“Uh, um, the Nurses’ Room, I—”
“I understand. I’ll come with you. Before that.” Grinning, Fuko pulled the emergency disconnect XSB cable from Haruyuki’s Neurolinker. If he had stood up with his intended force, he might have broken the connector. Shrinking into himself, he waited for Fuko to remove her own cable, and then they stood at the same time and moved away from the sofa set.
He turned to the girl in black still seated. “I’m sorry, Kuroyukihime. I have all these things I need to report to you.”
“Mmm. Go.” She smiled. “I’m sure Kusakabe’s waiting for you.”
“I-I’ll be back soon!” He dipped his head and hurried toward the door.
Fuko followed him. “We’ll be back in five minutes.”
He was worried about whether Kusakabe would actually be up so soon, but the only thing to do was go and check on her. It was a fair distance from the student council office, which was on the western edge of the first school building, to the nurse’s office, which stood at the eastern end of the second school building.
“Um, Master?” he asked Fuko in a quiet voice as they moved as quickly as possible through the hallways jammed with school-festival guests. “You guys took out the ISS kit main body, didn’t you?”
“It would seem so, at any rate. Although we had a little help.”
“Huh? From whom?”
“Let’s talk about that later. What I’m concerned about right now is that the kit terminals might not have actually disappeared when the main body was destroyed.”
“Uh…Huh?!” That was more than a concern; it was a serious problem. His feet tangled around themselves in his surprise and worry, and Fuko reached out to steady him.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, leaning in, her arm linked through his. “I made you worry. Basically, the kits weren’t eliminated, but they were sealed. So all the terminals should have been rendered powerless, and the mental interference should have stopped for Rin.”
“They were…sealed?”
As long as they were disabled, it didn’t much matter if they were eliminated or sealed, but the difference did make him a little anxious. But there was no point in getting all worked up here. He’d know the second he saw Rin’s face whether everything was over or not.
Their slippers stepped onto the boundary between the passageway and the second school building. When they turned right into an empty hallway, the door to the nurse’s office soon came into view.
Fuko pulled her arm free of his and gave him a gentle push. Taking a deep breath, he placed a finger on the door handle and gently slid it open. “Hello?”
The health adviser, Mitsu Hotta, turned around in her desk at the front of the room and smiled. “You really are back soon, hmm?”
Soon? He was about to ask before he remembered. After Rin had collapsed, he had brought her to the nurse’s office, and before he had raced over to the student council office, he had told Ms. Hotta that he had something to take care of, but he would be back soon. Then he’d dived into the Unlimited Neutral Field and fought fierce battles against powerful enemies before coming back here. In terms of his own subjective time, it was definitely not soon. But of course, for Ms. Hotta, it had only been a few minutes ago, so all he could do was nod.
The teacher urged him on with her eyes, so he bowed lightly before cutting across the room to a bed in the back that was separated by a curtain. There was only silence on the other side of the spotless white fabric.
He opened his mouth, thinking he should say something at least before he pulled the curtain open, but he didn’t know what. Was Rin sleeping? Had the interference from the ISS kit actually stopped? Had the battle Haruyuki and his friends fought really been able to clear away the darkness corrupting the Accelerated World?
“Rin, we’re opening the curtain,” Fuko said on Haruyuki’s behalf, reaching a hand out.
Shf! When the curtain was pulled back, he saw the curving line of a white sheet and the short hair, slightly unruly, that peeked out from the top. He entered the cubicle with Fuko and closed the curtain before walking around to the head of the bed.
There, he found the face of Rin Kusakabe in profile, eyes closed, her right cheek on the pillow. Innocence was the perfect adjective to describe this sleeping face. But the only one who could determine whether the interference of the ISS kit was gone was Rin herself.
Fuko gently stroked the younger girl’s hair with her fingertips. “Rin.”
Her long, soft eyelashes trembled and lifted slightly. After blinking a few times, she opened her eyelids about 70 percent. A hazy light flickered in the pale pupils. She took in first Fuko and then Haruyuki standing next to her.
“Kusakabe,” he said, barely moving his lips.
