The Red Crest

by Reki Kawahara

  The interference of the kit is getting stronger, Haruyuki thought to himself. He remembered that when Bush Utan was parasitized, he had basically kept his original personality even three days in. In contrast, despite the fact that Mint and Plum had been parasitized a similar three days, their appearances were already those of automatons.

  Since the ISS kit terminals were synchronized through the main body enshrined at Midtown Tower every night, the more of them there were, the greater their influence over those who equipped them. Without exaggeration, this was a race against time. Digesting this, Haruyuki turned his eyes on the tall avatar, who was apparently the leader, standing to the right of Mint and Plum.

  She was tall, but her torso and limbs were as slender as Silver Crow’s. Her entire body was covered with a film-type armor so that she looked like she was wrapped in bandages. Other than her mouth, her face was completely hidden, so it was hard to discern her gender. But from the lines of her body and the air about her, she was probably an F-type. In each hand, she held a strangely shaped weapon. They were probably in the sword category, but the single blades were extremely tapered, and the space between the blade and the grip was excessively long. The grip was incorporated into an enormous knuckle guard, making a distorted circular shape. The color of her armor was a bright reddish-purple.

  And then the last avatar—a figure that could only be said to be bizarre. It was very large and much taller than even the reddish-purple leader; probably two and a half meters tall. It was also at least a meter wide. And its round, dark-green body had nothing in the way of a neck or a waist, but simply tapered slightly at the top. In other words, it was essentially a perfect egg shape. If it hadn’t been for the short arms and legs sticking out from the sides and bottom, alongside the eye lenses shining yellow, it wouldn’t have looked like a duel avatar at all. Even the ISS kit attached to the center of the oblong body looked ridiculously small.

  During the time when Haruyuki and his comrades were quickly inspecting the enemy group, their adversaries were doing the same thing to them. The reddish-purple leader pulled the corners of her mouth—the only part of her face not covered by the film-type armor—into a grin. “That silver and the shiny head—so you’d be the Corvus of Nega Nebulus, hmm? Then the yellowish-green one behind you’s the Witch. These are some unexpected guests, but we are glad to have you. Welcome to Setagaya area.”

  From her husky voice and tone, he instinctively knew his opponent to be a slightly older girl. This was the type of duel opponent he was worst with, but he couldn’t shrink now. Haruyuki focused his strength within his abdomen.

  “And you must be Magenta Scissor,” he declared, certain from her color and attitude. But then his confidence disappeared abruptly, and he muttered, “Wait, no, was it Magenta Scissors…”

  Although he felt Chiyuri sighing behind him, this wasn’t the time to turn around and get her to tell him. He was pretty sure this should have been Scissor, but if that meant the office supply for cutting paper, he had a memory of learning in English class that it absolutely had to be in the plural, “Scissors.”

  If it had been a regular duel field, her name would have shown up under her health gauge, Haruyuki agonized.

  The magenta avatar smiled bewitchingly once more. “Scissor is right for me. I’ll tell you why, so don’t add that s ever again. I totally hate those English words that are two things when they’re one thing.”

  “Like shoes and pants?” he said, inadvertently drawn in, and Magenta Scissor nodded sharply.

  “Right, exactly. Like chopsticks and stuff.” She chuckled as she continued. “I mean, it’s acting like these things have no value on their own. A single shoe, a lone chopstick. Don’t you think that’s terrible? The second they’re not a pair anymore, no matter how beautiful they are, how untouched, they end up in the garbage.”

  Not comprehending what she was trying to say, Haruyuki fell silent.

  “Does this have anything to do with the fact that you’re going around handing out—no, forcibly infecting Burst Linkers in the Setagaya area with ISS kits?” Chiyuri snapped on his behalf from behind him.

  The reddish-purple avatar moved her head, wrapped with winding ribbon armor, and laughed again. “If I had to say, it does…maybe? Once I give this to every Burst Linker, one concept of a pair that I hate so much will disappear from the Accelerated World. Because if everyone’s using the same techniques, then tag-team compatibility becomes meaningless, after all.”

