Ice Flower

Chapter 27

"Man, this place is a mess!" Winter remarked.

Glacier couldn't help but agree. Link VRAINS was in total chaos. Almost everything was on fire or falling to pieces, avatars were getting deleted left and right, and duel monsters were chasing almost everyone.

"You might wanna be careful while you're here," Winter advised. "Looks like whoever is behind all of this is also preventing people from logging out."

"Good to know." She spotted a skyscraper that wasn't currently ebbing damaged and jumped, a D-board materializing beneath her feet. "Have you noticed anything unusual?"

"No. But there are a surprising amount of avatars with the same clothing."

"Knights of Hanoi?"

"No, though there are some. These people look like they're in military uniforms or something, and the uniforms are navy blue and black."

"Spriggan." Glacier scowled, landing at the top of the skyscraper.

"So you know these people?" Varis asked, walking over to her side. She wasn't surprised to see him, nor he her.

"Yes. They get their name from the folklore Spriggan. They are convinced that they have all the youth in the world and all the wisdom as well." She was trying to keep the distain out of her voice and utterly failing. "They're surprisingly good at recruiting people to work for them, and slowly twisting those people to believe their true goal."

"You sound like you have quite a bit of experience with them."

Glacier's eyes narrowed. "I do. If I know them, they won't care about the destruction that they're creating. They probably have plans to rebuild Link VRAINS from the ground up once their finished."

"At this rate there might not be much 'ground' left for them to work with."

"I agree."

"Is there any way to stop them?"

"Defeat all of their duelists and defeat their accounts. Permanently."

Without that, she jumped off the building and onto the D-board that appeared, right behind two of the uniformed people Winter had spotted earlier.

Varis smirked. "You're on."

"Thank you!" The boy called as she logged out using the emergency program Glacier had given her. 

"That was our last one." Glacier said. "We'll have to wait until the Hanoi give us some more before we can help anyone else log out. How many Spriggan and duelists are left, Winter?"

"About twenty Spriggan, and maybe around fifty duelists. Actually, scratch that. A duelist just logged out and another got their account deleted, so we're down to forty-eight."

"Good to know. Send me to locations of the nearest Spriggan agent."

"Alright. Looks like the nearest are on the other side of the city, but Varis is dealing with them."

"Okay." 

"Help!" A voice shouted. "Someone, please help me!"

Glacier turned in the direction of the voice. She just saw a collapsed building.

"There appears to be a duelist stuck beneath the rubble," Winter informed her.

"Hello?" The voice called again. "Is anyone there?"

"Just hold on!" Glacier called back, scrambling over the rubble. "I'm on my way. Keep talking."

"Um. Like, about what?"

"I... don't really care. It's just so that I can find you."

"Oh. Right. That makes sense. Well, my username's K. Like, you know, the letter. That's my mom's nickname for me."

Glacier spotted a flash of pink in the gray and went over in that direction. Soon she was looking down at a girl about her age who was half stuck underneath a slab of concrete.

"I'm going to try to lift this, okay?" She squatted down and grabbed the concrete, trying to lift it. K pushed with her arms as well, try to help. Unfortunately, when the girls had been creating their avatars, being strong was the last thing that they were thinking about, so they didn't have much muscle.

"Here." Someone grabbed onto the concrete next to Glacier.

They tried lifting again, and this time, it moved with ease. Glacier was surprised to find that she was actually barely touching it.

K scrambled out, covered in dust. "Thanks, uh..."

"I'm Glacier," Glacier said.

"You can call me Hunter," The other person said simply. 

Glacier's duel disk beeped and she looked down to see that the Hanoi had refreshed her supplies of emergency log out programs. She took out one and tossed it to K.

"This will get you back to the real world safely," She said in explanation to her confused look.

"Oh! Thank you." K smiled and waved as the program activated and she vanished into blue data.

"Thanks for helping back there." Glacier turned to the person who had assisted her and was surprised to not see and Knight of Hanoi. "Were you trapped in here, too?"

"No. I logged on when I saw what was happening." The person shrugged. He looked vaguely familiar. The man was probably in his early fourths, had blond hair with teal bangs, icy blue eyes, a pale skin. He was wearing a non-SOL Tech duel disk with a design that was foreign to her and also seemed very familiar to her and didn't seem concerned about the fact that he was probably stuck inside of Link VRAINS.

"Nice to know I wasn't the only one. Hunter, was it?"

Hunter nodded. "It is. Do you know how many of the duelists were attacking this place are left?"

"Fifteen," Winter reported.

Hunter frowned at her duel disk. "Was that... an AI? I thought that that type of model didn't have any."

"I uploaded this one on my own, actually." Glacier's hand automatically moved to hid her duel disk from sight. "I should probably get going."

"Of course. I'll see you around Glacier."

Kayla fell to her hands and knees as she logged out, panting. That was probably one of her longest trips to Link VRAINS ever. 

She glanced at her phone's clock and saw that it was six in the morning. Slowly, she stood and walked back to her bed, collapsing into it. Before she could try to cover herself, she was asleep.