Archangel of Savage Light

by Reki Kawahara

  Hrrrn! The air shuddered, and fist and arrow of flame were launched. The attack was of such force that a midlevel Burst Linker or lower would have easily been sent flying. The egg avatar’s movements were sluggish; it was already too late for it to defend or escape. The two flames ferociously closed in on the ISS kit stuck to the front of the torso.

  Plark!

  With a wet sound, the egg split in half. The enormous “mouth” that had tried to swallow up the master of the Legion Petit Paquet, Chocolat Puppeteer, four days earlier opened wide. There were no teeth or tongue to be seen inside; it was filled with a sticky darkness.

  And from that darkness came five or six ink-black energy bullets. These collided with the flame bullets head-on and immediately began to swell up in the air. Haruyuki braced himself for an explosion that never came. Instead, the swirling crimson and ebony energy balls grew smaller before his eyes, as though perhaps their force canceled each other out.

  In other words, given that the nihilistic something launched from the mouth of the egg avatar had canceled out even Niko’s Radiant Beat, it was an Incarnate attack. Haruyuki only knew one type of long-distance technique like that: Dark Shot, one of the two techniques the ISS kit gave to users. But that could only be launched from the right or left hand.

  “Why…from the mouth?!” Haruyuki let slip out, dumbfounded, and then, before his eyes, something even more surprising happened:

  The mouth of the massive egg avatar opened to a height of two meters and a width of four, and one human shape after another jumped out. There were five, ten—more than that. The silhouettes, of various shapes and sizes, were nothing other than battle puppets.

  “Rain! Maiden! Get back!”

  At Kuroyukihime’s command, the long-distance Niko and Utai withdrew. Haruyuki stepped forward with Takumu to protect them, but that was about as much as he could keep up with things.

  He stared dumbfounded at the new Burst Linkers in front of the egg avatar. Once a thirteenth avatar had jumped up high into the air and done a somersault before landing on the grass, the egg finally closed its mouth. And then, almost as if it had thrown up everything inside it, the massive egg shrank before their eyes.

  Once it reached the two-and-a-half-meter height, the contraction of the egg avatar stopped. But that was how Haruyuki knew it: The short limbs; the small, round eyes—it was without a doubt Avocado Avoider.

  And the slender F-type avatar, standing with the group of Burst Linkers thirteen strong lined up behind her, was none other than Magenta Scissor, the very Burst Linker Haruyuki and his friends had fought a fierce battle with four days earlier and who had parasitized Ash Roller with the ISS kit.

  With a form that looked as though dark-reddish-purple bandages had been wound around her entire body, Magenta smiled sweetly, her mouth the only part of her entire body exposed. And perhaps as a way of offering a greeting, she opened the arms crossed in front of her chest, spreading them out to both sides. Along with this gesture, the bandage armor on her chest melted away to reveal the ISS kit attached there. The blood-red eyeball also shone somewhat darkly on the bodies of all the avatars behind her, including Avocado.

  Ten meters apart, Magenta’s crew of thirteen and the nine in Haruyuki’s group faced one another. A low murmur broke the tense silence.

  “How…did…?” The owner of the voice was Takumu, still carefully wielding the Enhanced Armament of his right arm at the ready.

  Haruyuki finished the sentence in his mind. How on earth did you ambush nine people?

  Magenta was the one who attacked Ash Roller the previous day, so she might have anticipated that Haruyuki and his friends would go so far as to take on the challenge of destroying the ISS kit main body today in order to save Ash. But it would have been absolutely impossible to specify a precise time. And this was the Unlimited Neutral Field, where time was accelerated by a factor of a thousand. Even if they had been lying in wait since ten o’clock that morning real time, a simple calculation showed that more than three months would have passed on the inside.

  If you waited in one place, alert to your surroundings, for that length of time, when your target did eventually show up, you would have been totally exhausted and unable to fight. In other words, an ambush in the Unlimited Neutral Field was, in practical terms, impossible. The only one who could pull it off was the lone—as far as Haruyuki knew—Burst Linker with the ability to decelerate, the vice president of the Acceleration Research Society, Black Vise.

