

    And then, standing over her...

     ..

    And there he is.

    "I remember, when you, went berserk. Once I kill this woman... who is your friend, once you go berserk like that again, you'll be the, real Kirito. Come... let me see it, let me witness that blade of yours, full of anger, killing intent and madness..."

And then, briefly, the eyes of his red skull visage flicker to a sort of purple. "I wonder if your soul will taste sweet?"



Why.
    Why.
        Why, why, why...
                whywhywhywhy is that gun here

    It was that man. That man who, 5 years ago, took the gun... the Type-54 pistol to barge into a little post office in a city, in the north, to shoot Shinos mother. At that time, the young Shino Asada lost all self-awareness and leaped at the gun, snatched it and squeezed the trigger to kill that man... those eyes were just like the man.

    That man has a bullet that will shoot through her heart and kill her.
    That was an unavoidable fact. Even if she did not play GGO, she would be caught up by this man in some place. Her efforts were all in vain. No matter how much she struggled to break free from her past, it was meaningless.

    In that moment, the sniper, the machine made of ice known as <<Sinon>>, fades away. She was never real.

    Asada Shino screams.

Reker (631) has posed:
    Reker had been doing his best to keep track of the group of enemies that were nearby. With his two targets down he began to make his way towards the bridge. He's moving on foot so he doesn't give his position away, but he wasn't far.

    He steps up onto a hill above the bridge, a decent distance away but he was pretty sure he saw a couple of icons on here, he just didn't have time to check who they were. Of course who it is, well, it's definitely not who he expected.

    That finger is squeezing on the trigger of the Type 54, but Reker is faster, and he has a bigger bullet. The 1911 Operator fires two shots, aiming center mass at Death Gun to try to make him miss his shot, or at least pull off of his target.

    "Death Gun! I'm calling you out!" He fires again, advancing on the cloaked, skull-faced player. He'll either kill Death Gun outright or cause him to retreat. Or Death Gun will turn that Type 54 upwards and score a single hit, killing him in the real world. Either way, at least he'll make sure Sinon is safe. That's the more pressing concern right now.

Tomoe has posed:
Eisen has got Pale Rider's attention and she's now in a fight for it. She sees how good he is as he's moving about the cbales. She too dows not slow down. She'd be a sitting duck otherwise. She does see Dyne, she makes a good move and she's now getting some shots at her, she's grazed but no direct hits, the fact Dyne hit her at all? Has her thinking he's been getting better.

She keeps bouncing about this point, taking what shots she can. She'd be having fun but then death walks into the local area and now she's scared, but even more so for Dyne and Pale Rider. They got to be taken out of the match given what could happen, she keeps bounding and shooting she can't help right now, but then Reker steps in and calls him /out/.

Amalthea (395) has posed:
    In that instant. In that one instant Amalie heard the name Death gun get dropped, all pretenses are cast aside. Whipping her Sattelite Scan Terminal out to check the locations of the other players, the maid's eye locks right in on the position of Reker's last known coordinates.
    Her eye traces the path between Reker and herself, before she's given a mild second of pause, lingering her gaze on her own location.
    Amalie drops her gun.
    Before it even clatters to the ground, the Maid's hand SNAPS into the dense brush of nearby foliage as fast as a bolt of lightning, fingers curling, clenching, wrenching, twisting, all in the span of less than a second and-
    *-CRACK-*
    "I don't have time for garbage like you right now!"
    The sudden notification of DEAD pops up over the bushes, Masaya's name suddenly stricken from the contest as Amalie kicks her gun back into her hand and begins sprinting full tilt towards Reker, Sinon, and Kirito.

Kirito has posed:
    ARTHUR, THEO:
    Arthur's call is answered by a round whizzing right past his face. It's not Death Gun, though. Instead, MUSKETEER X has emerged into the city again, having decided that approaching the four players further south of her would be a bad idea. Musketter X is a rather pretty young woman with dirty-white hair, plenty of skin showing, and a Mk 14 Enhanced Battle Rifle. She continues firing from behind cover, hoping to fill profoundBadness with holes!

    XIAOMU:
    Subtilizer is a man of few words and heavy actions. What he wasn't expecting was for his much smaller-framed opponent to have such skills. He's taken by surprise by the martial arts, but recovers in time tos werve out of the way of the knife. Instead he grabs the weapon by the blade outright, taking some damage, but wrenches it free of Kanokon's grasp. He fails to stop her follow-up assault though, given how low his HP already was. She brutally mauls him with centuries of experience. The fight literally ends with him toppling over, the force dropping out of his meaty haymaker counterattack moments before it would've hit Kanokon's head and decimated her health.

    That was lucky.

    IRIA, KARIAN:
    Thanks to havin his head mostly behind his huge weapon, Kakameposu the II cannot see the grenade or shots coming at him. He was expecting to lose SOME Hp, but a grenade to the face is another matter entirely. His weapon's destroyed in the explosion, and his dead body is sent sailing backwards across the sand.

Theo Morrison has posed:
Theo waits for it --

'THEO! RIFLEMAN, MY RIGHT!'

Theodotus stands up out of cover. He's imposing in his big ol' shoulderpads and drape-like camo-cloak, but that gun he's got isn't so much... which is why he drops it, and reaches a hand under his cloak and behind him, grasping and drawing a two-and-a-half-foot green tube. In the same practiced motion, he swings it up onto his shoulder and sights the rifleman. This is about the time they usually run.

Except that the guidance system in the Predator Short-Range Assault Weapon -- the rocket launcher he's currently got readied, which they have lovingly recreated in GGO down to the most minute system modifications -- has a pretty neat quirk: Theo tracks someone for three seconds, and then it adjusts the projectile's heading based on the speed and direction of the target.

"WELCOME TO THE PARTY, MUSKETEER!" Theodotus yells. His following, "YAAA-HOOOOOO!" is drowned out by the scream of needlessly high-powered ordnance screaming down-range.

Xiaomu (707) has posed:
"If we ever meet outside," Kanokon says to Subitilizers 'corpse,' "I gotta buy you a drink."

She retrieves her dropped handguns, reloads, and legs it to the southwest, heading towards the Iron Bridge, since that's where Kirito and the others are who called out an alert that Death Gun is *there*. She probably ought to recover HP too, but she wants to link up with the others - particularly if Death Gun hasn't been removed from consideration by the time she gets to the bridge.

In point of fact, she's *running*, and god help any poor fool who's caught in her path and isn't an ally. (But then, she doesn't really have fools among her allies, or at least she gives them that benefit.)

Arthur Lowell has posed:
    A bullet whizzes past Arthur's face and he snaps his view on the lucky customer in question. "YES." He declares. "DO IT!" And then he POWER-DASHES at her, screaming and drawing the steel Battlebroom from his Strife Deck. Swinging it back, he blasts off, rocket engines screaming, zipping around bullets. If there were one or two more enemies, he wouldn't be able to do this, but right now, and for a brief moment, he can. He's going to try to take MUSKETEER X out in one hit, or one combined hit with Theo handling the flanks. He intends to have a very thoroughly broken body, which he means to drag back to the stage and deposit it between the corpses.

    Assuming Theo's rocket and/or his broomsmash lands, Arthur will be walking back to the stage with another head for his collection, and an intended broadcast.

Kirito has posed:
    BY THE POWER OF RETCONS:    COLONEL LIBERTY was never here. The hero of justice is replaced with everyone's favorite rapieriest, who's sporting a very different loadout for this futuristic scenario. But where in this vast map is she?

