Flight Toward a Blue Sky

  At this, the layered avatar shook his head emphatically.

  “No, in these few minutes, I’ve seen to the point of unpleasantness the actual power of a king. I really don’t have a chance of winning. I’ll simply quietly take my leave here.” His voice was calm, as if he thought nothing of the fact that his companion had completely disappeared before his eyes.

  Kuroyukihime gracefully raised the sword of her right hand. “Say what you will; I’m under no obligation to let you go,” she whispered in a voice like knives. “I’ll cut you down where you stand and use the hour until you regenerate to carefully consider how to properly deal with you.”

  “Ooh! Scary!” Black Vise batted her words aside lightly as he shrugged. “But my greatest ability is fleeing. Oh, but before that, one thing. I harbor not a shred of ill will toward you all in the Black Legion. I came here because Taker asked me to and paid for my services in advance. Naturally, I received absolutely no information about any of you in the real, and if possible, I would like to have nothing to do with you ever again.”

  “Too late,” Kuroyukihime retorted coolly, and the sword of her right arm was clad in a red aura, the left in blue.

  Taking a step forward, there, ahead of her, abruptly, bizarrely, Black Vise clapped together the countless thin panels making up his body. Where he had stood, there was now a single black panel—nothing more than a shadow. From Haruyuki’s position, he could just barely make out the shape, but head-on, it was essentially invisible.

  “Well then, you all take care.” Immediately, the thin panel sank down, melting into the shadows of the schoolyard spreading out at their feet. A whistling sound followed as the avatar sped away.

  “Hngh!!” With a slight battle cry, Kuroyukihime waved her right arm straight up into the air.

  A red line raced along the ground, bit into the school, and began to climb.

  “Uh, ah?!” Haruyuki cried out in surprise as he watched as the southwestern corner of the chalk palace—where the staff room and the principal’s office were in the real world—was cut off and crumbled in a heap. Mixed in with the many white objects smashed and scattering, a single small black panel shot off and stabbed into the schoolyard in the distance before turning into an arm and rolling across the ground.

  But that was it. The arm soon broke into an infinite number of polygon fragments, scattered, and disappeared.

  “So he got away, then.” Kuroyukihime lowered her sword.

  “Kuroyukihime!!” Haruyuki cried out and began to walk after her, staring at her too beautiful, too brave, and ephemeral form for a while.

  He made his avatar—armor blown off its upper body, scarred with countless wounds—run earnestly. Hearing his footfalls, Kuroyukihime whirled around. He stopped before her and clenched both hands tightly.

  “Kuroyukihime…Kuroyukihime…I…I…” He couldn’t say anything else.

  She stared for a moment at the Gale Thruster, the Enhanced Armament fused with the wings glittering on his back. Her violet-blue eyes lit up and she nodded deeply. Raising the sword of her right hand, she patted Haruyuki’s shoulder with the blade’s ridge. “Well done. I’ll have you tell me the details after I return to Tokyo tomorrow. For now, rest and relax.”

  She then shifted her gaze behind Haruyuki, where Cyan Pile and Lime Bell had also come to stand.

  “Takumu, you fought well. Good job. And…Kurashima, or rather, Chiyuri.” Here, Kuroyukihime did something unexpected. Turning toward Lime Bell, she lowered her head.

  However, the real surprise was the words that followed. “Thank you, really. If you hadn’t notified me, I wouldn’t have been able to run over here.”

  “Wh—”

  “What?!”

  Haruyuki and Takumu cried out in surprise in unison.

  “Y-you told her…Chiyu, you?! Kuroyukihime?!”

  “I did!” Waving the bell of her left hand, Chiyuri shouted in her usual spirited way. “What did you think I came all the way over to your house for, huh? Obviously I came to set the actual fight time and tell Kuroyukihime!”

  “Wh-whoa…H-hold on…” Groaning, Haruyuki worked hard to turn the gears of his exhausted brain.

  After Haruyuki had sent Nomi the final postponement message immediately before diving into the Unlimited Neutral Field, he had indeed said, “Okay. We dive in one minute.”

