Book 6: Chapter 38:

It was time for Ryouta to make his girlfriends proud. After all, he was not only the former leader of the Divine Brigade, but he did have some experience with shooters. In a similar way that swordsmanship and archery skills could be learned in virtual reality and transfer to the real world, Ryouta was sure that gun skills were the same. He didn’t play that many games with guns, no, but he still had some experience with them and was confident in himself.

So when it came to Cassandra giving him the signal to take out that large group on the opposing team, Ryouta went into action. He separated from his girlfriends and took a flanking route to secure a good shot on the enemy. Given that it was a water gun battle, he could easily take out multiple enemy combatants with a single spray of the gun each. He just needed a good position and aim – that was all.

And fortunately for him, those walks and runs that he went on, alongside giving in and consistently using the supports for his legs, has meant that he was quicker and more agile than ever before in real life!

“Alright, I’ve got this. I have girlfriends to impress,” Ryouta whispered to himself, holding his gun close to his chest before giving it a few pumps to make sure it’s fully pressurized.

But he was not alone.

“You have what?” a young, childlike voice asked.

Ryouta jumped and noticed that a small boy was standing right in front of him. He wasn’t sure how some small kid managed to find him, but at least the boy was from the same team as him.

But that didn’t matter.

Despite being from the same team, the boy pointed his gun straight at Ryouta.

Ryouta was about to be betrayed by a kid only a third of his age at most.

“He-hey, be careful where you’re pointing that. We’re on the same team,” Ryouta said.

“But I wanna shoot you,” the boy replied.

“No, you want to shoot the other team. You can shoot them as much as you want.”

The boy’s smile grew wider the more that he realized Ryouta did not want to be shot.

Ryouta recognized that sadistic yet innocent smile as a sign of trouble. He either had to shoot the boy first, at which point he still wasn’t safe since it was possible the boy wouldn’t properly tag himself out as soon as he got wet, or he would have to try and escape. Either way, he was in trouble and his perfect flanking strategy was about to be ruined.

“We’re on the same team – we’re friends. We’re the good guys. You want to shoot the bad guys, don’t you?” Ryouta asked the boy.

“Nuh-uh, I want to shoot you,” the boy answered.

A bead of sweat rolled down Ryouta’s forehead. He was already worried about having children because of having no idea how to deal with them and this child has done nothing but confirm his fears.

What if he has a son or daughter who wants to shoot him? What if they pick up a knife and want to stab him for fun and he doesn’t know how to talk them out of it? What if he ends up accidentally raising some sort of maniac who terrorizes the world?!

Another bead of sweat rolled off the opposing side of his forehead.

This was not good.

“Alright, I’ll make you a deal. Sound good?” Ryouta asked.

“No,” the boy answered and immediately sprayed Ryouta in the face with water.

And so, before Ryouta could do a single thing to help his girlfriends obtain victory, he was teamkilled by a little kid. And he got shot in the eyes.

He took himself out of the round and was anything but happy about it. Furthermore, once he reached the area where those who got shot had to wait it out, he noticed that he was anything but the first one there. His girlfriends were already there, too.

“What happened?” Ryouta asked them as soon as he noticed they were all wet. More importantly… it seemed like whoever shot them had a habit of aiming specifically for their chests and crotches. Cassandra in particular had the chest of her shirt absolutely drenched, not that it mattered since she was prepared for something like this with her black and heavy clothes.

She also already had a popped vein on her forehead before she was asked. “That kid… some little bastard came up from behind us, started crying because he was lost, then shot all of us,” Cassandra explained. “He was on the same team as us… and he shot me five times. He kept on shooting and shooting even after I was already trying to walk away.”

“He seemed rather desperate,” Alice added on. “It is a good thing that you prepared us for this!” Her bra might have been visible through her shirt, but it was essentially a thick and plain sports bra that kept everything fully covered to reveal nothing.

“He made me never want to have kids. There’s no way I’m risking raising some little bastard like that.”

“Wow, I haven’t seen you this angry in a while,” Ryouta said.

“He betrayed us!” Cassandra shouted. “He’s not taking this seriously at all!”

“No, I think he is taking this seriously.”

“Haah?”

“Oh, man, it’s been forever since you’ve given me a tsundere ‘haah’ noise.”

“Is… is that something I used to do?”

“Yeah, but pretty rarely. Anyways, that kid – he might have looked innocent, but he knew exactly what he was doing. I think… I think he’s a plant.”

“My hero, you must have been sprayed harder than we feared if you are mistaking a human for a plant!” Alice teased, amusing nobody but herself with her joke.

