The Asterisk War, Vol. 8: Idol Showdown

by Yuu Miyazaki

  They could hear Ayato absorbed in practice inside the principal dojo of the Amagiri Shinmei style. Saya could count on a single hand the number of times she and Ayato had fought, and after each and every one of them, he had secluded himself inside that building.

  “I guess he isn’t in a good mood, either. His center of gravity is off.”

  The fact that Haruka could tell that through sound alone never failed to impress Saya.

  Standing there, her hand on her waist, she’d looked less like Ayato’s elder sister, and more like a confident dojo instructor.

  “So what happened?” she’d asked, her usual, gentle smile at once coming back.

  “…He wanted to know why I hadn’t told him. That we’re moving away.”

  “Ah, I see.” Haruka had nodded in understanding.

  She’d seemed to already know.

  “I didn’t say anything to him because I thought it would be better for him to hear it directly from you. But I guess he found out on his own first.”

  “…Yeah.”

  “So why didn’t you tell him?”

  Saya had looked away in embarrassment at the characteristically blunt question but answered honestly: “I thought that if I told him…he’d definitely worry about me.”

  “…Well, that’s the kind of person he is.”

  “I just wanted things to stay the way they were.”

  That was all that she had wanted. She couldn’t understand why Ayato had reacted the way he did.

  “I see… You’re always too thoughtful, Saya,” Haruka had said, pulling her close in a tight embrace.

  “…Haruka, I can’t breathe.”

  “Ah, sorry… You know, Saya, I understand how you feel, but I don’t think it would have worked out.”

  “Why not?” Saya had asked, confused.

  Haruka had reached out to stroke Saya’s head. “Even if Ayato had kept on acting normally, it still would have been different for you, wouldn’t it? Were you able to play with him like you normally do, keeping it all to yourself?”

  Saya had slowly shaken her head.

  “Right? There are things you should keep to yourself—and things you shouldn’t, but if it’s someone like Ayato, it’s best to say it all up-front, don’t you think? That doesn’t mean it would have gone well. But at least you wouldn’t have regretted it so much afterward, would you?”

  “…I don’t know,” Saya had replied sullenly.

  Haruka had let out an awkward laugh. “Well, that’s that, I guess. Why don’t you go and make up with him? You wouldn’t want to leave without first having set things right, would you?”

  “…No.” Saya had shaken her head in agreement.

  “It’s best to be honest. And it just so happens that I’ve got a secret weapon for you. It will definitely help.”

  “…Thank you, Haru.”

  Saya had bowed her head in gratitude for the two ice cream bars and then ran off toward the dojo.

  “Saya,” Ayato called out as he shook her shoulders. “Saya, wake up. The commander’s here.”

  “Ngh…?” Finally, his childhood friend awoke from her restful sleep, rubbing at tired eyes as she glanced at her surroundings. “…Where am I?”

  “The headquarters of the city guard.”

  “The city guard…?” Saya remained motionless for a long moment, as if frozen in place, before finally clapping her hands together in realization. “Ah, right.”

  Stjarnagarm’s headquarters was located almost in the center of the administrative area, right next to City Hall.

  Looked at from outside, the building was unremarkable, but to those who knew what to identify, the austere atmosphere reflected the police force’s supreme confidence in their abilities.

  After all, the city guard had to deal with students from Asterisk’s six schools. They would have little hope of being able to carry out their job if they weren’t sufficiently skilled. Indeed, many members of Stjarnagarm were former students themselves—the most noteworthy among them former Page Ones.

  It was in a room deep in the organization’s headquarters—a simple room, outfitted only with a businesslike desk, chairs, and a sofa—that Ayato and Saya had been waiting for Helga Lindwall.

  “So you’re finally awake?” she asked as she took a seat across from them. “Let me start by apologizing for the delay. My interview with Team Rusalka went on for longer than I had expected.”

  “No, it’s all right…,” Saya replied.

  The night sky could be seen outside the window, and in the distance, the dazzling lights of the commercial area—a stark contrast to the peaceful quietude of the administrative one.

  “It sounds like you two just managed to get caught up in the middle of that fight in the redevelopment area. It shouldn’t be a problem for either of you.”

  “That’s good…,” Saya said softly.

  Ayato had expected as much as well, but hearing it officially was a great relief. The last thing he wanted was to cause any difficulties for his other team members.

  “…But what about them?”

  “Team Rusalka and Team Hellion will have to face some kind of disciplinary action, but I doubt it will be too severe.” Based on her tone of voice, Helga didn’t seem particularly satisfied by that state of affairs.

  Any punitive measures issued in relation to the Festa were at the sole discretion of the Executive Committee. Stjarnagarm’s role was only to oversee their implementation—not to issue any sentences themselves. Ayato could only imagine what Helga would have to say about that.

  The commander, it seemed, had guessed what he was thinking. “Of course, I would prefer a more severe punishment—especially for a team as dangerous as Hellion. However, I need to abide by the city’s rules. Although this mercenary system is—” She stopped herself there, shaking her head. “No, I shouldn’t get off topic. Let’s return to the issue at hand. You’ve no doubt realized this already, but that place where you managed to wind up used to be where the Eclipse was held.”