  “D-duels without any personality like that won’t be fun at all!” Chiyuri shouted.

  Magenta spread out her hands, clutching the strange swords, and shook her head in exasperation. “They’re fun because they have personality? So then what about the Burst Linkers who were born with the kind of individuality that everybody sneers at, the kind they hate? What are they supposed to do? Like Avocado Avoider here?” She passed her left wrist through the ring-shaped grip of her sword and gently stroked the dark-green egg avatar with her now-free hand. When she did, the body—so large they had to look up at it—shuddered slightly, and a low purring voice came from somewhere unknown in that body.

  The avatars generated automatically by the Brain Burst program came in all shapes and sizes, to the point where they had essentially nothing in common other than a roughly human shape. Inevitably, the great majority of Burst Linkers ended up with avatars with a cool or cute design, or with avatars that were the exact opposite. And unfortunately, in the Accelerated World as in the real world, the tendency for the former to be more popular and the latter to be the opposite was seriously pronounced.

  “It can’t be everyone doing that,” Haruyuki said, before Chiyuri had the chance to reply.

  “You’re right there, too, aren’t you, Magenta? From the way you’re talking, you guys were comrades before the ISS kits came out, right?”

  “Unfortunately, you’re wrong. I met Avocado very recently. Only just having become a Burst Linker, he was the target of a group attack by several people and was on the verge of total point loss. One of the people attacking him was his own parent. He was cackling, saying how he didn’t want a creepy child like this.”

  When Haruyuki and his comrades were at a loss for words, a rumbling groan slipped out of the massive green body. Whether he liked it or not, Haruyuki was forced to understand that this was not a voice of anger, but of sadness.

  “I challenged Avocado when he was in a place where it’d all be over if he lost one more time and gave him an ISS kit. You should’ve seen him turn the tables after that. Those guys really were out of luck that they canceled the limit on the number of times they could be challenged with their Legion member privilege. Half of them were at total point loss. Including Avocado’s parent. So? Can you still say a Burst Linker needs personality? Can you actually believe it’s natural that there are Linkers anyone would pair up with and Linkers no one will join?” Hand still on Avocado’s side, Magenta shrugged lightly.

  The entirely unexpected question thrust at him, Haruyuki could only fall silent once more. He thought that Magenta Scissor was wrong, bringing the idea of winning and losing teams into the Accelerated World. But at the same time, it was a fact that when he first saw Avocado Avoider, his impression was “different, weird.” At that moment, Haruyuki hadn’t thought of Avocado as a fellow Burst Linker, but only as a monster to be defeated.

  Breaking the silence was Chocolat Puppeteer, who’d been silent up to then. “Pushing his parent to total point loss…I wonder if that was really Avocado’s will?”

  “What do you mean, Cocoa, hon?”

  Faced with Magenta, broad grin still on her face, the small chocolate-colored avatar took a resolute step forward. “The ISS kit doesn’t just take away a Burst Linker’s individuality. It also steals the user’s kindness and empathy and gives them hate in their place. Even if, hypothetically, everything went according to your plan and all the Burst Linkers were kit users, unfairness and alienation wouldn’t disappear from the Accelerated World! Absolut
ely not!”

  “How can you say that, hmm? Your friends understand, you know, Cocoa? They get that instead of locking themselves up in a little box, it’s way more fun to get stronger, get fighting power, and change the world.”

  “That’s a lie!! That’s your—that’s what you want! You’re simply forcibly infecting other Burst Linkers with this desire! And one more thing: The only people allowed to call me Cocoa are Min-Min and Pliko!!”

  The end of this was a tear-filled shriek.

  It seemed like Mint Mitten and Plum Flipper, who were standing lifelessly behind Magenta, shook slightly upon hearing this. But immediately after that, the eyeballs pasted to their chests flared with a red light, and the eye lenses of the two girls became empty once more.