  The instant Chiyuri had heard that, she had pushed the SEND button on a message to Kuroyukihime that was already saved on her virtual desktop. Kuroyukihime, receiving it in Okinawa, had immediately dived into the Unlimited Neutral Field, captured a flying horse Enemy, and raced toward Tokyo for fifteen hours. So that was what happened.

  Chiyuri kept going as Haruyuki and Takumu exchanged dumbfounded looks. “I was worried about leaving things to you two stubborn jerks, so I sent Kuroyukihime a mail when you decided on the final battle and told her everything. And then she told me she would run in the field, so I should fix the exact time. At your house, Haru, I was actually really annoyed! I just wanted you to pick a time already!!”

  “S-sorry,” he muttered, and then he shook his head hard.

  He turned to Kuroyukihime and lowered his head as deeply as he could. “Thank you so much. To take fifteen hours and come to help us…When I saw you on the roof, I was overwhelmed…I was so happy.”

  “Maybe I put on too much of a show.” Kuroyukihime shrugged, and Haruyuki held back his tears to return her smile.

  Next he looked at Chiyuri and lowered his head once more. “Thanks, Chiyu. If it had been just Taku and me, we totally would have lost. Thank you…so much.” His throat was blocked and his voice shook.

  “Honestly.” Chiyuri’s own voice was also secretly damp. But his old friend continued in a more cheerful tone, “And I’m worried about it being just the two of you from now on, too. Guess I got no choice…I’ll join your Nega Nebulus.”

  “Huh?!”

  “Ch-Chi!”

  Paying no further attention to the two boys, Chiyuri turned back to Kuroyukihime and tilted her head shyly. Kuroyukihime nodded decisively and did some quick operations on her Brain Burst console. Without the slightest hesitation, Chiyuri pressed the Legion entry application that popped up in her vision.

  The two girl-type avatars, one jet-black, the other the color of fresh grass, took a step toward each other.

  Sword and bell met with a ringing clang.

  Haruyuki could only stare silently as Takumu’s muttering next to him reached his ears. “What were we so worried about?”

  “Seriously. But…this is great. Really great…Really…” Haruyuki stretched out his arm unconsciously and clasped Cyan Pile’s shoulder.

  Under the blue moonlight of the Accelerated World, the four Burst Linkers stood like this for a while.

  Eventually, however, Kuroyukihime lifted her face and ordered her subordinates in a refreshingly clear voice, “Now. Go home. To the real world.”

  They left the Unlimited Neutral Field through the portal at Koenji station, and Haruyuki returned to his own living room in the real world.

  Although the final battle had gone from one unexpected development to the next, it hadn’t even taken a full hour altogether. In other words, on this side, it had all happened in a mere three seconds.

  However, the instant he returned to his flesh-and-blood body, Haruyuki slumped over onto the table at the enormous sense of exhaustion he felt. Still, he managed to get it in check and lift his face. His blurry eyes focused on Chiyuri, similarly blinking rapidly.

  For a mere instant, they exchanged glances. That alone made something hot well up in his heart, and his eyes started to blur dangerously again, so he hurried to open his mouth. “You could’ve told us.”

  “Seriously,” Takumu said, bobbing his head up and down next to him. “If you had just told us that you contacted Master—no, wait, that you joined up with Nomi to get Haru’s wings back, we could’ve gotten through all this with a little less agony.”

  The two boys were so full of self-reproa
ch at having doubted their childhood friend, their voices were unintentionally resentful, and Chiyuri sighed deeply before responding with exasperation.

  “Now, look! I told you before! I had one chance to rewind Dusk Taker’s time with Citron Call! So there was no way I could let Nomi get the slightest idea about what I was up to. I mean, I didn’t think he had, but what if Nomi had planted some eavesdropping app or device on me? The second I explained it all to you, the whole thing would be blown!”

  Gulping, Haruyuki looked at Takumu, and then murmured in amazement, “Y-you thought that far ahead…even though it’s you—”

  “Hey! What exactly is that supposed to mean?!” she shouted, and knocked her chair back as she stood with the intent to come around the table and punch him. But before she could, she fell back into her seat, exhausted, as though standing up had given her a head rush.

