Accel World - Volume 20 - Chapter 3

3

Koto and Yuki Takanouchi were identical twins.

Normally, family can tell even identical twins apart by tiny differences—the location of a mole, the timbre of a voice, the tilt of one’s eyes. But neither Yuki nor Koto had a single mole, and they had exactly the same voice and gaze. Thus, ever since they were babies, not even their own mother could tell who was who at first glance.

And then their mother introduced a simple way of figuring it out: She gave the Koto, the elder sister, a red newborn Neurolinker, and Yuki, the younger sister, a white one, and used those colors to distinguish them. Neurolinkers were equipped with a function to authenticate brain waves, and as with fingerprints, no two sets were exactly the same, not even for identical twins. For all intents and purposes, it appeared that these Neurolinkers definitively identified the girls, and the problem was seen as solved.

However, when they started preschool, their new Neurolinkers could not distinguish between them. Perhaps this was because of some issue with the machines; perhaps it was because their brain waves had come to be almost the same through shared experiences growing up. Either way, the fact that they were the only ones who realized this only complicated the issue.

At first, it was just as a bit of a mischief that Koto and Yuki traded their devices. Their mother and father were easily deceived, which they found quite funny, and the pair started trading Neurolinkers frequently, with the one wearing red spending the day as Koto and the one with white as Yuki. They were always together, which made the switching of various child protection functions of the Neurolinker that much easier. Examples of these functions included an alert that would appear in their view if their name was called, or holotags with their names on it that would appear above their head.

At some point, this risky but fun “game” had become a daily practice, and it continued for the entirety of their three years of preschool. They finally decided to stop switching the night before they started elementary school. They would be in different classes there, and no matter how much support the Neurolinker could provide, they thought sharing their memories would be too difficult to pull off. But when they decided to return the red and white Neurolinkers to their rightful owners, the girls realized a fact more frightening than anything else.

Was I Koto to start with? Or was I Yuki? Because they’d been playing at switching for three years at that point, they couldn’t say with certainty anymore which name really belonged to whom. Koto and Yuki were still only five years old, and the terror of this realization was equivalent to the annihilation of their senses of self. They desperately wanted to run to their parents crying and begging for help, but they had no hope at all that their mother and father would be able to tell who was who after failing to notice the switch they’d been pulling for three whole years.

With no other choice, the twins decided to close their eyes and each choose a Neurolinker; the one who took the red would live as Koto and the white would be Yuki. They also wanted to add a visually identifying element, and so they decided that Koto would wear her hair in pigtails while Yuki put hers in a ponytail, and that this would never change.

Once they started elementary school, there were no issues on the surface, but in the depths of their hearts, there was always an indescribable anxiety. This idea, the terror that perhaps each girl was not who she thought she was, never completely disappeared, and instead grew up to become an impenetrable barrier. This wall not only rejected other people but also threatened to crush their senses of self little by little. And then, one day, an encounter with a game program changed their lives forever.

Brain Burst 2039. This program, which read a player’s “mental trauma” and produced a “duel avatar” from it, gave Koto and Yuki a decisive way of identifying themselves. Their duel avatars did of course look very much alike, but the horns on their heads, the colors of their armor, and, above all else, their names, were different. Koto’s avatar was Cobalt Blade. Yuki’s was Manganese Blade. These utterly unique names absolutely could not be traded, even if, hypothetically, Koto was really Yuki and Yuki was really Koto.

Having gained this means of “defining” themselves at long last, the pair ended up distinguishing themselves as Burst Linkers in the Blue King’s Legion, the Leonids.

On the western edge of Shirokanedai in Minato, Tokyo—i.e., Minato Area No. 3—there was a massive park, or rather a forest: the Institute for Nature Study. During the Edo period, it had been a villa of the Takamatsu clan; later it was designated an imperial asset under the name of the Shirokane Reserve; and later still, about a hundred years earlier, after the end of the Pacific War, it had been opened to the general public as a park. Although it was considered an annex, the institute that managed it, the National Museum of Nature and Science, was in far-off Ueno Park in Taito; the Tokyo Metropolitan Teien Art Museum, which stood on the southwest side of the site, had more presence there.

The Teien Art Museum was originally a Japanese art deco–style manor known as the residence of Prince Yasuhiko Asaka, and the building itself had been designated an important national cultural asset. Of course, because it was an art museum, anyone was permitted to go inside (for a fee), and the building now also housed a café.

Which brings us to Saturday, July 20, 3:30 PM. The twin sisters Koto and Yuki Takanouchi were seated across from each other at a table by the window of the Teien Art Museum café and staring intently at the plate of chiffon cakes that had only just been brought to them.

Koto had ordered the lemon and mint, and Yuki the marbled matcha. Both actually looked delicious, but they weren’t immediately inclined to dig into either. With a drink (Koto had mixed berry soda, Yuki iced milk) each order fetched the super dreadnought price of 1,400 yen. Adding in the museum entrance fee, that was 1,950 yen per person. If they didn’t very carefully examine the cakes in front of them and expend every effort in appreciating their beauty, they’d never get their money’s worth.

“Hey, Koto? Maybe we can invoice Negabu for this as a necessary expense,” Yuki suggested glibly.

Koto shrugged. “Probably no way. And you were the one who said we should come into the café because it’s too hot out. We were going to wait on standby on a bench in the park.”

“But, I mean, I’m no good in the heat. And that’s not a park. It’s a forest. A forest. There’s flies and snakes and bears! I just know it!”

Grinning painfully at this, Koto glanced outside. The café had a modern interior with white as the keynote, but a green lawn spread out on the other side of the large glass window, and beyond that a dense, deep forest. It had been left to grow naturally since it had been planted as a firewall in the 1700s during the Edo period, so the history of this forest was that of the imperial palace itself—or rather, Fukiage Omiya Palace’s gardens. There might very well have been raccoon dogs or some other semimythical animals living in it. “If there are bears in there, I want to see one. Well, thanks to this price, there aren’t any other kids in here at least. We’ll tighten our belts tomorrow.”

