To figure out just what happened that caused so much panic to develop in Meil’s heart, we must first rewind the clock a couple of minutes. This is the entire situation all over again, but through the eyes of Issei.

“Yosh!” I psyched myself up, “Time to roll! It’ll be just like Assassin’s Creed!”

Man, that walking wall called Bryce really saved me back at the cafeteria. I have no idea why M-kun and Lee-san are putting so much faith into me coming up with a good plan, I swear sometimes I wonder if I have “Protagonist Powers”, like Subaru or Kazuma…

In any case, everyone’s doing their best, so I can’t back down either! Right now, both Lee-san and I are waiting for M-kun to give the signal for the plan to start. Oh, speak of the devil, he just did. Alright, Lee-san, you’re up!

“Everyone look, I’m gonna do a backflip while simultaneously flipping this chair in the process to land properly!” He proudly called out to everyone in the courtyard.

Gahh! What the hell is he saying all of a sudden?! And what does he mean “land perfectly”? Is he saying he’s gonna flip the chair while doing a backflip, or does he mean he’ll do a backflip while holding the chair and sitting down on it mid-backflip? Damn, I’m really curious now. If I go into the bushes now, then I might not ever see this spectacle unfold again! Mnn, maybe I’ll wait a bit more…

Just like that, as everyone was crowding around Lee-san, it got increasingly harder and harder to look at him from my angle, thus I stepped away from the wall and inched closer.

“Damn, still can’t see…” I muttered.

“Can’t see what?” A guard snuck up behind me, “Why are you standing near the bushes here all alone? Get away from here.”

“GAHHH!” I panicked, throat chopping him out of pure reflex, “Oh, it’s just a guard. Phew, you scared me there!”

“Now you fucked up!” The guard pointed his gun at me, “And since you attacked first, I won’t even get in trouble for killing you on the spot! Lucky~!”

Oh come on! You’re gonna whine and retaliate from a little throat chop!? What are you, a football player?! Damn, if I manage to survive somehow, I’m gonna start calling this guard Messi!

“Hold it!” I put my hand in front of his face, “You can’t just kill me now! I have something important to do before that!”

“…?” He lowered his gun for a moment, “And that’d be?”

“Not dying!” I yelled, shoving him into the bushes before making a beeline for the watchtower doors, “Heh, serves you right! It’s gonna take him a while before he can get out of there, so I’ve successfully bought myself some time.”

Oh, but I was supposed to be in those bushes, not him… Wait, so if I’m about to enter the watchtower, from my angle, I won’t be able to shoot the sniper. I kind of shot myself in the foot there, no pun intended.

“Ehh, whatever!” I reasoned, “To begin with, I have a pistol, and the guard has a sniper. Not to mention, I’ve barely shot off even a couple of bullets in my life, so I would definitely miss. Then there’s the fact that I only have two more bullets left in the magazine… Ugh, why did I agree to this whole thing again?!”

Walking up the stairs ever so carefully, basically the only thing I did while ascending was hug the walls. Now listen, call me whatever you want, but I am not about to fall down the center. Who in their right minds forgot to implement guardrails into the plan of this tower’s interior?! If I get startled, or God forbid attacked, I’ll slip and fall all the way to the bottom!

“Oi!” A voice suddenly jolted me, “Mark, what the hell are you doing here?”

“Ah, it’s just you, Axel.” Another voice responded, “I’m just playing with this ball I took from the inmates. It’s pretty fun, you should join me!”

Argh, that scared me, but it looks like these guys weren’t calling out to me. In any case, they’re slacking off on the job instead of being on high alert. In any other case, I’d be badmouthing their posh ways, but this time I actually couldn’t be more thankful. So wait, should I assassinate them? Once I kill the sniper at the top, they’ll certainly block my passage back down, so I definitely should, but how?

Oh wait, what am I thinking? Duh, I have exactly two bullets left in the magazine, so it perfectly works out! Alright, so the entire playing field is positioned as such – I’m peeking through the barely opened doorway, and they’re standing in a long hallway that for whatever reason doesn’t have any windows. Because of that, the entire place is pretty dark, so it’s a bit hard to take aim, but I’ve got no other choice! I assume that we’re right now somewhere around halfway up the stairs, elevation wise, given how many more stairs are waiting for me after I’m done with these two.

“Alright… Three… Two… Ack!” A football was suddenly sent flying my way, making me miss my shot, “Crap, this is bad!”

“What the heck was that, a gunshot?!” Both guards were alerted, “Oi! Whoever’s out there, show yourself!”

Oh no, oh no oh no oh no! They’re wary of me, they know where I am and are probably pointing their pistols at me right now, and to make matters worse, I no longer have enough bullets to dispose of the both of them! Right now, I’m hidden away behind the door, but what should be my next course of action?

Do I make a break for it and run up the stairs? No they’ll just shoot me from the center, since there are no guardrails. Then do I run back down and act anonymous? No, there’s only one inmate in this entire prison, and that’s me! Dammit, my only viable option is to run in and try to duck and weave somehow! It’s now or never! But before that…

Putting my gun’s barrel through the keyhole, I prayed to Buddha and counted down. Three, two, one and bang. Immediately after, I hopped back on my feet and kicked open the door to reveal…!

