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Accel World - Volume 9 - Chapter 5




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5

HERE COMES A NEW CHALLENGER!!

The flaming text sprang to life in front of his eyes and then disappeared, bringing virtual darkness, and Haruyuki had a strong hunch about what stage would appear before him. Eventually, the soles of his metallic avatar’s feet touched the hard earth. He waited until the sensation of descending had stopped before gently picking himself up.

He had, of course, not moved from the expansive underground parking area on B2 of his own condo building. But the real world’s multicolored rows of neatly arranged EVs were crushed, burned, rusted, decaying. Even the yellow compact car that had been Fuko’s baby, enshrined to his left, was a miserable sight, the hood peeled away, small flames flickering in the exposed engine compartment.

The duel had only just started, so it wasn’t as if someone had destroyed them. Looking down, he saw that the concrete at his feet was also covered in hairline cracks, and around him, the thick pillars and walls were crumbling, exposing the rebar. If he went outside, the building itself would probably also be half-destroyed, and he wouldn’t be able to get back inside. This image of “destruction completed” was the true nature of the Century End stage Haruyuki had sensed was coming.

And then…

Across from him in the gloom, some twenty meters away, he heard a throaty mechanical roar. This was immediately followed by the irregular rumble characteristic of a V-twin engine idling. A round headlight flicked on, and a warm, yellowish light illuminated his avatar.

Reflexively looking down at his own limbs, Haruyuki found there the smooth, slender armor of Silver Crow and let out a small sigh of relief. The Enhanced Armament Disaster wasn’t the type that was constantly equipped, so it wouldn’t appear unless he used a voice command to call it. Or it shouldn’t, anyway…

“Ngh!” But in the next instant, Haruyuki was made painfully aware of the naïveté of his own outlook.

Silver Crow was not entirely as he had been. Normally, the ten fingers on his hands were so slender as to be ill-suited to fistfighting, but they were now talons with tips tapering like knives. He had three talons on each of his feet as well, and these dug deep into the concrete. When he hurriedly touched his head with one hand, he felt the original round form of his helmet, but protrusions like the vestiges of a visor stuck up from his temples.

So the Armor had indeed already stepped out from the realm of simple Enhanced Armament and was trying to fuse with his duel avatar itself. If Haruyuki’s emotions or actions provided any trigger, it would explode and, in the blink of an eye, he would transform into a rampaging destroyer.

The instant he realized this and his body began trembling, he heard it growl, quietly but ferociously, somewhere deep in his back. Was it beginning to wake up from its brief sleep, sensing battle and slaughter?

Hey, Beast, he addressed the monster earnestly. Just sit still and be good for this one fight at least!

Once he had finished confirming to some degree who and what he was at that moment, Haruyuki started talking to the headlight in front of him. “Um, Ash?”

The silhouette of the rider that popped up beyond the intense beam of light stayed silent, seeming to simply stare at Haruyuki. The burning remains of cars around them occasionally lit the skull-patterned helmet shield with an orange light.

I can’t believe…it’s actually a girl under that skull. And I can’t believe…she told me that she likes me.

In the fourteen years or so that Haruyuki had been alive, this was the second time a member of the opposite sex had seriously confessed feelings for him. The first had, of course, been his Legion Master and swordmaster, his parent, Kuroyukihime. As she’d moved to protect him from an out-of-control car charging toward them, she had said it: “Haruyuki. I like you.”

At the time—no, still, even now, he couldn’t completely banish the question of why someone like Kuroyukihime would pick someone like him. Of course, he was so happy when she said that, he practically floated off up to heaven, and he naturally also really liked her. But in his heart, he could see that his own feelings were something akin to worship or respect and admiration. But because he had been in so-called self-restraint mode—right now he was still a short, pudgy, cowardly crybaby, but if he someday became a person worthy of her, then he would definitely tell her—Haruyuki himself had actually never told Kuroyukihime how he felt.

And then a few minutes earlier, in the cramped, closed space of the car, for the second time in his life, a girl had told Haruyuki she liked him. Rin Kusakabe had said, in her real voice, allowing no suspicion of any electronic fraud, and without the slightest reserve, “I like you.”

Not only did he not have any idea how to react, he wasn’t even clear on how he should take that. He just knew that transforming from his real body into his avatar through the sudden direct duel had succeeded in cooling his head, albeit slightly.

Inside Ash Roller was a girl named Rin. And this Rin had sincerely confessed her crush on him.

He would set these two points aside for the time being. At that moment, what he needed to be thinking about, first and foremost, were Rin’s last words. She said she would erase the Armor of Catastrophe with her body. But as far as Haruyuki knew, Ash Roller didn’t have any kind of purification-type ability. So did that mean that, just as the sentence that followed—“I’ll take. All of your anger and hatred.”—indicated, she was planning to suppress the destroyer Chrome Disaster by giving her own self to the Armor as an offering? Maybe she was hoping to take responsibility in this form for creating the trigger for Disaster’s return.

“Ash—I mean, Rin.” Because they were in a direct duel field where there was no Gallery, Haruyuki dared to utter his opponent’s real name. “I’m really happy you want to help me. But you don’t have to feel responsible for the Armor of Catastrophe. This armor—this Beast—has been inside me for a long time, for a few months now. I just got carried away by my emotions and summoned it.” He glanced down at the sinister tapering talons of his right hand and went to continue speaking, but he was cut off by the heavy yet calm roar of the engine.

Vrrrr! The internal combustion engine shuddered, and the output it generated slowly rotated the fat rear tire. From the darkness ahead of him, the massive American motorcycle revealed itself. The slender rider, a knight on an iron horse, leisurely placed both hands on the handlebars, the skull face hanging so deeply Haruyuki couldn’t see the expression on it.

“Rin…” Haruyuki tried to call out to her once more.

In that instant, the black leather gloves clutched the handlebars tightly. While the right hand twisted the throttle, the left dropped the clutch. The engine roared, an explosive howl, and the rear tire spun furiously, sending up plumes of white smoke.

