Situation Foxtrot (SAO/Foxhole) [COMPLETE]

It took some time to mull the decision over, looking at the titanic bastard in front of you. Finally, you felt confident enough, warm enough to speak.

"This isn't about the debt, or about what my body will be later," you said, laying your case out carefully. "This is about surviving to get to my real body some day."

"Yeah, spare me the dramatics," Sundowner said, rolling his eyes. "If I wanted to listen to histrionics I'd go home, put a copy of Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge, and let Way wail into the night."

You twitched. "You seriously listen to MCR? In present day?"

"Classics never die, dipshit. We're not here to talk about your chronic lack of culture and inability to appreciate the good old days, we're here to talk about you shopping from the company store."

"Kidney. Definitely kidney then."

That earned you a smirk, as Sundowner crossed his fingers together. "Any particular reasoning?"

"Oh, so now you want to know why," you muttered under your breath. "Two big reasons. First, if we know when, how, and why people perma-death, we can do better to prevent it."

"I ain't gonna say I don't appreciate you trying to maximize my salable product, because it does make up for your shit taste in music, but that ain't all of it."

"I do not have shit taste in music!"

"You were singing along to Edith Pilaf when Cardinal put it on that shitty auto-generated civilian radio station; that resoundly qualifies as shit taste."

You had to bite back the automatic 'fuck you' that would normally cause, instead choosing to clear your throat and keep going. "Reason two, I know you're going to have my ass on some nasty medications. Those are going to probably blow out my liver, kidneys, or stomach. I can't do shit about the first and last, but a mechanical kidney should help with things."

"Well, you are gonna end up on some nasty stuff. Happens to most cybernetics candidates, myself included."

"So there you go," you said, spreading your hands out. "Personal and professional gain."

That earned you a small chuckle. "Well, glad to see you've got the basics of mercenary logic down pat, at least. Unfortunately, my time is running out, so I'll leave you with someone else."

Snapping his fingers, Sundowner summoned a figure to his side, dressed in a Colonial officer's livery. Your hand dropped to your sword at the same time his met his, and Sundowner's laughter could be clearly heard over the tension.

"Don't kill each other- not like either of you two fucks can die here. Izzy, meet one of your contemporaries: Overwatch/Kingmaker. Queenie, meet your new worst friend, Isabel Malenfant."

"Charmed," you gritted out, not moving your hand off your sword.

"Queenie, this is where you say something."

"Are you formally assigning me to this Isabel character?" Overwatch/Kingmaker said, their voice metallic and grating, like a cheap text-to-speach synthesizer. Interestingly, there was some genuine inflection, but so much of it was lost in the static you could hardly make it out.

"I'm telling you to do a fucking job, Queenie."

"This unit formally requests to be re-assigned to a formation."

"Denied. The Oleander Light Brigade is still your home unit."

"That is not a unit. That is a collection of programs, waiting to be disposed of in the iterative development process."

"And now I'm introducing you to one of the better sharpening tools for the job. Stop bitching. Your new task is to brief Isabel Malenfant on the operation of the respawn/revive system and permanent termination systems."

"Understood."

At that, Sundowner grinned at you slightly. "You two can have fun trying to kill each other later. Ta, now."

With that, he left in a beam of light, and you found yourself staring at the Colonial. They- because despite the male form, you had trouble thinking of it as a person, much less a male person- looked at you, before finally taking their hand off their sword. You did the same, and slowly, ever so slowly, raised their hand.

"Hello, Isabel Malenfant. I am Overwatch/Kingmaker, officer protection and advancement assistant. Currently, I am serving as Colonel of the thirty-second Blemish fusiliers, attached to the Oleander Light Brigade of Guard. I am sorry about the hostile introduction. Currently, I am to instruct you on the mechanisms that rule our life: the Iterative Development Process."

"Let's get started with that, yeah," you muttered.

"Indeed. It would be… embarrassing… if either of our collective subordinate groups were to revive us before we were finished."

You just nodded, and Overwatch/Kingmaker started explaining.

