The Red Storm Princess

by Reki Kawahara

  “Friend…You’re really a hardcore idiot. Well, you do what you want,” Niko muttered after a brief moment of speechlessness, as if dazed, and then took another step forward.

  The Red King stretched her right arm out straight ahead, jabbed a fingertip at the Yellow King standing at the western edge of the crater, and shouted, “Yellow Radio! That special-attack gauge you so diligently charged up before making your awesome appearance is totally empty! Now it’s my turn to pay you back. Don’t forget, if I take you out, you get banished forever, right there on the spot!!”

  As if overawed, the Yellow King’s clown avatar retreated a half step.

  Niko responded with another step forward and threw her arms open. “Come! Enhanced Armament!!”

  An inferno raged suddenly, and the avatar engulfed by it floated up gently. From the surrounding sky, armament containers covered in flames sprang up one after another and began converging on the girl from all sides. The shoulder missile pods, the thick armor skirt, the thrusters on her back—and the terrifyingly huge main weapons in place of her arms.

  Finally displaying the true form implied by her second name, Immobile Fortress, the Red King Scarlet Rain struck the center of the crater with a heavy, rumbling shock, and white gas plumed from her entire body.

  The collective discomposure of the thirty avatars surrounding them was clear even to Haruyuki. Because the Yellow Legion had their headquarters on the east side of Tokyo, they didn’t have many chances for contact with the Red Legion, which ruled Nerima and Nakano in the west. The majority had never even watched a battle with Niko in the gallery, much less fought her directly themselves. The enormity of Scarlet Rain’s true form, so large that she could barely be called a duel avatar, struck them dumb. The same way it had struck Haruyuki the day before yesterday.

  The sound of Niko’s quiet voice, with strong effects applied, reached Haruyuki, who was holding his breath anxiously. “Hey, Silver Crow. Sorry, but you just take care of any close-range opponents sticking to my butt.”

  “G-got it. But…Kuroyukihime…”

  “These jerks won’t touch the girl. Not until they take me down, anyway. If I get done in, don’t sweat it, fly out of here with Lotus.”

  Done in—In this situation, that meant the forced uninstallation of Niko’s Brain Burst.

  Before Haruyuki could say anything in response, the Yellow King looked down on them from on high and cried out even more venomously, “There is no need to fear! That thing is just a fixed fort; if you glue yourself to her, she’s simply a lump of steel!”

  He threw his right hand up. “Close-range team, you’re up! Long-distance team, support! Now go!!”

  His arm flashed with yellow reflections as he brought it down, and the roar of a war cry rang out as fifteen or so duel avatars surged forward as one from the outer edge of the crater.

  As if acting in concert, the missile pods on Niko’s shoulders deployed with a crisp metallic clack. Dozens of seeker heads poking out shone red and fired, leaving a trail of white smoke.

  Fanning out into a semicircle, the missiles flew straight up before spreading out and raining down on the enemy duel avatars on the ground. Some pulled up in a dash, others tried to drop into defensive postures, and the force of the charge slackened.

  Scarlet Rain immediately sighted two standing frozen with the main weapons of her arms. The ruby-colored heat beam these weapons released with shrill resonance swallowed the unfortunate Burst Linkers whole. The lump of energy briefly swelled into a sphere before quickly destabilizing into a fierce explosion.

  The denotation erupted into a pillar of fire, and light the same color as each of the avatar’s armors rose into the sky. Their HP gauges were blown away, disassembled, annihilated.

  One shot! Haruyuki shuddered. At the same time, he thought, If that’s how this is…then maybe.

  However, the long-distance avatars had finished recharging and launched a bombardment from outside the crater. Given Scarlet Rain’s enormous size and immobility, there was no way they could miss, and every shot was absorbed by the crimson fortress.

  Explosions bloomed all over her body, but the Red King didn’t even flinch. In response, she turned toward the crest of the crater and began unloading on them with her four machine guns.

  Her only answer to the long-distance attacks at the moment was to endure. Haruyuki clenched his teeth tightly and laid Kuroyukihime’s avatar down.

  Niko had said that a Burst Linker couldn’t move until she healed the wounds in her heart. This was something Haruyuki was familiar with.

