by Yuu Miyazaki
“As you can see, Ayato Amagiri is supposed to be with Glühen Rose.”
“…But is this reliable?” Mahulena wondered, dubious about the clearly sensationalist titles.
“Who knows? But the princess did go home around the end of last year, and the Murakumo did go with her. Even the normal news covered that. And besides…” Monica paused there for a moment, raising a hand to her lips to conceal a girlish laugh. “There are other articles, too, but I thought they might be a little too steamy for you all.”
“…Steamy?”
“Things like a love triangle, or a square, or even a pentagon… I mean, the Murakumo is taking part in the Gryps, too, and all his teammates are girls, right? People are saying that he gets along incredibly well with all four…”
“N-no, he couldn’t be…” Mahulena couldn’t stop herself from blushing.
Miluše and Tuulia, on the other hand, merely looked puzzled.
“Huh? What do you mean?”
“…You’re both still wet behind the ears, I see,” Päivi murmured under her breath.
“What she means is that…it might not just be Sylvia whom Amagiri’s going out with…,” Mahulena explained.
Miluše, after tilting her head to either side for a moment in thought, suddenly looked up as the pieces came together. “So he’s just playing around with her?!”
“Wh-what?! Ugh, that Murakumo! What a horrible thing to do!” Tuulia cried out, her face flush with anger.
Mahulena was left feeling strangely uneasy at their overly simplistic conclusions. “N-not exactly, it’s just a rumor,” she pointed out, trying to calm them. There’s no way to know whether it’s true or not…”
Neither Miluše nor Tuulia, however, were paying her a bit of attention any longer.
“Argh…! We’ve got no choice; let’s put the plan on hold for a while!”
“Huh…? You mean, we won’t release the video?” Mahulena blinked in surprise.
Miluše nodded as if that was the only natural conclusion. “Obviously! I mean, I’d feel so sorry for her!”
“…Weren’t we planning to drag her down though?”
“That’s that; this is this!” Miluše declared.
“Well, now that it’s come to this… I’d feel pretty bad if we did go through with it…”
“We’ve got no choice.”
“What? You’re all actually pretty soft, huh?”
Even the other members—though Monica did look a little disappointed—didn’t raise any objections.
Mahulena felt like grasping her head in exasperation, but she couldn’t deny that she did feel a certain amount of relief.
Now, she knew for certain.
Her band members weren’t bad people.
They just weren’t particularly bright; that was all.
“So—change of plans!”
“Huh?”
“Let’s take a break from Sylvia and focus on the Murakumo!”
“Whaaat?!” Mahulena cried out at this new announcement. “H-how did we end up here? I—I mean, what can we do even if we do look into him?!”
“If the rumors are true, and he really is this…sh-shameless, we’ll all teach him a lesson together! And if Sylvia can see just how lame he really is, she’ll lose interest in him, and then we can go back to trying to take her down!”
“…” Mahulena was left speechless at just how thoroughly derailed the plan had become.
“I see…”
“That’s an excellent idea!”
“Just don’t make me play the villain.”
The other three, however, seemed to be completely on board with it.
“B-but even if it is true, what can we do…?”
“Heh-heh, you’re pretty slow, Mahulena.”
“Huh…?”
Miluše, pointing grandly with her index finger, looked full of confidence. “The Murakumo’s taking part in the Gryps, too, so we’re bound to go up against him sooner or later!”
Mahulena almost found herself asking what they would do if he was eliminated before that, but she swallowed her words.
Ayato Amagiri’s Team Enfield was, after all, one of the favorites. At the very least, he should be expected to make it through to the main tournament.
And she knew for a fact that Team Rusalka would have no problem making it that far, either.
CHAPTER 4
THE PRELIMINARIES
“It’s finally time for the first round of Block B! Seidoukan’s Team Enfield is entering the stage now from the east gate!”
Mico’s excited voice rang out, and then the roar of the crowd engulfed them as the gate swung open.
During the last Festa, the passage had been connected directly to the stage, but now that the moat of protective gel had been installed, the entrance gate, too, had needed to be altered. As such, a hatch opened beneath the protective gel, and a huge pillar-shaped entrance gate rose to almost the same height as the galleries. Once that was in place, a semitransparent path appeared in the middle of the pillar, through which the contestants were to enter the stage proper. It struck Ayato as an excessively elaborate system.
Julis let out a disgusted sigh. “I guess it’s too late to say anything now…but this is practically a circus show.”
“That’s how it is. We’ll just have to bear with it, I’m afraid.” Claudia let out a light laugh before stepping onto the path, waving to the cheering crowd as though such publicity were an everyday thing for her.
“Th-this is…a little embarrassing…” Kirin, her personality not at all suited to this kind of attention, stared down at the floor, her face scarlet.
“…Let’s just get it over with. I have to get back to my work,” Saya said under her breath.
It seemed that she hadn’t finished upgrading her Luxes in time for the match. She had said she wanted to have them all finished in time for the main tournament, but Ayato had a feeling that would be more difficult than she was letting on.
