Sniping with an Actanoid is an extraordinarily difficult feat.
Even with targeting assistance, compensating for lag in a moving shot is beyond human capability.
The Warabe got hit because it had closed in on the destroyed Allrounders — that’s when it was targeted.
In that case, the right move is to move immediately.
Chihaya’s team reacts fast. Some hit the undergrowth in the clearing instantly, others sprint into the trees.
“Use the drone to find the sniper!”
“Did the Jackalope’s sound pickup catch the gunshot?”
“——I have bad news.”
The Jackalope’s Actor silences the whole group with one sentence, then continues.
“The sound pickup caught footsteps. A pack of Hafrondes is heading this way.”
“Of all the things — Hafrondes, in a situation like this.”
The New Frontier creature known as a Hafronde is something like a massive crocodile. Covered in tough scales that make conventional firearms largely ineffective, and fast on top of it. The fact that they travel in packs of around twenty only makes them worse.
But the team has the Heavy Rounder-series Keeper. The Keeper’s weapon is the light machine gun Saiga=Counterweight — heavy ordnance that can reduce another Actanoid to scrap within range, making it effective against Hafrondes as well.
Its teammate the Cyclone has opted for the Kaien Heavy Industries handgun Ryuho, seemingly with an eye to maneuverability. High recoil, but developed specifically for large New Frontier reptiles — naturally very effective against Hafrondes too.
The problem is that being under a sniper means fighting is out of the question.
Someone has to cover their backs, and that naturally means the job falls to whoever isn’t armed to fight Hafrondes.
“Jackalope and Allrounder — keep the sniper suppressed.”
Of course, Chihaya looks up at the ceiling, eyes watering.
“heh, h-heheh……”
She’d forgotten her voice chat was still on. The Jackalope’s Actor sounds unsettled by her laugh.
“You can laugh at a time like this……?”
“oh, no, heh heh”
Stomach in knots, Chihaya works the Allrounder.
She doesn’t know where the sniper is hiding. But given that the Warabe got shot, it’s hard to imagine they’re inside the forest — the dense trees would block any line of sight.
Maybe they’re on a mountain somewhere. Chihaya looks east toward the Wakagawa Upper Mountain Range. That feels too far away.
Which might mean they’re positioned high up in one of the taller trees.
Chihaya checks the rear camera.
She can see the Keeper team fighting Hafrondes in the forest. Either the numbers are too much, or something else — they’re laying down fire while slowly retreating. Keep retreating and they’ll break into the clearing, exposing themselves to the sniper.
Chihaya needs to draw the sniper’s attention, but against someone with a sniper rifle her Allrounder is helpless. It’s hard to imagine the sniper is within assault rifle range.
Time is running out. While she’s standing here, the sniper is probably just waiting for someone to step into the clearing. In the worst case, Chihaya’s Allrounder becomes the target that reveals the sniper’s position.
If the loaner Allrounder takes damage, she’s in the red for certain. Repair costs in the hundreds of thousands of yen. Total destruction would mean millions in reimbursement. Insurance or not — absolutely out of the question.
Teary-eyed and wondering why she’s being ambushed in the middle of absolutely nowhere, Chihaya has a thought.
The sniper doesn’t want any Actanoids near this location.
What bothered her was the way the target Allrounders had just been left where they fell. A bandit wouldn’t leave a unit they’d taken down out in the open.
And why were those first Allrounders sniped in the first place? Anyone going into dense forest like this would bring something more maneuverable than a sniper rifle. There shouldn’t be a sniper here at all.
The sniper didn’t end up here by accident. But this isn’t banditry either.
“……protecting something they don’t want found?”
This is deep in the New Frontier, out of range of signals from other garages.
Actanoids are expensive, and any sensible Actor avoids combat whenever possible. So if you ambush and wipe out a team, everyone starts avoiding the area.
Simple, but effective. Just limited-time effective — until a skilled Actor comes along with a suppression contract.
If the goal is just to clear the area for a short period, this isn’t the kind of place you’d set up a permanent base.
A drone appears on Chihaya’s main monitor. If she ran the resource identification app on that drone’s aerial footage, she might be able to figure out what the sniper is protecting.
But asking the Conductor for drone footage isn’t something the socially anxious Chihaya can bring herself to do.
She opens voice chat, mouth moving wordlessly as she searches for words — and then the Jackalope’s Actor reports on their acoustic survey first.
“No hits. However, encrypted communication is active on part of the spectrum — there are multiple hostiles.”
At the same time, a rough topographical map of the surrounding area assembled from the Conductor’s drone footage comes through.
Tall trees and elevated ground where a sniper might be positioned are marked in red. Chihaya opens the attached drone footage and immediately starts running the resource exploration app on her computer.
“heheh, found it……”
She mutters without thinking and immediately starts working the Allrounder to pull out the wire.
The Jackalope’s Actor calls over.
“Found it — found what? Found who?”
“huh? oh, heh heh”
Technically she hadn’t found the sniper, so she laughs it off. Even through voice chat the suspicious atmosphere comes through clearly.
In the meantime, the Allrounder Chihaya is operating works in silence — threading the wire along with the winch between the trees and hooking a grenade onto the wire midway.
Remotely triggering the winch while pulling the grenade’s pin. The wire reels in at speed, and the hooked grenade is flung upward into the air.
A grenade in a parabolic arc.
“What exactly are you——”
The Jackalope’s Actor mid-question, and in the distance the grenade explodes.
Apparently curious about Chihaya’s actions, the Cyclone sends drone footage of the blast site and shares it with the team.
“Is that a Kukumerka grove? Why is there one all the way out here.”
Just as the Jackalope’s Actor says — what Chihaya identified with the resource exploration app and lobbed a grenade into is a grove of the New Frontier plant Kukumerka.
Its growth conditions are still unidentified, but it’s a New Frontier resource expected to have medical applications as a non-addictive anesthetic that’s easy to extract.
An extremely high-value plant — and Chihaya’s read is that this grove is exactly what the sniper is trying to protect.
“heh heh heh……”
Laughing unsettlingly as she reloads and fires again, Chihaya earns a look of horror from the Jackalope’s Actor.
Mercilessly bombing a rare and valuable medical resource. Since no one’s heard her reasoning or her plan, from the outside it looks like she’s ignoring the fight with the sniper entirely and just destroying resources while laughing.
But the effect shows immediately.
When the third grenade goes up, an unidentified large drone rises out of the forest and opens fire on it.
No way it hits a small grenade in flight — the third round lands another blow on the Kukumerka grove.
The Jackalope, which had been looking on in horror, snaps back and reports.
“Acoustic survey hit. Rannoid-series Conductor and Sprinter-series Leaf Sprinter approaching!”
Realizing they can’t protect the Kukumerka grove unless they deal with Chihaya directly, the snipers have apparently abandoned their position and are closing in.
It was exactly what she’d planned for — but Chihaya, faced with hostile units bearing down on her, keeps up her unsettling laugh through the nerves and the dread.