"Once everyone gets here, I think the first step we need to take is to find one of the Fearless and convince them to join us." Mori shifted on her section of the tower's parapet, Ronin and Wei busy peering at a holographic map he'd pulled up. They'd found her team's old base in the fifth ring, but with no one occupying it.
"Aren't you a Fearless?" Wei asked, wrinkling her nose.
"We need a...more fearless Fearless than me," Mori explained lamely. Really they needed a Fearless because after shuffling through her inventory half a dozen times, she hadn't been able to find the cube.
"We don't need another Fearless," Ronin said. He poked at one of the moving dots on the map. "There. Wraith's entered this ring, probably with the team in tow."
Wei hopped up and stepped up onto the edge of the tower. "I'll head over to meet them." Her voice registered in Mori's ear. "We've got comms?"
"Comms are good," Mori confirmed.
Wei gave her a thumbs up and leaped from the parapet.
Mori looked up from fiddling with her earring to find Ronin offering her a gleaming blue blade. "My knife," she said in disbelief.
"And that's not all," Ronin said. Her pistol shimmered into existence. "I used or traded most of your food and crystals." Then a light blue rifle materialized in his hand, its surface decorated with silver streaks across the metal.
"But...that's not mine," Mori whispered. Her finger skimmed over the smooth metal stock of the weapon. "I broke my rifle in the battle before I left." The color matched the tint of a perfect cloudless sky—her favorite color.
"I might've cleared one of the hardest dungeons just to get it for you. Look, look, look!" Ronin raised the rifle to his cheek with a practiced motion and fired at a boulder in the field below. Light raced out of the barrel. At first Mori wondered if he'd missed, but then a boom like thunder cracked the air and the rock crumbled.
"Whoa," Mori breathed.
Ronin whistled at the damage. "Best rifle in the game," he said.
Mori stepped back when he offered the gun to her. "You should keep it. You worked for it, not me." She eyed the weapon, identifying it as the Artemis rifle.
"Mori," Ronin said, lowering his voice. "I got it just for you. Not me, not anybody else." He took her hand and placed it on the stock.
"Thank you." Mori cradled the rifle in her arms, admiring the beauty and lethality of it. More than that, her heart filled at the thought he'd done this for her. "Why would you go through all that trouble though?" She looked up to search his face, her breath catching in her lungs at the intensity in his eyes.
"Because you remind me of someone," Ronin said softly. His hand hovered over hers like the touch of a butterfly's wing. "You see, I—"
"Mori!" Ren screamed, stomping up the stairs.
Ronin stepped back as Mori turned to the stairwell, the gun evaporating in her hands. "Up here, Ren."
Her old friend appeared and paused, her chest heaving and face splotched red. In two quick strides, she reached Mori and slapped her across the face before pulling her into a rough hug.
"I deserved that," Mori said, wincing from the sting of Ren's palm.
"Don't you ever do that again." Ren sniffled. "I though you were dead, idiot. Not to mention this is, not the first, but the second time you've fallen off the face of the fricking planet."
"I missed you too, Ren."
With a final squeeze, Ren whirled around and barked out orders down the stairs. "Hurry up, slow pokes. We haven't got all day!"
Someone must be going through her dictator phase. Mori waved as Yuta and Tsuna climbed up to the tower's peak, the latter glaring instead of being her usual sunny self.
"Can anyone be the leader except Ren, please?" she growled.
"We can arrange for that. I've sent you three party requests," Ronin said.
Mori did a headcount. "Wait, where's Niko and Potato?"
Ren kicked a pebble at Tsuna. "Niko's asleep. We left him in the second ring with the Night Watchmen."
"Does that have something to do with the snow cloak people?" Mori asked, glancing at Ronin. He'd left his behind when they teleported out of the second ring and she had to admit, he looked better in black.
"The sleepers have nightmares," he explained. "Our job is to kill their fear manifestations and to keep them safe from any players who have looting on their minds."
So she and Perera had foretold the disaster. Somehow that stirred up guilt in Mori, as if she could have prevented it somehow by knowing. "And Potato?"
Tsuna kicked the little rock off the tower with enough force to leave black scuff marks on the stone floor. "Potato left the party and went missing the day after you did."
"I don't like Potato," Yuta muttered, the first time Mori had heard him speak in the game.
"Then I guess this is it." Mori nodded to Wei who'd managed to slip upstairs without anyone else noticing. "Take a moment to uh—figure out who the leader is going to be. I need to talk to Ronin really quick."
She gestured for him to follow her down the stairs and stopped at ground level. "Ronin, I really can't press the importance of how much we need to find another Fearless. Like, let's just say that coming back a second time gets rid of that secret ingredient that makes a Fearless any differe—"
Ronin pressed his finger to her lips. "Mori, I inherited your entire inventory."
Her earring. The pistol. The knife. He has the cube. "But...how?"
"You didn't read the fine print?" Ronin chuckled, but the next moment he swayed on his feet, eyes rolling back in his head.
"Ronin!" Mori caught him, wondering whether she should call for help.
