Glancing over his shoulder at the picture his companions were painting, Haruyuki murmured in his heart, I’m counting on you, Kuroyukihime. Let’s do it, Taku, Chiyu…and Raker. I am definitely going to take you to the finish line. That’s why I’m here right now, after all.
“Okay! One minute! Everybody, hang on tight!” Haruyuki shouted as the shining digital numbers above his head dropped down to the last two digits, and then turned to zero.
The enthusiastic cries pouring down from the three floating spectator stands once again shook the Earth. Tightly gripping the wheel, he lightly pressed down on the accelerator with his right foot. The shuttle engine area howled reassuringly, and the vibration enveloped the vehicle. The digital meter displaying the total race distance of four thousand kilometers glittered brightly.
Staring up at the majesty of the Hermes’ Cord re-created in the Accelerated World, a metal pillar piercing the sky, one hundred meters in diameter, Haruyuki had an abrupt thought.
Right about now, in the real-world elevator, too, rich tourists are ascending toward space, right? And they’re not even thinking about this. That in another world produced by the social cameras placed in every nook and cranny of the elevator, dozens of children are about to race up alongside them right now.
Of course, the Accelerated World is, in the end, not real, just a fabrication of our Neurolinkers. But even if there’s no physicality here, it really does exist. Because—
I am right here burning up with real excitement!
“Go! Go! Go! Go! Go!”
The chanting of the Gallery drowned out the sound of the red signal lights coming on. Points of crimson light formed a line in the sky above, shining down on the ten shuttles. At that moment, one of the spectator stands precisely blocked the sun hanging high in the air, and the stage was blanketed by a thick shadow. A second buzzer sounded as the signal lights shone red on the vehicles. The roaring of each engine increased all at once. Dazzling lightning gushed from the four driving discs in place of tires and bounced off the steel surface below.
“…Here we gooooooo!!”
The instant the countdown hit zero and the lights turned green, Haruyuki slammed the accelerator to the floor.
Tremendous torque kicked the machine into the air. Ten shuttles raced up the short incline in the blink of an eye and began a vertical sprint. Along the gently curving surface of the enormous metal pillar they flew, all in direct violation of the law of gravity. Some sort of attractive force seemed to be at work between the pillar and the machines, and even when the angle of elevation reached ninety degrees, the physical sensation was essentially no different from driving along a straight road.
Foot stuck to the accelerator, Haruyuki glanced over at the speedometer. The vivid digital numbers told him that in a mere ten seconds, he had sped up to more than two hundred kilometers per hour, and he was still climbing dizzyingly fast.
“H-hey, Haru. Y-you sure you should be going this fast?!”
At Takumu’s concerned voice from the rear seats, Haruyuki half shouted in reply, “Trust me! I’ve played a ton of racing games and crashed thousands of times!”
“…Th-that’s…”
“Allll riiiight! Flyyyy!”
Chiyuri’s cheer drowned out Takumu’s hoarse voice.
Glancing at the reflection of the rear in the upper part of the window, Haruyuki saw Kuroyukihime and Fuko sitting with cool expressions on their faces. Encouraged, he put even more force into his right foot. Two hundred fifty kilometers per hour. Three hundred. If he were driving a real-world race car, it would be reaching its limit right now, but the virtual linear-drive shuttle howled at an increasingly higher pitch and kept pulling itself up to endlessly faster speeds. The details carved into the steel below melted into ripples and the lumps of clouds that appeared occasionally flew back behind them in the time it took to blink.
A few seconds later, when the red-tinged digital meter began to flash the MAX icon, they had reached five hundred kilometers per hour. Apparently, this was the shuttle’s top speed. He exhaled all at once the breath he’d been holding and now finally took a look outside the vehicle.
Silver shuttle number one, containing the Nega Nebulus team, was as before racing at the left end of the line of vehicles. To their right, about ten meters or so away, the red team’s machine, led by Blood Leopard, glittered with deep crimson sparks.
Beyond that was the machine carrying the four members of the Blue Legion, Leonids. The driver was Tourmaline Shell. The enormous figure taking up one of the rear seats was Frost Horn. Even farther to the right, Ash Roller, who belonged to the Green Legion, Great Wall, was yelling, “Hey, heeeey!”
