The Lightning Flash

Chapter 31: Bullet of Bullets Round 3

"You look a little tired, Suguha," commented Agil, as he was drying some glasses, behind the bar counter that he was standing behind.

Suguha was resting her head on her arms, that were folded on the bar counter, staring up at the tv in the bar to watch the live stream of the third round of the Bullet of Bullets.  

"I didn't get much sleep, again, last night," she admitted, tiredly.

Suguha yawned after giving the explanation to Agil, only proving what she had just said, further.

"Still worried about your brother, huh?" 

"Kazuto, Asuna and Sinon...all of them are in danger, as long as they're taking part in that stupid video game tournament," claimed Suguha, clearly, not thrilled about the three putting themselves in danger, again, to stop Death Gun and POH.  "But, this time, I do feel a little better about it."

"Why is that?" asked Agil, wondering what was different, this time.

"Because...this time...Kazuto, made me a promise and Kazuto isn't the type of person to break a promise...not to me...not to anyone," answered Suguha, confidently, and all Agil could do was laugh in response.

"Yep, when it comes to him, that's the one thing you can count on.  Don't worry.  The three of them will make it out of this damned tournament in one piece and, finally, put a stop to Death Gun and POH.  Then, hopefully, they can put all of that nasty business behind them.  Lord knows, those kids deserve that much, at the very least.  Kirito and Asuna's pasts in SAO...it just keeps following the two of them, wherever they go and it seems that they can just never move past it, for one reason or another.  As soon as Death Gun and POH are dealt with, I'm hoping that they can move forward without having to let those pasts run the rest of their lives."

"Yeah, me too, Agil," agreed Suguha.  "All of the SAO survivors deserve that."

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Meanwhile, for the first time in her entire life, Kyouko found herself watching a live stream of the third round of the Bullet of Bullets tournament on her laptop.  She couldn't care less about video games if she tried but Asuna had actually told her mom that she was taking part in it.  Kyouko was surprised and, initially, confused, as to why her daughter would bother even telling her mother this but Asuna mentioned that it was important that she did, this time.  Kyouko knew that her daughter was upstairs, in her room, with the Nerve Gear on her head.  The same Nerve Gear that Kyouko, more than anything, wanted to toss into the trash can and light on fire, for all of the pain that it had caused her family.  She knew how much the device meant to her daughter which was the only thing that prevented Kyouko from doing this.  

"Hm, so Asuna is one of the players?" asked Kyouko to herself, since no one else was around, at the moment.  "When is it going to show her?  And when does this actually start?  Hm, I kind of wish she would have explained the rules of this to me so I could tell if she was doing well or not.  This is kind of like watching a sports game without knowing the rules to it.  Ugh, I hate sports too.  Maybe, this will be a little more tolerable than that, at the very least?  Still, I'm happy that Asuna told me she was doing this, tonight, even though, I have no idea why she did so.  She must have her reasons.  Whatever that girl's doing, she better be safe because the two of us still need to take that trip out to my parent's cabin by ourselves.  Huh, saying it out loud, I actually sound a bit excited about it, now.  That's strange."

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In one moment, Asuna was inside of the black room, waiting to be teleported to the area where the third round of the Bullet of Bullets was being held and, now, she found herself standing in some kind of aircraft, hovering above a large wasteland.  The aircraft itself was similar in design to a helicopter which Asuna had never had the opportunity to ride in, herself.  She didn't know much about what the third round of the Bullet of Bullets entailed but Shino told her that it was going to be similar to the free for all format of the second round with a couple of twists.  For one, upon entering the black room, each player had to select a single weapon from their arsenal that they would keep because when they spawned into the third round, their other weapon would be randomized.  On top of that, it seemed that, instead of merely being spawned into a location on a map, Asuna would be forced to jump out of the aircraft she was in and parachute down to the surface, herself.  Another thing was that this was going to have some PVE elements as well, meaning that random spawns of AI controlled enemies were going to be spawned into the map as well.  This just added more danger that each of the remaining ten players had to worry about, aside from each other.  Not just that, but, apparently, there was going to be changing environmental patterns as well to make combat feel more dynamic.  In terms of the weapon that Asuna had chosen to keep, at first, she thought it should be the Uzi submachine gun since she had gotten used to firing it and it was the safer choice due to her fear of blades.  However, after all the work she had put into no longer being afraid of blades...she didn't want to jeopardize all of that so, instead, she took a gamble and decided to pick her pink photon saber as her main weapon since she felt comfortable enough to do so, now.  She knew she wasn't completely over her fear of blades, yet, but, a part of her knew that when Shino was presented with the same choice, her friend, most likely, chose to keep her sniper rifle as well.  Asuna didn't want Shino to be the only one, who was working towards fixing her trauma.  Plus, Asuna had spent weeks practicing and getting stronger and more skilled at GGO and wanted an opportunity to show off all of the progress she'd made in regards to using her photon saber.  Asuna had already checked her inventory, via the game menu, so she knew that in place of her submachine gun, she now had a Desert Eagle.  Asuna didn't know too much about the weapon but just from studying it a little, could tell that it was a pistol which wasn't too different than the submachine gun that she had prior.  Asuna took a deep breath, realizing that waiting on the aircraft wasn't doing her any good, and then dove out of the aircraft, feeling the rush of wind blow her chest-nut brown hair back.  She could feel a drop in her stomach as she began free falling towards the ground, below her.  Asuna had always wanted to try sky diving in her life and pondered how close this was to the feeling she would get from doing that very activity?  She still had a little bit of time, before reaching the ground, so she didn't pull the chord to her parachute, yet.  All of the sudden, she felt an incredible force ram, directly, into her, sending her stumbling through the air, wrestling with another player, who had just jumped from his aircraft as well.  Her opponent equipped a combat knife and thrusted it right at Asuna's left eye but she used the back of her forearms to stop the blade from making contact.