Accel World - Volume 18 - Chapter 2

2

Time inched forward. The second this thought occurred to Mihaya Kakei, a shout bounced off the walls of the definitely-not-large room.

“Aaah, come ooooon! I can’t wait anymooooore!” The voice was owned by a girl with pigtails red like flames. Upside down on the sofa, she kicked her legs up and down before yanking herself upright. “Hey, Pard? How ’bout we actually sneak into Shibuya ourselves?! If we just watch from a corner of the stage, no one’ll notice us! Prob’ly!”

“No,” she retorted curtly, glancing at the old analogue clock on the wall.

Two forty-five. At the strike of three, the meeting between the top levels of Nega Nebulus and Great Wall would start in the Shibuya area. That would be, at most, 1.8 seconds from start to finish, so they’d hear about the result soon enough, but the fifteen minutes until that time felt like an eternity. Mihaya wasn’t a patient person to begin with—or rather, she was generally acknowledged by herself and others as being an impatient alien—so she desperately wanted to go along with her boss’s proposal, which meant she had to nip that excitement in the bud right here and now.

“If we snuck into the meeting and green found us, they’d destroy us. And we won’t make it in time on my bike anyway.”

“Unh, I knooooow. I was just saying.” The redheaded girl leaned her back up against the sofa and let out a sigh. The childishness of the person who had upended the Accelerated World with her fierce fighting style, the very picture of her eleven years, brought a faint, unconscious smile to Mihaya’s lips. To hide it, she picked up her teacup from the low table and took a sip of the unsweetened apple tea.

They were in Mihaya’s room in the back of the first floor of Patisserie La Plage, a cake shop in Sakuradai, within Nerima Ward. There were no windows, and the door and walls were made of material that blocked electromagnetic waves, so connecting their Neurolinkers to the global net required a direct connection to the router in the table.

Her aunt, who essentially ran the shop as the chef/pâtissier, rolled her eyes at the idea of a room where you couldn’t use wireless in this day and age and never came near the place, but that was actually a blessing. Because this small Western-style room was, for all intents and purposes, the command room of the Red Legion, Prominence.

“That reminds me, Pard. You take your level-eight bonus yet?” asked the girl, Prominence’s Legion Master and the second Red King, the Immobile Fortress, known as Scarlet Rain and, in the real world, Yuniko Kozuki.

Mihaya shook her head. “Not yet.”

“Whoa. So even you can’t decide on a level-eight bonus? But you totally snapped up the ‘normal running on all surfaces’ at seven,” Niko teased, grinning.

Although Mihaya was five years older, she wanted to purse her lips like a child. “You couldn’t decide on your level-eight bonus, either.”

“That was because anyone’d have trouble picking between a heavy cannon and a laser cannon! You can’t know which one does what without some research…”

“I’m doing the research now,” Mihaya replied smoothly, having only just jumped up to level eight from level six the other day, and took another sip of tea.

She couldn’t exactly whine in front of Niko, but the pressure for level eight was more than she’d expected. Outside of the Seven Kings, eight was essentially the highest level, and the way people treated her was different, not to mention the increased number of points taken when she lost to a middle ranker in a duel. As the leader of the Triplex, Prominence’s executive group, she felt like she’d fought with everything she had so far, but apparently, somewhere in her heart, she’d been spoiled by that little number six in her level.

Sky Raker, Mihaya’s most worthy rival and the vice deputy of Nega Nebulus, had her sights set on the loftiest of goals and had been fighting with this enormous pressure bearing down on her for some time now. And Mihaya had no doubt she would make it through with her usual cool—even when confronted with the powerful warriors of Great Wall she was about to face.

She’d told Niko they couldn’t, but she did want to be present at that meeting, and it was hard to completely banish that nagging thought from her head. The Acceleration Research Society had kidnapped her leader, whom she loved more than anyone, and then, after hanging her from a cross, had stolen four parts of her infamous Enhanced Armament, Invincible. Although Pard and her friends had gotten three of these back, thanks to the awesome special ability of Nega Nebulus’s Watch Witch, Lime Bell, which could rewind status changes, the thruster block was still in the hands of the Society.

