“Wh-what is this…” Muttering, Haruyuki climbed up to the platform and approached the vehicle on the left end with a “1” painted on its side. The blunt iron body was cold and silent, no sign of fire in the engine. He stretched out a timid hand, poked at the smooth line of the door area, and instantly:
Beebong. A purple holowindow popped up. After a moment’s surprise, he peered at it. Pard, beside him, also brought her face in.
At the very top of the window sat a row of text in an inorganic font: 3D 18H 25M 18S (JST). These numbers, indicating a day, hour, minute, and second, were obviously some kind of timer.
“Hmm. So if this is a countdown, then it’ll reach zero three days, eighteen hours, and twenty-five minutes from now…so at noon sharp on Sunday.”
After Blood Leopard spoke, Haruyuki followed with the thought, “And then what will happen…?”
But instead of replying, Pard pointed at the lower part of the window with a finger very like the toe on a feline’s paw. A short sentence was also displayed there: WILL YOU DRIVE ME? And below that, there was only a YES button. He understood the meaning of the simple English question, but even so, Haruyuki hesitated about what he should do.
“If you don’t push it, I will,” Pard, ever quick to impatience, whispered in his ear.
“Oh! I-I’m pushing it!” he replied, flustered. He raised his right hand, resolved himself, and touched the YES button.
Instantly, a short fanfare effect rang out, and the English text changed: YOU ARE MY DRIVER.
A few seconds later, the row of characters changed shape once more, leaving behind only the lone word RESERVED. At the same time, an object appeared, as if oozing out of the surface of the window.
It was a transparent blue card. In addition to the mark “1,” it showed the same countdown as in the window. The instant Haruyuki took it, the next, and final, phenomenon occurred.
The streamlined machine transformed from a body color of dull iron to dazzling silver, making a noise as it did so. Haruyuki quickly realized that the shade, almost that of a mirror, was exactly the same as his—that is to say, Silver Crow’s—armor.
“I get it,” Pard said, as if satisfied, and stepped over to the shuttle with “2” painted on it. She touched the body, the window popped up, and she clicked the YES button without hesitation. When she deftly snatched up between two fingers the card that appeared, the vehicle body this time turned a deep red, dyed to match the color of Blood Leopard’s armor.
Haruyuki walked over to Pard, still holding his card, and asked his question anew: “Uh, um…So you and I are registered as the drivers of these cars or boats or whatever they are…I basically get that. But what’s this countdown? There’re still more than three days left on it.”
“Obvious. These shuttles won’t move until the timer reaches zero at exactly noon on Sunday.”
He nodded in an accepting way at this clear response before his next question popped up.
“R-right…B-but why such a long time…”
Here, Pard, rather unusually, opened the mouth hidden in the lower part of her bullet-shaped mask and laughed, sharp fangs glinting. “That’s obvious, too. The three and a half days we’re being given are a grace period to get a driver and four crew members ready for each of the ten shuttles. At noon on Sunday, we’re going to slam our feet down on the accelerators and head for the top of this pillar. In other words…” She pointed with her uplifted right hand in the direction of the distant peak, and then the crimson leopard-headed avatar said, almost singing:
“We obtained the right to participate in the Hermes’ Cord Race.”
It took a full five seconds or so before Haruyuki understood the meaning of those words.
“Then…that means…the finish line is the top of this tower, which means…s-s-space?!” he cried, his voice practically turned inside out, and Pard nodded.
“Of course.”
But before she could say anything further, they heard the sound of transit coming from the opposite side of the pillar. The Burst Linkers who had accelerated in the basement had likely reached the portal of the observation deck.
After a swish of her long tail, Pard touched Haruyuki’s back and whispered, “It would be best if we disappeared before they found us.”
Indeed, since there were only ten shuttles, the limit for the number of people who could still register as drivers was eight. Having those who would inevitably be left out come along saying the privilege should be decided in a duel would be nothing more than a hassle.