  Three months earlier, back around the time when he had just learned about the existence of the Accelerated World, Haruyuki had fought his good friend Takumu—Cyan Pile—to protect Kuroyukihime. And he had been beaten horribly, swallowed up by his own insignificance and helplessness, and ended up not even being able to stand next to the unconscious Kuroyukihime’s avatar.

  If, at that time, he hadn’t heard Kuroyukihime’s voice—either a hallucination or she had actually communicated with him—Haruyuki probably wouldn’t have been able to fight again. The hidden potential of Silver Crow—the ability to fly—would not have awakened, and he would have lost everything.

  So now, Haruyuki did not feel despair or even anger at Kuroyukihime’s inability to move.

  He was sad. He didn’t know why, but he couldn’t help feeling sad.

  Closing his eyes tightly, Haruyuki removed his hand from the ebon avatar and stood up. He started running in a straight line. In his sights was a close-range avatar trying to get onto Niko’s back. It was olive green in color, and the tips of its ridiculously long and thick arms were U-shaped metal.

  Seeing Haruyuki en route, his opponent gave a guttural howl. “Shoo, small fry!” It turned the U of its left arm toward Haruyuki and continued shouting.

  “Magnetron Waaaaave!”

  As the avatar uttered its technique, purple lightning gushed out and captured Haruyuki. However, rather than being damaged, Silver Crow’s slim avatar was yanked up by an incredible force and snapped onto the U with a harsh clanking.

  “Hee-hee! Metal colors get sucked in so nicely!” Olive Green shouted and started pummeling him with his right hand.

  Guard against these blows with both arms, Haruyuki thought calmly. From the name, this special attack probably pulled in opponents with magnetism. In which case, there should be a time limit. And given that the technique completely immobilized an opponent, that was at most maybe ten seconds.

  Haruyuki abruptly stretched his arms out to cover his opponent’s scope-shaped eyes. Then he spread his wings and took off in one go.

  “Hey! You! Let me go!”

  Pulling airborne both the magnet affixed to his chest and his struggling opponent, Haruyuki quickly flew up to a height of a few dozen meters. The surge of purple emitted by the magnet disappeared abruptly, and his opponent knocked Haruyuki’s arm away with his free right hand.

  “You trying to blind me? That’s not gonna damage—Aaaah?!”

  His challenger shrieked as he realized his situation—plummeting from a ridiculous altitude without a handhold in sight—but Haruyuki paid no attention and dove at full speed. Overtaking the magnetic avatar in the sky, he pointed his legs into his best approximation of a cylinder and charged.

  “Yaaaaah!!” With a yell, he pierced the back of a drill-equipped avatar that had tried to jump Niko. He slashed a left overhand into the seams of his target’s neck armor, punching him into the surface of the ground with a thunderous slam.

  “Ah! Gah! Aaaah!”

  Just as he leapt away from his enemy, who was screeching at having had two vertebrae gouged out, the magnet avatar crashed out of the sky in front of him. This one was also unable to move, convulsing from the shock that had slammed its entire body.

  But a sudden blow caught Haruyuki’s right cheek as he was about to take off to finish the the two. Sent flying spectacularly, he ended up tumbling along the ground. A fierce pain ripped through his mouth as
if his molars were shattering, and sparks flew before him.

  This third enemy closed on Haruyuki, who forced himself to ignore the pain and sparks and jump to his feet. A pale blue karate uniform covered a body as square as if carved from stone. The mask, which closely resembled an Easter Island statue, was funny, but the threat hidden in the avatar’s rocklike fists could be seen at a glance. It was a weaponless, extremely close-range type, and this sort of orthodox avatar was actually terrifying.

  Likely experienced in a crisis, the karate master avatar came after him following a suitable pause. Without wasting its breath on pointless chatter, it suddenly delivered a right front kick.

  Silver Crow’s extremely slender body proved fortunate in that he managed to dodge the direct impact. But sparks scattered where the blow clipped his left flank, and his HP bar dropped. He launched a left Punch in counterattack, but this was blocked by a massive right arm, like hitting a tree trunk.

