Limousine
After riding along in the car the Yan Sisters were driving, we arrived at a town.
The map labeled it Philip Town.
It had been dressed in warm colors, the kind of place built to look charming for tourists. The atmosphere didn't hold up under a closer look, though. Buildings were smashed in here and there, pocked with bullet holes and blackened with scorch marks.
"This the place you stashed the loot?"
"Nope. We've still got farther to go."
"We did grab supplies from this town, though!"
The moment we reached the edge of the village, the growl of a motorcycle drifted in from somewhere ahead.
"Yandere! You hear that motorcycle? Is this a sound play?"
"Ian, that's not a sound play."
Is that so? The world of sound play sure ran deeper than I thought.
Either way, something hostile was closing in, so I stuck my head out of the vehicle and trained my sights ahead.
This was it—the moment I'd finally meet the enemy. This one encounter would decide what kind of impression I left on the yandere.
I drew a long breath against the nerves, and that was when a player in the same car shouted in a panic.
"Ian, don't shoot! Same team!"
"Huh? Same team?"
Right then, a player on a motorcycle came weaving out from between the buildings. Same team?
"Remember the two I mentioned? The ones gathering supplies? That's one of them."
She was right. The rider pulled up alongside our vehicle and kept pace without missing a beat.
"Ah—h-hello! Ian!"
"Hey. Hello! Thanks for having me?"
"O-o-of course!"
A shy one, apparently.
I wasn't exactly the type who loved talking in front of strangers either, so I felt a little flicker of kinship.
"Don't be nervous, okay? I'm the one getting help here."
"B-but still..."
"What are you gonna do if you tense up and die? Relax!"
She hesitated for a second, then eased into a more comfortable register and went along with it.
On the way into town, the six of us in the cars had already agreed to drop the formal speech. We were playing a game together—keeping the honorifics going the whole time would've just felt weird.
On top of that, I was the one being carried. Having everyone talk stiff and uncomfortable on my account would've been even stranger.
"How much closer are you trying to get?!"
What was I even supposed to do to get friendlier than this? I already thought this was plenty. If anything, we'd gotten too close too fast.
I'd hoped things would end up like this someday. I just hadn't expected the walls to come down at this speed.
"Ian is seriously so nice. I've been watching the stream this whole time going, wow."
The driver said it with a laugh, like our back-and-forth was the best entertainment she'd had all day.
For the record, this car—Vehicle 1—had four of us in it, and I was in the seat behind the driver. Ahead of us, Vehicle 2 carried three more, and the motorcycle that had joined us in town kept circling around the convoy.
"Am I really that nice?"
"You're telling me you don't know? Does that even make sense?"
"I can't even argue with that..."
They'd roast me all they wanted, then turn around and compliment me like that, and just like that I couldn't even stay mad. I genuinely couldn't bring myself to hate them.
"Chat's over. Hostiles incoming!"
The woman in Vehicle 2's passenger seat called it out. Conversation died in an instant, and everyone snapped into a combat stance.
I swept the surroundings too, hunting for wherever the enemy was coming from.
"Eleven o'clock!"
We were driving toward one o'clock, so I twisted my body toward the diagonal rear. Of all the angles, it was a spot only the driver and I could even answer.
I had my muzzle out the window and trained on the approach when the motorcycle that had been looping around both vehicles kicked up its speed and shot off toward eleven o'clock.
"Uh? I-isn't that dangerous?"
"She's fine."
Fine? We had the numbers. Wouldn't it be better to go together? She couldn't even aim properly like I could—she had to drive at the same time.
I didn't like it. I kept my sights up and ready so I could cover her the second something went wrong.
Bang! Baaang!
My worry turned out to be wasted breath.
A handful of shots, and a knock log popped. One more gunshot later, a kill log followed.
"Holy..."
The motorcycle engine that had faded into the distance swelled back up, and she reappeared from between the buildings.
"Well? Pretty cool, huh?"
"Completely."
She couldn't see it, but I gave her a thumbs-up anyway.
Honestly, it was cool. She hadn't sprayed wild. She'd cut her shots clean and still taken the kill.
If that had been me, I'd have been dumping rounds in every direction and making a mess of it. Part of me wanted to watch from right next to her.
"What? Isn't someone who's good at something just cool?"
It meant they'd put in the work in that field. I thought that was impressive. Even if the field in question was a video game.
"We heading to Ash Forest?"
"Yeah. That's where we piled the loot."
The motorcycle girl answered the driver's question.
I pulled up the map and checked Ash Forest. We were almost there. It was the closest marked location to Philip Town to begin with.
True to the name, the woods on the map were the color of ash—gray and bare, not a single leaf, like the whole place had burned down and never grown back.
Once we reached the forest, the motorcycle girl took point. We'd made it about halfway in when we came to a spot another woman was holding down.
Loot was scattered all around her. This had to be the stash they'd been talking about since earlier.
"Waaait, Ian! Hi there!"
This one had the brightest energy of anyone so far.
"Hey, hello. Please, talk however you want."
"Yeah? I was getting jealous listening to you guys talk anyway!"
Listening to us talk? The distance had to be considerable. How? In-game voice didn't carry that far—it wasn't possible.
The second the motorcycle girl had peeled off in town to take that fight, the connection had dropped. There was no way someone even farther out had been hearing us.
Were they all grouped up somehow?
"Not like that. We're on Discord!"
Her explanation went like this. There was a community for people who played UnCom.
Word had gone up that I was hopping into UnCom, and the people who already watched my stream—or had been curious—decided to queue-snipe in and play with me.
Anyone who landed the snipe joined a Discord room, shared intel, and made a rule to protect me as much as possible.
That was how they'd split early on: a group that dropped with me and held the line, and a group that went to a loot-rich area to gather supplies.
