Chapter 2.
- # -
As I watched the battle on the projected screens, the surrounding air booming at times with the sounds of gunfire, interspersed with the patter of dirty rain that befell the game’s scenery, a wet skyline stroked with neon light and sweeping search beams, I quickly forgot all about Monique Valjean and her threats. I was lost in the visuals, enthralled by the intensity of the combat, my body trembling faintly and my heart thumping noticeably in my chest.
The strengths of the game shone through with its stunningly realistic visuals. The fluid movements of the Gun Princess combined with her interaction with her surroundings, such as the way water splashed when she sprinted over puddles on the rooftops, made it easy to forget this was just a game. When I looked at the city she was running over, a less than pristine forest of megascrapers with tall spires and terraced walls, it was impossible to believe it wasn’t real. Everything about the environment was so meticulously crafted, that I couldn’t imagine the processing power required to render it. The level of detail and realism went beyond what was possible with a home gaming system.
That too was its charm. The fact that it could convince the viewer that it was real, even the way drops of blood splattered the air when the girl took a hit from gunfire somewhere out of screen.
“Damn it!” the girl beside me cried out. “She took a hit!”
“Is she going to make it?” another girl asked.
“Gods, I really want to see if she can beat that top score.”
The two holovid windows displayed the Gun Princess from different vantage points as she rolled with the blow and came up on her feet, sprinting to the edge of the rooftop. I watched in disbelief as she leapt off the building and fell over its side…only to land on a terrace balcony. Rolling to shed the kinetic energy of a hard landing, she quickly slowed to a stop and took aim at her pursuers, a pair of Gunbirds with sweeping searchlights fitted to the underside of their wings.
In a matter of heartbeats, the rifle cannon she wielded was aimed at the flying machines. With a flash of light from its muzzle, the wing of a Gunbird exploded into feathery fragments. Trailing embers, smoke, and debris, the machine soon spiraled down into the artificial canyon formed by megascrapers. The Gun Princess fired again, but the second Gunbird was already on guard and banked away sharply. The Princess ran to the edge of the balcony, and fired repeatedly at the fleeing war machine until it flew out of sight between a couple of buildings.
She wasted no time searching for the Gunbird, instead resuming her sprint across the rooftops by jumping down from balcony to balcony until she arrived at a broad bridgeway between buildings so wide it could accommodate two lanes of vehicular traffic. However, the bridgeway was intended for pedestrians, with transparent fencing to ward away the gusting wind and prevent people from falling off thereby bespattering the street hundreds of feet below with their bloody remains. The girl ran with incredible speed along the bridgeway, and used the rifle cannon to blow apart the doors leading into a megascraper.
I watched her disappear into the building, eager to see what would happen next.
- # -
I believe it prudent for me to explain a little of the Princess Royale. However, I will describe it as I understood it back then, and will save what I know now for later.
Essentially, the Princess Royale is a hyper-realistic virtual reality combat simulation where competitors operate avatars called Gun Princesses, and battle it out with ballistic weaponry.
The Princess Royale comes in different flavors.
There is the official tournament or championship with corporate sponsorship and holo-Vision streaming across the star system overseen by an organization known as the Battle Commission.
Then there are the officially sanctioned games. These ranges from home and network releases, to the high-end holo-VR booths found at game centers. The latter can employ a combination of effect-fields and holo projection within a booth to simulate travel through an environment, or they can utilize a neural-VR and Waldo interface for the gamer to control the Gun Princess avatar.
The official championship conducted by the Battle Commission consists of two half-year seasons held during the year, and comprises of a Major and Minor League. At the end of the first season – a little before the middle of the year – the highest ranked competitor in the Minors moves up to the Majors, while the lowest ranked Princess in the Majors is dropped to the Minors. This is repeated at the end of the year, with one Gun Princess moving up and another moving down, and afterwards the top ranked Princess in each city-state is crowned Gun Queen. The Gun Queens then participate in the final match of the Princess Royale – a true battle Royale – to decide who will be named Gun Empress for that year.
That is the official championship based Princess Royale in a nutshell.
I’ll know explain a little further.
Each city-state, including Ar Telica, has official Gun Princesses taking part in the championship. These Princesses are part of corporate sponsored teams and compete in both team battles and individual matches. Points are awarded for victories, draws, and losses in both team and individual combat, though the latter is where most points are earned. Teams that start with three Gun Princesses can end up losing or gaining a Princess when she is moved up or down from a league. In the event of teams facing each other with uneven numbers, a Princess or two can be benched, unless the party with fewer numbers agrees to battle against a team possessing more members. Occasionally there are exhibition matches were a highly ranked Princess from the Major League may face a team from the Minor League.
The official Gun Princesses themselves are extremely lifelike battle avatars, and they are anything but understated. Their outfits are flashy, loud, utterly fail to blend in with their surroundings, and serve little to no tactical function at all. In other words, Gun Princesses were extravagant in their choice of battle wear, and added to their allure.
There is a great deal of published commentary on their degree of realism, focusing on everything from their movements to their appearances. Conspiracy theorists claim that despite their idealized proportions, the Gun Princesses are physical and thereby quite real, thus suggesting they are automata or remotely operated mechanical bodies employing technology developed by the military to combat the aliens. Some theorists claim the Battle Royale is nothing more than a proving ground for these state-of-the-art Gun Princess avatars.
However, conspiracy buffs hit a wall when trying to explain the environments within which individual Princess Royale matches take place. The cities possess a genuine appearance, and their immense scope and breadth would be impossible to replicate outside of a virtual reality environment. So while it’s possible – though highly unlikely – that Gun Princesses are physical avatars, the cities that serve as arenas for battle are simply too large and too expensive to build for a competition as popular as the Princess Royale.
