Archangel of Savage Light

by Reki Kawahara

  The yellow-green witch avatar was completely still, as though a time-stopping spell had been cast on her. But an infinity of stars was swirling around, glittering deep in her eye lenses, reminiscent of a cat’s eyes. Chiyuri had a surprisingly intellectual side, and this was the sign that the gears in her head were going full speed.

  Haruyuki peered at her face, wondering what exactly she had come up with.

  “Oh…Ohh! …Ooooooh!!” Lime Bell suddenly let out a wild cry and whirled her head around, looking at their surroundings.

  “Wh-what’s going on, Chii?!” a dumbfounded Takumu asked.

  No sooner had her eyes locked onto him than Chiyuri was shouting again. “G-gauge! Gimme your special-attack gauge! Right now! Now!!”

  “Huh? O-okay, so then smash some ob—”

  “There’s no time for that! Aah, come on, Haru! Taku! Sit down!!”

  Snap! The index finger of her right hand shot out toward the ground, and instantly, Haruyuki and Takumu were seated alongside each other. Standing imposingly before them, Chiyuri brandished the Enhanced Armament of her left hand, Choir Chime, high in the air.

  Gong, gong, boooong! With a solemn sound, the bell smacked the heads of the two on the ground from right to left and then back to the right again.

  About 20 percent of Haruyuki’s health gauge was instantly carried away, and in his field of view, visions of yellow chicks hopped around. Other people’s gauges weren’t visible in the Unlimited Neutral Field, but Takumu had probably taken about the same amount of damage.

  Paying no mind to Kuroyukihime and the others gaping at the sudden violence, Chiyuri glanced up to check her gauge and then shouted again, “Can you go one more time?!”

  “Y-y-yeah, I guess,” Haruyuki nodded.

  “O-of course, Chii!” Takumu puffed his chest out.

  Gong, gong, boooong!

  The Choir Chime, at first glance a musical instrument, was actually a pretty great weapon. It induced a stun state at the same time as it did damage with a striking attack. After a total of two round trips, and blows to the head on top of that, Takumu and Haruyuki were half-comatose; their upper bodies swayed and wobbled.

  Fortunately, Chiyuri’s special-attack gauge was apparently full now, and she yanked Choir Chime above her head. “Leopard! Please trust me!!”

  She makes a big show of this violence, and then is all “trust me,” Haruyuki thought, cradling his head in his hands.

  But Pard was nothing if not brave. “’Kay.”

  “Okay, here we go! Citron—” Fwm, fwm! Chiyuri swung the bell of her left hand around twice and then called in a high-pitched voice, “—Caaaaallll!!” She brought Choir Chime down sharply, and a green light gushed forward to swallow Leopard.

  Here, finally, Haruyuki—and probably Takumu, too—grasped the intentions of his childhood friend: a recovery measure that was so simple and thus had not occurred to anyone there. Chiyuri was trying to rewind the damage Blood Leopard had taken—not her health gauge, but the burst points Seiryu had stolen.

  Lime Bell’s special attack, Citron Call, had two modes. Mode I rewound the status of the target avatar in units of time. And Mode II rewound in units of status change. In other words, with Mode I, an emptied health gauge or special-attack gauge could be replenished, while with Mode II, Enhanced Armament summoned by an enemy could be returned to storage. Either ability brought a fearsome advantage in tag team matches and the Territories, earning her the nickname the Watch Witch.

  Chiyuri was using Mode I now. But the witch herself had told Haruyuki something once: that neither mode could rewind changes related to level-ups. Meaning, it was impossible to cancel a level promotion and recover the spent points, or cancel a special attack or ability gained as a level-up bonus so that one could make a new selection.

  In which case, it seemed to Haruyuki that she wouldn’t be able to rewind the burst points stolen by Seiryu. Level increases were saved in the avatar data in the Brain Burst central server at the time they were generated, putting them out of reach of a Burst Linker’s individual ability to interfere. It should have been the same for level drops…

  —Wait.

  That wasn’t right. Although Blood Leopard had had her points stolen from her, it hadn’t gone so far as a level drop. She hadn’t gotten anything in exchange for the deduction of points, so maybe it was possible to rewind that? The points the God Seiryu had sucked up and tucked away in a bag might disappear, but why would they care about that?

