Signal Fire at the Water’s Edge

by Reki Kawahara

  The one who stepped up and took the lead in this massive confusion, piling victory upon victory until she eventually reached level nine, the proof of kinghood, was the Immobile Fortress, the Bloody Storm, Scarlet Rain. After she became the second Red King, Prominence was reformed with her as a pillar, and things settled back down in the Nerima area. But not too many of the old members stayed in this new Prominence. The scale of thirty or so members was proof of that fact, making it the smallest of the current six Great Legions.

  But from what he could infer from the way she talked, Blaze Heart was a holdover from the old Prominence. And given that Peach Parasol and Ochre Prison were also taking part in this territory attack, they probably were, too.

  “…So then, Blaze, the reason you and your comrades are attacking Suginami is…to fight Black Lotus?” Haruyuki asked, and the three attackers nodded resolutely.

  “That’s right! When she’s in her territory, we can’t challenge her to a regular duel! Rain said not to move until she can get a hold on the situation, but…we just can’t allow this! Even three against one, I don’t think we could beat the Black King, but, but at least one blow! We won’t be satisfied until we punch her a gooooooood one!!” As Peach shouted this, Haruyuki definitely saw a battle spirit that resembled flames flicker faintly around her right fist.

  There was no way the Black King had used an Enemy to hunt the Red King—absolutely none. To Kuroyukihime, Niko was no longer just the head of a Legion they had a cease-fire with. She was a cherished friend in the real world. Just like it was for Haruyuki.

  So if Blaze and her companions were saying they saw Black Lotus on the back of a Legend-class Enemy, then he could only assume it was a trick set up by a force that was neither Nega Nebulus nor Prominence. But even if he explained that here and now, the three enemy Linkers were burning with such anger that they likely wouldn’t accept it. The grudge from Red Rider’s fall was pushing them forward.

  “…Unfortunately, the Black King is not in this stage,” Aqua Current uttered abruptly, quietly. She reached out her right hand and clenched it, scattering water droplets. “So we’ll prove it to you on her behalf. The fact that Black Lotus and the Nega Nebulus she leads would absolutely never set up a sneak attack on your king.”

  “And how are you going to prove that?! We’re not interested in your little excuses!” Peach Parasol shouted.

  “Naturally, we will not rely on words,” Ardor Maiden responded boldly, not flinching at the gun barrel that threatened to erupt in flames at any moment. “We are Burst Linkers. So we speak with our fists and our battle cries!” Utai thrust out her right hand just like Akira had and made an adorable fist.

  Although Haruyuki felt like he should say something, too, he unfortunately couldn’t come up with anything to add to the declarations of the two more experienced fighters. Left with no choice, he silently followed their example and stretched a tight fist out.

  Seeing the three fists lined up, Blaze Heart started to call something out reflexively, but she swallowed it down hard. After a second, she replied, “Just what we were hoping for! We’ll kick you down before we get to the Black King!!” She opened her right fist—still thrust out—and continued, “Mic onnnnnnnn!”

  This was apparently a key word, since a red light gathered around the palm of her hand to produce a single object. For an Enhanced Armament, it was fairly small. The cylinder, which was twenty centimeters or so long with a rounded end, was indeed the very definition of a microphone.

  Maiden, the Black team’s long-distance fighter, also called up her Enhanced Armament: “That the path of the bow and arrow does not stray.”

  When she uttered this poetic phrase, flames gathered in her left hand and stretched up and down to generate a slender longbow. Named “Flame Caller,” the powerful weapon combined force and accuracy.

  In Territory Battles of three against three, it often happened that the teams scattered before meeting, so that right from the start it was one-on-one duels in three different places. But when both sides met while still together like this, the synergistic effects of abilities, the speed at which team members understood each other—in other words, teamwork—became an important element in deciding victory.

  In that sense, the three members of Nega Nebulus were at a disadvantage. This was the first Territories duel for the team of Ardor Maiden, Aqua Current, and Silver Crow. They hadn’t developed a single three-person combo technique.

