Flight Toward a Blue Sky

by Reki Kawahara

  “This Pile Driver is the incarnation of my terror of piercing techniques…and my anger. It’s saying I’d like to line up those guys who bullied me back then and slam this stake into their throats one after the other. Which is why I’m a close-range duel avatar who also has a piercing weapon rather than a sword, Red King.”

  The final words were directed at the crimson avatar silently looming over them.

  The long monologue finished, Niko finally nodded. “Okay, I hear your scars. So that’s the reason the majority of your potential was poured into an Enhanced Armament that’s the opposite affiliation of your avatar. In that case, what you need to confront, Pile, is your own stake. If you can overcome that terror, your avatar should be able to gain the Incarnate Attack Power Expansion as a true close-range type,” Niko declared severely, turning back to Haruyuki. “So the professor and I are going to get into the actual training now. What are you going to do, Crow? Hang out?”

  “Uh, um.” Haruyuki blinked fiercely before answering so they wouldn’t see that his eyes under his silver mask were full of tears. “No. I think it’s probably better if I’m not here. I can’t…really explain why, but…”

  “Thanks, Haru,” Takumu said and nodded, so Haruyuki smiled awkwardly and stood up.

  He looked back over at Niko again and added, “And there’s something I want to check into a bit on my own. The mechanism that keeps Dusk Taker from showing up on the matching list.”

  “Yeah, you seriously can’t ignore that part. Actually, that’s a bigger problem than the Incarnate attack. And I feel like I heard something similar recently.”

  “What?! R-really?!” He unconsciously sidled up to her and the Red King shoved him back.

  “Why does that mean you gotta get so close?!” she cried. “It’s just a rumor! A rumor, geez! I don’t know all the deets; go ask the person who does!”

  “Huh? Wh-where?” He looked around instinctively, but, of course, there was no one there.

  “Log out and you’ll see. There’s a portal on the first floor of the Nerima Ward office, over there.”

  “O-okay.”

  Niko waved a curt hand as if to say she was done with him, so Haruyuki started walking.

  But—

  “Oops! Hey, wait!” she called out to stop him, and he turned around once more.

  “Wh-what?”

  “Aah, that Range Expansion Incarnate technique of yours before. You give it a name?”

  “A-a name?!” Haruyuki raised a shrill voice at the unexpected question.

  Niko thrust out her index finger. “It’s not for some dumb kid reason like it’s cooler like that or something!” she shouted quickly. “The heart of an Incarnate technique is whether or not the image is firmly fixed in your mind. Ideally, you wanna be able to call it up as naturally as you do the abilities and special attacks you had from the start. You were concentrating for nearly three seconds from the time you crouched down to the time you moved. That’s way too slow! So first, you give your technique a name, so then you superimpose over the image with you shouting the name as the trigger. C’mon, name it! Name it now!!” she exploded.

  Haruyuki hurriedly racked his brains as he looked at his hands. “Umm…Sword…Swooord…Light…th-then.” He raised his eyes. “L-Laser Sword.”

  “Pft! Weak sauce.” She immediately laughed off the name he had so desperately thought up, the name that was so cool by Haruyuki standards.

  “Th-then what’s the name of your Range and Movement attack from before, huh?!” Haruyuki retorted instinctively.

  “Like I’d tell you, stuuupid!”

  Here, they heard a familiar throat clearing.

  Haruyuki looked over at Takumu and scratched his head. “Oh, uh, that’s…Umm…Taku, g-good luck!” He awkwardly thrust the thumb of his right hand up.

  Standing, Cyan Pile returned the gesture. “You, too, Haru. But please don’t do anything too dangerous.”

  “Got it. I’ll report back to you tonight.”

  They nodded at each other, and then Haruyuki ran a few steps toward the Nerima Ward office rising up in the west before turning around one final time to shout, “Niko! Thanks!!”

  The voice that came back to him was the same energetic abuse as always.

  “Shut up and just go already!!”

  6

  Via the leave-point set in the lobby of the Nerima Ward Office, Haruyuki returned to the real world. Taking a deep breath, he sat up on the sofa. As he pulled the XSB cable out, he looked to his side and saw Takumu breathing evenly, long eyelashes lowered beneath his glasses.

