The Floating Starlight Bridge

by Reki Kawahara

  However…

  Immediately to their right, the unexpected, the seemingly impossible happened.

  A bizarre something rose up from the center of the concentrated shadow of the shuttle, which was produced by intense sunlight, and accompanied by a slight splashing sound.

  A single thin, large panel. Rectangular, about the same length and height as the shuttles, it ran silently parallel to number one, about two meters away. Even though it was supposedly moving along at five hundred kilometers an hour, it produced not a single vibration, not a single sound. The matte black seemed to swallow all light.

  The nature of the object sent a jolt through Haruyuki’s memory. He didn’t have to work at recalling why.

  The mysterious Burst Linker who had jumped into the “final battle” in the Unlimited Neutral Field at Umesato Junior High School two months earlier, just after the start of the new school year. There was no doubt that before them now was that avatar with the ability to change his own body into thin panels and slip into any and all shadows to move about. But what was he doing here now?

  The impact and the question burst from Haruyuki’s throat in the form of a name. “Black Vise…!!”

  Almost as if responding to his cry, the enormous panel peeled back soundlessly to both sides, to become two thin membranes. They spread out before quickly disappearing, as if melting into the vacuum.

  The object that then appeared from between those thin membranes stunned Haruyuki all over again.

  A shuttle. It was exactly the same shape as the one the Nega Nebulus team rode in, but the color was different. A powdery reddish brown, as if tiny speckles had bled out—in other words, the color of rust. This was very clearly shuttle number ten, which had sat rotting quietly at the right end of the starting platform. But this machine, which had seemed to be out of the action, now had brilliant lightning gushing from its four linear wheels and was zooming along at top speed.

  Which meant that shuttle number ten had not been destroyed by corrosion, but rather that the color was nothing more than a re-creation of that of the registered driver.

  Struck with a certain conviction, Haruyuki shifted his gaze the tiniest bit and looked over at the cockpit of this tenth shuttle. Sitting there, silently gripping the steering wheel, was—

  The thin body, reminiscent of a riveted steel frame, of a duel avatar the same rust color as the machine. And this was not Haruyuki’s first encounter with him, either. Two months earlier, he had fought this opponent just once at Akihabara Battle Ground, the underground arena set up within the local net of an arcade in Akihabara.

  “Rust Jigsaw…” Haruyuki uttered the second name at a lower volume than his previous cry.

  However, even when his name was called, the rust-colored avatar remained silent, not even turning his head. He sank intently into the seat, as if he had become one with the shuttle.

  Looking at the rear seating area for the four-person crew, he saw only one person there. Or rather, it would be better to say “one panel.” Because there in the back row was just a shadow with no thickness. The strange shape—black paper arranged in human form—could be none other than Black Vise, just as he had thought.

  Both Burst Linkers belonged to a group that called itself the Acceleration Research Society. The scope of this organization and the members that made it up were unknown. The one thing Haruyuki did know was that they all had illegal VR devices—brain implant chips, aka BICs—in their skulls and that, using this power, they maneuvered to avoid the limitations of Brain Burst.

  Which was why, for Haruyuki, the fact that these two would show up at an event so festive as the Hermes’ Cord Race was wholly unanticipated. Unable to rouse himself from the shock of it, he could only gape as countless voices rose up suddenly from the sky above.

  “H-hey, whoa! Where’d that shuttle come from?!”

  “Number ten didn’t drop out, after all?!”

  “If that thing wins, what happens to our bets?!”

  The Gallery was also apparently stunned at this unexpected development. The wave of commotion contained much more of the element of surprise than of excitement.

  Haruyuki listened to the quiet conversation happening on shuttle number ten among the shouts.

  “…I guess this is where my work ends?” The calm voice sounding like a teacher belonged to Black Vise.

  “Yeah, you’re good.” The purposefully low voice of a boy, cracking with adolescence, replied. “Go home.”

  “Well then, I’ll take my leave of you here, Jigsaw…Good-bye, Black King. And the ladies and gentlemen of Nega Nebulus.”