“You think he’s purposely working for the other team?” Cassandra asked.

“Yeah,” Ryouta answered. “And given that it seems like he specifically targeted us, I’m thinking he might be a member of that big group you were worried about. He might have overheard us talking about how to deal with them and decided to take us out to protect them.”

While Ryouta and Cassandra talked, Serra looked at Alice’s chest, then looked at Cassandra’s chest, and sighed. While she was happy that nobody else could see her girlfriends’ private areas… she really wanted to see them covered in water and vulnerable herself. This just meant that they would have to have a private water gun battle sometime at home where they won’t be so guarded against perverse eyes other than her own.

“Tch. Betraying your own team isn’t against the rules, so we might as well take him out as soon as possible at the beginning of the next round,” Cassandra said.

“That’d be for the best, but… imagine how we’re going to look, surrounded by a bunch of people, betraying our own team member right away, who’s a little kid, as adults,” Ryouta said and sighed.

“I would think that if we were to do that,” Alice spoke up, “we could cause others to mistrust us and spray us immediately after. There is a possibility of starting a chain reaction that wipes out our team before the opposing team even reaches us.”

“Given that our team is mostly kids, you’re right. If we spray that kid, and then somebody sprays us, we’re basically beginning a free-for-all water gun fight of our own.”

Ryouta and Cassandra went into deep thought with one another to figure out how to solve this. Meanwhile, Alice offered her lap to Serra, and Serra was quick to take her up on that offer by sitting on the presented lap. Alice then helped put Serra’s hair into a ponytail to make the long hair more manageable and to keep it from getting stuck on her face in case it got even more wet than it already was. Serra disapproved, however, and freed just enough hair to make sure that her forehead would stay covered.

Alice took note of Serra not wanting an exposed forehead to make sure that she would not try such a thing again. But at the same time… it made Alice want to see Serra with all her hair pulled back even more.

Serra wanted to soak her girlfriends with water while they wore regular lingerie underneath their clothes, and Alice wanted to reveal Serra’s forehead. Each woman had their own secret plans to work on.

As for Ryouta and Cassandra, they each sighed.

“I had no idea that some little kid would make me think this hard about a strategy,” Ryouta said.

“Yeah, he’s got us good. That really pisses me off,” Cassandra groaned.

“Even if we try to lure him away, that’s less time spent getting into position against the enemy, and he’s probably going to suspect that we’ll try something like that. I think he’s smarter than he looks.”

“And nobody else is talking about him, so I’m guessing that he’s taking it easy and only eliminating anybody who poses a threat to his group. But if nobody specifically tries to deal with them, we can’t win.” Another sigh left Cassandra’s lips. “Is it really time for that already?”

“Time for what?”

“Remember the case I brought?”

Ryouta looked over to where they left their belongings. Surely enough, there was the case that looked suspiciously like a gun case. But, as far as Ryouta was concerned, it only held spare clothes and the like in it. “Yeah?”

“Be right back.”

Cassandra returned the water gun that she borrowed from the event organizers, went into that suspicious case, and pulled something out that was hidden beneath the clothes – something that Ryouta never expected her to own. When she brought it back over, she attached the pieces together, secured a scope onto it, and screwed on a special nozzle that looked like it was designed to specifically concentrate any water into small but extremely precise shots. In other words, Cassandra had a sniper rifle – a water sniper rifle.

“How… how long have you had this for?” Ryouta asked.

“I ordered it online years ago. It cost me a few hundred,” Cassandra answered, tossing in an answer for what question she predicted was next as well.

“You really do take this holiday seriously, don’t you?”

“I usually save this for the third round and only bring it out if my team looks like it’s in trouble. Oh, and go turn in your gun then take the other one in the case.”

“There was another?”

“Yeah. A sniper isn’t useful depending on the map setup, so I’ve got a backup in there.”

Ryouta nodded and did as she suggested, turning in his borrowed gun to the event organizers before heading over to that case. And when he took the other gun out of the case, he found himself wielding a shotgun. It wasn’t just an ordinary pump-action water shotgun, either. He could tell that it was clearly different from the rest.

Cassandra had an explanation ready for him once he returned. “I followed some guides online to modify it. The trigger is sensitive, so don’t put your finger anywhere near it until you’re ready to fire because it’s going to shoot as soon as you apply even a little bit of pressure. And I added a selector to it so you can choose between semi or auto. I recommend going full auto against any groups, but keep in mind that you’re going to run out of water fast. Oh, and the nozzle will spread the water out, so you don’t have to worry about accuracy.”