A faint smile rose on her face. “Arita…Master Fuko.” Her voice was faint but firm. “In my dream…I heard. Your voices. And the voices. Of many other people. Too. The voices of people. Fighting their hardest to protect. Me—no, the Accelerated World…”
“Rin.” Fuko crouched down and wrapped her hands around Rin’s small face. “Rin…How is it?” she asked gently but still with a note of tension. Of course, by “how,” she meant whether the interference of the ISS kit had stopped.
Several lights bobbed up in Rin’s eyes and came together, flickering, to produce shimmering, shining droplets that flowed softly down her cheeks. But these were not tears of suffering or sadness. Rin didn’t have to say anything for Haruyuki to know that. “Thank you so much, Master. Thank you, Arita. I…It looks like. I can still be. A Burst Linker.”
“…Rin.” Light streaming out of the corners of her own eyes, Fuko used both hands to help Rin sit up and then wrapped her arms around her in a tight hug. Watching over this scene, Haruyuki also felt something warm in his eyes.
Master and pupil embraced for a full ten seconds before they pulled apart. Rin turned to him, and Haruyuki opened his mouth to say, That’s great, huh, Kusakabe? But the instant her slender arms reached out toward him, he forgot his words and stood frozen in place.
But then Fuko, grinning, gave him a push with a force that compelled him whether he liked it or not. Haruyuki took a step toward the bed, and Rin wrapped her arms around him. The instant he was conscious of her softness and warmth and the faint scent of flowers, his brain stopped working. Or at least, he thought it would, but this time, it didn’t. Because the overwhelming relief and joy, along with a strange heartache, that rose up in him, pushed away his usual upset and surprise.
He gently touched his hands to Rin’s small back and murmured in the ear that was immediately nearby, “I’m so glad…This is really great.” The mental interference from the ISS kit that had tormented Rin Kusakabe had disappeared completely. Haruyuki could finally believe it.
Strictly speaking, it had been Kuroyukihime, Fuko, Akira, and Utai who fought with and destroyed the ISS kit main body at Midtown Tower. So maybe Haruyuki himself hadn’t been able to keep his promise to save Rin and her older brother, Ash Roller. But now, he was able to easily accept that he didn’t need to fixate on details like that. Now that he had been shown the Highest Level by Archangel Metatron.
The Accelerated World was much broader, deeper, and bigger than he had ever imagined. And at the same time, it was fragile, precarious, and ephemeral. In that world, a lone Burst Linker shone brightly as best as they could, like a small star. Several people came together and became a star system. Star systems came together to form a star cluster. Star clusters came together to create a single galaxy. Burst Linker duels were proof of the life pulsing through that galaxy. By fighting in earnest, winning and losing, rejoicing and lamenting; light, sound, and story were born in the vast darkness.
Rin and Haruyuki were incredibly tiny stars compared with the enormity of the Accelerated World. But they weren’t alone. They could reach out at any time, and there would be someone whose heart was connected to theirs.
All the stars had disappeared from the worlds he saw alongside one another in the Highest Leve
l, Accel Assault and Cosmos Corrupt. He didn’t know why yet, but he firmly believed that he could not let the world of Brain Burst go down the same path. He felt like he understood at least a little of the Green King’s motivation in redistributing points without fear or favor. He was fighting back. Against the rules of the Accelerated World that said that those who lost all their points were instantly eliminated. All by himself, he was trying to protect the entire galaxy that was Brain Burst.
Haruyuki couldn’t even beat a Lesser-class Enemy solo; there was no way he could imitate Green Grandé. But he could help and be helped by the stars that formed the same star system near him and keep moving forward together. And then that star system would get bigger. Someday, it would be a star cluster.
“I’m so glad…you’re not going anywhere, Kusakabe,” Haruyuki said, tightening his arms around her, his voice shaking with emotion.
“Me too…I’m glad.” Rin replied weakly. “I can see. You again…like this.”
“And how long exactly are the two of you going to do that?” Two hands reached out and pulled Haruyuki and Rin apart. They turned their heads together and found Fuko’s exasperated smile.