  In the event that a metal color ends up in close combat with a type specialized in blows, against which metals are weak…Unexpectedly, a lecture from Kuroyukihime he had heard at some point resurfaced in Haruyuki’s brain. Do not panic and guard or try to hit back; instead, turn aside the enemy’s attacks and use that power. With your reaction speed, it’s possible. Understand? Don’t forget that no matter how mighty the fist, it is slower than a bullet.

  “Hiyaaah!!” The karate avatar let fly a thick battle cry and thrust forward the face of his fist.

  Haruyuki squashed his terror and stared at the mitt, which was encased in a blue aura and approaching fast. Falling backward, he would apply his left hand below his enemy’s fist and his right foot to the enemy’s stomach.

  “Hah!” As he shouted, he flapped the wings on his back as hard as he could for an instant. Using the thrust generated as a catapult, the force of Haruyuki’s right foot and his counterpunch sent the clumsy karate master soaring into the air.

  “Niko! Above you!” Haruyuki cried, and instantly, the missiles on Scarlet Rain’s shoulders were brought together and launched, every one of them seizing on the karate avatar in the sky. It crashed to earth, swallowed in multiple, reddish-black explosions and trailing a tail of smoke before turning into a light blue pillar of light and vanishing.

  “Ooh, for as weak as you look, you do reasonably well, Silver Crow.”

  “Well, thanks!” he called back at Niko’s insult, and bracing himself to face the next enemy without letting his guard down, Haruyuki stared at the jet-black avatar still lying a slight distance away.

  She’s—Kuroyukihime’s definitely not some flawless superhero. She’s a teenager like me, a girl who’s easily hurt. Haruyuki had never once forgotten this, ever since the time he saw Kuroyukihime shed tears at his own thoughtlessness. However, that said, the admiration and adoration inside of Haruyuki was not diminished in the least.

  It wasn’t her strength.

  It was the determination to be strong itself. Haruyuki was absolutely drawn to her spirit and the way it shone, trying to fight back against any and all adversity.

  Which is why you’ll stand up again. I don’t know what your relationship with the former Red King was, but you’ll get over that memory and stand up for me. Right?!

  When he uttered this soundless cry beneath his silver mask, the enemy legion’s attack, which had temporarily slackened, started up again, even fiercer than before. The remaining close-range types didn’t even number ten, but they were charging from all directions. The long-range barrage to support them fell like heavy rain.

  “Is that all you got?!” Niko roared, deploying with a crack both main weapons on her sides, the missile pods, and the machine guns.

  They erupted in fire all at once. Before they did, though, a strange noise disturbed Haruyuki’s hearing. A high-frequency grating sound, like static, shook the air. At the same time, he saw double, triple.

  The missiles launched by Scarlet Rain abruptly went into a tailspin and struck the wrong places. The main weapon beams targeting the long-range types on the outside of the crater also turned away from their intended targets and hit a building in the distance, causing a faint explosive rumbling.

  “Dammit! They’re jamming me!” Niko cried in a low voice. “It’s not Radio…It’s one of his yellow subordinates! Find them!”

  “R-right!” Haruyuki spread his wings, kicked hard on the ground, and flew up.

  However…

  Two wires snaking up from the ground wrapped themselves around his ankles. Immediately yanked back down, he slammed into the ground hard. The impact knocked the breath out of him, but Haruyuki moved to bring his hand down sharply like a sword to free himself of the wires.

  “Shock Therapy!!”

  “Ngh…!!”

  Together with a voice calling out the name of someone’s attack, bluish-white lightning suddenly surged through Haruyuki’s body, assailing him with an intense shock. When he looked, he saw a mechanical avatar at a distance from him. Wires stretched from both arms, sparking energetically from a device it carried that looked like an old electrical transformer.

  The stun effect seemed to be the main attack. Haruyuki took almost no damage, but, unable to make his body do what he wanted, he couldn’t get free of the wires around his ankles.

  “Unngh!”

  The electricity-generating avatar showered the groaning Haruyuki with a high-pitched, scornful laugh. “Hee-hee-hee-hee! You just sleep there for a while, brat! Until we’ve peeled away every bit of the Red King!!”