The Princess Royale was indeed quite popular, but what set it apart from other competitive forms of entertainment is that all the official participants were girls or young women. By this I’m not referring to the Gun Princess avatars but to those who wielded them in battle, and these girls or women were referred to as Princess Meisters, though on occasion the two titles were used interchangeably by commentators and reporters.
Unlike other competitive sports, a Princess Meister could choose to participate incognito. They could conduct interviews in secret, and refuse to appear in magazine spreads. However, that wasn’t the case for all the Meisters, as a great many of the girls basked in the popularity the Princess Royale afforded them.
As oblivious as I was back then, even I was familiar with the names of the more popular Meisters in Ar Telica – girls who were photogenic and featured prominently on printed and photronic media. Many of them attended the schools of Ar Telica, which in turn earned those establishments a degree of notoriety. When a school’s policies prevented a girl from competing, she usually transferred to another institution that wasn’t as draconian. Having mentioned this, one talking point amongst my classmates was the fact that Telos Academy had no Meisters to call their own, though the other schools and academies of Ar Telica could boast of a Meister or two.
While a great many of the Princess Meisters were female students, many others came from different walks of life. Some were athletes. Some were office ladies. Others were college students. Regardless, all of them were selected through an audition process, but it was by invitation only and that meant they were either recommended or scouted. In terms of the latter, it was common knowledge that those who did well on the arcade versions of the Princess Royale sometimes received a tap on the shoulder and an invitation to the official ‘tryouts’, so to speak.
Was the Princess Royale violent? Absolutely, although it was censored considerably. Simulated violence was stamped prominently on the home releases as well as the arcade versions, warning under aged impressionable minds of what to expect. The official championship league matches were also censored at appropriate times, courtesy to being streamed with a ten or fifteen second delay.
So why was it so popular amongst girls and young women? To be honest, I have no idea. That’s simply how it was. Perhaps because it was a game or championship exclusive to female competitors. Perhaps because it ‘promoted’ strong women. Perhaps because there was considerable prize money involved – something for which it was often criticized. Despite attempts to regulate it further than it already was, the Princess Royale continued to gain gentle momentum across the Teloria star systems.
So you may as well ask why does the universe behave so mysteriously at the subatomic level?
Why does it do things that just can’t be explained.
Why was the Princess Royal so damn popular?
I don’t have the answer, but does it really matter?
- # -
The floating holovid screens were large enough and high enough that I didn’t have to overly bend back my neck in order to see them over the heads of the crowd.
On one screen, the Gun Princess ran down a wide passageway traversing the megascraper.
On the other screen, the remaining Gunbird circled the building from high above.
Like the girls around me, I was transfixed upon the vision of beauty and power on the screens. None of it was real. It was nothing more than a simulation, yet the Gun Princess captivated my attention.
I watched her skid to a stop when she arrived at a broad balcony encircling the atrium running vertically through the center of the megascraper. A heartbeat later, the Gunbird crashed through the atrium ceiling and flew down into the middle of the building. The war machine pulled up sharply, flapping its wings and pivoting its thrusters to bring it to a stop above the tall girl. Wasting little time, it opened up on her with a Gatling gun mounted to its belly. The Princess was sprinting by then, running with phenomenal speed along the hexagonal balcony, with heavy caliber rounds nipping at her feet and body. Tracers rounds lit the air while the heavy ammunition tore up the balcony, shattering glass fitted to the guardrails, chewing up the metal railing, and turning the place into Swiss cheese.
Yet the girl continued to run fearlessly through it all, her body taking hits that stripped her skin away, her limbs a blur of motion as she circled the atrium. Arriving at the entrance to a wide corridor, the Gun Princess used it to flee into the depths of the building, chased by heavy rounds from the Gatling cannon.
In the atrium, the Gunbird whipped up a storm with its flapping wings and flaring thrusters. Unwilling to be denied its kill, it disgorged a handful of missiles from concealed ammunition bays within its belly. The mini-missiles corkscrewed and flocked into the corridor, pursuing the Gun Princess who turned smoothly as she slid to a stop. Taking aim, she fired the rifle cannon and blew away the closest missile. The explosion and fratricide took out half its companions, and the Gun Princess fired again on those warheads that slipped through the fireball that scorched the corridor’s ceiling, floor, and walls.
The second explosion occurred much closer to her, the blast wave knocking her back off her feet. She landed on her back, rolled, then came up on her knees with the rifle cannon at the ready. For a short moment, she regarded the destruction, her weapon aimed down the corridor. When the Gunbird came into view, she fired and scored a hit on the war machines armored beak, blowing a chunk off it. The second shot blew apart one of its almond shaped pitch black eyes, and the craft spun about. As soon as it flew out of the firing line, the Gun Princess rose to her feet, and resuming running down the corridor.
The entrance to a bridgeway lay ahead of her, and at first I thought she might flee across to another building. But she changed direction, choosing instead to climb the nearby stairs at a run, taking them three if not four steps at a time. Her speed was such that she kicked off the back walls at each landing to avoid crashing into them. Back at the central atrium, the Gunbird began cautiously firing into the corridors at each level as it flew upwards. But the Gun Princess was already well above the craft. Emerging from a corridor, she sprinted across the balcony, leapt onto the guardrail, then out into the open expanse of the atrium.
As I watched her soar through the air, I had the impression that time itself had slowed down to watch her. Her clothes and hair fluttered as she sailed over the Gunbird belatedly realizing its quarry was now above it. The rifle cannon in her hands roared not once, twice, but three times. The heavy explosive rounds penetrated the Gunbird’s back, detonating a heartbeat later and blowing large holes in its spine.
I saw sparks, then watched flames gush out of the holes.
The war machine flapped its wings, but lost lift as its thrusters flickered and flamed out.
