Accel World - Volume 22 - Chapter 1

1

“Aah, no matter how many times we do this, I always get nervous waiting like this,” Haruyuki announced to no one in particular, as his fingers wandered around his virtual desktop. His global connection was currently cut, so he figured he would distract himself with a mini-game or some other app that worked offline, but he couldn’t decide which one to launch.

“Now listen, Haruyuki.” Kuroyukihime turned a faint wry smile toward him over the headrest of the passenger seat. “We still have twenty minutes before the meeting starts. Shihoko’s much calmer than you.”

“What? No, that’s…I’m actually extremely nervous,” Shihoko Nago responded in a quiet voice from her position in the middle of the back seat to the left of Haruyuki. Maybe because her good friends Satomi Mito and Yume Yuruki weren’t there, or because of the unexpectedly large part she had to play that day, she was indeed speaking less than usual. Or so he felt.

In the Accelerated World, Shihoko—Chocolat Puppeter—was extremely high-handed, a “spoiled rich girl” sort of avatar, and she had hurled verbal abuse at him the first time they’d met over there. But he had to say the real Shihoko was much more reserved, and he wasn’t quite comfortable with her yet. When he thought about it, though, they’d only come face-to-face on this side a mere five days ago.

When Shihoko, Satomi, and Yume had come to the student council office at Umesato, they’d all seemed fairly nervous, but when Shihoko, the smallest of them, gave her name as Chocolat Puppeter, he’d cried out in surprise. Thinking about it now, however, when Shihoko and her friends had learned that inside the sharp and sleek Silver Crow sat the round and jiggly Haruyuki Arita, they must have been thinking “What?!” and “Get out!”

He really owed a serious debt of gratitude to the members of Nega Nebulus, who had never looked down on him after learning who he was in the real—in fact, they often hung out with him in the real world, both around town and at his house.

As if picking up on his self-torturing thoughts, Chiyuri Kurashima laughed from the other side of Shihoko. “It’s no wonder Haru’s nervous, Kuroyuki! He’s surrounded by four hot girls.”

“Mmm. I see.” Kuroyukihime nodded. “There is that, isn’t there? Haruyuki, you may be as anxious as you wish.”

Just when he was wondering how he was supposed to react to that, Fuko Kurasaki giggled in the driver’s seat.

“Perhaps we should’ve come dressed a little more summery for Corvus’s sake,” she said, clearly with a hint of sarcasm, because her thin knit top, with its wide neckline, and her tulle miniskirt were plenty summery already.

“Whoa, whoa, Fuko. Any more summery, and you’ll be a public menace.”

“Goodness. Isn’t it the duty of the Legion Master and Submaster to raise morale of the Legion members? I think you could stand to show a little more skin yourself, Sacchi.”

“A-as if we have such an obligation!”

As Haruyuki listened to them, he felt compelled to sneak a peek, but sitting behind the driver’s seat as he was, he could only see their shoulders and up. According to his predeparture memories, Kuroyukihime had been wearing a chiffon tunic with knee-length leggings, so by Haruyuki’s standards, she was probably showing enough skin…

“Sorry for not wearing anything you can get excited about, Haruuuu,” Chiyuri teased, in a singsong voice. But she was also looking quite ready for summer in a lime-green T-shirt with white jean shorts. After all this time, however, his childhood friend showing a little leg wasn’t going to send his thoughts hurtling off any cliffs, not when he’d known her as long as he could remember. Or at least, it shouldn’t have.

If he reacted in any way now, he would only unlock further rounds of teasing, so Haruyuki fixed his eyes on the seat back in front of him. “Keep it together, keep it together,” he told himself quietly.

“Um. I do apologize for coming dressed like this.”

With Shihoko joining in, his eyes drifted up once more. Her “like this” was a short-sleeved gray blouse with a wide Puritan collar and a white pleated skirt—her school uniform.

“Oh, you totally don’t have to apologize, Choco. I mean, I’m in uniform, too,” he replied, wondering why he was the focus of attention here.

Shihoko cocked her head slightly to one side. “I know I didn’t have time to change clothes, but why are you in uniform, Corvus?”

“Huh? Um. I have club stuff at school after this.”

“Even though it’s the first day of summer vacation? What club are you in?”

“The Animal Care Club. We have an owl. We can’t exactly take a day off from feeding him,” Haruyuki explained, and Shihoko’s eyes grew wide.

“Wow! What kind of owl?”