    AT THE IRON BRIDGE:
    Through a feat of incredibly good timing, wicked aim, and plain luck, Reker arrives to put a few holes through Death Gun moments before he can fire. The wraith-like figure jolts backwards, his aim shifted. The Black Star still fires once, offhandedly, for Reker... and that mask pulses with a hateful red fervor. A single fateful bullet flies towards Reker's shoulder - not, thankfully, the heart.

    Moments later... "siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiIIIIIINON!" Kirito storms back into sight with a face full of desperation and rage. His beam saber's brought to bear at the last moment, but by that time...

    Death Gun's form ripples, turning translucent in waves... "There it is. That frenzied swordsmanship." Then vanishing altogether. Although Kirito moves at speeds that might've just broken the system limits, Death Gun had a head start. The murderer vanishes once more. The last thing anyone can see of him is him LEAPING away and sprinting northwards. If he KEEPS going that way, he'd hit the city...

    Kirito hasn't yet seen where the stray bullet's going, he's simply glad that it hasn't hit Sinon.

    "Sinon! Did he shoot you? What happened?!" He can only interpret her obvious breakdown as she must've gotten shot.

Reker (631) has posed:
    The shot from that Type 54 rings out, and the round sails across the span between Reker and Death Gun. The round strikes Reker in the left shoulder, and his health bar drops just a bit. He tries to fire again at Death Gun before the man vanishes, but his target vanishes.

    "Is everybody okay?" He asks, as Kirito goes running up to Sinon and the others arrive at the battle site. They were so close, too, they almost had him, if only he'd had a chance to get off more than one shot, "Any way for us to tra.." Reker stops talking mid sentence, and his left hand comes up to his chest, "What the..." He drops to a knee, and then falls over, his avatar disappearing, as the word DISCONNECTED appears over where he had been.

Kirito has posed:
    SATELLITE:
    Aside from the positions of the Gatecrashers, only a few blips remain.    DARK WIND is farthest from anyone else, off by his lonesome in the western prairies. He's known to be a SPEED type and top-tier guy, best not underestimated.
    STERBEN is nowhere to be found. He's ALIVE, but his location is unknown.
    GARRETT is shown to be DISCONNECTED. He was last seen along the river spanned by the Iron Bridge.
    PALE RIDER is atop the Iron Bridge, in a heated battle with EISEN BLUMEN.
    DYNE is currently running the hell away from the Iron Bridge, towards the western prairies. Presumably he doesn't think his chances are so hot with this many players around.
    MUSKETEER X is in a heated battle with PROFOUNDBADNESS.

Asuna (9) has posed:
The Colonel? Who is THAT?

There's a flash of white nearby the area where Kirito and Sinon are, and then Asuna comes sailing out from the darkness, her auburn hair flying behind her as she bolts straight for them - and Reker. Her gun is in her left hand, and in her right hand is a small metallic object that she hits a button and throws at the same time, into the air and forward as she makes her move off of one of the large dunes, landing on her shoulder and turning it into a flip as she catches the object, a blue sheen appearing as she twirls her Kagemistu in her grip.

"KIRITO! SINON!" Oh, yeah, that's definitely Asuna. when and how did she get here, and why is she looking at Death Gun, with, pardon the expression, murder in her eyes?

Sinon (649) has posed:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yfx3rXQixm4

    Has Reker sacrificed himself? This would likely be Shino's chance of escaping. But... even though the stun bullet's effect would have worn off by now, she can't even make her hand move. In fact, she didn't even have the will to stand up and fight. She could only lie prone, staring into the middle distance-- until someone with flowing black hair and obsidian eyes stands over her- and another, with long auburn hair and flashing eyes-- her guardians.

     "Ki...ri...to? A...su...na."

    The synthetic sound of a mechanical horse is carried on the wind; flickering under optical camoflage, additional speed and armor for Death Gun- or if you want to look at it that way, a pale horse for Death to ride.

    He's getting away.

Xiaomu (707) has posed:
"Hey!!"

Kanokon finally reaches the west end of the bridge, and stops running to catch her breath. "Who's hurt?" she pants - maybe not that audibly to the others on the bridge, but once she's gotten her wind back, she heads out along the bridge, staying alert as to friends, enemies, and others. Death Gun was supposedly here, but the fight seems to have subsided for the moment. If Sinon's still collapsed, the sniper girl is Kanokon's first priority; the blonde twin-handgun wielder kneels next to her, fishing in her inventory and applying a general status remedy.

"So can someone bring the rest of us up to speed on what all happened?" Kanokon inquires as she works. She doesn't have a LOT of medical supplies, but she'll use them on anyone who needs them - including a light HP recovery for herself. (If it doesn't get her back to 100, she'll deal, she just doesn't want to stay as hurt as Subitilizer left her.)

Kirito has posed:
    EISEN BLUMEN, PALE RIDER:
    DYNE has decided to vamoose after getting those few shots off, thinking better of his options now that Sinon, Kirito, Asuna, and Sterben appeared. he's too wide open and he needs cover. So he flees northwest, sticking to cover during the confusion. He knows when he's outmatched. Going after him to finish him off might be prudent.

    PALE RIDER has taken this challenge to the limit. He dives, swoops, slides, and grinds along the suspension bridge in a lethal form of dancing. Every so often he takes a potshot at Tomoe with his light but powerful ArmaLite AR17 shotgun. Whenever they close in range enough for it to count, that is. It's a short range weapon, but EXCELS at whittling down Eisen's HP from graze shots at medium distance. She'll need to do something FANCY to knock him off his rhythm if she wants this to be anything more than a battle of attrition. And as always, he remains totally silent. His technique is his pride.

    PROFOUNDBADNESS, THEODOTUS:
    Being ganged up from two angles was NOT what Musketeer X was expecting. And NOBODY could've expected a ROCKET-RAZOR BATTLEBROOM in a gun game. Her utter SHOCK leaves her standing straight in disbelief briefly, but Musketeer X hasn't made it this far without thinking on her feet. She dive-rolls out of Arthur's way, taking only a grazing blow to one leg. that's still enough to destroy the leg though. It explodes in a flurry of pixels, derezzing spectacularly. But even with one leg gone, Musketeer X manages to launch herself airborn using her remaining limbs and rifle. She goes flipping up towards a bent lightpole and slams down hard on it. "A guy with a BROOM?!" Is taht a hint of recognition? Well, maybe.

    A certain broom-toting wacko has made baffling headlines a few times on MMO Tomorrow. According to rumors, anyways.

    But the call from above warns her of more trouble incoming. That rifle's up in a flash, aiming for... not THEO, but the incoming rocket? Sadly, her lacking one leg leaves her off-balance. She takes too long to decide between shooting down the rocket and evasive action! When she does fire, the rocket's nearly upon her. It detonates in her fa<span class=" bold_fg_r bg_n ++ e...

    chr">DEAD</span>

Karian Icefang has posed:
    Karian grabs one of the healing pills he carried with him and offered one over to Iria when the call and the shooting of Reker came over the radio. The old soldier grimmaced, but in his eye burned a seething, pure hatred of Death Gun. He simply looked to Iria and nodded. "Let's go. We have a debt to repay." He says simply, before calling up a vehicle and making tracks.

Iria (215) has posed:
    Accepting the healing pill, Iria quickly uses it to heal herself. "You're damn right about that!" Iria exclaims, fires literally burning in her eyes at this time. "We're gonna get that debt repaid, and they're gonna regret messing with us!" No one messes with one of Iria's allies!