  Haruyuki and Takumu hurriedly stood and dropped down in front of her.

  “Ch-Chi! You okay?!” At Takumu’s voice, she nodded lightly, head still hanging.

  “I worked really hard, you know,” Chiyuri whispered abruptly, tiny tremors in her voice.

  Plip! A single droplet of water fell to the laminate floor.

  “…It was so incredibly tough…but I kept trying. I worked so hard…”

  Plip, plip. The drops falling one after another glittered beautifully like gems on the wood.

  Pierced straight through, Haruyuki said gently in a voice that was definitely shaking, “Aah…thank you. Really, thanks, Chiyu.”

  Heaving a large sob, Chiyuri lifted a face stained with tears and leapt at their necks. She yanked Takumu in on the left and Haruyuki on the right and pushed all of their heads together. “I love you…I love you both!!”

  His childhood friend then began to cry like a child, loud and suffering, and Haruyuki squeezed her back tightly. He couldn’t maintain his own control then, and tears welled up in his eyes. Something shone on Takumu’s cheeks, too, under his glasses.

  The three friends—born in the same year, raised in the same place—stayed like this, letting their tears flow.

  11

  “A win rate of a hundred percent!”

  Haruyuki clenched his right hand tightly, and then his shoulders fell as he continued, “Or it was. If only we hadn’t gotten taken down in that last fight…”

  The following day, Saturday April 20, a bright evening. The place was the same as the previous day, the Arita living room.

  Every week at that time was the crown jewel of the fighting game Brain Burst: the Territory Battles between Legions. Haruyuki and the other members of Nega Nebulus had been expecting some difficult fights that week given that they were going in with a battle formation that lacked their Master Black Lotus, but they ended up with an almost-complete win ratio.

  It was because Lime Bell jumped right in, even though she had just joined the Legion the day before. Her healing ability might have turned out to be the ability to reverse time, but it could also definitely be used as a sham means of recovering HP. The only issue was, if she went back too far, repeatedly cycling through heal, hit, heal, they were back in damage territory, but she managed to keep this straight somehow with an expert’s knack.

  Thus, Haruyuki and his friends adopted the strategy of always keeping either Silver Crow or Cyan Pile with Lime Bell for protection, while the other attacked and returned to the base for healing. This worked very well, and he thought that they were going to have a total Territories victory for the first time in a long time. But…

  The long-distance, three-person team that challenged them last didn’t approach their base at all and showered the lone person who came to attack with concentrated firepower. The remaining two were forced to gradually advance, and when the three of them were all together, their enemies blasted with multiple special attacks and wiped out all at once.

  “Well, it happens. Just winning as much as we did with a team that was thrown together’s more than enough,” Takumu said, sipping his large drink, and Haruyuki pursed his lips.

  “Yeah, I know. In the end, they got us right in our weak spot, the fact that we don’t have any long-distance firepower, and we lost.”

  “And that weak point’s not going to change when Master comes home, either.”

  “If it’s without Incarnate, then yeah.”

  They both simultaneously remembered Kuroyukihime’s long-range technique and how it severed the distant Umesato school building in a single blow, shivers running up their spines.

  Chiyuri wasn’t there—perhaps embarrassed about all the crying she did the day before, she said she would dive from her own place—so it was just the two of them. After popping into his mouth a fry from the hamburger meal he had bought in the shopping mall on the first floor, Haruyuki cleared his throat and changed the subject.

  “Anyway, nice work in there. And…Taku. That…Have you had any contact?” He left out the “from Nomi” part.

  “No, none.” Takumu shook his head slightly. “I’m a little worried about it, though. I mean, it’s Nomi. He might have proposed the battle, but I seriously can’t believe he’d give up, even if he did lose.”

  “Me, either.”

  The air suddenly heavy, they both fell silent.

  “That avatar that showed up there, Black Vise,” Haruyuki said as he chewed on the end of another fry. “He said something weird. About how former acceleration users who had lost Brain Burst couldn’t interfere with the Accelerated World. Wonder what that was supposed to mean.”

  “Huh? Isn’t it just that they can’t accelerate, so they can’t fight?”