“Wohkay. So trade once we eat half.” Yuki’s appetite meter had apparently dipped into the red zone.

Koto picked up her fork at the same time as her sister and gently pushed it into the edge of the pale-yellow chiffon cake. Then, out of the corner of her eye, she saw the automatic café door open, and Koto glanced in that direction.

A slightly younger boy walked in. Navy blazer, ivory pants, slightly long hair in a bowl cut, he was attractive in a very Japanese way. Perhaps he had run there—he pressed a handkerchief to his forehead to dry the sweat as he spoke to the waitress, and she showed him to a table a little ways off from Koto and Yuki.

Even as she brought the chiffon cake to her mouth, Koto kept taking peeks at him. It wasn’t, of course, because he looked like her type or anything like that. She was instead considering the possibility that he was there to interfere with their mission—in other words, he might have been an enemy Burst Linker.

There were around a thousand Burst Linkers in the city of Tokyo, of which perhaps seven hundred were junior high students. In contrast, including both private and public schools, the total number of junior high school students was approximately two hundred thousand. A rough calculation showed that one in every 285 was a Burst Linker. So normally, there was no need to be concerned about the chances that another young person in the same café would happen to be one.

But the bowl-cut boy slightly hidden behind Yuki definitely had something of that air about him. Although he seemed completely different on the surface, he had something in common somehow with the real-life Ardor Maiden, whom they’d met in a family restaurant in Nakano area three days earlier.

“It really is delicious, though, hmm?” Koto murmured as she deftly operated her virtual desktop, still cut off from the global net, and set up an ad hoc connection with her sister’s Neurolinker. For safety’s sake, she actually would have preferred to direct, but she had to avoid doing anything suspicious. She sent a camera feed from her own Neurolinker and started to talk in neurospeak. “Yuki, don’t turn around. Look at the video. Have you ever seen the boy behind you?”

The normally flighty Yuki was a Burst Linker at heart, so the look on her face didn’t change in the slightest as she munched away on her cake. “Nope. He’s cute, huh? But…mm hmm. He doesn’t seem like an ordinary boy.”

“Is he maybe one of Oscillatory’s?”

“Dunno.” Yuki shrugged mentally. “But if he is, then that means the whole mission today’s been blown.”

Koto signaled her agreement with her eyes. The twins were not, in fact, the main actors that day; that would be the Black Legion. When the Territories started in twenty minutes, Nega Nebulus would launch a surprise attack on Minato Area No. 3, thought to be the headquarters of the White Legion. If Black won there, White would lose control of the area, and its right to block the matching list would be stripped away. Then, finally, it would be the twins’ turn. They would check the list immediately after the Territories ended, and if any of the confirmed members of the Acceleration Research Society—at present, the Burst Linkers Black Vise, Rust Jigsaw, and Sulfur Pot—were on it, that would be proof that Oscillatory Universe was itself the Society’s parent body.

To be honest, Koto (and most likely Yuki, too) still half disbelieved this—well, she was about 40 percent belief and 60 percent doubt. She wanted to trust Silver Crow and Ardor Maiden after they’d gone so far as to expose themselves in the real in order to ask the twins to take on this role of checking the matching list. But when they told her that the White King, White Cosmos, also known as Transient Eternity, was secretly the leader of the Acceleration Research Society, that she was the one wreaking havoc and sowing the seeds of war…Koto couldn’t help but be bewildered before feeling anything along the lines of understanding.

She couldn’t imagine what motive the White King had or what advantage it would give her to create things like the Armor of Catastrophe and the ISS kits. At the very least, there was no evidence that Oscillatory had profited at all from the subsequent chaos these had brought about. In fact, it had to have hit the Legion fairly hard when Tokyo Midtown Tower, an important landmark in white territory, was occupied by the Legend-class Enemy Archangel Metatron. So what did the White King get out of all of this? Or was the Black Legion just mistaken? The answer would be clear in twenty minutes. Or it was supposed to be, but if the bowl-cut boy behind Yuki was an Oscillatory assassin, Yuki was right—they would have to assume that Nega Nebulus’s greater mission had failed before it even started.

“So then, what should we do?” Koto asked.

Yuki brought a forkful of matcha chiffon cake to her mouth as she replied, “If the kid’s here to get in our way, he’ll probably challenge us before we can check the matching list. I can’t imagine we’ve been cracked in the real, but…”

“If we were cracked in the real, there’s also the risk of PK. But that’s unlikely. I mean, he’s exposed in the real here, too.”

“Well anyway, we’re probably just overthinking this,” Yuki finished.

Koto looked at the boy once again. He had an indigo Neurolinker equipped on his neck that was a slightly more saturated tone than the ones the twins wore. It was customary for Burst Linkers to match their Neurolinker color with their duel avatar color, so was he a blue type? Of course, the probability that he was even a Burst Linker at all was statistically only one in 285, but the hunch she’d felt when she saw him come into the café was increasingly turning to conviction rather than fading away.

Right. In addition to resembling Ardor Maiden, the boy also resembled their own parent. A calm that was beyond his years, and a fathomless depth behind that.

She kept thinking and moving her fork until her lemon cake was exactly halved. She traded for the remaining half of Yuki’s matcha cake, cut off a piece of the light-green cake, and brought it to her mouth. The moist cake melted like a light snowfall, and for an instant, her tongue was enveloped in the rich flavor of matcha, which quickly faded to leave a refreshing bitterness.

Top quality. No surprise at this price. She nodded to herself as she sent a thought to her sister’s Neurolinker. “We have no choice but to let him be. If he is from Oscillatory, his name won’t appear on the matching list yet, so we can’t challenge him. And we don’t even know his avatar name. But there’s one more problem. Should we warn Nega Nebulus about the possibility of an information leak? If their strategy’s been found out, Oscillatory will put their greatest firepower in Area Three and ambush them. And if that happens, they can fight as hard as they want, but they’ll never win.”