“I—I guess so.” Haruyuki agreed for now, pushing back the surprise in his heart, and her next utterance came flying into his ears.
“Once you release the acceleration, wait at the door to the parking lot on the ground floor. I’ll take you to Suginami on my bike.”
“Eee!” He froze up again. In the back of his mind, the violent power of the large electric bike Leopard rode sprang vividly back to life.
However, naturally unable to say, No, that’s fine, I’m good, or anything like that, Haruyuki simply bobbed his head. “Th-th-thank you; that would be great.”
“NP.”
And then the pair shouted the command together.
“Burst Out!”
Meeting Pard in the real again after such a long time, she was fortunately—or perhaps unfortunately—not in the maid’s uniform of the cake shop, but a tight-fitting T-shirt and slim jeans.
His eyes involuntarily strayed to the unexpected volume pushing out against the tight fabric, a volume imperceptible when she was wearing the billowing apron. Still with no expression on her face, Pard pulled an extra helmet out of the under-seat compartment, plopped it on Haruyuki’s head, and straddled the motorcycle. After fastening the buckle himself this time, he hurriedly climbed up onto the seat behind her and timidly wrapped his arms around the slim waist before him.
At first, he restrained himself to the utmost in terms of the strength he put into those arms, but the instant the in-wheel motors roared to life in the bike as it left the Skytree parking:
“Aaaaaah!”
Just as he had before, Haruyuki couldn’t help but cry out and cling to Pard as hard as he could. That said, it was all he could do to endure the extreme stops and starts at each and every red light, and he didn’t really have the mental breathing space to pay attention to any sensations other than the ones that let him know he was still holding on.
They passed from Sumida Ward through Okachimachi and Ochanomizu, and right around when they were coming out of Iidabashi, Pard’s voice reached Haruyuki’s ears.
“It’s five till six right now. You got time?”
“Uh, y-yeah.”
The curfew set by Haruyuki’s mother was nine o’clock, so he still had time. He couldn’t say anything about whether she allowed him, still in junior high, to be out until that somewhat inappropriate hour because she had faith in him as her son or because it was too much of a hassle to enforce an earlier curfew. If he broke curfew once in a big way, he would probably find out the answer to whether she would get mad at him or not, but he didn’t quite have the courage for that, and so he replied, “I’ve got about two hours.”
Pard then said, so very casually, “If I had tea for that long of a time, I’d melt away.”
Huh? T-tea?
He didn’t even have time to really have that thought before the large bike pulled into a fast-food place along the road, turn signal flashing.
In the last eight months, Haruyuki had gone into this restaurant more than twelve times with Kuroyukihime and once with Sky Raker. Nonetheless, he had not the slightest air of being used to such a situation and broke into a cold sweat, anxious about the spotlight of What is even up with such a mismatched couple? most certainly being shone on him.
Telling himself that he was being too self-conscious, that no one was even paying attention to them at all, he sat down facing Blood Leopard in a booth and tried to block out the other customers from his mind by focusing on the teriyaki burger m
eal Blood Leopard had treated him to.
For a brief moment, he thought he might succeed somehow.
And then Pard pulled a red XSB cable from a pouch on her belt, leaned forward, and stabbed one end of it into Haruyuki’s Neurolinker. With no expression on her face, she jammed the other end into her own.
Not able to hide from the wired connection warning that appeared in his field of view or the sight of the junior and senior high students in the shop very obviously staring at him and whispering to one another, Haruyuki ended up shrinking into himself, a total mess, cold sweat dripping down his face and all over his body.
It was clear that Pard paid absolutely no attention to customs such as the length of a couple’s direct-connect cable being an indication of their progress in dating, and Haruyuki, unable to liberate himself from such concerns, asked in neurospeak that was almost a shriek, “Oh! Uh, uh, um, wh-wh-why direct?”
Her reply was quick and simple.
