1

“Equip…the Destiny.”

Haruyuki’s voice command made the bone-dry air of the Scorched Earth stage ripple and shake ever so slightly.

As if a switch had been flipped, the distant roar of the wind, the alarm sounded by his nearly empty HP gauge, the crash of his opponent smashing through one thick wall after another in his relentless march toward Haruyuki—all of it disappeared.

Haruyuki stood in the center of a large, scorched-concrete room, blanketed by heavy silence. And then sensation exploded from a single point within him.

Intense pain.

Like a molten lance piercing deep between his shoulder blades. His vision was haloed in white while an infinite shower of sparks scattered across his brain. His virtual breath stopped. Even his thoughts broke into countless fragments and shot off in all directions.

“…Ngh…Hnk…Aaaah!!” His entire body jerked backward like a bow after its arrow, and a hoarse scream leaked out of his mouth. But even so, a voice abruptly echoed toward him from far, far away—though perhaps it was closer than anything else.

It’s useless.

I can no longer be separated from my vessel.

Due to our overwhelming rage, grief, and despair, the armor derived from the Destiny cannot be changed. We desire nothing but blood. Only endless slaughter. Only an eternal parade of catastrophe.

Before his snowy vision, several image fragments flashed in succession, like a “suggested videos” screen had taken over. At the center of them all was a knight-type duel avatar, body covered in heavy blackish-silver armor. But the design was different each time that image flashed.

Innumerable teeth growing from the edge of a hood-shaped helmet.

Tentacles of some sort twisting out from the entire face area.

Long silver hair hanging from the bottom of the helmet down to the feet.

Crimson flames shooting up from the head, dragon’s breath.

And a sinister greatsword brandished below a sharply tapered visor that came low over the eyes.

Haruyuki knew instinctively that they were the successive generations of Chrome Disaster. The forms might have been different, but the color of the armor, the aura of darkness, and the frenzied fighting style were exactly the same. In the fragments he saw, these knights swung swords, slashed with talons, and stabbed with teeth as if compelled by an unseen force. They were howling, wailing in excitement as they slaughtered entire groups of duel avatars, avatars who were nowhere near a match for their might.

As the images faded, the voice echoed in his head once more:

Smash. And devour. That is what you desire.

Eat, take, become infinitely strong. Until you alone are left in the wastelands of the Accelerated World.

Until the demise of this world.

From the center of his spine—the exact position of the wire hook that the fifth Disaster had pierced him with—a pain like pale lightning radiated outward, stabbing into his extremities. But Haruyuki gritted his teeth to keep from screaming. If he lost to the destructive impulses now, all this would be for nothing.

The sadness of Niko forced to condemn Cherry Rook, her parent and closest friend, in order to perform her duty as a king.

The love of Chiyuri, who pulled Haruyuki back from the edge after he began to run wild on Hermes’ Cord by returning the armor to a seed state for him.

The desire of Kuroyukihime, who reached out to the Haruyuki hiding in the depths of the local net and gave him wings called hope.

And the prayers of a single girl lodged in a corner of the armor, waiting for such a long time…

The pain simply kept growing, endlessly, surpassing the domain of physical sensation to become a storm of energy that overwhelmed, attempting to shred Haruyuki’s consciousness. It would all go away if he just called the name “Disaster.” He knew that, but he mustered the last of his mental energy and endured the onslaught with everything he had.

At that moment, from the distance of the incandescent world far, far away, another voice came to him.

Believe.

It’s all right. I know you can do it, you of all people. You’re the one I’ve been waiting for all this time…

The voice was without a doubt that of the golden girl who appeared before him earlier like a vision. Haruyuki used what little remaining focus he had to give a brief reply.

I’m sorry. I’m not the special person you’ve been waiting for. I have a ton of problems. I worry all the time. All I do is mess up. I can’t trust people, so I run away, even though I can’t even walk straight by myself. I’m pathetic.

But I do have one thing I’m proud of now.

