The Red Crest

by Reki Kawahara

  They had moved from the large sports ground to the inside of a compact temple. The three sat in a circle on the white floor, elegant cups before them, faint steam rising up. The cups held hot cocoa, but this chocolate was not pulled from the ground with Chocolat’s special attack. Instead, it came from a porcelain pot that had appeared together with the cups, made into objects from her storage.

  As a general rule, your only option was to buy items at the shop if you wanted food or drink in the Unlimited Neutral Field. The currency was, naturally, burst points, but players who had only just set foot in this world didn’t really have the points to spare for that. Which meant Chocolat was somewhat of a veteran, but her level was four, one below Haruyuki’s.

  “Our Legion wasn’t especially passionate about normal duels, much less so the Territories. We’d go to the Shibuya or Meguro areas next door on the weekends and fight a few tag-team matches, and that’s about it. Which is why it took me nearly two years to reach level four, and the fact that I cleared the Legion Master quest was honestly miraculous.”

  “Huh? Don’t you need a minimum of four people for the LMQ?” Haruyuki blurted.

  The dark-chocolate avatar smiled ever so faintly. “The reason they say you need four people is because there are several puzzle gimmicks that require operation in four different places at the same time, but I have my Chocopets, so.”

  “Oh. Ohhh. I get it.”

  “That was also a part of my miraculous luck,” the tiny avatar said, then brought her cup of cocoa to her mouth.

  Haruyuki watched her for a while, pushed into silence. The members of Nega Nebulus almost never went on expeditions to Shibuya or Meguro, so perhaps it was only natural that he didn’t know Chocolat’s name, given that she’d made those areas her main battleground. But an apologetic feeling still rose up in his chest.

  Up to that point, he’d always treated Setagaya like an empty area. He’d never turned his feet in that direction—even though it bordered his home of Suginami—but there were indeed Burst Linkers in that region, too. Chiyuri apparently felt the same way, as she took on a formal position and bowed her head.

  “I’m so sorry. I thought there was no one in this area. So I came here looking for Enemies.”

  “It’s fine. In fact, even if you combined Setagaya Areas One through Five, you’d still only get a couple dozen or so Burst Linkers. If you had dived an hour later, you…wouldn’t have come across me or anyone else,” Chocolat murmured. “They’ll have taken care of everything by then.”

  Haruyuki lifted his hanging head. “Um. You told us a little about this before, but you’re on standby in this place to fight the people coming to hunt Coolu, right?” he asked timidly. “And you said they’re your friends—members of the Legion Petit Paquet. You all came this far together?”

  “That’s exactly right— No, our relationship goes beyond that. One of them is my parent, and the other my child.”

  “…!!”

  Haruyuki and Chiyuri both gasped. But when he really thought about it, this wasn’t strange at all. In fact, it was only natural that there would be parent and child among the members of a small-scale Legion. In the six-member army of Nega Nebulus, after all, there were four with parent-child relationships: Haruyuki and Kuroyukihime, and Takumu and Chiyuri.

  But in that case, it was all the more curious—why would Chocolat’s parent and child try to hunt the Lava Carbuncle she’d spent two years building a friendship with? From its size, that Enemy was no doubt a lesser class; they definitely wouldn’t get that many points for defeating it.

  Perhaps seeing the question in Haruyuki and Chiyuri’s minds, Chocolat Puppeteer lowered her cherry-pink eye lenses sadly. “Three days ago, on Sunday evening, everything changed—no, everything was lost. My parent, Mint Mitten, and my child, Plum Flipper, were forcibly parasitized by ISS kits. In that instant—”

  “What?!”

  “Th-that’s—!”

  Simultaneous cries of surprise burst out of Haruyuki and Chiyuri.

  “Ah!” Haruyuki leaned forward and squeezed his question out. “The ISS kits, they can only parasitize Burst Linkers who want that themselves, can’t they?!”

  “That’s what I heard, too! I mean, if it was possible to force the parasite, then they wouldn’t have needed to do that whole thing during the Hermes’ Cord race, would they?!”

  Chiyuri’s observation was correct.

