His overwhelming sense of presence, almost as if the duel avatar itself had gone up a full size, froze Haruyuki in his tracks.
Beneath the slits lined up on his face mask, there was a low sound, and Takumu’s eyes flashed. But the color had changed from the light blue of a little earlier to a dark purple. He stared quietly from his higher position at Haruyuki standing stock-still in an unsteady posture.
“Sorry, Haru.” A voice tinged with a distorted effect flowed from his mouth.
“…Taku…” All Haruyuki could do was call the name of his best friend, almost soundlessly.
“I’m sorry.” Takumu slowly took another step closer. “I—I knew it’d be like this. I knew it’d end up like this. And yet I pushed you. I forced you into a duel. I guess…there’s no helping it if you think I just wanted to beat you down like this…”
Thud. He narrowed the distance between them by another step, and now Cyan Pile’s massive body was directly before Haruyuki. A thick, jet-black aura poured ceaselessly from the enormous rocklike avatar, gushing up toward the sky. Takumu glanced down at its source, the black eyeball parasitizing the Enhanced Armament of his right arm.
“I heard that the deeper the darkness of the owner’s heart, the more terrifying the power this ISS kit manifests. So you see…I’m this kind of person. I realized this while I was massacring those four PKs with this power—though the truth is maybe I knew it right from the start. After all, I only became a Burst Linker to get good grades, win tournaments, and hold on to Chii.”
“Taku…Taku.”
You’re wrong. You’re wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong!!
This word alone swirled around in Haruyuki’s heart. But he didn’t know how to say it so Takumu would hear. His vision shook, rainbow-colored and blurred. Haruyuki belatedly realized he was shedding tears under his helmet.
As he looked down at Haruyuki, meager particles of light spilled out from Takumu’s eyes as well and evaporated instantly.
“Thanks, Haru.” The gentle voice of his best friend reached his ears. “I’m glad my opponent in my final duel was you…Thanks.”
“…F-final? What…are you talking about…?” Haruyuki asked in a trembling voice.
“When this fight is over,” Takumu replied quietly, “I’m going to go take a stab at the Acceleration Research Society.”
“…What…”
“They’re the ones making and handing out this kind of terrible Enhanced Armament. I don’t think I can beat the top-level guys. But once I reach the infection route, I should be able to figure out the ones at a certain level. I’ll invite them into the Unlimited Neutral Field somehow and get all the info I can from them. Even—” He cut himself off momentarily, but soon continued again with certainty. “Even if I lose all my points doing it and Brain Burst force uninstalls, I’ll definitely tell you everything I learned. After that, it’s up to you to stop them, Haru. This kind of…power—taking advantage of the mental scars that all Burst Linkers have to mislead them—shouldn’t exist. The Accelerated World is a place for people like you and Chii and Master, people who change that pain to hope and move forward.”
“Taku…But you…I mean, you, too…” Haruyuki was frustrated and annoyed by his own inability to do anything but stammer like this.
But it seemed that his childhood friend of more than ten years still understood Haruyuki’s feelings. He felt a gentle smile beneath the mask.
“Haru, I have to thank you for one more thing.” In contrast with the dark aura streaming from his body, even more wildly, his voice was nothing but gentle. “That time…at the end of our first fight, thank you for forgiving me. The eight months from that day to today, fighting as a member of the new Nega Nebulus, have been so much fun, it’s like I’ve been dreaming. Thanks, Haru. It’s too bad I got knocked out in the middle of your purification mission and the Legion’s work to reach the ending, but…tell Master, Raker, and Maiden thanks for me. And…tell Chii I’m sorry.”
“Don’t say that! Don’t talk like that, Taku!!” Haruyuki screamed, suppressing a pain like his heart was being ripped in half.
He clenched his remaining hand into a fist and focused on the glittering Incarnate lodged there. Reflecting his violently shaken emotions, the light flickered irregularly, but even so, the dark color winding around the two of them weakened the tiniest bit.
“Chiyu’s gonna cry if you leave the Legion, you know! She’ll totally cry! You wanna make Chiyu cry, Taku?!”
Takumu hung his head slightly. Finally, an even more gentle voice. “Yeah, she probably will, huh? But…I know she’ll get over those tears and keep moving forward. After all, I’m the one who’s been making her want to go back to the past. Haru, please. Look out for Chii.”
Grinning, Takumu clenched his enormous left fist tightly in front of Haruyuki.
The condensing dark aura roared ferociously. The midnight black, absolute as a black hole, easily overwhelmed the modest silver light in Haruyuki’s right hand.