Reker (631) has posed:
    The disconnect message hangs over where Reker had been as the others scramble to try to find Death Gun. Back in the real world, Reker's woken up in his hospital bed, the shot having made his heartrate spike and the system's natural protections kicked in, shutting him off from system.

    After convincing the nurse that he's fine, he's gotten the amusphere back on and is working on re-logging into the system. It takes a few moments, but sudenly Reker re-appears after the disconnect message vanishes.

    "Well that wasn't fun.." He says, to anybody who's still around, as he picks himself back up off the ground, "Where'd that son of a bitch go? I owe him a knife in that stupid metal face of his."

Kirito has posed:
    "REKER!"

    Kirito's immensely relieved that Asuna's here, but his face is practically bursting with horror and wrenching disbelief at what just happened before him. He trembles in horror at the sight of Reker's avatar vanishing.

    "... Dammit... DAMMIT!" Fury, deep fury and desperation flickers in Kirito's eyes, and he acts without thinking. Sinon is scooped up regardless of any protest and carefully shouldered, and Kirito hands Hecate off to Asuna for safekeeping. Reker's APC is nearby...

    He glances around...

    Only to have Reker reappear.

    The boy just sort of stands there, dumbfoundedly blinking, for a few seconds. Is he seeing things?

    "A... Asuna?" He points Reker's way, wondering if she's seeing the same thing.

Tomoe has posed:
Tomoe would be enjoying finding someone normally who could keep pace or was better than her. She liked finding challenges, this however had higher stakes than just simple fun. She knew that Pale Rider was one of the top players in GGO's Japanese server. Which put them on Deathgun's hit list, in all likely hood. Worse the Death Gun was here. She's fighting much in the same way, she respects him being silent by not banering as she's normally prone to do. She's making use of her Spaz-12 however while it's differn it's auto fire feature lets her get off several rapid blasts when she gets in close. She then as she's firing she stops without warning a lobs both a flash bang and a sticky grenade at Pale Rider. She had to take him down and take him down fast. She is dimly aware of Reker going down and is that Asuna?! No she mustn't get distracted she needs to win this fight.

Amalthea (395) has posed:
    Things have just gone from bad to worse. Officially. Reker disappearing off the Satellite Scan Terminal was cause for worry, Amalie knows the 'unstoppable cyborg supersoldier' knows his game and how to play it, and she knows he wouldn't simply get offed by some other random player in the tournament.
    The instant Kirito's report of Death Gun actually hitting the pro gamer comes through on the radio, the maid's eye widens significantly, and she puts on all the speed she can, sprinting full bore and arriving just after Kanokon, skidding to a halt, breathless and panting. Despite being a game environment, and how her body isn't performing any strenuous activities in the real world, her heart still races, her teeth clench as she pants and rasps, drawing quick and excited ragged breaths.
    "Where is he?!"
    The sound of hooves barely hits her. But they do. The RPng maid is suddenly infinitely more serious than she ever has been, her very demeanor shifting wholly and entirely from the slackabout silly goose to a complete no-nonsense professional soldier, her very body language and stance altering to one ready to go to all out war. A scowling one as her eyes drift-- to Reker's APC.
    Kirito gets a sudden jab on the arm, thumb jerking at the vehicle as she throws herself into the shotgun seat.
    ...
    And then Reker reconnects.
    "Y-... You're still alive, right?" Asked before she remembers her character. "-... A-ah... I mean..."
    This is suddenly IMMENSELY AWKWARD.
    "I-I knew he was an unstoppable super soldier, Death Gun's bullet must have hit his shields, which recharge after Reker takes a few breaths crouching behind a waist high wall!"
    ...
    Cue nervous french maid laugh.
    "H-hon hon hon hon~..."

Kirito has posed:
    A properly cooked grenade with just the right timing in midair is devastating. Although EISEn is blinded as well, she'll only take a single solid shot to the side from the shotgun. Pale Rider cannot move mid-leap though - and this is why her tactic works. Unable to see what's coming, he's oblivious to the sticky grenade. Pale Rider lands atop the opposite support tower, standing stalwart... and only notices what's stuck to him after a beep. Once half-second of panicked tensing later - BOOOOOM!

    And Pale Rider's corpse hits the Iron Bridge's pavement, hard. DEAD

Kirito has posed:
    SATELLITE SCAN:
    DARK WIND is still in the western prairies.
    DYNE is a kilometer south of DARK WIND.

    STERBEN's location is still unknown apart from what was reported about his moving towrds the city on horse.

Arthur Lowell has posed:
    Arthur returns to the stage with another corpse-gib from those rockets. A third head, under one arm. His teeth are gritted. Alright, he has to work with what he's got. Death Gun is heading north from the bridge according to the data he's seeing from other Gatecrashers. He's got a vehicle, the others don't; the gang won't be catching him. He starts swearing, repeatedly, under his breath. He can think of one more method and one more route to take. But this is gonna be a bad one. He grits his teeth, finds a third pipe, and sets up his next trophy of sorts. He's back on the stage crossing his arms as his magic remote-operates the amphitheatre's systems. A camera displays Arthur in a striking arrangement with the three trophies behind him. He sets up another broadcast.

Sinon (649) has posed:
Reker is certainly going to have a story to tell on the way, but it will need to be 'on the way', because Death Gun is making tracks. He has to be pursued, or the trail will go cold, and from there anything could happen.

    Sinon makes a soft wailing noise as Kirito shoulders her, and for a moment it almost seems as if it pains her to be seperated from Hecate. But, but-- Reker is here, and Kirito Sinon Kanokon Amalie, she is, she is among, she is among...


    They'll have to board the APC. Kirito goes with Sinon, staying close to her, in a grim parody of the way they first drove for fun and exhilaration in Glocken.

     The call goes out. No matter what has been happening before, now priority is finding and catching Death Gun, who is unfortunately a moving target and doing his absolute best to evade what, at this time, is practically all the remaining competitors in the contest. Because the Gatecrashers are so thoroughly scattered across the 10km wide island of ISL Ragnarok, simply 'converging' is not as easy a task as it might sound, even with the potential to take discarded rental tricycles and make one's way to the same place Death Gun is headed- the central city, moving towards profoundBadass, who has been very much making himself a target. It is not helped by the fact that this in itself is a run-and-gun situation, as if the incredible odds have only heightened his desire for murder and mayhem. During this frantic pursuit, it is very likely that things explode, trees are flattened, and huts and even buildings may collapse.

    "I cant shoot... My fingers wont move. I cant... cant fight anymore."
    "NO, YOU CAN! THERE'S NO ONE WHO CAN'T FIGHT! THERE'S ONLY THOSE WHO GIVE UP ON FIGHTING!"

    And that is how, as the chase goes on, Sinon takes out Dark Wind, sniping them on the move and thereby saving them from the killing bullet.


    Eventually, however, through serendipity or design, or perhaps the grim reaper disappearing through a huge explosion, the trail wavers. On the satellite scans, Death Gun- a glowing blip by the handle of 'Sterben'- disappears... in the vicinity of that self same ampitheatre.

    This ampitheatre is near the large river flowing out of the city, the same one that the bridge crossed over. In keeping with the feeling of the setting, ampitheatre and boats alike are mostly in ruins, with many of the ships wrecked or half-sunken, and there are a mix of classical and modern ships made of iron and timber here. Whereas the ampitheatre crackles with makeshift light and energy, some of the boats are Imperial Japanese Navy, and some would not look out of place in a pirate movie.