“It’s a species called a northern white-faced owl.” He moved a finger and selected a number of pictures of Hoo from the image folder of his Neurolinker before sliding them to his left.

“Oh!” Shihoko squealed in delight as soon as she saw the pictures that had been sent to her own desktop. “He’s so cute! His orange eyes are super pretty. Wait. This is at Umesato, right? Why is Utai in the pictures?”

“Haru’s the president of the Animal Care Club, but Ui’s the super president!” Chiyuri interjected.

“Th-the super president…?” Shihoko had a question mark sprouting above her head.

Haruyuki explained how the Umesato club had been established to take Hoo in after the Animal Care Club at the private Matsunogi Academy, which was owned by the same company as Umesato, had been eliminated and the owl had been left with nowhere to go. How Hoo had been abused by his previous owner, and after being found in critical condition and cared for by Utai Shinomiya, he would only eat food she gave him. And thus Utai had become a member of the Umesato Animal Care Club and came to feed him every day once school was over.

“Huh. I had no idea.” Shihoko looked at the photos of Hoo and Utai again, and then said, as if she’d only just noticed something, “Uh. But then, does that mean that when you first met Utai, you didn’t know she was a Burst Linker and one of Nega Nebulus’s Four Elements on top of that?”

“Y-yeah.” Haruyuki nodded. “And Utai Shinomiya didn’t know I was a Burst Linker, either. Or that I was Kuroyukihime’s child.”

Shihoko laughed. “So then you must have both been surprised when you found out who you were.”

“Yeah, well, mainly me, though…” Haruyuki trailed off.

“So, like, I just thought of this,” Chiyuri interjected. “But why didn’t you just say something to Haru and Ui, Kuroyuki? I mean, you’re the one who started the Animal Care Club, right? After Ui asked you, I mean.”

“Hey, whoa.” Kuroyukihime whirled around in the passenger seat. “I simply got the ball rolling at the school. And I never dreamed that Haruyuki would draw the winning number in the Animal Care Club lottery.”

“Ohh, right,” Chiyuri replied. “And I’m pretty sure it wasn’t because of the lottery that Haru ended up in the club. He actually put himself forward as a candidate, right? And by mistake on top—”

Haruyuki coughed deliberately to cut off his childhood friend. Her memory was indeed correct. He’d spaced out in class and missed whatever their teacher had said. So when his name was called, he reflexively stood up and ended up being the nominee for the Animal Care Club, without having the first clue about what was going on. That was the honest truth of the matter.

But the reason he’d spaced out in the first place was because he’d been mentally replaying the conversation he’d had the day before with Niko—Yuniko Kozuki—in his living room.

The instant his thoughts reached this point today, Niko’s hoarse voice came back to life in his ears:

“Now look, big brother Haruyuki. If one of us—or maybe both—loses Brain Burst, we’ll probably forget it all, everything we know about each other, you know?

“So let’s promise. That when we find a name we don’t know in the address book of our Neurolinkers, before we erase the data, we’ll send one mail. And then maybe, one more time…”

At the time, Niko had been overwhelmed by the other Seven Kings of Pure Color at their eponymous meeting and afraid of total point loss. But she’d faced that fear and overcome it to continue protecting what needed protecting. Indeed, at that very moment, Niko was on standby with Blood Leopard not so far away from Haruyuki and his friends in order to go up against the most powerful presence in the Accelerated World, the bringers of far too much chaos and tragedy.

“Hey, Corvus?” Shihoko asked.

“Oh…” Haruyuki came back to himself and blinked a few times. “Wh-what?”

“Once the meeting’s over, is it okay if I stop by Umesato, too? Can I watch the owl being fed?”

“Yeah, sure. Of course,” he agreed immediately. When Hoo first came to Umesato, he’d been on guard with anyone who wasn’t Utai, but lately, he’d gotten comfortable enough that he would even eat his dinner from Haruyuki’s hand, so he probably wouldn’t get anxious if Shihoko were there.

“Yay!” A smile blossomed on her face, though Chiyuri’s eyes narrowed dangerously for some reason.

“Oh goodness, Corvus,” Fuko said from the driver’s seat, her tone light. “Exactly when did you become able to respond to a lady’s request so boldly, I wonder.”

“Nngh?! N-no, I’m not b-b-b-bold or anything…”

“My! I was complimenting you, though? As your master, I was simply pleased at the growth of my student.”

And yet, on the face in the rearview mirror, was the vacuum-shattering Raker Smile—combined with the ultimate chill of the Kuroyukihime Smile from the passenger seat.

