The Floating Starlight Bridge

  “F-feelings of protectiveness?” Takumu asked. Haruyuki and Chiyuri also opened their eyes wider.

  “Yes.” Sky Raker smiled even more delightedly. “When the Legion formed, Lotus was still only nine in real-world years. Although naturally that sort of real information was not made public, you could tell to a certain extent from her bearing and attitude. While boasting overwhelming fighting prowess, she was nonetheless childish and easily hurt. Many Burst Linkers no doubt squealed and cooed over her and joined the Legion.”

  “C-come now! It’s true I was a child, but I refuse to consent to the idea that I was easily hurt, Raker!”

  “Oh? Well then, shall I also tell them about how we ended up meeting in the real?”

  “N-no! You can’t; I forbid it! I absolutely forbid it! If you tell them, it’s the Judgment for you!” she shrieked as she began to intently peel a shrimp, and Haruyuki involuntarily burst out laughing. Kuroyukihime hung her head even farther and muttered, “Even though you older lot were all only ten or eleven anyway…”

  Fuko’s shoulders shook for a minute with laughter. “That was how it was,” she continued. “So back then, there was nothing so large-scale as a headquarters. I suppose that’s basically the same situation with the other Kings’ Legions. The King and their executive court had the possibility of enormous danger if they exposed their real information, even to other Legion members.”

  “Mmm. Although it’s a different story if you’re confident you have a perfect grasp on the entire Legion,” Kuroyukihime said after finishing the shrimp as she abruptly wiped the previous expression off her face.

  Haruyuki cocked his head to one side. The Legion Masters may have had the privilege of the Judgment Blow, but it would be hard to bind all the members of a large Legion with the fear of that alone. The effective period of Judgment was for a month after leaving the Legion, so as long as you were prepared to keep running during that time, betrayal was possible.

  However, Kuroyukihime’s tone suggested that there was in fact a King actually achieving this sort of perfect grasp. He wanted to ask her about it, but before he could, she set her fork down with a clatter and said in her usual tone, seemingly satisfied, “Aah, that was truly delicious! Thank you, Chiyuri. Please thank your mother as well.”

  “Oh! Sure! I was a little worried about whether or not you’d like it. I’m glad you did!” Chiyuri grinned happily, and Kuroyukihime turned a wry smile on her as she wiped her fingers.

  “Come come, my usual fare is incredibly slapdash. I could give Haruyuki a run for his money.”

  “Whaaaat? That’s not good for you!” Chiyuri screwed her face up.

  “Well then,” Sky Raker said with a composed look. “Perhaps Corvus and Lotus both had the same frozen pizza last night.”

  Puzzled looks from Chiyuri and Takumu. Contrasted with the deer in the headlights from Haruyuki and Kuroyukihime.

  “F-frozen pizza lately’s pretty good with the whole CAS freezing technology! Do you know about this? Basically, they use supercooling so that they don’t destroy the cells when they freeze stuff…”

  Blathering away in a desperate bid to change the subject, Haruyuki had the abrupt thought, Wait, there is one, isn’t there? A Legion that’s under perfect control.

  The second Nega Nebulus now was exactly that—or rather something more than that. Because all the members exposed their real information to one another and even came together to eat like this. None of them doubting any other, they were bound by real trust. Almost as if they were a family.

  This absolutely could not scale up to a large Legion with more than forty or fifty members, but Haruyuki felt that these bonds themselves were their greatest weapon to fight the other Kings going forward. At the same time as this feeling hit him, in the depths of his heart, he prayed resolutely that they would be bound like this forever. He closed his eyes for a moment, quickly opened them again, and involuntarily smiled wryly without letting it onto his face. In his ears, Kuroyukihime’s words came back to life.

  To maintain these new bonds, we try to maintain the stability and the concealed nature of the Accelerated World.

  That sentence summarized everything in his mind at that moment.

  But…Haruyuki took a step forward in his thinking. Even if the movements of my heart put me onto the exact trajectory the developer intended, that wouldn’t decrease the value of these bonds even the tiniest bit.