  So then scatter and take it to one-on-one?! Or aim for improvised combo techniques?! As if targeting Haruyuki’s fleeting hesitation, the Promi team took the lead in moving. Actually, more precisely, they’d started before he even knew it. Ochre Prison, who hadn’t said a single word so far, was not simply a silent character, but apparently was getting ready to activate some secret technique.

  “Edged Cage!!” he shouted in a throaty voice. He plunged his hands, equipped with the enormous claws that were his most significant feature, up to the wrists in the filthy water at his feet.

  Instinctively determining this to be a grounder type of attack, Haruyuki sent his eyes racing through the water. There were nearly twenty meters between the two teams. No matter how fast the technique was, it was possible to see it and get out of the way.

  Clang! The heavy, sharp metallic sound echoed in all directions. Rising up from the water to surround Haruyuki and his team were Ochre’s claws made enormous—now many times larger than they had been. And it wasn’t just their size; their number had also increased. Nearly thirty claws, lined up with a gap of a mere twenty centimeters between them, came together and closed above their heads.

  In the blink of an eye, the Black team had been confined in a cage of steel claws. Though when Haruyuki thought about it, “ochre” was basically a pure, indirect-type yellow. There was no reason an avatar like that would have a special attack that was simple, straightforward long-distance firepower.

  “…You were a little too late in inferring the nature of the attack,” Akira murmured, pressed up against Haruyuki to avoid touching the cage. From her tone, she had somehow guessed that Ochre’s technique was a capture type, but had waited for Haruyuki’s instruction as per her previous declaration.

  “I-I’m sorry!” he shouted, flustered at the sudden error. “I’ll break it right away!”

  At a glance, the individual claws didn’t look that strong. But just when he’d clenched his fist to smash it, he was stopped by Utai. “You have to look carefully. The claws all have blades on the inner edge. If you simply punch them, you’ll be the one to take damage.”

  “Nngh…” Indeed, all the claws making up the cage had sharp edges like razor blades, facing inward rather than outward. No matter how resistant to slicing attacks Silver Crow was as a metal color, he wouldn’t get off scot-free if he punched the blade. It was possible to hit the side with all his might and break out that way, but since there were only twenty centimeters between each set of claws, he couldn’t get the correct angle for a punch.

  “R-right…A special attack for a special attack!” Haruyuki clenched his left hand and blocked with both fists in front of his face. Silver Crow’s lone special attack, Head Butt, required a large motion and took a long time to charge up, and even if he did manage to launch it in the middle of high-speed, hand-to-hand combat, it wouldn’t land on its target. But if he used it against a motionless object, the effect was huge. He glanced up at his special-attack gauge and confirmed that it was just barely charged enough.

  With his arms still crossed, he leaned back, and light began to gather at his forehead with a screeching sound. The two more experienced Burst Linkers, seeing this, commented coolly once more.

  “I don’t think the aim is bad, but…”

  “Is it time to use it now?”

  —What? Haruyuki said in his heart.

  “As if I’d let yoooouuuu!” Blaze Heart shouted. “Searing Noooooote!”

  She yelled the technique name loudly toward the mic in her right hand. The mic glittered red,
and then, almost as though the voice itself had sparked it, an enormous flaming eighth note was generated in midair.

  Krrr! Roaring, the deadly annotation charged toward them, and Haruyuki instantly knew he wouldn’t make it in time. Since he had a pretty good idea of what would happen if he ignored his instincts and insisted on activating his special attack, he quickly dropped his arms.

  The light gathering at his forehead dissipated futilely into the air, and shaking off any regret, he shouted, “Defensive formation!” At the same time, he tried to step out in front of his teammates to use his metal shell’s heat tolerance as a shield.

  But getting the jump on him was Aqua Current. “Roger.” With a single word, she wrapped her arms around Crow and Maiden and then shifted the flowing-water armor of her body to envelop all three of them.

  The flying, flaming eighth note touched the top of the cage of blades and split into four thirty-second notes, which dropped down around the cage, bounced once, and exploded.

