The Twilight Marauder

by Reki Kawahara

  “Y-you should’ve told me that before! And what are we supposed to do if a super big one shows up?”

  “Run away crying, obviously.”

  Haruyuki sighed beneath his silver mask, shook his head quickly, and changed the subject. “So why did you call me out here, then? Did you want to finish the duel or something?”

  “You stupid? Even if I did beat you and get the ten points, diving here takes ten points. Never get nowhere like that.”

  Haruyuki stopped himself from pointing out that that was a double negative and contented himself with spreading his hands questioningly. “Then why?”

  “Just get on,” came the cool reply, and his jaw dropped to the ground.

  “…Huh?”

  “I said, get on, man. Grab a lid— Oh, guess you don’t need one.” Laughing, he put his thumb up behind his back, so Haruyuki, apparently an idiot for being on guard for a trap, straddled the seat in an unaccustomed motion.

  “All right. Hold on tight. My pretty baby here accelerates like a monster!!”

  Around the “like,” he was already opening up the throttle, front wheel bouncing up high, and Haruyuki came very close to falling off the back. He hurriedly propped his body up with both hands, and the night-black bike tore out due east on Inogashira Street toward the city center, howling throatily.

  “Unh…whoa!” he shouted, unable to stand the pressure of the wind hitting his face and the acceleration that made his whole body creak.

  The roar of the engine grew louder, and every time he thought they were at top speed, a boot would kick hard at the pedal, and the higher gear would pull them ever faster. The reddish-brown road surface melted into countless flow lines, and the rocks approaching from the front screamed past, one after another.

  “Isn’t…this…too fast…!” He half yelped this complaint, but the answer that came back to him was laid-back to the extreme.

  “What? Idiot. This isn’t even half of what you do flying up there.”

  “B-but the bike is—”

  Haruyuki had never even been on an electric scooter in the real world. Naturally, when it came to automobiles, he had ridden in the car his parents had before the divorce and in taxis, but electric cars didn’t make any engine noise, and you obviously didn’t feel the wind.

  But this old-style motorbike was a polygon object in a virtual world, a totally different beast than modern machines prioritizing energy efficiency and safety. It was completely incredible that things like this had run wild on public roads in the real world until a mere twenty years ago. Except for a helmet, the rider’s body was completely exposed, and the rider just sat there with no seat belt or air bags or anything.

  “H-how fast can this thing go?!” Haruyuki shouted, since he was unable to see the gauge from his position, and once again, the response was unhurried.

  “It’s no racer, so it can only do like two hundred.”

  “T-two hund…”

  If there was an accident, we’d be sooooooooo dead! Haruyuki freaked out in his head, before suddenly, sharply getting it.

  That was the kind of vehicle it was. This machine wasn’t for anything other than speed. The engine racing, unsparing in its explosive use of precious fossil fuels; the complex transmission; the desperately fat tires; all of it was designed and assembled for the sole purpose of going fast. The beast existed, as it were, as an unqualified manifestation of the desire for speed. A machine created by human beings without wings, creatures who sought only to go a little faster, faster, faster, as if fighting against their fate of living glued to the earth.

  Haruyuki forgot his fear and tossed his head back to look up at the pale yellow sky with wide-open eyes. There, the silhouettes of pterosaur-like Enemies soared together in a small herd.

  I—I didn’t understand anything about the meaning of the power that was the wings I was given. A tool to fight, an advantage to win, that’s how I always thought of them. But those silver wings aren’t some special attack I got through leveling up, and they’re not some Enhanced Armament I bought with my points. They’re supposed to be the true nature of the avatar Silver Crow, an avatar my own heart created. They’re supposed to be my salvation, my desire, my hope. It’s because I forgot that…Because I only saw them as a tool…I know it’s because of that, that he could take them from me so easily. And now…Right now I’d—

  Realize how precious they are.

  Haruyuki desperately swallowed the howl in his throat before Ash Roller noticed anything was up. He was no longer afraid of two hundred kilometers an hour. On the contrary, he even felt like the engine roaring diligently below him was a very industrious and reliable thing.

  The bike went around to the south from Inogashira Street, avoiding the heart of the city, and then headed east once again. Around the time they entered Minato Ward, Haruyuki finally asked the question he should have asked right at the start.

