Phantom Bullet 2

  Hiss, hiss. Death Gun breathed like an exhaust vent, lazily waving his hands in a mock clapping gesture. The scraps of cloth he wore as a glove around his right hand shifted, exposing the symbol of a laughing coffin on the inside of his wrist.

  “Then you, should know, already. The difference, between me, and you. I am, a true, red player, but you, are not. You only killed, to survive, out of fear. And you tried, not to think, about the meaning, to forget. A coward.”

  “…!!”

  For a moment, I had no words. He had struck me right in the most vital, central point.

  How? How is he able to say that? When from the night I crossed swords with him, to our reunion in the dome yesterday, I never made contact once with him. Does he…does he have some kind of psychic power? Was my brilliant uncovering of his killing methods just nonsense in the end…?

  As my eyesight began to warp, it took all of my concentration to stay standing. It was a miracle that I kept the lightsword from wavering. If I had, Death Gun would thrust from a standing position again, piercing me through the chest this time.

  I let out a breath through clenched teeth and growled, “Maybe you’re right. But you’re not a murderer anymore. I’ve already got a very good idea of how you killed Zexceed, Usujio Tarako, Pale Rider, and possibly one more. It’s not because of the black pistol—not even because of you.”

  “Oh? Then tell me, what it is.”

  This was the showdown.

  I glared in the enemy’s eyes with all of the power I could muster, putting the truth as I believed it into words.

  “You used that camouflage cloak to hide in the regent’s office, watching the contestants enter their addresses into the BoB form. You had an accomplice sneak into their homes ahead of time and administer an injection timed to your shooting, making it look like you caused the resulting heart failure. That’s the truth.”

  “…”

  Finally, Death Gun was silent.

  The red eyes in the darkness narrowed. I couldn’t determine if that meant my conjecture was right or wrong. I let his thick, choking hatred flow through me as I explained further.

  “Though you might not know this, the Ministry of Internal Affairs has a database of all SAO players’ character names and actual names. When we find out your old handle, we’ll know your real name, address, and the methods of your crimes. Put an end to it all. Log out, and turn yourself in at the nearest police station.”

  Again, silence.

  The dry night wind caught the front of the tattered cloak, making the tendrils squirm like little insects. The live camera, REC symbol active, rose slightly in impatience. Nearly three minutes had passed since Death Gun and I faced off. The audience couldn’t hear us talk, so their confusion and irritation had to be reaching a peak. But for now, all I could do was continue our battle of words. If Death Gun backed up my assertions, there would be no need to cross blades.

  But a few seconds later, all that came from his hood was the usual hissing laughter.

  “That is, a very interesting, idea. But, it’s too bad, Black Swordsman. You cannot, stop me. Because you, will never, remember my, old name.”

  “Wh…what? How can you be so sure?”

  “Heh, heh. You’ve even forgotten, the reason why, you forgot. Listen…when the battle, was over, before you sent me, through the portal, to jail, I tried, to name myself. But you said, ‘I don’t want, to know your name, and I, don’t need to. I will never, see you, again.’”

  “!!”

  I stared, wide-eyed. Death Gun hissed at me again. “You don’t, know my, name. That’s why, you can’t, remember. You cannot, do anything. You will fall here, sprawled into the dust, and have no choice, but to watch as I kill the girl…”

  There was a sharp whistle of air being cut. A silver curve glittered in the darkness.

  “You can, do nothing!!”

  Death Gun suddenly thrust out the estoc, like a spring-loaded puppet. Before I even realized what I was doing, my arm was moving the lightsword to intercept the needle aimed for my heart.

  The energy blade growled, and the tip just barely intersected with the estoc’s trajectory. The pale plasma cut into the underbelly of the metal weapon.

  It should have cut it in two. The Kagemitsu had sliced Sinon’s rifle bullet in half, after all. How could it not slice that slim piece of metal, too? I swung my sword up, prepared to cut right through Death Gun’s shoulder.

  A very, very nasty sound came from the inside of my avatar.

