Accel World - Volume 19 - Chapter 4

4

“Mah…mah…ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma.” Stammering like a broken sound file, Thistle Porcupine was transformed at once into a cute, round animal, having fired every single needle on her back.

Cassis Moose clapped a large hand lightly on her back, and Thistle coughed for a moment or two before sucking air into her lungs.

“Merrrrrrrge?!” she shrieked at double-decibel volume.

Kreeeeenk!

Mihaya waited for the earsplitting sound to fade away and then nodded with Niko.

“Yes.”

“That’s right.”

Thistle staggered backward. Of the three members of the Triplex, she had been the most concerned about any form of cooperation with Nega Nebulus, so her shock was entirely understandable, but they had to get her to agree before the meeting was over.

“No.” Although her torso was still thrown back at a twenty-degree angle, her feet had stopped shuffling away from them. Thistle thrust her hands out ahead of her and shook her head back and forth. “No-no-no-no. Hang on a sec. Um. To begin with, is it even possible system-wise to merge Legions?”

“Yes.” Mihaya nodded at the porcupine as she finally started to calm down a bit. “But for a merger between Legions that both have territory, their territory has to be adjacent.”

“So then what happens to the Legion name and the Legion Master?” she asked immediately.

“You can pick and choose, I guess,” Niko replied. “Keep one of the Legion names or pick a new one or something. And both LMs can stay on as is, or you can pick someone new.”

“Hmm.” Thistle considered this. “What about those kids from Setagaya who joined Negabu whenever that was?”

“Oh, that wasn’t a merger,” Niko told her. “They disbanded their original Legion and formally joined Negabu.”

“Huh? Why’d they go through all that hassle?”

“Dunno. I didn’t get that part of the story.”

Thistle and Niko cocked their heads to one side in unison.

“Balance, probably,” Cassis Moose said, breaking his silence. “With the Judgment Blow.”

“Whaddya mean?” Thistle cocked her head to the opposite side.

“I only discovered this when I looked into it now. Regardless of what options are chosen, when two Legions merge, both of the original Legion Masters continue to possess that right for one month. The right to activate the Judgment Blow.”

“Whoa.” Thistle whistled. “So then, if the merged Legion chooses a totally new master, with the two former Masters, there’d be three people who could Judge?”

“It would appear so,” Cassis agreed.

“Whoa-ho. You get a big fight going after the merger, and it’ll be a Judgment festival!”

“That’s not a festival I want to go to,” Niko interjected with a smirk. “So then, the Petit Paquet LM went and disbanded the Legion so she wouldn’t still have the right to Judge? That takes some real guts.”

“Hey, hey, hey, heeey! Now’s not the time for getting all starry-eyed, Rain!” Thistle started to get worked up again, her voice rising in pitch. “There’s no way we’re gonna be doing that, right?! I’m not here for that, not that kinda one-sided, take-it-all merger!!”

“Calm down, Pokki.” Cassis placed both hands on Thistle’s shoulders, and the small porcupine gradually cooled down once again.

She let out a long breath and stared up at the larger moose. “You’re way too calm, Cassi…Oh! Or maybe you knew about the merger right from the start?!”

“N-no, don’t worry about that.” Clearing his throat, Cassis removed his hands and took a step back.

Thistle Porcupine’s guess was correct. Before this meeting, Mihaya and Niko had sounded out Cassis Moose alone on the possibility of merging Legions. They’d done so because Thistle’s flash point was famously low, and they’d wanted him to pacify her. But he’d apparently taken the opportunity to dig a little deeper on his own into what the whole thing would mean.

His cool powers of judgment and Thistle’s nimble explosive force had saved them any number of times in the short period that they’d fought together as Submasters of the new Prominence. Both were essential members of the top executive and loved Prominence very deeply. That love was maybe even greater than Mihaya’s own.

Mihaya’s loyalty as one of the Triplex was more deeply focused on Niko personally rather than the Legion. And her passion as a Burst Linker was turned more toward individual battles than the Territories. The reason she frequented the so-called duel holy land, Akihabara Battle Ground, was to gather information, but another big factor was her desire to refine her one-on-one duel techniques. Thus, she didn’t feel any serious resistance to the idea of merging with Nega Nebulus. Of course, it was a shame that the Prominence name would be gone, but as long as Niko was there, the new space would be Mihaya’s battlefield. And anyway, Niko had decided on the current merger policy only after a lot of wrestling with the idea.

But the majority of Prominence members wouldn’t be able to accept it as easily as all that. Even Thistle, who had risen to the top during the rule of the second King, was deeply shocked, so veteran members from the time of the first king, like Blaze Heart and Peach Parasol, would be more than surprised. After all, it had been the current Legion Master of Nega Nebulus, Black Lotus, who had taken the head of the previous Red King, Red Rider, and pushed him to total point loss.

“Pokki. I get that a merger with Negabu’s a tough sell.” Niko, speaking softly, turned toward Thistle Porcupine, whose lavender fur silently rippled as it regenerated. “Of course, I’m not thinkin’ we’ll just disband Promi and get sucked up into Negabu. I’m gonna seriously negotiate so that it’s an equal merger. But…even still, to be honest, I doubt all the current Legion members’ll follow me. I’m expecting any number of them to leave, and…If you or Cassi make that choice, I don’t have the right to hold that against you.”

Thistle opened her mouth, ready to fire back instantly once more, and once again, Cassis gently pressed down on her shoulders to silence her. Niko kept her gaze squarely on them as she continued.

