The Red Crest

by Reki Kawahara

  The design was of two revolver-type guns crossed. He had no recollection of ever seeing it before. If pressed to note some special characteristic of the mark, he would say the barrels of the guns were fairly long, but that was about it. He couldn’t think of any Burst Linker who used weapons like this, either.

  “Is this someone’s crest?” he asked, pulling his gaze away from the card and turning toward Kuroyukihime, but he received no reply from her.

  On behalf of their Legion Master, for whom the shock still hadn’t worn off, Legion Submaster Fuko announced softly, “This crest…is that of the previous Red King, Red Rider.”

  8

  After school.

  Having finished taking care of his Animal Care Club duties, Haruyuki avoided the front yard, crowded with students busy preparing for the school festival, and returned to the first school building through the inner courtyard. When he stood in front of the sliding door of the student council office, deep inside on the first floor, an entry request window popped up in the center of his field of view. But before he could tap it, the door was unlocked from inside.

  “Excuse me,” he announced himself in a quiet voice and slid the door open. On the other side, the usual dignified atmosphere filled the room, so solemn it was hard to believe the room was in the same junior high. When he closed the door behind him, the hustle and bustle of the school at the end of the day receded at once, and only the faint sound of the student council office server machine could be heard.

  Haruyuki took pains to walk softly—although the floor was covered in a thick carpet, so he wouldn’t have made much of a sound even if he had walked normally—and took a few steps forward when the person hard at work at the large desk facing him lifted her head and said, coolly, “Oh, sorry for calling you in when you’re busy.”

  “No, I’m pretty used to taking care of Hoo now, so.”

  “Mm-hmm. Sorry, just give me five more seconds…Okay, done.”

  The person who saved the file she had been working on and then stood up was, of course, the vice president of the Umesato student council, Kuroyukihime. None of the other council members were there, so he was alone in a closed room at school with Kuroyukihime, a situation that gave Haruyuki heart palpitations in a variety of ways.

  He had actually invited Utai Shinomiya, aka the super president of the Animal Care Club and person with whom he had been working until a few minutes earlier, to come along with him, but for some reason, she had grinned and said, I’LL HOLD OFF TODAY. Takumu and Chiyuri were at practice, and Fuko went to a school in far-off Shibuya Ward.

  Thus, Haruyuki was forced to stand at attention alone in the center of the room at the unexpected situation, while Kuroyukihime moved with a gallant step from the desk to the small kitchen built into the wall on the west side.

  “Is tea all right with you, Haruyuki?” she asked.

  “Oh! Y-yes!”

  “With milk, lemon, or perhaps brandy?”

  “M-milk, please,” he replied, after judging that the last option was probably a joke.

  “Mmm, understood.” Kuroyukihime nodded casually and yet was surprisingly smooth in her tea preparations. Carrying a tray, she walked over to the sofa set in the southwest corner, and Haruyuki awkwardly followed.

  “Please, have a seat.”

  “O-okay.” He lowered himself onto the sofa—synthetic leather but with a soft touch—and she arranged cups and saucers for two on the low table before pouring tea from the pot. Her words and movements were extremely natural, but even so, Haruyuki sensed the faintest hint of pain in the expression of his beloved sword master.

  That, too, was natural. The text message Kuroyukihime had sent him between fifth and sixth periods had included the following: I NEED TO TALK TO YOU ABOUT THE FIRST RED KING, RED RIDER.

  In January of that year, Kuroyukihime, at the request of the second Red King, Scarlet Rain, had gone on a mission to subjugate the fifth Chrome Disaster together with Haruyuki and Takumu. However, lying in wait for them in the Ikebukuro area of the Unlimited Neutral Field was a large attack force from Crypt Cosmic Circus, the Legion led by the Yellow King, Yellow Radio. Kuroyukihime had nonetheless turned resolutely to face them until Radio played a certain replay card.

