“So don’t give up, Crow. You can’t be thinking about disappearing in some corner of the Unlimited Neutral Field with the Armor. You got Miss Lotus, Master Raker, that big blue one, the noisy green one…You got so many friends counting on you, man. You disappear like that, what’ll your Legion buddies think? I mean, the ton of Burst Linkers who been staring up at you flying all this time, what’ll they think, you know?!” Ash Roller half shouted and hung his head again deeply.
But…
But if I keep going like this and completely become Chrome Disaster and start slaughtering other Burst Linkers at random…it won’t be just me; even my precious friends could end up with bounties on their heads, Haruyuki murmured in his heart, unable to produce a voice.
At the meeting of the Seven Kings the previous week, Nega Nebulus deputy Sky Raker had responded thusly to the threatening manner of the whip-bearing Aster Vine, acting deputy for the Purple Legion, Aurora Oval: Dissatisfaction with the six major Legions and the stagnation they brought to the Accelerated World was growing among Burst Linkers belonging to small and midsize Legions. If the major Legions were to set out to crush the traitor Black Lotus and her Legion through any means, the dissatisfaction smoldering in the Accelerated World would catch fire.
The senior members of the major Legions were most likely aware of this risk. Thus, until that time, they hadn’t been able to take the plunge and put bounties on the heads of Haruyuki, Takumu, and the others simply for the reason that they were Black Lotus’s subordinates.
But it was a different story if the sixth Chrome Disaster came out of the Black Legion. The kings could give some reason like Lotus was trying to use the Armor to expand her own military power, and thereby put a bounty on the heads of all the Legion members. If they wanted to try and avoid that, Kuroyukihime, Takumu, and the others would have to subjugate Haruyuki with their own hands. Just like the Red King, Niko, giving Cherry Rook, the fifth Disaster, the Judgment Blow while she cried…
It was precisely because Haruyuki loved his friends that he didn’t want to thrust such a choice upon them.
“I mean, I—I don’t want to disappear from the Accelerated World with everything still half-finished—the Legion’s objective, my own leveling up, everything,” he muttered, squelching the conflict and the even greater resignation filling his heart. “But once I lose control of the Armor, once I’m not me anymore, it’ll be too late. Probably, the Burst Linkers who became Chrome Disaster before this, they all thought at first that they could control this power. That they’d get used to the Beast raging and they could use the incredible power for justice, for their friends. But…in the end, they were all taken over by the Armor. They attacked a ton of Burst Linkers at random. They ended up not being able to even tell their friends apart, until finally, they were put down like dangerous animals by the kings and vanished from this world.”
He paused for a short breath and stared at his hands, transformed into sharp talons. “And…disappearing like that, only the host Burst Linker leaves the Accelerated World. The Armor itself is transferred to the storage of one of the subjugators or it parasitizes them with a seedlike part, and lives on. And then…this cycle of Catastrophe that’s been going on so many years is still not broken. Someone else will turn into the next Chrome Disaster and spread the same pain and suffering. The only way I can put an end to it here is if I, someplace in the Unlimited Neutral Field far, far away, where no one ever goes, go into total point loss up against an Enemy, and secretly disa—”
Skreek! The earsplitting sound of metal tearing interrupted Haruyuki.
It was the sound of Ash Roller punching through the hood of the car that served as their bench with his clenched fist.
“Ah! Ash—”
“Then…I’m coming, too.”
The strangled words stopped the movement of Haruyuki’s mouth.
“Your wings get bad mileage. You won’t get too far with ’em. Mighty me here’ll let you up on the butt of my bike. To Hokkaido, Kyushu, wherever you wanna go. But, like, going all that way, it’s gonna be a real pain to get back to Tokyo. You gonna take the poison, go all the way to paradise, right? Maybe I’ll hang out with you and your Enemy? Heh-heh! You and me, like it or not, we’re stuck with each other. Gotta see your ugly mug from the very beginning to the bitter end. Not too bad, I guess.”