  Right now, his good friend’s consciousness was in a different time stream from Haruyuki, entirely devoted to a desperate training. No, the simple word training couldn’t quite encapsulate it. Takumu was at long last confronting psychic wounds he had likely spent years pushing to the bottom of his heart and trying to overcome them.

  “You can do it, Taku,” Haruyuki whispered, and then stood up.

  On the opposite side of the table, he saw the innocent sleeping face—although she wasn’t in fact sleeping—of the girl clad in an elementary school uniform. She really almost was an angel like this. “Thank you,” he said to her, and he meant it from the bottom of his heart. Then he went to step out of the electromagnetic wave isolation room, opening the thick door into the hallway.

  “This way. Hurry.” A voice came down from above his head, and he jerked his eyes upward.

  Standing there was, no mistake about it, the clerk who had brought their drinks and cake earlier. Jacket puffed up at the shoulders, long skirt, both in a dark cherry color, topped by a snow-white apron decorated with conservative lace over. The Alice band on her head and the thin ribbon on her chest were both a brighter red than her clothing. In short, she looked the maid in every way. Seen up close, she was younger than he had thought; she was fairly tall, but she was probably still in high school. Her fringe was parted perfectly in the center and the hair in the back was gathered into a braid that fell below her shoulders. Her face was angular, and her narrow, upturned, single-lidded eyes reinforced the impression of sharpness.

  Does she mean hurry up and get out? Are Niko and Takumu gonna be okay like this? Haruyuki wondered. He bowed, in any case, and tried to slip through the hall to the shop. But…

  He heard her say, “Not that way,” as the collar of his blazer was yanked from behind, knocking his head back. The shock he felt that a cake shop clerk, and one dressed as a maid to boot, would act so aggressively grew several magnitudes larger with the words that came next.

  “Go out the back. Follow me, Silver Crow.”

  “Wh—?!”

  Oh crap, I’m outed in the reeeeeaaaal! he screamed in his mind and instinctively tried to run away, but she had a firm hold on his collar, so he only ended up strangling himself again. She was slim, but she had a seriously powerful grip.

  “No need to run. And anyway, it’s too late for that,” she told him in a husky voice that was almost a monotone, and he had no choice but to give up on thoughts of escape. He turned around.

  The maid looked down at him completely expressionless and finally let go of his collar. “Scarlet Rain told me to help with your investigation,” she informed him with extreme nonchalance. “My name’s Blood Leopard. If you’re going to call me by name, go with Leopard, not Blood. If you need to shorten it, go with Pard, not Lep.”

  “Hey…uh…Please hold on a minute.” Haruyuki managed to get that much out somehow, while he earnestly set his brain to work to try and understand the situation.

  I don’t know all the deets; go ask the person who does! the Red King Niko had said right before he’d logged out. However, he had naturally taken that to mean within the Accelerated World. But it seemed that that maid, exposing her real self in the real world, was the “person who does” Niko had mentioned: a Burst Linker in the Red Legion, Prominence, and at the same time, a clerk in this shop. In other words, this was no ordinary cake shop but something along the lines of a Prominen
ce base.

  He had muddled this far when the maid, Blood Leopard, nickname Pard, said as if growing impatient, “I waited two seconds. Think about the rest as we move.” And then she whirled around, long skirt fluttering, and started toward a door visible at the end of the dark hallway.

  Haruyuki no longer had any other options. He followed the mysterious older girl’s order.

  The door was apparently the back exit, and where it came out was next to a garage behind the cake shop.

  The maid moved her fingers, and the shutters facing the road began to open automatically. Blood Leopard seemed to be a fairly impatient type for some reason, and she thrust a finger out at Haruyuki, as if she couldn’t waste time waiting.

  “This is all Master told me: You got a Burst Linker who doesn’t show up on the matching list, even though he’s connected to the local net. You want to figure out how. That’s the end, ’kay?”

  She sought his assent with half of the word okay carved away, and Haruyuki nodded. “R-right, that’s exactly it.”