Above it, the Gun Princess pirouetted through the air, her weapon aimed down at the Gunbird, the muzzle flashing repeatedly, and more pieces of the machine exploded along its back until it swelled and blew apart. The shockwave and heat from the explosion tossed the Gun Princess higher into the air, catapulting her the rest of the way across the atrium to the balcony’s guardrail. Twisting her body like a platform diver, she landed on the guardrail while facing the atrium. But her momentum was too great, and to avoid falling awkwardly, she somersaulted backwards and then landed down on the balcony floor a half dozen meters away from the guardrail. Stumbling back a handful of steps, she collided with the wall behind her, and then used it to support herself.
In the atrium, the burning remains of the Gunbird spiraled lazily to the bottom of the building, crashing loudly before detonating a second time, rocking the building. By then the Gun Princess had pushed herself away from the wall. Staggering at first, she soon picked up her pace, though she ran with a noticeable limp as she turned down a corridor.
“She’s making good time,” remarked the girl in front of me loudly.
“But the clock is still winding down,” her companion pointed out, “and she’s injured.”
“She’s got it beat. She’ll take down that score,” another girl cheerfully proclaimed.
“So who set that score?”
“Nobody knows.”
“White Princess. Who the Heck is the White Princess?”
“Who cares? Her score is going down today.”
I listened to the girls while watching the Gun Princess run while reloading her enormous weapon. Clearly this was a simulation, as I couldn’t imagine a woman carrying such a large firearm with the ease she was demonstrating, let alone jump halfway across an atrium with a fifty meter span.
But if they were real, what chance would mere humans have against them?
A frown crept across my forehead.
Their speed. Their strength. If they were real…they would be amazing.
A guilty pang in my chest wiped away a smile before it could form on my lips.
What the Hell am I thinking? How stupid of me.
Yet when I looked at the girls before me, each one of them mesmerized by the visuals on the screens, each one cheering on the Princess in their hearts, I felt like I understood why they enjoyed it so much, and despite being a guy the Princess Royale appealed to me as well, though perhaps not for the same reasons. Nonetheless, I quietly experienced a change of heart, and when I looked back up at the screens, I felt it was okay for me to smile.
“She won’t make it.”
I glanced up at the girl with brilliant snow blonde hair standing beside me.
“She lost too much time dealing with that Gunbird.”
Mouth agape, I stared at Shirohime calmly eating a crêpe with one hand.
Without looking at me, she handed me the crêpe in her other hand. “This one’s for you.”
I hesitantly reached for it. “Ah…thanks?” The smell of the food triggered a rumble from my stomach.
“Don’t mention it,” Shirohime said in a flat, chilly tone. “Your boyfriend paid for it.”
“Huh?”
“He said he was sorry.”
“You mean Mat?” My eyes widened in a heartbeat. “He’s not my boyfriend,” I snapped at her.
My angry rebuttal drew attention from the girls in the crowd.
I shied back from their flinty stares. “Sorry….”
“I’m envious,” Shirohime remarked coldly, and withdrew the crêpe she was offering me. “I’ll take this as punishment for what you did to me on the mag-lev.”
I faced her. “That’s not fair. I apologized didn’t I?”
“Your apology was not accepted, you pervert.”
I started to clench my hands but soon stopped and forced myself to relax. “Whatever….”
Shirohime’s arrival had the effect of weakening the spell the Princess Royale had over me. I started walking away, but Shirohime grabbed me by the collar and yanked me back toward the crowd of girls.
“Watch it to the end,” she insisted, then took small bites out of both crêpes.
“Why?” I questioned her while fixing up the collar of my shirt.
“Just watch it,” she stated bluntly, and took another couple of bites out of the crêpes.
Somewhat reluctantly, I turned back to the action on the holovids but as I’d mentioned before the spell was broken and the mood was uncomfortable. If someone had told me this morning that I would be spending time beside the goddess of our class, I would have thought them crazy. This should have been a dream come true for me, but rather than feeling elated or overjoyed, I was rather bummed by her company. It hadn’t taken me long to realize that while Shirohime was pretty, she had a biting personality, something I hadn’t considered when I watched her from afar. I had been shallow in my desires, but now that I knew her better I couldn’t help thinking that perhaps the prettier the girl on the outside, the uglier she was on the inside.
It was a stereotype, I’ll admit that much, and I’m certain to be criticized harshly for it, but at the time that’s how I felt toward her. I actually went as far as to wonder if there was a portrait of her somewhere like that of Dorian Gray that revealed her true and ugly nature.
For thinking that I would come to hate myself just a little more.
My attention was jerked harshly back to the Princess Royale. A massive, rolling boom lent an air of realism to the violent explosion on the holovid screens. Before me, the crowd gasped in disbelief and dismay, many of the girls swaying on their feet.
“What happened…?” I asked in confusion. “What was that?”
“That,” Shirohime replied coldly, “was the end.”
I had missed it.
Preoccupied with my thoughts of Shirohime, I had stared at the holovids without watching them. As such, I couldn’t comprehend Shirohime’s meaning until I saw the Gun Princess falling to a street between megascrapers amidst the ruins of an enclosed bridgeway connecting two of the immense buildings. However, the game system prevented us from seeing her splattered on the hard permacrete, the virtual camera pulling away at the last moment.
“She lost?” Though I asked the question, it sounded more like an observation.
“Obviously.”
“But how…?” I looked up at the holovid screens but the game footage was frozen behind the words, GAME OVER.
Shirohime exhaled curtly as she shook her head. “She lost too much time dealing with the Gunbirds. That gave the hover tanks the time they needed to set up their ambush.”
“Tanks? What tanks?”
“The tanks that blew up the bridgeway.” Shirohime frowned to herself, and then a second later began pushing forward through the crowd.
Surprised by her actions, I followed her. “Wait—where are you going?”