    The only course of action that seems logical is to converge on this location, the riverside ampitheatre, for a final confrontation. Strength in numbers. And as it happens, it becomes obvious that 'Sterben' is not moving from this location.

    The APC arrives first, but Sterben is nowhere to be found.

    In order to deny him at least a little information, it would be best to split up and look through the area. As Sinon is still very much a broken girl, they beg some 'alone time', whereupon Kirito, Asuna and Sinon hide out in a ruined ship to recover their wits and patch themselves up.

    As the minutes tick by, it becomes obvious that Death Gun is somewhere in this shipyard, preparing for a final showdown. But will it be a last stand, or a death god's harvest?

Arthur Lowell has posed:
    Those remaining decaying holoscreens in the central city, and even far beyond, flicker to life again. Large and small, the screens show off the view of Arthur Lowell, in various locales, and even broadcast to the spy satilite terminals for easy viewing. He is framed dramatically in the amphitheatre. All the lights that still work in the facility are active, making it an obvious beacon. It sits, plainly, nestled on a pier on the southern end of the city. He has three heads, stolen from the players who entered the city. KAEEEEDE, Blackwood, and MUSKETEER X are all on display, though it's not particularly gory given the damage indicators at the base of their necks. Arthur looks incredibly determined, and yet, he still needs to keep up the theatrics, and not tip his hand that he knows what Death Gun's threat truly is. He has to play dumb. Luckily, he's very good at that. He has something to draw Death Gun to here specifically.

Arthur Lowell has posed:
    "ALRIGHT CHUMPS, welcome back to the PROFOUND BADNESS SHOW." He declares with a harsh tone. "That's THREE LUCKY CUSTOMERS, huh? Look at THAT, and not a SCRATCH ON ME, I'm fucking INVINCIBLE." He says, pounding a hand into the opposite palm. "Not a GODDAMN ONE OF YOU can lay a HAND on me." He has to pretend he doesn't know what Death Gun's threat is, and he has to also make himself a big target. Who kills in a videogame? People who want to show power, one thinks. "So it looks like if any of you were PLANNING on BEATING my HIGH SCORE, you sure aren't gonna get your SHOT. You're RUNNING OUT OF TORSOS, kids, and BEFORE YOU KNOW IT, I'll have MORE KILLS here than ANYONE." He has to threaten Death Gun's quarry; make it apparent that if Arthur isn't taken out of the fight, Death Gun won't have anyone here /to/ kill. But Arthur has yet more rambling aggression to levy.

Arthur Lowell has posed:
    "You wanna know my SECRET? You wanna know my GIMMICK?" Arthur says, aggressively approaching the camera. "You wanna know what gives ME the REAL POWER?" He holds up one hand... And then bites, viciously, into one of his fingers. Not enough to seriously wound, but enough to draw blood, real human blood rather than digital damage indicators. He displays the blood proudly, without shame, and holds up his fist while it trickles down, before pointing dramatically at the camera. "So if any of YOU sons of bitches think you can TAKE ON the REAL GODDAMN DEAL? Come and GET IT. Southern side of the CITY. AMPHITHEATRE on the PIER. I'll add you to my SCORE on LIVE TV."

    The guaranteed opportunity for a real kill, regardless of his fancy methods. The other players will back off, if any remain. None of them would WANT to kill a real person. Death Gun, however, will inevitably see it as Arthur tipping his hand and stupidly showing off. And that's the plan.

    The displays deactivate. And Arthur waits.

Arthur Lowell has posed:
    Arthur quietly, wordlessly, and motionlessly activates his GATE magic. He will send out GATES to those who lack VEHICLES or SPEED necessary to get to the fight. Glowing green spirographic portals will appear after a minute or two of delay to set up; anyone wishing to fight DEATH GUN and who lacks the vehicular means to get to the pier amphitheatre in time is encouraged to leap through to an arbitrary point at the ambush location.

Karian Icefang has posed:
    Karian pushed the 'borrowed' tricycle he took to the absolute limit. Death Gun had gone far enough, and allfather as his witness, the 'reaper' fell here. Perhaps somewhere in the back of the Wolf Lord's mind, he felt fear. Fear of a pair of bullets striking him and sending him to whatever awaited him. But the trip allowed him time to quiet those voices. Iria would hear him intoning prayers of protection for everyone in the gatecrashers to remain safe, even if it cost him everything. As desert turned to city, he made a note to watch his corners, and beware of snipers. He had no words as he continued to the ampitheatre, letting the actions soon to be done speak volumes.

Reker (631) has posed:
    Hey Reker does appear to still be alive. He looks at Amalie as she asks him if he's alive, and gives her a thumbs up, "I'll tell you all about it later. For now we have to go!" He moves as quick as he can to get to his vehicle, which has been waiting nearby. He dives into the driver's seat, and lets anyone else nearby pile in.

    The chase is on, as they rush to the amphitheater. It's going to be a big showdown, but one Death Gun against all of the Gatecrashers, they should definitely have the upper hand.

    "My advice to you all, don't let him shoot you. I don't really know what the hell happened when he hit me, but I think if I wasn't an Elite it would have finished me off."

Xiaomu (707) has posed:
"Our job is not to lay down our lives for our allies; our job is to make that son of a bitch Death Gun lay down *HIS* life for ..." Kanokon trails off with a shrug, "Whatever he thinks he's fighting for. So yeah -" She nods to Reker. "- not gonna let him shoot me either. Good luck, everyone."

The APC reaches the amphitheater; Kirito, Sinon, and Asuna hole up somewhere to help nurse Sinon's mind back into a relatively intact pieces; Kanokon checks her ammo supply, checks her grenade count, checks the knife she collected from Subitilizer, and heads into a building selected seemingly at random. If she were geared for sniping she might be taking high cover somewhere; as it is, the best she can do is hole up somewhere that should allow a reasonable chance of getting the drop on Death Gun. Unless HE'S a sniper - and when Felidae Z was punked, it was at close range, so that seems unlikely - he'll have to go into the amphitheater proper to target Arthur; that gives Kanokon and the other Gatecrashers a slim window of opportunity to intercept Death Gun and shut him down cold. If push comes to shove, they can avenge Arthur's untimely death and keep the sociopath from getting away, but better if the trail of bodies stops before Arthur is added to it.

Either way, as a gamer, Kanokon has *no idea* how Death Gun could possibly turn his back on the juicy, neon-illuminated target that Arthur's set himself up as. So she's pretty confident this is going to work.

Iria (215) has posed:
    Karian and Iria get lucky, as there are a pair of 'tricycles' on hand. As Iria revs hers up and begins to zoom after Karian, her face shows the fiercest of all scowls. "I can't believe this could happen. No one lives after they mess with the wrong bounty hunter!" She says, teeth gritted and feeling more anger than when Zeiram 'killed' her brother.

Asuna (9) has posed:
The group moves as a whole, and eventually Asuna finds herself tucked into a ship with Kirito and Sinon. Asuna brushes her hair, leaning down next to the other girl, her brown eyes wide and worried, before she gives in to her instincts, placing her palms against her cheeks so she can turn her face to stare at her.