  “Um…exactly where are we going?”

  “Can see it now. That.”

  Letting his eyes follow the abrupt jerk of Ash’s helmet, Haruyuki saw a stretch of huge, rough rocks and a hazy, long, and thin silhouette at their end. Probably a steep, rocky mountain—no: it was already a tower, drawing a perfectly perpendicular line up from the ground to reach into the distant sky.

  Haruyuki took a few seconds to go over his mental map of southern Tokyo, wondering if there was a building like that in the place corresponding to that spot in the real world, and finally arrived at the answer.

  “Huh? I-is that the old Tokyo Tower…?”

  “Very yes!”

  Ignoring the very dubiousness of the English that Ash Roller fired back, Haruyuki picked through his hazy knowledge of the landmark.

  Tokyo Tower, in Minato Ward’s Shiba Park, used to send out TV signals throughout the capital city area but had ceded that role to Tokyo Skytree in Oshiage, Sumida Ward, more than thirty years earlier. After that, it had continued operation for a long time as a viewing platform, but skyscrapers easily surpassing the tower’s 333 meters were built in rapid succession all over Tokyo, so its role as a tourist spot also finally ended at the beginning of 2030. At present, the elevator no longer ran, and the building was preserved as a historical relic into which entry was prohibited.

  The former Tokyo Tower—the spire he stared at as they drew nearer with every passing second—existed as bare rock in the Unlimited Neutral Field, seemingly with no internal structure. There was nothing other than the three-hundred-meter stone pillar soaring above the wasteland.

  “Wh-what is there in a place like that?” he asked, stunned, and Ash Roller, uncharacteristically, started mumbling vaguely.

  “Yeah, well, it’s…Right. There’s a person I want you to meet.”

  “A person…?”

  Not a guy or a jerk or an SOB?

  “Yeah. Uh, to be honest, it’s my parent.”

  “P-pardon?!” Haruyuki shouted, shocked to his core. “Y-your parent…?! Then that means…He’s even more incredible than you? Like beard, sunglasses, leather vest, tattooed, beer belly—”

  “Just what do you think I am anyway?” he growled, sending a shiver up Haruyuki’s back for some reason. “Just so you know, if you face ’er and run off at the mouth like that, you’re gonna seriously regret it. Been a while since she stepped back from the duel frontline, so you prob’ly don’t know, buuut…Way back in the day, she used to freak people out. People called her ‘Iron Arms,’ ‘ICBM,’ stuff like thaaat.”

  “Oh, ICBM…?” Haruyuki parroted back Ash Roller’s words, the ends of which were getting weird, perhaps out of fear.

  “Totallyyy. Oh, and one more…Had the nickname ‘Icarus.’”

  “Th-that doesn’t sound so scary as all that.”

  “Well, you know. Started calling her that after she retired, I guess. She’s, well…Until you showed up, she was the Burst Linker who got closest to the sky in the accelerated world.”

  Haruyuki gasped sharply, and at basically the same time, the motorcycle stoppe
d in a cloud of dust.

  In front of them, the stone pillar rose up maybe twenty meters in diameter from the rufous, dried earth, so perpendicular it could have been used as a triangle ruler. Nearly a perfect circular cylinder, there was, as expected, nothing like stairs or an entrance anywhere. Maybe because the old Tokyo Tower was off limits in the real world, it was reproduced in a form like this.

  Haruyuki looked at their surroundings and wondered just where this “ICBM,” aka Icarus, was, but the only thing that stopped his eyes was a stone turtle-like silhouette, moving slowly in the distance.

  It can’t be, he thought, but he asked anyway. “Ummm…so is that her?”

  “Idiot. That’s an Enemy. I’m just waiting for the wind to stop.”

  “W-wind?” He hadn’t noticed while the motorbike was racing along, but now that Ash mentioned it, there was indeed a strong wind gusting, a result of the Wasteland stage terrain. But it wasn’t as though they were in the middle of a duel, so why would he—

  The instant this thought entered his head, the howling of the ceaseless wind stopped abruptly.

  “All right! Let’s go! Hold me tight!”

  Initially baffled by Ash Roller’s sudden shouting, Haruyuki soon grasped the meaning of his instruction.