At best, Koto and Yuki were supposed to be neutral observers. It was precisely because they were third parties siding with neither White nor Black that their testimony would be credible, and she wasn’t sure if transmitting information to Nega Nebulus was the right thing to do in the end.

“Huh?” Yuki neatly cut off this circle in Koto’s mind. “We should probably tell them. We’ve barely spoken to anyone from Oscillatory in the Accelerated World, but we’ve met Negabu’s Corvus and Maiden in the real, y’know?”

“…Your thinking is too simple.”

Although they had been two peas in a pod in kindergarten, to the point where even their own parents couldn’t tell them apart, at some point their personalities had grown quite different. If Koto had chosen to be “Yuki,” would her personality have turned out like that?

“But, mm, maybe that’s exactly it.” Koto nodded slightly. “And if Nega Nebulus loses, we’ll have spent two thousand yen each here for nothing. Okay. I’ll mail Silver Crow…” She was about to launch the mail app on her virtual desktop, but then she stopped her hand in the middle of the act.

The bowl-cut boy sitting three tables away returned the cup of tea or coffee he was drinking to its saucer and brought his right hand to his Neurolinker. The only time you needed to use a finger to operate your Neurolinker was to turn the power on or off—or do the same to a global connection. In this situation, it was probably the latter. And she was betting he was turning the connection on, not off. She stopped watching him with her naked eyes and zoomed in on his mouth with the camera feed she was also sending to Yuki. If he was a veteran Burst Linker, he would have mastered the technique of “shouting” acceleration commands at a volume that only he could hear, but he couldn’t not move his mouth at all. They’d be able to guess the type of command from the slight movement of his lips.

“Yuki!” By the time Koto sent the sharp thought, her twin sister was already touching her own Neurolinker and pressing the global connect button.

There was no mistake; the bowl-cut boy had mouthed the Brain Burst acceleration command. And it wasn’t the basic Burst Link, but rather the spell to dive into the true Accelerated World that only those who had reached level four could use. If they went after him, Koto and Yuki would definitely be cracked in the real. But it would be the same for him. Rather than avoid that risk, they needed to go after this chance to find out who this boy was.

Reaching this decision simultaneously, the twins shared their thinking with an instant of eye contact and then gave the same command a second after the boy did. ““Unlimited Burst!””

On this first visit in some time to the true Accelerated World—the Unlimited Neutral Field—the stage was a Wasteland, dry wind whistling through the spaces between massive reddish-brown rocks. Coming down to stand on the gravelly earth in the form of her duel avatar Cobalt Blade, Koto quickly looked around as she placed a hand on the hilt of the sword hanging off her left hip.

There were no human-made buildings in a Wasteland stage, but the placement of the rocks was based on the locations of real-world buildings. The Teien Art Museum where the twins were had transformed into a group of strangely shaped rocks, like long, thin pillars, and the view from them was not the greatest. On top of that, off to the south, there was a group of plants that looked like large cacti, likely the forest of the Institute for Nature Study.

Even so, she managed to confirm there were no Burst Linkers within her field of view, and she let out a weak sigh. “So he’s already moved.” Koto’s speech here was more curt than her polite real-world speech.

“Looks that way,” a voice responded from immediately behind her. “It’s only natural. A single second in the real is nearly seventeen minutes here.”

“……”

Turning wordlessly, she looked at Yuki’s duel avatar, Manganese Blade.

Koto’s speech was quite noticeably different between the real world and the Accelerated World, but the change in Yuki was on the level of a second personality. Even though it happened every time, as the older sister, she did worry a little. But they couldn’t exactly maintain their usual gentle tone on this side. The menacing threat of the Blue King’s closest aides, Dualis, would melt away like cotton candy in hot water if they did.

She cleared her throat and switched mental gears. “But given the stage, might still be footprints. Let’s check it out.”

“Right.” Yuki nodded, making her ponytail-shaped horn shake, and then stared at the ground as she started to walk. Soon enough, she was pointing at a spot up ahead. “Good thinking, Sis. Faint, but footprints right there.”

“Which direction?” Koto asked.

Yuki pointed not at the forest of cacti but at the rock formation on the opposite side. Without a word, Koto turned her gaze in that direction.

“So the two of you are Burst Linkers, too,” a voice called out to them from inside the stand of rocks, and Koto and Yuki reflexively leapt back, grabbing at the hilts of their swords at exactly the same time.

Their shared special attack, Rangeless Scission, gave them a powerful ability—to extend the ranges of their blades farther and farther the longer they held this defensive posture. But they wouldn’t be able to activate the move, since their special-attack gauges were completely empty at the moment, and their normal attack could never reach inside the stand of rocks over ten meters away. Even so, if the owner of that voice came at them, they would cut him down first. That much they knew for certain.

“Who’s there?!” Koto barked.

Of course, Yuki followed suit: “Show yourself!”

“I understand,” the voice readily replied before continuing in a slightly apologetic tone, “I’ll come out now, but I’m sorry, could you please have mercy and spare me the preemptive strike? I have a meeting here, so it would be rather rude of me to die now.”

At this entirely straightforward request—or rather, wish—Koto unconsciously met her sister’s eyes. Yuki’s eye lenses flashed, and Koto’s tone was a little more relaxed as she replied, “Then come out with your hands where we can see them. If you so much as twitch, we’ll cut you down.”

“I accept your terms.” And then a flash of blue bright enough to rouse the dead appeared from behind a reddish-brown pillar.