“Um, if you’d like, Master…a-and Kuroyukihime,” Haruyuki squeaked, shrinking far into himself, “why don’t we all go together?”

Kuroyukihime turned her face away. “Unfortunately, we’re in street clothes, so we can’t enter school grounds.”

“Aah! You’re not gonna invite me?!” Chiyuri, meanwhile, puffed her cheeks out.

“Y-you have a very important job after this, though!” he protested.

“I knooooow, but the process of inviting and refusing is important!” Chiyuri wailed.

Shihoko laughed happily, and he couldn’t see any sign of the earlier tension on her face.

If my sacrifice allows Choco to relax, then I guess this is okay… Haruyuki mumbled and grumbled in the back of his mind as he looked up at the blue sky out the window.

Sunday, July 21, 2047. In the early afternoon of the second day of summer break, the five of them had set out from Suginami Area in a yellow hatchback driven by Fuko and moved over to Chiyoda Area. Their goal was, of course, to attend the fourth meeting of the Seven Kings that was to take place at one PM.

At the last meeting of the Seven Kings exactly two weeks earlier, Nega Nebulus, the Black Legion, had proposed to the other six Legions a large-scale mission: That the seven great Legions would immediately muster their forces and attack when the Acceleration Research Society’s home area became clear. And if a Legion did not take part in the mission, they would be deemed to be conspiring with the Society and become a target for attack.

The Yellow King, Yellow Radio, had dithered and butted in, but the proposal had been adopted with the backing of the Blue King, Blue Knight.

At that point in time, Haruyuki and his friends had already confirmed that the White Legion, Oscillatory Universe, was the parent organization for the Acceleration Research Society. But they couldn’t get the kings to move with no evidence on the basis of their conviction alone. They needed to get ahold of some incontrovertible proof, but that was no easy feat.

In the end, Nega Nebulus put together a complicated mission across three stages. First, they would negotiate with Great Wall, the Green Legion, to have them agree to temporarily cede the areas of Shibuya No. 1 and No. 2. Next, immediately before the Territories on Saturday evening, the transfer of the two areas would be executed, and Nega Nebulus would attack and usurp Minato Area No. 3, the site of the White Legion base. Finally, they would have Blue Legion observers check the matching list for Minato Area No. 3 once the White Legion had lost the right to refuse challengers. If members of the Acceleration Research Society appeared on the list, it would prove they were members of the White Legion.

To be honest, this was still not actually incontrovertible evidence. At the end of the day, they would be forced to rely on nothing more than the testimony of these observers; they wouldn’t be able to show any sort of physical proof in a form that would shut the mouth of even the Yellow King.

Still, they didn’t have any other options. So Haruyuki and his comrades cleared one hurdle after the other, merging with the Red Legion Prominence in order to increase their battle strength, until finally, just yesterday on July 20, they carried out the final stage of their strategy.

However.

Somehow, although the Territories attack should have been a total surprise, the White King had guessed that they were coming. A mysterious Burst Linker, Orchid Oracle, had appeared out of the blue in the Territories field and transformed it into the Unlimited Neutral Field with her Incarnate technique. The seventeen members of the Nega Nebulus attacking team had very nearly been annihilated by the combined Incarnate attacks of Snow Fairy, the second seat of the Seven Dwarves (the White Legion’s executive branch) and Glacier Behemoth, the seventh seat.

Having very narrowly escaped the Unlimited EK trap, Haruyuki and Chiyuri had joined up with Trilead Tetroxide, who had dived from a separate location as their eighteenth member, and together, the three of them had crushed the first form of the Archangel Metatron in the Contrary Cathedral, the Shiba Park Underground Labyrinth, which was just barely part of the range of Oracle’s Incarnate technique. En route back to the main battlefield with Metatron’s newly freed true form, Haruyuki had spotted Orchid Oracle curled up on the top floor of a small tower and attempted to defeat her and her guard Rose Milady, the third seat of the Seven Dwarves.

But he hadn’t been able to do it, because he had learned that Oracle was actually the Umesato Junior High student council secretary and Kuroyukihime’s best friend, Megumi Wakamiya.

Megumi told Haruyuki then that she was a Burst Linker, and she was supposed to have lost all her points long, long ago, but her memories had come back to her mere hours before the start of the Territories. And that White Cosmos, the White King, had told her that if she followed her instructions, Cosmos would bring Megumi’s parent, Saffron Blossom, back to life.