  Recorded on it was the ghastly scene of Black Lotus, the Black King, taking off the head of Red Rider, the first Red King, in a single blow at the first meeting of the Seven Kings, which had been approximately three years earlier at the time. Being shown this out of the blue had given Kuroyukihime an enormous shock, which went so far as to trigger the zero-fill phenomenon, and she had collapsed on the spot. It had been six months since then. As the leader of the new Nega Nebulus, Kuroyukihime had cut down numerous powerful enemies, but the wound carved in the depths of her heart could not have disappeared completely.

  So with the surprise reveal of Red Rider’s crest on the ISS kits, I guess Kuroyukihime’s trying to face her own wounds, but is it really okay if it’s just me here? Haruyuki couldn’t help but have this thought—in fact, only recently, he would have gone so far as to drag another Legion member along with him there, or perhaps simply run away. Now, however, he said nothing, but rather quietly waited for her to speak.

  Kuroyukihime was indeed Haruyuki’s parent and Legion Master, as well as an absolutely invincible level niner. But at the same time, she was just a junior high school girl, a year older than he was, a girl who had the same struggles, pain, and fears as he did, as well as the desire to be rescued from time to time, like he did. He couldn’t always be the one leaning on her and being protected.

  Kuroyukihime. If I’m what you want, I’ll always be right by your side. I’ll never try to keep anything quiet from you again.

  There was no way she could have heard these words he whispered to himself, but she touched her cup of chai to her lips and then abruptly began speaking as she lowered it again. But the details of what she said were, for Haruyuki, fairly unexpected. “Say, Haruyuki, what do you think the ultimate long-range attack power is?”

  “Huh? The ultimate…long-range attack power?” After parroting her words back at her, he thought it over. “I guess it’d be an attack with serious range and firepower that could send a distant enemy flying in a single shot. Like Niko—I mean, Scarlet Rain’s main armament.”

  “Mmm. I suppose. The Immobile Fortress’s real armament is undisputedly the most powerful long-range attack currently in the Accelerated World. If it came down to a one-on-one shoot-out, even Crikin’s robot couldn’t beat her.”

  “Huh? C-Cri— Who’s that?”

  “Sorry, a tangent. I’ll explain later. Let’s continue with the main topic for now.” The smile bleeding out around the corners of Kuroyukihime’s mouth disappeared, and she leaned her slender body back against the sofa. “Just as you note, it goes without saying that Niko is the most powerful red type. But I wonder if that equals ultimate.”

  “So you mean there’s a difference between most powerful and ultimate? What kind?” At some point, Haruyuki had been completely drawn into the conversation, and he leaned forward on the sofa.

  Kuroyukihime moved her gaze around like she was thinking about something and then lifted a finger in a very teacherly gesture. “You said before: serious range and firepower, hmm? So then which do you think is the true nature of the red-type duel avatar’s power?”

  “I think…” He only had to contemplate for a second before replying almost immediately. “It’s the range. The absolute firepower—the instantaneous force—is maybe higher with the blue types.”

  “Mmm. Exactly. If, hypothetically, the attack had something like a damage meter attached, the Blue King, Blue Knight, would likely get a higher reading than Niko. So then, the true nature of Niko’s power is the long range. I suppose. Assuming a max of three thousand meters…”

  What? Three kilometers is just too—, Haruyuki was about to say, but then he stopped himself. Because although that was the distance from one edge of a normal duel field to the other, he actually th
ought Niko could probably shoot that far. He wiped away the cold sweat that sprang up on his forehead with the back of his hand and bobbed his head.

  “Which means even that girl couldn’t hit an enemy farther away than that. This is the reason I say the most powerful is not the ultimate. Don’t you think if the ultimate blue-type power is to cut through anything, then the ultimate red-type power is a shot that reaches anywhere?” Kuroyukihime grinned, and Haruyuki was at a loss for words for a moment.

  Blinking his eyes rapidly, he shook his head quickly from side to side and objected, “B-but, Kuroyukihime, that means, then, unlimited range…doesn’t it? Like, a bullet fired in the Unlimited Neutral Field in Tokyo would just keep going to Okinawa…sort of. That kind of power, I mean, serious firepower just doesn’t exist. I don’t think.”

  What if it does exist, though? Haruyuki broke out in a sweat once more, but fortunately, Kuroyukihime smiled again and laughed off the idea herself.