  In the final stage of the Hermes’ Cord race held on June 9, after secretly slipping in among the participating teams, the Acceleration Research Society’s Rust Jigsaw had activated Rust Order, a fourth-quadrant Incarnate—negative will targeting a broad range—going so far as to slaughter not only the race participants but the many spectators in the Gallery.

  The Acceleration Research Society’s intention was assumed to have been to make widely known across the Accelerated World the overwhelming power of dark Incarnate and make Burst Linkers more likely to reach out to the ISS kit, an Enhanced Armament that could easily be attached to the body.

  In fact, Ash Roller’s junior avatar, Bush Utan, had turned to Haruyuki and said, “IS mode has that kind of incredible power. The ultimate power, skipping over all the rules of Brain Burst, even.” And: “But this ISS kit makes even losers strong. Like the more of a loser you are, the stronger you can get.”

  The reason Utan had been overtaken by the ISS kit was because he had first had this awareness of that power. Put another way, if forced parasitization were possible, then just as Chiyuri noted, there would have been no need to carry out a demonstration like that during the race. If they simply challenged Burst Linkers on the matching list one after another, they could have easily succeeded in the Society’s objective of spreading the ISS kits throughout the Accelerated World—although Haruyuki still didn’t know what they were hoping to achieve with that.

  Chocolat took this in and let out a long, deep sigh. “I, along with my two comrades, also understood this to be the case. We never sought out any suspicious power. It was enough for us to simply protect our small box in a corner of the Accelerated World. The truth is, I had no intention of going up any further levels. Our desire was to dive all together once or twice a week into the Unlimited Neutral Field, chat, feed Coolu, sit alongside one another and wait for the Change, simply spending the time like that…”

  Chocolat hugged her knees tight, perhaps reliving sad, painful memories, and continued.

  “That is why when she appeared before us to invite us to accept the ISS kit, we flatly refused. Because we had heard that you wouldn’t be parasitized by that black eyeball if you sincerely refused it. However—when we did so, she said, ‘Then you’ll need surgery, hmm?’ and attacked us. There were three of us and two of them, but we were basically no match for IS mode. They caught Plum first. They cut her chest open with large scissors and put the kit seed in.”

  “S-scissors?!” Haruyuki felt a pinch in his memory.

  But before he could actually dig into that memory, Chocolat said, even more sorrowfully, “Seeing this, Mitten told me to escape through a portal and pull out their direct cables on the real side. I ran desperately for the leave point at Sakurajosui Station, returned to the real world, and pulled out the cables of the two who had dived with me. However, by that point, Mitten had also already fallen into their hands…but neither of them appeared much different immediately after bursting out. They laughed and said they hadn’t been parasitized by ISS kits. But…”

  “…It was too late…?” Chiyuri asked in a quiet voice.

  Chocolat hung her head deeply. “In the space of one night…the next day…they were no longer the Mitten and Plum that I knew. They urged me to accept an ISS kit as well. When I refused, they said they were leaving the Legion. Since that day, they’ve been her comrades, hunting small- and midsize Enemies in the Unlimited Neutral Field in Setagawa.”

  “This ‘her,’ is it maybe”—Haruyuki timidly gave voice to the name that had finally come back to him—“is it maybe a Burst Li
nker called Magenta Scissor?”

  Chocolat jerked her face up, only to drop her shoulders once more before nodding. “Yes, it is. She was likely the first ISS kit user in the Setagaya area. Now everyone other than me is already on her side.”

  Magenta Scissor.

  Haruyuki had heard this name from the mouth of his best friend and Legion comrade, Takumu Mayuzumi. Eight days earlier—on the night of Tuesday, June 18—Takumu had visited the Setagaya area alone to get information on the ISS kits, and he had been given the very item by Magenta Scissor. At that time, the kit was in sealed card form, and Takumu had saved this in his storage. But the next day, June 19, he had been attacked by the most fearsome PK group, Supernova Remnant, and to fight back, he had activated the kit. That night, Haruyuki and Chiyuri went to sleep while connected with Takumu, and by attacking the ISS kit main body in the Brain Burst central server, they had just barely managed to remove the kit terminal parasitizing Takumu.