  “…So I was right,” Saya murmured.

  Ayato had guessed as much when they’d found Saya and Miluše, but he hadn’t given it much thought.

  After all, they’d had a busy evening. Shortly after Ayato and the four members of Rusalka contacted the city guard, Helga had come to meet them along with several other officers, and one had been able to use their seeking abilities to locate the two girls almost immediately. No sooner had they found them down there than they were all rushed back up to the surface and taken straight to the city guard’s headquarters. There hadn’t been much time to really think about it.

  Now that he had heard it directly from the person who had brought the illegal tournament to an end, however, there could be no doubting it.

  “To begin with, that place is in the lowest levels of the city’s superstructure, at the bottom of the ballast area—in other words, underwater.”

  “The ballast area…?” Hearing this, Saya’s eyes opened wide in surprise.

  If one thought about it, however, there was probably no better hiding place anywhere in the city. Ayato himself had once entered the ballast area—albeit unintentionally—and so knew just how impossible it would be to find anything down there.

  “There are three different types of entrances,” Helga continued. “Those for the audience, those for the organizers, and those for the contestants. There are six of these last ones, each connected directly to the stage. They can only be accessed through hidden passages in the underground blocks, like the one you found.”

  “…But someone must have opened that door before us. That’s how we found it.”

  “Yes…” Helga took a deep breath, her posture seeming to shed some of its usual dignity. “Well, there’s no point hiding it. That was Le Wolfe’s mercenaries…Team Hellion.”

  “They were there?” Saya frowned in discomfort.

  “They didn’t try to hide it when we interviewed them. They said that they just went to take a look and then left.”
>
  “…They went to take a look? Why?”

  “Their boss at HRMS, Liberio Pareto, was a winner of the Lindvolus, but he also took part in the Eclipse. We’ve had several people testify to that over the years. He’s pretty recognizable, after all. And was quite a handful for us, too.” Her tone was bitter, no doubt just like her memories from that time. “Scheming isn’t his style, but he’s unusually charismatic, and it sounds like those mercenaries in Hellion are completely devoted to him. It was probably a kind of pilgrimage for them.”

  “But in that case…how did they get out?” Saya asked.

  According to Saya, the elevator closed behind them automatically, and they hadn’t been able to use it to get back to the surface.

  “Those elevators are a one-way ride. Only the winners were allowed to come back… But I’ve heard that certain participants, like Liberio, were given special ID cards so they could use them whenever they liked. They probably had one of them.”

  “Can I ask a question?” Ayato asked. There was something that had been bothering him for a while now. “The Eclipse has been brought to an end, right? Then why is that place still there? And why are the elevators and lights and everything still working?”

  At this, Helga’s normally stolid expression grew clouded. Her next words were uncharacteristically tinged with emotion. “Do you remember what I told you a while back, that our investigation into Danilo was brought to a halt under pressure from the foundations? The Eclipse is the worst example of that. We received a request—meaning an order—not to lay so much as a hand on that arena. We haven’t even been able to bring back a single piece of evidence.”

  Before Helga had finished speaking, Ayato noticed Saya, sitting beside him, visibly stiffen.

  “What is it?” Helga, who noticed it as well, turned toward her sharply.

  “…It’s nothing,” Saya replied, feigning ignorance.

  Helga continued to stare at her for a long moment, clearly seeing through the lie, but then shook her head before taking a deep breath. “Very well. There was a protective field installed to prevent people from entering the elevator, but Team Hellion must have broken it on their way in.”

  “There wasn’t anything like that when we were there.”

  There was no questioning Team Hellion’s strength. Ayato had his doubts whether even a protective field like what Ardy had used would have been able to stop them.

  “Well, that’s all I can say. Do you have any other questions?”

  “No, I’m fine,” Ayato answered.

  “…Me too,” Saya added.

  Helga nodded, standing up. “My apologies again for taking up so much of your time, especially in the middle of the Festa, but this is our job. Don’t take it the wrong way.” She stepped toward the door before glancing back. “Oh, I can have someone take you back to Seidoukan, if you like.”

  “There’s no need,” Saya answered flatly before Ayato could have a chance to accept.

  With that, she bowed politely to the commander, then took Ayato by the hand and began to lead him away.

  “S-Saya…?”

  “Come with me.”

  Saya all but dragged him down the dull corridor. When he glanced behind him, Helga was watching them go with an amused smile.

  “Phew… We should be able to talk now,” Saya stated, finally coming to a stop at the side of a dark street. They’d put a considerable distance between themselves and the headquarters.

  They were still in the administrative area, but there were few buildings with any lights on. The hour being what it was, the streets were practically deserted.

  Even so, Saya made sure to carefully check their surroundings before turning to face him.

  “Ayato, here,” she whispered, pulling a handkerchief-wrapped item from her breast pocket.

  “What is it?”

  It was surprisingly light. No sooner had he put his hand around it than a shock like an electric current coursed through his body.

  He slowly unfolded the handkerchief and caught his breath.

  “I found them down there,” he heard Saya say as if from some great distance.