Niko acted like she wasn’t bothered at all, but there was no way she wasn’t worried about it deep in her heart. It was Mihaya’s duty as the deputy leader to take the fight to the Society and get the thrusters back.

They’d taken a step forward in learning that the Acceleration Research Society, long shrouded in mystery, was, in fact, an organization within the White Legion, of all things. This showed again just how difficult it was going to be to fight the Society.

The Black Legion had decided on a frontal attack to take down Minato Area No. 3, the location of the White Legion headquarters. The meeting that day was the first step, and Mihaya understood there was essentially no other choice. However, even if negotiations with the Green Legion were successful, and Shibuya Area No. 2, adjacent to Minato Area No. 3, was returned to Nega Nebulus, that didn’t mean that Mihaya would be able to fight the White Legion. Only members of Nega Nebulus would be able to participate in the Territories; as a member of Prominence, Mihaya would not have that right.

When the Black Legion pulled back the curtain on the Society and the Six Legions’ joint attack mission was activated, she would, of course, be running at the front of the pack. But the fact that she would have to wait until then was actually very frustrating. Attack immediately when things started to move; this was the policy of Bloody Kitty, Blood Leopard/Mihaya, after all.

“So, like, Pard?” Niko said, a little anxiety bleeding into her voice, while Mihaya stared at the painfully slow hands of the clock as she let her thoughts race.

“What?”

“For example, ’kay? …I was thinkin’ maybe it’s time to talk to Cassi and Pokki, too. But I dunno.”

“…Hmm.” Even the immediately decisive Mihaya couldn’t answer this right away.

Cassi, aka Cassis Mousse, and Pokki, aka Thistle Porcupine, were the second and third of Prominence’s Triplex. Both had distinguished themselves during the period of chaos immediately after the disappearance of the former Red King and served admirably in supporting the new Prominence both in public and behind the scenes, and thus, they were both more attached to the Legion than Mihaya was.

For those two, the “talk” that Niko was thinking about having would have been relatively shocking. If they didn’t take the time to carefully explain things, it could even rip the Legion apart once more.

“Maybe it’d be better to talk to just Cassi first, instead of both of them together,” Mihaya offered hesitantly.

“Yeah.” Niko nodded, a complicated look on her face. “Pokki’ll prob’ly explode when word hits the street. Gotta have Cassi there to hold ’im back. Still, Cassi’s pretty stubborn and all, too.”

“Cassi likes sweets. Offer her some cake. Maybe that’ll make things easier.”

“Oh, good idea. Okay. Maybe your Cassi’s Mousse Tart’s the thing that’ll put us over the top.”

“Maybe.”

They both laughed briefly and then looked at the clock. Two more minutes until three.

“’Bout that time, huh?” Niko muttered, plugging a cable into the XSB connector built into the table before connecting it to her own Neurolinker. Mihaya did the same, and the icon for a global net connection was displayed in her field of view.

Right about now, the seven members of Nega Nebulus were also counting down the time remaining somewhere in Shibuya. All they could do now in distant Nerima was pray that the negotiations—the first step toward the decisive final battle with the Acceleration Research Society—went well.

“Let’s take a cake and go see them when they’re back,” Mihaya said.

Niko looked a little surprised, and then her large eyes that looked green in the right light shone. “Yeah. But can your bike hold ten cakes, Pard?”

“NP,” she responded, beginning the final countdown.

They had pressed Kuroyukihime and the others to tell them what had happened as soon as the meeting was over, so even with the time it took to utter the voice command, they should have gotten a call around five seconds past three.

The hands on the analogue clock on the wall moved ever so slowly as if to thwart her.

2:59:57 PM. Fifty-eight seconds. Fifty-nine seconds.

Three o’clock.

3:00:01. Two seconds. Three. Four. Five.

Six. Seven. Eight…