Cobalt Blade and Manganese Blade both had armor that was also fairly blue, but this was a step above theirs in both hue and saturation. If Koto were to compare it to something, maybe it was like the deep, serene blue of the sky right before you hit outer space. And the duel avatar’s design was a Japanese-style samurai type, much like Koto’s and Yuki’s. But he had essentially none of their thick armor, and the blade that hung at his left hip was a straight sword. He was the very picture of a young samurai in ceremonial dress, or perhaps a Heian-era noble granted permission to wear a sword.

“Your name,” Koto demanded.

The young samurai avatar bowed conscientiously. “I am called Trilead Tetroxide.”

“Try-leed…?” She’d never heard that avatar name before, and the English spelling didn’t immediately come to mind. She turned her gaze briefly toward Yuki, but her sister also had a faintly puzzled look on her face. Since they certainly couldn’t ask their opponent the meaning of his name, she made a mental note to look it up later in her dictionary app and cleared her throat before pressing him further. “You said you knew we were Burst Linkers. Did Oscillatory Universe send you to get in our way?!”

If this Trilliad or whatever he was called was an assassin from the White Legion, she couldn’t imagine that he would meekly admit it. But neither Koto nor Yuki was particularly fond of beating around the bush. The situation was already reaching critical mass anyway.

But Trilead’s almond eye lenses flashed, and he shook his head. “Me, a White Legion…? No, not at all!”

“Then what’re you doing in Minato Three?!”

Before Trilead could respond to Koto’s interrogation, Yuki gently elbowed her and whispered in her ear, “Sis, he already told us. Something about meeting someone.”

“Mm. I-indeed.” She cleared her throat loudly and then changed her question. “You said you’re meeting someone. Isn’t that someone from Oscillatory?!”

And then it hit her—if she had scored a bull’s-eye with this question, then it was a trap targeting the twins. Trilead had deliberately caused them to notice him when he dived into the Unlimited Neutral Field and made them follow him to this place, where an Oscillatory Universe attack squad would assault them. And Oscillatory didn’t mess around. In the worst case, their attackers could be aiming for consecutive kills or unlimited EK until Koto and Yuki lost all their points.

Without waiting for her opponent to respond, Koto put her hand on the hilt of her sword once more. Next to her, Yuki made the exact same gesture. This time, they intended to unsheathe their blades.

Trilead gripped the sheath of his straight sword in reaction to their obvious intent to fight, and instantly, the girls were frozen in place. The design of the straight sword was quite staid for a sword-type Enhanced Armament, but an intense energy pushed at them from it, on par with that of a Legend-class Enemy or even a king-level Burst Linker.

“Hng!”

“Ghh!”

The twins gritted their teeth in unison and braced themselves. They leaned forward and tightened their holds on their beloved swords.

Meanwhile, Trilead put his hand not on the hilt of his straight sword, but toward them, fingers spread out. “Please stay calm,” the young samurai said, perplexed but somehow calm as well. “I do not know your situation, but I do not belong to Oscillatory Universe.”

Shaking off her paralysis, Koto took a deep breath and shouted back, “Then who exactly is this someone you’re trying to rendezvous with?!”

“That’s…” Trilead lowered his face the slightest bit and fumbled for words.

Not missing this opportunity when his eyes were off them, Koto and Yuki drew their blades in a single breath and snapped them up at the ready in front of their chests.

Trilead yanked his head up and finally touched his hand to the hilt of his straight sword.

A fight would inevitably explode into being if any of them so much as blinked. The dry wind of the Wasteland stage blew between the twin sisters and abruptly fell silent.

“Stoooooooopppp!!”

Koto and Yuki reflexively looked up at the sky and took a step back at the loud voice emanating from directly above them. A dark silhouette was plunging toward them like a bird of prey against the backdrop of the slightly hazy blue sky.

A surprise attack? Koto automatically moved into an attack position—until a bright silver light caught her eyes. The sunlight reflecting off the wings of the intruder…

It wasn’t an Enemy. It was a flying avatar. Silver wings.

“Cobalt, that’s…!” Yuki cried.

“Manga, don’t attack!” Koto responded.

Booooom! The silver avatar landed on the ground between the twins and Trilead. Still in a crouch, he threw his hands out.

“Twins! Wait gradually!”

Mmm? Koto raised an eyebrow, and in that moment, another figure descended to stand next to the silver bird with a light krnch.

The obsidian avatar had no wings. Most likely, she had been carried by the bird, but then separated from him right before the landing and fallen down after him. She pulled her sword legs free of the ten centimeters or so they’d sunk into the ground and floated up, shrugging lightly.

“Your Japanese just now was a bit strange, you know,” she commented.

“Huh?” The first on the ground released his theatrical pose and scratched his head as he stood up. “Was it?”

“Gradually means steadily or slowly,” she said. “In this case, wouldn’t it be ‘wait a minute’?”

“Oh, r-right. Okay, I’ll do it again—”

“No need for that!”

As she listened to this little comedy routine, Koto wondered if they’d actually prepared it in advance or something. Her battle lust vanished like the mist, and she sighed heavily before speaking to the silver flying-type avatar. “What are you doing here, Silver Crow? And the Black King…Black Lotus.”

Koto and Yuki severed some narrower rock pillars to a height of fifty centimeters to create impromptu seats, the Black King sliced a thicker post into a table, and then the five of them sat down in a circle in a corner of the Wasteland stage at their makeshift dining set.

While the two members of Nega Nebulus were readying the tea they’d pulled out of storage, Koto ran her fingers across the stone table in front of her. The surface reflected the light of the sun like glass, perfectly level; there was nothing to catch her finger. It was proof of the extreme sword edge and the skill of the master. In comparison, the chairs that Koto and Yuki had cut were rough, albeit only slightly.

Once four steaming cups had been set down on the table and the Black King and Silver Crow had lowered themselves onto their own seats, Koto opened her mouth. “Before we get to the matter at hand, I have a question for the Black King.”

“Mm? That’s fine. As long as it’s something I can answer,” the jet-black avatar said as she brought her cup deftly upward with the sword tip of her right hand.