  The lenses were broken and the frame twisted out of shape, but there was no mistaking that these glasses had belonged to his elder sister, Haruka Amagiri.

  “I didn’t want to tell the commander. She said they couldn’t take anything back.”

  “Ah, right…”

  Based on how she had acted, however, she had probably guessed that Saya had taken something.

  But even so…

  “…Thank you, Saya,” he whispered.

  “Don’t worry about it,” she replied with a bashful smile.

  It was the fourth round of the Gryps.

  “Haah!”

  The young man whose hair was done up in a queue caused a small crater to erupt in the middle of the stage as his openhanded strike missed Ayato by only a fraction of an inch.

  He might have dodged that blow, but within a split second, a short-statured girl with braided hair attacked from the right with her elbow. He swung the Ser Veresta with one hand to try to block her, but he was too late.

  “Ngh…!”

  He concentrated his prana on his abdomen to lessen the effects of the strike, grabbing her by the arm and flinging her across the stage.

  The move was the opening part of one of the Amagiri Shinmei style’s grappling techniques, but the man with the queue launched another attack at the same time. Ayato was forced to interrupt the technique before he could finish, letting the girl land safely some distance away.

  These two always kept Ayato at a distance, attacking out of nowhere with minimal movements. Striking at those areas where its user was weakest in maneuvering was one of the most common ways of countering the Ser Veresta, but such a strategy nonetheless required a consummate degree of skill.

  “Jie Long isn’t just the Ban’yuu Tenra’s disciples!” the girl boasted with unyielding determination.

  Team Taotie consisted of representative members from several schools of martial arts independent of the Ban’yuu Tenra, and while there were no Page Ones among them, they were all in Jie Long’s top twenty.

  That said, Ayato had already known what to expect, and he’d only found himself cornered like this due to the abilities of Team Taotie’s leader, a young man with unsettlingly large eyes.

  “That’s right!” a voice behind him said with a burst of laughter. “And Jie Long’s Dantes aren’t all daoshi!”

  Ayato could all but feel a thirst for blood emanating from behind, and he quickly leaped out of the way.

  At that instant, the gaping maw of some terrible beast shot through the area where he’d been standing—its jaws clamping shut like a giant bear trap. It dissipated almost immediately, but because its user was able to summon it without any warning, and because even his shiki senses were little help detecting it, Ayato was unable to fully concentrate on the two people before him.

  No sooner had he touched the ground than the young man with the queue and the girl rushed toward him, and then the beast’s head began to emerge once again at his feet. Its piercing fangs had been waiting for him even before he could attempt to dodge. His other two opponents, fully aware of his blunder, flowed right into their next moves.

  The team leader wasn’t as versatile as Jie Long’s daoshi and probably specialized in just this unique ability. That was the only explanation Ayato could think of to explain how he was able to use it so quickly.

  Ayato, trying to dodge the three-pronged attack, lost his balance, striking his head again and again as he rolled across the ground.

  “All right! This is it! First, we’ll bring down the Murakumo, and then… What?!” the team leader cut off mid-sentence as his eyes opened even more in shock.

  “…Our turn.” Ayato leaped up with a grin.

  The leader with large eyes had been keeping Julis and Saya in check with his ability until just a short moment ago, while the two members of his team’s vanguard protected him
from Kirin and Claudia. The fact that they had been able to do this much, even if not for long, was a testament to their skills and teamwork.

  However, just as Ayato had suspected—and indeed, lured them into—they had focused too much on taking him down.

  And now—

  “Hah!”

  “You’re mine now!”

  Kirin and Claudia had taken advantage of that opening to take down their opponents, slicing clean through their school crests.

  “D-damn it…!”

  The two girls had been superior in one-on-one combat to Team Taotie’s vanguard from the very beginning, and because they had focused not on winning but merely on keeping their opponents on their toes, those opponents, without support from their team leader, had been unable to defend themselves against the intensified attack.

  “Now, Ayato!” Julis called out as she used her Rect Lux to distract the pair attacking him.

  “Glühen Rose…!” the girl growled in vexation, but with Julis’s Rect Lux attacking from every angle, she had no choice but to let Ayato go.

  “Thanks, Julis!”

  Ayato took full advantage of the opening, quickly shortening the distance between himself and Team Taotie’s leader.

  “It’s not over yet!” the leader grunted, the huge beast’s head manifesting in front of him, when—

  “…Boom.”

  An explosion of pure light from Saya’s Helnekraum engulfed it in flames.

  “Argh!” the leader grunted, but he still wasn’t going to give up.

  Though smaller than the ones he’d faced up till now, the heads of seven more beasts appeared all at once around Ayato.

  “Amagiri Shinmei Style, Middle Technique—Defilement of the Night!”

  Ayato grasped the Ser Veresta in both hands, twisting his body as he ran straight through them in a flash.

  “I-impossible…!” The man gaped, his eyes bulging.

  But in a single stroke, Ayato had already cut through not only the seven heads, but the team leader’s own school crest.

  “End of battle! Winners: Team Enfield!”

  Ayato heaved a sigh of relief as the automated announcement sounded throughout the arena.