– II –

“This is where you’ll face your opponent.”

Arnval’s words came back to bite me as I fell off the rooftop terrace.

I reached out with my left hand to catch the edge of the parapet, but my gloved fingertips only brushed it.

Unable to arrest my fall, an overwhelming panic swamped me and I heard myself cry out in fear. But with my overclocked awareness running at full steam, everything was happening in slow motion, and my cry drawled out for an incredibly long time that quickly annoyed me.

So I cut myself off, and then watched in welcome silence as the top of the building slowly receded into the distance above me.

Crap! I missed it by that much….

I started to laugh inside my head.

The fear and anger I’d experience had faded away like smoke in the wind, leaving me cold, empty, and unexpectedly clear head. But the sight of my outstretched left hand, having come so close to grabbing onto the parapet, now appearing to be reach for the sky well beyond it, filled me with amusement.

Why? Because I wasn’t reaching for thin wispy clouds painted across a canvas of blue sky.

I was unwittingly reaching for Erina, whose face was plastered in various angles across the curved ceiling high overhead.

Her giant visage looked so close, yet she was drawing farther away by the millisecond.

I bitterly laughed inwardly since I couldn’t laugh outwardly at how ridiculous my situation had become.

Me? Reaching for Erina? Get real!

The part of me that wasn’t laughing caustically was instead surprised at how clinically I was observing myself fall down the side of the building.

Another part of me laughed at how close I’d come to saving myself.

And yet another part of me was puzzled then amazed at how slowly the world moved around me.

One second had become four. Then five. Then six. And then ten….

As impossible as it sounded, time seemed to be slowing down even further, until eventually I didn’t appear to be falling at all.

This had never happened before, and I felt a slightly uneasy.

Yet for the most part, once I stopped laughing at myself, I grew calm and collected as I began contemplating my situation.

How had it come to this?

Before I could even declare my intention to save Erina’s hide, I’d been attacked by an unknown assailant. If not for the Argus System, my back would have been riddled with bullets.

I quietly gave Ghost my thanks as I then turned my thoughts to my opponent – the unknown bitch who’d ambushed me.

Not once had I seen her clearly, but as I dropped to my demise in extreme slow motion, I grabbed at a memory that I then freeze framed in my mind. It was nothing more than a glimpse of her silhouette as I’d rolled over the parapet, but it revealed an important detail I hadn’t noticed during our brief exchange of gunfire.

My opponent had a long, swaying, ponytail!

The possibility that it was her subsequently crossed my mind, but there was something else to consider – she had no discernible lifeforce radiating from her body.

In short, she was probably a mechanical avatar – a Gun Princess – made in the image of the young woman who was quickly rising up the ranks of people on my short but memorable Black List. Based on these observations, I jumped to the conclusion that my assailant was Miss Blue Tinted Ponytail operating a Gun Princess avatar made in her likeness.

Why? To stop me from saving Erina’s ass.

However, the problem was that I hadn’t declared I was going to save Erina.

I’d only gotten as far as asking how to save her.

Yet I’d been shot at before coming to a decision.

So what was my decision? Was it yay or nay? Should I save Erina? What were the pros and cons?

I mulled the matter over while watching the top of the building slowly back away from me as I continued to fall in extra slow motion.

When I couldn’t think of a reason to save her from spending the rest of her life as a disembodied mind, I searched my emotions.

Believe me, I had to dig real deep, but in the end, even if I couldn’t justify saving her, I couldn’t stand back and do nothing about it. It wasn’t that I felt sorry for her. Perish the thought. Rather, it was a gut feeling that I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I didn’t save her.

In other words, I didn’t want to be haunted by the guilt of not saving her.

Now let’s be clear.

I’m not talking about trying to save her.

There’s no point in trying and falling short, unless you learn something from it.

No, sir. I’m talking about actually getting the job done.

As a wise green fellow once said, ‘There is no try, only do or do not do’.

And so I decided the answer was, Yay.

I would save my former sister from life as a virtual ghost.

However, having made my decision, I suddenly and inexplicably felt hollow inside.

I would have sighed away ten years of my life, but it was only my mind that was chugging along while Mirai’s body was falling at a thousand frames a second, subjecting me to the illusion that I was gently drifting to the ground. But that’s all it was – an illusion – and before saving Erina’s backside, I needed to save mine first.

With self-preservation the focus of the moment, I decided to scope out my surroundings.

I had failed to catch the edge of the parapet, or the ledge running along the base of the rooftop, but perhaps there was something else I could grab onto before I went ‘splat’ on the ground far below.