  “I’ve heard of list interception, but lately there’re rumors of a local net troll.”

  The maid’s assessment was sudden, and Haruyuki, flustered, unconsciously leaned forward. “L-local net troll? What’s that?”

  “Don’t know the deets. Apparently, on a certain net, this Burst Linker challenges you, but when you go for a rematch, the Linker’s already gone from the list.”

  “Wh-where is this ‘certain net’?!”

  “Akihabara.”

  Haruyuki recoiled at the concise reply. “A-Akihabara? That’s the Yellow Legion’s territory, ri—”

  “Yup.” Haruyuki watched the maid nod as if it were no big deal. He swallowed hard.

  It was a mere three months earlier that, due to the evil machinations of the Yellow King, Yellow Radio, ruler of the Legion Crypt Cosmic Circus, the Red King Niko had, without warning, ended up in serious trouble, ambushed by dozens of people. Haruyuki and the other members of Nega Nebulus had been dragged through that hell with her, so it would be fair to say that currently, of the six major Legions, Haruyuki was the most vigorously opposed to Yellow.

  He wanted very much to go and collect information, but not quite having the courage to head off into such an enemy’s territory, Haruyuki bit his lip. But this isn’t the time for me to sit here freaked out. I mean, just her telling me there’s a clue in Akihabara is a lucky break. If I just go and hang out in a normal duel gallery there and ask about any rumors, I should be able to get in and out without too much trouble…

  These thoughts running through his mind, Haruyuki tried to muster what little courage he had.

  Blood Leopard, similarly silent for several seconds, finally said with utmost brevity, “’Kay. We’ll go now.”

  “Huh?”

  …Go? To Akihabara? With her? Dressed like that on a train…? His eyes opened so wide, his eyelids threatened to peel right off.

  She grabbed his collar, almost as if to say she wasn’t interested in talking anymore, and strode into the garage, short boots clacking on the concrete.

  Enshrined there, radiating an overwhelming sense of presence, was an enormous electric bike at least two meters long. A completely different beast from the electric scooters zipping along peacefully with their lilting engines, the body was enveloped by a sleek red-and-black cowl, and the motorized front and rear wheels were astoundingly thick, maintained by an active suspension arm so tough it looked like armor. The streamlined body was low, practically crawling on the ground.

  “W…ow…” He let out an involuntary sigh of admiration.

  Pard grabbed something rounded from the rack on the wall and shoved it at him. He took it reflexively and looked down to find an open-face red helmet in his hands.

  “Huh?” He simply stood and stared, not understanding the meaning of this. Blood Leopard approached on quick feet and picked it up again—and then popped it on Haruyuki’s head. She deftly buckled it on under his chin with one hand.

  She slipped a full-face black helmet over her Alice band, and after a quick shake of the braid poking out from under it, she grabbed Haruyuki’s collar again and plopped him down in the passenger seat of the large bike.

  …No way. No. Wait. Wait a minute.

  The older girl didn’t even leave him the time to groan. She straddled the bike, still in her maid’s clothing, and grabbed the handlebars firmly, slender hands in leather gloves.

  “Start,” she murmured, apparently a voice command, since the bike’s dash subsequently flashed to life. The fully extended front and rear suspension arms whined with preloading.

  Haruyuki’s Neurolinker also automatically connected to the bike’s CPU, and windows appeared for speed and battery gauges and other things one after another before his eyes. Meanwhile, he heard Blood Leopard’s voice—not her real voice, but one communicated wirelessly.

  “Hold on.”

  “Huh? Uh, no, but…,” he cried, but two hands immediately stretched out from in front of him and took hold of his arms. She yanked his forward and forced them around her slim waist to lock over her apron. This girl was apparently not the type to give an order twice.

  Thinking escape was likely impossible, he half gave up at this point, but he couldn’t fully let go of the dream of freedom. “Uh, um, are you going to drive dressed like that?”

  “Waste of time to change.”

  “A-and what about the shop?”

  “My shift was till five. Any other questions, ask them all at once.”

  “…That’s it.”

  “’Kay.” And the maid casually opened the throttle.