I know how to like people again. And lots of them, so many people. I still don’t like myself or believe in myself, but even still, I can keep fighting for them. I know that now. It’s not much, but I want to do whatever I can to protect our warm place…

These thoughts of Haruyuki’s, a torch on the verge of burning out, were answered by that kind voice.

That’s more than enough. After all, that—that all by itself—is proof of strength.

Inside Haruyuki, there came the faint but definite sound of something cracking. But not the echo of collapse. The sound of something bouncing off the inside of a shell of hard, hard seed. The sound of birth.

A clear silver the temperature of snowmelt spilled out, gushed out of him, pushing away the luminescent pain. Haruyuki opened his eyes wide.

Glittering armor was smoothly generating from the fingertips of his remaining right arm. An even more pure, true silver than Silver Crow’s own covering—the armor.

The design was powerful, but there was nothing sinister about it. From the palm of his hand to his wrist, up to his elbow, then his upper arm, the armor equipped itself with a light metallic clink. Each time he felt another bit of reassuring weight add itself, a vitality twice as great as the armor was heavy filled him, and his body actually seemed to lighten.

Instinctively, Haruyuki understood that this silver Enhanced Armament was the original form of “the Disaster,” the Armor of Catastrophe: “the Destiny.” The theta star of the Seven Arcs, enshrined alongside the epsilon—the straight sword Infinity—was the armor covering him now.

A long, long time ago, someone had successfully made it into the Castle and obtained the Destiny. But after that, something—many sadnesses, the golden-yellow girl had said—happened, and the form of the armor was distorted to become the Disaster. When Fuko Kurasaki and Utai Shinomiya spoke of the “four confirmed Arcs,” they were referring to the Blue King’s greatsword Impulse, the Green King’s large shield Strife, and the Purple King’s staff Tempest, with the last one being the Disaster Haruyuki himself owned.

Once he knew this, the incredible power hidden within the Armor of Catastrophe made sense. When he considered the fact that it was one of the Seven Arcs and that the epsilon star was effectively sealed away with the eta star still untouched, it was no exaggeration to say that this was the strongest Enhanced Armament in the Accelerated World.

At that moment, Haruyuki was, by calling the armor’s true name, attempting to summon the original from before its transformation. If he succeeded, there should be no mental interference when he equipped it. And although the future-prediction function that had allowed him to effortlessly slaughter the powerful enemy Rust Jigsaw would no longer exist, he didn’t need that sort of power in this fight.

He didn’t want to beat the IS-equipped Cyan Pile.

Takumu couldn’t stop blaming himself for past crimes, and now that he was finally caught on the edge of despair, Haruyuki simply wanted to tell him. Tell him how much he, Haruyuki Arita, trusted, relied on, and needed this person, Takumu Mayuzumi. He wanted to be able to deliver a punch with all these feelings in it, a final blow. He wanted to borrow the power to smash through that aura of darkness, with the very little that was left in his HP gauge.

As if in response to Haruyuki’s prayers, the pure silver armor continued to appear before his eyes. A large elbow pad, and then the light stretched out from there to his upper arm.

However.

Just as the armor was about to reach his shoulder, he abruptly felt a fierce resistance. A ferocious roar thundered faintly in his ears, and he realized it was the voice of the spirit housed in the arm, the voice of the beast, the Disaster. The beast refused to disappear. Enraged that only the Destiny, the Enhanced Armament it possessed, was being summoned, it was trying to interfere with the creation of the object.

Kreee! A fierce creaking sound ripped through him, and the silver armor stopped where it had covered half of Silver Crow’s right shoulder. In the left of his field of view, a string of text in the system font was flashing irregularly. YOU EQUIPPED AN ENHANCED ARMAMENT: THE…He could read it up to there, but after that, only the blurry forms of the letters D, S, and T floated up.

All the voices and pain receded until they were finally gone.

For a moment, silence—so characteristic of the Scorched Earth stage—filled the charred space, the first floor of his real-world condo’s B wing. In the center of the dark room he was currently in, Haruyuki raised his right arm, covered in the new armor, and squeezed his hand into a fist.