For that matter, just how far above the ground was I?

The Argus System provided me with a dire answer.

My consciousness didn’t balloon out but the within milliseconds my situational awareness was flooded with a clear image – an impression – of my surroundings within a sphere of twenty-meter radius. My first realization was that the Argus System couldn’t detect the ground below. That meant I was falling from a height that exceeded twenty meters. However, I next noticed a multi-level bridgeway between the two terraced buildings, and the top level had no roof. If I twisted my body around by 180 degrees, and then reached out with my left hand over my head – since I was falling horizontally – I should be able to catch a hold of the bridgeway’s guardrail, or the edge of its low sidewall.

Time began to speed up within my awareness.

One second was no longer a hundred.

One second became ten, then five, and then four.

In the blink of an eye, I’d gone from gently drifting to the ground, to falling at a slow but troubling pace.

Throwing my body into a spin was no easy feat, and it relied in part on Mirai’s body dragging against the air as she fell to the ground. But by the grace of the merciful gods watching me from above, I was able to roll over, and the outstretched fingers of my left hand grabbed hold of the bridgeway’s guardrail without a moment to spare.

A half second later, my body swung downwards like a pendulum, and I slammed my face into the bridgeway’s hard bodywork.

Actually, it was Mirai’s enormous boobs that hit the sidewall first.

Pain lance through my chest an instant before fireworks exploded in my head.

The agony made my hand lose its grip on the railing, and I fell again, only to catch onto the edge of the bridgeway level below.

This time I was somewhat better prepared, and though I struck the sidewall bodily, I succeeded in hanging on.

I will tell you that holovid action flicks make it look easy – jumping from buildings, catching onto walls, and so forth. They also make it look relatively painless.

Well…it’s not.

My face hurt, my boobs felt like they’d been pummeled, and I honestly believed my left arm was hanging onto my shoulder by mere threads.

Mirai was abnormally strong – far stronger than the average Simulacra – but she wasn’t a machine. She hurt. She bled. And she damn well cried in pain when it became too much to bear. However, she had an anomalous ability to heal her injuries at preternatural rate, and if not that for that ability I’d be in tears by now.

Putting Mirai’s strength to work, I hauled myself up and over the guardrail and into the enclosed bridgeway level, landing on my feet but quickly falling to my hands and knees.

I wasn’t exhausted. Rather, my body appeared to be in shock.

Trembling faintly all over, I tasted blood on my lips. When I reached up to touch my face, my gloved fingertips came away moist.

The Regalia was a bodysuit that covered most of my body, but the degree of tactile sense it possessed at times made me feel naked.

This is why my fingertips felt wet with blood from face.

My nose felt sore, my forehead stung madly, but as on previous occasions the pain was quickly fading away, and after a few moments prostrate on hands and knees, my body soon calmed down. But both my arms were numb from the shoulder down to my wrists. Not being able to feel them properly made me anxious, but I couldn’t afford to wait here until I regained sensation in my arms. The clock was ticking, and though there was no guarantee I’d be able to board the Promenade from the tree-like tower, I felt it was my best bet.

Taking a deep breath, I started to rise to my feet when I heard a dull whump-whump from the bridgeway level above me.

The top most level had no roof, but I’d fallen to the next level below it, thus the ceiling overhead was the floor of the uppermost bridgeway that spanned the thirty-foot gap between the two terraced buildings…and something had just landed on it.

I scrambled quickly to my feet, then backed away toward the building Arnval had been standing on.

I had no allusions as to who it was.

The Argus System told me that someone was standing on the bridgeway above me, and I wholeheartedly believed it wasn’t Arnval.

Then a muted boom rocked the air, and a fist-sized hole opened up in the ceiling.

I flinched sharply and darted back a few feet, biting down on a startled yelp.

Because of Mirai’s wide field-of-vision, I didn’t need to look down to see the crater in the floor over which I’d been kneeling a short while ago.
Summoning the second Punisher, I waited with both weapons in hand for them to report ready. In the half second it took the rifles to prime their accelerators, two more booms sounded and two more holes appeared in the ceiling.

I skipped back another couple of feet, then aimed the Punishers at the ceiling.

The Argus System was aware of objects within a sphere twenty-meters in radius, so I knew the exact location of my opponent. I also knew the stance they were holding as they aimed a large firearm down at the floor, but I couldn’t discern the type of weapon. In short, the Argus was telling me where things were and what they looked like but the image lacked details. It was like seeing the world around me in outline with very little rendering.