“Okay, let’s finish this, Haru. You don’t have to look so sad for me. This darkness was inside of me right from the start. You just have to make the opposite choice you did eight months ago. I’m making you do it.”
Perhaps due to the concentration of such enormous power, an infinite number of sparks shot into the air from his left fist as Takumu slowly pulled it back.
As if to comfort Haruyuki, to encourage him, the call of the technique name was somehow kind. “Dark Blow.”
Haruyuki tried to guard with the silver light of his right hand against the fist, which shot down at him with pressure akin to an enormous meteor pouring down from space.
However, an impact unlike any he had ever felt before, as if the world itself were exploding, made his entire body dance. Meager though it might have been, if he hadn’t had his Incarnate defense, his avatar would have been blown to bits instantly.
He managed to avoid annihilation, but, very much unable to stand his ground, Haruyuki went flying backward toward the condo’s B wing at a terrifying speed.
He flew for half a second or so, parallel to the ground, before his back crashed into the exterior wall of the building. His body gouged out a large hole in the scorched concrete, and he still didn’t stop but plunged inside. Only once he had smashed through the next wall, and the next, and then yet another, was his momentum finally diminished. After bouncing once on the floor of a large, empty room, Haruyuki tumbled onto his back, arms and legs splayed.
Something was flashing red in the top left of his vision, sunk into gloom from the intense impact. His brain had basically stopped working, but even still, Haruyuki understood that this was his HP gauge, reduced to a few pixels.
The power imbalance was enough to make him lose hope. And here, for the first time in all of this, Haruyuki felt despair filling his heart.
How conceited he had been to think that he’d win using his full force on Takumu, and then he’d save him. After all, right from the start, Takumu’s abilities far exceeded Haruyuki’s in all things. That’s why he looked up to him. That’s why Takumu was his hero.
If this Takumu had pushed himself up against this wall and made up his mind, then what on earth could Haruyuki do, with his sole power—his wings—taken from him…
He felt a heavy vibration from off in the distance. Takumu was coming straight for him, punching out the walls of the condo as he did, to finish this duel.
Beneath his cracked helmet, Haruyuki’s eyes once again filled with tears. He never thought it would end this way. He had really believed that he, Chiyuri, and Takumu would be able to hang out together forever. All this time, he had believed that Brain Burst, the Accelerated World, existed precisely for that reason.
“That’s right.”
Abruptly, someone’s voice echoed inside his head.
He absently opened his eyes. Against the scorched, bleak ceiling, he saw a strange sight: another human form gently slipping away from Silver Crow’s body on the floor and standing up silently.
Haruyuki had no idea who this someone was, faintly transparent, basically a hallucination.
A slender girl-shaped avatar. The design, with the flower petal motif at the shoulders and hips, resembled Chiyuri’s Lime Bell somehow. But the short hair on her head, ends flipping up, and her armor color were totally different.
A bright, golden yellow that reminded him of spring sunlight.
This unnamed someone sat down on a pile of rubble beside Haruyuki, flat on his back, and spoke once more. “It’s just as you say. Brain Burst doesn’t exist simply to fight and hate each other. We can join hands; we can build bonds.”
“…Who are you…?” Haruyuki asked vacantly. “Why are you here…? This is a direct duel field…”
The ephemeral, transparent someone smiled lightly. “I’m…a memory. A tiny fragment of a thought living in a corner of the enormous body of quantum information that makes up a certain object registered in the central system.”
“…A memory…” The instant he murmured this, Haruyuki felt a prickle stab his own memory somewhere.
I know her. We’ve never met, and I don’t know her name, but still, I know this person…
Almost as if to affirm this thought, the golden yellow avatar nodded lightly. “Because you traced a past memory in the Castle, the system circuits were temporarily activated, and I’m able to talk to you like this. But I’m sure it won’t last long.”
The girl broke off and then announced in a voice with increased strength, “There’s still a way to help your friend.”
“What…” His eyes flew open. Supporting himself with his battered right arm pressed against the floor, he desperately struggled to sit up. “Wh-what? Are you saying there’s something else I can do?”
“You still have power inside you. The lone power that can resist the deep darkness penetrating your friend,” the golden girl murmured, smile fading.
After a moment’s confusion, Haruyuki intuitively grasped what she was getting at. Reflexively, he shook his head.
“N-no way. I can’t use that. If I summon that again, I definitely won’t be able to come back from it ever again.”
That. The cursed Enhanced Armament parasitizing Silver Crow deep inside, currently returned to a seed state by Lime Bell’s Citron Call Mode II.
The Armor of Catastrophe.
A somehow sad smile rose up onto the golden yellow girl’s face. “It’s not as though the armor was born crowned with the name Catastrophe, you know. So many sad, sad things happened, and its form was distorted.”