  However, that said, naturally, it wasn’t as though the kit’s disappearance had destroyed the source of reproduction, Magenta Scissor’s kit. Scissor continued to distribute the kits in the Setagaya area until finally—he supposed—three days earlier, she had attacked Chocolat and her Petit Paquet near the border of Suginami, where they had been living quietly.

  “Then there aren’t any more Burst Linkers in Setagaya for Magenta Scissor and them to target, so they’re hunting Enemies instead?” Haruyuki asked.

  “That appears to be the case.” Chocolat assented once more. “And it seems that even with the power of IS mode, opponents of the Beast class and up are too much for them, so they’re only hunting Wild and lesser classes. I…I begged and pleaded with the changed Mitten and Plum to at least let Coolu live, but…”

  Here, abruptly, a single transparent droplet spilled out of Chocolat Puppeteer’s cherry eye lens.

  “With every passing day, the two of them grew colder. And finally today, they said this to me: That if Coolu died, then I would give up and also join Magenta Scissor. They said they and their friends would come to hunt Coolu after school…which is why…which is why I…”

  Another tear spilled onto her chocolate cheek. Before it had a chance to fall to the floor, Chiyuri reached out and gently embraced Chocolat.

  “That’s why you’ve been waiting here all this time. To protect Coolu…I’m sorry we scared you.”

  There was no way he could also do something like hug Chocolat, so instead, Haruyuki bowed his head. “I-I’m sorry too. To make up for it, we’ll help you. Let’s protect Coolu together.”

  Even hearing this, Chocolat Puppeteer didn’t react right away. Her shoulders continued to shake in Chiyuri’s arms for longer than ten full seconds before she finally uttered, “I didn’t think I could really protect Coolu. On the color wheel, I’m between yellow and red, more long-distance and indirect engagement—more of a support type. But I…I do have a means of an absolute direct attack that I can use against only Mint Mitten and Plum Flipper, my former friends.”

  Haruyuki wasn’t immediately able to grasp the meaning of this, but from Chocolat’s tense air, he caught her true intention. Chiyuri seemed to realize it at the same time. “Judgment Blow?” they murmured together.

  Chocolat nodded very slightly and continued feebly, “In the Legion Master quest, we all worked together and took on the challenge, but the one who obtained the clear item…was me. Mitten and Plum have already left the Legion, but for one month, I have the right to judge them. I think that’s my only choice now. Not to protect Coolu, but to save them. They’re parasitized by the ISS kits, and it is having an effect on their real personalities, too.”

  “…”

  An attack on Carbuncle by three or four people was something that could be fended off with the help of Haruyuki and Chiyuri. But it was impossible to get rid of the ISS kits parasitizing Chocolat’s friends with an attack inside the Accelerated World. Last Thursday, Haruyuki had witnessed ISS kit users attacking Ash Roller and Bush Utan, members of the Green Legion, in this very Unlimited Neutral Field. Spurred on by a dizzying rage, he had summoned the Armor of Catastrophe that lay sleeping in his avatar and fought the six kit users. In the middle of that battle, Haruyuki had ripped out the kit parasitizing one of his enemies and crushed it.

  A strange light had escaped from the destroyed “red eyeball,” and he had chased after it to its destination, Tokyo Midtown Tower, guarded by the Archangel Metatron—but the light that had fled was itself most likely the core of the ISS kits. Even though the eyeball was crushed, the kit hadn’t disappeared. If they were going to resolve the situation with offensive power in the Accelerated World, their only option was to hit what was thought to be the kit main body that existed on the top floor of Midtown Tower.

  And if that was the case, then maybe the only option was to use the Judgment Blow to liberate Mint Mitten and Plum Flipper from their ISS kits, just like Chocolat said. But—that was a final solution and at the same time a tragic conclusion. Because Burst Linkers who lost Brain Burst also lost all memories related to the Accelerated World.