I didn’t know if the system was deliberately lowering its resolution of the surroundings to avoid overwhelming me, but while it was enough to give me a heads-up on my situation, I would have preferred a little more detail to go along with it.

But for now, I was able to aim the Punishers at a spot on the ceiling and fire a double-shot of armor piercing rounds that tunneled through the material and into my opponent.

My overclocked Awareness acknowledged the sensory data the Argus fed into my mind, telling me that all four rounds had hit the mechanical avatar standing on the top level of the bridgeway. The first two had tunneled through the ceiling, so they hadn’t done nearly as much damage as the two rounds that followed in their wake, but it all adds up in the end.

She – I was fairly certain it was her – leapt back a couple of meters, then stepped to my left.

I fired again while tracking her position via the Argus, punching two more holes an inch across through the ceiling, and landing another couple of hits that made her stumble backwards.

Unlike the cannon like shots she’d fired at me, the Punishers’ rounds weren’t wasting their energy on making big holes. This was telling, as each time I landed a hit, I could sense through the Argus System that pieces were being blown off her.

For now, I was keeping her busy so she wasn’t returning fire.

I was also taking her apart, a couple of pieces at a time.

So the question was when would she change her strategy?

Adjusting my aim, I followed her for a few of steps as I discharged salvo after salvo of ten-millimeter heavy grain bullets through ceiling at her.

Calling cheating. Call it unfair. I didn’t care, but the Argus System was making it easy to aim since I had a spatial awareness of her position.

Again, as time stretched out in my overclocked state, I wondered for how she would endure being chipped away by the Punishers heavy rounds.

I decided to change the game.

Tracked her via the Argus System, I pumped a double pair of bullets through the bridgeway…and into her left thigh.

Damn it—I missed.

Then I noticed that she went down onto her left knee.

What? But I didn’t—?

It was a faint because within the blink of an eye she returned fire, and I had to scramble to avoid the worst of it.

However, that didn’t mean I had stopped shooting back at her.

Even while jumping left, right, forward, and back like a teenage girl maximizing her points on Dance Sensation – the arcade game where you jump on colored spots in time with the music – I was triggering both Punishers simultaneously.

Seriously, my footwork was par excellence.

However, I had no idea why I was moving so well.

After all my struggles getting through the obstacle course in a reasonable time, was all that training coming into play?

Were some mysterious latent talents beginning to stir?

I frowned as I jumped diagonally backwards a few feet.

Feels like I’ve done this before….

I fired a double salvo, then bounded to my right, kicked off the guardrail, and closed the distance between her and I by leaping toward the middle of the bridgeway.

Feels like…I’m remembering how to move….

Between her shots and mine, the floor – or ceiling – was rapidly turning into Swiss cheese, and I was running out of places to step safely.

The bridgeway floor was peppered with craters as though a meteor storm had passed through.

The ceiling above me was more or less the same.

As a result, I was jumping onto the low walls of the bridgeway more often than not. Careful not to slip on the rounded metal railings, I would then leap from wall to wall, shooting each time my feet landed. To trade shots with my opponent in mid-leap was a mistake as the double recoil would affect my jump.

Unfortunately, she was beginning to catch on, and her last couple of cannon shots had blown away large chunks of the sidewall copings mere moments after I’d jumped off them.

In short, her shots were beginning to catch up to me, so I took one last shot at her before jumping back down onto the bridgeway floor, and then retreated at a sprint toward the building Arnval’s projection had been standing on.

Why?

Two reasons.

Firstly, that building was in the direction of the tall, tree-like tower where I hoped to find a way aboard the Promenade.

Secondly, I was out of ammo.

The magazines in both Punishers were dry.

Close to a hundred and twenty bullets had ripped the bridgeway ceiling apart, and about a third of them had either struck or grazed Miss Ponytail.

The Argus System failed to give me a clear image of her, but if she’d taken that many hits, I doubted she cut a pretty picture.

As I ran toward the tinted glass doors at the end of the bridgeway, I debated whether to reload at least one of the Punishers.

But that would mean slowing down, and it wasn’t long before I heard a loud crash, and the bridgeway trembled violently.

I didn’t need to look behind me to know that a large section of the topmost level had finally given way and collapsed to the level below it.

I could sense the collapse through the Argus System, and I could see it reflected in the tinted translucent doors ahead of me.

But I could also see my opponent jump down through the large gap in the ceiling, and land nimbly on the rubble.