  So he’s pulling strings again? The thought flashed through Haruyuki’s mind. When it came to Black Vise, it was possible that he’d been hiding around Midtown Tower since the morning, and then when he discovered his target, he could have returned to the real world to inform Magenta and her gang. But in that case, considering the time lag on the real side, Magenta and the others would have had to show up after Haruyuki and his friends. So that theory was contradicted by the fact that Avocado Avoider had been there when they arrived at the park. And Black Vise and his Acceleration Research Society likely thought Metatron alone was enough to guard Midtown Tower, so Haruyuki couldn’t believe he would expend such effort on Magenta’s behalf when she wasn’t even a comrade.

  Haruyuki had thought this much through while he inhaled and exhaled, but he still absolutely could not understand how Magenta had managed to succeed in an ambush. As he racked his brain while he got into a fighting stance, Magenta smiled thinly and finally spoke.

  “Hello, Silver Crow. It’s been a while, Cyan Pile. I’m glad we could meet again.”

  “…I actually never wanted to see you again,” Takumu responded in a hard voice. He had come across Magenta in the Setagaya area in the middle of the month and been given a sealed ISS kit card. He had obtained it at first for the sake of gathering information, but pushed into an unavoidable situation, Takumu had equipped it and very nearly been dragged down into the dark side of Incarnate.

  Glossy lips still stretched out in a grin, Magenta shrugged her sharp shoulders lightly. “So cold! I was ever so looking forward to our reunion, y’know?”

  “Then prove it. Tell me how you managed to ambush us,” Takumu demanded, not entirely sure about where the “prove it” part of his statement was going to go.

  “Sure thing.” Magenta’s smile turned wry, but she agreed readily. “I had to make my apologies for breaking my promise with Crow and all.”

  “Promise…?” Haruyuki parroted, before finally remembering.

  When they fought in the Setagaya Area four days earlier, he had indeed exchanged words like a promise with Magenta: “Are you going to achieve your goal first, or will we destroy the ISS kit main body first?” The woman had come that day to block Haruyuki and his friends from destroying the kit main body, so that couldn’t have been construed as him breaking that promise. But then, what on earth was Magenta ultimately doing?

  As he listened with half an ear to Chiyuri explaining the situation to Kuroyukihime and the others behind him, Haruyuki tossed out the question inside him. “But, Magenta, if you hadn’t forcefully parasitized Ash Roller with an ISS kit yesterday, we wouldn’t have hurried like this to destroy the kit main body. Why? Why did you target Ash?!”

  “Can’t answer that, sadly. Got obligations of my own…But your first question. The answer’s simple. The hard part of an ambush in the Unlimited Neutral Field is you can’t handle the passing time. I mean, the days, the months, right? But what if you didn’t feel time? You could wait however long you wanted then, right?”

  “Didn’t feel…time?”

  Time was indeed extremely subjective. Fun times passed quickly, while hard times flowed slowly. But there was no way an ambush was fun. Time you spent standing by on guard for an enemy who might appear anywhere at any time would actually feel longer, wouldn’t it? The words meant as a hint only deepened his doubts.

  “I see.” A quiet voice came from behind him. “So there’s a secret to the egg-shaped duel avatar behind you then? You didn’t get in his mouth just to hi
de yourselves?”

  “Sooo insightful. But he’s not an egg, he’s an avocado. He’s not so great at talking, so I’ll do the introductions. This is Avocado Avoider. A pleasure.”

  Perhaps because his name was called, the dark-green avatar parked at the very rear stirred slightly. He had gotten a fair bit smaller, but even still, he was without a doubt the largest of the twenty-three avatars there.

  Magenta Scissor brought her right hand down to her hip. “Avoider means someone who avoids, but that’s not all. Originally, the word meant to void, y’know.”

  “To…void?”

  “Yup. There’s nothing but a void inside Avocado’s mouth. And ’cause there’s no space, he can get any number of people in there. And there’s no time, so when you’re in there, you don’t feel outside time. Although once he swallows you, your avatar gradually melts into the void, so you need some defenses against that.”