At the same time as Ash Roller stopped with his feigned cheer, hot liquid spilled over from Haruyuki’s eyes. Uncontrollably shedding virtual tears beneath the mirrored silver helmet, he shook his head over and over. The voice he earnestly pushed out of his throat warbled thinly, like that of a small child.
“That’s…Ash, you don’t need to…come with me and disappear, too…I mean—”
“What you’re saying is exactly that, you know!!” the biker shouted, his own voice also damp, and grabbed on to the Armor around Haruyuki’s neck with the hand he pulled out from the hood of the car. “So you disappear with the Armor of Catastrophe and peace returns to the Accelerated World?! There’s no effin’ way they all live happily ever after!! You seriously think about how much your parent, your pals, Master, and the kid Rin, too—how much they’d cry and suffer and blame themselves?!”
“So then…” Even if it was a Normal Duel Field, it was dangerous for Haruyuki to get too worked up. And although he knew that, he couldn’t stop himself from shouting out the fierce, almost maddening emotions sweeping over him. “Then what am I supposed to do! I keep going like this and fuse with the Armor, I stop recognizing my parent, my friends, I go on a rampage in the darkness, spreading catastrophe, and in the end, I get put down! Are you saying that’s how it’s supposed to end?! If that’s what’s going to happen, then right here, right now, while I can still be me…”
It’s better if I disappear.
Before he could spit these words out, Haruyuki had a shock like a bolt of lightning and swallowed his breath.
It’s the same thing. What I’m saying is exactly what Takumu was saying yesterday.
Like Haruyuki, he had been parasitized by a dark power—in Takumu’s case, the ISS kit—and with that awesome power, he had massacred the members of the PK group Supernova Remnant. And then, fearing what he would turn into, he had planned to end things by his own hand.
And Haruyuki had told Takumu: “Don’t lose—fight. For me, for Chiyu, for everyone in the Legion, fight the ISS kit.”
If he gave up on everything here and disappeared alone in the wilderness of the Unlimited Neutral Field, everything he said then would become a lie. And even if he did get rid of the Armor of Catastrophe, the menace of the ISS kits currently blanketing the Accelerated World would remain. Haruyuki had acquired a certain amount of information about where the main body of the kits was thought to be—Tokyo Midtown Tower—and the Legend-class Enemy Archangel Metatron guarding it. He had to at least tell everyone in the Legion this.
But…if I see them all again, I…I know I won’t be able to keep running. What should I do? I…What should I do…
“Fight it. Don’t give up; hang on until the last thread.” The voice echoed abruptly in his ear. Ash Roller’s voice, his hand still on Haruyuki’s chest armor. “Grit your teeth and fight it ’til the end, just like when you fought me the second time. Crow, you can do that. You’re that kinda guy; that’s why Rin fell for you…I’ll kill you if you touch my sis, but I’ll kill you even more if you make her cry.”
Haruyuki slowly let out the breath he’d been holding. And smiled, just a little. “That’s kinda impossible, you know.”
“Shut up. That’s what being a big bro’s about, y’know!” Ash shouted, seeming embarrassed somehow, and lightly shoved Haruyuki away.
They looked up at the timer in the top of their field of view at the same time; before they knew it, more than 1,700 seconds had passed. In about a minute or so, the duel would be over.
Since Haruyuki’s health gauge alone had decreased, Ash Roller moved his hand to request a draw, but Haruyuki pushed it back down.
“I earned a lot of points back there in the Unlimited Neutral Field. This is my treat.”
“…You can treat all you want, but I’m still not letting you touch Rin.”
“I—I won’t touch her!”
After a bit more of this back-and-forth, Haruyuki suddenly remembered something and straightened up. “Oh, right. Ash?”
“…Whut?”
“Um, before, you said your name meant ‘spinning tires burned and turned to ash,’ but I…I think it’s a little different.”
Shifting his gaze, he looked over at the large American motorcycle a little ways off. The front and rear tires were indeed not the black of synthetic rubber but a gray somehow reminiscent of metal or ceramic. But there was no sense of the brittleness of embers.
“For me, your name means ‘rolling up the earth, swallowed in flames, and turned to ash to create a new path.’”