These four machines, essentially lined up in a row, were fighting for the lead. Slightly behind them, pulling up a tight rear, was the team from the Yellow Legion, Crypt Cosmic Circus. Naturally, the Yellow King was not among them, but he saw a few faces he had gone up against in battle more than once mixed in there.
Be careful of those guys! He carved the warning into his brain and looked closely once more. It seemed that the only Legion team with a King was their own, and the four machines running along in the rear in a single lump seemed to be from midsize Legions—that said, all of them had far more members than Nega Nebulus.
The shuttles running were the total of nine he noted. Which meant that, in the end, that super-rusted shuttle didn’t actually start. The unresolved question caused him momentary discomfort, but he quickly banished it from his mind. Regardless of who had turned the shuttle into that corroded mess, they couldn’t have any impact on the race anymore.
Having gotten a grasp on the situation, Haruyuki was about to turn his gaze back to the front when he spotted an enormous shadow in the sky behind them, which surprised him a little. The three floating spectator stands crammed with the total of six hundred members of the Gallery were automatically chasing the shuttles. Only now did he notice that the tumult of mad cheering was coming to him alongside the howl of the linear engine.
“Hee-hee, it does seem that they’ve placed a few bets.”
Sky Raker nodded at Kuroyukihime’s words. “Mm-hmm. I saw the Matchmaker running around looking quite busy.”
The Matchmaker was a mysterious Burst Linker who ran the gambling/tournament hall Akihabara Battle Ground. And he seemed to have shown up at this race as well.
“H-huh. Have you been to Akiba BG, too, Raker?” Haruyuki asked as he made incremental adjustments with the steering wheel, and he got a reply in the form of a wry smile from Kuroyukihime, rather than Sky Raker herself.
“She has, she has. Raker used to—”
But he didn’t get to hear what came next. The cheers of the Gallery abruptly doubled in volume, overlaid with a series of sounds that practically pierced his eardrums. Haruyuki immediately looked to his right. His face stiffened. “Whoa! Pard’s already starting!”
The sounds were originating from the weapons readied by the four Burst Linkers sitting in the back of the red team shuttle. It seemed that the only close-range type was the driver Blood Leopard, with the other four solidly in the long-distance camp. A battery of machine guns and rifles sent out a barrage of light bullets.
Their target was the blue team shuttle racing along to the right of the red team. The blue team, in contrast, was apparently all close-range types, and Frost Horn plus one other avatar with thick armor leaned forward to defend against the hail of bullets. Avatar HP gauges were locked, so no matter how many bullets rained down on them, they wouldn’t die, but there seemed to be a recoil effect at work. From time to time, their bodies would bounce back, and in that opening, the shots would hit the mark on the shuttle body.
“Waah, you guys! Unforgivable! Serious! Tori, hit that machine!!”
With an “Okay, Hooooorn!” in reply to Frost Horn’s shouting, Tourmaline Shell turned the steering wheel to the left. The blue team shuttle zoomed in on the red team. Apparently, they were planning to bring down their opponent’s shuttle by throwing themse
lves at it.
That’s the kind of pira–e-style fighting Frost Horn loves. Haruyuki watched excitedly as the scene played out. The Gallery crowds following from the rear on the floating stands also got even more worked up: “Slam ’em!” “Noooo!”
As the two machines grew closer, the accuracy of the hail of bullets naturally increased. Countless tiny holes were gouged out of the left flank of the blue shuttle as sparks crackled and scattered. But its endurance was apparently fairly high; the shuttle didn’t show the slightest sign of slowing down.
“Oh! Okay! Take this! A real man’s! Spirit punch!!” Shrieking, Frost Horn stood and brandished his right fist.
Instantly, Blood Leopard spun the steering wheel of the red shuttle so fast it blurred. The linear wheel squealed and the machine whirled around. The shaken right rear slammed into the side of the blue shuttle. The impact knocked Frost Horn—standing and ready to swing a superpunch—helplessly off his feet.
“Wha! At! Whaaaaaaat?!”