I succeeded in getting through the crowd by trailing in her wake, much like a small boat following an icebreaker, and arrived at an enclosed capsule shaped like a giant teardrop. The cover of the capsule opened to reveal a young woman lying inside, her hands encased in gloves with ringed fingers, and a virtual reality headset covering most of her face. She first removed the gloves before reaching up to take off the headset. By then Shirohime had pushed her way to the capsule, and joined the ring of girls surrounding the contraption.
Standing behind her, I peeked between bodies at the young woman in the teardrop capsule who calmly listened to the gushing girls.
“…that was amazing….”
“…you almost did it….”
“…you came so close….”
“…aggh damn it. I really thought you’d win….”
“That was careless and stupid.”
I gasped and blinked in alarm at Shirohime who was staring stonily at the young woman. As soon as the words left her lips, and registered in the minds of the girls around the capsule, several dozen pairs of eyes turned upon her in anger.
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
“Hey, who are you to call her stupid?”
“Why don’t you try it? Let’s see how far you get.”
“Bet you won’t even make it halfway.”
“Yeah, I’ll put my monthly allowance on that!”
Ignoring their ire, Shirohime stepped closer to the capsule and addressed the young woman half sitting, half lying within it. “You got careless.”
The young woman looked up at her with faint surprise, then broke into a sheepish laugh as she rubbed her hair that was slightly matted with sweat. “I guess I did.” Looking down at the headset on her lap, she weakly shrugged a shoulder. “I’m not used to these….”
Shirohime’s eyes narrowed. “I guess you’re not….”
“It’s a lot harder to control a Princess with them.”
The exchange sounded a little strange to me, and I wondered if there was a connection between the two young women. Truthfully, I felt like an outsider while listening to them.
The young woman began to struggle to climb out of the capsule. “Um, could someone give me a hand? Sorry….”
A few of the girls around the capsule surged forward and then helped her out of the device. I was puzzled as to why she had so much trouble climbing out until I saw someone move a wheelchair closer to the capsule, and the girls helped the young woman onto it. It was evidently motorized with hubless wheels that resembled those on racing bikes, and equipped with a ring of effect-field emitters along the inside of the wheel rims. I wondered if they allowed the contraption to levitate over short distances thereby allowing the occupant to travel up and down stairs or over uneven ground.
The words TELOS CORPORATION were printed on the wheels.
The young woman fixed up her ankle length peach colored dress, and pulled down its long sleeves. It was then I noticed that she wore skin colored gloves and socks, and her feet were encased in shoes that resembled ballerina slippers. Perhaps she was a burn victim, but in this day and age, burns were relatively straightforward to heal. It was also rare to see someone in a wheelchair as most spinal injuries were repaired via nanosurgery, so I was clearly intrigued by whatever ailed her.
“Thank you,” she offered the girls standing around her.
With her tranquil and refined bearing, she gave the impression of being raised in a well-to-do family. In another day and age, she may have been the kind to enjoy long lunches or tea in the backyard of a luxurious manor, overlooking a scene of fine greenery.
“Will you come back again?” asked a girl standing beside the wheelchair.
“Maybe.” She smiled weakly, and then nodded. “No, I’ll definitely come back.”
“Do you need any help,” another girl asked.
The young woman shook her head. “No. I’m fine.” She swept her gaze over the faces surrounding her. “Thank you. I had a great time.”
The crowd of girls parted before her as the motorized chair nearly silently travelled forward. However, the young woman stopped and looked up at Shirohime, and then offered her hand in greeting. “My name’s Akane.”
Shirohime blinked slowly, her eyes narrowing for a heartbeat, before swapping the crepe in her right hand over to her left. After wiping her free hand against her skirt, she reached down and shook the young woman’s hand. “Next time, don’t waste time on the Gunbirds. You gave the tanks too much time to prepare their ambush. And travelling along the ground isn’t bad, but avoid the underground expressways as the tanks will follow you into them, although you can use the subways as there are a lot of emergency tunnels you can dive into.”
While I tried not to gawk at Shirohime’s unexpected insights into the game, the young woman, Akane, replied with a soft smile. “Oh, I’ll remember that.”
“You can also commandeer a bike or a car. That will let you get around faster. The underground parking lots are full of vehicles you can start up. I would recommend a bike.”
Akane nodded gently. “Thank you. I guess I will try that the next time.”
“So you’ll be playing it again?”
“Of course. I want to defeat that high score.”
Shirohime grew still before her lips parted into a thin smile. “Is that so?”
Though seated, the young woman bowed politely to Shirohime. “Until we meet again. Goodbye.”
She resumed travelling down the path formed by the girls, the wheelchair humming faintly as it propelled itself on its hubless wheels. She smiled at the girls but it faded slightly for a moment when her gaze brushed mine. I wondered if she found it surprising to see a boy amongst the crowd, or perhaps my feminine appearance confused her. Whatever the reason for her subtle reaction at sight of me, I was spared a second glance and soon she departed the area. However, it wasn’t long before a group of girls hurried after her, ushering her safely through the crowd moving about the arcade.
When they disappeared from view shortly thereafter, I felt confused by what I’d witnessed. I had the impression the cogs of a great machine had begun turning, and that I was in danger of being unknowingly swallowed up inside of it. Feeling uneasy, I decided to question Shirohime, but before I could do so a familiar voice called out from nearby.
“So this is where you were hiding.” Felicia was grinning broadly as she sauntered up to me with Angela not far behind her. “Where’s Class Rep?” she asked with a carefree tone.
I jerked a thumb over my right shoulder. “Back there.”
“No, I’m here,” Shirohime stated bluntly as she walked past me and stepped close to Felicia and Angela. My unease had briefly abated but returned when I saw the trio move away from me. Whatever Shirohime said to them startled the other two. With eyes wide, Felicia muttered something back, and Shirohime nodded faintly. Felicia then grew thoughtful, before stepping around Class Rep.