Haruyuki was convinced that this was a lie on the part of the White King, because it had been the White King herself who’d forced Saffron to total point loss in the distant past. But Megumi had refused to listen to Haruyuki and tried to close herself off in her shell once more.

Then they had heard her voice. Saffron’s.

He didn’t know whether it was real or an illusion. But Megumi had listened to her—“Do what you think is right, Orkki. Do what you can now for the sake of the person you love”—and returned to the battlefield, where she restored it to its original Territories field from the Unlimited Neutral Field.

With the attacking team on the verge of annihilation on the main battlefield, when the stage changed back, team leaders Kuroyukihime and Niko launched a combined counterattack with their full-powered Incarnate techniques and eliminated the defending Oscillatory team. The Territories finished in a Nega Nebulus victory, and Minato Area No. 3 finally became Black territory.

But the report they got back from Cobalt Blade and Manganese Blade, the Blue Legion’s Dualis who had taken on the job of observers, stunned Haruyuki. Even after the right to refuse challenges had been stripped from the White Legion, not a single member of the Acceleration Research Society appeared on the matching list in Minato Area No. 3.

And then, as the party grew dejected, Shihoko Nago said something utterly astonishing. Desperate, surrounded by ten Devil-class Enemies, she had decided to memorize and record her brave comrades engaged in this fierce struggle. So she had unexpectedly caught the moment on a secret replay card. The moment when Ivory Tower—the most powerful executive member of Oscillatory Universe, full proxy to the White King and fourth of the Seven Dwarves—transformed into Black Vise, the jet-black layered avatar who called himself the vice president of the Acceleration Research Society.

The replay card item could only be obtained at a shop in the Unlimited Neutral Field, and editing or processing of the video recorded on it was absolutely impossible. Thus, Shihoko’s recording could be more than sufficient to serve as the concrete proof Haruyuki and his comrades had been looking for.

Black Vise had barged into the Hermes’ Cord race at the beginning of June together with Rust Jigsaw, another confirmed Society member, and revealed his distinctive form to the eyes of the large Gallery gathered there. At the first meeting of the Seven Kings soon after, Kuroyukihime had announced to all assembled the names of these two avatars and the organization to which they belonged. So the other kings likely had no doubt that Black Vise was, for all intents and purposes, the ringleader of the Acceleration Research Society.

Ivory Tower would be at this fourth meeting of the Seven Kings, feigning ignorance. If they played the replay card and showed him and everyone one else at the meeting the scene where he transformed into Black Vise, this time for sure, there would be no way for him to evade the issue or argue his way out. For sure. Definitely.

While Haruyuki was certain of this, he couldn’t completely erase the vague anxiety in his heart, and he wiped a sweaty palm on the pants of his uniform. When he lifted his head, he found that the happily chatting troop of girls had also fallen silent while he’d slipped down the rabbit hole of his thoughts.

Fuko stopped the car in a parking lot near an office area a little west from where they’d turned onto Uchibori Street. Unsurprisingly, given that it was Sunday, they were the lone car in the lot. The only sound in the cabin was the faint whir of the air-conditioning and the chirping of the cicadas seeping in through the glass of the windows.

Haruyuki stared for a moment at the line of Kuroyukihime’s cheek that he could see through the gap in the headrest. She seemed totally the same as always in the way she spoke and acted, but there had been a faint anxiety coloring that profile all morning. He knew the reason for that, too.

Orchid Oracle—Megumi Wakamiya. After talking with Haruyuki in the Territories the day before, she had returned the stage to the original duel field, bringing about the Nega Nebulus victory. She and Kuroyukihime had been friends since they started at Umesato Junior High, and Kuroyukihime hadn’t been able to get ahold of her since the end of the duel.

Megumi had betrayed the White Legion, and Haruyuki couldn’t believe that the coldhearted Black Vise—or the White King—would forgive her so easily as all that. In the worst case, they might even push Oracle to total point loss once again after bringing her back to life.

On the drive over to the Chiyoda area, Kuroyukihime had said, “Megumi’s a whole lot tougher than she looks. They won’t catch her so easily.” But the way she said it had sounded more like she was trying to convince herself. And since Kuroyukihime still hadn’t heard a peep from her via mail or voice call or anything, he could only assume something had happened to her.

If she wasn’t answering her phone or mails, the only other option was to go over to her house. And Kuroyukihime was probably intently pushing back her desire to do just that. All he could do right now was wait for his Legion Master’s decision.