“You’re kidding me.” I sighed.

With this one singular bullet, I had somehow managed to not only shoot one of the guards, but headshot both of them. It seems they were both huddling up close to the door to check the situation out, and were in fact not ready to preemptively shoot me like the other guards would. Damn, now I kind of feel bad. If it wasn’t for my “Protagonist Powers”, I’m sure this improbable situation would never have happened.

Slowly taking both of the guard’s guns out of their holsters and putting them in my own, I suddenly recalled a cool character I always wanted to cosplay if I was ever given the chance. That being said, I took one of the guard’s long red jackets, and took some of the chalk from the walls to whiten my hair up. I’m no M-kun, but I’d say I make a pretty convincing Dante! Right, we’re switching games!

***

With my newfound confidence, I made my way up the rest of the stairs in record time, before kicking open the horizontal door at the top, only to immediately feel a bullet whizz passed my chalked up sort of white, sort of black hair. Yikes, and to think I just made it look good…

“That was too damn close!” I yelled at the sniper.

“Huh? Who’re you?” He furrowed his brows, “Ugh, just some weirdo in a costume…”

“I’m not a weirdo, I am omega!” I shot back, “Well, I guess subhuman would work too… Yikes!”

Immediately running to the side as I dodged the sniper rifle’s fire, I had to think quickly if I was to take this guy down. Thankfully though, I have a slight moment of reprieve while this guy reloads each bullet, but that still doesn’t help me at all! Dammit, how do the people of this world even fight to begin with? I’ve seen what Lune did back at the Grys Castle, and those moves looked like something straight out of an anime! Can I really pull it off?

“Hey kid,” A confident dilf voice called out to me in my head, “Don’t worry about it and have fun. Devils never cry, remember?”

Huh, Dante? Wait, you’re right! I can’t back down now! Actually, M-kun is fighting for his life on the other tower right now, waiting for me to kill this guy so he can safely do his part of the plan! And not only him, but Lee-san is also doing backflips like his life depends on it, I assume! This is it, I need to look for the right moment in between the reloads and…!

“Jackpot!” I said as I fired the gun dramatically, only to miss entirely, “Crap. Dual wielding is way harder than I thought…”

“What?” The guard couldn’t help but laugh, “What the hell are you doing, kid? You weren’t even remotely close-!”

“Well that’s the beauty of dual wielding, chump!” I shot with my other gun, this time hitting him in the side, “Just because I miss with Ivory here, doesn’t mean I’ll miss with good ol’ Ebony! Although these archaic AFPs look nothing like the originals.”

“Wha-?! You…!” He scrambled to take aim once again, “You damned lucky bastard! I’ll shoot your dumb head clean off!”

“Lucky bastard? That’s not right.” I joked, “Maybe if I slipped and fell directly onto a bosom of a rather well-endowed lady, then I’d be considered a lucky bastard. But this? Definitely not the same thing.”

“Joke all you want, but for you it’s game over!” He laughed maniacally as he pulled the trigger, only for nothing to happen, “Eh?”

“Seems my guess was right.” I approached him and took his gun away, “For your world, guns are still a new thing, so you might not be that well-trained to remember – These types of snipers only carry five bullets.”

“No, you gotta be kidding m-!”

“Bonk!” I smashed his face in with the stock of the sniper, “Oh wait, that’s not DMC, that’s TF2. Ah, whatever! I did my part, now there are no more snipers here that can stop us from running out of here when we get the chance! I wonder how M-kun is doing…”

Actually, while I was about to go back down the staircase, I realized that the other guards would immediately find me guilty, given how sporadically all of these dead guards have been left, so I need to make it seem a bit less suspicious. I casually grabbed the dead sniper guard and not-so-nicely threw him down the center of the staircase. I was aiming for him to fall straight down the center, but he hit a couple of the stairs on the way down, which made for a bigger splatter. Yeah, my assumption was right, I should probably continue with my “Hugging the wall” strategy…

That being said, I left the football guards just lying next to the door. And by that I mean I didn’t toss them off as well, because I wanted a more believable story for them. Actually, I put one of the guard’s mouths around the door handle, making it look like he died while tripping and falling directly onto the door, while I broke the door and put the other guard through it. Yep, perfect! With this, there can be no other logical explanation, other than “The guards were playing with a football, but somehow tripped on it and fell onto the door”. Yep, it was a freak accident.

“And with that, my work here is done!” I said as I waltzed back out of the tower, opening the door to reveal Messi standing in front of me as if waiting for someone, “Uhh, what are you doing?”

“Hmph.” He ignored me and let me pass, “Who the hell are you? No, never mind. Watch out, there’s some crazy inmate in here who throat chopped me and threw me into that bush over there. Tell me if you see him.”

“Ah, will do!” I said as I ran back into the prison, all the while thanking the heavens for giving me such godtier cosplay talent.