“You… you really take this holiday seriously, don’t you?” Ryouta asked.

“I told you.”

“Are you sure that you don’t like, want to join a team for this or something? Or get into paintball or airsoft or anything?”

“I don’t really care about this stuff outside of today.”

“Are these even allowed?”

“They’re not not allowed. Just like how betrayal isn’t not allowed.”

“I… I see. So, if we’re bringing these out, do you have a plan?”

“Yeah. Alice, we need you for this.”

“I am glad to be needed!” Alice replied. “What would you like for me to do?”

“Follow the brat around.”

“A-ah?”

“If me or Ryouta do it, it’s going to be suspicious. If a girl in a wheelchair is following a kid around, it won’t look anywhere near as bad to anybody watching. While you’re following him, he’ll probably try to get away from you, so you probably won’t be able to buy us much time. Either way, you should be able to keep him busy long enough for me to sneak away and get into a good position. Then Ryouta and Serra are going to try and take out that other group by flanking them again. Just make sure that you head up along the same side as before so I can watch you. Once that little brat is free from Alice, he’ll probably go hunting for Ryouta and Serra, and I’ll be able to take him out.”

“I’m not going to lie, Cass Cass,” Ryouta said.

“What?”

“You’re really hot right now.”

“Sh-shush. This isn’t the time for that.”

“I know, but you’re really, really hot right now.”

“What? Does talking about strategy get you going or something?”

“When you talk strategy, yes.”

“I must agree with my hero!” Alice said.

“You – you’re going to get me all flustere and out of the mood if you keep this up. Save it for later,” Cassandra said.

Ryouta and Alice looked at each other and nodded. Meanwhile, Serra yawned and imagined what it would be like to be a penguin. Sure, penguins were more or less extinct in the wild alongside most arctic life now, but she still imagined what it would be like to be a penguin living in the wild back when that was actually feasible.

Then she got the idea of visiting a zoo – a zoo with penguins to be specific. She would have to bring this up with them later.

Or what if…

Serra hopped off of Alice’s lap and tugged on Ryouta’s arm.

“Yeah?” Ryouta asked her.

Serra signed to him asking if Fantasy Tales Online had any penguins in it.

“Now that you mention it, I’ve heard of a frozen region to the northwest, but it’s more to the west than north. Like, between the two main continents. More west even than where we started, so getting there would take a long time,” Ryouta explained. He might have known sign language for her now, but it was still faster to speak normally since Serra could easily keep up with reading lips. Not to mention that because Ryouta got lazy with signing around her, he couldn’t remember some of the important signs.

Serra slumped her shoulders and looked down.

Ryouta poked her to get her attention again before saying, “But, it might be possible that we can find some penguins if we head directly north from where we are in-game. Not all penguins only live on icebergs, and our coast goes pretty far up. After we’re done with the current trouble, we can go exploring a bit. Alright?”

Serra brightened up and tugged down on his shoulders so that she could reach up and kiss him. That was his reward for restoring her hopes of meeting penguins in-game.

But she still wanted to see some in a zoo in real life, too.

And right after figuring out some more future plans, the first round of the match was over.

“Tch, figured,” Cassandra said, groaning at the opposing team’s victory. Most of their own team had joined them on the sidelines, and that miniature troublemaker was nowhere to be seen.

“Too bad I don’t have a beamsword and a pistol,” Ryouta sighed.

“Why would you want a sword and some dinky pistol? You don’t bring a sword to a gunfight.”

“It’s a reference to one of the greatest anime of all time.”

“It wasn’t the greatest if somebody took a sword to a gunfight.”

“Listen, if you have extremely fast reflexes, you can chop bullets out of the air.”

“You can’t chop water out of the air.”

“But if I had a beamsword, it would be hot enough to uh… evaporate the water out of the air when chopping it?”

“Just… don’t bring a sword to a gunfight.”

“But what about if it’s a giant mecha in space?”

“Don’t. Bring. A. Sword. To. A. Gunfight. Gunfights are for guns, not swords. If you have space to bring a sword then you have space to bring a bigger or extra gun instead. Or more ammo.”

“You’re killing my dreams, Cass Cass. Wait, since I brought up that old anime… Cass. Cassuna.”

“I… kind of like that nickname, but I want nothing to do with it if it comes from something where somebody took a ‘beamsword’ into a gunfight.”

“What if the sword was responsible for winning the tournament?”

“That makes it even worse.”

Ryouta sighed and shook his head. “You just don’t understand.”