  My eyes went wide with shock as I stared down at the piece of metal piercing my solar plexus.

  Death Gun’s estoc was slightly charred in one spot, but otherwise completely whole. The supposedly extreme power of the energy blade had passed right through it. But how was that possible?

  The enemy plunged in further, pushing the estoc in to the hilt. With each inch of the metal, my HP gauge dropped precipitously. I gritted my teeth and put as much power as I could into a backward leap. The blade popped out and spilled bloody red effects in an airborne line.

  Twice, then thrice, I hopped back, putting distance between us. Death Gun brought the estoc up to his mouth and waved it about, as though he were going to lick it.

  “…Heh, heh. This is made, of the best, metal you can get, in the game. Battle cruiser, armor plating. Heh heh, heh.”

  He tossed the cloak back and charged, done with the conversation. His right hand moved so fast it blurred, the little point of light leaving countless afterimages in the air. It was the first time he had showed off a combo attack. I recognized it as Star Splash, an eight-part, high-level, thrusting-sword skill…

  Unable to parry with my sword, and prevented from adequate footwork by the shifting sands, I was helpless to stop the sharp needle from gouging me, over and over.

  Kirito!

  Sinon fought with all her self-control not to scream his name aloud, or squeeze the trigger.

  Nearly half a mile away, the black-clad swordsman was knocked off his feet, spraying blood effects. To Sinon, who had never used a weapon that wasn’t a gun, his opponent’s sword proficiency seemed tremendous. She held her breath, wondering if that combination attack had finished all of Kirito’s HP, but fortunately, Kirito leapt backward, doing a backflip and pulling further away. There was no DEAD tag floating in the air.

  Meanwhile, Death Gun needed no regrouping. He trailed after his prey like a ghost. The automated cameras seemed to sense an impending conclusion, as they were multiplying in number. Nearly ten cameras spread out around the two in a circle, turning the desert stage into its own little coliseum.

  If only the Hecate’s scope was still there, she could snipe to assist Kirito. But at this distance, even Sinon couldn’t control the bullet circle with the naked eye. Even worse, if she fired wildly, she might hit Kirito.

  You can do it. Hang in there, Kirito, Sinon prayed, forgetting the danger that her real body was in as she kneeled on the rock and clutched her hands together.

  Kirito had killed people in the legendary Sword Art Online, even if it was to protect himself and others. That experience was shockingly similar to the past Shino bore. In that sense, his own mental anguish had to resemble Shino’s.

  Kirito said that you couldn’t overcome terrible memories by compartmentalizing them and hiding them somewhere. You had to face them, accept them, and think about them.

  At this moment, he was trying to turn his words into action. He was trying to stop the criminal named Death Gun, who brought the darkness of SAO with him.

  It wasn’t Kirito’s strength that made him capable of this. It was his drive to be strong. He was a person who could accept, anguish, and suffer over his own weakness, and face his foe anyway. Strength was not a result—it was the process of aiming for something.

  I want to talk with you right now. I want to tell you about what I’ve noticed, what I’ve felt. Is there anything I can do? Descending this rock and coming closer would have the opposite effect. The instant the Black Star gets po
inted at me, Kirito will be helpless. On the other hand, sniping without a scope is just gambling. I don’t have nearly enough range with my MP7 sidearm. There must be something…some other way to help him…

  “…!”

  Suddenly, Sinon’s whole body shook.

  There was. One kind of attack that she could actively attempt. She didn’t know how effective it would be—but it was worth a shot.

  Sinon took a deep breath, clenched her jaw tight, and watched the distant battle.

  Kirito!!

  Asuna was just barely able to keep the scream trapped in her throat.

  Although it didn’t have the same visual effects, the combination that Death Gun whipped out was clearly the eight-part Star Splash, a high-level sword skill that Asuna the Flash had once made good use of. It was a rapier skill that contained no slashing movements, which made it available to the estoc, an offshoot weapon of that category.

  On the wall screen, she watched Kirito dash backward over and over, trying to maintain distance. But the cloaked player stayed right on him, gliding eerily over the sand. Kirito kept pulling away, just barely out of the estoc’s reach.