Koto took a deep breath. “Do you have any kind of martial arts experience in the real world?” This question violated slightly the basic etiquette of not asking about a Burst Linker in the real, but the Black King only blinked her bluish-purple eye lenses.

“No,” she replied. “Not in the slightest.”

This was the answer she’d been half expecting, but even so, Koto—and Yuki, sitting to her right—couldn’t help but let out a deep groan.

“…So then this cross-section…,” Koto moaned.

“I feel the same way.” Trilead Tetroxide nodded deeply. “Truly incredible technique, as one would expect from the famed Black King.”

Looking their way, that same Black King let slip the aura of a wry smile. “Don’t flatter me so. This is just the fixed ability of this duel avatar; it has nothing to do with my skill. At any rate, we haven’t made our introductions yet.” Sitting a little straighter, the Black King looked directly at Trilead and spoke with the requisite amount of majesty. “I am the head of Nega Nebulus, Black Lotus. I truly appreciate your accepting the sudden request to meet.”

The young indigo samurai also snapped to attention and bowed. “I am called Trilead Tetroxide. I was very pleased to be asked to join you, Black King. I’ve heard a great deal about you from my master.”

“It can’t have been anything good,” the swordmaster retorted.

Koto raised an eyebrow, unable to pick up the thread of the conversation.

Silver Crow on her left brought his face in close. “Coba, Lead’s master used to belong to Nega Nebulus.”

“Oh?” she murmured. “Who?”

“Um. This guy Graphite Edge…”

““Wh-wh-whaaaaaat?!”” Koto and Yuki screeched simultaneously.

There wasn’t a high ranker in the Accelerated World who didn’t know the name Graphite Edge, the Anomaly, one of the former Nega Nebulus’s Four Elements. The sisters’ most bitter enemy was “Strong Arm” Sky Raker—they still had not forgotten the humiliation from when she hung them by wire from the top of the government building—but Graphite Edge was very firmly ranked at number two on that enemy list. Forget winning or losing—Koto had no memory of him ever giving her a proper fight. She and Yuki could hunt him down and try to strike at him, but he countered their attacks neatly with the overwhelming defensive capabilities of his twin swords. He always treated them like children—“You’ve still got a long way to go, Cobama!”—and then three years earlier, when they still had not managed to make him fight them for real even once, the Red King lost all his points, Nega Nebulus collapsed, and Graphite Edge disappeared from the duel world.

The idea that the Anomaly himself had taken on a student and trained him until he could paralyze Koto and Yuki with mere information pressure…

Somehow recovering from the shock, Koto pushed herself back down onto her stone stool and took several deep, calming breaths before turning to the puzzled young samurai avatar and lowering her head. “Trilead Tetroxide, my apologies. We believed you were a White Legion assassin. But if you are the Anomaly’s student, then that possibility is nil. Once again, I apologize.”

“No, I was in the wrong for speaking to you carelessly.” Trilead shook his head. “It was only natural you would be on guard.”

Silver Crow watched as the sisters and the samurai bowed to one another, and then he abruptly cocked his head. “Now that you mention it…why are you in the Unlimited Neutral Field, Coba and Manga? Were you hunting Enemies while you were waiting?”

“You were the one who specified the Institute for Nature Study as the place to be on standby in order to check the matching list, Silver Crow,” Koto responded in a sharp voice. “We encountered Trilead there, assumed he was an assassin, and pursued him.”

“Huh?” Crow scratched his helmet. “But this isn’t the institute forest, it’s the Teien Art Museum next door, right?”

“The forest is hot, and there are flies and bees and bears!” she snapped. “We too have the right to cool ourselves in the café!”

“Ohh, I get it.” He nodded understandingly. “And I told Lead to meet us in the Teien Art Museum, so that’s where the near miss happened, huh?”

“All of which means,” Koto started, and then shouted with Yuki, ““All of this is your fault!! Why would you put us on standby in the same place?!””

“I-it’s not the same, though,” he protested. “I split it up into the park and the museum, right? I mean, it’s super-close to the leave point at Meguro Station, but it seemed like there wouldn’t be junior high or high school students around, so I figured it was perfect…and basically, you’re the ones who left the forest and went to the museum.”

“Then you should have had us in the museum and Trilead in the forest!!” Koto yelled.

“B-b-but it costs money to enter the museum. And if you go into the café, you have to pay for tea, too…Wait. But. Huh?” Cocking his head to the opposite side now, Silver Crow turned back to the young samurai seated on the other side of the Black King. “Hang on a sec. Lead, are you maybe in the Teien Art Museum café in the real?!”

“Oh! Yes, in fact.” Trilead nodded firmly.

“Wh-wh-why?!” Silver Crow yelped. “I said the Unlimited Neutral Field, right?! You could’ve dived off somewhere else and then come to the museum.”

“That’s…” The young samurai faltered and lowered his eyes, but then quickly snapped to attention again. “I came to meet you today in order to be allowed entry to the Legion. However…” He looked at Silver Crow and the Black King in turn before continuing. “I came not only for that. I wished to lend my strength to the Territories battle today, however meager it might be. To do that, I must be on standby in the target area in the real world, so I entered the Museum with the intention of looking around during that time. When my guard—I mean my companion—was not looking, I moved to the café and dived to this side. That’s when I had the near miss with Cobalt Blade and Manganese Blade, so the responsibility for needlessly putting the two of you on the defensive lies with me.”

“……”

The other Burst Linkers at the table fell silent.

So Trilead Tetroxide was meeting with the Black King and Silver Crow here to join the Legion, apparently. She could understand that. It made sense that the student of the Element Graphite Edge would become a member of Nega Nebulus. But taking part in the Territories right after joining…And this was no mere wresting of ground, but a battle against one of the six Great Legions, Oscillatory Universe. It wouldn’t be an easy fight.