“R-Rin?” Dumbfounded, Haruyuki called her name for the third time. But he didn’t have the time to say anything more. From the startlingly close distance of ten meters, the massive American motorcycle charged forward, front wheel lifting slightly.

To his left, Fuko’s car. On his right, an enormous SUV. With nowhere to run, Haruyuki stood rooted to the spot. And wham! Mercilessly, the bike knocked him down—more precisely, sent him flying.

Not knowing which way was even up anymore and still without the mental reserves to remember to take up a passive posture, he hit the ground on his back several meters to the rear. Crash! Sparks shooting up as he bounced, Haruyuki saw the gray tire closing in on him once more.

Wham! Crash!

Wham! Crash!

The combination of the sound of collision and the sound of his fall echoed another two times in the vast underground parking area. The third time, instead of landing on his butt, Haruyuki sprawled out on his back, arms and legs splayed, head spinning from the physical impact and the mental shock.

When the silhouette appeared looming above him in the sky, he cried out, “Wh-whoa!”

But then the enormous, descending rubber ring—the front wheel of the motorcycle—slammed into his stomach. Pressed down by the machine’s overwhelming weight, he couldn’t actually move, although he could flail his arms and legs frantically. Thanks to the three direct hits and the current crushing, Haruyuki’s health gauge had already decreased nearly 40 percent.

She says she’s always liked me and then she treats me like this?! Or does she take after Master and this is some kind of violent expression of love?! These thoughts raced through Haruyuki’s mind a little late in the game, while a meter and a half or so above him…

The skull-faced rider straddled the seat of the American bike, arms crossed, and spoke in a hoarse voice that both did and did not sound like the real-world Rin Kusakabe.

“You scrawny little craaaow…You dare lay a hand on my baby siiiiiiis!”

“Wh-whaaaaaaaaa—?!” Haruyuki shouted.

As if he could sit there and not shout it.

The real-world person moving the duel avatar that leaned over with the machine, flames of fury burning brightly in the eye sockets of the skull face, was supposed to be the sister, not the brother. Hadn’t Rin said that? That her brother, the young ICGP rider Rinta Kusakabe, had been in a coma in a hospital bed ever since a crash two years earlier?

In which case, naturally, it was impossible for him to dive into the Accelerated World as a Burst Linker. And to start with, it was definitely the sister, Rin Kusakabe, who had directed and accelerated with him after falling on top of him in the backseat. Of course, he hadn’t actually confirmed through whatever means that she was really the junior high school girl he saw before him—and it wasn’t as though Rin herself had declared that she was a girl—but still, in this situation, it was just too absurd that Ash Roller would be denouncing him for “laying a hand on his baby sis!”

“Uh, uh, y-y-you’re Rin…right?” Haruyuki asked with a groan, enduring the weight of the front wheel as it made the Armor on his chest squeal and creak.

To which the century-end rider’s response was, “‘You’re Riiiiin’? Damn, man. Who said you could go calling my baby sis by her first name?! Way too soon for second names—nah, third names! Daaaaaamn!”

The opposite of “first name” is “last name.”

This was normally where he’d toss off a retort like that, but this was definitely not the time for that. The anger he saw in the rider far surpassed the domain of role-play. Somehow, the personality inside Ash Roller was clearly not the sister, Rin, but the brother, Rinta. So Haruyuki figured he should assume that all the fights in the Accelerated World, the cursing, and at times, the talking had all been with the older brother.

So then that meant…this was a so-called split personality? When the girl Rin Kusakabe dove into the Accelerated World, she switched over to a second personality produced from memories—recollections connected with her brother?

While these thoughts developed in his mind at super-high speed, his health gauge was squeaking down to the halfway mark from the large load damage and finally turned yellow. Instantly, Haruyuki heard, in the center of his back, it howling once more with displeasure. Uh-oh. If this kept up, the Beast he had managed to put to sleep for a while after rampaging against Iron Pound and Green Grandé in the Unlimited Neutral Field would wake up. Before the duel, Rin had stated her intention to appease the Armor of Catastrophe by putting her own self forward, but he couldn’t actually let her do that. First, he needed to escape this crushed state and get into a situation where he could at least talk with Ash.

“Uh, uh, uuuuuuuh, Ash—No, big brother!!” Haruyuki called out almost in a trance, as he struggled to try to lift the massive tire with both hands. “Th-th-th-th-that, Rin—I mean, your sister! Um, uhhh…”

If the personality of the girl existed inside the century-end rider above his head, then maybe he could call her out and get her to take over somehow. The moment this plan cut through the jumbled circuits of his mind, a strange conversion process was executed, and:

“P-p-p-p-p-p-please let me marry your sister!!” The cry jetted from Haruyuki’s mouth.

Ash Roller’s eyes flashed red. No, they burned. “What. Did. You. Say?”

“Ah! N-no, um, it’s, what I’m trying to say—”

“Shuuuut iiiiit! Shaddaaaaaaaap!!” At the same time as Ash’s words rang out, sounding like a battle cry, he uncrossed his arms and clamped his hands down on the handlebars. He revved the V-twin engine and the fierce sound of the exhaust echoed in the parking garage.

“You! Made! The rage radiator of my mighty self overheat right into the red!!”

From the mouth area of the skull helmet, white steam jetted up with a sizzling sound. Or at least that’s what it felt like to Haruyuki.

Flames stretched out from the dual exhaust, and the front wheel pinning Haruyuki down reared up high. If he took another direct hit from it, his health gauge would drop into the danger zone. Not letting this chance slip by, Haruyuki shook both arms and legs, but the backside of his avatar had been embedded ten centimeters into the concrete floor, and he couldn’t pull free.

“Ah! Ah! Wait! Stop! Just a moment!!” The last bit in English. Although there was no reason his panicked cry would reach the older brother in the throes of rage at this stage, no matter the language.

