Combat Load
After leaving the Safe House, the group set out through the forest in formation—but not before Natsume drilled Shioji on exactly what to do if they made contact with something hostile.
Natsume took point. Mako followed behind her, then Shioji, with Kanon bringing up the rear.
There was no guarantee a monster attack would come from the front. Kanon, the second-best fighter in the group after Natsume, covered their six, while Mako—experienced with firearms but physically the weakest of the three—stayed in the middle to protect Shioji.
It was a formation built around what each of them could actually do.
“Mako, let's start streaming at ten, Japan time. Then around noon, we'll hit 'em with the fun part and rake in some Super Chats.”
“Th-the fun part...? Y-you don't mean we're gonna do some... s-sexy stream or something...?”
“Hell no. Why the fuck would we act like some attention-starved dumbasses desperate for validation? The main course on our channel's always been shooting or showing off real guns. So let's give 'em a show. We'll livestream ourselves buying some new guns with yesterday's Super Chat money.”
A predatory grin spread across Natsume's face.
“Ohhh, that's what you mean! Na-chan, you're a genius!”
Kanon's voice practically bounced with excitement. Shioji, meanwhile, had been completely left behind.
“What do you mean?”
“She's probably going to tell everyone how much we got in Super Chats, then ask the viewers what gun we should get next. That way they'll start thinking, Maybe if I donate, they'll buy the gun I request. Right?”
“Pretty much. Doesn't mean I'm buying whatever dumb shit they ask for, though. I don't give a damn how much somebody throws at us—if we're strapped for cash, I ain't wasting it on some Uberti black-powder piece or one of Kel-Tec's freak-show specials. Desert Eagle's out, too. Tokarev, same deal.”
Shioji knew virtually nothing about firearms, but even she recognized the name Desert Eagle. Anime and video games loved portraying it as the ultimate handgun—the star of the show.
“Eh? But Desert Eagle is a great gun, isn't it? I heard it is strongest handgun.”
“Huh? The hell kinda decade are you living in? A Desert Eagle ain't something I'd trust my life to. I don't care how hard the damn thing hits. If it jams when you need it, then in this world it's worth less than scrap metal.”
“Jam...?”
“Failure to eject. Failure to feed. Stuff like that. You pull the trigger, the gun needs to go bang. That's the first damn requirement of a firearm.”
Natsume kept scanning the trees as she spoke.
“Now, nothing's a hundred percent. Ammo quality matters. Some guns don't like certain loads. Shit happens. But there's a reason I like the 1911, even though the design's over a century old. Browning knew what the hell he was doing. The 1911, the Hi-Power—old designs, sure, but they've got a hell of a track record.”
She paused for a moment, her attention never leaving their surroundings.
“Course, everybody and their grandma makes a 1911 now, so there's plenty of garbage out there too. Same with that Beretta M9 Kanon's got her eye on. It's been around for decades, but that's part of the point. The platform's mature. People know what works, what breaks, what needs fixing.”
Natsume clicked her tongue.
“Then you've got the newer M17 and M18. Whether every story you hear about unintended discharges is true or not, there's been enough noise around the P320 family that I ain't interested in trusting one yet. I like SIG's P226 line just fine. The P320? Not for me. Not yet.”
“I don't really understand... So older guns are more reliable?”
“Old don't automatically mean good. Plenty of old shit belongs in a museum—or a trash pile. But if a gun's been around forever and people are still trusting their lives to it, there's usually a reason.”
Natsume shrugged.
“Simple mechanisms help, too. Fewer things to go wrong. That's one reason some folks still trust revolvers.”
She glanced back at Shioji.
“Self-defense ain't a damn gamble.”
Natsume spoke about firearms with absolute, unsentimental practicality when it came to trusting one with her life—and with an almost religious kind of discipline.
The sheer intensity of it all was clearly starting to overwhelm Shioji. Seeing her edge away ever so slightly, Kanon gave her usual little smile and leaned in to whisper.
“...Surprised? Na-chan's always been like this, even back in Japan. She's not just some gun nut.”
Kanon glanced toward Natsume.
“She never really had a place where she belonged. Not in America, and not in Japan. So she had to take the things she loved—guns, Southern history, doctrine, all those solid rules she could depend on—and put them into words. She had to redefine the world through her own logic just to live in it.”
Her smile softened.
“She's a philosopher at heart. She built herself a fortress out of her own philosophy... and that's the only place she knows how to breathe.”
Natsume was a gun freak to her core. As a collector, she would happily own all kinds of firearms simply because she found them interesting.
But when it came to carrying a gun as a tool—something she would literally trust with her life—her standards became ruthlessly strict. Only a select handful of proven firearms, with reliability she trusted as far as humanly possible, made the cut.
To Natsume, a gun she loved as a “toy” and a gun she depended on as a “tool” for survival were two completely different things.
The Uberti Model 3 Schofield that Mako wanted was a top-break revolver based on a design from the nineteenth century. Beautiful, historic—and of questionable practicality by modern standards. The top-break design had inherent limitations in strength, making it poorly suited to sustained use with powerful modern loads.
The only reason Natsume didn't object to buying one was that she didn't consider Mako a front-line fighter in the first place.
If Kanon, one of their primary combatants, announced that she wanted to carry something like a Colt Navy percussion revolver as her main sidearm, Natsume would shoot the idea down without a second thought.
