Nextgen Kids: Legend of the Nine Newborn

Operation: AINCRAD, Level 5: Safety Precautions

So far, this is kinda shaping up to be one of the best Newborn stories. I think we're doing pretty well with the pacing and the divided character arcs, not to mention some pretty obvious foreshadowing here or there.

Level 5: Safety Precautions

The Splat Zone resembled a grocery store with about 21 aisles, but the would-be service areas were replaced with pits of water. There were stairs to second-floor walkways, from which they could jump down onto the shelves or cross ceiling light platforms. The contestants started on opposite sides of the field.

"Bubbles, bubbles everywhere!" Millium was excitedly blasting a bazooka of bouncing bubbles, covering the register area with blue ink as the group scattered. Sinon rushed over to the stairs to take position on the walkway. Her rifle could cover the whole field, each shot exploding and drenching the surrounding area on impact. After shooting miscellaneous spots around the field, she tried to aim at Sogeman; none of the shelves had groceries, so she could target people through them. Sogeman stopped to shoot something, so Sinon took the shot and struck him. For taking what the game considered a "fatal shot," he was teleported back to the start.

"!" Sinon gasped when she saw missiles heading her way, running as they crashed behind her. "Man, I hate missiles!" She recolored the spots that they inked and retained a snipe position. "Whoa!" Another sniper tried to hit her from the opposite walkway: the bullet missed and burst against the wall behind her, drenching Sinon in pink ink. The culprit was Mine, the pink pigtailed girl. Sinon ducked down to wait for the ink to fade and scoot away from that position. Unfortunately, Mine's weapon had powered up, firing a Hyper Beam directly along Sinon's walkway, even piercing its barrier. Sinon decided to jump off the walkway and onto the lower ground. Since she had a power-up herself, she fired a small nuke up at Mine's walkway and managed to "splat" her with the explosion.

"Mayyouperish" was shooting a bazooka at Millium, who swiftly dodged backward in the aisle and bounced bubbles at her foe. Millium was being shot from the left, realizing "Constanyou" was behind the shelves and shooting twin pistols. Paint was being dumped over her from the shelves, for one of the Blue Team's members, Chadley, was standing atop them. He seemed to be a white-haired boy in geeky attire. Constan retreated and climbed one of the other shelves, getting level to shoot at Chadley. However, she was easily sniped by Sinon.

"So, getting 'killed' in the Turf War wouldn't log you out of the game." Fie observed. "It just sends you back to your starting point. Honestly, whoever tested that out was pretty gutsy."

"It still makes me worried." Morg said.

"Me, too." Nagisa agreed. "But nothing seems to be wrong so far."

The other Blue Team member, a rhino Mobian, jumped across the ceiling lights and shot ink down with shoulder cannons. Mine spotted and tried to shoot the rhino, but Millium surfed up to her under a river of ink and jumped out before bombarding Mine with bubbles. Mine retreated, but panicked as Millium encased herself in a glass ball. She climbed a shelf to escape the Ink Ball, so Millium rolled around and left a trail of ink. The ball exploded into a bigger ink mass, but it was then she was splatted by Constan. The latter was using an Inkjet to fly around and shooting strong shots everywhere. Sinon was unable to get a good aim on the fast-moving target, and the sniper ended up splatted by May. Mine shot down the rhino player.

With one minute remaining, Millium was frantically bouncing bubbles everywhere to cover as much ground as possible. Mine aimed her rifle through a shelf and tried to snipe her through them, her teammates rushing to fix Millium's damage. Sinon ran back to the walkways to cover up any uninked spots. She then jumped across the lights, watching as Chadley confronted Constan and splatted her. May engaged Millium, dodging each other's ink, while Sogeman got behind Millium and cornered her. She simply dove through the shelves as a squid, then tried bubbling them from behind. Mine was about to land a shot on her, but Sinon sniped the sniper first. Millium then splatted Sogeman.