  Right. Whether or not there’s some hidden objective somewhere in Brain Burst…

  I will protect this family.

  A few minutes later, once they had all finished eating and everything was cleaned up, they moved to the living room sofas. The U-shaped set was for five people, and they sat down in such a way as to allow them all to daisy-chain.

  After they quickly connected using four XSB cables of various colors, Haruyuki looked around at everyone assembled. “Umm,” he said. “Once you accelerate and show up in the initial accelerated space, please stay on standby there. I’ll use the transporter card in my menu, and then we should all be instantly taken to the bottom station of Hermes’ Cord.”

  The others nodded. The details of the race had already been outlined in that earlier mail, so all that was left now was to wait for the time. They stared not at the analog clock on the wall, but the digital clocks in the bottom right of their virtual desktops, which constantly displayed the precise Japan Standard Time. Two minutes and three seconds until noon.

  Real-world time normally felt like it raced by, the surging waves of swift currents, but at times like this, each and every second seemed so long as to be vexing. Still, the digits did indeed continue to decrease until at long last, there were just twenty seconds left.

  “Now then, everyone,” Kuroyukihime uttered in a light, clear voice. “Let’s enjoy every minute of the Hermes’ Cord Race! I’ll start the countdown! Ten, nine, eight, seven…”

  The five leaned back deeply into the sofa as they closed their eyes. Six, five, four.

  They took a deep breath. Three, two, one.

  They shouted.

  “Burst Link!!”

  8

  During the time he raced up the tunnel of light leading to the empty sky 150 kilometers above the Earth, Haruyuki transformed from his pink pig avatar to his duel avatar, Silver Crow. He slipped through one particularly dazzling ring and landed on metallic ground with a clang.

  Which was immediately followed by four sets of footfalls from his companions echoing through the space. He straightened up from his hunched posture and opened his closed eyes.

  “Whoa! A King! The Black King’s heeeeeeere!!”

  “Now things are getting exciting! Negabu’s the beeeeeest!!”

  Showered on all sides with welcoming cries, Haruyuki jumped a little.

  “Wha…?!” He hurriedly looked around and was rooted to the spot at the scene before him.

  The flat metallic ring stage. The steel tower soaring up from the center. The surrounding dark blue sky and the herds of hovering white clouds. This was indeed the majestic Hermes’ Cord, the space elevator in the Accelerated World he had visited a few days earlier.

  However, three enormous things he didn’t remember seeing the last time sat there, encircling the tower.

  No matter how he looked at them, they were clearly audience seating. The tiered stands fifty or so meters long floated in the sky slightly above the stage on which Haruyuki and his friends stood. The four rows of seating were jam-packed with avatars of a variety of colors. Putting all three spectator stands together, these audience avatars likely numbered more than five hundred. In other words, half or more of all the Burst Linkers in existence were occupying this field now.

  “This…is turning into a real thing, huh…”

  “Seriously. I’ve never seen this many people at once before.”

  Next to him, Cyan Pile (Takumu) and Lime Bell (Chiyuri) murmured, stunned. Naturally, Black Lotus (Kuroyukihime) and Sky Raker (Fuko) were their usual calm selves, but even still, t
hey likely each had their own strong emotions welling up. They looked up at the sky soundlessly.

  “…How did that Gallery even dive here…,” Haruyuki unconsciously murmured.

  “Spectator transporter cards were given out,” someone from immediately behind him replied right away.

  “O-oh, that makes sense…Huh, the system even does nice stuff sometimes…Wait, what?!” Gasping, he whirled around.

  Standing there was a slim duel avatar with a dark red body who had approached him without his realizing it. He didn’t need to see the triangular ears popping up from the mask or the long tail to know that it was Blood Leopard, nicknamed Pard, member of the Red Legion, Prominence. A little ways off stood four avatars, likely her team members, conversing quietly. They were all veteran Linkers he had seen countless times before, but the figure of the crimson girl avatar was not among them.

  “H-hello, nice to see you, Pard.”

  “’Sup.”

  “Um, Niko didn’t come?” Haruyuki asked quietly after exchanging greetings with the ever-abbreviated leopard-headed avatar.