"Sinon." She says, her voice soft. "I don't know exactly where you are, but I know I have been somewhere similiar to you. Watching, waiting, sure death was coming for me. It was all I could do to not watch someone strike down someone I loved, and I broke everything - all the rules I had followed, I'm pretty sure I even broke the laws of physics-" Kirito probably knows where she's going- "Because I couldn't let my fear control me, not when it was I and everyone I've loved at the risk of letting it do so. I had to step forward into my future, and that's what you're about to do. Show him that he doesn't scare you, even if he does - so take my hand, it'll be alright."

She then glances at Kirito, nodding at him. "Trust me. Friendship does wonders. So does love..." She steps out, pulling Sinon with her, and hopefully with Sinon pulling him.

She checks something, then smiles, her lips curving dangerously. "Now if you'll excuse me, I have something I need to do before I come back to join you. I haven't had enough fun here yet." Asuna releases her hand, before she vaults up onto the ship, gaining speed and height before she reaches the highest point on it. She spots Dyne in the diistance, and smiles. She sheathes her sword, pulling out a pair of dual SMGs before she waits... and waits... and when Dyne passes the ship, she vaults off of it, landing neatly in a three point crouch. "Hey." She says, to get Dyne to turn around, letting off a quick pair of shots.

She then takes off back towards the final showdown. Sorry, Dyne - you had to go, but Asuna's got things to do, and she's not taking any chance of interference.

Amalthea (395) has posed:
    All through the ride in the shotgun seat, Amalie is preparing herself. Mentally, physically, rifling through her inventory. Her eye strays to Sinon, the girl's internal turmoil is written on her like bold letters on a page. Briefly. Ever so briefly, her eye narrows when there's speak of being unable to fight.
    "What happened. You were so eager to give me the clean sweep when I smiled in a firefight. I thought you wanted to become stronger." She asks. Though the maid does relent when Sinon takes down Dark Wind, one hand setting on the sniper's shoulder.
    Okay, she has a basic plan for not getting shot, it's very simple as she readies her shield.
    "I'm not afraid to get between someone else and his bullets. If anyone needs to get behind my shield at any time, just do it." It's damn near impossible to tell if that's just roleplay bravado or not, but the serious look on her face says it probably isn't, before she sighs. "Don't scare us like that, I was worried." She does aside to Reker.

Kirito has posed:
    Somewhere in ZASKER HEADQUARTERS, dark, shadowy figures who will not be named are staring at their monitors right now. Staring, and facepalming.

    Kirito does what he can during the APC ride to cheer up Sinon, with Asuna's help, but he ends up departing from the group for just a while with the two girls.

    AT THE SHIP GRAVEYARD-AMPHITHREATRE-PIER:
    Light ripples atop a ruined wooden ship drifting in the waters near the pier. Death Gun is once again revealed for all to see, gazing down at Arthur and his trophies.

    "The real deal. The man with the broom. From the land of swords." Another gout of steam hisses from behind the mask.

    Eerie red eyes gaze down at Arthur and everyone else who's assembling.

    "You can't stop me. You don't have the power. False trophies is all you display. Real. Virtual. Code. Blood. My bullet makes no distinction... ALL will fall to Death Gun."

    He seems strangely undeterred by how BIZARRE Arthur's gesticulations were. Real blood? In a virtual game? How?

    The lure, however, has worked out.

    -- Elsewhere...
    Kirito's full speech will be saved for another time, another place. It's not today's story... but a few words are quite important. "I haven't gotten over anything. Even now I'm terrified of going out there. ... But that's why I keep moving forward and fighting. I can't stop until this is finally over with for good. Backing out now means saying everything I've tried to accomplish, struggle hard to prove, was all a pointless lie."

    While Asuna goes after Dyne - and the startled 'cowboy' is taken down with only a few yells of protest - Kirito emerges and dashes out towards the gathering where Death Gun's showed up. he shouts up towards the murderer...

    "It's all other, Death Gun. All of us will have that avatar torn to bits in no time. And the virtual division has the the real names and addresses linked to the avatar names of every SAO survivor. It's game over. Your name back then is all I need to have you arrested! So do us a favor. Log out and turn yourself in right now."

    DEATH GUN's eyes flash red again. He's heard laughing shortly at the gathering. "Then I've nothing to fear. You don't know my name, Black Swordsman. Think back to that day..."

    Kirito flinches rather visibly.

    "Yes. That day when you cut loose and struck down two lives with that ferocious swordsmanship of yours! The you of then would shake his head at that pathetic Vorpal Strike... you don't know my name..."

    STERBEN reaches into his cloak, and draws forth what seems to be an incredibly long, thin bayonet. It closely resembles an estoc. In his other hand is the Type 54 'Black Star,' the one that put Reker out for a few minutes...

    "Because you didn't want to hear it! Now... let's see that murderous frenzy from you once more. You'll have no choice. Once your allies start falling like flies!"

    Death Gun doesn't open fire. Instead he drops down to ground level swift as a ghost. He cuts across the distance in no time at all, zipping past people like a bolt of lightning. Gunfire and fierce, polished thrusts with that needle-like blade ring out for everyone.

    And these sting if they hit. Each bullet, each stab, bypasses any protection FullDive gives against pain. The pain is REAL, and each blow brings it with a cold, gripping sensation, like a skeletal fist of ice clenching around one's heart.

Sinon (649) has posed:
There's a lot to think about. Once they disembarked from the APC, and went towards that ruined ship, in the darkness, dripping, with water and rust all around them- Sinon, Kirito and Asuna had a lot to talk about. But that time has passed.

    It has become clear and obvious what the issue with the mysterious Sinon is. As a sniper, she gathers her kills and practices her sniping techniques. One day, should she win the BoB, the Asada Shino in the real world will be surpassed by that 'real strength'. The fear of guns would disappear, and she could begin a normal life.

    But... unknowingly, she had thought that she had already seperated herself into two seperate existences, 'Shino' and 'Sinon'. The strong Sinon and the weak Shino. But Sinon in the game still had the weaknesses of the person in the real world.

    If someone were ever to look in on the three of them, they woukd see her holding hands with Kirito and Asuna.

    And she emerges into the fight, with Death Gun- with Sterben.

    "...let's fight together, one last time. I want to look at my own memory and crime, and build on from there. Maybe this was the moment I have always been waiting for."

    It's time to find a place to set up. Time to move from shadow to the light beyond. Time to endure pain and defeat her demons. Time to begin the sniping.

    Time to see the bullet lines.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhTBYn1vJTA
    Masterplan - Sail On

Karian Icefang has posed:
    Karian had to admit, he hadn't prepared for an estoc. The chill reminds him that this was a battle for lives, but perhaps he, much like arthur was, could be a distraction. He locks his good eye towards the ampitheatre, grinning. "Fighting straight to the death. For once, I feel the urge to give you an inch of respect. A lesser man would be afraid..." He then raises his voice, letting it echo out. "But I am no lesser man! I do not fear death, but you shall FEAR ME, FOR I AM FEAR INCARNATE! FIGHT ME, DEATH GUN! YOU ACT LIKE A REAPER, BUT FACE AN ANGEL OF DEATH! CLAIM YOUR TITLE PROPER!"

Asuna (9) has posed:
Asuna doesn't announce herself. Screw that. Screw this, screw this whole experience, why has she had to live through three life or death games likes this.

(She might be a little bitter.)

She apepars out of nowhere nearby Death Gun, her SMGs firing.

