“Aaaah!” With a small battle cry, he accelerated and closed the distance until he was just behind the blackish-silver back. When he did, the Armor once again whirled, this time to the left, and Haruyuki was forced into a hard turn. His avatar groaned at the centrifugal force bearing down on him.
Gritting his teeth, he began beating his fist desperately into the Armor’s back when Chrome Disaster again did the impossible.
This time, he sank straight down. Haruyuki’s Punch sliced the air, and having overtaken his enemy, he dove, twisting his own body to target where his opponent would land.
Only in that moment, when both his feet made contact with the roof of the building, would Disaster be forced to stop before launching into the next jump. Haruyuki continued holding the figure of Disaster descending desperately in his sights, dimming because of his own reckless maneuvering, and calculated his timing.
The Armor arched its body, yanked its face up, and stretched out its right arm, allowing Haruyuki to bear witness to a sight that stunned him a third time.
The metal avatar, supposedly incredibly massive, suddenly decelerated in midair. Almost as if gravity had reversed direction, it stopped instantly in empty space and then shot directly up again. His aim off yet again, Haruyuki sliced through the atmosphere vainly with his right foot and flipped his body—
Both eyes wide, he finally saw it.
The momentary glimmer of an extremely fine red line between Chrome Disaster ascending at a steep angle and the rather tall building for which he was headed.
It wasn’t a beam. The light was a reflected afterglow shining through the gap between buildings.
It was a wire.
In the back of Haruyuki’s mind, he recounted flashbacks of the strange gripping technique Chrome Disaster had shown off earlier. That technique—the way he had forcibly yanked the Yellow Legion long-range avatar and the rock that Kuroyukihime had kicked into the armor’s opened palm—and Disaster’s long-distance jumping and midair maneuverability came from exactly the same thing: an extremely thin wire with an anchor attached. It was launched from the palm of his hand at the target to retract it, or was launched at a fixed object to hoist himself toward it.
As Haruyuki watched, Chrome Disaster ascended, wire winding at ridiculously high speeds, and disappeared onto the edge of a building.
Rising once more to give chase, Haruyuki focused his thoughts to calculate his next move. To interfere with that jump, all he had to do was cut the wire stretched out in the air.
But he probably couldn’t disconnect it with a hand chop or a Kick. It easily supported that heavy avatar—and while accelerating on a descent, to boot. He had to assume that the wire’s anchoring power and load-bearing ability were absolute. There was even the possibility that it could not be cut and, in fact, might do him damage.
Rolling seriously through these thoughts as he gained altitude, Haruyuki caught sight of Chrome Disaster landing on an arched roof. On the other side, separated by only a road now, was Sunshine City. His opponent would reach the portal tower with one more leap. What could he do? How could he stop him?
Disaster stretched out his right hand, aiming for the blue-black wall of his destination. His sharp fingers opened into claws. In the center, the light of the wire firing flashed.
“Right!!” Haruyuki shouted at the revelation that came to him in an instant. The strategy that popped into his mind was basically suicide, but he had no other cards to play.
He poured every bit of energy he had into the silver fins that constituted his wings and plunged straight ahead toward Sunshine. Particles of light enveloped his small avatar, drawing out a tail in space like a comet. He quickly overtook Chrome Disaster, crossed the road, and flew on.
More! More, more! Accelerate!
The faster he moved, the more the color of the world changed; everything was decelerating in relation to himself. Now just a dazzling laser shooting forward, Haruyuki was sure he saw it: the wire launched from Chrome Disaster’s right hand toward the exterior wall of the tower, and the microscopic hook at its end.
“Aaaaaaah!!” With a howl, he applied a final burst of acceleration and dove at a shallow angle, mingling his flight trajectory with the wire sight.
He heard the faint snap through his body and felt something bite into the center of his back. An incredible force tried to haul Haruyuki back, but he fought it and pushed himself to the limits of his acceleration to keep charging ahead.
He felt the weight suddenly. Chrome Disaster’s body at the other end of the wire was floating on its back in midair. Without even looking back, Haruyuki saw vividly in his mind the Armor connected to him, flying through space at the same speed.