  “Ha-ha! It’s true—I don’t know of any avatar that incredible. But…the idea that a bullet fired by one’s own weapon could reach an enemy no matter how far away they are…In a certain sense, there was someone who expressed this ultimate ability in the Accelerated World.”

  Here, a moment of pain raced through Kuroyukihime’s eyes again, but drawn into the conversation as he was, before he noticed it, Haruyuki was already asking, “Wh-what do you mean? Not unlimited range, but reaching however far? I feel like that’s a contradiction.”

  “It’s simple. It’s like this. The weapon is yours, but someone else pulls the trigger. In that case, theoretically, you could shoot an enemy in Okinawa from Tokyo? You’d just have to entrust the weapon to someone in Tokyo and have them go to Okinawa.”

  “Th-that kind of cheat,” Haruyuki retorted, flapping his hands. “I mean, the weapon’s an Enhanced Armament, right? I don’t think you can really just hand those over to someone else so easily as that.”

  As far as Haruyuki knew, there were only four ways to obtain an Enhanced Armament: (1) initial equipment, (2) level-up bonus, (3) shop purchase, and (4) driving another Burst Linker to total point loss and taking the Armament from them; that was it. Even if (4) was out of the question, the other three were also fairly difficult. Buying it in the shop seemed easy, but since a powerful Enhanced Armament actually cost enough points for a player to go up an entire level, in a certain sense, buying it wasn’t all that different from sinking the points into a level-up bonus.

  “It’s just as you say, Haruyuki.” At some point, a tranquil expression had come across Kuroyukihime’s face, and she nodded gently. “However, there used to be a lone exception in the Accelerated World. The power to produce one’s own Enhanced Armament: the ability Arms Creation. The person who possessed this ability…was the first Red King, also known as Master Gunsmith, Red Rider.”

  The Legion meeting over the lunch break approximately four hours earlier had ended in confusion: Immediately after Fuko gave voice to the name Red Rider, Kuroyukihime had told all of them, “Give me a little time,” and brought the topic of the ISS kits to a close there. Then she and the others had discussed the main agenda item she’d called them together for: confirming their course of action for a Magenta Scissor raid at the school festival (though, that said, the plan was basically just to be on maximum alert at the Umesato festival on Sunday), and then the meeting had been abruptly called to a close.

  When they were about to leave, Fuko had sidled over to him and murmured, “June’s almost over, you know? ” but it was still clear the double-gun crest hidden on the ISS kits was seriously troubling her.

  During his afternoon classes, 10 percent or so of Haruyuki’s brain was occupied by the former Red King. He noted in his mind all the information he had ever heard about Red Rider, but the list was surprisingly short. His name, the fact that he had been the leader of Prominence before Niko, and the fact that three years earlier, he had been hit with Black Lotus’s sudden death technique, lost all his points, and been forever banished from the Accelerated World. That was basically all he knew.

  Even still, from the fact that his color name was crowned with red—the pure color itself—Haruyuki had vaguely assumed that he had boasted incredibly awesome long-range attack power: massive firepower exceeding even that of Niko in fortress mode. However, this ability of his that Kuroyukihime was now telling him about was far beyond anything Haruyuki had imagined.

  The power to produce Enhanced Armaments…

  “Arms Creation? Th-that means the power to make as many gun-type Enhanced Armaments as he wanted?” Haruyuki asked ever so timidly.

  “It wasn’t quite that impressive of an ability.” Kuroyukihime shook her head, a faint smile crossing her lips. “I remember him telling me that to forge just one gun required serious payment on his side. Although, of course, he didn’t tell me exactly what that payment was.”

  “Still, that’s an amazing ability. He could gradually enhance his Legion members with his own power.”

  “Indeed. In fact, there were plenty of Burst Linkers in Prominence at the time equipped with handguns and rifles made by Rider. Apparently, some even switched over from their own original Enhanced Armaments. For that alone, I suppose Rider would have been adored by his Legion members.” Kuroyukihime cut herself off there and turned her gaze on the evening scene on the other side of the window before continuing, almost in a murmur, “The guns he forged were all extremely accurate, you see. They gave us quite a bit of trouble in the Territories. About the only one who could shake free of the barrage of bullets and break through to the enemy was Fuko, equipped with Gale Thruster. The ICBM strategy, where she would fly in carrying Uiui and airdrop her into the enemy firing squad, was something we came up with out of necessity.”

