Rambo (Cute-Girl Version)

Lieutenant Colonel Heat. And the soldiers under his command. The men with their guns raised were, ironically, the ones thrown into confusion.

Did this person have any idea what situation she was standing in? This was the heart of Untouchable's headquarters. Over a dozen soldiers had their weapons trained on her at this very moment, and even if she somehow lucked her way through their gunfire, more men waited beyond them. Yet there she stood before it all, calmly declaring she would take them on with her bare hands. She looked — even by the standards of the genuinely deranged — completely out of her mind.

The newly arrived viewers thought exactly the same thing as her enemies.

The veteran viewers clapped right along, agreeing a hundred percent. Then came the however.

They had watched long enough to know better than anyone just how unhinged she was — but their faith in her abilities ran every bit as deep, so they held off on any hasty verdicts.

"Pardon the indelicate question, but have you been taking any sort of psychiatric medication lately?"

While the newcomers heeded the veterans' advice and settled in to watch, Lieutenant Colonel Heat — who, being a game NPC, had no possible way of reading the chat — spoke up.

"Most of our forces are out on covert operations at present, so the garrison here is thin — but it still numbers in the hundreds."

"A few hundred, huh. That'll take a while to wipe out."

"It is not merely a matter of numbers! Every last man is armed with a firearm and kitted out with military hardware. Do you not see the helicopters and armored vehicles stationed nearby?"

"I see them. So what about them?"

"...I suspect a parrot would make for less absurd conversation."

The dialogue was going nowhere. Lieutenant Colonel Heat realized that any further attempt at persuasion would be pointless, and muttered in sheer disbelief at the impossible nonsense spilling out of Seyul's mouth.

"Even a man wrapped head to toe in heavy weaponry would find it a tall order — and yet she postures about fighting barehanded."

He had pointed out her lack of armament out of pure exasperation, and at that very instant, Seyul broke into a wide, sunny grin.

"Weapons are lying around everywhere. I'll just take them off you."

Take them off — how, exactly? They weren't idiots; they had no intention of standing by and watching her walk off with their guns. Properly enraged by the audacity of it, Lieutenant Colonel Heat drew breath to roar his fury—

—and Seyul vanished.

"...?"

"Sh-she's gone! Where did she go?!"

It was enough to make a ghost weep. A woman whom a dozen guns had been tracking had simply ceased to exist. Heat and his soldiers, startled out of their wits, whipped their heads around in every direction—

"My gun!"

A man standing guard some distance away suddenly shrieked. Moments later came the clatter of metal from somewhere else entirely.

"Wow, it's heavy."

When on earth had she gotten over there? Seyul reappeared in the last place anyone would have expected, arms full of confiscated firearms. Rifles and pistols far too large for her small frame had been stripped from their owners, and she turned them over with keen interest.

"Hmm, I can work with these."

She said it with a bright, easy smile — every inch the innocent girl she appeared to be. Who could have known those words were the incantation that would summon hell?

Bang!

The next instant, the head of one of the soldiers guarding Lieutenant Colonel Heat burst open.

Rat-tat-tat!!!

The soldiers immediately returned fire toward the direction the bullet had come from — but their countless rounds did nothing but shred empty air, because Seyul, who had most definitely been standing there a heartbeat ago, had melted away without a trace. Bang! This time a round came flying from the opposite side, claiming yet another life.

What was happening? Untouchable's soldiers — and the freshly arrived viewers — neither of them could make heads or tails of the scene unfolding before their eyes.

The veterans did their best to explain to the baffled newcomers, but the more they explained, the deeper the confusion sank.

"What in blazes are you all doing?! All personnel, watch every direction!"

If the spectators were recoiling in horror, one could only imagine what it was like to actually be on the receiving end. Sweat pouring off him like rain, Lieutenant Colonel Heat barked orders at his panic-stricken men.

"Our opponent is no ghost. She is human! A human does not simply vanish. There is a trick to this, so wake up and watch your surroundings, all of you!"

Heat was convinced Seyul had used some kind of trick, and he hammered that point home with every order, determined to keep his men from spiraling into full panic. At that, the soldiers guarding the headquarters building began pouring toward the scene.

"Colonel!"

"What's happening, sir?!"

This was the stronghold they were meant to protect above all else, and with an uproar erupting there, six soldiers from the HQ building came rushing out in full combat gear.

"Aagh!"

"Ghk—!"

Lieutenant Colonel Heat hurried to brief them on the situation, but every last one of them was dead within the span of a breath. Bullets from who-knew-where had flown straight for the one gap in bodies armored with solid helmets and ballistic vests — striking the throat with surgical precision and snuffing out their breath.