Tomoe has posed:
Eisen was not expecting her manoeuvre to get him out but it seems that she got lucky. Still it worked, she threw Pale Rider off their game. Either way she sees the explosion and sees the body hit the bridge hard. He's out of the game and ironically he's safe now from what ever Deathgun might have been planning. She doesn't pause longer than to reload her weapon.

The Red headed gunner is moving quickly to catch up with the rest of the party. She takes a moment to open her inventory and checks the map as the update is given. She then puts the scanner away and summons her off road cycle. It takes shape she hops on and takes off to the pings that are on there.

She's shivering as she goes, she's afraid she has no idea what's going to happen. She's scared she thought she'd got over what happened but that damn laugh the tree and everything else is playing through her mind as she's closing in on the group. She's terrified to be honest, but she can't run. Her squadron is one of the few groups of people aware of what he could do.

At the Fight.

Those fighting Deathgun would hear the roar of a vehicle engine of some sort coming in fast.

Back with Eisen.

She speeds along moving up some ruined section of ship hull and getting some air flying into the skies above the old ship. She looks down and stares down as she guides the bike attempting to drop the bike on Deathgun. She leaps off now shotgun in hand and is opening fire on Deathgun even as she drops.

"I don't care who you were, all that matters is your one of them! Your not getting off or away this time!"

She's open while she's in the air she's going to be a lot easier to hit, but even as she drops she's emptying that shotgun and it's not all buckshot it's a mix of buckshot and sold slug rounds. As for the bike?It will hit and explode on impact in a massive fireball. Eisen will land in a crouch and is now going to pull her side arm and is making ready to open up on Deathgun some more.

"Those eyes! I know those eyes!"

Meanwhile somewhere Else

"Subject one has engaged with the annoy along with a good deal of the others we been watching."

The man looks to the women as his hands danced over the keyboard.

"I know that, this is getting out of hand, the Anomaly is no good for recruitment, too uncontrollable and if this isn't stopped it's going to be a PR disaster and risk exposing the whole operation."

"Yes, it is should we terminate the BoB?"

"No not yet, they may have this handled yet and I want to see how the subject preforms further here."

"Understood."

Arthur Lowell has posed:
    Arthur lets Kirito handle the speechmaking. Kirito knows the stakes better, knows the opposition better too it turns out. It's with a heavy scream that he takes the first thrust though, swearing and crying out. He immediately backs off. The blade deals WAY more pain than it should. Stumbling back, his body flashes suddenly, as if something's affected him on a more intense, mystical level, but it's unclear what it's done, aside from make him cry out even worse.

    Asuna and Kirito are, no doubt, about to move in to strike. Arthur can't let the spray of real blood from his wounds stop him. He draws his BATTLE-BROOM from his Strife Deck, and moves in. The bristles scream with violent whirring, and he uses the club-like weapon in tandem with Kirito and Asuna, with whom he has the most mutual battle experience. His strikes are meant to create openings, to force inopportune blocks, and to lock the blade when he can, but he can't do anything to affect that gun at the moment. He also has a keen eye looking for bullet lines; he intends to give Sinon whatever shot she can get, alongside the others. Unfortunately, that's all he can do, in his pained state.

    And, of course, he'll rant, rave, and shout through the pain as he does.

Iria (215) has posed:
    Most might be seeing the villain just as Death Gun. But Iria's not seeing this guy as just Death Gun. She's envisioning him as a reincarnation of Zeiram. And when you're envisioned as Zeiram, you'd better watch out. Because Iria's got a death wish against you. When the time finally comes to confront Death Gun, Iria's teeth are gritted so hard that they could crack if pushed any harder. Her scowl is deeper than anything one could imagine. And boy when she's angry, you better watch out!

    "YOU'VE GONE FAR ENOUGH!" Iria screams furiously, breathing quickly. "YOU'RE GONNA PAY FOR ALL YOU'VE DONE! NOW DIE!" She opens fire with her rifle, yelling a battle cry.

Xiaomu (707) has posed:
How did he get past her? Kanokon only lets herself wonder briefly as she steals back out of her hiding place, what she thought would be a hunting blind; her real senses and awareness don't really pay off in a virtual environment, even if her combat skills *do*. What's important is that Death Gun has revealed himself - the battle has been joined, and it's her job to support her allies in taking him down.

More than seven centuries old, the sage fox who plays as Kanokon has long memories of a world where guns didn't exist, where gunpowder was used more for celebrations than for violence. But the basics of hunting are more familiar to her than language; long before Xiaomu was named by a friendly Buddhist abbot, the huli jing had skulked through forests and fields, seeking prey with which to stave off hunger and pave the road to the next day's meal.

Those old instincts still serve her well, in work and play alike. Don't allow prey or predator to spot you, by eye or ear or nose; if you're lucky enough to have allies, don't distract them from their roles in a joint hunt. Get closer but don't rush; if you're detected, prey will flee, predator will pounce, and your hunt will be wasted, even if your life isn't.

Kanokon stifles a grin as she hears Karian and Arthur and Iria blowing their stacks to draw Death Gun's attention, or just to vent their fury. She doesn't rush - but neither does she dawdle. She just needs to get close enough ...

She hunkers down behind one last chunk of rubble to pull out a grenade, withdraw the pin, hold the spoon with a finger. She listens; she glances around the edge of her cover, just briefly.

And she throws the grenade, aimed to avoid her friends while still catching Death Gun within the explosion's range. The grenade doesn't have to kill him on its own - but if it hurts him, makes him react, then that creates an opening for her allies.

And she listens for the reaction.

Reker (631) has posed:
    Reker is still alive. And he's going to make his presence known to Death Gun in a very particular way. Their target is focused on so many people at once, all of the Gatecrashers closing in on him. Reker has moved around the battleground, ahead of where Death Gun is rushing to. He has to time this just right or he'll miss, and he can't miss. Not now.

    He takes a deep breath and closes his eyes, remembering the pain and the visions he got after that shot from the Black Star. That won't happen again, not this time. He opens his eyes, and presses his back against a wall. Death Gun will be there in moments.

    Reker pulls something out of his inventory, a small black cylinder, and snaps it out into a long baton. The other hand holds a very dangerous looking combat knife. He swings the baton out at the moment Death Gun passes the wall he is pressed against, trying to take the man off his feet with a blwo to the throat, as the Marine steps out into view.

    "Hey motherfucker. Guess who's back?" He twirls the knife in his hand and waits for an attack to come, knowing Death Gun will want to strike at him. The radio is warning him that Death Gun is causin real pain from the attacks. He knows that far too well already, "Didn't think you could take me down with your weak ass Chinese knockoff of a shitty Soviet pistol, did you? It'll take a lot more than that to kill me." Reker earned his Confidence Elemental title for a reason, but he's really scared that his meatspace body wouldn't be able to take another shot from that weapon. He just can't let that fear show through, not now. It's too close to end game.

Sinon (649) has posed:
    This is what it means; this multiverse.

    Sinon feels lighter, different, better. She will overcome this here and now. She will overcome...

    The pain. She can feel the pain, the unnaturalness, the -

    Sinon has been used to the cold for a long time.

    She has to find a way to utilize her talents, or she will be a burden. And she refuses to be a burden. So, as the others engage the dead spirit-

    No, she thinks. You're not a ghost. You're not a death god. You are a man in a mask, with red optical filters, and underneath that mask is another male avatar.

    That is the thought that lingers in her head as she scales theatre ticket-booths, skipping le parkour up a ship's rigging and onto a mast.