With a shriek, he tumbled and fell outside the vehicle, which was speeding along at an intense five hundred kilometers an hour. The instant he touched the surface of the tower, he bounced back high up with a tremendous wham, scattering showy sparks. A throaty scream accompanied the enormous body as it bounded along, receding in the blink of an eye behind them. After a few seconds, it disappeared from sight entirely.
Meanwhile, Pard stabilized the vehicle as though nothing had happened and slid away to get some distance. The projectile barrage started up again. The blue team tried another daring close-range attack, but it seemed that here, the shuttle had finally reached the limits of its endurance. Abruptly, the two linear wheels on the left spurted flames, and the six-meter machine began to spin like a top. Amid the rising and falling cries of the remaining three crew members, the engine whined higher and higher—
Explosion. On a massive scale.
As the cheers and shrieks of the Gallery washed over them, the charred machine and the three avatars disappeared from sight, just like Horn before them. Watching this, Haruyuki shrank into himself with an inner shriek. Kuroyukihime and Fuko made almost admiring comments.
“I see. If you fall from the shuttle, that’s the end of the line, then. Either way, that was quite the attack by Prominence.”
“It was. Just like Leopard. From the selection of her teammates to her handling of the machine, her unparalleled skills haven’t grown the slightest bit dull.”
“S-s-sis, is now really the time for admiration! They’ll be after us next!” Chiyuri shouted at essentially the same time that the four shooters of the red team, having finished reloading, repositioned themselves facing left. The muzzles of their guns aimed perfectly at number one—or, more precisely, taking into consideration the curvature of the bullet’s path, a little ahead of their machine’s nose.
“Gah!” Haruyuki shouted, and hurriedly pulled the wheel to the left. But Pard, through some wonderful maneuvering, managed to maintain the same positional relationship. A cheer rose up from the Gallery at the two machines drawing lovely parallel lines above the column a hundred meters in diameter—in other words, three hundred and fourteen meters around—but unlike a car commercial, this game of tag was life or death. The instant one of the shooters gave the command, the four guns erupted in flames all at once.
“……!”
We can’t escape! Haruyuki instinctively pulled his head back, but the sound he heard was not that of bullets hitting them, but rather a high-pitched reverberation. Hurriedly shifting his gaze to the right, his eyes beheld a totally unexpected sight.
Leaning out from the starboard side somehow, Black Lotus was repelling nearly all of the bullets falling in a curtain of rain upon them, the swords of her hands glittering at incredible speed. Cyan Pile, in the rear, was also thoroughly guarding the machine, using the enormous Pile Driver of his right hand in place of a shield.
Only a tiny few bullets slipped through their guard to hit the body, and the endurance indicator dropped hardly at all, but there was no doubt the situation would only gradually get worse. Even if he got close to them aiming to use their own shuttle as a weapon, he couldn’t hope to beat Pard when it came to driving technique; they were more likely to have a precious crew member knocked out of the vehicle instead, just like the blue team.
“Ah, come on! Just ’cause we don’t have any reds on our team, they think they can just shoot us up all they want!” Chiyuri shouted indignantly from the left rear. And indeed, this lack of any long-distance types had been Nega Nebulus’s biggest weak point since its reformation. When they lost in the Territories, most times, the opponent included a powerful red type.
However, lamenting this fact here and now would get them nowhere. Haruyuki steadied himself to challenge Pard to a dog fight with their machines and was about to call out to the backseat. But a second before he could—
“I’m getting out,” Sky Raker announced quietly.
“Huh? Master, what?!”
“This is simple addition and subtraction. The Promi team has five people, and four of those are large, heavy guns. If I get out of the shuttle, there’ll be four of you, and you should be able to shake them off with speed.”
“Y-you can’t do that, sis!” Chiyuri’s half shriek was covered up by Raker’s cool words.
“I told you, you know, that if I was to participate, we would put everything into the top spot. And getting out here is my ‘everything.’ If I don’t, you won’t be able to respond to Leopard! She’s not holding back, you know!” And then, the sky-blue avatar grabbed on to the side of the ship with her left hand and unhesitatingly went to send herself flying.
Instantly, Haruyuki yanked the wheel hard to the right. The machine went into a half spin, and Raker was thrown back into her seat.
