C-Rank Ranked Match — Lucky Girl

After wiping out Reiwa Kunoichi, the first thing I did was open fire on each of the teams that showed up on my radar. The shots get blocked. Doesn’t matter. My goal isn’t to take them down. It’s to bait them. Now none of the three teams can afford to let me slip past. Nobody leaves a sniper who can land precision fire to her own devices.

They have to know it too… that a genius by the name of Shinkai Tsubasa is still out there. Before their fight with her, they’ll want to whittle down every extra piece on the board while they still can. And the same goes for me, obviously. Before I go head-to-head with Tsubasa, I want every obstacle cleared away.

The beasts come creeping toward the bait that is me.

Before the three teams could converge, I scattered the Smoke Grenades I’d salvaged, and white smoke started spreading across the factory floor. By the time each of them had ringed me in and the smoke filled the place, I jab at all three again with Radar Shooting. In answer, the teams either storm inside or hang back to size it up.

“Wh-what in the world is this?! What’s going on?!”

What I’m after is a free-for-all.

Sure, I’m the one they’re after — but this late in the match, none of them can afford to ignore the other teams. Their focus gets split, naturally, watching what the rival squads are up to, and I stop holding their full attention. On top of that, the white smoke taxes the enemy’s processing capacity.

The smoke also cuts their line of sight to me, dropping my nerves to zero. That leaves them two choices: ‘Retreat’ or ‘Charge.’

If they run to dodge the melee, I just shoot them in the back. If they come charging in, I just pit them against each other and reap them one by one. Well — putting distance between themselves and a sniper like me isn’t something you’d normally do, I’d think.

The team that smashed in through a window pulled back outside to avoid the free-for-all. Meanwhile, the two teams pouring in through the east and west entrances ignore the smoke and concentrate their firepower on me in the center. Radar Shooting.

But aiming at me in the center means their rounds inevitably carry on through to the entrance on the far side. A standard radar can’t read posture, so if I go prone, they basically can’t touch me. The handful of rounds that do reach me, I can handle with my last few Shield Pieces. Most of the bullets whiff and sail on toward the teams at the entrances.

If a stray round tags the enemy team diagonally across, that’s a bonus — the trajectory lines up to cut both ways.

One icon apiece blinks out from the teams at the entrances. I pump three G-AGE rounds into each of the two crumbling squads. That finishes the east squad; the west, one down. The last one standing, I grind away with a combined volley of assault-rifle and Bullet Piece fire.

In a cluttered mess of a battlefield, reacting to the G-AGE is a tall order.

Six down. Three left.

“…I’m not letting them get away.”

The team that fled through the window is pulling away from the factory. At that same moment, the seventh area-shrink range pops up on my display.

“Talk about rotten luck…”

The spot picked as the last safe zone… the sea of trees. And the fleeing team is heading straight for it.

I gun my Thrusters, slip outside in a hurry, kick the Thrusters again to fly up onto the factory roof, and track that team’s icon through my sniper rifle’s scope. They’re already moving out, in what’s probably the same jeep they rode in on. I steady my aim on the fuel tank along the vehicle’s flank.

“It’s summer, after all. I’d love to see some fireworks…!”

I fire.

The laser round sinks into the fuel tank. Detonation. Two of the three are blown apart in the blast; the last one, her lower half gone, thrashes on the ground. I put a rifle round clean through the back of her head.

“Not a hair’s breadth off.”

All twelve of them, down…

The shipyard is completely cleared. Two Space Girls remain in this Ranked Match. No question about it: me and Tsubasa.

The final battleground is the sea of trees. There, one on one, this gets settled.

I grab a bike and make for the sea of trees. From paved road to grassland, from grassland to the hills ringing the sea of trees. I climb a slope on my Thrusters and tuck myself behind a big boulder.

What a daring woman she is…

Tsubasa stood squarely in the center of the shallow lake, facing my way. Coming from the shipyard, this lake is the first place anyone would inevitably wind up, so I figure her attention’s fixed over here. Even she can’t have picked me up on radar yet, though. I could loop around behind her, but there’s no time. I’ll snipe from here.

Even if she does pin down where I am, it’s not like Tsubasa’s got any long-range game anyway…

I plant myself openly on top of the hill and start sniping. A head-on shot. Sure enough, Tsubasa reacts and blocks with her large shield, the Aegis. From the second shot on, she starts dodging. So she won’t burn her shields’ durability for nothing, huh.

Distance, roughly 1,200 meters. Outside assault-rifle range… in that case—

I keep up the sniping. Fire, then fire again the instant after, over and over. The shots land on the shields in a steady string. My target isn’t Tsubasa. It’s the Aegis. Tsubasa’s Aegis can’t dodge every round, and it takes hits.

The further a brainwave-controlled armament sits in a blind spot, the further it is from its owner, the heavier it gets to control. Aim for a shield that’s hard for Tsubasa to see and far from her, and it’ll land. But blind spot or not, the Aegis directly behind her is a no-go — Tsubasa guards her rear hard, and she’s paying close attention to the Aegis at her very back. What I want is an Aegis off her diagonal rear—

Another shot lands on the Aegis. The counter is simple. Tsubasa will adapt to my attack soon enough.

“Yeah. That’s what you’d do.”

Tsubasa draws her shields into her field of view, out front, and pulls them in as tight to herself as they’ll go.

Keeping the shields from reverting to data — to save EN, I’d guess.

Just bringing armaments out and stowing them away burns EN all on its own, after all.

The Aegis has to be one of the heavier types of brainwave armament. Giving all five of them reflexes on par with her own is impossible. The most she can run at top precision is three, tops. So I just aim for the remaining two with the thinner reflexes. And the two thin ones, you can spot if you watch — like an arm shaking under a heavy load, a shield trembling ever so slightly—

I train my aim on the shield that showed the faintest, barest wobble, and keep firing. My shots land on it one after another.

“Break.”

I manage to blow one of the Aegis apart with a single shot. Four left.

“Still, though…”

It’s a little late to be wondering this, but why is she standing somewhere so exposed? And it makes no sense that she’d just quietly let this play out, either.

Something about this… I’ve got a bad feeling…

That’s when I notice it: fire, climbing from the forest.

“Damn it…!”

The trees ringing the lake go up in flames, one after another.

She set the forest ablaze — with a Molotov, or with a laser round off a shield! To build a wall of flame…!!

This whole time she’d been quietly eating my fire to buy the flames time to spread. And she kept her shields out to lock my focus onto sniping. So that was it!

But there’s still a chance the zone shrink picks this hill I’m on.

The hill I’m on, the lake where Tsubasa stands, or the forest. Any of the three could be named the final zone, and none would be a surprise. If the hill or the forest gets picked, this wall of flame turns around and burns Tsubasa instead.

There’s a chance she winds up caged in her own fire… and yet.

Even so, a smile is playing at the corner of Tsubasa’s mouth.

“…That’s the face of someone dead certain there’s no way the gods would ever pass her over…”

The seventh area shrink finishes, and the range for the next one appears. My hill falls outside the safe zone; the lake, and the blazing woods encircling it, are what get chosen instead. A strategy that banks on her own luck. There’s no way I could pull that off.

“Nice. Now things are heating up…!”

The perfect quarry to headline this festival’s finale.

I take back what I said. Today, getting to dance the finale with a powerhouse like you, I’m one lucky girl.