    She can get in position here. She can do something. She can see-


    It. That <<black star>> handgun, her nightmare, and--

    For a moment, it all falls away. Nothing can change immediately, and Shino feels the coldness, the tightening in her stomach, the urge to shut her eyes, to turn away--

    "I thought you wanted to become stronger."

    I will, she thinks. I will. I will. I have... I have... I will defeat him.

    No...

        I will help you all defeat him.

    And Sinon squeezes the trigger without even waiting for the reticule to shrink...

    And the Hecate II roars with a jet of flame as its anti-tank bullet fires straight at the <<black star>> handgun.

Amalthea (395) has posed:
    There he is.
    Stepping out of the APC, Amalie's expression is one of frosty antipathy as she simply trains her LMG on Death Gun. Upon Sterben. But she doesn't seem to flinch in the least when he reveals what Kirito had done back upon SAO, that lone eye trailing to the youth and lingering for a moment before she lines her sights.
    The perfect maid is subtle. Seen when needed, but not heard.
    She has no words, for they are not hers to give, clamming up shortly after her vague pep talk with Sinon. She simply...
    Gets shot.
    That speed catches her completely off guard, a sudden gasp, her eye shoots wide open as she's caught in the act of getting her shield up, the bullet whizzes right by it and punches her in the gut.
    The maid's eye glazes briefly with pain. Pain she didn't expect. Pain that looks over dramatic and roleplayed.
    But no, she feels like she literally has eaten a gunshot, heart beginning to race. In that panicked, confused, moment of trying to understand why, her reaction is simply instinct and honed reflex.
    Every single ounce of her STR stat is poured into the completely automatic act of swinging her ballistic shield open like a door, intending to slam Death Gun and off-balance him for someone else to get a better attack in, while she staggers backwards, winded and reeling.

Arthur Lowell has posed:
    Arthur rants as he fights. "Listen you son of a bitch, and listen good. Maybe I can't stop you, but I can know you. Maybe I don't know your name, but I know /who/ you are. You're the son of a bitch who counts his score on other people's misery. You're the tremendous piece of shit who can only be happy if meant taking that from someone. You're the worthless fucking garbage who's so empty, so hollow inside, that you've gotta fill it up with other people's blood, you gotta fill it up by having power over other people. You know what? Fuck you, maybe you'll kill me." Arthur shouts and raves as his wounds spray painfully and his strikes rain down with faltering force.

    "But what you're going after is something you're never gonna find, you're never gonna reach it, you're never gonna have it. You kill everyone and there's nobody left to fill in the cracks of your shit worth, and all of it drains away. But you don't get to go that far, because maybe you'll kill me, but you're not logging off in anything but handcuffs you ignominous skullfetish motherfucker." He goes to lock blades with Death Gun and aggressively push him if he can. "I'll kick your ass offline or on! But you're only gonna kill me behind a /mask/? How much is your power worth if you're gonna hide forever? /Nothing/!"

Kirito has posed:
    Kirito offers Sinon the most confident and reassuring smile he can manage in the brief span of time he has before Death Gun goes on the warpath!

    There's no plan and no order behind the wraith's advances. He blitzes first for Kirito and the two clash for a few moments. Kirito's blazing blade sparks and sizzles as it parries the Estoc again and again, but Kirito's quickly overtaken and stabbed a dozen times all over his extremities. Thankfully, PROFOUNDBADNESS is right there to batter the deathblows away at the last moment.

    It's true. Death Gun's technique is much more polished than Kirito's. Will the Black Swordsman still manage...? The boy screams briefly, flinching back, but doesn't curl up.

    "You've taken in too much of the real world's rotten air." The masked man states, voice reverberant with triumph. "Your sword arm's grown slack, your blade has rusted. What a pathetic show, Kirito. I hoped for better. How far the legendary solo player has fallen. He needs a mob like this to face me!"

    Kirito pants, but his POWER SLASH is enough to force Death Gun to backflip away from him and Arthur. Spotting Asuna behind him, he manages to twist around in midair and dodge half of her bullets. But plenty land, depleting his HP.

    Then a BIKE drops on him... ALMOST. He ghost-skids sideways just in time and is only caught by the explosion. More of that HP's shaved off by it, and EISEN's shotgun blasts. He's an incredibly dodgy AGI build and it speaks leagues of his skill to be able to manage against this many top-tier opponents, but he's swiftly losing health.

    This doesn't stop him from rapidly making the sign of the cross and firing a bullet towards EISEN as she falls, when she's most vulnerable - nobody can change their trajectories mid-air!

    That shot will HURT, if it hits. Just as with Reker.

    But a BULLET LINE falls across his sight. DEATH GUN reacts instantly. He has no time to prepare his sniper rifle with everyone around him. He simply fires a few rounds from the Black Star straight for Sinon. Most of them go wide...

    But one zips past her own bullet with a millimeter of clearance and shatters straight through her scope. The most unlikely shot from that pistol, at that distance...

    But this gambit puts his own weapon in jeapordy. Hecate's ANTI-TANK rounds OBLITERATE the Black Star and Death Gun's arm with it. The limb and weapon both derezz colorfully, shattering into pixels.

    A few shots from Iria peg him. More from Karian. Yet somehow that Hit Point meter is several times more full than it OUGHT to be. A dull red glow briefly emanates from beneath those robes...

    The Voice of Doom answers Arthur and Karian. "Such bravado. Come then! Let's see you try and do just tha--- WHARFG--" He's cut off by a CLUB-CLOTHESLINE from Reker and a MEGA-SHIELD BASH from Amalie, which sends him tumbling like a ragdoll over the ground. Death Gun skids but recovers... just in time to hurl himself partially way from Kanokon's grenade. He fails to fully escape the blast... he's now peppered with red marks of all shapes and sizes, now at 2/3rd health. He seems to have been utterly disoriented by this turn of events too. He gets back to his feet but just a bit slowly.

    And he chases right for Asuna, moving to engage her with a flurry of thrusts that would make any rapier user proud! "If I cannot kill Hecate, then the White Flash do just as well!"

Xiaomu (707) has posed:
And there's the reaction. It's not quite what she expected - at worst, Kanokon figured Death Gun might come after her directly, and might even be SNEAKY about it - but it's a reaction, and at that, it's one which she can capitalize on it.

So she does exactly that.

Kanokon glances over the upper edge of her rubble-cover, then pops up further to rain bullets on Death Gun from where she is now, firing both handguns in a rapid series of shots. This is a technique she's honed in the real waking world, so adapting it to virtual reality isn't that difficult as long as her in-game stats permit it; she also isn't mixing it up with the kind of acrobatics she would resort to if she were attacking while simultaneously being under attack herself. With Death Gun's full offense focused on trying to cut down Asuna, Kanokon is free to empty her clips at him.

She does so. Then she breaks from her cover, flinging a grenade to cover her reload ... and she resumes firing, this time while running, angling to make sure that Asuna *doesn't* get caught in her line of fire as Death Gun tries to run her down with his own blade.

She's not snarking or taunting or even saying a word; Death Gun *HAS* to go down, and she has nothing to say to him as long as the threat is still active.

Karian Icefang has posed:
    Karian looks over and takes off like a shot. His Winchester roars, somehow the old school rifle firing like a true semi-auto. "YOU CAN NOT STAND AGAINST US, DEATH GUN! WE WILL BE YOUR END, REAPER! IN THE NAME OF ALL YOU'VE SLAIN, I CAST YOU DOWN!!!" He roars out. It's truely clear that he wasn't just Role-playing now. Of note was the fact he was moving and STILL firing, somehow letting the bullet lines get as good as they could. Once the rifle was dry, those pistols pop out and bark their own sermon of lead. Finally, he got as close as possible, and holstered one gun. If at all possible, he would engage in a mix of melee and gunplay.