  “…Chiyu!!” Lost in his thoughts, Haruyuki stood up and supported the shoulders of his childhood friend from behind, as she continued to release light from the bell. “You can do it! You, for sure, I know you can do it!! Keep fighting!!”

  Since Citron Call was a special attack and not an Incarnate technique, Haruyuki’s encouragement probably wasn’t particularly helpful. Even so, he put all the energy he could muster into his hands and tried to support his friend.

  Chiyuri had thought and acted on her own before, too, when the twilight marauder, Dusk Taker, had stolen Haruyuki’s flight ability, and she eventually got his wings back for him. She was that sort of person. Seemingly willful and selfish, she actually paid more attention than anyone else to the things around her. Most likely, more than half of her motivation for becoming a Burst Linker was for the sake of Haruyuki and Takumu.

  …Thanks, Chiyu.

  A faint silver light grew in the hands of Silver Crow gripping Lime Bell’s shoulders, pouring through his armor where they touched. But neither Haruyuki nor Chiyuri—and probably not Kuroyukihime or any of the others, either—noticed this phenomenon.

  Before them, wrapped in layers of green light effect, Blood Leopard abruptly stretched her hands toward the sky. Almost as though she were accepting something invisible.

  No— Haruyuki could see it, too. White droplets of light pouring down from the night sky. Ephemeral like snowflakes yet somehow warm, the light particles danced down one after another into Leopard’s open hands, flashing and disappearing when they touched the armor of her palms.

  The strange snow continued to fall for a time and then finally stopped. Chiyuri’s special-attack gauge was exhausted.

  Lime Bell slowly lowered her Enhanced Armament, and Haruyuki pulled his hands away from her shoulders and took a step back. But Leopard didn’t move right away. As the others held their breath and watched over her, the crimson avatar with the leopard head moved just her left hand, opened her Instruct menu, and flickered around on the page. She quickly found what she was looking for and closed the window, a faint smile lingering on the mouth modeled after a ferocious animal.

  “Thank you, Lime Bell.” Leopard said actual words of appreciation and not just her usual “Thanksy” and followed it up with a deep bow. “They’re back. The points Seiryu stole, all of them.”

  After a brief silence, they all erupted in cheers. Niko and Haruyuki both did double fist pumps, Takumu and Akira bobbed their heads up and down, while Raker and Utai clapped in unison. Amidst all this, Kuroyukihime hovered lightly over to Chiyuri.

  “Bell—no, Chiyuri,” she murmured, thick with emotion. “I am eternally surprised by you. I thank you. Because of you, we are able to end the mission to rescue Aqua Current in no better way. In the future, too, help me and our comrades with your inventiveness and your ability to take action…Thank you.”

  The sword of her left hand was raised softly, and Chiyuri lightly touched Choir Chime to the flat front of it. “I—I just always charge forward with my hunches,” she said, as though embarrassed. “But I’m really glad I was able to rewind in time. While I was doing it, I thought maybe there was just barely not enough in my special-attack gauge, though.”

  “…You did?” For some reason, Kuroyukihime glanced at Haruyuki here, but then quickly returned her gaze to Chiyuri. “No, it’s all thanks to your quick-wittedness. I’m truly glad you made it in time…”

  “You say that, but aren’t you reeeeeally thinking that you’re super-lucky to not have to go
through the hassle of Enemy hunting?” Niko jeered, putting an end to the tender moment.

  “A-and why would I think that?!” Kuroyukihime whirled around. “Once this entire mission is finished, I couldn’t care less if we spent whatever time’s left hunting our hearts out!!”

  “Oh, now you’ve said it, Black One! ’Kay then, it’s been a while since I took a tour of the four great dungeons—”

  ““Gah! P-please no!””

  Haruyuki and Takumu cried in protest as Niko started laughing in a way that was not clear if she was serious or joking about the whole thing.

  “I’ll add my own thanks to that pile, Bell.” She straightened up again and bowed her head to Chiyuri. “For how you recovered the points for her, but also for how hard you worked for Pard’s sake.” She patted Chiyuri’s arm lightly and took a few steps to face Blood Leopard. “So, Pard? Whatcha wanna do?”