As a collector's piece, though?
If they had money to burn, Natsume would probably approve the purchase with a grin.
“Na-chan's always been a 'tools are tools' kind of person,” Kanon said. “You don't really go for those ridiculously expensive custom guns once the price gets past a certain point.”
“Na-chan w-wouldn't... even if she had the money... b-buy something like a Pit Viper.”
“Damn right I wouldn't. Seven thousand dollars for one handgun? Kiss my ass. It ain't seven times the gun just because it costs seven times the money. Bet Bob would tell you the same damn thing.”
Natsume glanced back at Shioji.
“Speakin' of which—we gotta figure out what to give her eventually. Once she's trained up enough to carry, anyway. I'm thinking we just hand down Kanon's XD to her, then let Kanon pick up whatever she wants. P365, M9, whatever.”
“That sounds fine to me. Shioji-chan doesn't really care about guns, right? If she's only going to treat it as a tool, handing down something we already know makes everything easier.”
“I-I think... a r-revolver might be better. I'm... w-worried about handling.”
Unlike Natsume and Kanon, Mako understood a weakness of semi-automatic pistols that was easy for people as naturally capable as those two to overlook. They could make almost anything look easy. Mako knew she couldn't.
She stuttered. She was emotionally fragile. She considered herself painfully ordinary. But those same qualities made her cautious.
There was a reason revolvers had long been valued in places like Japan's criminal underworld. You could leave one loaded for years without having to worry about a magazine spring deteriorating. Even after a decade sitting untouched, chances were good that when you pulled the trigger, it would still fire.
A semi-auto was different. Leave a magazine fully loaded for months, and a weakened spring could potentially cause feeding problems. It demanded a certain degree of care and regular maintenance—something Shioji, who had almost no interest in firearms, couldn't necessarily be trusted to keep up with.
More importantly, when a gun malfunctioned in an actual fight, an inexperienced shooter was liable to panic and do something dangerously unpredictable.
“S-semi-autos... maintenance, and... j-jams. I'm worried.”
That was all Mako needed to say.
Natsume and Kanon immediately understood what she meant.
“Yeah. Fair point. Revolver might be safer for Shioji.”
Natsume thought about it for another moment.
“Ain't something we're doing tomorrow, anyway. First we get our own gear squared away and find ourselves a decent semi-permanent base.”
Her training plan was already taking shape.
First, Shioji would learn safe handling until it became instinctive. Then she would move on to live-fire training. Only after that would Natsume even consider letting her carry a real firearm.
“Na-chan, how many guns are you planning to buy during our 'fun part'?”
Kanon sounded just a little concerned.
Natsume tended to live in the moment, and they were sitting on roughly 1.3 million yen—a precious resource. Kanon had half expected her to blow through it the second something shiny caught her eye.
Surprisingly, Natsume had already set priorities.
“Depends on the price, but first thing we need is a rifle. Five-five-six or seven-six-two.”
Her expression turned serious.
“Our biggest advantage ain't firepower. It's distance. We can hit something before it gets close enough to hit us. If we're gonna make that advantage count, we need a rifle.”
“Th-then... that'd probably be... K-Kanon-chan's main weapon? Na-chan likes shotguns, so...”
“Pretty much. You're mostly on self-defense, and Shioji ain't even in the conversation yet. So depending on what Kanon's rifle costs, we might have enough left for my sidearm. Maybe Mako's toy too.”
Natsume scratched her cheek.
“Truth is, most of those Super Chats came from Mako's tits bouncing around on camera, so I'd kinda like to buy her whatever the hell she wants.”
“I-I'd rather... spend it on Na-chan. I'm... n-not very good at shooting anyway.”
Kanon thought for a moment.
“...What about a Daniel Defense AR-15?”
It was an expensive suggestion, but one with a reputation for quality.
Natsume gave her approval almost immediately.
“Safe choice. A decent rifle can run you two grand easy. And if amateurs like us wanna reliably hit shit four or five hundred yards out, we need something that'll give us enough accuracy to work with.”
“Two thousand dollars!?”
Shioji's voice jumped.
“That's... around three hundred thousand yen, right? Is it really okay to spend so much?”
“This ain't a video game, Shioji. We don't get a Continue screen when we die.”
Natsume didn't even hesitate.
“Money ain't worth shit to a corpse. Good gear is an investment in staying alive.”
She did the math in her head.
“Figure two grand for the rifle. Put decent glass on it and we're probably pushing three grand—call it four hundred fifty thousand yen. Then maybe my handgun, and we're done.”
Her mouth curled into another grin.
“Anyway, we'll talk it over on stream. Get lucky, maybe the viewers throw some more Super Chats our way.”
Then she looked Shioji up and down.
“Hell, Shioji, you could always put on something a little more revealing and sweet-talk the audience for us. We ain't doing that shit, but I ain't above outsourcing.”
“...I don't want to do that either. And I am not as beautiful as you three.”
Author's Note
The original Japanese version of this story contains a fair amount of detail about firearms. Because those details are directly tied to Natsume's identity and other important aspects of the story, I've chosen to preserve them in the English version rather than simplify or omit them.
As a Japanese author, I don't have the same firsthand access to firearms that many American readers may have, so I've relied on sources such as YouTube reviews and discussions on Reddit for research.
I've done my best to keep the firearm-related details accurate, but there may still be mistakes. I appreciate your understanding.