The fat tire descending with a roar was on the verge of smashing Haruyuki’s helmet to pieces when it suddenly changed trajectories and crashed into the hood of the German luxury car parked immediately to the right. The rusting panel was crushed flat, and a brilliant pillar of flames rose up from inside. It quickly went out, but the flickering embers reflected in the chrome plating of the car reflected Ash’s body, as he snarled in a slightly subdued tone, “You know I’m all two-mountain here. I wanna do this with ya.”

After thinking a second, Haruyuki nodded to himself as he got it. Oh, two mountains—“yama-yama.” A direct translation into English of “very into it.”

“Damned crow. I s’rsly owe you now for back there in the Unlimited Neutral Field. So I’mma let you off here. But but! You come near my sis, and next time, I’ll make roast crow—naw, chop you up and make a stew outta you! Comprenez-vous?!”

“I—I—I—I—I understand! Yes, sir!” Reflexively reaching for politeness, Haruyuki pulled himself out of the him-shaped indent in the floor before finally taking a breath. He stared hard at the skull mask of Ash Roller, who was returning the bike wheel to the ground.

After a moment of indecision, Haruyuki felt like he had to ask, at the very least. Thus, still sitting on the floor, he took a deep breath and opened his mouth.

“So then…Um, Ash. Just…who are you, anyway?”

Haruyuki and Ash Roller lowered themselves side by side onto the hood of a desperate-looking, huge American-made sedan enshrined a little ways off. The timer in the top of his field of view was already down six hundred seconds—ten minutes. The fifteen minutes until the unlocking of the emergency lock he had set after flying out of the house in the real world was very nearly up. If he was going to put some distance between him and his Legion members, and settle things with the Armor of Catastrophe on his own, he needed to run out of the underground parking lot right then and there, and head off to the condo grounds.

But Haruyuki had no intention of leaving the duel field until the mysteries contained in this Burst Linker Ash Roller were revealed. He couldn’t say this wasn’t partly out of simple curiosity, but that wasn’t the whole story. After his “greatest rival,” the one he had dueled and won and lost against countless times in these eight months since he had stepped into the ring of the Accelerated World, was revealed on this other side in the real, he felt he had an obligation to try to understand the situation as best he could.

Fortunately, the Beast was still lightly dozing, leaving Haruyuki’s body to himself. As long as he didn’t fight any more than he already had, it wouldn’t wake during this duel. As he set himself down on the left side of the wide hood, swinging his legs a little, Haruyuki very patiently waited for Ash to speak.

Finally.

“So like, this is just Master Raker’s guess, ’kay?” The slightly abrupt nature of the words shook the gloom of the Century End stage. “Like, maybe the memories us Burst Linkers have of fighting and talking like this in the Accelerated World, like, none of ’em are stored in our actual brains.”

“H-huh?! If our memories aren’t saved in our brains, then where exactly do they…?!” Baffled, Haruyuki shouted out this much before clamping his mouth shut. He opened it again and ever-so-timidly gave voice to his thoughts. “Is it…in the Neurolinker…maybe?”

“Yup. ’Course, not the lock, stock, barrel, everything. Just, like, a part like the key, something you need to replay the whole pile of memories, that’s not in your brain but in your Neurolinker. Or that’s what Master’s thinking, anyway.”

Haruyuki took a moment to digest what Ash was saying, and then immediately shook his head back and forth. “B-but that doesn’t make sense. I mean, then we wouldn’t remember anything about the Accelerated World when we took our Neurolinkers off.”

“Take our Neurolinkers off? But, Crow, where does it come off?”

“Y-your neck, of course.”

“Ding, ding! Your neck. Not your head, not your brain. Those little machines, they’re wirelessly connected to our brains.” Ash Roller stopped and tapped on the crown of his own head, the top of his helmet, with leather-gloved fingers. “Totally true, it won’t start or signal or anything unless you got it strapped to your neck, right? But, like, that’s ’cos it measures distance from your brain or your spine and locks up. You know something? I didn’t know until Master came and told me. But before the Neurolinkers went on sale, this big experimental machine, Soul—something or other…But that thing could connect to a brain ten meters away.”

“T-t-ten meters?!” Stunned once more, Haruyuki flapped his mouth beneath his silver mask.

If that were true—and if that capacity existed in the current Neurolinkers, there was no need to equip the machine neatly at the medulla oblongata. Couldn’t you just put it on your arm or your chest or even just in a pocket or bag, somewhere easy to carry around, take it on and off?

I mean, for someone sweaty like me, it’s so hot in the summer, I hate it. I keep putting all those inner pads in the mesh, but they just get soaked, and when I was in elementary, they used to call me “Ari-duh the Sweat Cloth” and tease me so hard…

“N-no, not just that.” Kicking the sad memories out of his brain, Haruyuki earnestly set his thoughts back on track. “Umm. So, so, then that means— Is this what you’re saying, Ash? Even when we take our Neurolinkers off our necks, they’re secretly communicating with our brains, and so we can replay our memories of the Accelerated World? Is that it?”

“That’s Master’s theory, at least. But, like…There’s no other real way to explain why I’m here like this as me right now, y’ know.”

Haruyuki swallowed hard and timidly confirmed in a hoarse voice. “So then…you really aren’t Ri—I mean, Rin Kusakabe’s older brother, the former ICGP rider, Rinta Kusakabe…are you?”

The answer took at least a full ten seconds to come back to him.

“Dunno.” Ash Roller stared down at the leather gloves on his hands, studded with dull silver rivets, finally opening and closing them, backs turned up, as if testing out how they felt. “Like they say, ‘I got no clue.’”

This was a slightly unexpected reply. Because hadn’t he definitely referred to Rin as his little sister before? Haruyuki’s doubtful eyes upon him, the rider connected his words in faltering groups.

“At least…I got no memory of being a charmed, cursed GP rider in the real world. Actually, I have zero memories of anything before I became a Burst Linker. My very first memory is…watching this duel avatar fight awkwardly.”

“Huh? W-watching? From the outside?”

“Yup. In that first duel, the one making this thing move was definitely my baby sis, that kid Rin. And then I watched her from close up. Not the Gallery, man. Whaddayacallit, like a guardian spirit? I was right up close, all see-through, kinda floaty.”