And then the front wall crumbled into tiny pieces, a large silhouette appearing from the other side.

The dark aura blanketing Cyan Pile—Takumu—had grown even thicker. The true light-blue coloring of his armor was hidden; only the crimson eye of the ISS kit lodged in the Pile Driver, the Enhanced Armament of his right arm, glittered vividly. Even the eye lenses behind his mask’s narrow slits had changed from their old light blue to a sharp purple. Those eyes stared hard at Haruyuki.

Finally, a quiet voice: “Is that the original form of the Armor of Catastrophe?”

Even propelled by destructive, ruinous urges, Takumu had apparently not lost his power of insight.

Haruyuki looked down at his right arm, covered in its new armor, and nodded. “Yeah. Although I couldn’t summon anything more than one arm…”

“That alone is seriously impressive. You’re probably the first of all those Burst Linkers the armor has swallowed to resist its power.” Takumu’s voice was gentle but nearly inflectionless; it rang hollow. “You’re strong, Haru. You know, if you just gave in to the temptation of the armor, you could have tens, hundreds of times the power you have now, but you can still fight it. If it had parasitized me, it would have taken me over immediately. I’d probably have bared my fangs at you and Chii, and even Master…”

“No way. Taku, you’d be able to summon more than one arm of the Destiny for sure. You’d get the whole thing. I really believe that,” Haruyuki asserted immediately, staring at Cyan Pile’s face mask.

But Takumu hung his head low, perhaps to escape that stare and those words. “You still don’t understand, Haru?” he murmured, voice slightly quavering. “I…I’m not the kind of person you can say things like that about. I just put on this show. The truth is, inside, I’m jealous of other people. I hate them. I don’t want people to be happy; I pray for them to be unhappy. I laugh in the shadows when my rival gets bad grades; I feel good when the guy I’m up against for a regular spot on the team gets hurt. When my two best friends stopped talking, the people most important to me, people I’d been with basically since I was born? I pretended to be worried, but I was secretly relieved.”

From eye slits now devoid of any light, several white particles spilled out. “That’s me. That’s the real Takumu Mayuzumi!” He’d shouted like he was spitting blood, and the black aura jetting up from his body increased in strength, reaching up almost to the ceiling.

Thud. Cyan Pile took a step forward, and the charred, burned ground of the stage cracked beneath his foot. A pressure charged forward at Haruyuki, threatening to send him flying back if he stopped concentrating for even a second, but he resisted that power and opened his mouth once more.

“Taku. I’m basically exactly the same.” He worked hard to keep his voice from shaking and began to quietly tell his story. “If we’re comparing the number of people we’ve cursed in our hearts, I’m definitely ten times worse than you. You think I haven’t been jealous of you, that I haven’t envied you? The only reason I can manage to resist the temptation of the armor is because my insides are as black as it is.”

Takumu was silent then, the jet-black storm around him subsiding the slightest bit. His shoulders shook minutely.

“Heh. Heh-heh. The way you talk hasn’t changed since we were kids. Right…You’ve always done this. You’ve always managed to control the dark parts of your heart. Not like me, always trying to put up a front—”

“We’re no different! You and me, we’re the same! We get lost, we worry, and just when we think we’ve taken a step forward, we smash into a wall. But even with all that, the reason I’ve made it this far is because you were right there with me! So I know you can fight this black power, too! You can fight it and break it and move forward again! You can, Taku!!” Haruyuki cried earnestly, and he felt like Takumu smiled faintly beneath his mask.

“Thanks. Thanks, Haru. You saying that to me now…maybe becoming a Burst Linker, fighting like this—it wasn’t a waste of time. But, you know…that’s exactly why I want to use my power until the end—for you, for the Legion. The control of…this ISS kit is overwhelming…I’m practically bursting with the urge to destroy right now. But how much of that is me and how much of it is the kit making me feel that…I don’t know anymore.” The voice murmuring this was quiet. But that quiet was a seed, ripe with omen.