She walked up to me and asked, “Are you going to run out on us again?”
I mulled her question over. “That depends.”
“On what?”
“On what the three of you were talking about.”
Felicia waved a hand about airily. “Oh, that was just girl talk.”
“I see. Then I guess I have somewhere else to be.” I started walking away from them, heading for the staircase leading to the upper levels of the arcade.
“It’s about Princess Silver Blue.”
I stopped at the foot of the stairs, and spared the girls who’d followed me a look over my right shoulder.
Felicia was watching me with a grim look. “Want to tell us about it?”
“Why?”
“Because maybe we can help,” she replied somberly.
Had she answered me differently, I would have dismissed her offer by turning away. But the grin she usually wore was absent, and her countenance was solemn, such that it gave me pause.
Felicia stepped up to me. “Ronin, don’t treat us as strangers.”
I realized that yet again Felicia moved to bridge the distance between us. But this time it felt different from when she approached me in class a year ago. There was something deeper going on here, and I couldn’t put my finger on it. Once more, I had the impression of cogs turning and a great machine rumbling to life.
“Why would you help me?” I asked her. “What’s in it for you?”
She glanced away for a moment before giving me a shrug. “Nothing. Friendship, maybe.”
I raised my eyebrows at her. “Are you saying we’re not friends?”
“I’m not the one putting a wall up between us.”
That wall was evidence of my distrust of people in general, but it was also there to protect me. I searched her face, looking for the lie, and though I couldn’t find it, my guarded nature insisted that I be cautious. In other words, that wall wasn’t coming down today, but I could take it down a few bricks.
“Okay. I’ll tell you about the tragedy of Silver Blue”
- # -
So why did I agree to dress up as Silver Blue from the animated hit, “The Silver Blue Princess”?
Allow me to elucidate.
There is a girl that I presently consider the most beautiful girl in the cosmos and she happens to be a model.
Her name is Mercedes “Mercy” Haddaway.
To be fair, she’s a gravure model otherwise known as a bikini model, and in my unbiased candid opinion she ranks number one. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, as they say, and my tastes are supreme. But to cut a long story short, I’m one of her biggest fans. I have her entire magazine and photo album collection in various forms of media, not to mention every single holovid she ever released. So when the girls of the Cosplay Club found out – most probably from Tobias – they bribed me by getting me a ticket to one of her fan events. Mercy would be coming to Ar Telica that week to promote some new swimwear line, and would be holding a fan event as well. How could I dream of passing up the opportunity to meet Mercy in person, let alone shake her hand?
Thus I sealed my fate.
One year ago, for one day only during the Academy club recruitment week, I became Princess Silver Blue.
Was meeting Mercy in person worth the terror of cosplay cross-dressing?
Absolutely!
- # -
The arcade had three levels.
The ground floor contained the boothless games, of which there were dozens upon dozens, though there were exceptions such as the Princess Royale that was located near the back of the floor, along with a handful of other games that required players to slip into capsules, some of which were open.
The first floor was full of the pricier and larger holo-booths. These offered a more realistic gaming experience that comprised a combination of holographics and effect-fields to simulate an oriented moving terrain, so it was much like running or walking on a treadmill that could go forward, backward, left and right, up and down, all without leaving the confines of the booth.
The second floor – or third level – was smaller and served as a rest stop for gamers by providing a fast food dining experience along with tables and chairs. That’s where I found myself explaining my motivation for cross-playing as the Silver Blue Princess. I was seated at a table accompanied by Felicia, Angela, and Shirohime. Feeling famished, I dug into an oversized burger and somewhat watery soda, while the trio sipped on drinks of their own.
Felicia sat back in her chair looking bemused. “So that’s why you did it?”
I nodded as I ate the last piece of the burger on my tray.
“Is this girl really that pretty?”
Angela had been busy on her phone, and leaned over to show its screen to Felicia. The latter stared down at it for a long while, then shared a suspiciously meaningful look with Angela who drew back a moment later. I noticed worry flicker across Felicia’s face and Angela looked faintly uneasy.
What’s up with them?
While this was happening, Shirohime typed away furiously on her phone, which had me wondering what she was up to. Eventually she huffed to herself, then wiped away the device’s display and dropped it unhappily on the table.
What is up with her?
Felicia leaned forward and planted her chin on an upturned palm, resting her elbow on the table. “Well, I guess there are guys that will go to extremes for a woman.”
I gulped down my drink then plonked it loudly on the table. “Mercy isn’t just any girl. She is the girl. She’s absolutely gorgeous. No other girl can compare to her.”
“Huh…I’m not sure how that makes me feel.”
“Envious, probably,” Angela muttered. “She is pretty, but beauty is only skin deep.”
Try as I might, I couldn’t help glancing at Shirohime who happened to be pouting unhappily at her phone.
“What?” I asked her. “Did you get dumped?”
“Hah?” Shirohime mixed disbelief into her scowl. “Me? Dumped?”
“Well, is that a no?”
“First of all, I would have to be in a relationship in order to be dumped. Secondly, whomever I choose has to meet my exacting standards. Thirdly, who in their right minds would dump me—?”
Felicia raised a hand at her. “Okay, we get it. You’re not dumped. So what’s got your knickers in a twist?”
“I don’t wear knickers,” Shirohime replied testily before placing fingertips to her sumptuous bosom. “I wear lingerie. Designer lingerie. Only plain girls like you stick with the boring white stuff.”
Felicia grinned like a Cheshire cat but it made me shiver. “Plain. White. You got a problem with plain and white?”
Angela put her phone away. “Well, some girls just don’t need to try.”
