Fairy With a Shotgun

Chapter 1

Lucy POV:
Mr Kikuoka walks towards me with a smile on his face, he came to visit me not long after I had woken up from ALO. He had wanted to know about the connection between my family and Sugo, however there was no connection. It turns out that Sugo had researched the guild members in order to find me, then he tracked down my family, and when he found that I was from a wealthy family he claimed that I was betrothed to him. I had been betrothed, but to a different family, my father had planned to extend Heartfilia Rail using the lands that the family owned.

"How have you been?" I ask shaking his hand as he gets closer.

"Very well miss Heartfilia, or should I say Master Lucy." He asks shaking my hand in return.

"Master Lucy is fine, now what can I help you with?" I ask sitting down at the bar and ordering a drink. "Strawberry lemonade please Mira."

"Sure thing Master." She replies with a smile.

Kikuoka sits down next to me placing a brief case on the surface of the bar, ordering a coffee he turns to me.

"How have Mr Kirigaya and Miss Yuuki been?" He asks taking a small sip of his coffee.

"They've adjusted well, they had to leave for Japan since they are both still in school. But I speak with them every night though a communication Lacrima, they both wish they could move here to Magnolia with the other members from the game, but aren't able to due to still being in school. I've even had to send some other members back because of this." I explain sipping my lemonade, I used to drink beer when I was in game but it's a lot stronger here IRL.

"I understand that must be difficult, especially for them." Mr Kikuoka says putting his coffee cup down. "Would it be possible to talk somewhere more private?"

With a nod I lead him to my office, Natsu looks at me with concern on his face but I wave my hand with a smile, guarantee him and Kiko will be at the office door in a couple of minutes anyway. Once inside I turn on a sound blocking Lacrima so that no one can hear what's going on, then I sit down at my desk and get serious.

"Something's happened." I state as Mr Kikuoka sits down opposite me.

"As expected of Titania." He says and pulls out some type of tablet. "Have you heard of the game Gun Gale Online? Or GGO for short?"

"No I haven't, is it another full dive game?" I ask glancing over at my NerveGear Helmet which sits on a stand in my office, I don't use it anymore since I have the Amusphere but I keep it as a memory.

"Yes, since the release of the Seed games like this have been popping up everywhere, but GGO is a little different. The money you make in game, is converted to money IRL." Mr Kikuoka explains.

"That changes things, I guess people use it as a career then?" I ask.

"Yes, there are some hard core gamers who will dive from morning till night to boost their stats and increase their funds, only logging out for a bathroom break and to eat a meal. The rest of the time they spend it in game." He explains to me pulling out some documents.

"It sounds cool, but something tells me you didn't just come here to tell me about a new game." I say feeling a little nervous.

"No I didn't, take a look at this." He says passing me the tablet.

Touching the screen I see an image of a man, he looks pretty disheveled and looks like he might fall asleep at any moment.

"This won't be pleasant, so last month on November the 14th the landlord of an apartment complex in Nakano Tokyo found a suspicious odour while cleaning. It was coming from one of the units, so he disabled the lock and discovered this man dead. His name was Tamotsu shigumora, he was 26 and had been dead for five days. His place was a mess but no signs of burglary, he had something interesting on his head though." Mr Kikuoka explains as I pass the tablet back to him.

"An Amusphere." I say feeling dread build inside me, Kiko uses that along with Natsu and other guild members. If something is wrong I don't want them using it.

"Yeah, it was ruled as an unnatural death so they did an autopsy. The cause of death was acute heart failure." He explains.

"Heart failure?" I ask confused.

"He had been logged into the game for two days straight and hadn't eaten anything during that time, and during his time of death he was currently on a VR live stream in his avatar form. His Avatar's name was XeXeeD and he had recently won a tournament in GGO called the Battle of Bullets, this next bit of information still needs to be confirmed. The same time he had the heart attack something strange happened in GGO, some players were at a bar in game watching the show, when another player stood up and started acting erratically." He explains looking over the notes. "The log says that the player was shouting stuff about judgement and power at XeXeeD image on the tv and then fired his gun at it, at the same time another player happened to be recording audio and he uploaded it to a video site. Since the file had a Japan Standard Time counter embedded we know that the shot fired at the tv and Shigumora's avatar disappearing from the show happened about the same time."

"Wasn't it just coincidence?" I ask.

"There was another death though." Kikuoka says which causes me to fix my eyes hard on him.

"Go on." I say to him.

"This one happened on November the 28th, somewhere in Saitama Prefecture. Same set up as before, the deceased was found in their apartment. A guy delivering newspapers happened to look in the window and saw the victim lying in bed wearing an Amusphere rig, said the smell was terrible. Heart failure was the cause of death again, and the victim again was a top ranking player in GGO. He was playing when he died, it happened in the central plaza in Glocken. He was in a meeting with his squad, I guess it's the same as a guild."

"I understand." I say as he continues to speak.

"A strange player came up and shot him point blank." Kikuoka says putting the tablet down.

"Do we know if it was the same person who shot XeXeeD?" I ask looking over the information.

"Most likely, he spoke about judgement and power and then called himself by the same character name. Death Gun."