Unconsciously, Haruyuki froze with a start. As he glanced at Ash Roller’s skull face, the sort of thing that would make a kid cry if they saw it, a hoarse voice slipped out of him. “A—a ghost?”

“N-no way, man! I’m no legless ghost! I got two long and hella cool legs, don’t I! I mean, if I didn’t have no legs, I couldn’t brake or shift or nothing!!” The heels of the black riding boots kicked at the front bumper of the American car that doubled as their bench, and the rusted license plate peeled off and fell to the floor before shattering into polygonal pieces and disappearing. “A-anyway. In the first duel, I was just floating there, thinking, what the hell’s this kid Rin fumbling around like that for? That was the very first thought of me sitting here talking with you now. I watched her control the bike, just awkward as hell, and, y’know, I could hardly stand it. I came up and got on behind her, like, I was gonna tell her, this is how you ride a bike, man. But then before I knew it…”

“You became one?” Haruyuki asked timidly, and Ash shook his helmet slowly.

“I…Honestly, I don’t actually get what exactly I am, man. All I know’s the one who made this duel avatar is my ‘little sis’ Rin Kusakabe. So that prob’ly means I’m Rin’s ‘big bro,’ yeah? But like, what the hell is his deal, y’ know? Is Rinta Kusakabe, sleeping in a hospital somewhere all this time, connected to her Neurolinker super-long-distance, talking to you like this? Or am I, like, a virtual personality the kid Rin made up to fight in this world? I think about it all the damned time, and I get nowhere…” A small sigh.

Swinging tough boots back and forth like a little kid, the mysterious rider continued his monologue. “If the virtual personality thing’s right, then, like, that means this person I am doesn’t really exist. But, like, Crow. I think that way’s seriously better, y’know?”

“Huh? Th-that’s—I mean, if that’s—then, at some point…” The Ash Roller of this moment might disappear.

Haruyuki swallowed the words in his mouth, but Ash seemed to have heard them loud and clear.

“That works,” he said, almost whispering as he nodded slightly. “I mean, look, if I am the real Rinta Kusakabe…then, like, that means that even though my dream of being a champion rider burned up and vanished in an accident, I can’t give up on those tires—the ashes, they gotta roll, so I’m, like, using my baby sis Rin’s mind—nah, man, her soul, right? Like, age-wise, I totally ain’t qualified to be a Burst Linker, but here I am taking my sis over, wheeling around all super caz on my bike in the Accelerated World, yeah? And that’s craptown, man. Like, she…she should have her own road to race down, y’know.”

Ash started to bring a tightly clenched fist down forcefully onto his own knees. But Haruyuki reflexively caught his wrist with his right hand.

“No. That’s not it, Ash.” He shook his silver helmet from side to side several times. “It’s not like…we’re fighting here in the Accelerated World to make up for things we lost or dreams we gave up on in the real world. We’re doing it to face our own scars and weaknesses, and accept them so we can move forward again. That’s what we’re here for. Regardless of whether or not you’re the real Rinta Kusakabe, you exist right here, right now! You exist, and you’ve had hundreds of duels with me and other Burst Linkers! That alone…Those memories at least can’t be fantasies or illusions!”

Although he was the one talking, Haruyuki wasn’t too sure of the point he was trying to make.

Maybe this Burst Linker Ash Roller was a sort of miracle produced by the combination of Rin Kusakabe, a girl who adored her comatose older brother, and the Neurolinker that the older brother Rinta had used. In which case, because of the inherent instability of the miracle, he might at some point stop being the him he was now.

But…be that as it may, that didn’t change the fact that his opponent in his first fight, his first loss, his first win as Silver Crow, was Ash Roller. That at least was absolute.

Not knowing how to further put into words the things filling his heart, Haruyuki simply held tightly on to Ash’s wrist.

The motorcycle rider didn’t pull his arm back or push him away, but just silently stared at the hand of Silver Crow holding his own wrist. The hand that no longer had the slender, weak fingers of the past, but evil talons instead.

“I…Before, in the Unlimited Neutral Field, I was ready for total point loss.” Abruptly, a quiet voice. “The attack power of Olive Grab and those other five guys was overwhelming. I mean, even if I’d been up against Olive alone, I prob’ly wouldn’t have had a chance. I was trying to at least let Utan get away somehow, but I couldn’t do that, either. And I was thinking, Are we both gonna disappear from the Accelerated World here?”

“But, like, it’s one thing for me to disappear, when I don’t even know, like, whether I existed to begin with. But when I thought about U finally waking up, and even Rin, who’s somewhere in this avatar disappearing, I just hated it, y’know. But, like, then you came along. Even though you had to know that if you summoned the Armor of Catastrophe, who knew what’d happen to you…Still, you called that armor and rescued me and U with that power. That time, man…It was like, however it happened, me getting to be a Burst Linker, getting to fight in this world, I was lucky, yeah…”

The century-end rider had never once before dropped his wild and easy attitude before, and seeing him faltering however slightly here, Haruyuki felt a sharp pang in his heart again.

Ash swiped his right hand across the nose area of his skull mask, seemingly embarrassed, and his tone was back to normal as he continued, “That kid U, he said the same thing before we left through the portal. Said to say thanks to Silver Crow. And…‘Sorry, ya get me?’ Looks like he finally gets it, too. That, like, strength isn’t something someone can give you, yeah?”

“That’s true. Strength only comes from the process…losing over and over, forced to crawl, but never giving up and always looking up at the sky…the proof of strength,” Haruyuki murmured, as if sucked in.

Then Ash Roller twisted around the hand held captive by Silver Crow to catch hold of Crow’s wrist. Unwilling to have his own hand stared at now that it was transformed into those talons, Haruyuki reflexively tried to shake it off. But the black leather glove held fast, not budging an inch. Ash Roller stared at Haruyuki with serious eyes from behind the skull shield.

“Right. Master taught me that, too. But, like, Crow, I could say the same thing to you right now, man.”

“Huh? Me, right now?”