For a short while, Shirohime gaped at her before closing her mouth. Then she slid her phone across the table toward Felicia. “Fine. If you must know.”
Her companions peered at her phone.
“Oh,” Felicia muttered, then glanced at her slender wristwatch. “Well, whatever.”
Shirohime took back her phone, then folded her arms and sat back unhappily in her chair. “Really. I’m more than up to the task….”
Felicia’s grin faded as she frowned a little. “Aren’t you just looking to score points?”
“And what if I am?” Shirohime asked in return.
Feeling the tension growing between the two girls, I was grateful when Angela sighed then cleared her throat. “Back to the matter at hand,” she said, “the question is what can Ronin expect come Monday morning?”
Felicia blinked and looked at me. “I’m wondering how she found out.”
“Ah,” Angela blurted out, then said, “She probably used facial recognition software. Because it compares the position of the eyes in relation to the mouth, and if possible to the ears, she probably used it to compare one of the Cosplay Club posters with a photo of Ronin.”
I gave her a confused look. “But then wouldn’t that mean that anyone could have figured it was me? The guys chasing after me could have done the same thing.”
Angela nodded pensively. “Assuming they compared the poster shot with every photo in the school database. Summaries of student profiles are available to students and staff. However, it’s more than likely they never considered you were a boy, so they probably only checked the female student profiles.”
In an unpleasant way, her theory did make sense, and because of it my self-esteem plunged. I was so convincing as a girl, even when not cross-playing, that the guys never considered the possibility that I was a male student of Telos Academy. Yet, if Angela had surmised correctly, it demonstrated Valjean’s determination to learn Silver Blue’s identity. The question I couldn’t answer was why?
“So, as I was asking,” Angela said. “What kind of reception can Ronin expect come Monday morning?”
Felicia’s lips twisted into weird shapes as she mulled it over. “I guess we won’t know until Monday. Then again, it might not be a problem. You know what I’m saying?”
Angela’s eyes widened slightly before relaxing back to normal. “Perhaps….”
I was puzzled so I asked, “What do you mean?”
Felicia stiffened for a heartbeat then broke into her cartoon grin. “Well, you could end up hit by a bus or car and then it’s adios amiga—I mean amigo.”
I stared at her in disbelief. “Thanks. I really needed to hear that.”
“Look, it may be that nothing happens. You show up on Monday to a warm round of applause.”
I placed my food wrappings and empty drink container on the tray. “Oh yeah, that’s really gonna happen.” I rose from the chair and picked up my tray. “If you’ll excuse me, I have places to be.”
“Wait—!” Felicia stood up quickly. “What if you show up in a female uniform?”
I froze. “What?”
“That way you can arrive at the school incognito. No one will know it’s you. You can slip into the school unnoticed.”
Felicia’s flights of fancy were beginning to disturb me. “How the Hell am I going to get past roll call?”
Angela had palmed her forehead. “How do you even think this stuff up?” she asked her friend. “Try to think before you speak.”
I sighed and shook my head. “Forget it. I’ll just take a leave of absence until it all blows over.”
“What if it doesn’t?” Angela asked.
“Then I’ll change my identity and transfer to another school”—I stared at Felicia—“not as a girl.”
She grinned at me sheepishly but it still looked cartoonish.
Walking over to a refuse bin, I cleared away my tray, then placed it on the stack of trays waiting to be cleaned. With that, I made my way to the stairs leading down to the first floor where the more expensive games were located. I noticed the girls hurrying after me, though Shirohime pointedly lagged behind, and I found myself growing irritated. She was a beauty, the kind that made my knees weak when I gazed upon her, but I was having trouble getting past her personality issues.
If she doesn’t want to be here, why doesn’t she just leave?
There is a saying that to be ignorant is to be delusion. I was ignorant of what Shirohime was like as a person, thus in that regard my image of her was a delusion, and now that delusion was being torn down by Shirohime. Compounding my state of disappointment, I had come to the gaming arcade hoping to escape reality, and for a brief while I’d done so, but now the gravity of my situation was weighing down upon me, and so I decided to flee it once more by escaping into a holo-virtual reality.
The first person shooter I loved to dominate was unoccupied, though a great many of the other booths had crowds of students from Telos Academy surrounding them, eyes eagerly watching holovid screens displaying the game progress for those outside the booths. I suspected on good authority the game I enjoyed wasn’t as popular due to its disturbingly graphic and realistic content. So I was eager to enjoy it as much as possible before the Arcade operators chose to remove it from their lineup.
Apparently, some players – and probably their parents too – had complained, and after a few students with weaker stomachs had succumbed to the game’s overpowering nature and tossed their cookies, a big warning sign was erected at the entrance to the game’s holo-booth that was shaped like a mini planetarium about four meters in diameter at the base. In addition to the warning, a security console stood on a pedestal beside the sign, requiring a prospective gamer to present identity and sign an electronic waver before being allowed to enter the locked booth.
Looking at the slowly rotating holovid screen projected above the booth, I saw that only a handful of new scores had been set since the last time I played it, but someone had recently bested my record by the slimmest of margins.
White Princess? Who’s the White Princess?
“Necropolis?” Felicia questioned as she read the name on the overhead banner. “What kind of game is this?”
“A zombie apocalypse,” Angela explained. “See. There’s a mature content warning on it. Expect lots of blood and gore. Adults must be supervised at all times.”
“Huh? Adults?” Felicia sounded perplexed, then asked, "You're going to play a zombie game right after eating?"
I didn't see the problem with that. As I walked to the pedestal outside the booth serving as an entry scanner, I shrugged. "Sure, why not?"
"You must have a really strong stomach."
"It's only a game," I murmurred under my breath.
Angela pointed out. "It says there, playing not advised after a meal."
I sighed as I stood before the pedestal, and threw the girls a look over a shoulder. “Why are you following me?”