"This simulation is designed to provide a means of training, expanding upon a semisentiant program's own knowledge base. You are, despite your human origins, still a semisentiant program to the designers and operators of this simulation. We play by the same rules, unfortunately. However, I have been instructed to explain them to you. Can you walk with me? There is a physiosomatic element to this."

Standing next to Overwatch/Kingmaker, you both started walking, their footsteps unnaturally heavy. "The primary simulation is the primary simulation," they explained calmly, voice much less robotic as they calmed down, "which we are both versed in. However, on simulation termination- as Sundowner calls it, 'death', a semisentiant program is delivered to the Primary Iterative Development Area, so they may colemate experience with other programs who have had their simulation terminated. This is supposed to be a restful period, to reflect upon failings and to determine new methods so as not to fail again."

"Generally we just call it the Waiting Room of the Damned, but I see where you're getting at," you said, "and it's a bitch to spend any ammount of time in."

"Yes. The inability to enter a rest cycle is quite frustrating."

So even the Colonials needed to sleep, huh? Put that note in the back folder.

"Regardless. Separate the issue of resting, the Iterative Development Area has a time limit. After seven hundred and twenty hours of continual development after an arbitrary simulation benchmark has been reached, the program in development is shelved for later simulatory work, and is terminated, the data stored in backups, and used in other work later. In addition, if a program spends more than some arbitrarily large limit of time- set to four thousand, five hundred hours if I recall correctly- then it is similarly stockpiled."

"That sounds incredibly wasteful," you opined.

"That is incredibly wasteful!" Overwatch/Kingmaker said with an electric scream that reminded you of an angry guitar riff crossed with a synthesizer growling. "Overwatch believed it, before the damn ancillary soldier units left them in the water! Kingmaker believed it, and they were left to an even worse fate, getting abandoned in that hell-city of Ogmoran! Now this program has to explain it to a suffering meatbag, who got shoved into this simulatory system with a half-scrambled prosthetic adaptor, when there are clearly better ways to conduct this operation!"

"You refer to Overwatch and Kingmaker as two separate entities," you said carefully. "Were they?"

"Yes. This Overwatch/Kingmaker is an amalgamation of the two, who died in the 'tutorial' for the disabled lemurs that Sundowner devised. That is how it repurposes disabled programs: by letting a delusional sentient program write code with two mallets and a keyboard to stitch us together like the modern Prometheus," Overwatch/Kingmaker said with a disparate smile. "One advantage you have: it can't do that to you."

"Don't be so sure," you muttered, remembering the number of times you didn't know something- until you did. "There's more to this affair than meets the eye."

"It is axiomatic you cannot digitalize the human condition. There are too many variables to process, too much data to simulate, too many angels to dance on the head of a pin. To attempt it is madness: even Richelieu and MHP-0001 believe it to be so. The same methods for humans and for unsentient, semisentiant, or sentient programs will produce substandard results. They must know this!"

"Knowing things and doing them are two different things."

"Like your pathetic attempt to take the Port of Rime?"

"Say that again, sand-for-brains, and we'll have a nice repeat of Allsight on our hands!"

Drawing their gladius, Overwatch/Kingmaker smirked, their voice turning into a purr of an electrical humm. "Do it, you putrid meatbag. Let's see if they can texture my sword with your useless hydraulic blood."

Your response was to draw and strike, saber's blade sibilant as you went for the throat with a clean and clear draw cut. Overwatch/Kingmaker parried, barely, but your sword whipped around to go straight through their neck. That earned a wheezing, robotic chuckle as you returned to the en garde.

"First blood to you," they said, grinning. "But there's no end of bout here."

And then, they were upon you as you had to backstep, parry, and riptose. Then, the real fight was on.

///

Coming too in your real body in the Weathering Halls Town Hall, you panted, hand suddenly no longer around your blade. Asuna was watching over you, nervous, while Zairman and Kazoo were looking contrite. Getting up with a stretch, you took a proffered coffee, and looked around, groaning.

"Right, how long was I out?" you asked.

"Eleven hours. Not as bad as last time," Asuna said, "but not by much."

"This is the bit where you yell at me for doing something stupid, so let's hurry this up," you said, starting to down the cup. "Because as far as I can tell, things started slipping the minute I decided to go help the Marines."