When landing normally, Disaster avoided crashing into whatever he’d hooked by adjusting the force reeling in the wire. But dragged along like this, the Armor had no technique for decelerating on its own.
Before him, the exterior wall of the enormous tower piercing the sky drew closer. Haruyuki glared at it, a combination of countless pieces of thick steel, and swallowed his fear as he timed his strategy. Too early and he would end up giving Chrome Disaster enough time to land safely; too late and he would crash into the tower himself.
Right. Now.
“Gah!” Screaming, Haruyuki shot straight up at the steepest angle he could manage. Every joint in his body squealed, pain lancing through them. The sharp end of one of the steel girders grazed him from chest to stomach. Orange sparks flying, Haruyuki ascended along the wall of Sunshine, easing up on the acceleration at the same time.
And Chrome Disaster’s enormous body collided against the wall of the tower with an impact so loud that the whole of Ikebukuro shuddered.
The tower itself rattled, and broken fragments of glass, steel, and stone scattered with the force of an explosion. The aftershocks of the energy unleashed turned into bluish-white sparks, crawling through the air.
The wire stretching out from Haruyuki’s back trailed into a massive breach around the tower’s tenth floor. There was a rumbling roar, and he stared, awestruck, as a river of water surged from the hole. Straining his eyes, the water appeared to contain strange, aquatic creatures of varying sizes. The afterglow lighting up their scales red, they danced in the sky and fell to the park on the first floor, splashing about.
Haruyuki finally realized that in the real-world Sunshine City, there would have been an aquarium around this spot. Most likely, that had been re-created here in the Accelerated World, and the crashing Disaster had shattered the tanks.
Toward the end of the outflow of giant fish and amphibians, something that looked like a lump of metal popped out of the hole and was caught, limp, on one of the twisted girders.
Chrome Disaster. In such bad shape, he was nearly unrecognizable. Half of his left arm had been torn off, and his right leg had been smashed like scrap iron. His armor plating was furrowed and crushed, wholly lacking its former sheen.
From innumerable lesions, a near-terrifying amount of black liquid spewed, melting into the air and disappearing before it even hit the ground. Given his condition, it was amazing Chrome Disaster didn’t disappear from the field that second.
Haruyuki blinked his eyes tightly, told himself that this was not the time to let these feelings out, and went to lower Disaster’s body to the ground, using the wire that still connected them. Niko would probably arrive soon.
He ascended slightly, and the taut wire hoisted up the Armor’s right arm.
“Rooooooooooo!!” Suddenly, a howl emanated from the beast at an unspeakable volume.
From inside the hood-shaped helmet of Chrome Disaster’s abruptly raised face, a countless number of very long fangs appeared and opened wide.
His right hand snared at the air like a claw, and Haruyuki’s body was yanked back irresistibly.
After unexpectly dropping several meters, Haruyuki put every bit of force he had into pumping his wings to resist the demonic pull. The straining wire screamed. Before his eyes, the hungry fangs
snapped open and closed.
“Nngaaah!” Wailing, Haruyuki desperately fought back. Chrome Disaster’s “predation” had a damage recovery effect. If he got eaten now, this thing would be all healed up and go after Niko again, and then Kuroyukihime.
Tearing his gaze away from the terrifying maw, Haruyuki looked straight up.
The sky of the Unlimited Neutral Field, night approaching, was almost entirely covered by inky black clouds, but between the breaks, he could faintly see stars. He reached out his right hand to a remarkably large red star among them. Making a tight fist, Haruyuki cried out.
“Ngaaaaaaah!”
The air roared, and the thrust of his silver wings increased the metallic attraction. Flying perpendicularly as if popping out, Haruyuki started scrambling up the exterior wall of Sunshine tower rapidly, the Armor still dangling below him. The shock wave rippled the wall like a wave, and the glass followed, shattering.
Reaching the summit of the tower mere seconds later, he kicked at one of the strange thorns stretching out horizontally from the edge and used the reaction to change his orientation, turning back toward Chrome Disaster, still borne along by the wire.