  “…You,” Kuroyukihime muttered. But by the time she made a small movement with her right hand, the human-shaped shadow in the rear seat was already dancing upward. It slipped into the ink of the starry sky and receded in the blink of an eye, vanishing.

  With things having come this far, Haruyuki finally managed a hazy guess as to why number ten had abruptly appeared from the shadow of number one.

  Possessing many curious abilities as he did, Black Vise was likely able to lock up not only himself, but also other people and objects within his black panels, and then sink into the shadows with them. When the portal had opened at five thirty on Wednesday afternoon on the top floor of Skytree, Haruyuki and Pard hadn’t been alone in being the first to visit the top of Hermes’ Cord. Black Vise and Rust Jigsaw had also, in fact, been there. The pair must have concealed themselves in the shadow of the tower and registered to drive the tenth shuttle the instant Haruyuki and Blood Leopard had burst out. Which was why none of them—not Haruyuki, not Pard, and not Ash Roller and the others who came running in immediately after—noticed the shadowy duo.

  And it wasn’t just during registration that Vise showed off his powers of concealment.

  The instant the race started that day, the starting platform had been completely swallowed up by the shadow produced by the enormous spectator seating. Vise and Jigsaw had slipped through this to get into their shuttle before concealing the machine itself immediately after the race started. From there, they moved into number one’s shadow without attracting anyone’s notice, and then they had held their breath right up next to Haruyuki and his friends until that moment. All of which was Vise’s ability: to move or stop with total freedom as long as he was in the shadows.

  While Haruyuki was running this speculation down in his head, Rust Jigsaw, the sole remaining avatar in shuttle number ten, fell silent once more and gripped the steering wheel tightly.

  “Rust Jigsaw.” Unable to completely grasp the current situation, and also feeling an incomprehensible discomfort, Haruyuki began to toss out words at the rust-colored avatar. “Why are you showing up here now? If you wanted to, you could have stayed hidden in our shadow all the way to right before the finish line and then flown out and snatched the win.”

  Jigsaw didn’t even blink, much less answer. But Haruyuki squelched his physical unease and continued.

  “But leaving the shadows now at this stage instead of doing that…you feel like racing us for real? That suits us just fine! A fair and square fight for the remaining thousand kilometers—”

  “Silence.” The lone word cut Haruyuki off. Hearing Rust Jigsaw’s voice for the first time, he found it cold and dry, and yet tinged somehow with heaving emotion, almost boiling.

  “Huh…?”

  “Don’t talk. Don’t make me listen to bullshit about races and fights.” After this languid utterance, Rust Jigsaw moved for the first time to glance over at Haruyuki and his team. His eyes were a penetratingly cold red, set beneath a face mask that had a design like an assemblage of thin iron pieces. His only memory of that face from the duel before at Akiba BG was of Jigsaw, at wits’ end, losing to Blood Leopard’s literal bite, but the ice residing in the gaze of the rust avatar now was enough to wipe that helplessness away.

  Jigsaw narrowed those eyes and said—practically ordered: “Have some shame. Be ashamed of how you all continue to avert your eyes from the true natu
re of Brain Burst.”

  “Oh?” Having stayed silent until that point, Kuroyukihime spoke up now, her voice containing a dangerous edge. “Then I ask you. What is this true nature?”

  Even when faced with this question almost like a sword itself, Rust Jigsaw showed no signs of agitation. “Recognize,” he spat, slowly turning his face forward. “Brain Burst is simply a slightly dirty life-hack tool.”

  “Life…hack…?!” The voice, heavy with indignation, belonged to Takumu. The large blue avatar started to lean over the side of the ship, and the yellow-green avatar next to him pulled him back.

  “Look, you!” Having stretched out instead of Takumu, Chiyuri offered her own rejoinder point-blank, without a hint of fear. “That’s a matter of personal opinion! Even if it is just a tool for cheating for you, it’s not like that for us! Our Brain Burst is a superamazing fighting game, got it!”