  The tempo of the beeps coming from the heart monitor rose, causing Asuna to glance over. His heart rate was already up to 160 bpm. She tore her eyes off the screen and looked at Kazuto’s face.

  Beads of sweat hung on his forehead, and it seemed to her like his expression was pained. His parted lips made way for short, quick pants. Nurse Aki had noticed this as well; her eyes were clearly worried behind her glasses.

  “I make sure he gets plenty of water before he dives…but it’s been over four hours already. With how much he’s sweating, dehydration is a concern. You don’t suppose we could have him…temporarily disconnect, do you?” the nurse asked.

  Asuna bit her lip and shook her head. “Nothing we say here will reach Kirito…and this is a PvP tournament, so I don’t even know if he’s capable of logging out…”

  Based on ALO tournament events, she was familiar with the practice of temporarily preventing players from intentionally logging out, to protect against desperation log-outs by losing players—one of the cardinal sins of VRMMOs.

  “But the AmuSphere does monitor blood flow in the brain, and it will automatically log him out if it detects dehydration is about to occur,” Asuna added.

  The nurse nodded back. “I see. We’ll monitor him a bit longer, then. We can’t go giving him an IV when he isn’t even technically a patient, after all.”

  “Ah…of course.”

  Her voice stiffened against her will. If he had to be hooked up now, he might as well be back in SAO.

  But there was one major difference between then and now: Kazuto wasn’t wearing a NerveGear with its deadly trap installed, but a guaranteed-safe AmuSphere. So there shouldn’t be any danger if she just reached down and yanked the silver rings off of Kazuto’s head. Kirito would disappear from the desert footage and instantly return to the hospital bed—and Asuna’s side. The sword of the terrible foe bearing the name of death would not reach him.

  It took all of Asuna’s willpower to resist the impulse to do this.

  Kirito/Kazuto was fighting with all of his swordsman’s instincts. She could not interfere with that process.

  But there had to be something she could do. Some way she could reach him where he fought in that far-off world, from his side right here.

  “Mama, his hand,” came Yui’s little voice from the cell phone speaker. “Take Papa’s hand. The AmuSphere’s physical signal interrupt isn’t as complete as the NerveGear’s was. I’m sure he’ll feel the warmth of your hand. My hand can’t touch him in the world he’s in now, but…you can do it…for me…”

  Her voice quavered and stumbled toward the end. Pierced through the heart, Asuna shook her head briskly. “No…that’s not true, Yui. You can reach him. We’ll cheer Papa on together.”

  She put the phone into Kazuto’s limp hand and squeezed it between both of hers. Despite the considerable warmth of the heating, Kazuto was cold as ice. She had to be careful not to squeeze too hard, so as not to set off the auto-disengage feature. So it was that Asuna tried to subtly warm him up as much as she could.

  She closed her eyes, shutting out the images on the screen, and prayed.

  Hang in there, Kirito. Keep trying, for the sake of what you believe in. I’ll always be at your side. I’ll always be behind you, watching your back and supporting you.

  Faintly, but certainly, his cold hand twitched.

  He was tough.

  In speed, balance, and timing. He was a master of all. Very few of the front-line players could boast of such considerable, polished skill.

  So why? When he was a lieutenant of Laughing Coffin, the man who now played Death Gun was barely able to keep up with my sword. Otherwise, it wouldn’t have been so easy for me to knock him down to half HP and send him scurrying off to lick his wounds.

  Which meant he had changed after that, probably during the half a year that he spent in Blackiron Palace’s prison. He’d honed his skills, living off his burning desire for revenge against me and the others who brought Laughing Coffin to ruin. There was strength to be gained by practicing sword skills over and over, even if it didn’t result in more col or experience. How many thousands, how many millions, of times did he practice these moves in that gloomy, chilly prison? The exact movements necessary to pull off the estoc’s attacks had been burned into his nerves.