“Yeah. You’re thinking you can’t cut the Armor of Catastrophe from your duel avatar anymore, man. Just charging in to finish things off by finishing yourself off with it. Yeah?”

Ash’s words were so on the mark that all Haruyuki could do was nod slightly. Even while they were here like this, his spine tingled with the premonition that the Beast would wake up from its light sleep and try to run wild. If he awoke as the Disaster, Haruyuki might furiously attack Ash Roller. The only reason he was able to hold it in check and keep that from happening was because this was not the Unlimited Neutral Field, the Beast’s true hunting ground. And because there was no desire to fight in Haruyuki’s heart.

However, this precarious equilibrium could break down at any moment. If, hypothetically, Ash Roller launched just one serious punch filled with real enmity, Haruyuki—no, the Beast—would likely react. And each time he became the Disaster, the fusion grew deeper. He didn’t know where the point of no return was, but he had seen the example of the former Disaster, Cherry Rook; he knew it wouldn’t be too long before the Armor started to interfere mentally with Haruyuki Arita in the real world.

Which was exactly why Haruyuki had locked the door of his house and run off by himself. If the real Ash Roller, Rin Kusakabe, hadn’t caught him in the middle of the shopping mall, he would be flying into the Unlimited Neutral Field from some dive café somewhere right about now.


Perhaps picked up on Haruyuki’s thoughts, Ash hung his head for a moment. But he soon lifted his face again. “Crow,” he uttered in a quiet, but firm voice. “It’s not like I don’t get you thinking like that. But, like…It’s more like this? Like, turning into Chrome Disaster is one part of the process, man. I mean, the Armor lives in you, sure, but I can’t help thinking that it’s only part of the process, right? ’Cos you can break this curse going on forever in the Accelerated World. So, like, that’s why you were chosen. You could think of it like that.”

The instant he heard these words, deep in his ears, someone’s voice came to fleeting life from off in the distance.

It’s all right. I know you can do it, you of all people. You’re the one I’ve been waiting for all this time…

But Haruyuki closed his eyes beneath his silver mask and tried to wipe the voice from his memory. It was a baseless hunch, but he felt like the girl who had once spoken those words to Haruyuki didn’t appear when the Beast was excited. Which meant that unless the Armor of Catastrophe could be returned to its seed state, he wouldn’t see her again. And that was probably already impossible.

I betrayed her expectations, too.

Chewing on this bitter awareness, Haruyuki murmured, “It’s too bad, but…I don’t think I’m the one who can break the curse of the Catastrophe. I…When I saw you and Utan being attacked by Olive Grab and them, I felt this intense rage at your attackers, more than any desire to go help you. And, filled with that rage, I summoned the Armor. I moved on without waiting for you guys to regenerate because I probably would’ve attacked you if I had stayed there. Being able to talk with you normally like this is probably a one-in-a-million miracle.”

Even after Haruyuki closed his mouth, Ash Roller showed no reaction for a while. After nearly ten seconds, he released Silver Crow’s wrist and brought the leather gloves of both hands together between his knees.

“Just like how my sis—how Rin doesn’t have any clear memories of the Accelerated World, I only have this hazy idea of what the real her’s doing or thinking in the real world.” The words spilled out from the mouth of the downcast helmet.

Haruyuki couldn’t even begin to guess at what logic allowed the two minds of Rin and Rinta to coexist, so he stayed silent and opened his ears to that voice.

“So, like, I don’t actually know what Rin was thinking—what she wanted, challenging you to a direct duel. And she prob’ly didn’t expect this, either. I mean, she shouts the acceleration command, and the instant she lands in the duel field, control of the avatar shifts to this personality—to me. So basically, there’s only one thing I can do right now.” Ash Roller cut himself off here and turned his entire body toward Haruyuki, on the hood of the car.

With his right hand, he slowly raised the skull-patterned helmet shield. The “bare face” of the duel avatar that appeared from within had narrowish, pale-green eyes and a design somehow reminiscent of a delicate boy. With that face before him again, Haruyuki could indeed see a faint resemblance to the real-world Rin Kusakabe.

Haruyuki’s eyes shouldn’t have been visible from that side, but Ash stared into them with his own unmasked eyes, and then lowered his head deeply. “C’mon, you damned Crow,” he said quietly. “Silver Crow. Don’t go vanishing from the Accelerated World. You’re…hope. For Master Raker, who entrusted you with her dream of flying in the sky, and the members of Nega Nebulus, restored and growing stronger bit by bit, of course…but also for the hundreds of Burst Linkers who’ve dueled you up to now. Win or lose, they looked up at you flying forever like a bird in the sky of the stage.”

“Hope,” Haruyuki repeated in a voice that was not quite a voice.

“Yeah, hope.” Ash nodded, head still lowered. “Still, I mean, it’s not like we’re putting all this…whatever, expectations, on you—like, you’ll prob’ly get to level nine, you’ll beat a king or whatever. Your wings are a unique power in the Accelerated World, but, like, no one thinks it’s some cheat, or a fake-out or whatever bending the rules of ‘same level, same potential.’ You…I dunno…”

His hoarse voice paused for a moment, before quickly continuing again. “We’re the same, you know. We started at level one, not knowing left from right, gradually getting stronger, sometimes on the verge of total point loss, sometimes getting crushed…And then when we’re totally kicked down and we sit down on the ground, we look up at the sky and there you are. Barely avoiding snipers or missiles or whatever, hands thrust out in front of you, you’re up there flying as hard as you can. And, like, in the evening, the light of the moon reflects on that shiny silver body, and it’s all…glittering brightly up there…Heh-heh, what am I even talking about?”

Ash Roller clenched his right hand and rubbed his own face roughly. Head obstinately still hanging, he continued to speak, albeit falteringly. “Anyway…When I see you up there flying, I feel like yeah, I can still fight a little. And it’s not just me, man. In the Hermes’ Cord race that time, all those hundreds of people in the Gallery who saw you Disasterfy, the reason they all decided not to say nothing, it’s ’cos everyone believes in you. They believe that you…you won’t be beaten by something like the Armor of Catastrophe, you’ll break free of the curse and all that, and then you’ll get back up in the sky, all happy like you do. So…so, like…”

Here, the biker finally lifted his face. The pale-green eyes were a little wet with drops of hazy light, and he could see that those eyes were very much like those of Rin Kusakabe staring at Haruyuki about to cry in the real world.