He glanced over his shoulder to see a number of huge air-windows surrounding the gate, displaying Seidoukan’s school crest and introducing them all with live, close-up video. Even he couldn’t help but feel embarrassed.
There was a staircase at the end of the path leading down to the stage. Their opponents would appear from the opposite entrance.
“And now, challenging Team Enfield, we have Team Black Venom from Le Wolfe Black Institute!”
“It will be a spectacular upset if Team Black Venom comes out on top here.”
At the other end of the stage, five almost stereotypical Le Wolfe students—each dressed in uniforms that looked modified to the point of not retaining a shred of their original material, and each sporting tattoos on seemingly every exposed patch of skin—turned toward them menacingly. Some looked as if they were trying to intimidate them; others seemed to be staring at them in scorn, but they were all clearly of bad character. They had already activated their Luxes, long-range weapons shaped like assault rifles.
“…You did call them thugs, but this isn’t what I was expecting,” Saya murmured.
Claudia had informed everyone during their last meeting that their opponents were all unlisted. As such, the data on them was extremely limited. While Le Wolfe’s ranked list was the most dynamic among the six academies, the fact that these people had never been ranked at all spoke to their abilities—or lack thereof. Bluntly speaking, they didn’t look particularly strong.
“There are a lot of people who get the wrong idea about the Gryps, at least compared to the other Festas,” Julis remarked with exasperation.
“Get the wrong idea?”
“The Gryps is a team tournament, so the barrier for entry is higher than for the others… But at the same time, it’s also the tournament with the most upsets. So basically, you get these people who think that, just by putting together a team, they can hope to snatch victory through some stroke of luck.”
“I see…”
“But if they’d actually watch the matches pr
operly, they’d know that those teams that do manage to take down the favorites only do so with great difficulty,” Julis all but spat out. “They need to be able to take advantage of the perfect moment to overcome their differences in ability. But these people think all they need in order to win is luck. The Festa isn’t that simple!”
And just as she came to that—
“Heh-heh… Yo, Glühen Rose. Wasn’t expecting to bump into you here!”
—the other side’s Mohawk-sporting team leader called out to her.
“…Sorry?” Julis stared back at him for a moment with a puzzled expression, her head tilted to one side. “Who are you?”
“Wha—?! Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten?!” The young man’s face turned purple with rage.
Ayato, who had been watching the exchange in silence, was the first to recognize him.
“Ah! He looks like one of the guys from back then, when you took me around the city…”
When Ayato had first arrived at Asterisk, he had asked Julis to show him around the center of the city. Mohawk was, it seemed, one of the students from Le Wolfe whom Silas Norman had hired to attack them.
“…Ah, so he’s one of them, is he?” She seemed to have finally recognized him, but she still didn’t seem particularly interested.
The same couldn’t be said, however, for their opponent.
“Quit screwing with me! I just decided to join this tournament as a bit of fun, but it looks like it’s finally given me my chance to settle things! We might not be able to win, but we’ll at least make you suffer, Glühen Rose! You’d better be ready!” At that, he turned his back on them and returned to his team’s starting position.
“…” Julis watched him go in cold silence before turning to Claudia, who nodded in understanding.
“The protective gel is being set up, meaning it’s almost time for the match to start! Who will come out on top?”
With the match about to begin, the protective gel was welling up over the moat until it surrounded the whole stage, hardening through ultraviolet radiation emitters installed throughout the arena. It was taller even than the walls enclosing the stage, completely separating them from their surroundings.
It also blocked sound from passing through, but speakers had been installed around its circumference so participants could still hear the live commentary and the crowd cheering, almost as if the towering walls were not there at all.
The gel itself, which had looked blue before hardening, was now completely transparent.
“Gryps Block B, Round 1, Match 1—begin!”
No sooner had the automated voice announced the beginning of the match than the members of Team Black Venom all turned their weapons directly to Julis, and—
With a terrible roar, they switched their target to Claudia, the team leader.
A barrage of bullets of light erupted from all five Luxes, descending upon Claudia like a storm while a thick cloud of dust rose to fill her surroundings.
“How’s this?” Mohawk laughed feverishly. “They say your Pan-Dora can see the future, but there’s no way that’ll help you against a saturation attack!”
He looked to be fairly confident of victory.
But like Julis had said, the Festa wasn’t that simple.
“Not a bad idea… But you were obviously bluffing,” Ayato pointed out.
“It wasn’t even particularly subtle,” Julis added.
“Wha—?!” Mohawk, upon seeing the two of them defending Claudia as the dust settled, stood frozen in shock.
Ayato had used the Ser Veresta as a shield, as had Julis with her Anthurium. Not a single projectile had reached Claudia.
“D-damn you!” Mohawk and his team members hurried to prepare for another attack, but it was too late.
“Here I come!” At that moment, Kirin leaped within striking distance, holding the Senbakiri.
The silver blade glimmered through the air, effortlessly slicing through the school crests of a large-bodied man with dreadlocks and a bald man with a snake-like tattoo on the back of his head.