“Nngaaah!!” As he yelled, he drove a right Kick into the Armor’s throat. The lower half of the helmet went flying with a sharp metallic clatter, and the obsidian fangs crumbled.
Still in the same posture, he began plummeting at full speed. The silver avatar and its blackish-silver counterpart became one, streaking toward the ground like a falling star.
Then…
The darkness inside Disaster’s helmet disintegrated with a puff. What appeared inside was a simply designed mask with a light pink hue. The horizontal ellipses that were its eyes blinked hazily, and a small voice—that of a boy—spoke, a lingering innocence in its tone.
“I…want…to be stronger. That’s all…”
Continuing to dive even now, Haruyuki opened his eyes wide. He met the other’s, almost as if trying to peer in, and the peach-colored avatar pressed further, “You…you can understand that, right? You want…power, too, don’t you?”
Hearing those words, Haruyuki felt an intense heat well up deep within him.
Rage. Overwhelming fury.
“You wanted to be strong?” Haruyuki said, still concentrating all the thrust of his wings into the right foot piercing the Armor’s neck. His question instantly swelled to a shout, which practically erupted from his throat.
“So you’re saying that gives you the right to do whatever you want?! You’re saying that makes putting on that armor, attacking huge numbers of avatars, and even trying to eat your own child—eat Niko—totally acceptable?!”
Their dive had already passed the tower’s halfway point. If he didn’t pull out soon, he’d be in trouble, too. He knew that, and yet he couldn’t stop the words rushing out of him.
I want to be stronger. He had, in fact, been repeating those words over and over like a spell for a while now. He felt inferior to pretty much everyone and had become completely obsessed with his ridiculous training. But coming to the field today and fighting his way through more battles than he could count, Haruyuki finally understood that he had forgotten something important.
Strength was definitely not relative.
Superficial standards like winning or losing duels, or being higher or lower than someone, had no value.
It was him. The sole, absolute standard was inside himself.
“It’s not just you!” Haruyuki mustered every scrap of vocal strength he had to shout. “I mean, Niko…and Kuroyukihime…and Taku, and the other Burst Linkers…and Chiyu, and the kids at school, the teachers, too, everyone thinks that!! ‘I want to be stronger, I want to live strong…I want to be able to stand up and face all the hard things myself,’ everyone thinks that!!”
Fragments of the Armor, unable to withstand the speed of their descent, peeled away, immediately turning into light particles and disappearing. Even the darkness leaking from the countless wounds emitted heat the instant it touched the wall of air and burned up.
The avatar contained in the helmet said nothing more.
Without even trying to decelerate or withdraw, Haruyuki plunged forward as one with the Armor.
The two entangled avatars crashed at a terrifying speed into roughly the center of the large staircase that stretched out from the entrance of the park to the tower, causing a final, massive explosion.
8
The fact that Haruyuki still had about 20 percent of his HP gauge left, even after being swallowed up in a pillar of fire that reached up to the sky and then jostled by the shock wave, was because he had taken almost no damage in the impact itself.
Punching out an enormous crater by crashing into the large staircase at Sunshine City, Chrome Disaster’s armor—the Enhanced Armament—was finally completely destroyed. The armor broke into thousands of metal fragments and went flying, and from its core, particles of thick darkness jetted straight up, acting as a cushion and repelling Haruyuki’s avatar back into the sky. He felt the wire on his back severed, perhaps struck by shrapnel.
Tossed about like a scrap of litter in the enormous explosion, Haruyuki curled his body up intently and endured the damage whittling down his gauge. He somehow managed to break free of the intensely hot sphere and descended haltingly, thin lines of smoke trailing from all over his body. Unable to stand up again once he’d landed, he crumpled to his knees.
When he raised his face, the pillar of flame mixing orange and black was just beginning to diffuse into the atmosphere and disappear. The embers pouring down like rain bounced off gray tiles and withered trees, making their surroundings glow red.