“But…I’ve been thinking a lot lately. Like, after my predecessor was retired, why’d we fight so desperately to stay alive in Nerima and Ikebukuro during the total chaos of the warring states period? I’m up here, sitting on the throne as the second Red King, so what am I doing gritting my teeth and protecting our territory? I’m totally no good at bringing together huge forces, and to be honest, I don’t feel too much of an attachment to the Prominence name. Like, I’d be happy with a few close pals in a tiny Legion with no territory or nothing, just hanging out in a corner of the Accelerated World, y’know?”

The small crimson avatar looked up at the cloudy sky of the Thunder stage. She slowly pointed with one hand as though she had spotted a bird flying in the thick, distant clouds.

“I know it wasn’t that I wanted to run away. Not from that lot who came and attacked us, like they were gonna earn big points from the Red Legion when we were on the verge of destruction. Not from those jerks in the major Legions who looked down on me like I wasn’t a pure color after all, like I was a fake king. And not from the members of Promi now, not when they rely on me for real. But I’ve sorta been bluffing my way through this, like any second the paint’s gonna peel off, and everyone’ll see that I’m actually awful; and that’s so scary I can hardly stand it. But still, in my heart, I’m totally certain of it; I don’t want to run, and I don’t want to lose.”

It almost certainly wasn’t Mihaya who had brought about this realization in Niko, but rather the silver corvus she’d met only six months ago. Equal parts sad and happy about this, Mihaya turned her ears toward her young Legion Master’s speech so as not to let a single word get away from her.

“So I want to stand my ground now. To be honest, the Acceleration Research Society and the White Legion scare the heck outta me. But they did Cherry in…So they’re my enemy, too. If I run away now and leave it all to the Negabu gang, I won’t have any right to call myself a king anymore. This time, for sure, I want to fight for the sake of the things I hafta protect. That’s why…I’m asking you, Pokki, Cassi. Help me.” Niko bowed deeply toward the two members of the Triplex.

A large ripple ran through fully regenerated fur, and Thistle took a deep breath before asking their Legion Master in a low voice, “And what is it that you ‘hafta protect,’ Rain?”

“Myself, my Promi comrades…and this Accelerated World itself,” Niko answered unwaveringly as she stood up straight once again.

Cassis shook his massive horns once. “The Black King has her sights set on level ten—on clearing the game Brain Burst. Your will to fight alongside her isn’t shaken even if the path she walks will lead to the end of the Accelerated World?”

“Yeah. That’s the thing she’s gotta protect and all. And I don’t think this world’ll suddenly vanish or anything just because one person makes it to level ten. I mean, we go up levels to win something, yeah? If this game was so sad you could clear it just by getting a bigger number, then we wouldn’t be so desperate like this, laughing and crying and whatnot. Even if someone does make level ten and meet the developer or whoever, they’ll just get a new quest or mission or something, and that’ll be the end of it,” Niko declared.

Mihaya had also started to feel the same way, with apologies to the Black King. But on the other hand, she wasn’t quite firm enough in that feeling to state that Brain Burst level ten was a mere number. Because, among all the levels, it was only level ten that couldn’t be reached by earning some particular number of Burst Points. Only a player who had driven five other level niners to total point loss and walked that blood-soaked path could reach the unknown land of level ten.

Niko called this conquering path of personal supremacy the Black King was on “something to protect.” She must have seen something of her own self inside the Black King. They differed in that one had guns and the other, swords, but both duel avatars hurt everyone and everything that came near them, and both had been born with the ability to keep others at a distance. They were also both trying to face this power—the manifestation of their own mental scars—head-on and accept it. They wanted to transform their scars into strength—the darkness into the light.

“So like…even if the time comes when I gotta fight Lotus someday…” As Niko looked at the silent members of the Triplex in turn, her eye lenses shone with a powerful light. “Even if one of us ends up at total point loss, I’ll accept that fate. I mean, I’m the one who chose to go up to level nine even though I knew about the sudden-death rule, y’know? …I sought power ’cause I wanted to protect the world around me. So I want to see that decision through, right to the end. And to protect the things I wanna protect, right now that means I hafta join forces with Lotus and fight the White Legion.”

For a while, neither Thistle nor Cassis said anything. Thistle’s fur flew up on end briefly before falling back down, soft against her back, a cool breeze making it ripple and wave.

The thistle-colored duel avatar stared up at the swirling black clouds and slowly nodded. “I guess if you’re ready to go that far, Rain, we got no choice but to stick with you right up to the end. Lemme talk to Blaze and them old-timers. I’m pretty sure they’ll get on board if we sit down and hash it out.” Her voice held equal parts concern over an uncertain future, fear of a powerful enemy, and the resolve possessed only by one who has chosen to fight.

Cassis Moose also assented, his nod making his heavy armor clank. “I thought it would come at some point…the time to leave the territory and fight. It’s in an unexpected form, but I will also follow our Legion Master’s will.”

Hearing their declarations, Niko nodded firmly in return and thrust a clenched fist out in front of her. “Thanks, Pokki, Cassi…and Pard. No matter how things change from here on out, I promise you this, at least: I’m definitely not running away. Up against the White King or the Armor of Catastrophe, Mark II, or whoever, I’m never freakin’ out or steppin’ back. I’m gonna fight with everything I got right up until the end.”

Thistle and Cassis approached her wordlessly and bumped Niko’s small fist with their own clenched hands.

You’ve gotten stronger, huh, Niko? Mihaya murmured internally, touching her own fist to the others.

A small gap in the black clouds of the Thunder stage opened up, and the light that poured down through it made their four fists glitter and shine like rising flames.