It was one thing if they managed to prove the Black Legion’s suspicion that the White King was the one pulling the strings behind the scenes at the Acceleration Research Society. But if they didn’t, the Black King would be severely censured at the meeting of the Seven Kings of Pure Color, and in the worst case, she could even end up with a bounty on her head again that extended to all her Legion members. Trilead seemed to have come from a good upbringing. Would he be able to withstand that kind of carnage?

The wheels in Koto’s head turned round and round, but then she remembered the moment when Trilead had moved a hand toward his sword before, and a faint chill ran up her spine. That incredibly intense pressure, as though she were facing off against a king. If he had that kind of aura, he’d probably be able to dispatch with one hand behind his back the herd of Mid-Level challengers who came after him for the bounty. But had he gained this kind of power simply by receiving instruction from Graphite Edge?

“N-no, but Lead, the Territories today aren’t just any regular fight,” Silver Crow started, waving both hands back and forth in front of him, as if tracing Koto’s own thoughts, and she shut him up with an elbow to the side before turning her gaze on the young samurai avatar, who was as relaxed and open as ever.

“Trilead Tetroxide,” she said. “Apologies for the rude question, but mind telling me your level? Me and Manga are seven.”

“Oh, I’m level six,” Trilead replied immediately.

“One lower.” Koto nodded thoughtfully. “So why do you emit a sword aura that can make us shrink?”

“You’ve trained a lot under the Anomaly, then?” Yuki added.

The young samurai shrank back almost apologetically at these compliments from Leonids’ Dualis and shook his head slightly. “No. If you sensed any pressure, its source was not me personally.”

“Meaning?” Koto and Yuki cocked their heads at the same time.

Trilead reached a hand down to his hip and released the Enhanced Armament mount there. Kushunk. He placed the straight sword on the stone table.

As soon as she focused on it, Koto felt the earlier pressure come over her again. In terms of size, it didn’t compare with the twins’ initial katana, much less the greatsword Impulse that the Blue King wore. The workmanship of the hilt and scabbard was simple, but the smoothed and polished steel felt decadent somehow, faithfully communicating the fact that this was no ordinary Enhanced Armament.

“The name of this sword is The Infinity,” Trilead said.

“……!!”

Koto threw her head back reflexively and very nearly tumbled off her impromptu seat. Yuki had exactly the same reaction, and the twins both waved their hands wildly in the air before they somehow managed to regain their balance. Once her wild breathing had calmed, she asked the sword’s owner, “The definite article and a proper noun…Is this a Seven Star Enhanced Armament?”

“Yes, it’s one of the so-called Seven Arcs,” Silver Crow said. “The word epsilon was inscribed on the dais.”

“H-hang on. Crow, why do you know that— No, wait.” Abruptly, Koto remembered something. It had been at the meeting of the Seven Kings convened the previous month to confirm Silver Crow’s purification from the Armor of Catastrophe. They’d been waiting for the inspector Quad Eyes Analyst aka Argon Array when Crow looked at the sisters’ swords and remarked that he’d seen a similar sword before in the Unlimited Neutral Field. “You…Then at the meeting you already knew about this treasure?” She glared at him out of the corner of her eye.

“Y-yes, actually.” Crow scratched the top of his helmet. “Oh, it’s great you and Manga finally get to see the real thing, too!”

“That’s beside the point! Where did you see it?!” she demanded.

“Huh? Uh, heh-heh,” he chuckled. “That’s a secret.”

“Don’t play dumb, Crow!” Now that it had come to this, Koto wouldn’t be satisfied unless she gave him a good poke in the forehead, so she stretched out a hand. Crow put up a desperate defense, but her low-stakes attack was relentless.

“O-oh, please don’t get mad! I’ll explain!” Trilead leaned forward to intercede, so she had no choice but to pull back.

In retaliation, Koto downed all her tea and let out a loud sigh as she waited for the young man to continue.

“The place where I came into possession of this sword”—Trilead dropped his eyes to The Infinity on the table, his voice slightly tense—“and where Crow saw the sword’s dais was the deepest level of the main building of the Castle.”

A few seconds passed.

“The…,” Koto groaned.

“The Castle?!” Yuki shrieked.

Although it was in the center of the Unlimited Neutral Field, it was the biggest and final mystery of the Accelerated World, protected by the super-class Enemies the Four Gods and unapproachable no matter how many people you had in your party. This was the Castle—the Imperial Palace of the Accelerated World. The previous Nega Nebulus had been destroyed because it had dared to challenge the Four Gods and suffered serious losses. And yet Trilead Tetroxide and Silver Crow had managed to penetrate this absolutely impenetrable last dungeon. Was that what they were saying?

“Y-you couldn’t have…defeated the Four Gods and opened the four gates?” Koto asked ever so timidly.

After exchanging a quick glance with Trilead, Crow shook his head firmly. “No. It would be absolutely impossible for us to defeat any one of the Gods.”

His voice contained a chilling fear now, as if the previous feigned innocence had been a dream, and Koto held her breath again. Crow looked to the Black King and, perhaps getting permission through eye contact, continued.

“Last month, we went on a mission to rescue Ardor Maiden. She’d been sealed at the Castle’s south gate for a long time—she’d fallen into an unlimited EK. The plan was for K—I mean the Black King to get the south gate’s guardian, the God Suzaku, to target her, while me and Master…I mean Sky Raker charged the altar in front in a two-stage booster. Ardor Maiden would appear at just the right time, and I’d catch her and bring her back out. But the instant I grabbed hold of her, Suzaku started to target us. I couldn’t turn, so we had no choice but to charge into the gate. And it was open just a little bit, so we slipped in through the gap.”

“The gate was open?” Yuki muttered, dumbfounded. “Even though the Four Gods hadn’t been defeated?”

“Each of the Castle’s four gates has a seal on the inside that matches its respective guardian beast,” Trilead told her. “It’s set up so that defeating the guardians destroys the seals. But from the inside of the gate, it is possible to destroy the seals with a physical attack.”