“So don’t give up, Crow. You can’t be thinking about disappearing in some corner of the Unlimited Neutral Field with the Armor. You got Miss Lotus, Master Raker, that big blue one, the noisy green one…You got so many friends counting on you, man. You disappear like that, what’ll your Legion buddies think? I mean, the ton of Burst Linkers who been staring up at you flying all this time, what’ll they think, you know?!” Ash Roller half shouted and hung his head again deeply.

But…

But if I keep going like this and completely become Chrome Disaster and start slaughtering other Burst Linkers at random…it won’t be just me; even my precious friends could end up with bounties on their heads, Haruyuki murmured in his heart, unable to produce a voice.

At the meeting of the Seven Kings the previous week, Nega Nebulus deputy Sky Raker had responded thusly to the threatening manner of the whip-bearing Aster Vine, acting deputy for the Purple Legion, Aurora Oval: Dissatisfaction with the six major Legions and the stagnation they brought to the Accelerated World was growing among Burst Linkers belonging to small and midsize Legions. If the major Legions were to set out to crush the traitor Black Lotus and her Legion through any means, the dissatisfaction smoldering in the Accelerated World would catch fire.

The senior members of the major Legions were most likely aware of this risk. Thus, until that time, they hadn’t been able to take the plunge and put bounties on the heads of Haruyuki, Takumu, and the others simply for the reason that they were Black Lotus’s subordinates.

But it was a different story if the sixth Chrome Disaster came out of the Black Legion. The kings could give some reason like Lotus was trying to use the Armor to expand her own military power, and thereby put a bounty on the heads of all the Legion members. If they wanted to try and avoid that, Kuroyukihime, Takumu, and the others would have to subjugate Haruyuki with their own hands. Just like the Red King, Niko, giving Cherry Rook, the fifth Disaster, the Judgment Blow while she cried…

It was precisely because Haruyuki loved his friends that he didn’t want to thrust such a choice upon them.

“I mean, I—I don’t want to disappear from the Accelerated World with everything still half-finished—the Legion’s objective, my own leveling up, everything,” he muttered, squelching the conflict and the even greater resignation filling his heart. “But once I lose control of the Armor, once I’m not me anymore, it’ll be too late. Probably, the Burst Linkers who became Chrome Disaster before this, they all thought at first that they could control this power. That they’d get used to the Beast raging and they could use the incredible power for justice, for their friends. But…in the end, they were all taken over by the Armor. They attacked a ton of Burst Linkers at random. They ended up not being able to even tell their friends apart, until finally, they were put down like dangerous animals by the kings and vanished from this world.”

He paused for a short breath and stared at his hands, transformed into sharp talons. “And…disappearing like that, only the host Burst Linker leaves the Accelerated World. The Armor itself is transferred to the storage of one of the subjugators or it parasitizes them with a seedlike part, and lives on. And then…this cycle of Catastrophe that’s been going on so many years is still not broken. Someone else will turn into the next Chrome Disaster and spread the same pain and suffering. The only way I can put an end to it here is if I, someplace in the Unlimited Neutral Field far, far away, where no one ever goes, go into total point loss up against an Enemy, and secretly disa—”

Skreek! The earsplitting sound of metal tearing interrupted Haruyuki.

It was the sound of Ash Roller punching through the hood of the car that served as their bench with his clenched fist.

“Ah! Ash—”

“Then…I’m coming, too.”

The strangled words stopped the movement of Haruyuki’s mouth.

“Your wings get bad mileage. You won’t get too far with ’em. Mighty me here’ll let you up on the butt of my bike. To Hokkaido, Kyushu, wherever you wanna go. But, like, going all that way, it’s gonna be a real pain to get back to Tokyo. You gonna take the poison, go all the way to paradise, right? Maybe I’ll hang out with you and your Enemy? Heh-heh! You and me, like it or not, we’re stuck with each other. Gotta see your ugly mug from the very beginning to the bitter end. Not too bad, I guess.”

At the same time as Ash Roller stopped with his feigned cheer, hot liquid spilled over from Haruyuki’s eyes. Uncontrollably shedding virtual tears beneath the mirrored silver helmet, he shook his head over and over. The voice he earnestly pushed out of his throat warbled thinly, like that of a small child.

“That’s…Ash, you don’t need to…come with me and disappear, too…I mean—”

“What you’re saying is exactly that, you know!!” the biker shouted, his own voice also damp, and grabbed on to the Armor around Haruyuki’s neck with the hand he pulled out from the hood of the car. “So you disappear with the Armor of Catastrophe and peace returns to the Accelerated World?! There’s no effin’ way they all live happily ever after!! You seriously think about how much your parent, your pals, Master, and the kid Rin, too—how much they’d cry and suffer and blame themselves?!”

“So then…” Even if it was a Normal Duel Field, it was dangerous for Haruyuki to get too worked up. And although he knew that, he couldn’t stop himself from shouting out the fierce, almost maddening emotions sweeping over him. “Then what am I supposed to do! I keep going like this and fuse with the Armor, I stop recognizing my parent, my friends, I go on a rampage in the darkness, spreading catastrophe, and in the end, I get put down! Are you saying that’s how it’s supposed to end?! If that’s what’s going to happen, then right here, right now, while I can still be me…”

It’s better if I disappear.

Before he could spit these words out, Haruyuki had a shock like a bolt of lightning and swallowed his breath.

It’s the same thing. What I’m saying is exactly what Takumu was saying yesterday.

Like Haruyuki, he had been parasitized by a dark power—in Takumu’s case, the ISS kit—and with that awesome power, he had massacred the members of the PK group Supernova Remnant. And then, fearing what he would turn into, he had planned to end things by his own hand.