"I'm fine." He grunted, already supporting his own weight again. But his skin looked waxen, veins popping out at his temples. "Been a little light-headed lately, that's all."
"You've been pushing yourself too hard," Mori scolded. "You look like you're about to pass out."
"Almost did. Anyways, shall we embark on our grand quest now?" Through Ronin's cheerful facade, Mori glimpsed exhaustion and even worse, fear.
"Why didn't you go to the center yourself if you have it?" she asked. "Don't tell me you couldn't have made it." Even with stats slightly lower than Cynthia's, Ronin had appeared untouchable to her since the beginning. His revelation about his sister hadn't put to death Mori's belief that Ronin could clear the game without her help.
"You want me to be honest, Mori?" Ronin pinched his nose and closed his eyes. "It's because I've tried. I made it to the center's edge and I couldn't take it. But I'm willing to try again."
"How bad is the seventh ring?" Mori whispered. She'd asked the question before about the sixth ring, as a different person than who she was now, yet the same chill washed over her when Ronin replied—
"If the sixth ring is a nightmare, then the seventh ring is a circle of hell."
In the end, Mori chose not to question him further. She couldn't lose her nerve and when they returned to the top of the tower, the team had voted her as leader.
"Back in the captain's chair again," Ren told her with a grin.
"I feel like captains have hats, not chairs," Mori murmured, sorting everyone's stats into neat boxes as a way to calm her mind. Nevertheless, she accepted the mantle of responsibility with minimal protest. "Captain's first order is that Ronin's first mate." She tried to ignore the look of disappointment on Ren's face. She could make it up to her later.
"Can the crystals take us to the middle of the sixth ring?" she asked Ronin. "I'm not really in the mood for murderous birds."
"The more expensive kind can." Ronin summoned a blue cluster to his hand. "Which I happen to have enough of."
Mori surveyed her team of tired, battered players with low morale to boot. But they'd volunteered to be here. They knew the risks and decided to take them anyway. They'd seen her at her weakest and given her a second shot anyway.
"I couldn't ask for better teammates than all of you." She raised her crystal, a shining light of hope in the surrounding darkness. "For our friends and family, both the ones we hope to return to and those we've lost along the way. May they burn forever bright in our memories."
Ronin pinpointed a destination on his map for everyone to teleport to. "We want to be on the ground for the ideal strat, but not close enough for anyone to trigger the minotaurs."
"What's the best strat?" Mori questioned.
"Sight in from a distance—the monsters are near-sighted so as long as the wind favors us, they won't notice. If it doesn't, we edge along the cliff until it does. Next, we have our best sniper watch their patterns. Could take several hours, but they'll line up in a row like suns in eclipse and that's when you take the shot." Ronin patted Mori on the shoulder.
Mori sighed. "No pressure or anything like that."
"We can fight them if we have to," Ren said. "I've still got the poleax from the last fight. Thing takes up half my inventory space."
"We're agreed then. Sixth ring, take two." Mori's crystal glowed as she read the map coordinates aloud. The sparkling rock chipped apart and swirled around her like snowflakes in a storm.
When they melted away, she stood in the shadow of the cliff's ledge. While her team settled in for the wait, Mori readied her rifle, shifting her feet around to form divots then settling her arms on her knees.
She found the pack of minotaurs a mile away, seven in total. They snorted and milled around, sometimes knocking heads with each other, horns interlocking. "Why is it so dark? Where did the sun even go?" Mori muttered, flicking the scope's night vision on. The cold wind gusting through the valley caused her to shiver.
"The sun left when sleep came," Ronin answered. "Who knows if it'll ever come back?"
"I hope our party will be able to stay awake," Mori whispered. "All of you have been here longer than me. Aren't you tired, Ronin?"
"Of course, I am." He yawned beside her. "But I told myself that if I closed my eyes, I'd never be able to see you again. So I kept them open."
"Stop flirting." Mori wiped the smile from her face. "It's distracting and we'll probably never see each other again once we leave Valor."
A light weight settled over her as Ronin draped his cloak across her shoulders. "I wouldn't count on it. It's a small world, after all."
Without the sun, it'd become even harder to tell time in the virtual world, but after several hours, the bulls began to align.
"You're better, you're better, you're better,*" Ronin muttered in encouragement.
Mori drew in deep breaths to keep her vision from blurring. Any second now. There.
The last bull's horns had about disappeared from view when she fired. Like a comet, light shot from her rifle's barrel and pierced through the straight line of monsters.
The concussive blast rang in her ears. As one, the minotaurs bellowed their pain before shattering—all seven of them.
"That one was for my sister," Mori said softly.
Her team cheered, coming over to pick her up off the ground and squish her between them in a group hug.
"Three cheers for Mori!" Tsuna yelled. "Hip, hip!"
"Hooray!" her teammates shouted.
Ronin hung on the outskirts but smiled wide enough to warm her more than the sun.
____________________________________________________________
Chapter Word Count: 1933
Total Word Count: 31644