“Uh. Um. It’s—,” Haruyuki stammered, looking at Rin and Fuko in turn as he belatedly realized the excessive boldness of his own action. “Um. R-right. We said we’d be back with the others in five minutes, right? So we should get going. Kusakabe, can you walk? Or maybe it’d be better for you to rest here a little longer?”
“There appears to be no need for that, Corvus.” Fuko set herself down on the folding chair that had been left out next to the bed. “I just got an e-mail from Sacchi. She can only use the student council office until twelve thirty, so we’ll have the meeting in a regular duel via the local in-school net. Sacchi will start it, I’ll be her opponent, and you two can just join the Gallery.”
“Oh! R-roger.” Haruyuki sat down on the chair next to Fuko, and Rin folded her legs underneath her on the bed. Because it was school festival that day, Rin, who was not a student at Umesato Junior High, had also been given permission for a limited connection to the local net. And Fuko was Rin’s parent and master, so of course, she had Fuko on her list of automatic Gallery inclusion.
“Ten seconds,” Fuko announced, leaning back.
Haruyuki also waited for acceleration in a comfortable posture. He glanced over at Rin on the bed and saw her lovingly stroking the cracks racing along her Neurolinker shell. The instant he had the thought about how great it was again—skreeeee!!—the sound of acceleration echoed in his mind.
The light of the sun was harsh in the almost transparent sky. The ground it hit was also blue as far as the eye could see. The entire field was covered in water.
The Water stage, naturally, was affiliated with water. Unlike the Ocean stage, the water was only ten centimeters deep, so avatars were not submerged, and there were also no large waves. All the buildings were skeletal concrete frames, bleached white by the exposure to the sun, and slight waves lapped across the water surface between them. The scene was beautiful and somehow sad. Some Burst Linkers called it a beautiful fin-de-siècle stage.
Appearing on the roof of a concrete shell a dozen or so meters high and a hundred meters wide—the first school building of Umesato Junior High—Haruyuki allowed himself a moment to take in the watery world before he whirled his head around. Since the Gallery was placed randomly around one of the duelers, Fuko or Kuroyukihime should have been somewhere nearby, but he couldn’t seem to find either of them.
So he checked the two arrow cursors displayed in the bottom of his field of view. Both pointed directly in front of him. But there was nothing but the schoolyard, now transformed into a vast, unpopulated pool, glittering in the sun.
“Huh? Where are they?” he muttered, leaning over the edge of the concrete frame. “Did they already go outside the school maybe?”
“Real Down.”
He heard a voice from beside him. Concentrating on the town across from the school, he unconsciously asked, “What’s that mean?”
“’S obvious, you. Real’s ‘direct’ and Down’s ‘below,’ so put ’em together, and you get directly below you.”
“That seems kinda off…”
“Oh, really? Then you tell me how to say ‘directly below you’ in English.”
“Um. Maybe ‘right under’ or something.” Absentmindedly continuing the conversation, Haruyuki peered down as instructed and saw two F-type avatars facing each other. One was an onyx black, the other a light-aquamarine blue—obviously, Black Lotus and Sky Raker.
“—?!”
Haruyuki jerked his head up and looked to his right.
Standing there with arms crossed was a fairly large M-type avatar, wrapped in a leather jacket with scattered spikes and wearing a skull-patterned helmet. He wasn’t straddling his beloved American motorcycle, but it could only have been the century-end rider, Rin Kusakabe’s older brother, Ash Roller.
Magenta Scissor had planted an ISS kit in the motorcycle that was essentially a part of him, transforming it into something strangely half machine and half living creature. The mental interference from the kit extended to Rin in the real world, and to protect his little sister, he had even gone so far as to vow that he would lose all his points himself. The reason Haruyuki and his comrades had headed into the Unlimited Neutral Field in the middle of the school festival was nothing other than to save Ash and Rin.
Thanks to the hard work of Kuroyukihime and her team, the main body of the ISS kit had been destroyed—he’d learn the details of this at the meeting that was about to start—and all the kit terminals had been sealed away. From the look of him, it did seem that Ash Roller had been cut loose of all influence from the kit.