  “It’s too bad, Chocolat Puppeteer. In the end, I guess I have no choice but to operate on you, too,” Magenta Scissor said in an increasingly cold voice, removing her hand from Avocado. She twirled the sword hanging from her wrist and grabbed it once more. The sharp, tapered end glittered coldly. “Silver Crow, Lime Bell. If you sit and watch quietly, I won’t do anything to you. I only came with one kit seed, anyway. But if you get in my way, we’ll kill you over and over and over until we get bored of it, you know?”

  Haruyuki reflexively called the surrounding terrain to mind. From the university here to the portal at Sakurajosui Station wedged along Aratama Suido Road was about eight hundred meters as the crow flies. He could make it there with his wings in a single bound, but if the fighting power of Magenta Scissor and her gang far exceeded his expectations, it was a little far for all three of them to retreat together. However, Chocolat Puppeteer probably wouldn’t try to run. She was prepared to free her friends from the control of the ISS kits with the Judgment Blow, even if it meant being killed over and over and losing all her points.

  Their one hope to avoid this tragic end was the Mint and Plum Recovery Mission drafted by Chiyuri. And the possibility of this mission succeeding rested on whether or not they could defeat Magenta Scissor and Avocado Avoider while leaving the other two alive.

  It was a fact that Avocado’s past as recounted by Magenta did move his heart. But faced with him in this situation, there was no road other than fighting, not due to hatred, but in order to talk to each other through the duel—the very meaning of a Burst Linker’s existence.

  “Sorry, but we can’t just stand by and watch,” Haruyuki declared. “We have our own reason we have to fight you.”

  “Oh?” Smile still on her face, Magenta cocked her head slightly to one side. “And what’s that?”

  “Don’t tell me you forgot you parasitized our precious comrade with an ISS kit last week.”

  “Oh, Cyan Pile, right? And I had high hopes for him, too. I mean, a change of heart in the middle of syncing and then attacking the main body—that was disappointing. You’re barking up the wrong tree complaining about that to me. After all, Cyan was the one who came all the way to Setagaya wanting the kit, you know? All I did was give it to him as a present in card form, just like he wanted.”

  “Even if you did, you had to have known. That even if it was sealed in card form, the kit would whisper to the owner’s mind and tempt them into equipping it. You’ve probably experienced that yourself, haven’t you?”

  “…”

  At this from Haruyuki, the smile vanished from Magenta’s lips. She raised the bizarre swords dangling from each of her hands and lightly brought the points together with a clink. “I’m a bit offended by that. I accepted this of my own free will. In order to remake the Accelerated World into what it should be.”

  When Magenta slowly opened the swords crossed in front of her to both sides, almost as if that was a signal, part of the ribbon armor wrapped around her chest peeled away. The crimson-red eye snapping open on the surface of her exposed avatar body was, of course, the same ISS kit that Mint and the others had attached to their chests. But for this one, the coloring, so reminiscent of blood, was darker, and the eyeball was also a size bigger. Because Magenta’s face was hidden under the layers of ribbon wrapped around it, it almost looked like the kit was her own eye. After this eye, inorganic and yet clearly hate-filled, glanced at Haruyuki and his comrades, Magenta declared coldly, “I guess we’re going to have to make you disappear, after all, hmm? And if you two are gone from the Accelerated World, Cyan’ll probably come back to me, too.”

  It had to have been more than ten days since the ISS kit had taken up residence in her body, and yet it appeared that she had almost completely retained her self; did that mean the power of her will was incredibly strong?

  Banishing the fear that threatened to rise up in him, Haruyuki shouted, “A-as if that’s going to happen! No matter what, he’ll never come back to you again!”

  “Well then, let’s test that theory. I’m getting pretty tired of chatting already. Just as you wished, I’ll be your opponent. Mint, Plum, the two of you take Lime Bell. Avocado, you can eat Chocolat.”

  Haruyuki and his comrades were startled by this last order, and in that moment of stunned surprise, Magenta Scissor brandished the sword of her right hand high—and then dropped it sharply. The two former members of Petit Paquet to her left and Avocado Avoider on her right started to move.

  “Bell! Choco! Just like we planned!”

  “Leave it to us!”