For a while, Ash Roller said nothing in reply. Finally, he snorted briefly and filled Haruyuki’s ears with the same old abusive language. “Dang, that’s like some kinda slash-and-burn farm style, man. Totally not the style of supercooooool mighty me! Whatever, I can take it. I ever meet you in the real, I’ll toss you a hundred yen for the idea.”
“Th-thanks.”
That “in the real,” however, was probably not the younger sister, Rin Kusakabe, but rather this older brother they weren’t sure actually existed or not.
And then the flaming letters TIME UP!! blazed up over that not-very-promising thought.
The duel ended after a full thirty minutes—1.8 seconds in the real world—and the first thing Haruyuki felt upon returning to the real world was a mysterious peace in his heart.
To speak of what he had actually done during the duel, he had only been hit three times by Ash Roller’s motorcycle, and then they had simply sat on the hood of an American car and spoken intently. They had talked about some pretty important things, but they hadn’t actually come to anything like a conclusion. Haruyuki still basically had no idea what he should do now.
And yet the frustration and remorse—and despair—that had been sweeping through his heart before the duel had calmed, if only for the moment. Eyes still closed, Haruyuki stayed submerged in the gentle warmth filling his body.
A few seconds later, he finally realized that this sensation was not a psychological illusion or false electronic information, and his body froze with a start.
The high-quality elasticity pushing up on his back was the leather of the rear seat of Fuko’s beloved car. He was lying on his back there. And on top of him was something soft that smelled good. A sensation a hundred times more alluring than that of the material of the Italian car’s interior leather upholstery, an exquisite ratio of elasticity and plasticity.
Very timidly opening his eyes a crack, Haruyuki looked at the ivory knit fabric glued to his own stomach. More precisely, a summer sweater with the badge of a school he didn’t know. Even more precisely, the upper torso of a girl the same age as he was, wrapped in that sweater.
“Ngh.” A small noise like a hiccup slipping out of him, Haruyuki nervously shifted his eyes upward. A thin, checkered ribbon tie. Slender pale neck and metallic-gray Neurolinker around it. Tapered jaw like a young boy’s, thinnish lips, a subdued but solid bridge of the nose. And then two eyes, irises tinged with a light gray.
The girl with her entire body on Haruyuki’s—or rather, the girl who pushed him back, XSB directing cable still clutched in her right hand—murmured from extremely close range, eyes as wet as possible as always, “I-I’m. Sorry. My brother. Said so many rude…”
“Uh, uuuummmmm.” Darting his eyes around in the great confusion brought about in him by the physical situation and the linguistic information, Haruyuki tried at any rate to cope by producing some kind of voice. “Um, uumm, first, so, you…Do you remember the duel just now?”
He was pretty sure she had said before that she ended up in a trance of sorts during duels and didn’t really remember the details. In other words, the personality that dove into the Accelerated World switched to her “brother,” and so no vivid memories remained inside her. Or at least that was what Haruyuki had supposed was happening.
But the girl—the true identity of the Burst Linker Ash Roller, Rin Kusakabe—nodded her head sharply. “Right now. I can still. Remember it. While I have this—my brother’s Neurolinker. Equipped.”
“O-oh, you…can…”
Perhaps sensing the many questions stuffed into Haruyuki’s brief reply, Rin blinked her wet eyes and added by way of explanation in a faint voice, “I. Don’t know, either. If the brother that appears in the Accelerated World is my. Real brother. Rinta Kusakabe sleeping in a hospital in Shibuya Ward. Or. If he’s a fictional personality I created. But Master. Said to me. There’s definitely meaning in the things that happen in the Accelerated World. She says that if I keep fighting together with my brother. As Ash Roller, someday for sure. I’ll find a very important answer.”
“…You will…”
Rin hadn’t actually clearly stated whether the Master she spoke of was the Fuko Kurasaki Haruyuki knew. But listening to her now, Haruyuki became sure of it. Fuko was a Burst Linker who, according to Kuroyukihime, was a “pure positive Incarnate user”—that was to say, a Burst Linker who believed more strongly than anyone in the power of hope and bonds and love. There was nothing more fitting for Fuko to say than this very line.