  “She super wanted to, but the six Legion mutual nonaggression pact prohibits fighting among Kings, even in an event. I have a message from her instead: ‘Aim for second. Good luck.’”

  “Oh…R-right.” The corners of his mouth tugged unconsciously upward at the image of Niko’s frustrated face, and an equally frustrated tone popped up in his mind, and Haruyuki followed up with another question. “So then, um…Is the Red team fighting with us until we’re close to the finish line?”

  But Blood Leopard did not reply. She shifted her gaze from Haruyuki and began to walk soundlessly. She slipped between Takumu and Chiyuri and passed in front of Kuroyukihime, toward the light blue avatar sitting in the silver wheelchair.

  The two Burst Linkers, who had in the past been opponents in countless fierce battles, stared silently at each other. There was no hostility there, but rather, a hard, wizened air spread out, and the surrounding chatter and bustle receded temporarily.

  A few seconds later, Pard took a step back and glanced at all of the members of the Black team before turning back to Sky Raker once more.

  “We’re going for the win with all we’ve got,” she said.

  It was a declaration. They might be friendly Legions, but they wouldn’t be working together. Haruyuki actually felt there was likely more meaning to the statement than that. Now that Sky Raker had sealed away Gale Thruster and continued not to take part in normal duels, the day when these two could go back to their old friendly rivalry was not coming. Which was why, at least today, Pard was without a doubt wanting to fight for real.

  Likely having grasped this, Sky Raker nodded deeply. “Just what I was hoping for,” she replied.

  The leopard-headed avatar returned the nod lightly and pivoted her lithe body, heading back to her own team members. The five from Prominence then headed toward the shuttles parked at the base of the elevator tower.

  Looking up, Haruyuki saw huge digital numbers counting down. They were carved into the upper part of the sloped starting grid, where the multicolored shuttles were lined up. There was still ten minutes before the start of the race.

  “All right, we should head over, too. That silver one on the left edge, that’s us, number one, hmm?”

  Urged on by Kuroyukihime, the five members of the Black team also started toward their shuttle. As they did, another shadow approached them from the right. Until Haruyuki heard the voice, he had no idea who this avatar was, running with heavy feet in sturdy boots.

  “Hey, heeeeeeeey! Here you are, all set to be a lazy loser dog—no, loser crow!”

  “Huh? What? Ash?!”

  “…H-hey! Who else d’you think this megacooooool star’d be!”

  The cocky skull-helmeted head obviously belonged to Ash Roller, whom he had fought just the day before. When he looked away, behind the avatar running toward him, he saw a bright ash-gray shuttle. Apparently, the century-end rider had somehow succeeded in registering as a driver for the race.

  Thinking the very rude thought that if Ash Roller had figured out the appearance of the portal on his own, then he was way more intellectual than anything about his character suggested, Haruyuki began excusing himself. “S-sorry. You’re not on your bike, so I wasn’t sure who it was—”

  “C-come on, you! Treating me like an accessory to my bike, that’s bullshit!”

  “That’s rude, Ash.”

  The instant that voice sounded from behind Haruyuki, the century-end–style avatar leapt to uncharacteristic and ill-fitting attention and offered a respectful bow. “H-hello, Master! And Miss Lotus, p-pleasure to see ya!”

  After offering up this marble-mouthed greeting, Ash Roller lifted his face as though he had just remembered something and abruptly brought his skull face up to Haruyuki. “R-right, this totally ain’t the time for dissing each other! Crow, I got somethin’ I wanna ask you.”

  “S-sure, what is it?”

  “You signed up as the driver for machine number one here, so that means when you got to this stage, you were the first?”

  Stunned at the unexpected question, Haruyuki recovered quickly. “Yeah, that’s right. But it was at basically the same time as Blood Leopard. She was second.”

  “So then, that shuttle was like that when you guys got here? Or did you see the dude who registered for it?”

  Unable to comprehend what Ash Roller was talking about, Haruyuki craned his neck around. The skull-headed avatar grew impatient and placed an arm around Haruyuki’s neck and started running, cutting across the row of shuttles.