As she straightened and aimed a miniature Howitzer in my direction, my heart jumped in abject panic. Yet my consciousness remained calm and my overclocked awareness accelerated even further as it had when I was falling off the building.

It gave me time to consider my options.

It also gave me an opportunity to sense out my surroundings through the Argus System.

But it wasn’t all good news.

To start with the doors ahead of me were locked.

If I wanted entry into the building through the bridgeway exit, I was going to have to unlock the doors – not possible without Ghost’s intervention – crash through them – unlikely since Mirai wasn’t a tank – or shoot myself an opening with the Punishers – risky since it required that I slow down or stop to reload them, exposing me to the prospect of being shot in the back by Miss Ponytail.

Thus, I chose option D.

I would jump off the bridgeway.

The Argus System sensed narrow balconies running along the steeply slanted wall perpendicular to the bridgeway.

My intention was to jump off the bridgeway and onto one of those balconies, then descend to the next balcony and the next until I arrived at street level some four stories below me.

However, as I leapt onto the coping of the bridgeway’s low sidewall, I felt the entire structure tremble as a series of cracking and groaning noises broke into the air.

I turned to look up the length of the bridgeway, toward the middle of the structure.
Miss Ponytail was in the process of aiming her howitzer at me when the floor beneath her gave way, and I watched her fall, rubble and all, to the level beneath her.

The whole thing happened in slow motion, and thus I was able to see the moment she triggered one last shot before disappearing from view.

The explosive shell – what else could it be – struck the ceiling a few feet away from my head. The detonation sent chunks of material rocketing through the air, and I was forced to dive off the coping and back into the bridgeway to avoid the worst of it. But the concussive blast made my ears ring, and it took a few moments for my head to clear.

When I looked up the bridgeway again, there was a ten or twelve-foot section of it missing.

In other words, there was a bloody big hole in the ground.

It took me only a moment to understand why.

The floor and ceiling had been riddled with holes that weakened the structure. When the large section of the topmost level had crashed down into the bridgeway floor below it, that section had weakened further. Add in the weight of a mechanical avatar, and the overly burdened floor had given way…just in the nick of time.

It seemed that Lady Fate had granted me a reprieve.

After all the trouble she’d put me through, the bitch had shown me a fleeting moment of kindness.

Now I needed to make the most of it.

Going down wasn’t an option as I’d be shot at by Miss Ponytail who’d fallen to the level below me.

That left me with two alternatives: break through the glass doors into the building at this floor…or climb up to the rooftop.

I chose to go up, thinking I’d make better progress over the building rather than through it.

I holstered both Punishers, and once the armatures attached to my back collected the weapons, I once again leapt onto one of the bridgeway’s sidewalls. Peeking down, I spotted niches cut into the exterior face of the wall, running the length of the bridge. They were no more than foot wide and a few inches across, but they offered me a foothold as I reached up for the sidewall above me.

I was also fortunate that the open-air level of the bridgeway was narrower than the one below. This allowed me to jump upwards without having to lean dangerously backwards, and within seconds I’d hauled myself onto the top floor, a feat made possible by Mirai’s ability to leap more than ten feet straight up into the air. Seconds later, I had run to the end of the structure where I faced a couple of darkly tinted glass doors. They were closed shut across the entrance into the building, and rather than force my way through them, I leapt up and climbed over the building’s parapet onto the terrace rooftop.

There was no sign of Arnval’s holo-projection, but Erina’s last meal continued to play out from horizon to horizon across the artificial sky.

The sight of my drunk former sister was a tempting target to shoot at, but bullets were precious and not to be wasted, so I turned my attention to immediate matters.

My consciousness was in an overclocked state, thus giving me the impression that the world was moving at a crawl. But outside of my head the clock was still ticking, and I had twenty minutes to climb aboard the Promenade and save my treacherous former sister.

The giant upside-down turtle shell was floating gently toward the tree-like tower standing tall about a kilometer in the distance.

Glancing back toward the bridgeway, I used the Argus System to scan for movement or a sign of Miss Ponytail.

There wasn’t any within twenty-meters, and that made my gut clench worriedly as I knew that girl wasn’t above sniping me from a distance.

While sweeping my gaze over the rooftops around me, I walked fast across the terrace in the direction of the tree-like tower.

It wasn’t until after I’d reloaded both Punishers that I broke into a run across the skyline.

---

Thank you for following the webversion of Book Three.

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Book One - Awakening the Princess

Book Two - The Measure of a Princess

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Thank you for taking the time to read this.

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