“And I don’t want to. Now, come on. Everybody is getting back onto the field. You and Serra group up near where we were before. I’ll go my own way. Alice, follow that brat around once we’re all in the starting spot.”

Everybody agreed to the plan and got to work. Though, Alice did speak up to say, “My hero, for what it is worth, I do love the concept of sci-fi swords and bringing their might against traditional firearms! Impractical, yes, especially when considering that firearm technology would have also advanced enough to be much more effective than what we may currently have available, but it is still romantic in a way!”

“If you think it’s romantic… you’re probably imagining something tragic involving the one with a sword sacrificing themselves against people with guns and losing, aren’t you?” Ryouta asked.

Alice replied with an excited nod.

Ryouta became filled with the determination to prove that taking a sword to a gunfight was a perfectly viable strategy. That would have to wait for another time, though, considering that no swords were permitted in a water gun fight.

The second round of the match was underway, and hopefully this one would not end so quickly for Ryouta and his girlfriends. Everything seemed to be going according to plan so far as well. Yet, there was something that caused Ryouta to feel suspicious. Alice found the teamkilling brat and had herself parked right behind him – or, well, in front of him since the boy turned to face her with a smile on his face.

He knew. He definitely knew. The boy even turned to wave at the suspicious Ryouta.

Ryouta never knew that it was possible to want to see a kid cry as much as he wanted to see this brat cry. Not only did this evil little brat betray them, but he specifically targeted the girls’ privates to try and expose them, and now he was so smug about the whole thing. Ryouta had his moments of being a massive troll, yes, but he was only a troll to people who deserved to be trolled. He was chaotic good, sometimes chaotic neutral, if anything. But this kid? This kid was pure, unfiltered, chaotic evil. Or lawful evil. Either worked as far as Ryouta ws concerned. All that was required was knowing that the kid was pure evil and that he had a smug grin in severe need of being wiped off his face.

And if this kid was so smug about it, the large group in the opposing team probably was, too.

Ryouta took a deep breath to relax himself.

His enemies were the exact kind of people that he despised in games. They were the kind of people who he devoted years of his life to trolling and ruining. He may have tried hyping himself up before, but now it was time for him to get serious. It was time for Ryouta to truly embrace his position as the former leader of the Divine Brigade. It was time to not only get revenge, but to ruin his enemy.

Cassandra would deal with the hellspawn, and Ryouta would deal with those who spawned him.

The second round began.

Ryouta grabbed Serra’s hand in one hand and carried his new shotgun in the other, and together they ran off up toward the side. As for Alice, she planned on following the boy around to distract him long enough for Ryouta and Serra to get a headstart while Cassandra got into position… but that wasn’t going to happen. Instead, the boy stood there, standing still, staring at Alice.

Even Alice felt disturbed by the boy’s behavior. She also felt awkward enough to say something. “A-ah… hello? It is a… wonderful day we are having, yes?”

The boy looked around, confirmed that nobody else on their team was watching them, and raised his gun to spray Alice in the face. He then immediately took off in the direction that Cassandra went in.

And then he was shot between the eyes.

The boy stood still and blinked before raising his gun to shoot, clearly breaking the rules, but it did not matter. Cassandra was too far away for his gun to reach. Furthermore, she wasn’t even in a sniping position. She was simply standing too far away from him, in the open, with her sniper aimed directly at him.

“If you’re going to openly betray us where everybody can see, don’t cry about it when it happens to you, you little shit,” Cassandra said, not that he could hear her.

Whether Ryouta and Serra were bait or Alice was didn’t matter. Cassandra was well aware that the boy may very well catch onto their plan and immediately take out Alice as soon as he was in the clear instead of trying to get away from her, and doing so made it all the more justifiable for Cassandra to blatantly shoot a little kid in front of a crowd.

Alice and the boy left for the sidelines. While Alice may have been a very kind woman who generally did not enjoy the actual suffering of anybody but herself… there was something incredibly sweet about hearing the boy sniffle and grumble to himself.

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Meanwhile, Ryouta and Serra charged up along the side of the course. It wasn’t long before they encountered the large group as it had decided to take the same approach as last time. Only, this time, one of the adult men in the other group was sniped the moment that he poked around a corner.

Ryouta signed to Serra telling her to stay where she was and to keep watch, remembering at least that much when it came to signing, and left on his own. One of the other people in the opposing group tried to take a shot at him only to immediately be sniped as well.

Cassandra had the enemy group pinned down. Trying to take any shot at Ryouta would leave them vulnerable to her covering fire.