  Haruyuki needed two seconds or so to comprehend what Magenta Scissor was saying. The instant he managed to imagine it somehow, he cried out in surprise. “What?! So then, you mean, it’s like this? When you go into Avocado’s mouth in the Unlimited Neutral Field, and then his mouth opens again right away and you get out, a serious amount of time has actually passed. Something like that?”

  “That’s exactly it, Crow. From my perspective, I only jumped into Avocado’s mouth a second ago. Incidentally, we started this ambush here at a little before nine in real-world time. What time’s it now, hmm?”

  “…About twelve thirty.”

  “Three hours, hmm? Which means that nearly five months have passed over here, huh? Normally, we’d have gotten sick of waiting and lost even the energy to talk, but this is how it is, so you don’t need to worry.” Magenta Scissor grinned.

  “Yer a damned liar, Magenta Scissor, or whoever you are.” A low voice containing a fierce heat came flying at her.

  It was Niko. When Haruyuki glanced back, the Red King stood next to the Black King, glaring at Magenta Scissor, a sharp light shining in her large eye lenses.

  “Oh my! Liar? Whatever do you mean?”

  “Don’t play dumb. You know what I’m talking about. I don’t know anything about this void or whatever of yours, but it’s true thirteen of you went into Avocado Avoider’s mouth and didn’t feel time. But, you know, what about Avocado? He didn’t wait here in this park all sharp and focused by himself for five months, now, did he? You hafta know how hard that would be.”

  Following the shower of verbal attacks—a rain of high-temperature flames—the smile finally faded from Magenta Scissor’s mouth and disappeared.

  But it wasn’t Magenta Scissor who responded to Niko, but rather Avocado himself standing at the rear.

  “I’m…fine…!” Avocado shouted, tiny round eyes blinking. “I. Was asleep. The whole time…! So. I’m fine…!”

  He was parasitized by the ISS kit beneath his large mouth, but somehow, Avocado appeared to have maintained his self, although not to the extent Magenta Scissor had. In contrast, the twelve lined up in front of him were uniformly silent, the light gone from their eye lenses. When Haruyuki thought back, Avocado had repeated “Like. Chocolat,” while he was trying to eat Chocolat Puppeteer four days earlier.

  The large avatar was about to shout something more, and Magenta Scissor stopped him with a hand. Turning to Niko, she bowed lightly.

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Red King. I didn’t expect you and Bloody Kitty to be involved, but I am very glad to see you…Just as you say, I did push Avocado into a difficult role. I at least should have kept him company during the overly long wait, but I didn’t. But that’s not to say that waiting would have been annoying…If I was going to take on the Black King, then I wanted to fight in perfect condition. That’s all.”

  Hearing this, Kuroyukihime responded in a voice like a honed blade, “So the sealed ISS kit card you gave Crow was indeed a challenge to me then, Magenta Scissor.”

  “Well, it did end up being that. Although it’s quite a bit sooner than I’d planned. But to wish for any more than this would be greedy. Because my full battle power is set up here now, on this most perfect stage, where not only can no one interfere, but there is no time limit. If it means I can have an all-out war with the Black King, then I will be content to accept any censure.”

  “…I believe this is our first meeting. Why are you so eager to fight me?”

  Magenta didn’t reply to Kuroyukihime’s question right away. She moved her long, slender fingers to stroke the single short sword equipped on each hip. Beneath the bandage armor that covered the majority of her face, her lips tightened firmly for an instant. When she spoke eventually, it was the sharpest and coldest Haruyuki had ever head Magenta Scissor sound. “That is because you were born with something very big, Black Lotus.”

  “Oh? And what might that be?”

  “You actually got too many big things to count, but…To sum them all up, I suppose it would be power and will? When you dropped down into the Accelerated World as a Burst Linker, you already had overwhelming battle power and an unshakeable will. That form of yours is proof of that.”

  Magenta raised her right hand without a sound and thrust her index finger at Kuroyukihime.

  “The general principle of same level, same potential? Heh-heh, that makes me laugh. Everyone actually knows it, deep down. Some Burst Linkers are strong and some are not, right from the start.”