Brandishing the pulsing, blood-colored eye affixed to the Pile Driver of his right arm, Takumu continued, tense, “This parasite was probably put together by some king-level experts, fusing their abilities and special attacks and wills. The more you fight, the more Enemies you devour, the greater the power it generates. And then at some point, it divides and makes a child—I mean, a clone.”

“…A clone…” Haruyuki shuddered. Something that deliberately dirtied the parent-child system that was the foundation of Brain Burst…

Takumu lowered his arm before opening his mouth again, and Haruyuki felt even more strongly that his friend was fiercely enduring something he couldn’t see. “The terrifying part is…the kit clones are connected by the medium of negative imagination. When Burst Linkers with clones of the same cluster cultivate their hatred and malice and rage inside the kit, the kits of the parent and child display even greater power. So the more clones you disseminate, the stronger you, too, can become.”

“Th-that’s…So you mean Burst Linkers who have kits compete to spread their own clones…?” Haruyuki asked hoarsely.

“Yeah.” Takumu nodded gravely. “While we’re here doing this, I can feel the black emotions pouring in from the Burst Linker Magenta Scissor, who gave me this kit in Setagaya, as well as Bush Utan and Olive Grab and the others who have her first-generation clones. And at the same time, the darkness I’ve cultivated is strengthening them.”

In other words.

The network of ISS kit clones was a malicious copy of both the parent and Legion systems that were the proper Brain Burst. If parents and Legions were joined by positive bonds of love and friendship, then the ISS kit clones were connected by the negative chains seeking power and profit.

Haruyuki was speechless. But Takumu’s voice came to him, creaking like glass on the verge of breaking.

“R-right now…if we don’t do something right away, the kit will blanket the Accelerated World in the blink of an eye, like a terrifying epidemic. We don’t have the luxury of waiting for the meeting of the Seven Kings four days from now and whatever decision they come to. I can get the names of the people behind this from Magenta Scissor. I think she’s really close to the source of the kits. We might have to do a little sparring, but I intend to get some information about the kit. I don’t know the motives or objectives of whoever’s behind this, but anyone planning something as big as this has to have some way of controlling the situation…”

Thud.

Takumu took another step forward and looked down on Haruyuki, a mere two meters away. “The rest is up to you, Haru. Even if I do end up losing all my points fighting the people behind this, before my memory’s cut out, I’ll tell you whatever I’ve learned, somehow. So you have to go and save this world. I know you can…You’re the only one who can. I believe that.”

“…Taku.” Haruyuki managed to call his friend’s name in a voice almost inaudible. He couldn’t get out any other words of substance.

Resolve.

Right now, the fact that Takumu was able to resist the terrifying control of the ISS kit—albeit just barely—was no doubt because of the massive boulder that was his own resolve. He had already decided. On the place of his own death. On his own final battle.

But.

The source of that resolve was despair at himself. The fact that he lost to the temptation of the ISS kit. The fact that he slaughtered the PK group Supernova Remnant in his rage. The fact that he set up the backdoor program in Chiyuri and attacked Kuroyukihime. And the fact that a long time ago, he had broken the circle of three childhood friends. He had made up his mind that these sins were absolutely unforgivable and changed that despair into resolve to face his final battle.

“I can’t. Let you go,” Haruyuki said, his voice shaking like a child trying to keep from weeping. “There’s absolutely no way I’m going to just say, ‘Got it. Leave the rest to me.’ I can’t leave you to sacrifice yourself and still go on being a Burst Linker myself.”

“Heh-heh. Stubborn right down to the bone.” Takumu chuckled, smiling as if he were truly happy. “I guess I wanted to hear you say that, so I forced you into this direct duel…but it’s enough already. Thanks, Haru. Your feelings give me energy. I feel like I can stay myself a little bit longer. So, okay. I guess it’s about time we finished this.”

He raised his sturdy left hand and rolled his fingers in from the littlest up to his thumb. The concentrated black aura made even the stage itself shake faintly.