In other words, the customer who had coolly laid these truths out at the table for Rin when she was working part-time in the hospital cafeteria last summer had indeed been Fuko Kurasaki. Her house was actually near the border between Suginami and Shibuya Wards, and it wouldn’t have been strange for her to go to a hospital in Shibuya for maintenance on her cybernetic legs.
Convinced they were talking about the same person, Haruyuki nodded and Rin stared into his eyes. A veil of tears once more covered the drops of gray in her own, and breaking the limits of surface tension, the droplets spilled out and onto his cheeks.
“…Why.”
“Huh?” Frozen in place, Haruyuki was unable to understand the meaning of her murmured word.
“Why,” Rin asked again, face contorted. “Didn’t you attack. Me? Even though I challenged you. I thought. I was okay with you hunting me. With disappearing. Even though. I thought I could do something reckless and. Subdue the Armor of Catastrophe possessing. You.”
At these unexpected words, Haruyuki swallowed his breath for a second.
Right. Rin had actually said that immediately before she challenged him to the direct duel. That she would make the Armor disappear, that she would take all his rage and hatred. And it could have really turned out like that, if the duel had played out differently. There had been the possibility that regardless of whether or not the Armor disappeared, Haruyuki would have rampaged and taken Rin on with all the attack power he had.
However, when cool big bro Ash Roller hit hard immediately after the duel started with his you-dare-lay-a-hand-on-my-baby-sis bit, he had completely taken charge of the duel, and there had basically been no chance for the Beast to wake up. It wasn’t like he had planned to yell about that, but now that Haruyuki thought about it, that attitude was really the heart of the countless Ash/Crow battles up to that point.
“I can’t hunt you.” Haruyuki shook his head gently, an unconscious smile on his face.
“What…”
“I mean, like, Ash is an important…friend.” He chose his words carefully.
“…Friend,” Rin repeated, turning her half-sobbing face toward him.
Haruyuki picked out the slightest note of dissatisfaction and hurriedly followed up. “Y-yeah. Very important. So, like, even if…I end up controlled by the Armor and totally turn into Chrome Disaster…” He pushed out the words that contradicted his early thoughts as his throat threatened to close over on him. “Don’t let Ash do anything reckless. I…I like that guy.”
Instantly.
Twice the tears, somehow a different color now, welled
up in Rin’s eyes. Her small face moved as though trying to catch up with the several drops that spilled over, and smacked into Haruyuki’s left cheek. Words riding hot breath poured into his ear.
“I…I’m so happy. That you met. The real me. I was afraid you’d think I was creepy. And I was in a different Legion. So I could only. Fight you in the general duels. And in the Territories…But. That you would…say that to me now…”
She pressed herself more closely against him, and the sensation, alongside its warmth and sweet smell, almost sent Haruyuki’s thoughts out of his head.
Even in this situation, the last threads of his reason remarked that the next time they met, Ash was definitely going to kill him, but regardless, his right hand escaped his conscious control and lifted itself up, moving in to touch Rin’s slender back—
“Please say what you said before one more time.” The murmured voice in his ear stopped his hand cold.
Hurriedly scrolling back through his memory, he replayed the scene in a hoarse voice. “Um. Ash is an important friend?”
“After that.”
“So I would totally never hurt you or anything?”
“After that.”
“And he’s someone I—”
Knock, knock. The hard sound rang out abruptly, quietly.
Eyes half out of focus, Haruyuki turned his gaze absently above his head. He first saw the door panel to the left behind him, and then the rear window came into view above that. Although he was pretty sure the transitional privacy glass had been in maximum shield mode a few minutes earlier, at some point, it had become completely transparent.
And on the other side, smiling quietly, was a woman with long, black hair. She turned the finger that had tapped on the glass and at the same time as she operated the holowindow, the doors unlocked with a light sound. The back hatch was immediately pulled open from the outside, and the woman leaning her top half into the vehicle smiled once more, directly above Haruyuki as he lay back on the seat.
“I’m so glad to see you again, Corvus ,” she said.