“…What…?” It was all Koto could do to get that single word out.

As a veteran Burst Linker, she had assumed that she well understood the presence of the Castle and its importance. But now she was painfully aware that she had never once thought of the fortress rising up in the center of the Unlimited Neutral Field as a tangible target for attack. But the members of the Black Legion were different. Of course, there was the fact that their executive members were sealed away at the four gates. But rather than simply saying “It’s the Castle” and giving up, they’d investigated and then investigated the investigations, hammered out a strategy, and finally slipped past the guard of the Gods to succeed in the great enterprise of entering the Castle, a feat no one from the six Great Legions had ever managed.

Honestly, who are these people? Koto groaned to herself, not in the voice of Cobalt Blade but that of her own flesh-and-blood self, before pulling herself back together and giving voice to a new question.

“But in that case, when Crow and Maiden approached the south gate, someone had to have already destroyed the seal disc from the inside…Isn’t that what you’re saying? Otherwise the gate wouldn’t have opened, yes?”

“Yes.” Trilead nodded before stunning the sisters again. “I was the one who cut the seal. However, I wasn’t working in concert with Crow’s mission. I did this out of the vague hope that someone might come in through the gate someday.”

“Come in…through that gate?” This wording deeply puzzled Koto. It almost sounded as if Trilead Tetroxide could normally dive freely inside the Castle—he couldn’t have been locked up there or anything, right?

She was about to question him further, but before she could open her mouth, Trilead shook his head.

“Please excuse me. I still can’t answer your question yet, Cobalt Blade. If there were one thing I could say…It’s because Crow opened the Suzaku gate and came flying inside that day that I am able to come outside like this after being in a certain sort of confinement in the Castle for a long period.”

“Th-that’s—I mean, same here,” Crow put in immediately. “If you hadn’t smashed the Suzaku seal for us, Lead, the gate wouldn’t have opened and we would’ve been stuck in an unlimited EK.”

“No,” Trilead counterprotested. “Breaking through Suzaku itself has to have been any number of times more difficult than destroying the seal.”

“Not many more times.” The silver avatar shook his head. “The soldier Enemies in the Castle are superstrong, and they keep popping up forever.”

The Black King abruptly giggled. “Just as I’d heard, you make a good combo.”

“Huh?” Silver Crow turned to his king. “H-heard? From who?”

“Maiden and Raker, of course. Trilead, please keep being a good friend to Crow.”

“Gah! What are you saying, K—?!”

You two make a nice combo, too. Koto forced herself to keep this thought to herself and sorted through the information in the back of her mind. As long as Trilead Tetroxide himself wouldn’t talk about his mysteries, she couldn’t pursue it any further. But the bits of information that he had supplied were so astonishing they made the core of her mind go numb.

At present, ownership of only three of the Seven Arcs was known: The alpha, Impulse, was owned by the Blue King; the beta, Tempest, by the Purple King; and the gamma, Strife, by the Green King. These had been discovered in the deepest levels of the so-called four Great Dungeons in the Unlimited Neutral Field. But only the empty dais of the delta, the Luminary, had been found in the underground labyrinth at Shiba Park; no one knew who had taken the Arc. And legend remained that the zeta, the full-body armor Destiny, had been polluted by dark Incarnate at the dawn of the Accelerated World and transformed into the Armor of Catastrophe, Chrome Disaster.

Silver Crow, who sat now beside Koto drinking tea, had been the sixth Chrome Disaster, but he broke the curse and sealed the Armor away in some corner of the Accelerated World. Or at least, that’s what he had announced at the meeting of the Seven Kings the previous month. Which meant that he had to know the whereabouts of the Enhanced Armament that had once been the zeta, but just as with Trilead’s secrets, she knew he would never tell her, even if she asked nicely. And Koto wasn’t the least bit interested in knowing where that fearsome armor slept, anyway.

In short, the only Arcs whose names and locations were not known were the epsilon and the eta, and every high ranker had spent long years chasing after them. And now, in the place where she sat quietly having tea, it was finally clear that the fifth Arc, The Infinity, had been inside the Castle and Trilead Tetroxide had obtained it. Which implied that the zeta had also been in the Castle, enshrined alongside the epsilon, which in turn meant that the first Chrome Disaster had gotten into the Castle through some means other than defeating the Four Gods to get the armor. So then the seventh—the final Arc—also had to be inside the Castle. And perhaps no one could touch it yet?

“Silver Crow,” Koto started, ready to check if her assumptions were correct. However, she faltered the instant those mirrored goggles turned toward her. She felt awkward casually asking about the seventh Arc, the greatest secret in the Accelerated World. She turned instead to Black Lotus across from Crow. “Black King. Why would you reveal such critical information to the executives of a hostile Legion? The seal structure of the four gates is information of greater value than the strategy for the gimmicks in the four Great Dungeons.”

“The executives of a hostile Legion?” The Black King turned a gaze so gentle on the twins that Koto almost disbelieved it possible for her to have driven the Red Rider to total point loss with a single blow before going on to attack the other kings. “Well, Leonids do attack Suginami area every so often even now, so I suppose in terms of position, that is what you would be. But in that case, I’ll just ask: Why did you accept Crow’s dangerous and troublesome request? I would have thought it only natural to refuse something like moving all the way to Minato Three in the real world to check the matching list.”

“…Well…” Koto was surprisingly at a loss for words.

“I’ll tell you right now,” Yuki replied, somewhat thornily. “We didn’t give our word without due consideration of the past and the future. It was only after we crossed swords with Silver Crow and then came face-to-face in the real, after we carefully tested how serious he was. And the Acceleration Research Society is our problem, too. If the White Legion is suspected to be the real group behind them, we have to lend a hand at least. Even if the request comes from an enemy Legion.”