As if in response, Haruyuki faced him, again tightly clenching the fist covered in silver Armament. He lifted his chin and nodded slowly. “Yeah. We’ve already said everything we can say in words.”

Right.

If they didn’t meet fist with fist, nothing would start, and nothing would end, either. They had both dived into this final battle stage to do exactly that; Brain Burst existed for only this purpose.

Haruyuki mustered up every ounce of willpower his duel avatar had, body now missing both left arm and wing, and concentrated it in his right fist. The silver overlay ripped through the pulsating, wild darkness and pushed it back.

He had managed to summon just one arm of the Destiny, theta of the Seven Arcs, which should have offered nowhere near the total performance of the Disaster. This Enhanced Armament had neither the vast wealth of battle data built up over long years nor a will inscribed with the rage and hatred of those who had worn the armor in the past.

But the Destiny had exactly one thing the Disaster did not.

Hope. A single shining hope, glittering like a star, protected for many long years by the mysterious golden-yellow girl avatar lodged in one corner of the armor. He still didn’t know who she was, why her consciousness lived in the armor, or what she wanted, but that faint warmth gave Haruyuki courage. It didn’t spur him into battle like the Disaster had, but rather supported and encouraged him.

Now that I think about it, someone’s always been there to support me. During the Hospital Battle right at the start, in the fight after that against the fifth Chrome Disaster, the fight against Dusk Taker, the race at Hermes’ Cord, the God Suzaku protecting the gate…Kuroyukihime, Chiyu, Master Raker, Ash, Niko, Pard, Mei, and of course Taku—they were always there to protect me, to cheer me on. There’s basically not a single fight I’ve won on my own.

But that’s okay. Because those connections…those bonds are the true power of a Burst Linker. I want Taku to know that. I want him to understand there are a ton of people besides me who are thinking about him, who need him.

So please lend me the strength to do that.

He could hear no answering voice to this cry in his heart. But he felt heat thump to life in the center of his fist, and then an even more dazzling white light gushed out.

Takumu slowly drew back his left fist and lowered his stance.

Haruyuki lifted his right hand and sharply pointed his fingers.

As the two spoke their technique names simultaneously, their voices held a quiet resolve, as though trying to console each other.

“Dark Blow.”

“Laser Sword.”

The instant the ink-dark and silver-white attack trajectories crossed each other, their current battleground of B wing followed in the steps of the already destroyed A wing, to be transformed into innumerable clumps that exploded in all directions.

When Takumu had hit him with the same Incarnate technique minutes earlier, Haruyuki had been sent flying dozens of meters backward, unable to resist the enormous force of impact for even a second. He should have been smashed to bits right then and there.

But this time, although the Dark Blow did indeed at first smash into him, Haruyuki braced himself and pushed back on Takumu’s fist, however slightly. Outstretched arms—separated by a mere ten centimeters—struggled for supremacy, sparks shooting from the gap between them as light and dark fought with surprising ferocity.

The divine protection of the Destiny Arc was awe-inspiring. Its defense alone was even more powerful than the Disaster, which had shifted a great deal of its potential to offense.

But there was no point in simply sitting here and struggling against each other like this. Haruyuki had to pierce the storm of raging darkness and tell Takumu. He had to tell him that there was not a single crime for which he could not be forgiven. That everyone in the Legion needed him. And that no matter how deep in the dark night he might be, if he looked up at the sky, there would always be the light of the stars shining on the path ahead.

Reach him.

Reach him!!

Body and soul, Haruyuki prayed—and thereby gave form to his will.

Rrrrring! A crisp echo, like a bell ringing, joined his prayer. Overlay, pure and white, spread out across the silver armor that covered his right arm. At the same time, from the tips of his fingers, his sword of light began to grow longer, bit by bit by bit.