“The form was…distorted…”
“I’ve been waiting all this time in a little corner of that armor. Each time a new owner came along, I prayed, ‘Please, let this be it.’ The appearance of someone who could remove the curse of it. I’ve waited all this time for someone who could heal his fury and sadness…”
Nimbly standing on the pile of rubble, the girl knelt down in front of him and touched the injured silver avatar gently with her slender right hand.
“And you. You’re so much like him, I’m sure you can do it. It might take some time, but someday, I just know it. So don’t give up here. For the sake of your friend, stand up just one more time.”
The girl’s figure became even more transparent. As she changed into a hazy silhouette, she stepped back inside Haruyuki.
In his head, far, far away, the last of her voice: “Now, remember. Call that name…the name of the armor before it was twisted into the Disaster…You should…already know it…”
Abruptly, a scene rose up on the screen of his memory. The pedestals of the Seven Arcs they found inside the Castle. The metal plate adorned with the name of the zeta star of the Big Dipper, kaiyou.
And at the very bottom, several roman letters. He had indeed felt something when he saw that. A tiny throbbing something deep in his soul. Like it called to mind a sad memory from a long, long time ago.
Thud. The heavy vibration came to him through the floor, and Haruyuki lifted his face.
Takumu had apparently arrived in the next room or the one beyond that. Now matter what attack Haruyuki faced next, the remaining pixels in his HP gauge would be easily blown away.
Can the me I am now stop Takumu? He’s brooded over it so deeply; what words could I say to bring him back?
A cold despair threatened to fill his heart once again, but Haruyuki gritted his teeth and shook it off.
Not words.
Feelings. With fists containing feelings. Me and Taku are both Burst Linkers. So then there’s only one thing to tell him, only one way.
“Go at each other with all we’ve got. Right at the beginning, I did, you know, Taku,” Haruyuki murmured in a low voice, and intently forced his battered avatar to stand. Fragments of his cracked armor fluttered to the floor.
There was no longer any fear, any panic.
Staring through the large hole in the wall, Haruyuki quietly gave voice to the name that had come to life from the depths of his memory.
“Equip…the Destiny.”
To be continued.
AFTERWORD
Reki Kawahara here. I’m bringing you the first book of 2011, Accel World 7: Armor of Catastrophe.
Thinking back on it, in the afterwords I wrote for the books from two years ago until last year, I have simply apologized intently and earnestly. Thus, my goal this year is to not apologize in the afterword. Or at least that’s what I thought, but…I’m sorry, please allow me to apologize out of the blue…I am already apologizing for the apology itself. (lol)
What?! I continued the story into the next volume again! I’m so sorry! Honestly, after dragging it out in book six like that, I resolved to neatly tie things up in book seven. And then, amazingly, I created this very detailed plot, and just as planned! That was how I was supposed to write it, but…Takumu worked so much harder for me than I was expecting…(lol)
B-but he almost never got the chance to come onstage in books five and six, so as the writer, I’m relieved that he’s really pulling his weight here. And I guess you could say, if the story’s continued this far, the only thing to do is let it go where it goes; I’ll just have to move forward following the demands of the characters. As of the time I’m writing this afterword, I’ve already begun work on the next book, and my heart is pounding as I type away at the keyboard, eager to see how the duel that didn’t finish this time is going to be resolved between Takumu and Haruyuki. I hope you’ll wait a little longer until I can deliver it to you in the form of a book!
Now, here, I’d like to write briefly once again about the outlook for 2011.
Since I’ve already (promptly) failed at my first goal to not apologize (lol), I’d like to at least meet my second goal of continuing to write without any big problems…Suddenly getting a bit raw here, but—no, but, I’ve been idly thinking lately that continuing to write at any rate is maybe the most important ability in this job of “writer.” To make an analogy with car racing, let’s say it’s something like rather than recklessly launching a do-or-die attack, you pick out the next hill, the next stage; you leave your assistants and continue cruising along…Although naturally, even still, there will definitely come some point where you have to fight for the finish line, sprint for the most important goal. So right now, I’d like to keep solidly turning that crank while not letting the timing for that sprint pass me by.
Volume 7 also slid into home just barely in time, and so to my long-suffering editor, Miki, and illustrator, HIMA, I am going to work hard in 2011 to be a good little boy and meet my deadlines. I hope you’ll stick with me!
To all you readers who were attacked with “to be continued” in the very first book of the new year, I humbly bow my head to you and entreat you to somehow please join me with a magnanimous spirit this year as well!!
Reki Kawahara
On a certain day in 2010 still, but it feels like 2011
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