And Haruyuki had told Takumu: “Don’t lose—fight. For me, for Chiyu, for everyone in the Legion, fight the ISS kit.”

If he gave up on everything here and disappeared alone in the wilderness of the Unlimited Neutral Field, everything he said then would become a lie. And even if he did get rid of the Armor of Catastrophe, the menace of the ISS kits currently blanketing the Accelerated World would remain. Haruyuki had acquired a certain amount of information about where the main body of the kits was thought to be—Tokyo Midtown Tower—and the Legend-class Enemy Archangel Metatron guarding it. He had to at least tell everyone in the Legion this.

But…if I see them all again, I…I know I won’t be able to keep running. What should I do? I…What should I do…

“Fight it. Don’t give up; hang on until the last thread.” The voice echoed abruptly in his ear. Ash Roller’s voice, his hand still on Haruyuki’s chest armor. “Grit your teeth and fight it ’til the end, just like when you fought me the second time. Crow, you can do that. You’re that kinda guy; that’s why Rin fell for you…I’ll kill you if you touch my sis, but I’ll kill you even more if you make her cry.”

Haruyuki slowly let out the breath he’d been holding. And smiled, just a little. “That’s kinda impossible, you know.”

“Shut up. That’s what being a big bro’s about, y’know!” Ash shouted, seeming embarrassed somehow, and lightly shoved Haruyuki away.

They looked up at the timer in the top of their field of view at the same time; before they knew it, more than 1,700 seconds had passed. In about a minute or so, the duel would be over.

Since Haruyuki’s health gauge alone had decreased, Ash Roller moved his hand to request a draw, but Haruyuki pushed it back down.

“I earned a lot of points back there in the Unlimited Neutral Field. This is my treat.”

“…You can treat all you want, but I’m still not letting you touch Rin.”

“I—I won’t touch her!”

After a bit more of this back-and-forth, Haruyuki suddenly remembered something and straightened up. “Oh, right. Ash?”

“…Whut?”

“Um, before, you said your name meant ‘spinning tires burned and turned to ash,’ but I…I think it’s a little different.”

Shifting his gaze, he looked over at the large American motorcycle a little ways off. The front and rear tires were indeed not the black of synthetic rubber but a gray somehow reminiscent of metal or ceramic. But there was no sense of the brittleness of embers.

“For me, your name means ‘rolling up the earth, swallowed in flames, and turned to ash to create a new path.’”

For a while, Ash Roller said nothing in reply. Finally, he snorted briefly and filled Haruyuki’s ears with the same old abusive language. “Dang, that’s like some kinda slash-and-burn farm style, man. Totally not the style of supercooooool mighty me! Whatever, I can take it. I ever meet you in the real, I’ll toss you a hundred yen for the idea.”

“Th-thanks.”

That “in the real,” however, was probably not the younger sister, Rin Kusakabe, but rather this older brother they weren’t sure actually existed or not.

And then the flaming letters TIME UP!! blazed up over that not-very-promising thought.

The duel ended after a full thirty minutes—1.8 seconds in the real world—and the first thing Haruyuki felt upon returning to the real world was a mysterious peace in his heart.

To speak of what he had actually done during the duel, he had only been hit three times by Ash Roller’s motorcycle, and then they had simply sat on the hood of an American car and spoken intently. They had talked about some pretty important things, but they hadn’t actually come to anything like a conclusion. Haruyuki still basically had no idea what he should do now.

And yet the frustration and remorse—and despair—that had been sweeping through his heart before the duel had calmed, if only for the moment. Eyes still closed, Haruyuki stayed submerged in the gentle warmth filling his body.

A few seconds later, he finally realized that this sensation was not a psychological illusion or false electronic information, and his body froze with a start.

The high-quality elasticity pushing up on his back was the leather of the rear seat of Fuko’s beloved car. He was lying on his back there. And on top of him was something soft that smelled good. A sensation a hundred times more alluring than that of the material of the Italian car’s interior leather upholstery, an exquisite ratio of elasticity and plasticity.

Very timidly opening his eyes a crack, Haruyuki looked at the ivory knit fabric glued to his own stomach. More precisely, a summer sweater with the badge of a school he didn’t know. Even more precisely, the upper torso of a girl the same age as he was, wrapped in that sweater.

“Ngh.” A small noise like a hiccup slipping out of him, Haruyuki nervously shifted his eyes upward. A thin, checkered ribbon tie. Slender pale neck and metallic-gray Neurolinker around it. Tapered jaw like a young boy’s, thinnish lips, a subdued but solid bridge of the nose. And then two eyes, irises tinged with a light gray.

The girl with her entire body on Haruyuki’s—or rather, the girl who pushed him back, XSB directing cable still clutched in her right hand—murmured from extremely close range, eyes as wet as possible as always, “I-I’m. Sorry. My brother. Said so many rude…”

“Uh, uuuummmmm.” Darting his eyes around in the great confusion brought about in him by the physical situation and the linguistic information, Haruyuki tried at any rate to cope by producing some kind of voice. “Um, uumm, first, so, you…Do you remember the duel just now?”

He was pretty sure she had said before that she ended up in a trance of sorts during duels and didn’t really remember the details. In other words, the personality that dove into the Accelerated World switched to her “brother,” and so no vivid memories remained inside her. Or at least that was what Haruyuki had supposed was happening.

But the girl—the true identity of the Burst Linker Ash Roller, Rin Kusakabe—nodded her head sharply. “Right now. I can still. Remember it. While I have this—my brother’s Neurolinker. Equipped.”

“O-oh, you…can…”

Perhaps sensing the many questions stuffed into Haruyuki’s brief reply, Rin blinked her wet eyes and added by way of explanation in a faint voice, “I. Don’t know, either. If the brother that appears in the Accelerated World is my. Real brother. Rinta Kusakabe sleeping in a hospital in Shibuya Ward. Or. If he’s a fictional personality I created. But Master. Said to me. There’s definitely meaning in the things that happen in the Accelerated World. She says that if I keep fighting together with my brother. As Ash Roller, someday for sure. I’ll find a very important answer.”