  The flash colored his field of view orange, and then a swirling vortex of fire pressed in on them from all sides. The flames slipped through the gaps between the claws and filled the inside of the cage. In an instant, the three-centimeter-thick layer of water heated up, and a powerful sensation of heat was communicated to Haruyuki’s body. Fortunately, however, the temperature stopped increasing right around the level of a fairly hot bath. The strength of the blaze weakened and flowed back outside the cage again.

  “Th-thank you…That’s just like you, Curren.” Since they were still wrapped in a layer of water, his words sounded burbly.

  Akira quickly shook her head. “If we’re hit with that attack again, the water will boil and evaporate. I can replenish from the lake below, but that water’s fairly dirty, so it’d take time to purify it.”

  Aqua Current meant that she could supplement losses to her water armor with water from the stage, but she had to remove any impurities before she could use it. The muddy water of a Sewer stage was, in that sense, very nearly the absolute worst. The only dirtier water he could think of was the poison bogs of the Corroded Forest stage or the blood ponds of the top-level, dark-type Deadly Sin stage.

  “But…they shouldn’t be able to shoot off a large attack like that in succession…,” Haruyuki said, searching for a way to escape with one half of his brain. Given that Blaze Heart’s attack of throwing flaming music notes looked very impressive and had a wide effect range, it had to have eaten up a fair bit of her special-attack gauge. And in this Sewer stage, breaking objects other than the oil drums didn’t charge your gauge. Before the next music note attack came, she’d have to charge her special-attack gauge somehow.

  Once his thoughts reached this point, he finally realized it: There was a way to recover your gauge more easily than oil drums, and forever on top of that.

  “Crap…!” By the time the word slipped unconsciously from Haruyuki’s mouth, Blaze Heart was already starting to run to the right. What she was aiming for was, of course, the large energy charger in the center of the underground dome, the stronghold. Right now, it was still neutral, but thirty seconds after an avatar entered the metal ring, it would shift to occupied status, and the function to charge special-attack gauges would be opened. When that happened, Blaze would be free to shoot off as many flaming music notes as she wanted.

  They had to prevent her from occupying the foothold at least. The only way that would be possible when they were locked up in this cage of blades was with the longbow Ardor Maiden carried. But naturally, the enemy was likely anticipating that. There was no doubt in his mind that Peach Parasol and her large rifle were doing nothing but standing by because she was waiting on Maiden’s shot. So then…

  “…Curren, on the count of three, pull back your water, and Mei, please aim for Blaze with your bow.” When he gave the instructions in a quiet voice, Utai and Akira nodded slightly.

  Three, two, one. Counting down to zero, Haruyuki quickly crouched down. At the same time as the layer of water blanketing the three of them returned to Current’s body, Ardor Maiden, who had been in Silver Crow’s shadow up to that point, lifted the bow in her left hand. When her right hand touched the bowstring, a flame arrow glittered red, and she pulled it back with all her might.

  However, the instant she saw Maiden’s bow, Peach Parasol also moved. “I’m not letting that happen!”

  She had no sooner dashed over to the line that connected Maiden and Blaze than she was opening her umbrella all the way. The flower petal–like metal plates expanded to a second level and instantly formed a circular shield extending a meter and a half in diameter. No matter how much power Maiden’s flame arrow contained, it would have been difficult to destroy a defensive Enhanced Armament with a normal attack. It was a different story if you fired over and over at the same place, but in the time it took for something like that, Blaze would have easily overtaken the foothold.

  However, Haruyuki’s true aim was not Blaze Heart as she took over the foothold. Still crouching, he changed the direction he was facing and vibrated the wings that were just half-deployed on his back with all his might. Normally, he would shoot forward and crash into the blades of the cage, dragging Utai and Akira along with him, but that didn’t happen—because the tips of his wings were sunk deeply into the muddy water on the floor of the stage.

  Instead, the high-frequency vibration of the metallic fins dredged up water and changed it into mist, generating an enormous cloud of fog to their rear. The white haze flowed toward Peach and robbed her of her view. Naturally, Maiden couldn’t see Peach or Blaze, either, but Haruyuki had only ordered her to aim. The shooting was, naturally, another obstacle altogether.