  What does she mean, what do you want to do? Haruyuki cocked his head to one side as he watched the red pair with the other black group members.

  Pard appeared to think it over for about half a second before nodding slightly. “Go up, right now.”

  …Go up? Where? Haruyuki cocked his head to the other side, but Pard’s left hand was already in motion, opening the Instruct menu. She tapped at the window several times with the tip of her short claw, and after a brief pause, she pressed firmly on some button.

  A rainbow circle of light appeared at the avatar’s feet, and from it, a similarly rainbow-colored pillar of light rose up to engulf Leopard’s entire body. At the same time, a cool and exciting melody played, a sound Haruyuki had heard about four times in the past—the fanfare of a level-up.

  “Wh-what?!” he cried out, stunned, and everyone else present, with the exception of Niko, similarly showed varying degrees of surprise.

  But Pard’s left hand didn’t stop there. She brought her index finger up once more and pushed the button again. And so again, the celebration of light and sound swallowed the slender avatar.

  “Wh…whaaaaaat?!” His head already thrown back as far as it could go, Haruyuki was unable to withstand the additional shock and ended up falling backward onto his butt.

  Chiyuri to his right and Takumu to his left managed to stay upright, but they were frozen in curious poses. Even Kuroyukihime and the senior Linkers lined up across from them simply stood there, speechless.

  And it was no wonder. Blood Leopard had, in mere seconds, gone up two levels. Simply going from a level-one newbie to a level three was an immense improvement, but at the moment she’d opened her menu, Pard had been level six. Which meant that she’d gone up one to seven, and then another one—to eight.

  Level eight. A true high ranker, with only the Seven Kings of Pure Color being at a higher level. Haruyuki could count on one hand the number of Burst Linkers he knew who had made it that far: only the current deputy of Nega Nebulus, Sky Raker.

  In the silence, the rainbow light effect vanished, and Blood Leopard casually let her hand fall back to her side. Since she didn’t go through the process of acquiring level-up bonuses or Enhanced Armament, appearance-wise, nothing about her had changed, but Haruyuki definitely felt something like a pressure in the way Pard stood that hadn’t been there a minute earlier.

  Her long tail swishing, the crimson avatar started to walk soundlessly. She cut past Haruyuki and stopped in front of the sky-blue avatar next to Kuroyukihime. Bloody Kitty, aka Blood Leopard, faced the Nega Nebulus deputy Strato-Shooter, aka Sky Raker, and said briefly in a quiet voice, “Sorry for the wait, Raker.”

  “You finally made it this far, hmm, Leopard?” Fuko responded with similar brevity.

  Haruyuki intuitively understood the meaning of this exchange. He’d heard that Leopard and Raker were rivals, and they had fought any number of fierce battles in the Territories and normal duels. Pard had no doubt made incredible efforts to level up in lockstep with Fuko. But in the summer three years earlier, the former Nega Nebulus had been destroyed, and their duels had ended. Leopard had stopped leveling up in order to rescue Aqua Current sealed away at the Castle, and Raker had determined that the responsibility for the destruction of the Legion was her fault and thus retired from duels.

  And then today, two years and ten months after the Castle Fight. Aqua Current had been rescued, and Blood Leopard had used the points she’d been saving that whole time to become level eight—to reach the same height as Sky Raker. That was what their exchange meant.

  As they faced each other, their bodies were wrapped in a hazy overlay. It wasn’t that they were trying to activate any Incarnate technique; it was simply that the fighting spirit and delight building inside their avatars had become an aura and leaked out. The pair simultaneously raised their right hands and clenched them into fists—and then slowly touched them to each other. The concentrated auras bounced off each other, sparking sky-blue and crimson.

  Naturally, not now, but at some point in the near future, the two would fight. The techniques they’d polished and perfected, the experience they’d accumulated, their pride as Burst Linkers, they would put all of it into their fists and tell each other so, so much. Haruyuki didn’t know whether he’d get to watch that fight or not, but even if he couldn’t, he was certain of just one thing: After the fight, the bond between the two would be that much deeper, and only stronger.

  Taking his gaze off the two level eights, Haruyuki unconsciously looked over at Cyan Pile standing next to him. Takumu happened to turn his face at the same time, and their gazes intersected for a moment.