  “I—I get it.” Nodding his agreement, he took another sip of milk tea before giving voice to the question that abruptly popped up in his mind. “But I mean, listening to this, it’s like Red Rider was really generous. He trusted the Legion members unconditionally, huh? I mean, there was the possibility that the Burst Linkers he gave the guns he made to would take them and transfer to some other Legion, right?”

  “Mmm. I suppose. It’s true Rider didn’t concern himself with the details; he was a thoroughly positive, passionate fellow. But it isn’t as though even he would hand out his weapons without any kind of safety whatsoever.”

  “Safety? What do you mean?”

  “Exactly what I said. All the guns Rider made were equipped with a safety modeled after the crossed guns crest you saw at lunch today. And he could lock that safety from a distance. Even after he handed the gun over to someone else, mmm? So supposing a Legion member were to switch Legions, gun and all, they would never be able to pull the trigger of that gun again.”

  “Whoa, this power just keeps getting more amazing,” Haruyuki groaned admiringly. “He couldn’t actually fire long distance, could he?”

  “It does appear that he indeed could not, and we kings used to roll our eyes at it.” Kuroyukihime smiled faintly. “If he’s going to activate a safety, then the power to recover the gun itself would be better. Rider would always say in response, ‘It’s not like I designed the ability, you know.’”

  Here, Kuroyukihime lifted her teacup and, without bringing it to her mouth, returned it to the saucer a few seconds later. She let out a thin sigh, head hanging, and murmured in an almost soundless voice, “Haruyuki…Is it all right if I come sit next to you?”

  “Huh?! Oh, uh, um, um.” His heart suddenly began to move at double speed, and he fell into a half-frozen state, unable to say yes or no.

  But without waiting for a reply, the older student, clad in black, stood up smoothly from the sofa. She went around the coffee table and soon sat down immediately to his left. A refreshing scent tickled his sense of smell, and a faint warmth that would have been impossible to re-create with avatars in the virtual world stroked the skin of his left arm.

  “There are social cameras in this room as well. But for this d
istance, no security’s going to come charging in.” As she whispered this, Kuroyukihime leaned her slender body against Haruyuki. Her arms, stretching out from her short-sleeved shirt, touched his own, and his mind raced. At this distance, he could hold in his feelings or he could leave zero distance between them—but he forced down the feelings quickly rising up within him.

  He knew instinctively what Kuroyukihime wanted. She was about to confess something very difficult, and during that confession, she wanted him to support her. In which case, as her child, as a Legion member, and as a male student who adored the vice president, he had to do what he had to do.

  “Kuroyukihime. I said this before, too, but…no matter what happens, I’ll always be right by your side,” Haruyuki said as if firming up his resolve.

  “Before?” Kuroyukihime cocked her head curiously, still extremely close to him. “When are we talking about?”

  “Huh? Uh, um.” Panicked, he replayed the movie of his memories and paused on a certain scene. He had definitely said almost the exact same thing immediately after sitting down on this sofa— “Ah! I-I’m sorry! I didn’t so much say it as just think it in my head.”

  It was one thing to get mixed up with a neurospeak voice-directing, but something was wrong with him mistaking speaking for a simple thought. Haruyuki was thoroughly embarrassed.

  “Honestly.” A slender finger reached out abruptly and poked his cheek. “You never change. It’s basically all right if you stay like this, but next time, make sure to communicate these kinds of thoughts in words. Out loud.”

  “R-right. I will.”

  “Mmm. Please do.” She nodded primly and pulled her finger away from Haruyuki’s check, tucking it back into her hand before taking a deep breath and speaking somewhat abruptly. “Summer three years ago. I was in grade six. If we cut straight to the reason I sliced off Red Rider’s head with an Incarnate-enhanced special attack, it’s…it’s directly connected with Rider’s abilities Arms Creation and Distance Safety.”