  “That’s exactly right.” Sky Raker picked up Chiyuri’s thread. “And you contradict yourself. If it’s simply a tool, then why are you taking part in this event? Why did you show yourself halfway through the course? If you have the desire to fight, to compete, then that’s proof that your Brain Burst is not a tool but rather a game.”

  At this pointed remark, Rust Jigsaw curled up tightly in the cockpit.

  Haruyuki thought he might be trying to endure something with that movement. And then several conjectures popped up in his mind.

  What if Jigsaw himself wanted to repudiate his own words? Didn’t he want to fight properly as a Burst Linker, to taste the thrill and excitement of the duel and, through that, feel a connection with someone? In other words, was he hoping to leave the organization that bound him…the Acceleration Research Society…?

  The instant he remembered how the twilight-colored marauder—who had belonged to the same organization—had not made that choice, or perhaps had been unable to make that choice even while he had the option to, Haruyuki instinctively called out, “Y-you…The truth is, you wanted to come here, didn’t you…?”

  Silence.

  After a fairly long pause, Rust Jigsaw slowly lifted the face he had hidden in the steering wheel and looked at Haruyuki once more.

  In that moment, Haruyuki understood that his guess had been inescapably wrong.

  What Jigsaw had been enduring was anger. A confused rage boiled, wholly unconnected with sharpness or genuineness. A diffuse hatred that simply spread in all directions, unable to converge on a precise target. An enormous rusty saw brandished wildly, so to speak.

  “Regret,” Rust Jigsaw commanded in a creaking voice. He then took his right hand off the wheel and clenched those five fingers around his forehead. The movement was one of enduring extreme pain, but the words he uttered gradually grew colored with an insane heat, rose in pitch, and changed to a shriek. “Regret your own softness for not attacking the instant you saw me. And pay the price. Scream in the midst of overwhelming terror! Your foolish sport ends today! And then the era of desire and competition, destruction and slaughter will arrive! Precisely now…this time!!”

  And then Haruyuki saw it.

  Shafts of dull red light rising up in all directions from all over Rust Jigsaw’s body.

  At once, the light began to swirl and writhe like a myriad of snakes. High-frequency vibrations began to shake the shuttle, and then the enormous body of the space elevator. The steel surface, the two shuttles, and even inky black space blazed red.

  It wasn’t a special attack. Because HP gauges were locked for this race event, their special-attack gauges wouldn’t charge. Thus, this light was born from Jigsaw’s will, his imagination…

  “He can’t—! Overlay!” Kuroyukihime was the first to shout out. “Get us out of here, Crow! An Incarnate attack is coming!!”

  Haruyuki was already yanking the steering wheel to the left as hard as he could. At a steering angle that was just barely above dropping into a spin, the shuttle tried to get some distance from machine number ten.

  “Behold, imbeciles!!” They heard the voice as if it were chasing the machine escaping to the backside of the tower. “This is the true form of Brain Buuuuurst!!”

  In the rearview mirror, Rust Jigsaw stood up in the cockpit and threw both arms high into the air.

  He howled.

  “Rust Order!!”

  The world trembled.

  …That was overlay?!

  Haruyuki shuddered as he jammed on the accelerator like he was trying to push it through the floor. The vortex of red light centered on shuttle number ten swelled up to the scale of a small star, zooming in on shuttle number one.

  “H-hold on!” Shouting, Haruyuki pulled back a little on the steering wheel. The explosion of light was a force to swallow up the entire hundred-meter diameter of Hermes’ Cord. Running at an angle, they wouldn’t be able to get clear of it. The light chased after them insistently, several centimeters behind the rear of the shuttle, now back on a straight trajectory.

  Holding the wheel steady as he looked back over his shoulder, Haruyuki gasped hard at the sight behind them.

  The surface of the elevator, which had until mere moments before shone a lustrous steel gray, was decaying with incredible force!