“Y-you little brat!”
A meaty man in the rearguard tried to contain her with a hail of fire from a Lux resembling a heavy machine gun, but the silver-haired girl dodged the attack easily on her way to cutting through the crest of a man with spiked hair.
“Argh! J-just stay still…!”
The hefty man swung his Lux around, trying to catch her in his sights, but the volley went wide, and she didn’t even need to deflect it.
“H-hey! Forget about the girl, go for—”
“…Boom.”
A stream of light pouring from Saya’s type 39 Lux laser cannon, Wolfdora, grazed past Mohawk, who was crying out in panic as he tried to put some distance between himself and Kirin.
The overweight man was swallowed in a whirlpool of light, his screams echoing across the stage as he was flung into the far wall. There was a dull, heavy thud as he collided with it—the impact strong enough to send cracks running in every direction. He seemed to have lost consciousness.
“…And?” Claudia, aiming the Pan-Dora toward Mohawk’s exposed neck, asked the openmouthed, defeated team leader. “Go for…who exactly?”
Mohawk, sinking to the floor at the sight of her composed smile, announced his surrender.
“Look this way, please, look this way!”
“I’d like to ask Miss Toudou a question. When you launched your attack at the beginning of the match, how much distance did you have to narrow down between your targets before…”
Next to the passage leading to the prep room was a small area where the winners’ interview was being held. During the main tournament, such interviews would, of course, be conducted in dedicated press halls, but unless something exceptional was to happen, those following the preliminaries were usually held in these kinds of informal spaces.
If there had been only two of them, like in the Phoenix, they would probably have been able to get it over with relatively quickly, but now they were five. Moreover, given that Team Enfield was one of the tournament favorites, it seemed that they had attracted a large following of reporters.
“Mr. Amagiri, your team is, of course, one of the favorites this time around, but are there any teams you consider to be particularly strong—any rivals perhaps?”
“Ah, well… Gallardworth’s Team Lancelot and Team Tristan are pretty strong, I think.”
“Miss Sasamiya, you used a lot of original Luxes during the Phoenix. Are there any new ones that you’ll be using this time?”
“…That’s a secret.”
It felt as if they had already spent twenty minutes answering those kinds of question.
“…” Julis, clearly fed up with it all, was making no effort to hide her sullen mood.
“I’m terribly sorry, but can we wrap it up for now?” Claudia declared, no doubt reading the situation.
“C-can I ask one more question?” inquired a slim female reporter from the back of the crowd, her hand raised to catch their attention. She was wearing a press card around her neck emblazoned with ABC’s logo.
She looked somewhat tense. Perhaps, Ayato wondered, she was new to the job.
“Um, Miss Enfield, this is your first time participating in the Festa since the last Gryps three years ago. Is there any reason behind that?”
“Not at all. I’ve simply chosen the environment where I can best use my skills. That’s the easiest way for me to have my wish fulfilled, after all.”
“And what is your wish?”
At that question, the reporters all leaned forward eagerly.
It was customary in Asterisk for the press not to look too deeply into contestants’ rewards for winning the Festa—in other words, their wishes granted by the IEFs. After all, unless the relevant party had themselves divulged it, such questions risked upsetting the foundations themselves.
However—
“Heh-heh, let’s see…,” Claudia said with a small laugh. “This does seem like a good opportu
nity.” She paused there, her shoulders trembling, as if holding herself back to let the tension build for a moment. “I wonder whether you’ve all heard of Professor Ladislav Bartošik?” she finally asked.
“Professor Bartošik? Wasn’t he involved with Orga Lux research…?”
A wave of confusion spread among the reporters.
Ayato noticed, however, that there were several among them who seemed to become suddenly uneasy.
Perhaps, he wondered, they knew more than they were free to share. It wasn’t difficult to imagine that the IEFs exerted some kind of control over the media, after all.
“But hasn’t Professor Bartošik been missing for several years now…?” the reporter asked.
“No, he’s presently in custody due to his involvement with the Jade Twilight Incident,” Claudia answered without hesitation, clearly anticipating the question. “My wish is to meet with him and have a little talk.”
An uneasiness quite unlike that which had assailed them a moment ago took root among the reporters.
There wasn’t a person there who didn’t know that mentioning the Jade Twilight Incident was taboo in Asterisk. No one could have forgotten about the incident, of course, but people had to be especially careful when touching on the topic.
“Um, what do you mean, exactly…?”
“There’s a secret that only the professor knows the answer to. I want him to share it with me,” Claudia answered before giving a slight bow to the rattled reporters and turning to leave.
“W-wait, Claudia!”
Her four companions, whom she had left stupefied behind her, hurried to catch up with her.
“I don’t really know what’s going on…but was that wise?” Julis asked, visibly troubled.
Claudia’s wish would only make an enemy out of Galaxy. She herself had said that.
Seeing her come out with such a statement so publicly—and without any prior warning—it was only natural that Julis would be so taken aback.