  “Absolutely!”

  Haruyuki and his team exchanged quick words and then started to act. First, Chocolat thrust both hands out in front of her.

  “Cocoa Fountain!!”

  Together with the call of the technique name, pink light poured down in a broad range from her ten fingers. With a burbling sound, large amounts of chocolate gushed out of the ground. This spread out and covered a diameter of thirty meters of the field, and Mint, Plum, and Avocado got their feet caught and staggered.

  “Tch!” Clicking her tongue, Magenta Scissor leapt back and then stepped even farther back, avoiding the pool of chocolate—more like a chocolate lake, actually.

  Naturally, Haruyuki too was within the effective range of Chocolat’s technique, but he had used his wings as she activated it and so was hovering ten or so centimeters above the ground.

  Behind him, Bell and Chocolat also retreated to get some distance and immediately got to work on the next part of the plan. Bell brandished the Choir Chime of her left hand and whirled it in large circles. “Citron Call!”

  She swung it down. Accompanied by the tinkling of a bell, the Chime’s light zeroed in on Chocolat, standing beside Bell. The brown avatar had broken an energy crystal before the arrival of their enemies to charge her special-attack gauge and had then used up that charge for the full-power Cocoa Fountain, but now, thanks to the effect of Citron Call Mode I, which rewound the status of the target in units of seconds, her special-attack gauge was replenished once more.

  No sooner was it fully charged than Chocolat was calling out her second technique. “Puppet Make!!”

  Snap! She turned four fingers toward the chocolate lake. The smooth milk chocolate surface bulged up in four places, and the now-familiar chocolate puppets—Chocopets—jumped up from within. Two of them flew at Mint and Plum, while the other two headed toward Avocado to surround the enemy avatars. With their feet caught up in the chocolate on the ground, the enemy was unable to move freely.

  Long/midrange duel avatar Chocolat Puppeteer had the ability first to make chocolate bubble up in the field with the prerequisite technique of Cocoa Fountain, which also hindered enemy movement. And then with her special attack Puppet Make, she could create automatic combat dolls from that chocolate pond and make them attack specific targets.

  The scale of the chocolate pond and the number of Chocopets were determined by the number of fingers she held up when activating the techniques. With ten fingers, she could create a chocolate pond thirty meters in diameter, but that completely exhausted her fully charged special-attack gauge. Which meant, essentially, that if she created the biggest pond possible, she couldn’t call any Chocopet
s until she charged her gauge once more. But when working in combination with Citron Call, she could smash through that limit.

  Although the chocolate pond was 40 percent smaller after the creation of four Chocopets, it was still more than large enough to hold the feet of Mint Mitten and the others.

  Haruyuki first confirmed that step one of their strategy had succeed and then shouted, “You guys take Avocado! I’m going after Magenta!”

  He spread his wings and flew at top speed, skimming the surface of the sticky-sweet pond. He slipped between Avocado and Plum and closed in on Magenta Scissor beyond them.

  “This is some seriously cheeky action!” The reddish-purple avatar readied her swords to meet Haruyuki. The thick blades glittered and glinted, but he charged forward regardless. Of the metal colors, Silver Crow’s antiphysical defenses were on the low side, but even so, his resistance to severing attacks was higher than the average regular color. He caught the swords that sliced down from both sides at the same time with the armor on his upper body.

  Skreeek! A high-pitched metallic screech sawed into his ears, and bright sparks shot out, lighting up the armor of both fighters. Of course, he couldn’t escape from this unscathed; the health gauge in the top left of his field of view dropped the tiniest bit, a few pixels, but he ignored it and flapped his wings as hard as he could.

  “Aaaaah!!”

  As if pushed back by Haruyuki’s roar, Magenta Scissor’s feet floated up. Not letting this chance get away, he started in on another charge, still at close range. Cutting directly across the grounds, he shoved her back to the temple where she and her team had first appeared. Magenta crashed thunderously into the wall right beside the hole Haruyuki had opened up with his Laser Javelin. Her body half-embedded in the white wall, a groan escaped her lips.