“She deserves some serious fanservice later,” Ryouta said to himself as he rushed to the back of one of the wooden walls used to shape the map. Almost every single wall looked different either in color or style, and they all wore their marks of old to show that it was all recycled wood being used.

Now, where Ryouta was, the obvious next goal was to capture the enemy’s flag. That was likely what the other group would assume that he was going to do, too. Since Ryouta was confident that the large group on the opposing team was a capture group rather than a defense group, he doubted that they would come and try to hunt him down rather than try to find a way around Cassandra to get to the flag they sought.

They weren’t going to expect to be hunted from behind.

Ryouta switched his shotgun to automatic firing and kept his finger just over the trigger.

It was hunting time.

Given that the large and open area along the edge of the course was locked down by Cassandra’s sniper, the family group had to move more toward the center of the map where there was plenty of cover and obstacles.

“I guess they took him out,” the oldest of the men in the group said.

“Doesn’t matter,” one of the teens said. “Their team is mostly a bunch of little kids. We can win going through the center.”

The voice at the back spoke up next. “Yeah, but now we – behi—!”

The group spun around to look at what was happening only for those next in line from their rear guard to get sprayed by several bursts of spread water. All they got to see was the barrel of their attacker’s gun being pulled back behind a nearby corner… and they lost five of their members in just one attack.

“Can any of the observers see us where we are?” the oldest man asked.

“Unfortunately, it looks like it. We’re being signaled at,” the oldest woman of the group answered.

“Damn it. Alright, you five, out. You two,” the man said, looking at two of the teens, “come with me. The rest of you, continue toward the flag. Watch each other’s backs and keep your eyes open.”

The oldest man and the two teens approached the last known position of their attacker… only for the rest of the group that they just sent off toward their enemy’s flag to get attacked.

Six of them were sprayed in an instant. Only one shot was necessary.

Before they even knew who was attacking them, eleven out of their twenty were taken out of the round.

“Damn it!” the oldest man said. “Somebody is fucking with us, and they’re not using one of the provided guns with shots like that.”

“Somebody should have bought us new guns then since somebody broke them,” one of the teens said. “We would’ve won already if we had our custom guns.”

“Keep it up and you’re never getting new ones.”

“Asshole.”

“Dipshit.”

The man and teen looked like they couldn’t tell if they wanted to laugh together or kill each other.

Then they looked like they wanted to do neither of those once even more of their group was wiped out.

Shot after shot, they were being taken out. Only five of them remained now and they barely even got to move from where they were when they were first attacked. It seemed like no matter which direction they wanted to go in, there was their mysterious attacker waiting to either ambush them or attack from behind.

And then there were three.

And then only two.

And finally, after growing more and more frustrated since brute forcing wasn’t working like it always did for them, the oldest man in the group was the only one left. “Whoever you are, fuck you,” he said.

“That’s not nice. What if I was a little kid?” the attacker replied.

The man charged at where he heard the voice come from only to not find anybody. “Where the fuck are you?”

“No idea.”

Once more, the man searched where he heard the voice come from. He didn’t even care about winning at this point – he simply wanted to get revenge. But, once more, the attacker was nowhere to be seen. “Come out and—

“Alright.”

The man spun around, ready to fire, only to be fired on first. And the water all splashed right onto his crotch. And, because the weapon was automatic, it kept on firing. Shot after shot of water sprayed the man’s crotch directly, thoroughly soaking his pants and causing him to look like he pissed himself.

“You know that they make adult diapers for people with your condition, right? There’s no shame in that sort of thing. If you need a diaper, you need a diaper,” the attacker, Ryouta, said.

The man had to hold back all of his desire to punch his attacker in the face. Getting thrown behind bars for assault over a water gun fight wasn’t something that he wanted to deal with… but it became even more tempting once Ryouta continued shooting him in the crotch.

“Oh, sorry. This trigger is really sensitive,” Ryouta said, holding the gun up. Its nozzle was pointed directly at the man’s face. “See?” To demonstrate, Ryouta applied just the tiniest bit of pressure to the trigger, causing the gun to fire the rest of its water into the man’s face.

While it might not have been a ruining anywhere near the level that Ryouta would have liked, it would have to be good enough. Especially since Ryouta could tell just how furious the man was.

Then, even as it was announced that Ryouta’s team lost the round, again, which really was no surprise to anybody considering how the rest of the team looked, the man didn’t care. He was far too pissed off to care about the rest of the team capturing some flag, especially when it wasn’t his family who captured it.

As far as he was concerned, they lost that round.

And as far as Ryouta was concerned, he won that round.