Haruyuki’s Laser Sword was a range-expansion Incarnate technique. The source of its power was the desire to reach out to a place that was not normally reachable. For a long time, Haruyuki thought this meant he wanted to run away from things. Run away from his ugly, cowering self. Run away from the kids who bullied that self. Run away from his mother’s gaze, which looked at him like he was just another hassle in her life. Run away from the memory of his father claiming not to want him. Run, run, stretch out this hand to some place where he wasn’t…

But a place where he wasn’t didn’t exist. Wherever he might try to go, he would be there. That hand reaching out would always be connected to his own self. So reaching out his hand was an active gesture, one that tied him to what he wished to grasp.

Which is why this silver light has to connect me and Taku. It will bring my feelings to him, my heart. It will overwrite the digital defense and attack power calculations of the Brain Burst system and make a tiny miracle happen.

Reach…him…!

The cry from Haruyuki’s heart rang out across the field with a powerful echo.

His pure, glittering silver light melted the superconcentrated darkness, pierced it, and pushed forward bit by bit. It was no longer a sword. It was Haruyuki’s own flesh-and-blood arm reaching out from Silver Crow’s.

Taku!! I need you…!!

Beyond the end of his outstretched arm, he suddenly saw something on the other side of the pitch-black darkness.

A pale left hand, just like his own, with no armor of any kind. Takumu’s hand, fingers callused from swinging a sword every day. The fingers, curled up into a tight ball, twitched. Slowly, tentatively, they opened up, then pulled back, shaking. But they reached out hesitantly once more and moved toward Haruyuki’s hand.

At that moment.

Countless spikes of light the color of dark blood exploded between them.

“Ngh?!” Pulled from the vision guiding the imagination circuit and back into the duel field, Haruyuki saw an unexpected sight.

The Pile Driver of Cyan Pile’s right arm was held up before his chest, as the eyeball-shaped ISS kit parasitizing the surface opened its eye so wide it threatened to fall out. It bathed them in concentrated light the shade of fresh blood. Black tissue like blood vessels reached out from around the eyeball and came together about ten centimeters away to form a round protuberance.

The lump immediately grew to the same size as the eyeball next to it, and then the surface of the black lump split lengthwise. One piece went upward, the other downward, and then the eyelids opened to reveal another eyeball.

On the surface of Takumu’s arm, the two adjacent eyeballs of the ISS kit gazed at Haruyuki from extremely close range. In them, Haruyuki felt the definite will of someone else. A bottomless hunger. The urge to destroy. The craving to multiply. And hatred.

“Wh-why—!” Takumu cried out, still struggling with Haruyuki’s Incarnate with his left fist. Apparently he hadn’t expected anything like this, either. “I didn’t give the command! So why did a clone…?!”

Haruyuki grasped the meaning of this at basically the same time as ten—or maybe more—thin black tentacles stretched out from around the second eyeball to plunge into Silver Crow’s chest.

Cold.

No, hot.

Abnormal signals raced through his entire nervous system. It was almost as if ice water had been injected directly into his blood vessels with a needle. The herd of capillaries, strangely like microwires, drove deeper and deeper into his body. They wrapped around his heart, tangled through his lungs, climbed up his spine, and entered his head.

Haruyuki couldn’t move. He couldn’t speak.

And although the many tentacles had pierced deep into the chest of his avatar, his HP gauge, with only a few percent remaining, did not decrease a single dot. But that itself showed the abnormality of the phenomenon. The silver overlay flowing from his right arm shuddered and flickered; the Laser Sword that had extended from there also melted and crumbled away like snow flurries.

Normally, the equilibrium between their two Incarnates would have been destroyed, and Cyan Pile’s Dark Blow would have easily dispatched Silver Crow.

However, that did not happen. As Haruyuki’s Incarnate flickered, Takumu pulled back his left hand and screamed, “Don’t you touch Haruuuuuuuu!!”

Veiled in the obsidian aura, he used his left hand to grab hold of the bundle of black wires that had come out of his own right arm and were piercing Haruyuki’s chest. He twisted his entire body in an effort to rip them out, yanking as hard as he could. But the wires shuddered like some kind of living creature and fought to keep from being removed.

Paralyzed, unable to move a muscle, Haruyuki met Takumu’s eyes as his friend yanked and tugged at the black tentacles.