  The front wheel of the bike, throttle wide open, jumped up, and Haruyuki reflexively wrapped his arms around the avatar’s torso. While the engine emitted a high-pitched whine and the rear wheel kicked up gravel, the front wheel slammed up against the vertical stone wall, and Haruyuki barely had time to wonder at what was happening.

  The massive American motorcycle, with pair onboard, started to climb straight up the towering precipice.

  “Whoa…whooooaaaa?!” Screaming absurdly, endlessly in his heart, Haruyuki had a vivid premonition of the bike flipping over and falling back, upside down.

  However, the bike rode up the vertical pillar without even wobbling, almost as if some mysterious gravity were at work to keep the tires glued to the wall. After five seconds or so, he finally understood and allowed himself to relax.

  This was Ash Roller’s wall-climbing ability. Now that he thought about it, he had seen this bike run freely along a building’s walls more than a few times during duels. But he hadn’t known it could climb for long periods like this, with no approach run. Put another way, Ash Roller was right now casually revealing the upper limits of his own abilities to Haruyuki, a member of an enemy Legion. But unable to ferret out Ash’s true intentions, Haruyuki simply held his breath and stared at the peak of the spire.

  Obviously, the bike couldn’t manage the same speed as it had on the ground, but it still climbed forcefully in a low gear. Glancing down, Haruyuki saw that the earth was already so dim in the distance that it looked like it was a different color.

  Flying with his wings, this height would have likely been no big deal, but now, his stomach tightened sharply and he hastily brought his eyes back to face forward. The top of the spire finally coming into view seemed to have been cut flat, and the edge traced a beautiful arc in the yellow sky.

  When they were about ten seconds or so away from arriving at that arc, he felt a wall of air about to rush at them from the left.

  “Shit! Wind! Shiiiiit!” Cursing, Ash Roller turned the handlebars and shifted the motorcycle’s trajectory to the left. The squall that blew in seconds later sideswiped the bike mercilessly.

  “Fly hiiiiigh!!”

  “Aaaaaaaaaah!!”

  On top of the bike shooting up vertically, riding the wind, Haruyuki and Ash Roller paddled the air, a crawl stroke in the sky. Perhaps because of their efforts, they made it to the peak in a parabola, steadily sliding to the side as they came down. Then, the rear tire of the falling bike landed solidly, about five centimeters from the edge of the top of the tower.

  “I-I-I-I-I am never riding this thing again! I’m never getting on anything that doesn’t have at least four tires again!!” Haruyuki moaned, tumbling from the seat and pressing hands and feet against hard stone.

  Ash Roller, however, still straddled the motorcycle, waving the index finger of his right hand in annoyance. “You don’t get it at all. It’s fun because the bike could fall over, man.”

  “That back there wasn’t about falling over!!” Haruyuki shouted, shoulders heaving, and shook his head before finally taking a look around.

  The summit of the stone pillar/old Tokyo Tower in the real world was a circular space with the exact same twenty-meter diameter as the bottom. But it looked completely different from the world below.

  The words heavenly garden popped up in the back of his mind. A soft lawn shone greenly over the entire area, a small spring in the center. The shimmering water there was clearer than anything he had ever seen.

  In the center of the spring drifted a small floating island—and on top of this, Haruyuki saw something unexpected.

  An elliptical blue light turning slowly, shimmering like a mirage. A portal. The sole means of returning to the real world of your own volition from this Unlimited Neutral Field.

  He was surprised there would be one in a place like this; the majority of portals were located in landmark-type buildings like large train stations and tourist attractions. In which case, maybe it wasn’t so strange for there to be one in the old Tokyo Tower. But it seemed like only people who could scale vertical walls like Ash Roller, or people who could fly like Silver Crow used to, could use one way up here.

  He brought his gaze back, cocking his head to one side, and saw another unexpected something on the opposite side of the garden.

  A house.

  The adorable toy-size house was surrounded by countless flowering plants and stood quite quietly. The walls were painted pure white, and the pointed roof was a deep green. It matched the green of the ivy crawling up the walls, and the sight was so beautiful it could have been mistaken for a page from a picture book.

  As he stared attentively, no words escaping him, the door of the house abruptly opened with a light creak. Next to him, Ash Roller leapt off his bike and stood at attention.