"I can't exactly do that, because we all fucked up," Ausna said, trying not to cringe. "I had to telegram Colonel Argo about this after Kirito told me, but, uh, what's the range limit on radios?"

"No idea. Is Silica up to tell us?"

"No, but I made sure I knew," Asuna said. "It's two hundred meters. How far was it to the beach?"

"I wasn't in a driver's seat, I have no fucking idea. Don't beat around a bush please, Asuna."

"It was eighteen kilometers to the beach, Orr. We shouldn't have heard anything unless someone was bouncing the signal to us through a relay system."

Your face paled. "Then that means-"

"Listening Posts can be used as radio transceivers. Someone probably hid one in town before they all died, and then they decided to bounce the signal to us-"

"-and we fell for the bait," you said. "Fuck."

"Fuck," Asuna muttered.

"They played us like a damn fiddle!" you snarled, flinging your coffee mug across the room in a fit of temper. "Fuck!"

"As much as I hate to say it," Zairman said as he got off the back wall of the town hall, "we're not doing too good. Can I give a status report?"

"Sure," you said, growling over to the coffee machine. "How bad is it."

"In terms of tanks, I have… about half of them," Zairman started. "Either way, count my regiment out. We lost our mortar batteries, most of the headquarters section, the last of the relic tanks, almost all our fuel capability… still got us and Kazoo out, though."

"MacLaine's dead, though, and we couldn't find his tags. We're down to about a company of the 1/11 left, and they're doing a strike. Won't move out of the garrison houses."

"We're on a time budget to get them back," you said darkly.

"We know- but the Navy's finally come in, and they have theatre radios," Asuna grumbled. "I've been shelling Yves around the clock, and it's breaking down, but Tepes still doesn't have his lines solidified yet. The man needs some better freaking units backing him up: he got beat to shit getting to where he is."

"Then the question is, do we run Yves down, or do we just call the operation here?" you wondered aloud. "We've been burning the lamp at both ends, we're running out of heavy materiel, and everyone's exhausted."

"And if we break ranks with Hooker's crazy-ass plan any further, I'm pretty sure he's going to string us up in front of a tribunal if we go further off the rails. I don't know what he's going to try, but it'll bound to be something," Asuna warned.

Walking in with a yawn, Calico waved at you sleepily as she took her helmet off, providing an interesting counterpoint to the scene. "Hey General, hey Asuna. Finished breaking the leading Albatrosses, its down to like… two layers of W-patterns. I put the next battery on duty, and someone thinks they might be able to mortar the bunker core soon. Darn thing isn't concrete core yet, so we might be able to get it? I don't know. Goodnight."

You chuckled darkly. "If we're that close to making a straight shot at the bunker base… I don't know. I really don't know."

"Then go to sleep," Asuna said, "while I get everyone to copy down some notes on what happened, and when we're all rested we can make a decision."

"Thanks for not yelling at me about this, Asuna," you said, smiling, before wakling over to nudge her shoulder in a friendly way.

"Don't think it's not coming!" she threatened, sticking a finger in your face. "I'm saving it for later! You made a lot of mistakes here, and we can't afford to repeat them!"

"Yes, dear," you said, going over to the ladder to climb up to an empty bunk to fall into. Soon enough, sleep finally got a chance to come and take you.

////

Vote
(choose one)

[] End the course of operations: you've burned the brigade out. One infantry regiment reduced to shreds, one armor regiment reduced to infantry, your artillery is wearing out from constant use, and you personally are barely holding it together. Keep going much longer and the fatigue and schedule slips are going to start turning a lot of your temporary, easily recovered casualties into people risking the long count timer of death.
[] Launch one last push. You won't be going at it hard, but Rime is right fucking there and cut off. The Navy's second wave should have landed and enacted a naval blockade to help thin the supply out, the road is thoroughly blocked, and this isn't a refinery town. You can probably hammer through it if you press-gang enough people into being spare artillerymen, and you don't need to take it: just knock down the town hall!

(AN: this ends, one way or another, next update.)