  The massive machine slipped smoothly out of the garage attached to the cake shop, the noise of its motor the eye of the storm made by its bottomless torque.

  The clock display in the lower right of his vision read 5:08 PM. At some point, the rain had stopped, and the gaps in the clouds streaming westward were dyed a spectacular orange.

  Ah, I left my umbrella in the shop. Oh well, Taku’ll probably grab it for me.

  Haruyuki idly wondered about this and other escapist thoughts while the electric bike silently and slowly slid through the Sakuradai neighborhood. Blood Leopard seemed to be as safe a driver as she was impatient. But just when he had started to relax, the bike turned right at a large intersection onto Kannana Street.

  Krraaaaa!! The internal motors in the front and rear wheels roared and the needle on the hologauge jumped up. In the periphery of his vision, he could see her long skirt flapping and fluttering. The wind pressure slapped his face through the shield of the helmet.

  “Aaaaaaaah!!” Haruyuki screamed with his real voice.

  The enormous bike with the driver dressed as a maid and the passenger a junior high boy in his school uniform moved from Kannana to Mejiro Street and raced hard to the east.

  Although these days, the legal speed limit for motorcycles and passenger vehicles couldn’t actually be broken. Control systems were equipped with limiters, which were automatically set to the maximum speed for a given road. If you wanted to break the speed limit, your only choice was to illegally mod the vehicle or order emergency mode and temporarily shut down the control AI. Naturally, it was against the law to turn off the AI without good reason, so either way, you had to be ready to face the police.

  Blood Leopard’s bike was naturally neither modded nor in emergency mode, and the limiter was, in fact, set at Mejiro Street’s legal speed limit of eighty kilometers an hour, but they went from zero to the speed limit in an exceedingly brief period. Huge Gs slammed into Haruyuki’s round body, the likes of which he had never experienced in the real world, and he nearly shrieked. And as if that wasn’t enough, he wasn’t sure about this whole thing where his stomach was glued to Pard’s slim body.

  Way better that I’m sitting in the back. If we were the other way around, it wouldn’t be her back, but the feeling of her front. Agh, the other way could totally never, ever happen.

  As his mind raced, the bike turned ont
o the outer ring road at Iidabashi, which was fairly busy, as you might expect at dusk in the city center. The drivers of the electric cars and scooters around them opened their eyes wide when they saw Blood Leopard’s motorcycle. Which was only fair, given that you hardly ever saw a large bike like this these days, much less one ridden at twilight by a dazzling maid in a snow-white apron, with a roundly plump junior high school student on the back, to boot.

  Unable to stand the many eyes concentrating on them as they waited at the light, Haruyuki shrank into himself. “Uh, um, I feel like we really stand out?” he said in neurospeak.

  “Yes.” Pard sounded like she didn’t care, and maybe she really didn’t.

  Haruyuki kept himself from flinching and continued, “A-and we’re charging into CCC’s stronghold; it’s a little dangerous.”

  This time, her answer was somewhat longer. “No prob. We won’t stand out.”

  “Huh?”

  But he got no further response; she opened the throttle all the way the instant the light turned green. Lightning from the motor. Haruyuki suffocating.

  After the bike pulled into a parking garage adjacent to the western edge of the Akiharaba district and they had walked for a few minutes, he finally understood what she meant.

  The instant they stepped onto the main street that cut north-south through Electric Town, at least three women in maids’ uniforms leapt into Haruyuki’s sight. They were, of course, not real maids—although, that said, neither was Blood Leopard—but rather seemed to be doing promotion for some store, handing out holopapers to passersby with sparkling smiles. The only difference between them and Pard was the presence/absence of a smile.

  “I get it.” He nodded his complete agreement and looked up again at the majestic city that never slept.

  Due to redevelopment in the early 2000s, this area had once been redesigned as a new kind of stylish neighborhood. However, as the center of electronic sales shifted to Ikebukuro and Shinjuku, property values dropped, and in the recession of the time, the banks got spooked and pulled out completely. This led to a subdivision of the land rights, and by the twenties, the former chaos of the previous century had once again descended on the area.