Black Lotus remained lazily amiable. In fact, when she opened her mouth again, she even seemed to be smiling slightly. “When I received the report on this matter from Crow, I was more surprised that you had met them in the real than I was that you’d accepted our request. At any rate, if you’ve fought in the Accelerated World and eaten a parfait in the real world, then you’re no longer an enemy, are you?”

“So if we’re not enemies, then what are we?!” Koto demanded, childishness flaring up without her meaning it to.

“Friends, of course,” the Black King replied neatly.

“Fr—” Normally, she would’ve grabbed the hilt of her sword the instant she heard the word and yelled about not underestimating her. But she had almost never heard the word friend in the Accelerated World, and for some reason it pierced her heart now.

In the family restaurant in Nakano, they had sat down not as armored warriors Cobalt Blade and Manganese Blade but as ninth graders Koto and Yuki Takanouchi with the flesh-and-blood Silver Crow/Haruyuki Arita and Ardor Maiden/Utai Shinomiya and talked over strawberry parfaits. She hadn’t been tense or nervous at all then. Just the opposite, in fact. After she and Yuki got home, she had even thought it would be nice to do something like that again, although she’d never felt like that toward her comrades in the Blue Legion before, much less members of a hostile Legion.

Struck by the Black King’s words, her mental defenses crumbled, if only for an instant, and Koto turned her gaze toward Silver Crow. “Are we…your f-friends?” she muttered, only to kick herself a moment later for asking such a dumb question.

“Huh? Um…Oh!” The silver duel avatar also stammered, sounding bewildered, but eventually he nodded firmly. “Yes. I think we’re friends.”

Koto and Yuki couldn’t remember having had anyone they could attach the priceless tag friend to in the real world since finishing elementary school. The reason for that was probably the fear that had penetrated deep into their hearts that they might not be the real them. Since they had set their individual hairstyles, there was no longer that immediate confusion about who was who, but the faint unease that welled up each time a classmate called “Koto” or “Yuki” hadn’t gone anywhere. The pressure of this left them unable to open up to anyone, and children were sensitive to such things. The twins were more and more often left out of the group, and they put on a show of strength, acting as if it didn’t matter so long as they had each other. This mental-scar “shell” didn’t completely disappear after they received their unique names as Burst Linkers, and they hadn’t been able to blend into their classes at school over the last three years. At some point, they’d gotten used to it, and just when they’d thought it would keep going like that after they went on to high school, they were hit with this declaration of friendship from Silver Crow.

““……””

Speechless for a full five seconds, Koto and Yuki cleared their throats at the same time, apparently on purpose.

“W-well, if you say that, we might do that for you,” Yuki started. “That…The whole f-friend thing.”

“B-but don’t get carried away,” Koto warned with a sigh. “We’re at best all Burst Linkers. When we find the names on the list, we’ll charge in without hesitation.”

Silver Crow bobbed his head up and down at top speed, and the Black King let slip a faint smile for the nth time.

“Hee-hee. I’m simply glad we’ve reached a consensus. Now I can answer your previous question. I disclosed the information about the Castle to you, Dualis, because you are Crow’s friends.”

“Th-that’s it?” Koto asked, stunned.

Black Lotus shrugged. “Do I need anything else?”

“……”

Koto was struck dumb, wavering between exasperation at this recklessness and admiration at the impressiveness of a king.

“Hee. Hee-hee…Ha-ha-ha-ha…” Trilead Tetroxide abruptly burst into laughter. The young, sky-blue samurai laughed for a while, sounding like a cool breeze blowing through, before composing himself and bowing. “P-please excuse me. I apologize. I was simply thinking the way the Black King speaks, she truly is Crow’s parent.”

“Oh-ho!” Black Lotus nodded. “That’s a glad thing, then.”

“Huh?” Silver Crow cocked his head. “Y-you think so?”

Instantly, the light in the Black King’s eyes grew sharp, and she raised the sword tip of her right hand as she pressed her child for details. “And what does that mean, Crow?”

“N-no, it doesn’t mean anything!” He waved his hands in front of his face.

“So that wasn’t how you really feel just now?!” she snapped. “Do you hate people thinking I’m your parent?!”

“N-n-n-n-no, I’m telling you that’s not it! I just couldn’t say anything as cool as you!”

Trilead started giggling again, and as she watched, Koto felt something rise up from her own throat. Unable to withstand it, she let it out and was surprised to discover that it was loud laughter.

“Ha-ha-ha! Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!” As she doubled over, she glanced to her side and found Yuki laughing the same way, in the same position.

When exactly was the last time we laughed like this? she wondered as the bright laughter of the twins echoed through the Wasteland stage.

Koto and Yuki left the two members of the Black Legion at the stone table with Trilead Tetroxide to conduct their Legion entry procedures, and then headed for the JR Meguro Station nearby (transformed into a sandcastle) to return to the real world through the portal.

Letting out a sigh, Koto cut the global connection on her Neurolinker and opened her eyes just as the bowl-cut boy was raising his face a millisecond after the twins.

So it wasn’t just Silver Crow and Ardor Maiden now; they’d been cracked in the real with Trilead Tetroxide, too. But strangely, no feelings of alarm welled up in her. She didn’t particularly want to go so far as to exchange real names, but she did wish him luck in the Territories with her eyes.

The boy bowed deeply and stood. It was still seventeen minutes before four o’clock, and since the actual battle probably wouldn’t start exactly at four, he was probably planning to move to another location in the building and dive into the Territories stage from there.

After watching Trilead leave the café, Koto wet her throat with her still-cold mixed berry soda and turned her gaze on her twin sister.

Yuki stuck out her tongue playfully. “Friends, he said.”

Koto was stuck for a minute on how to react as the older sister. “So then we have to do something friend-like. Once this issue’s taken care of, let’s have parfaits together again.”

“I was just thinking the same thing!”

The sisters exchanged a giggle, and then looked up together at the summer sky as it started to take on a faint golden color.