“…You will…”

Rin hadn’t actually clearly stated whether the Master she spoke of was the Fuko Kurasaki Haruyuki knew. But listening to her now, Haruyuki became sure of it. Fuko was a Burst Linker who, according to Kuroyukihime, was a “pure positive Incarnate user”—that was to say, a Burst Linker who believed more strongly than anyone in the power of hope and bonds and love. There was nothing more fitting for Fuko to say than this very line.

In other words, the customer who had coolly laid these truths out at the table for Rin when she was working part-time in the hospital cafeteria last summer had indeed been Fuko Kurasaki. Her house was actually near the border between Suginami and Shibuya Wards, and it wouldn’t have been strange for her to go to a hospital in Shibuya for maintenance on her cybernetic legs.

Convinced they were talking about the same person, Haruyuki nodded and Rin stared into his eyes. A veil of tears once more covered the drops of gray in her own, and breaking the limits of surface tension, the droplets spilled out and onto his cheeks.

“…Why.”

“Huh?” Frozen in place, Haruyuki was unable to understand the meaning of her murmured word.

“Why,” Rin asked again, face contorted. “Didn’t you attack. Me? Even though I challenged you. I thought. I was okay with you hunting me. With disappearing. Even though. I thought I could do something reckless and. Subdue the Armor of Catastrophe possessing. You.”

At these unexpected words, Haruyuki swallowed his breath for a second.

Right. Rin had actually said that immediately before she challenged him to the direct duel. That she would make the Armor disappear, that she would take all his rage and hatred. And it could have really turned out like that, if the duel had played out differently. There had been the possibility that regardless of whether or not the Armor disappeared, Haruyuki would have rampaged and taken Rin on with all the attack power he had.

However, when cool big bro Ash Roller hit hard immediately after the duel started with his you-dare-lay-a-hand-on-my-baby-sis bit, he had completely taken charge of the duel, and there had basically been no chance for the Beast to wake up. It wasn’t like he had planned to yell about that, but now that Haruyuki thought about it, that attitude was really the heart of the countless Ash/Crow battles up to that point.

“I can’t hunt you.” Haruyuki shook his head gently, an unconscious smile on his face.

“What…”

“I mean, like, Ash is an important…friend.” He chose his words carefully.

“…Friend,” Rin repeated, turning her half-sobbing face toward him.

Haruyuki picked out the slightest note of dissatisfaction and hurriedly followed up. “Y-yeah. Very important. So, like, even if…I end up controlled by the Armor and totally turn into Chrome Disaster…” He pushed out the words that contradicted his early thoughts as his throat threatened to close over on him. “Don’t let Ash do anything reckless. I…I like that guy.”

Instantly.

Twice the tears, somehow a different color now, welled up in Rin’s eyes. Her small face moved as though trying to catch up with the several drops that spilled over, and smacked into Haruyuki’s left cheek. Words riding hot breath poured into his ear.

“I…I’m so happy. That you met. The real me. I was afraid you’d think I was creepy. And I was in a different Legion. So I could only. Fight you in the general duels. And in the Territories…But. That you would…say that to me now…”

She pressed herself more closely against him, and the sensation, alongside its warmth and sweet smell, almost sent Haruyuki’s thoughts out of his head.

Even in this situation, the last threads of his reason remarked that the next time they met, Ash was definitely going to kill him, but regardless, his right hand escaped his conscious control and lifted itself up, moving in to touch Rin’s slender back—

“Please say what you said before one more time.” The murmured voice in his ear stopped his hand cold.

Hurriedly scrolling back through his memory, he replayed the scene in a hoarse voice. “Um. Ash is an important friend?”

“After that.”

“So I would totally never hurt you or anything?”

“After that.”

“And he’s someone I—”

Knock, knock. The hard sound rang out abruptly, quietly.

Eyes half out of focus, Haruyuki turned his gaze absently above his head. He first saw the door panel to the left behind him, and then the rear window came into view above that. Although he was pretty sure the transitional privacy glass had been in maximum shield mode a few minutes earlier, at some point, it had become completely transparent.

And on the other side, smiling quietly, was a woman with long, black hair. She turned the finger that had tapped on the glass and at the same time as she operated the holowindow, the doors unlocked with a light sound. The back hatch was immediately pulled open from the outside, and the woman leaning her top half into the vehicle smiled once more, directly above Haruyuki as he lay back on the seat.

“I’m so glad to see you again, Corvus  ,” she said.

Instantly, Rin, lying on top of Haruyuki facedown, shuddered.

Similarly frozen in place as he pulled a tight smile onto his face, Haruyuki managed to squeeze out a reply to the girl—the deputy of Nega Nebulus, Strong Arm Sky Raker herself, aka Fuko Kurasaki.

“Oh. Y-yeah. Me…too…”

It’s okay, it’s still okay; this is still not the level of crisis you have to run away from! Because the very person who had ordered Rin Kusakabe currently and admirably holding Haruyuki down was Fuko, and it wasn’t impossible for her to decide to interpret this situation as a logical extension of her own order, and in the end if they could talk about it, she would totally understand—he was completely sure of it. For sure.

Haruyuki let his thoughts run off earnestly, forgetting that he himself had tried to literally run away from everyone in the Legion.

However, immediately after that, Chiyuri popped up from Fuko’s left and visually confirmed Haruyuki’s current status.

Imagining a red overlay flaring up from her feet, Haruyuki shifted his gaze to the door on the opposite side, ready to open it and escape. And there, on the other side of that window, he discovered his Legion Master standing with her arms crossed, and he froze utterly and completely.

Chak! Kuroyukihime opened the door on the right side and bent forward, her special attack “Kuroyukihime’s Ultra-Cold Smile” ripping across her face for the first time in a long time.

“Perhaps we’re interrupting, Haruyuki?” she said.

Being a young man praised for having reaction abilities of the highest level among Burst Linkers, the response Haruyuki managed to calculate and deliver with all the force of his neural circuitry was the following.

“…I-it’s not what you think.”



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