Felicia made an ‘oh’ shape with her mouth before replying. “We thought you might want to try out the Princess Royale.”
“Huh…?” I glanced at Shirohime who was suddenly regarding me with interest. Caught a little off guard by her gaze, I blushed and blurted out, “No. Only girls play that.”
Shirohime’s expression darkened. She snorted softly and muttered, “Well, you’re halfway there.”
“What?” I whirled on her but she turned away, but not before making a show of tossing her hair then folding her arms under her magnificent bust.
Angela sighed and shook her head faintly, but Felicia quickly stepped forward. “So, are you any good at this?”
I stopped glaring at Shirohime and turned my attention on Felicia. “Are you kidding me? I set the highest score—I mean I had the highest score. Somebody beat me recently.”
Again, Shirohime snorted but continued to look away.
I turned back to her. “Hey, do you need to blow your nose or something?”
Shirohime slowly faced me. “Excuse me?”
“Well you’re snorting like a bull, so I was wondering if you had some sort of allergy.”
“I have no allergies, thank you very much.”
I held onto the moment before stating, “You should be glad Mat doesn’t know what you’re really like.”
Shirohime’s eyes widened. “Huh?”
I could almost hear the gong ringing out in her head, while my heart plummeted down to my feet as reality once more disappointed me. Yet, somehow I succeeded in masking my feelings behind a sagely nod. “If you think I’m going to put in a good word for you, think again. Not happening. Not a chance on this side of a purple moon.”
She unfolded her arms, and stared at me in shock. Though her mouth moved, nothing came out.
“Oh, and more thing,” I pointed at a finger at her chest. “Thanks for the pillow ride.”
“Why you little pervert!” She stormed toward me, but Felicia and Angela intervened by grabbing onto her and holding her back. “Unhand me,” she demanded.
Felicia sounded disenchanted. “I told you to be on your best behavior.”
Angela added, “You really should have looked at the bigger picture.”
“I told you he was a pervert,” Shirohime complained. “And my breasts are not pillows!”
I listened to them as I entered my Ar Telica citizen code, before swiping my phone over the scanner.
They may not be pillows but they certainly are soft.
I signed the legal waver that said I wouldn’t sue the Arcade’s operators in the event I was mentally scarred by the game. In other words, I participating knowing that it contained mature content that could easily offend impressionable young minds. If ten years from now I turned into a deranged serial killer, I couldn’t hold the Arcade operators or the game company responsible for my actions.
Swiping my phone one more time over the scanner to pay the game’s admission price, I waited for the dome shaped booth to unlock and open. Having played the game before, I knew what to expect and strode into the darkness within full of confidence I rarely expressed in real life. Also, I was trying not to appear obvious as I fled from an angry Class Rep.
“I’m going to be waiting for you,” Shirohime promised.
“Yeah, yeah,” I replied with a dismissive wave over my shoulder. “I’ll tell Mat your beauty is only skin deep.”
“Hey, I happen to be a sweet, kind, and generous girl.”
I turned around and pillowed my head on my hands. “Yeah, real generous.”
“Gah—I swear I’m going to kick your butt—!”
The door closed, shutting out the outside world and enveloping me in quiet solitude.
I dropped my carry-bag to the floor, and my body sagged as I bent over and grabbed my knees. “Gods, I’m never looking at a pretty girl the same way again.” After a moment, I reconsidered and raised a finger. “Except for Mercedes.”
Straightening slowly, I looked around me, then turned to the ‘back’ of the large and spacious domed interior of the booth, where a pedestal stood with two electronic light-guns holstered to either side of it.
“Here we go…,” I mumbled under my breath.
Reaching down to pick up my bag, something unexpected happened.
“Prepare for translocation.”
I straightened sharply and looked up at the ceiling. “What?”
“Translocation imminent.”
Turning quickly, I looked at the black walls in confusion as this had never happened before.
“Brace for immediate Translocation.”
I stretched my arms wide. “Brace? How the Hell do I brace—?”
Without warning, I felt the ground underfoot heave and I was abruptly knocked to the floor.
It was an experience akin to the saying ‘having the rug swept out from under you’.
I landed on hands and knees, and gulped as my innards surged when a disorienting wave of weightlessness washed over me. For several seconds I had no sense of orientation. If I had not continued to feel the floor of the booth beneath me, I would have believed I was floating in a black, weightless void. Once more without warning a violent shove knocked me down to my stomach and the wind was crushed out of me.
I lay on the floor for several heartbeats before pushing myself up to my knees. Shaking my head a little as the gyroscope of my inner ear began working again, I looked around me and saw that the darkness had given way to an afternoon scenery that I found disturbingly familiar yet wholly unexpected.
Rising slowly to my feet, I turned about in a full circle, and regarded my surroundings.
My first impression was that the booth’s holo-fields were fully active and I was now fully immersed in the game environment. Necropolis was the kind of shooting game that employed holo-fields rather than virtual reality gear, which was one reason why I enjoyed it more as it felt more real to me. It went so far as to simulate wind using hidden ventilators and effect-fields, so I wasn’t surprised to feel a gentle breeze caress my face and hair. However, as I continued sweeping my gaze over scenery, I began to have second doubts.
By all accounts, I was standing in a plaza in the midst of an abandoned city, one that uncannily resembled Ar Telica so much that I felt a sense of panic when I recognized this place as the plaza running through the entertainment complex housing the Arcade. However, there was not a single person in sight, and the eerie stillness that enveloped me had wondering if this was really a holovid projection complemented with effect-fields and other sensory equipment.
Everything looked a little too real, and my panic morphed into dread when I failed to spot anything remotely like the control pedestal with holstered lightguns.