"What...?"

Lieutenant Colonel Heat's mouth hung open like a fool's. The throat, in the sliver between helmet and vest — in theory, a bullet could indeed penetrate there. But that gap was vanishingly narrow. Firing accurately into a target that tiny, on a body in motion? Even he, built as a hardened veteran soldier, could not bring himself to believe such marksmanship!

"Ugh!"

"Th-this is insane..."

The next wave of reinforcements died in much the same fashion, and from the corpses of men who had perished cursing that ghostly shooting, several more firearms quietly went missing.

"Take cover!"

Lieutenant Colonel Heat's shout cracked through the air — because Seyul had reappeared at some point, a submachine gun in each hand, both muzzles leveled at his men. Dual-wielding SMGs was the stuff of action movies; the recoil of full-auto fire was ferocious enough that simply keeping the guns on target was a struggle. But Seyul pulled off the grueling feat with perfect, placid composure. Countless rounds poured from the twin guns into the soldiers around her, and her aim was so precise that hardly a single bullet went to waste. She didn't merely endure the recoil — she rode it like a propellant, weaving her body this way and that across the field.

The viewers, having just watched her use the recoil to slip clean out of the enemy's effective range, could only speak in stunned disbelief.

"You witch!"

Even to the soldiers, this was no sane sight. More and more of them came swarming in, denouncing her outright as a witch. Seyul opened fire again, but the men arriving outnumbered the men dying — with hundreds on the field, no amount of killing seemed to thin them out.

"Fire! Open fire on everything, in every direction!"

Lieutenant Colonel Heat roared at a soldier of middling rank among the crowd.

"I don't know what trick she's used, but she hasn't truly vanished. Keep firing and one of those rounds is bound to find her!"

"But then our own men and the headquarters will—"

"If you don't, we all die!"

Fret over collateral damage, and you would be slaughtered while you fretted. Heat felt that threat keenly and drove them on; distasteful as it was, they had no other choice. The soldiers did as they were told, hosing bullets in every direction, backs pressed together in a circle to minimize friendly fire. Heat himself — the man who had given the order — hastily tucked behind cover, shielding his body as he added his own shots to the storm.

Bang! Bang!

"Motherfucker!!"

Yet even after all of that, Seyul refused to be caught. As quietly humming rounds went on hunting down his own troops, Lieutenant Colonel Heat spat curses.

"What is she doing? How is she not getting hit in the middle of all this indiscriminate fire?!"

"Even indiscriminate fire is bound to have gaps. You just move between the gaps."

"Now I have heard everything. What gaps? Hundreds of rounds are tearing through every direction at once — what gap could there poss— hurk!"

Lieutenant Colonel Heat, answering without thinking, felt his heart nearly stop — because the voice belonged to the very woman ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠he had been hunting so desperately. It had come from right beside him, and then it stopped.

VRRROOOM!

A single person laying waste to hundreds. In a situation that made him want to doubt his own sanity, Heat reached his verdict: infantry alone would never settle this. The armored vehicles and the helicopter mobilized. The massive vehicle ground low across the earth, intending to crush the hidden Seyul beneath it, while the helicopter climbed high into the sky to scan the ground below. The pilot's eyes blazed with the plan — find her, then pick her off one-sidedly from the heavens. But before he could find anything, a crack split the air and the cockpit glass ran red: Seyul, shouldering an anti-materiel rifle someone had dropped, had put a round through the pilot's head. He had never once imagined that, seated inside a helicopter climbing into the sky, he would take a sniper's bullet from directly beneath him.

"Dodge."

"DODGE!!"

With the pilot dead, the helicopter naturally plummeted. The soldiers on the ground watched it fall toward them, their souls leaving their bodies. They scrambled to run, but it was hopeless — and the crash site could not have been worse. Of all places, the helicopter came down right on top of the armored vehicle, slamming into it with a thunderous boom. The vehicle keeled over sideways, flattening the soldiers who happened to be standing near it, and the driver, naturally, died in the impact as well.

But even that was nothing beside the carnage the helicopter itself unleashed. Skidding as it toppled, the aircraft plowed straight into the crowd of soldiers who had been firing indiscriminately — rotors first. They had broken off their firing in a panicked scramble to flee, with no chance left to scatter. Countless men were swallowed whole beneath the helicopter's tonnage and its screaming blades, and what remained of them was too gruesome for even the most eloquent tongue to describe. Then, after a few final gunshots rang out, every last one of those many soldiers was simply gone.

"Have I... already died and descended into hell?"

Lieutenant Colonel Heat — the sole survivor, having witnessed every inch of the slaughter — murmured the words in a daze, hollow-eyed.