“So we can talk while we eat.”
“…Right” was the only reply Haruyuki could give.
Pard displayed some serious technique in talking via the cable while digging into her hamburger as advertised. This seemed easy in principle, but there was a real risk of biting your tongue if you accidentally tried to speak with your mouth.
“Do you know how to dive into the stage for the race on Sunday?”
“Huh?” Haruyuki stopped chewing the fry in his mouth to answer the abrupt question. “We don’t just use the portal at Skytree again?”
“No need. The card you got when you registered as a driver is an item called a Transporter. It’ll simultaneously move a maximum of ten directing Burst Linkers.”
“W-wow…So then, we just get together in Suginami and use this, and we can go straight to Hermes’ Cord?”
“Yes.”
This was a huge relief. Because if, hypothetically, Kuroyukihime ended up taking part in the race, it was just too big of a risk for her to connect even for an instant to an external net in distant Sumida Ward, bound as she was by the sudden-death rules as a level niner.
After breathing a sigh of relief and biting into his hamburger, Haruyuki felt a rudimentary question rise belatedly to the surface. Ever since he had jumped into the portal at Skytree, he had been drifting along where the current took him, but the real issue—
“The real issue here is why are we suddenly racing? Those machines were prepared not by any player but by the system, which means the admin side of Brain Burst. It’s been eight months already since I became a Burst Linker, but I don’t think I’ve seen a single game master event like this.”
At Haruyuki’s inquiry, Pard thought for approximately half a second before replying, “It’s true that the BB admin normally never makes you feel their presence. But when there’s a large-scale update in the Accelerated World, there’re sometimes one-off events like this one. Like the year before last, when Tokyo Grand Castle opened…”
Grand Castle was a large theme park in the Bay Area. It ended up being a hot topic, this fortress city like something out of medieval Europe built with actual rocks, daring to take up the theme of “reality” during the heyday of full-dive technology.
“The day the social camera net started operating there, there was this event in the Accelerated World where you had to fight through swarms of monsters in the city and try to get the throne in the castle. My team was so close when we rubbed up against a large gang from the blue team and we all went down. If that jerk Horn shows up this time, I’m going to let him have it.”
Flames roared to life in Pard’s eyes, and Haruyuki unconsciously shrank into himself before managing to get a reply out.
“R-right, I get it. So then this race is…like an event to celebrate the addition of a new stage? Which means that the race only happens once…?”
“Pretty much.”
In that case, he was incredibly lucky to have been able to reserve one of only ten machines. After shouting, Mega lucky! in his heart, Haruyuki hurriedly banished that thought. He definitely hadn’t gone to Hermes’ Cord to obtain the right to participate in an open event. He had set his sights on the pinnacle of the space elevator because he had something he really needed to tell Her, Sky Raker.
Well, there is that.
Thinking there were other things he should at least know as basic knowledge, Haruyuki timidly let a question flow through the direct circuit. “Um…Pard. So like in the race, uh, if you come in first or second or whatever, is there some kind of—”
“Of course there is.” Blood Leopard nodded readily, not letting him get to the end of the question. “Probably some burst points. Or an Enhanced Armament or some other item. Should be some kind of prize.”
“W-wow, really?”
Although he tried to feign calm, the huge gulping motion he made with his throat apparently gave him away, and Pard grinned. Neatly folding up the paper wrapper of the hamburger she had finished in no time flat, she said with utter calm, “Best not to get your hopes too high. It definitely won’t be enough points to disrupt the power balance between the Legions. And more than that…” Here, she paused for a moment before she, the senior member of Prominence, shook the plait hanging down from her head and asked, “Will all five members of your Legion be in the race?”
“Huh?…Ummm, the shuttle holds five people, so…” Haruyuki, about to nod his agreement, forced his head to halt.