I decided against calling out, and instead took off my school blazer, dumping it on the ground, then loosened my tie and rolled up my sleeves. Picking up my carry-bag, I slung its straps diagonally across my body, then swept my gaze over the plaza once more. Catching sight of an information kiosk, one that also existed in the real plaza, I hurried over to it and was shocked to see a pedestal behind it with two large lightguns hanging off it.
At sight of the weapons, my heart jumped for joy while the rest of me sagged in relief.
After giving myself a few moments to steady my emotions, I quickly unholstered the weapons from the pedestal. Hefting them in both hands, I noticed they were longer and heavier than the lightguns I was familiar with, and the battery pack disguised as a magazine was double the size I remembered it. Yet despite this they possessed sling straps and extendable stocks, both of which I’d made use of in the past. Differences aside, having them in my possession alleviated some of the fear miring my thoughts, and I breathed a lot easier until a loud crash announced the shattering of a shop front window somewhere behind me.
I spun around in time to see the first of the zombies crawl out into the plaza.
It was a young woman wearing a chic outfit, more or less the kind you’d expect on an attractive girl out on a date or just shopping with her friends. She crawled on the ground for a short distance, then stopped and looked up in my direction.
As I stared at her, my body tingled with unease that melded into the dread weighing down my limbs. But when the creature rose to her feet and began staggering toward me, my gamer instincts slipped into gear and I began thinking more clearly. Quickly checking the charge on the lightguns, I slung one of them across my back, and used both hands to carry the other. I may have referred to them as ‘guns’ but truthfully they were around thirty inches long so two hands were better than one.
Since the guns fired photon rounds, stepping into a balanced shooting stance might seem pointless to people. After all, everyone knows that photons don’t weigh very much. Nonetheless, I felt better and more confident when standing in the ready position, and with both hands on the lightgun, I took aim at the unfortunate soul crawling toward me.
My finger was already pressing down on the trigger when I suddenly hesitated.
Something felt off.
Watching the creature stagger toward me, I studied it intently as I struggled to wrap my mind around the discrepancy between the game I was experiencing now and the game as I remembered it. It wasn’t just the stage loading or the weapons that were dramatically different, nor was it the breeze I could feeling blowing past me. It was the scent of something rotten in the air. Even if I could rationalize everything else my senses were experiencing, I couldn’t explain the scent of death that tainted the air.
A sudden tension gripped my arms as I aimed at the creature approaching me on unsteady legs and feet, hunched over as it struggled for balanced. However, I was running out of time and distance so I took steady aim and fired the lightgun.
I was accustomed to the muzzle flash, a nice touch of added realism courtesy of a holo-emitter fitted to the lightgun, but the mild recoil surprised me more than the sight of a simulated bullet – an explosive tipped holo-round – flying out of the barrel and striking the zombie woman roughly thirty feet away. A piece of her scalp was blown off, and she stumbled to her knees, but after a short while she picked herself back up. When her gaze meet mine, a cold shiver ran through my body.
Her eyes looked alive and real, so much so that my doubts about the veracity of this being a simulation began to swell like a tsunami, and I took an unsteady step back. The rational part of my mind attributed the shift in my surroundings as the game system employing holo-fields and effect-fields to simulate the effect of retreating a step. But the not-so-rational part of me was beginning to clamor that what I was experiencing was indeed real. This wasn’t the inside of the gaming booth but an actual plaza, and the pitiful creature in front of me wasn’t a holographic image but an actual zombie.
The young woman, her neck torn and bloodied, reached out for me as though pleading with me to end her existence and give her peace. Silently, she mouthed words that I couldn’t hear…and didn’t want to hear.
My mouth dry, I aimed the light-gun, centered the targeting beam on the zombie’s forehead, and squeezed the trigger. Again the gun kicked – my rational self explaining it was simulated by an effect field – but this time my aim was true.
The front of the undead woman’s skull exploded as the very real mini bullet struck home and detonated. But it wasn’t enough to bring her down. I fired a second shot, no longer thinking the bullets were holographic, and watched another part of her head blow apart. Her body collapsed to the ground and shuddered one last time before it stopped moving.
I noticed I was holding my breath, part of me afraid that she would begin moving again. But after a few seconds of silence and stillness, I inhaled deeply, feeling my lungs hurt a little as yet another shiver ran through me.
This isn’t a game.
The proof was lying on the plaza no farther than ten meters away from me.
The dead zombie wasn’t fading away or derezzing into light particles. It remained where it fell, dark red blood dribbling out of the perforated skull and other wounds on her body.
This is not a game.
A second zombie stumbled out of the shattered shop window, another young woman dressed in the clothes of an employee; perhaps she was the store clerk. Her neck and shoulders were ripped open and ruined. She muttered something between undead lips, and without thinking I aimed and blew her away with a shot to the chest, then followed up with one to the head. Her body collapsed supine, and lay still. But my focus didn’t linger on her, shifting quickly onto a group of zombies emerging from a café opposite the gaming arcade.
They were people dressed in many walks of life, some wearing business suits, other in casual wear, and a couple dressed in tight waitress outfits. But they were all undead, and again the gamer in me took over, but now I felt a pressure on my consciousness I’d never experienced before most probably from knowing this wasn’t the game I was accustomed to playing.
The plaza was real.
The zombies were real.
And the lightguns fired very real yet tiny bullets.
Taking a number of deep breathes, and gathering my nerves like I’d never before – except on the occasion when I dressed up as the Silver Blue Princess as per the signed agreement with the Cosplay Club – I extended the gunstock, pressed it against my right shoulder, and then stepped forward to face the undead slowly emerging from the shops of the arcade.
Opening up my mind to the patterns I could recognize in their group movement, and gripping tightly the lightgun that wasn’t a lightgun, I began picking them off one at a time with well-placed shots to their heads.
Little by little, I lost myself to the game that wasn’t a game and the ensuing carnage.
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