  Just like the avatar said, he could see several close-range types flying toward Niko’s fortress avatar. They started attaching themselves to her guns’ blind spots and peppering the joints of her Enhanced Armament with punches and kicks. Orange sparks flew, bolts popped, and first one and then another thick armor plate was ripped off.

  Desperately fighting to roll over against the current numbing his entire body, Haruyuki tried to turn toward the electricity-generating avatar and inch in its direction. But the current didn’t seem to be weakening in the slightest, and he couldn’t even turn his head.

  What can I do? What am I going to do? What am I supposed to do at a time like this, Kuroyukihime? If I don’t…If I don’t hurry, Niko will—

  As he raised a despairing voice in his head, Haruyuki heard a laugh rich with inflection ringing out from high on the distant outer edge of the crater.

  “Ha-ha-ha! Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!!”

  The Yellow King, Yellow Radio. Long, thin body and double-pointed hat shaking, he expressed his joy with pantomimes. “How! How uncouth! How funny you look! The dignity of a King and all that…Not a shred of that here, is there?! You two were unfit to call yourselves Kings after all, that’s what this is!! Because the Red is an upstart and an imposter!! And the Black, well, she is a cowardly traitor, isn’t she?!”

  Over his merciless contempt, Haruyuki heard a metallic creaking. And then the thin voice of a girl in pain.

  “Ah…Ah!”

  Quickly turning his gaze, Haruyuki saw a large, close-range avatar standing on Scarlet Rain’s missile launcher, holding her left main weapon. The avatar was using its entire body to forcefully twist the enormous armament. Sparks flew like flames magnificently from the joint, almost like fresh blood. Finally, with a remarkably fierce wrenching sound, the main armament was torn off.

  At the base, the left arm of Niko’s real body dangled, snapped off at the elbow. Niko’s scream poured out unchecked, and the roar of the elated enemy avatar raising the weapon high blended together with it.

  “Yesssss! This is what the Red King is! Guys, peel back every bit of skin and drag that kid out!! We’ll humiliate her plenty, right up until her gauge runs out!!”

  Haruyuki clenched his teeth until they almost cracked and scratched desperately at the earth with the outstretched fingers of his right arm. Ahead of them, the Black Lotus avatar lay covered in dust, the light completely gone from her eyes.

  “Kuroyukihime…Kuroyukihime.” Haruyuki pushed a hoarse voice f
rom a throat tingling at the stun effect.

  Behind him, the sound of her remaining weapons fired continually, likely Niko’s final push. Feeling the vibration of the empty explosions, Haruyuki called out once more.

  “You…Is this what you want? Is this how your game ends?”

  In the back of his mind, he faintly saw the image of the real-life Kuroyukihime and Niko sleeping against each other as he’d seen them the night before. Haruyuki couldn’t even guess at what that scene symbolized, what these two girls really wanted. But the one thing he was sure of was that everything was about to end. That the faint bond accidentally created one night was about to be cruelly severed.

  “Kuroyukihime…Black King!!” Haruyuki screamed, mustering every last bit of strength remaining to him.

  The mental wounds Kuroyukihime was confronting now were no doubt so deep Haruyuki couldn’t begin to understand them. She had almost certainly continued all this time to regret from the bottom of her heart the impulsive act of betrayal that had banished the first Red King—her companion, her friend—forever from the Accelerated World.

  Or maybe she and Red Rider were something more than companions or friends. Maybe she had attacked someone like that.

  But…

  Even if that were so…

  “What acceleration is to you!! What Brain Burst is!!” Fighting the charge to bring his clenched fist down violently on the ground, Haruyuki howled passionately. “Is this all it was, all your ambition to reach the untrodden ground of level ten and see the future of this world?! Was it such a cheap thing that it can be replaced by the memory of one guy?! You were trying to go beyond your human shell…and now you’re just going to be paralyzed by past regrets and crawl around forever like a bug?! You don’t have time for this! I thought you decided that you were going to cut down every obstacle, mow them all down, and keep charging forward until you were the last one standing! Black Lotus!!”

  Clink.

  He was probably hallucinating that he saw the obsidian tip of her splayed right arm twitch.