The large staircase had been pitted near the middle in the shape of a mortar blast, and in the center of this, he could see a small avatar lying half-buried on its side. The cherry-pink armor was completely scorched and absent its left hand and right foot. Extremely faint light in the elliptical eye lens, which seemed humorous somehow, blinked irregularly and disappeared.
Such a powerless and pitiful figure. He found it incredibly hard to believe that this was the avatar that had put on the evil armor and slaughtered so many so ruthlessly.
Crouching, unable to move, Haruyuki only heard the sound of the small footsteps approaching him from behind. His left shoulder was slapped lightly.
“You did it, Silver Crow. Now leave it to me.”
Haruyuki stared silently at the back of the Red King as she stepped forward and then descended into the crater.
He thought about standing up and following her, but he quickly reconsidered. He got the feeling that the final conversation between those two was something he shouldn’t overhear.
The two duel avatars, the same red family and nearly the same size, one prostrate, the other standing, appeared to exchange words for a brief while. Finally, the red girl-shaped avatar knelt down beside the light peach boy-shaped avatar, held up the ragged body, left arm severed, and hugged it tightly.
The gun in her right hand raised softly.
The barrel pressed against the boy’s chest.
Despite its impressive name, both the sound and the light of the Judgment Blow were modest. But the instant the virtual bullet pierced the avatar, something happened that Haruyuki had never before witnessed.
The boy avatar disassembled into countless ribbons, each one a luminous, minute series of code. All the information that made up the duel avatar by the name of Cherry Rook unraveled, divided, and melted into the sky of the Accelerated World.
Roughly ten seconds later, there was nothing left in Niko’s arms.
The crimson avatar, slumped down on the spot, threw her head back to look up at the sky, which was painted almost entirely black in the twilight.
Haruyuki wobbled to his feet and started walking toward the explosion’s epicenter, dragging his right foot, which had suffered a fairly serious injury. A few seconds later, he arrived behind Niko and stopped to her right, but a mixture of every type of emotion tripped him up and p
revented any words from coming out.
Finally, Niko blurted, “Me and Cherry, we don’t know our parents.”
He couldn’t grasp her meaning right away. When his breath articulated the question in his heart, her words returned, quietly.
“And by ‘parents,’ I don’t mean where we got our copies of Brain Burst, okay? I mean, the real world…our real parents. I told you before that my school’s a boarding school, right? The truth is, it’s a ‘school for the total care and education of abandoned children.’” Haruyuki could only listen respectfully to the words Niko, still plopped down on the ground, dispassionately uttered.
The policy of taking in newborn babies unconditionally had started in hospitals and similar places at the beginning of the century. As a step in the countermeasures against the acceleration of the decreasing birthrate and aging population, this policy had become law around the year 2030, and welfare institutions that doubled as schools were established in every region. And it was true that there was one such school in the Red Legion–controlled Nerima Ward.
“I-it’s ’cos of this personality. Even at school, I don’t fit in. I was always playing VR games by myself. But three years ago…this guy two grades ahead of me suddenly starts talking to me, right? He says, there’s an even better game, asks if I wanna try it.” She let out a small laugh before continuing.
“An invite like that, and I still let him direct. But, you know, he was just so sincere, all red in the face, you practically laughed. And that didn’t change after I became a Burst Linker, either. He taught me all these things super seriously, and when I got in trouble, he’d be a shield and protect me and stuff. But soon I caught up with his level. And then I passed him. And before I knew it, I’d somehow gotten to level nine. And once I was pushed into the Legion Master thing, I was frantic, too. It’s almost like I didn’t even care about what he was thinking or the problems he was having. In the real…When we’d meet at school, I didn’t even notice he was acting weird.”
Niko’s right hand scratched at the ground. Facing down, shoulders shaking, the young King squeezed out a thin voice. “He wanted to stay my ‘parent’ forever. And he wanted me to stay his ‘child.’ That’s why he sought power. He lost to the temptation of the Armor of Catastrophe. I-if I had just said something, just told him. That levels and stuff don’t matter, you’ll always be my only ‘parent.’ That that would never change.”