  But I knew that when it came to the number of swings, I was at least his equal. The problem was that the photon sword I carried now was far lighter than the swords I was familiar with. It felt entirely different. A single attack like Vorpal Strike was one thing, but it would be very tricky to pull off a combination attack. On top of that, Death Gun was not going to give me enough time to execute a major attack. He maintained close proximity, overwhelming me with a variety of moves. While I dodged as best I could, that sharp point caught my avatar from time to time, taking chunks of HP with each bite. I was down to barely a third of my health.

  Of course, even if his pointed weapon took the rest of my HP and knocked me out, I wouldn’t die if he shot me with that black pistol. I never typed my address into the terminal in the regent’s office, and he had no way of finding out the location of my real body.

  Maybe I’d been leaning too heavily on the truth of my safety. I was so concerned with the black pistol that I failed to notice the true power of the player holding the gun. If that was the case, I’d earned this outcome. He was still in the game of death, and I had drifted away from it in body and mind.

  It was far too late to realize all of this now.

  But that didn’t mean that accepting defeat was an option. I wouldn’t suffer a single wound in real life. But as he swore to me earlier, Sinon was within the firing range of his black gun, as she waited on the boulder in the distance. If I went down, he would attack Sinon. If she took a single bullet from that handgun, his accomplice would do his dark duty on her real body.

  One moment. I just needed one moment. Just one chance to break through his onslaught.

  As far as attack power went, my lightsword was far more potent than his narrow estoc. If I landed a heavy critical blow, I knew it would eradicate all of his HP. I just couldn’t get enough space to do it. He wouldn’t fall for any half-executed feints, and his estoc could pass right through my energy blade, so I couldn’t keep him at bay with a powerful swing. What to do, what to do…

  Tist-tist-tist. Three quick thrusts hissed at my right cheek and one caught it, sending my HP bar into the red at last.

  The stream of light from my cheek turned my vision crimson.

  And Death Gun’s red eyes flickered fiercer than before, certain of his victory.

  Red…The estoc fencer in Laughing Coffin had red eyes, too. My memory creaked and groaned. A crack ran through the heavy lid that kept it down.

  That’s right…I had refused to hear his name. I didn’t want anything to do with him ever again. I
just wanted to forget that night of madness, blood, screams, and hatred, and not a second too soon.

  But in reality, I couldn’t do it.

  I didn’t forget everything. I just pretended that I did. I was fooling myself, nothing more. I’d shut down the neural pathways to a whole chunk of memory, and convinced myself that something that did exist was invisible to me…

  Death Gun pulled back the estoc, preparing for the finishing blow. The cold gleam in the tip caused discrete images to flash out of my distant memory.

  Just before the vanquishing party left, we held our final meeting at the base of the Divine Dragon Alliance. At the meeting, we went over all the information we had on Laughing Coffin again. The abilities of PoH, their leader. The weapons and skills of his trusted lieutenants. Their descriptions—and names.

  It was mentioned that two of the officers had their own distinctive colors. One was black. He liked to use a poisoned knife, and his name was…yeah, it was Johnny Black. Klein turned to me and said in all seriousness, “Don’t fight him. We won’t know which one of you is which.”

  The other was red, but not all over. The estoc-wielding fencer had customized his eyes and hair to be crimson red, and wore a gray, hooded cloak with an upside-down red cross on it. Asuna the Flash, vice commander of the Knights of the Blood, did not appreciate this unsubtle play on the guild’s colors and crest. He was the one I crossed swords with right at the start of the battle, the man who swore he would kill me one day and tried to tell me his name as we cleaned up after the fight.

  Now, a year and a half later and into an entirely different virtual world, the man with the estoc and the tattered cloak had come to make good on his promise. His name was…

  “Xaxa.”

  The short little word that tumbled out of my mouth, pronounced like Zazza, threw off the course of the metal rod that plunged toward my heart. Instead, it grazed my chest and lurched past me, but I barely even registered the sensation.

  “Red-Eyed Xaxa. That’s your name.”

  A number of things happened after that point in quick succession.