No matter how well they got along, or how she gave him rides on her motorcycle and treated him to hamburgers, Pard was, in the end, not on his side. She was a key member of the Red Legion, which might one day come up against the Black Legion. What was he doing carelessly telling someone like this about the movements of Kuroyukihime, who was bound by the rules of sudden death?
Perhaps having immediately seen through this hesitation on the part of Haruyuki, Pard quickly shook her head lightly. “I’m not thinking of using this opportunity to take the Black King’s head or anything. And HP gauges are locked during the event, so, I mean, that’s not even possible.”
“L-locked…?” Repeating the word, Haruyuki finally remembered. When he had been sent to Hermes’ Cord earlier, the lone word LOCKED had indeed been clearly stamped on his own HP gauge. “Uh, umm…So that means that no one can take damage or give damage during the event?”
Although Pard did make a show of thinking about this question momentarily, she soon nodded. “Yes.”
“Then why do we need four people for the shuttle crew? I figured we needed them to attack the other teams or defend or whatever…”
“Yes to that, too. The shuttle itself’ll probably have an HP gauge, and once that drops to zero, you’re destroyed. It was like that at the Grand Castle event. A game where each team carried an orb they were given, up to the throne on the top floor of the castle. The idea was that the players didn’t die, but the orb lost HP in attacks by the monsters or other teams.”
Haruyuki nodded at Blood Leopard’s words, impressed. With that setup, even in the rather lukewarm situation where their HP gauges were protected, the race could end up being very hot indeed.
“I get it…So that’s how it works. If that’s it, then I think all five members of our Legion will be in the race. But…why do you ask?”
Haruyuki turned a puzzled look on Pard, and in an extremely rare occurrence, she seemed to be struggling with what to say.
But the hesitation disappeared in a mere second.
“There are two people who are very important to me in the Accelerated World.” The quiet thought came through the red cable. “One is the king I serve. Someone I want to protect no matter what happens. And the other is my eternal rival. We became Burst Linkers at basically the same time, and we’ve fought countless duels. ‘Strato Shooter,’ ‘ICBM’…”
Haruyuki instantly grasped who those two names referred to. “…Sky Raker…?” he murmured, and Blood Leopard nodded gently.
“I was so happy when I heard she’d come back. But she’s only participating in the battl
es to defend Territories, so I haven’t seen her yet.”
“Oh…You haven’t? Right, you haven’t.”
Currently, the Red Legion, Prominence, and the Black Legion, Nega Nebulus, were in the middle of a cease-fire of an indefinite term. Thus, Pard, a senior Red member, would have no reason to take part in an attack on the Suginami area.
Haruyuki took a deep breath and, in a move that was unusual for him, looked straight into the eyes of his conversation partner before saying, “The truth is, I want to bring Sky Raker to Hermes’ Cord somehow, for my own reasons. Even if she’s not onboard with the whole thing, I’m going to try hard to persuade her to come. I’m sure you’ll be able to see her on Sunday.”
“That so?” Her response was brief, but a faint smile rose up on Blood Leopard’s lips, and she slowly, deeply nodded. “Thanks, Silver Crow. I’m glad we could talk like this…Maybe it won’t just be the two of us, maybe all three.”
Unfortunately, Haruyuki had no idea what she meant by that. Thus, like an idiot, he just asked. But…
“S-sorry? What…Who would that be?”
Not telling.
Instead of those words, it seemed, Pard yanked the direct cable out.
Back on the bike, she saw him to Suginami, and after Haruyuki watched her fade into the night until her taillights disappeared, he started thinking absently.
There were about a thousand Burst Linkers in total. And nearly all of them lived in the metropolis of Tokyo. It was a number that very much did not allow you to remember all of their names, and the majority of them had a relationship that consisted of single-mindedly taking points from one another. And yet if you fought for long enough, at some point, relationships other than “enemy” started to develop. When he thought about it now, the first time he met his now-priceless tag team partner Takumu—Cyan Pile—it had been as genuine enemies…
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