  You can’t just say that! Haruyuki wanted to shout. The word potential didn’t only refer to abilities and special attacks. Even if you had hardly any special attacks or Enhanced Armament when you landed in the Accelerated World, as long as you believed in the avatar your heart had produced and you continually reached your hand out to the sky, never giving up, your duel avatar would respond someday. Haruyuki had fought to that very day supported by this conviction.

  But at the same time, the words Magenta had said to him four days earlier replayed in his ears. Avocado Avoider was abandoned by his parent immediately after being born and had his initial points stolen by Legion members, one of whom was his parent. On the brink of total loss, Magenta Scissor had given him an ISS kit, and he turned the tables to drive them to total loss instead.

  There hadn’t been a “someday” for Avocado. If Magenta hadn’t intervened, he would definitely have had all his points stolen and been permanently exiled from the Accelerated World. Simply because he didn’t have a powerful ability or a cool appearance. What saved Avocado hadn’t been the principle of “same level, same potential,” but rather the ISS kit.

  Haruyuki gritted his teeth, unable to say anything, while Kuroyukihime stepped forward between him and Takumu.

  “I will bear in mind your assertion. But what does that have to do with my form?”

  This curt response brought a thin smile back to Magenta Scissor’s lips. “…A duel avatar is born in the forge of mental trauma. Everyone knows that. If the shape and size of that trauma—that ‘lack’—is reflected in the avatar…This is just my personal opinion, but the greater the symmetry of the avatar, the less that Burst Linker needs other people.”

  “Symmetry…? You mean, left and right have the same shape?”

  “Yes. Left and right, front and back, top and bottom. When you really poke into symmetry, you see it’s eternal. It’s that perfect. You learned this in school, didn’t you? Molecules with higher symmetry are more stable, they’re not broken or bonded.”

  Had he learned something like that? Even in a situation like this, Haruyuki grew slightly uneasy and suddenly asked Pard, standing behind him to the left, “I-is that true?”

  And her answer was: “Once the fight is over, look up benzene and resonance stabilization.”

  At any rate, these weren’t the sort of terms you learned in eighth grade, so he nodded with an “O-okay” and turned to face forward again.

  Kuroyukihime sloughed off a small shrug. “I think it’s a bit of a stretch to force molecular symmetry onto a duel avatar. And if you’re saying that
my avatar has bilateral symmetry, then isn’t it the same for you and your companions?”

  “At a glance, maybe, sure. But, you see, Black King, that form of yours hides something almost no other avatar has, a perfect symmetry.” Sounding mysterious, Magenta brought up her right hand in a supple motion and spread out her thin fingers.

  Unable to immediately understand the meaning of the gesture, Haruyuki stared at Magenta Scissor’s hand. It had the same five fingers as Haruyuki’s—and pretty much every other duel avatar. The placement was also normal, and he couldn’t see anything she would go out of her way to show them.

  And then he finally understood.

  When you looked at it like that, the hand of a duel avatar—no, a human being—didn’t have bilateral symmetry. The lengths of the index finger and the pinkie finger were totally different, and there was nothing opposite the thumb. But only one person there in that place, only the Black Lotus alone, had hands that were symmetrical both side to side and front to back. As the blades of swords that cut through everything they touched.

  Kuroyukihime likely understood what Magenta Scissor was trying to say the moment she raised her hand. But the Black King maintained her silence, while Magenta Scissor gazed at her squarely and continued in an even sharper voice, “Our hands are asymmetrical. Only when they are joined with someone else’s do they become symmetrical. But, Black Lotus, your hands are different. Your two swords have just that, a perfect symmetry. You don’t need anyone else. Because right from the start, you were born with everything you needed.”

  “Y-you can’t just—!” Haruyuki cried wildly, unable to stand it anymore. “You can’t know all that just from the way an avatar looks! And you! You said before you hate pairs! You’re totally contradicting yourself now!”

  “Oh my, that’s a little off the mark, boyo.” Magenta Scissor twirled her hand in the air. “What I hate is two being one. And I don’t want to fight the Black King because she is the manifestation of ultimate symmetry. I hate that she went and made a child, formed a Legion, and plays around at being a parent or a friend or whatever when she has the strength to go however far she wants all by herself. Above all else, I simply can’t swallow the Black Legion, the way you’re all ‘chosen knights to fight evil.’”