“Your nerves are infectious, Haruyuki,” Kuroyukihime muttered abruptly, and touched a finger to the small monitor embedded in the center console. Modern cars were set up to display speed, battery life, and even route navigation directly in a driver’s visual field via the Neurolinker, but since not all drivers used Linkers, cars were still often equipped with physical gauges and monitors.

She turned the flashing monitor into a television screen, and instantly, cheers spilled out from the speakers at a modest volume. On the screen was a stadium or gymnasium somewhere. A girl in a red leotard was waving a hand to the crowd that filled the spectator seats. Half of the screen switched to a replay video.

“Oh, right. Today’s the national gymnastics meet,” Chiyuri murmured.

Fuko pushed a button on the steering wheel and turned the volume up a little. The commentator’s voice rang out in the vehicle cabin.

“—was a wonderful performance. Next up, we have Risa Tsukiori in the academic artistic gymnastics division vault.”

Both screens changed to show a gymnast in a white leotard with splashes of violet, her slightly lighter black hair pulled back into a ponytail.

“Tsukiori will be doing a Produnova vault, a front handspring followed by two front somersaults. This is an extremely challenging vault with a difficulty score of 7.0, but she performed it magnificently in the preliminaries…”

As the commentator spoke, the gymnast in the white leotard loosely held up her right hand and began her approach run. Swinging her outstretched arms like whips, she ran down the runway, light on her feet like a wild animal. Unlike the previous gymnast, she didn’t do a roundoff, but rather planted hard on the springboard with both feet. And then they heard an obviously abnormal high-pitched metallic squeal over the speakers.

“Ah!”

He wasn’t sure if it was Chiyuri or Shihoko who cried out.

The gymnast lost her balance in midair and spun around diagonally twice before hitting the mat headfirst. She bounced and then fell facedown, where she stayed motionless, not so much as twitching. There was a cry of anguish from the spectators, and a woman who looked like a coach, the meet staff, and several gymnasts all raced over to the ponytailed girl on the ground. They turned her over carefully, but her eyes remained shut.

“It looks like the springboard broke,” Fuko said in a concerned voice, peering close to the screen. “I can’t believe an accident like that would happen at a national meet.”

“I hope she’s not seriously injured,” Kuroyukihime said, and Haruyuki bobbed his head in agreement.

Tring! He heard a faint echo in the core of his mind. Much more ephemeral and clear than the sound of a bell, the sound was not of the real world nor a Neurolinker notification nor even a hallucination. From the distant Accelerated World, a voice was calling his name…

“Um, Kuroyukihime?” he timidly called out to the front seat. He was worried about the injured gymnast, too, but he couldn’t exactly ignore this sound.

Kuroyukihime looked back at him. “What is it, Haruyuki?”

“I’m sorry. It’s just…,” he said. “Is it all right if I go for a second? I’ll be back before the meeting.”

“Go where? The washroom? I wonder if there’s a convenience store nearby.” Kuroyukihime moved to switch the monitor to the navigation screen, and he hurried to stop her.

“N-no, not the washroom. To the Unlimited Neutral Field…”

“What?!” Chiyuri shouted. Fuko and Shihoko also turned toward him with question marks in their eyes. “Now listen, Haru. We only got five minutes until the meeting starts. If you wanna hunt Enemies, you can do that after.”

“Th-that’s not it. I’m not going to hunt Enemies…Metatron called me,” he announced meekly.

“Huh?” Chiyuri blinked repeatedly, eyes wide. “Metacchi called…?”

Meanwhile, Kuroyukihime made an obviously distasteful face. “Honestly. At a time like this— No, wait.”

Then a dumbfounded look crossed both of their faces simultaneously.

“Metatron called you?!” Kuroyukihime shouted.

“From the Unlimited Neutral Field?! How?!” Chiyuri cried.

It was only natural they were surprised, and both Shihoko and Fuko were also staring at him with wide eyes now, but he didn’t have the time to explain. While they were sitting there like that, time was passing a thousand times faster in the Unlimited Neutral Field.

“Uh, um. I’ll explain everything later! I’ll be back in two—no, one minute. If I’m not back by then, please pull my Neurolinker off my neck!” he yelped tongue-twister fast, and then leaned back in his seat before connecting his Neurolinker to the global net. The connected icon had no sooner flashed in his field of view than he was shouting the command.

“Unlimited Burst!”

Skreeeeee!!

The sound of acceleration freed Haruyuki’s mind from his physical body and sent him flying to the true Accelerated World.