"So it's just the eight of you?"
"Yep. The loot team originally had two more, but they died in a fight."
Were snipe rates always this high? Ten people out of a hundred-player lobby had followed me in.
"We were surprised too. We didn't think this many would actually land it."
"Right? People just kept pouring into the Discord, ahaha!"
In that noisy, cheerful atmosphere, we went through the gathered supplies and finished splitting them up.
Somehow I ended up loaded out in Tier 1 armor and weapons.
"Is it okay for me to take all this? The armor, sure, but I don't think I need a weapon this strong."
"You don't get it. If you can't hit anything, the shots that do land better hit like a truck."
"Exactly! One lucky bullet takes half their health? They're not gonna rush you so easy after that."
Hearing it put that way, I kind of had to agree.
If landing shots was hard, you raised the value of every single one. Was I really going to fire thirty rounds and not hit even once?
Unless I was shooting with my eyes closed, that wasn't going to happen.
"Loot's all split. Shall we move?"
"Where to? The center of the EMP field looks like it's around here. Wouldn't it be better to just hold this spot?"
"You don't get it. What's our biggest advantage?"
Our advantage? That would be a loadout this stacked this early, right? Even a newbie knew that much.
"Wrong."
"Why?"
Don't look at the trees, look at the forest?
"Our biggest advantage is numbers. A full nine people."
We had a lot of people, sure, but why would that... ah.
"This isn't squads, is it."
Right. This was solos. I was alone, and so was every enemy.
We'd been moving together from the start, so for a second I'd slipped and thought we were in a squads lobby.
"So you want to go hunting."
"Obviously! We can't just let numbers like this go to waste!"
The loot girl said it and swung a leg over her motorcycle. Everyone else climbed into the cars, and I took my seat in the back of Vehicle 1 last.
The two motorcycles rolled out first. Vehicle 1, with me in it, followed. Vehicle 2 brought up the rear.
"Nice! This side's all cleaned up!"
We'd left to hunt the remaining players.
The sixty-three people still alive had been dying to us, or dying somewhere else, thinning out one by one. Before I knew it, only seventeen were left.
In that time, we'd lost two of our own. Seven of us remained.
The EMP field had shrunk a lot, and a pack moving together as obviously as we were made for an easy target.
I understood where the yandere were coming from. Every one of them was strong on their own, but what really stood out was how well they covered each other's weak spots.
"Field's gonna close in on this area, so let's dig in here."
"We'll snipe from upstairs. Anything happens, call us immediately?"
Even now, they were slotting into their roles and moving without a hitch.
"Got it. You guys be careful too, okay?"
They grinned at the send-off and headed upstairs—the three who'd picked up Tier 1 and Tier 2 sniper rifles along the way and taken overwatch.
The four of us on the ground floor watched the windows, ready for whoever came.
We were in a two-story house on an American-style residential street, houses lined up on both sides.
Besides us, ten players were still alive, and it had been a while since anyone had heard a gunshot.
I figured the remaining girls out there had probably joined hands the same way we had.
If that was true, it was ten versus seven. We were the ones at a disadvantage. The girls, though, had said it with total confidence.
That we were going to win.
What's scary is I can't even argue with them.
The one who'd ridden a motorcycle from the start and hunted people down on a handful of bullets. The one in the driver's seat who'd toyed with enemies using driving that was somehow both rock-steady and flashy. The one who spotted hostiles faster than anyone. The one who never stopped reviving downed teammates from cover.
Most of them had a level of skill I couldn't copy no matter how hard I tried.
Still, if you asked me whether that was enough to stand up to raw numbers, I couldn't help but tilt my head.
"Incoming! Behind the house dead ahead!"
"Two more inside the house on the left diagonal!"
"Right side's still clear! I'll keep watching it—handle the rest!"
While I'd been lost in my head, the enemy had closed in, and the snipers upstairs—who hadn't let their guard down for a second—had finally spotted them.
So the other side had teamed up.
I tucked in behind a wall and worked the mouse as best I could, trying to pick out a target.
There!
I found one hugging the wall behind the house across from us.
Something I'd learned while playing this game: five hundred meters on a detection skill was a very short distance.
It was great if you were tucked into somewhere tight and safe, like a bunker. In a place this wide, with this much cover to hide behind, detection was basically useless.
Even if I popped it right here, it wouldn't reach the diagonal house, let alone the one across the street.
I checked my rifle's mag and was still turning over what to do when gunfire cracked through the air.
At the same time, rounds punched into the wall with a hard, rattling thud-thud-thud.
It wasn't the one out front, which meant someone in the diagonal house was dumping a rifle at us.
A few heavier reports rolled down from upstairs. Then a log appeared.
I felt my whole body tighten without meaning to. A victory log always felt good, no matter how many times I saw one.
"Nine left!"
"One on the right! They're out in the open!"
I couldn't just sit there staring. Every time the one hiding out front poked their head up, I put rounds downrange.
"I'm trying, okay?!"
That thing I'd thought—there's no way I fire thirty rounds and don't hit even once—had actually happened.
It was fine. My job wasn't to hit people. My job was to keep them from freely taking shots at us.
I clung to that bit of mental gymnastics for all it was worth.
In the meantime, the enemy count kept dropping until only two were left.
Through all of it, we hadn't lost a single person. Someone had gone down once in the middle, but we'd gotten them up immediately and held the seven-person line.
"Huh? Hey—someone's rushing us."
The moment only two players were left besides us, a figure appeared from behind the house on the right diagonal and broke into a sprint.
"I've got them."
One of the snipers upstairs claimed the shot—and in that same instant.
Baaang!
White1876 eliminated ThisIsDinner
Our sniper was dead.