Iria (215) has posed:
    Even in her digital form, Iria still has a lot of agility. She manages to keep evading as much as necessary, before she draws her rifle again and sets the switch to full automatic. "You can't hold out forever!" She yells, draining the rest of her clip, before switching to her next best weapon. A pair of pistols. Sure they may not pack as much punch, but she has lots of ammo for them, and this is a chance to prove that she'd make a great John Woo star!

    Seriously, Iria has decided to use her dual pistols to prove her point. That she has had enough crap and she's going to make Death Gun pay. "The game is over for you, Death Gun! You're gonna face the ultimate penalty for all the crap you've pulled on us and everyone else!" She yells out another battle cry then opens fire. "I WON'T STOP UNTIL YOU'VE STOPPED FOR GOOD!"

Reker (631) has posed:
    Death Gun picked the wrong game to fuck with. This is Reker's game. Reker's life. He's going to make sure to kick Death Gun out of it, and then if this guy is lucky, Reker won't go into wander mode and kick his ass in the real world.

    The baton is dropped and the knife is thrown full force through the air. He'll have to congratulate Sinon on that shot next time he talks to her, but for now he's going to finish Death Gun off.

    The Devastator comes to bear again, this time bringing the full fury of the incindiary rounds. Maybe he can burn up Death Gun's cloak before he can use it again. At the very least he'll make Death Gun feel the pain of the fire that's going to engulf him as Reker empties the magazine.

Asuna (9) has posed:
Asuna murmurs something into her radio as she hisses at the sudden approach of Death Gun. Those eyes, the mask, the face, the very name of this creep is on her fingers even as, in a dextrous move, her beam saber flares to life in his grip, their swords meeting in a clash. She dances with him, and it's like watching Asuna fight Zekken in the depths of Alfheim Online, only much less magical and elfin and much more real life dangerous and potentially heartbreaking. She slides around him, her grip coming up as she goes low, dropping down to a crouch to pull her pistol out.

GGO was never really made for sword battles, after all, and the fact that there's at least two beam sabers on the field, not to mention Death Gun's special blade that can withstand the beam sabers, means that there's definitely some hell going down. Asuna backs off of him in a series of swift backflips in an attempt to get a gauge on him with her pistol, and she manages, her gun going off seconds too late- as he pierces her through with his blade, before withdrawing. Asuna stares at him, her breath gurgling as her hp bar drops critically low. Someone could throw a rock at her and drop her, and it seems like that is Death Gun's intention.

After all, why take-

"Si...non..." Asuna breathes, before collapsing to her knees in front of the evil, evil man, opening him up for a perfect Shot.

Sinon (649) has posed:
The large scope of the Hecate II disappears without a trace. Were Sinon looking into it, she would be dead in an instant... so it's a good thing she wasn't. The bullets graze her shoulder, disappearing behind-- but Sinon's beloved <<silent assassin>> has taken a mortal hit for now.

    She utters a silent apology to it, the weapon which has become as much a part of her as Elucidator and Lambent Light for their wielders.

    But there's no more time. Everything is coming down to the wire.

    And Sinon... stops thinking.

    She sees Asuna fall.

    Sees Asuna fall, and...

    No, she thinks. Not permissable.
    Not permissable.

    It feels, at that moment, like something is struggling inside of her. There's a feeling... a feeling... like something trying to break out. Like a new life beginning. Like ... heat. Like desire. A blazing bullet, shot into her not to harm, but to--

    And it... all comes together for her.

    She takes a step, and she's walking on the ropes, held by momentum, angles and velocity planned out in her head. It all seems so simple.

    Hecate is ruined, but she can still go on. Sinon takes a step, and enters empty air, springing. She turns, holding her <<PGM Ultima Ratio>> sniper rifle out.

    In the moment before he can deliver a coup de grace to Asuna, Sinon sees him clearly. Perfectly planned. Angle absolute.

    As she drops down--

    Sterben will see a green tracer of light, see a target on him, delivered at the perfect position.

    Hecate cannot fire, but it doesn't matter. All he needs to think is that he is about to be hit with a nigh-unavoidable perfectly directed sniper shot. This attack via prediction line is an illusion, containing all of Sinon's experience, inspiration, insight and fighting spirit.

    Do not waste this last attack... the Phantom Bullet!

Tomoe has posed:
Tomoe has been going for her gun, she's fast but not fat enough. Death Gun got the drop on her this time. She's quite agile herself but wells hes' caught and the shot hits. She lets out a scream and her HP bar's going down quite a bit from the hit and she's not bleeding yet the pain. No her heart somehow it's her heart, she clutches at her chest. Her heart it feels like something is wrong here. Wait is she dying it feels like her life is slipping away from her she collapses managing to utter a single word.

"Klein...."

Klein, Kirito, Asuna, Sugu, Angil, and so many others. There pain is so much she's on the ground clearly looking like something is very wrong. She seems to go still for now, has she died? No DEAD is showing up, is it just like with with Reker? She doesn't seem to be disconnecting. After a moment her hand twitches and she starts to drag herself to her feet.

"You are ... screwing with my ... family."

She's lose her gun but she's got her long knife and readies it.

"You'd want it this way, so no more guns. Just blades."

She's breathing raggedly she's clearly still feeling the effects of what she was hit with. She also may owe a certain Abstractum a thank you later. Oh there might be an irony from her the blade she's using is one that Death Gun himself put up on the market sometime ago...one he made.

Amalthea (395) has posed:
    This is NIGHTMARISH.
    Amalie is still reeling from her earlier injury, panting and gasping. There's little she can do as Sterben changes targets- as he makes to try and slay Asuna. Try as she might to rise to her feet in the defense of another, the maid can do little, eye widening in horror.
    She only barely catches Sinon's bullet line. But she knows this is down between Sinon and the SAO survivors to get this job done.
    As Eisen draws a blade, there is one thing Amalie can do.
    "EISEN."
    It's mainly to get her attention as the maid pours all her str into throwing her ballistic shield.
    She already opened a trade window and gifted it over.
    "Show us how you got the name Iron Lily."

Arthur Lowell has posed:
    Arthur trusts Asuna to know how to handle herself. Death Gun blasts past Arthur and goes after her, and he doesn't go to get in front of that blade. Asuna can deal with it. She's strong and capable and she's not gonna die at the end of this dude's blade. With this man so focused on Asuna, he'll work on moving in to strike. Tomoe is one he's worked with before. When she lands, Arthur's rushing to get to her side on his way to Death Gun. He helps catch the DEFENDER'S BULWARK and get it into Tomoe's hands. "ON YOUR FEET!" He cries out desperately, grabbing her arm roughly and yanking her up by the shoulder with his free hand. "No time left! Finish him NOW!" He double-checks that she's still got the gear in her hands and attempts to shove her forward to execute her attack!

    And then Arthur, himself. He blasts forward, aggressively, rocket engine's roaring and blades screaming. With one swift motion, he releases the safeties on his BATTLE BROOM. He goes for one heavy swing; the intense gyroscopic and lacerating effects of his broom spikes insanely as he swiftly adjusts his broom's settings...

Arthur Lowell has posed:
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