  Unable to find anything to say, Haruyuki simply and intently clenched his hands together. In his heart, one thought alone spun round and round: If only I’d mastered the Theoretical Mirror ability already. Then maybe, right about now, the seven Legions would be cooperatively carrying out the Metatron mission and trying to destroy the ISS kit main body. And then, if they succeeded, Chocolat Puppeteer wouldn’t have to be suffering like this…

  Wait. The thing I should really be yelled at for is my lack of imagination. Even though I found out however many days ago that the ISS kits were spreading through Arakawa, Koto, and then Setagawa, I acted like it was someone else’s problem. I figured they were empty areas, so it was still okay. The thought never crossed my mind that there were Burst Linkers suffering there, too. I just selfishly kept thinking we’d figure something out before it got to Suginami and Nerima.

  “Sorry. I’m sorry, Chocolat…I…If only I’d—,” he squeezed out, unthinkingly.

  “Crow.” Chiyuri snapped her right hand up to cut him off. “This is a bad habit of yours. Making everything your own fault, and on top of that, thinking that it’s already too late,” she asserted curtly.

  “B-but”—he raised his eyes a little—“if I hadn’t been dragging my feet…”

  “You’ve been doing everything you can! And there’s still work you can do. Chocolat, you too; it’s too soon to give up. I’ve got an idea.”

  Just as Haruyuki had guessed, the university that sat in this place in the real world had a neighboring affiliated high school and junior high. Chocolat Puppeteer and the two former members of her Legion were students at the middle school. The temples of varying sizes that stood in this part of the Sacred Ground stage were school facilities—in other words, Chocolat knew the terrain of this area very well. But so did their attackers, Mint Mitten and Plum Flipper. It would be hard to hide in a temple for an ambush. There was also the risk of being on the receiving end of a surprise attack and having to fight in a free-for-all in close quarters.

  Naturally, their attackers wouldn’t know that Haruyuki and Chiyuri had joined forces with Chocolat. It might have been effective to use Chocolat as bait and then have Haruyuki and Chiyuri launch a surprise attack. But they couldn’t use that method now. Because the strategy that Chiyuri had come up with required them to fight openly, head-on.

  “I’m telling you, we don’t have to wait for the enemy in the middle of the grounds,” grumbled Haruyuki, a big lover of surprise attacks.

  “Don’t keep complaining after you’ve already agreed!” Chiyuri jabbed him lightly in the side. “Your job is to defend against any long-distance attacks from their side, Crow, so make sure you actually keep watch!”

  “R-right.” He nodded, but…

  Waiting for other Burst Linkers in the Unlimited Neutral Field was a matter of intense patience. Even if, for instance, you managed to narrow down your opponent’s dive time to within
five minutes, that could end up being as much as five thousand minutes on this side: over three days.

  And the preliminary attack warning Chocolat’s former comrades had given her was “today after school.” From a general perspective, that could have been a span of several hours, but having known the two Burst Linkers for many years, Chocolat had apparently narrowed it down somewhat to the thirty minutes between six o’clock and six thirty. Approximately twenty days inside. She had been planning to wait, earnestly and intently, that entire overly long time. In fact, eleven days had already passed by the time she ran into Haruyuki and Chiyuri. She had absolutely no idea at what point in time the attackers might appear during the remaining nine days.

  Put in this position, Haruyuki keenly felt the tremendousness of the deceleration ability of the jet-black layered avatar who called himself the vice president of the Acceleration Research Society. If you could drop the speed of perception to a 1:1 ratio with the real world while diving in the Unlimited Neutral Field, it would be a fairly simple thing to lie in wait for other Burst Linkers and attack. But, of course, he couldn’t be envious of a power that relied on the illegal BIC—brain implant chip.

  In the Accelerated World, if you tried to acquire something, compensation of equal value to that thing was required. A very long standby time was one of those—and the Burst Linkers who obtained incredible power via the ISS kits were definitely losing something precious inside themselves.

  Haruyuki had come now to Sakurajosui in the Setagaya area here with the aim of acquiring the Theoretical Mirror ability. He had come to have the rare laser-attack Enemy Lava Carbuncle be his partner in special training, but Chiyuri had spent three days here already to find this partner. No matter how many days they ended up waiting, this was not the time for Haruyuki to throw in the towel. This was even more true now that they’d met the Burst Linker who called Carbuncle a friend, heard her sad story, and been treated to hot cocoa.