“No…No, Master!!” As he focused all his mental energy on operating the steering wheel and the accelerator to desperately try and restabilize the machine, Haruyuki squeezed a voice out from his throat. “Getting out yourself isn’t ‘everything,’ not even close! We have to fight on the same stage or we communicate nothing!!”
“Crow’s exactly right, Raker!” Kuroyukihime shouted as she continued her awesomely precise defense. “We are a team! All five of us fight, and all five of us win!”
“But…But I have—!” Fuko’s half-shrieked rebuttal rang out. “I have no means of fighting! I can’t even stand up and defend, much less attack! I can’t do anything other than sit here like some object…!”
“You can, too!” The words, almost a cry of desperation, gushed from Haruyuki’s throat. “You have…the wings you produced, the wings you made strong!!”
He hesitated about whether or not he should say anything here. Sky Raker had her own reasons and feelings for firmly locking away that power after rejoining the Legion and keeping it locked away. Haruyuki didn’t want to do anything to force her into facing them. Which was why he was trying to take Sky Raker to the pinnacle of Hermes’ Cord, which he believed for various reasons was the lone place where he could actually be allowed to say this.
But if Raker got out of the shuttle at that moment, that opportunity would be lost forever. Thus, Haruyuki could only shout and pray that his words reached her.
“Our special-attack gauges basically won’t charge in this field…so I can’t fly. But your wings are different. Immediately after you equip them, the gauge is fully charged. Which means you can fly!” Looking back from the cockpit, he stared directly into Raker’s eyes. “Please. Lend this shuttle—no, lend us the power of your wings! If you do, we should be able to escape from Promi’s sights!!”
Instant silence.
Haruyuki’s ears picked up none of the howl of gunfire showering them, or the sound of Kuroyukihime and Takumu repelling those bullets, or the cheers pouring down from the audience in the sky. He simply and earnestly turned those ears toward Sky Raker’s thin breathing and the echoes of struggle it contained.
“…I hurt Sacchi.”
“…Wit
h my words, with my attitude, and with my heart, I hurt her. The fuel for my wings contains each and every tear Sacchi shed back then. Which is why…Which is why I can never again—”
“That’s not true, Raker!!” Kuroyukihime’s dancing hands came to a sudden stop as she whirled around.
Immediately, the gunfire began to gouge into the side of the machine and mercilessly pound against Black Lotus’s back. Even as her slim body shook and staggered with the impact, Kuroyukihime’s words were firm.
“I…I was foolish! I didn’t even try to understand the enormity of what you carried around with you! I simply wanted you to do everything for me and I was convinced you betrayed that. I was irrationally angry; I resented you! I have no right to seek anything from you…but!” Here, her voice finally began to shake with the force of the emotion bleeding into it. Behind the jet-black mirrored goggles, beams of violet-blue light poured from her eyes, almost like tears. “But the time to fly is now! Not for me, and not for the Legion…For you. Fly, Raker!”
At the same time as this impassioned cry, a bullet that came flying from a large rifle caught Black Lotus squarely, violently in the back. Sky Raker leaned forward to prop up the small body staggering toward her. The thin arms trembled as if hesitating to draw any closer.
Master—No, Fuko. Haruyuki started talking deep in his heart as he put his physical efforts into driving the shuttle. Two months ago, on the roof of Shinjuku Southern Terrace, Kuroyukihime took a step forward. So right now, you…please pull Kuroyukihime toward you with your own hand. I can’t close that final distance; no one else can. It’s something only you can do!
There was no way those words could have reached her. But the next instant, Fuko’s trembling stopped. The arms that supported Kuroyukihime’s body slowly bent and folded, and her hands circled round to the other girl’s back, embracing her tightly.
“Thank you, Lotus.” In the midst of the innumerable bullets whizzing past them, her words came quietly but with a certainty. “Now, now I finally see it. My wings…They’re not full of tears, but rather your hope, your kindness, and your love.” Here, she pushed Kuroyukihime back down into the seat to the right and nodded definitively. “So there was no need for me to be afraid…I can fly. Now, I’m sure I can fly again…!”