  “Hey! Uh! Where are we—?!”

  “You’ll totes get it once you check it!…See? The tenth shuttle. So? Was it like that at the start?”

  Haruyuki didn’t even hear the majority of the latter half of the question. Because the instant that came into view, surprise slammed into the crown of his head.

  The tenth of the shuttles lined up two meters apart on the starting grid, the machine enshrined on the right end—

  Was decayed.

  Almost as if it had been left exposed to a sea breeze for several years, the entire body was covered in rust. In contrast with the other nine machines, all shining brand-new, the same color as the bodies of their registered drivers, the tenth shuttle had completely lost all brilliance and was rusted a reddish brown. It wasn’t just the body that was weathered; the wear extended to the seats and the driving discs under the machine body. The idea that this shuttle could run seemed utterly improbable.

  Haruyuki unconsciously stretched out a hand and lightly clicked the way he had when he registered for machine number one a few days earlier. Pwan! A system window popped up. He read out loud the word displayed there.

  “Re-reserved? So someone’s taken it…in this condition?!”

  “Man, you understand zero or what? By the time the other Legion mems and I got here at five thirty on Wednesday, it was already like this.”

  “What? That’s weird!” Haruyuki’s eyelids flew back as he protested. “Pard and I took off pretty quickly after we registered for shuttles one and two, but before we did, we could already hear a ton of people running over. There probably wasn’t even ten seconds between the time we disappeared and the time you guys got here. There’s no way anyone could have registered without me or you seeing them…and even before that.” He closed his eyes for a moment and called the distinct memory up before saying decisively, “When we left, number ten here was not rusted. It was a clean steel gray, the same as the other machines!”

  “F-for real serious? So then…that means it just went and rotted on its own in those ten seconds?…Or some dude hiding somewhere did it…”

  “No way. That’s impossible. There’s nowhere to hide. And even if I didn’t notice them, Pard absolutely would have…”

  They each cradled their heads. As they struggled to reach a logical answer, a loud buzzer sounded, and cheers several times louder shook the stage. Lifting his face with a ga
sp, he saw they were down to three minutes left.

  “Welp, totes sucks ass, but nothing to do but leave this thing be. Doesn’t look like the driver’s here anyway.”

  “I guess so. If it’s some kind of system thing, we’ll probably see during the race at some point.”

  “That’s totes it. Aaaaanyway, we both gotta get out there and do it for real.”

  “Right! Let’s give it everything we have!”

  Haruyuki and Ash Roller dipped their heads at each other and ran back to their own machines. As they separated, the usual venom came flying his way.

  “Let me tell you now, though! Long as it’s got tires—tricycle, tanker truck, whatever—it’s giga welcome to supercool me!”

  “These shuttles don’t have tires!” Haruyuki retorted. When he reached shuttle number one, his four crew members were already sitting in the rear seats.

  “Huuuurry up!” Chiyuri shouted, waving her right hand. “What are you doing?!”

  “A-ah! Sorry!” Hurriedly leaping into the driver’s seat, he grabbed on to the steering wheel. On the small windshield, the text HELLO, MY DRIVER popped up, followed by a display of various indicators. That said, it was nothing complicated. Just a speedometer, a trip meter, and an endurance meter.

  Kuroyukihime leaned forward from the front row of the crew seating, next to Sky Raker, who had unequipped her wheelchair. “Crow,” she whispered. “I did a quick look-over of the other participants, and they’re basically all top fighters, including members of the six main Legions. Still, at any rate, this is the first time any of the drivers has operated a shuttle. Proceed cautiously until you get used to driving it. We’ll keep a tight guard against any attacks from the other teams, so don’t worry about that.”

  “Totally!” Chiyuri, sitting in the back row, continued. “And if we take a teensy bit of damage, I’ll just rewind!”

  “Hmm. Bell, I don’t think our special-attack gauges will charge that much, since our avatar HP gauges are locked,” Takumu pointed out, and Chiyuri cried, “What is that even?!” while Kuroyukihime and Fuko laughed.