  “That’s what I thought, too, at the time. But, like, that kind of goes without saying. You don’t really need to go out of your way to push the point. Hey, Taku. Maybe you don’t want to talk about it, but…” He glanced over at his friend sitting next to him on the sofa. “Your ‘guardian’…the captain of the kendo team at your old school…He had a forced uninstall with the Blue King’s Judgment Blow, right?”

  “Yeah, that’s what I heard.”

  “Did you guys talk after that? Like about Brain Burst.”

  At this, Takumu furrowed his brow in an interesting shape and appeared to think for a minute. “I was in a pretty big hurry to transfer schools after all that…I went to say my good-byes to the kendo team, but our teammates were there, too, so naturally, I didn’t say anything about Brain Burst. And, I dunno, he seemed to be surprisingly over it, so I didn’t dare bring it all back for him.”

  “Over it…?” Haruyuki muttered, and thought for a minute; he felt like he had heard something similar before. He soon hit on it.

  Cherry Rook, Red King Niko’s guardian. After using the Armor of Catastrophe to run wild in the Accelerated World, he had been judged for his crimes by Niko’s hand and lost Brain Burst. Later, Niko had said he was back to his old self and was talking to her for real again. He had said that even though he was moving, he planned to keep playing other net games together with her. Somehow, this was similar to what Takumu had told him just now.

  But there was no way either of these cases fit Nomi in any way. Nomi’s resentful screaming immediately before he left the Accelerated World stuck in Haruyuki’s ears even now. He had been prepared for the fairly likely eventuality of some kind of vengeance. But Haruyuki, Takumu, Chiyuri—none of them had had any contact from him.

  “Guess our only choice is to go talk to him in person on Monday,” Takumu said slowly, and Haruyuki nodded slightly.

  “Guess so. There’s the video thing, too…”

  Now that he was no longer a Burst Linker, Nomi had nothing left to lose in the Accelerated World. If he decided to, he could reveal that video he secretly took to get his revenge and also disseminate the real identities of Haruyuki and his friends to other Burst Linkers. The only counterattack they had was the brain implant chip in Nomi’s head, but Black Vise had said something worrying about that.

  If you lost Brain Burst, the BIC would automatically cease functioning and me
lt away.

  The BIC body was a synthetic protein micromachine assembly. Depending on the programming, it could be detached/dissolved, in which case, it would no longer be detectable with a scan. In other words, it stopped being a reason for Nomi to be expelled.

  Which is why Haruyuki and his friends couldn’t just cut off contact with Nomi. They still had to go to him and negotiate, to force him to delete the video. It was seriously depressing.

  Finishing off his drink, Takumu dumped the ice in the kitchen, carefully washed the recycled materials cup, and threw it in the special bag. “Okay, then, on Monday at school. You want me to come with you when you go see Nomi?”

  “No, I’ll be fine. I’ll go by myself, thanks. G’night.” He saw Takumu off at the door and went back to the living room to clean up, sighing. He looked at the clock on his virtual desktop, and then stared out the window at the night sky.

  She’s still on the plane right now. Or maybe she’s landed at the airport already, he wondered idly, and then shook his pudgy head and switched tracks. He’d get to see her on Monday at school. He’d waited a whole week; he could handle another day and a half.

  He had wrestled his emotions back under control, so that when the doorbell rang minutes later, he assumed Takumu had forgotten something. Not wanting to bother with the hassle of the intercom window, he went back to the entryway. “Coming,” he said as he unlocked the door.

  “What? You forget some—” The thing got stuck in his throat, and his heart stopped. Without even being aware of this, Haruyuki opened his eyes so wide, they almost popped out.

  Standing there, paper bag in one hand, carrier bag with motor assist dangling from the other, was a girl in the Umesato Junior High school uniform. In the slight breeze that wafted down the corridor, her dark red ribbon and long black hair fluttered, and he caught the faint scent of the tropics.

  “How many seconds are you going to stay frozen?” she asked, and Haruyuki’s brain finally restarted.

  Bwah! After several at-best-ragged breaths, Haruyuki squeezed out a hoarse voice. “K-K-Ku-Kuro—Kuroyukihime?! Wh-wh-wh—”