  So then the person coming out was likely Ash Roller’s “parent.” Probably a macho Hells Angels type in leather pants. The house was a bit of a mismatch, but Haruyuki wouldn’t be surprised if an enormous Harley came growling out that door. He braced himself for anything.

  But, in the end, he couldn’t begin to prepare himself for the situation he found himself in.

  What came rolling out, creaking as it did, was indeed a two-wheeled vehicle. But rather than front to back, the wheels were side by side. The spokes were extremely thin silver lines, and the tires were also silver, perhaps a centimeter wide, rather than rubber. On this vehicle was a slender chair, also knitted from silver wire.

  A wheelchair. The total opposite of an American bike, with no engine, no muffler. And the person sitting there was about ten thousand light years away from the image in Haruyuki’s mind.

  There was no doubt that it was a duel avatar. The arms resting in her lap were tinged with a smooth, hard blue brilliance, and the lower jaw of the downward-pointing face was in the shape of a sharp mask. He couldn’t see any more of the face because of the wide-brimmed hat the avatar was wearing. Not the witchlike pointy hat of Chiyuri’s avatar, Lime Bell, but a pure white bonnet. The body was also wrapped in a dress the same white.

  …Huh? So it is a girl?

  As if to give an affirmative answer to Haruyuki’s surprise, the stirring wind caused the long hair beneath the hat to flap. The straight, waist-length hair was a sky blue so clear it could suck you in—the color of a clear fall sky.

  The wheels creaked once again, and the wheelchair started to advance slowly. And yet both of the avatar’s hands stayed as they were folded up on her lap. Apparently, the wheelchair was equipped with some kind of self-propelling mechanism.

  The wheelchair rode smoothly forward, approaching them via the same brick path that circled the spring in the center of the lawn. The avatar stopped about two meters away from Haru
yuki and Ash Roller and lifted her hat gently, revealing her face. Haruyuki stood stock-still and stared at the visage, unable to believe he was looking upon the parent to Century End rider Ash Roller.

  Her face was the kind often seen on female-type duel avatars, a mask fitted with nothing more than lens-type eyes. But Haruyuki felt like this face, without nose or mouth, was more beautiful than similar avatars he had seen so far. The avatar looked straight at Haruyuki and then Ash Roller, date-shaped eyes glittering a pale red against glowing, pale blue skin.

  “It’s been a while, Ash. I’m happy to see you haven’t forgotten me yet.”

  “I-it has been a while, Master. A-a-as if I could forget you.”

  Unfortunately, Haruyuki did not get the chance to retort, Shouldn’t that be “mega” ages, to Ash Roller while he bowed respectfully. The sky-blue avatar turned her intense gaze back to Haruyuki.

  “So you’re Silver Crow.”

  The calm voice was like a gentle breeze, and Haruyuki also felt keenly compelled to lower his head deeply for some reason. “Y-yes. Nice to meet you. I’m Silver Crow.”

  “A pleasure. My name is Sky Raker. Glad to meet you, too, Corvus.”

  Feeling her gaze flicker up to his shoulders, Haruyuki shrank into himself abruptly. From the tone of her voice, she seemed to know about Silver Crow, but the silver wings—the ability to fly—that this name was so known for in the accelerated world were no longer upon his back.

  Avoiding Sky Raker’s gentle gaze that somehow seemed to penetrate into his mind, Haruyuki cast his eyes down to the ground. But after a short silence, he threw his head back up, forgetting his shyness, when he heard Ash Roller.

  “Um…okay then, Master. I—I’ll be on my way now.”

  “Wh-what?!” Haruyuki pressed the skull-helmeted rider turning to return to his bike. “Y-you’re leaving?! Wh-wh-what am I supposed to do?!”

  “How should I know?”

  “How should you know? You’re the one who brought me here!!”

  “’Cause you were all wah wah, boohoo, whine whine. Total mess, I shouldn’t have even bothered to get out my missiles. And after I worked so hard to get them…,” Ash Roller grumbled, scuffing the bottoms of his boots against the stone paving as if he were trying to get off dirt that wasn’t there, but then changed his tone abruptly and said, “Look, Crow. I don’t know how you lost your wings, but right now, you’re prob’ly thinking, ‘Can’t fly, can’t win, no point in fighting.’ But, man…you know how many Burst Linkers there are in the accelerated world who can’t fly no matter how badly they want to? You ever thought about that?”