  Even if he couldn’t put it into words, his childhood friend’s thoughts came across loud and clear. He was remembering again the promise to duel that they had confirmed with each other while they were moving on the armored truck from Suginami to the Castle. Once they were both level seven, they would duel for real, with the fullest extent of their abilities. Whatever they gained or lost as a result—

  “…!” Surprised by his own thoughts, Haruyuki opened his eyes wide beneath his mirrored mask. If Silver Crow’s goggles hadn’t been half-mirrored, he would have been getting some raised eyebrows from Takumu, but fortunately, his childhood friend appeared to have noticed nothing. He nodded and then turned his face forward again, but his mind was locked as it had been a few seconds before.

  …Lose? When Takumu and I duel, whoever wins or loses, we won’t actually lose anything. The way we’ve been…I’m sure it’s the way we’ll be, Haruyuki told himself, brushing away the baseless premonition.

  Fuko and Pard lowered their fists at basically the same time. The crimson, humanoid leopard whirled around and returned to her place, just behind Niko’s right.

  The Burst Linkers, now numbering nine since they’d welcomed one more person, rearranged themselves spontaneously into a large circle.

  Their commander, Kuroyukihime, nodded briefly and raised the sword of her right arm. “Mission number one, Operation Aqua Current Rescue, is now complete,” she announced firmly. “You all performed wonderfully. In conclusion, once again, welcome back, Curren.”

  “Welcome back!!” Niko and Pard also sang out.

  “…I’m home, everyone,” Akira said, enunciating each syllable, slowly blinking eye lenses beneath the flowing water that covered her face mask.

  Haruyuki had to have been seeing things to imagine that even through the film of water, Akira’s eyes looked warm and damp.

  3

  The post-mission processing—recovering everyone’s health gauges and refreshing Niko’s Enhanced Armament, which had been pounded full of holes under Seiryu’s fierce attacks—required roughly an hour.

  The means for it was incredibly simple. They returned to the real world briefly through a leave point in Tokyo Station and then immediately reaccelerated. Although this used up an additional ten points, their duel avatars and the Enhanced Armament were completely regenerated. It felt like mere seconds in experienced time for Haruyuki and his friends, but while they were shouting the Unlimited Burst command, about a thou
sand times that much time passed in the Accelerated World.

  Compared to the many online games Haruyuki had played before Brain Burst, the complete recovery of health and equipment with just one re-log-in seemed fairly generous, but there was a problem: When you used a portal, your location information was also reset.

  Thus, when Haruyuki touched down in the Accelerated World once more, the scene around him was not Tokyo Station. Instead, he had returned to the yard of Umesato Junior High. And on top of that, in the mere hour they had been away, the Change had apparently come, so that the night of the Century End stage had lifted, and the grounds were dyed red, as though they were on fire.

  He had been so impatient to get back, he had shouted the command at the fastest speed the BB program recognized, so no one else had dived in with him yet. And since a difference of 0.1 seconds bloated up into a hundred seconds on this side, it would take a minute or more for his companions to join him.

  Haruyuki turned around and looked at the Umesato Junior High school buildings, transformed now into something resembling Grecian temple ruins. He narrowed his eyes to stare at one corner on the east side of the first floor of the second school building.

  In the nurse’s room that existed in that spot in the real world, right now at that very moment, his cherished friend, Rin Kusakabe, was fighting with everything she had. She was desperately trying to endure the mental interference of the ISS kit parasitizing the American motorcycle that was a part of her duel avatar, Ash Roller.

  Rin had collapsed in the middle of the school festival right after watching the boys’ kendo team group performance, so in real-world time, thirty minutes had not yet passed. But since the power of an individual ISS kit’s interference grew in step with the spread of the infection through the Accelerated World, one minute must have felt any number of times longer than that to Rin, who was struggling to keep the kit from taking control.

  They had learned that you couldn’t get away from the kit’s interference even if you removed your Neurolinker or switched the power off from when Takumu had been parasitized. Haruyuki had no idea what the logic behind it was, but as long as the ISS kit existed inside the Neurolinker—or as long as the kit’s main body existed inside the Brain Burst central server—the phenomenon would continue.