  “Mei, Ochre!”

  “Roger! Understood!” At a speed that suggested she had anticipated this instruction from Haruyuki, Utai changed the angle of her flame arrow. The instant she had Ochre Prison in her sights—who couldn’t move while he was maintaining the cage of knives—she was launching her arrow without a moment’s hesitation.

  Ochre had to have been able to see Utai, but he couldn’t move while the capture technique was active. The flame arrow flew through the air, carving out a red trajectory in space, and hit home squarely on Ochre’s round head, which was wrapped in a frame like a birdcage.

  Whoosh! The flames that rose up enveloped his head.

  “Mwaaaah…!” Speaking for the second time that day, Ochre Prison threw his head back. As his arms were yanked out of the water, the cage of knives that restrained Haruyuki and his team sank into the water and disappeared.

  Haruyuki couldn’t let this chance get away. But he also didn’t have time to give detailed instructions. Thus, he simply shouted, “I’ll leave the rest to you!”

  With this instruction that probably meant he was a failure as a leader, he used up the last tiny bit remaining in his special-attack gauge and flew. His gauge was used up immediately after taking off, but it was more than enough to leap a mere twenty meters. Crow flew past Peach Parasol, still cloaked in thick fog and panicking, and plunged forward toward the foothold on the other side of her. The indicator bar on the ring showed that the time remaining to occupation was two seconds…one second…

  “Aaaaah!!”

  “Wha—?!” Blaze Heart finally noticed Crow descending on her as he crashed into her.

  He had to get his opponent out of the foothold. With nothing else in his head, Haruyuki crouched down to yank her from the little island, and from the force of it, plunged into the muddy water together with Blaze.

  “Aaaaah! Let gooooo! So dirty! It stinks! It’s slimyyyyyy!!”

  “I-I’m not in love with it eeeeeeeeither!!” he shouted back, desperately restraining the flailing Blaze. It wasn’t like the occupy timer would reset because he’d chased her from the ring. He had to keep her away from it until it gradually dropped to zero.

  He was honestly reluctant to use a hold on a small-statured F-type avatar with an idol-like design, and a flat-chested one to boot, but if he loosened his
grip even a little, she might slip away with the help of the slime. So he used not just both hands but also his feet to keep her pinned.

  “C-c-come onnnnn! What are you doing to Heartchiiii?!” Finally free of the thick fog, Peach Parasol closed her enormous umbrella even as her eye lenses threatened to jump off her face mask. The gun muzzle tip stretched out with a chak, and the Enhanced Armament changed from shield to rifle mode. “Die, you perv! Yeah!!” Flying into such a rage that any thought that she might accidentally shoot “Heartchi” had flown right out of her head, Peach readied her rifle to shoot Haruyuki.

  “Whoa! Don’t shoooot!” shrieked Blaze.

  “I’m not a perv!” Haruyuki tried shouting, but the murderous rage in Peach’s eyes didn’t disappear.

  “Charge Shot!!” When the trigger was pulled, light gathered at the muzzle for a moment before a ragged flame jetted out. The large-diameter, glittering pink bullet grazed Haruyuki’s helmet with a choon!, skipped up against Blaze’s ribbon, and then shot up a massive column of water nearby.

  “Eee! Uh, um, do something about that!!” Haruyuki shouted.

  The idol avatar shook her head back and forth quickly, as if having forgotten for a moment that she was pinned down. “Once Peacchi gets like that, she won’t stop until her target’s full of holes!”

  “Wh-what?! So she’s a sniper who’s snapped?”

  Even during this exchange, Peach was yanking the bolt handle of the rifle with a high-pitched sound and ejecting the round to ready the gun once more. Haruyuki and Blaze both shuddered and clung to each other unconsciously.

  Fortunately, however, the next round was not launched. In the large underground dome, he heard the call of a technique name in a clear voice tinged with exasperation. “Flame Torrent.”