Takumu smiled thinly. Or that’s what it felt like. In that smile was none of the emptiness, the deep resignation of the other smiles he had given Haruyuki any number of times over the course of the fight. It was the reliable, warm smile that had always been there when Haruyuki looked to his side during their days of fighting alongside each other in their Legion.

Cyan Pile put the barrel of his Pile Driver against his own throat.

“…T-Taku…,” Haruyuki struggled to say.

But at that exact moment, Takumu firmly called out the technique name: “Lightning Cyan Spark!!”

From the gap between the thick armor and the barrel glued to it, a pale light jetted out. Then, a beam of lightning shot up from the nape of Cyan Pile’s neck, higher and higher into the sky of the Scorched Earth stage.

Having launched his special attack into the vital spot of his own avatar, Takumu staggered backward and caught himself just as he was about to fall. His HP gauge, at nearly 40 percent before the self-inflicted blow, was dyed entirely red and dropped precipitously from the right side until it hit zero.

The movement of the black fibers, digging deep into Haruyuki’s body, very close to reaching the center of his head, stopped. They wilted and slid out of his chest before melting into the air and disappearing.

The second eyeball also closed its lids, looked vexed somehow, and disappeared as if absorbed into the first.

Standing there, dumbfounded, Haruyuki’s ears picked up his friend’s soft whisper. “…Thank goodness…”

Leaving just those two words, Cyan Pile and his enormous blue body, black aura completely gone, shattered into shards of glass and scattered in all directions.

Thus Haruyuki was left alone in the center of an enormous crater in the Scorched Earth stage, the area scarred and burned. The silver Enhanced Armament was released, dissembling into the air off his right arm.

As if to escape the flaming proclamation YOU WIN! displayed in the center of his field of view, Haruyuki looked up at the darkening evening sky.

A vortex of feeling he couldn’t put a name to filled his chest and spilled out from both eyes, blurring the reddish purple of the sky. The duel was over, and until the moment he was pulled out of the Accelerated World, Haruyuki simply stood there, the shoulders of his avatar shaking quietly.

The instant he returned to the real world and opened his eyes, Haruyuki felt a single drop of water bounce off his cheek. It was the tear Takumu had shed immediately before the direct duel started.

Having burst out at roughly the same time, Takumu was still holding down Haruyuki’s shoulder with his left hand, pinning him flat on the bed, while gripping the direct cable with his right, both eyes open wide. On the other side of his glasses, new droplets were born and dripped down onto the lenses.

“…I…” Takumu’s lips trembled slightly as a hoarse voice slid out of his throat. But instead of saying anything further, he slowly lowered his body and fell over to Haruyuki’s right with a thud.

Silent for a while, the two friends lay side by side on the wide single bed, at a diagonal. Their eyes rested on an A2-size poster, printed on thin polyfilm and plastered to the ceiling of Takumu’s room.

It featured an adult kendo player. Judging from the fact that there was no text of any kind on it, it was probably a photo Takumu had found and printed out himself. The composition had the player positioned at a diagonal, on the verge of launching a mask strike, the tip of the bamboo shinai sword plainly blurred. It was nothing more than a 2-D photo, but it held an intensity great enough to rouse passion just by viewing it.

“Is that player your teacher? An older student?” Haruyuki asked cautiously in neurospeak, through the direct cable that still connected their Neurolinkers.

After a while, a quiet reply came back to him. “No. He was a kendo player fifty years ago.”

“So then…he’s someone you want to be like?”

“…It’s more like…respect, maybe? I mean, it’s ridiculous to think I could be like him. In the nineteen nineties, he won the national kendo championships six times. And that record hasn’t been broken even now, fifty years later.”

“So…what’s the second-place record?”

“Three times. And even that is a seriously nice piece of work.”

In which case, the player in the photo was the best kendo practitioner in real-world Japan—no, in the entire real world. The instant the thought crossed his mind, Haruyuki murmured, “Wonder what it’s like to be that strong. Like maybe you wouldn’t worry about stuff or not knowing what to do, you know?”