  Almost as if he were watching a video on fast-forward of a piece of steel left on the beach, spots of red rust popped up one after another, anywhere the light touched it. These grew enormous before his eyes and soon merged to completely cover the elevator. Eventually, cracks grew up here and there, and chunks of the tower caved in, scattering blood-colored rust. Several craters formed, as if the tower were being showered with invisible meteors.

  “Th…that’s…crazy…” A hoarse voice slipped from his throat, and Haruyuki shook his head from side to side. “I mean, an Incarnate attack’s one thing, but this…Pard’s claws didn’t even leave a scratch on the elevator…A-and even before that, the scope’s just too large…!”

  As far as Haruyuki knew, for all Incarnate attacks, the effect target was limited by the person. For instance, even with a long-distance attack, you first had to expand your own attack power with your will and then release that at the enemy.

  But the will of Rust Jigsaw raging before his eyes now was causing unlimited destruction over a broad swath. In principle, this should have been impossible. The energy source for Incarnate techniques was the wielder’s mental scars…in other words, the imagination that belonged to the wielder, and no one else.

  Kuroyukihime, similarly looking behind them, replied to Haruyuki’s question in a low voice. “Space Corrosion…”

  “The antithesis of will, with hope as its source…” Sky Raker explained the unfamiliar term. “The ultimate form of a hateful will. A powerfully strong hatred of the world causes an overwrite of the field itself…But to bind this amount of imagination, even a King-class player would require very long hours of mental concentration.”

  Kuroyukihime narrowed both eyes sharply and nodded. “Hiding in our shadow that whole while was likely to buy that time. But even so, it’s too far beyond the norm. He’s surely forcibly boosting the depth of his mental concentration with a BIC function…?”

  “He can’t be. That’s…It would place too large of a burden on a living brain…”

  Even as the two talked, the rust storm Jigsaw had summoned continued its destructive march.

  Several of the other team shuttles trailing behind ended up prey to the corrosion. Blood Leopard and Ash Roller had apparently managed to take advantage of their excellent control to evade the storm by decelerating, but still, their shuttles were instantly half coated in rust, significantly slowing them down. Even if they had escaped total destruction, looking the way they did, there was no way those shuttles were going to make it to the finish line.

  But that was nothing compared with the damage to the Yellow Legion and the two midsize teams. They had charged headlong into the range of effect, and the cries of a dozen people rang out all at once.

  Immediately, the three shuttles were covered with a thick coating of rust
. And it didn’t stop there. The armor of the crews in the vehicles also corroded before their eyes, parts and equipment crumbling and scattering to the rear. Finally, the damage reached the avatars’ forms beneath the armor, and they collapsed and spilled out, falling into the darkness behind them.

  “What’s going on?! Our HP gauges are supposed to be locked!” Takumu’s groan was overlaid with Chiyuri’s heartbroken cry.

  “This…This is too awful! The race is in shambles!!”

  “Heh-heh-heh.” Almost as if he had heard them, Rust Jigsaw’s laughter caught up with them from behind. “Ha-ha! Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!! Despair!! Lament!! And feel remorse!! This is the retribution for your deception!! This world does, after all, have the same roots as reality!! Impossible to avoid the corrosion of everything in existeeeeeeence!!”

  The raging red light practically erupted upward as though these words themselves were Incarnate. The vortex of energy captured one of the floating spectator stands.

  No way. Haruyuki’s eyes flew open as even the audience seating—an object that should have been completely protected by the system—was blanketed in red rust, accompanied by an unpleasant zrr zrr zrr zrr sound. Several cracks immediately appeared in the once-smooth bottom, and the outer panels fell off one after another. And then a few seconds later, the enormous structure simply crumbled in the sky above the tower.

  More than a hundred people from the Gallery crammed in there were thrown into the void, an avalanche of avatars. Cries rose up from all over. Some were completely corroded, while others crashed into the surface of the elevator. Either way, they were all forcibly ejected from the Accelerated World with a momentary flash.

  “I-insanity…,” Kuroyukihime moaned, her upper body thrown back as though the scene itself were pressing into her. “Going this far…The Gallery will most certainly realize it, too. That this phenomenon transcends the framework of the normal system…”