Daredevil Night
"Why on earth are you rolling around on the floor!"
"If I play the fool, maybe they'll let their guard down a little..."
"That doesn't seem like acting at all."
"Huh."
"Can you not straighten yourself out already."
"Yessir!"
"Haah... you certainly answer well enough."
Having finally, finally had her fill of rolling around on the ground, Aso set off at a brisk clip to hunt down the survivors.
"But how on earth are three lighthouses already lit?"
Surely these games were designed so that clearing the escape objectives would take a good long while. And yet here she was, three lighthouses bright, not even five minutes into the match.
"This is exactly why I keep getting toyed with!"
"I would like to say that has nothing to do with it."
This time, though, I could hardly deny it. Still, she was veteran enough to earn the title of Survival Fiend, and it showed — she had a practiced eye for cornering Aso, honed to a shine.
There was a delay to account for, so one had to anticipate movements — but who was I, exactly? I could predict a movement a full minute before it happened.
"There. The third tree on the right. Three steps ahead, bear right, drop a little, and grab."
Which meant someone was hiding nearby, biding their time.
"Huh? Yes!"
She stumbled at the sudden order, but carried it out on the spot. At least she did as she was told — small mercies.
"Oh! Oh! Wha—WAAAAH!!"
With a string of unearthly shrieks, Aso fell upon the dragged-out survivor, hammering away while the poor soul, stunned senseless, took the blows and crumpled.
"She looks exactly like primitive man discovering fire."
"What...?"
"But I caught one! For the first time ever! Ah — wait, no? Was it the third time? The fourth time I caught one!"
"After all those countless hours, shouldn't you be grieving that this is all you managed to catch..."
"The viewers say to tell you that they love you."
"Oh, really?!"
"They're all women, though."
"Ah."
"So now, that Survival Fiend? What are we doing with him?"
What fate awaited the Survival Fiend, still writhing in Aso's grip like a freshly landed fish before going limp?
"Heh heh heh heh... BLOOD VENGEANCE!! Die, you wretch!!"
"Ha. Aso has finally lost her mind."
There she was, cackling with unhinged glee, jamming her face right up against the survivor's and contorting it into the strangest expression imaginable.
"That is enough. Another lighthouse has been lit."
"Ah! Yes sir!"
Leaving the Survival Fiend to dangle from a rope caught on a tree — a tidy enough arrangement — we pressed on toward the nearer of the two remaining lighthouses.
"I hear footsteps."
To the left, roughly twenty paces away.
"Footsteps? You can hear those?"
"Do not judge me by your own standards. Left of center — grab them."
Now that I thought about it, there was no need to predict anything through the broadcast at all. I could simply catch them through the sounds bleeding in over the voice channel. Naturally — anyone creeping closer while making that much racket deserved what was coming.
"Huh? Why did I catch this guy?"
"I am not something to be distributed about the place."
"Three left now. But are you certain there is no need to worry about the ones you've staked being set free?"
If the last one revived the captured, then everything we'd worked for would come to nothing, would it not?
And yet there was Aso, looking utterly unconcerned.
"Oh, this is a special event, so there's a handicap — revives are disabled. We're fine."
"That is alarming in its own right!"
Revives were disabled, and she was still at this for thirteen hours? No — more to the point, who were these people who'd kept her pinned down for thirteen straight hours?
"What was that?"
Which meant that across eleven hours of perfectly ordinary play, she had not won a single match.
How was that even possible.
"I see... so that is how it is."
So the cause of all this was you, Aso... you hopeless girl! Needlessly digging her heels in when she could have simply tried again another day.
"Let's stake that one somewhere as well and move along."
The sleep deprivation had made her even denser than usual. Haah.
"Yes sir!"
Ah — another lighthouse flaring to life.
Only one remained, and it stood right here, where Aso was planted. We had only to wait for them to come to us.
"Here they come."
Footsteps, and the sound of breathing. Not one set — two.
"A woman and a man. Choose one."
"Huh? Uh — the man!"
Goodness, what boundless energy. Right — the man, then.
"Upward. I have no idea how she's traveling between the trees, but two seconds from now — the right-hand tree, a third of the way up. Reach out and grab."
"One, two — NOW! Hah! What a catch!"
"Goodness, she looks positively delighted. Just how much has this girl suffered, to be that happy over it..."
"As for the other one... behi—"
"Behind?"
CLANG!
"AAAAH!"
"Haah..."
We'd built the atmosphere up far too high — naturally she couldn't react to an ambush. Ah, though with Aso, she'd have failed to react regardless.
"And yet she managed to land a blow. Remarkable."
"Aso is a girl who knows how to improve as well. You would all do well not to dismiss her quite so readily."
"Stake the fallen one somewhere convenient, and then we must catch that last one, mustn't we."
"Uh... yes..."
One good smack to the head, and it seemed her senses had returned to her.
"They do say you fix a machine by hitting it."
Granted, one could hardly call a person a machine — but people, it turned out, worked much the same way.
Plenty of sharp eyes in this crowd, it seemed. Well, I'd only meant it as a joke.
Screams had begun to ring out from all around — though "screams" was putting it kindly. They were more like dying gasps. The staked survivors, it appeared, were being eliminated one by one.
"So she really was handed a handicap..."
"So then, Aso — when is this little game of tag of yours supposed to end?"
"I don't—!"
BONK!
"Aaaaargh... I don't know..."
Well, a chase between a survivor and a killer was always going to end in the killer's victory. My condolences to Aso, who would suffer for the remaining ten minutes.
"In that case, I believe I shall start a game of my own."
"For now, I shall play as a survivor, to learn the rules of the game."
They said the ranks were overrun with players so veteran they'd gone stale — which meant it should prove quite entertaining. I, too, relished pitting myself against human opponents far more than spider-monster abominations. Ah — not that I intended to kill anyone, of course.
"The estimated queue time is remarkably short."
Waiting in a forest clearing where a dozen-odd trees stood, chatting idly with the viewers as the match readied itself—
Donations, was it. I had known the question would come up eventually — just not quite this soon.
"Donations, hmm. My reason for not accepting them is a simple one."
"I stream because I enjoy it — and because I hope that all of you watching now might carry something away from me when you leave. I do not accept money in exchange for your enjoyment. That is all there is to it."
"Ah."
And so, in the end, the donation window was opened.