“Ah…Ah…A—”
Aaaaaash!! Maybe this was the moment when he leapt up and screamed, but since they’d just had that silly exchange, he couldn’t figure out what to do. Flapping his mouth beneath his goggles, he stood there, frozen in place.
“Hey, ya damned crow,” the fin-de-siècle rider said bluntly, looking out over the endless submerged city.
“Wh-what?”
“Looks like I actually owe ya one now. So I’ll say that last one is a no count.”
“Wh-what? That last one…is what?”
“Obvioso! You pawing at Rin on the other side in a so-called hug, you mega-dolt!”
“Wh-what?! I-I-I-I’m sorry, big brother, sir!!”
“Who you calling big brother, yooouuuu?! Lemme tell ya right here, this is a right-now, one-time thing only! The next time you go wild with the meaty embraces, mighty me here’ll flatten you with my machine! Ultrathin!” Ash Roller shouted wildly, arms still crossed. “That’s thin like flat and ultra like you’re weak, because my mighty self is mega-coooool!!”
Haruyuki stared at him completely dumbfounded, thinking that this exchange ruined all sorts of things.
“Ash! Cooorvus!” Fuko’s voice came to them from the ground—well, watery surface—a dozen or so meters below. “It’s going to hurt if you don’t get down here in the next five seconds!”
“Y-yes sir, Master!” Ash snapped to attention and peered down. He couldn’t actually take any damage no matter how high the jump was since he was a member of the Gallery, but he seemed very reluctant to step over that edge.
“…What are you doing, Ash?”
“Aah, nah, just this rumor. Like, I heard sometimes there’re these huge sea slugs or sea anemones or whatever in the water of a Water stage…My fine self and the slithery things, it’s just—”
“……”
Haruyuki silently pushed Ash, and they jumped from the school building together.
“Nooooo!” The century-end rider fell, kicking and screaming, and landed face-first in the water.
Coming down gently beside him, Haruyuki turned to Fuko and Kuroyukihime and dipped his head. “Kuroyukihime, Master. I’m sorry we’re late. Where’s everyone else?”
“They’re all here. Behind you,” Kuroyu
kihime said.
He turned and saw six people sitting alongside one another on the concrete structure of the first floor of the school building. Naturally, none of their avatars had a scratch on them. The light of the sun in the blue sky reflected off the water and made their semitransparent armor shine brightly. Staring at his comrades, Haruyuki reflected once again on the fact that the long, hard fight was over.
The ISS kit main body was gone, and the darkness that was on the verge of overrunning the Accelerated World had been banished. They had returned to the days when Burst Linkers fought one another simply with techniques, wisdom, and guts in the normal duel field, and Legion members challenged massive Enemies in the Unlimited Neutral Field.
However, she was not in this world. The pure-white Archangel who had given Haruyuki wings and courage and taught him so many things no longer existed…
“Now then, let’s begin,” Kuroyukihime said. “A normal duel ends in thirty minutes, after all.”
Haruyuki took a deep breath. “Okay!”
Fuko and Kuroyukihime stood alongside each other in the courtyard, a mass of concrete cut from the school building. The nine people who had taken part in the mission, with the new addition of Ash Roller, formed a circle, and the meeting began. Haruyuki spoke first, earnestly.
The school was in the Minato Ward Area—the apparent headquarters of the Acceleration Research Society into which he had chased Black Vise after he abducted Niko. The Archangel Metatron who spoke to Haruyuki when he lost sight of Black Vise and was at a loss as to how to proceed. The decisive battle in the courtyard. Wolfram Cerberus jumping in. The theft of Niko’s Enhanced Armament by Cerberus III, aka Nomi’s copy. The red light that poured down from the sky and the birth of the Armor of Catastrophe, Mark II…
When he paused for a breath, after muscling through the many dizzying developments, Kuroyukihime dropped her gaze to the shimmering surface of the water. “I see…In other words, because we destroyed the ISS kit main body, the accumulated negative Incarnate energy was sent to the Society’s headquarters and created a new Armor at the worst possible time. Is that it, then…?”
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