“In an interview he did after he retired from competition, when he was working as an instructor, he said, ‘I haven’t gotten a hold on anything yet. I’m still dawdling at the entrance of a pitch-black tunnel.’”

“Huh…Really?” Haruyuki sighed unconsciously before voicing his thoughts as they came. “But, like, if it’s pitch-black, how can you tell if it’s the entrance or not? Maybe the exit’s just up ahead.”

He paused for a second before continuing. “It’s not actually ridiculous to compare yourself to him. I-I’ve thought that, too, so many times—that I’m in the middle of a tunnel without an exit. But there was an exit. There always was. And the next tunnel will…come along again soon, but…even still…”

Earnestly fumbling for words, Haruyuki turned his face to the left and looked at Takumu’s profile, less than a meter away. Eyes still blurred by tiny droplets, the frames of his glasses cutting across his pale cheeks, he stared intently at the poster on the ceiling.

Haruyuki steadied his resolve and opened his mouth to speak the heart of the matter in his real voice. “Taku, before, you stopped your Incarnate attack—Dark Blow—for me. To save me, you resisted the ISS kit and used your special attack on yourself. That action shows your true nature—that’s what I believe. Even if you did accept the kit and use its dark power this one time…you cut down that temptation and made it out of the tunnel. That’s what I believe.”

He couldn’t say the words before, out of fear that when the conversation was over, Takumu would stand up, say good-bye, and leave the room—to go and fight Magenta Scissor and the Acceleration Research Society.

Even after Haruyuki closed his mouth, Takumu continued to stare silently up at the ceiling for a while.

After ten seconds or so, his friend asked him an entirely unexpected question in his real voice. “Haru, yesterday, in the solo song presentation in music class, you sang ‘Wings Please,’ right?”

“Uh, uh-huh.” Haruyuki nodded, perplexed.

Takumu glanced at him, smiling faintly as he continued. “The teacher gave us a bunch of other choices. Why’d you pick that one? You’ve always hated that song.”

“Yeah…that’s true.” The enormous anxiety blocking his chest receded just a little as Haruyuki smiled a light, wry smile. “Well, it wasn’t like I had any real reason for hating it, either, you know. I dunno, I’ve always thought the song had ‘wishes that won’t come true’ as its basic premise.”

Looking out the corner of his eye at Takumu wordlessly encouraging him to continue, Haruyuki added, “It’s also because I’m pretty cynical, right? I always felt like right before the first line of the song—‘If I could have one wish come true right now, I’d ask for wings’—there was actually another line: ‘I know that I can’t, but…’ And, like, that was just too close to how I actually felt. So I could never manage to like that song.”

He turned his gaze back to the ceiling and gently raised his right hand. With his fingertips, he caressed the sky that lay beyond the wallpaper and concrete.

“But, like, when I listened to it again in the reference sound files we got for homework last week, I could kinda think…maybe not, you know? Umm…Umm…”

Explaining his own mental state in words was the thing Haruyuki was worst at in all the world. But as he moved his upturned palm like a bird, he worked to get it all out. “That song, maybe it’s not so important whether it comes true or not. I was thinking it’s maybe a song about wanting to go there sometime. ‘Up into the free sky, where there is no sadness,’ while always walking along on the ground one step at a time. I mean, like, what’s important is…”

Here, his language-processing faculties ran up against their limit, and he was stuck simply opening and closing his mouth.

“Not the result, but the process,” Takumu muttered softly, on his behalf. “The really important thing is that ongoing process.”

“R-right. That’s it.” Haruyuki clenched his right hand, still up in the air, and passionately said, “Like, Kuroyukihime is always telling me strength’s not a word that’s just about winning. And Shinomiya said so, too. True strength is moving forward without giving up, no matter if you lose, or fall down, or fail…And when I started thinking that maybe that song’s trying to say the same thing, I felt kinda bad for hating it all this time. Or, you know, maybe it’s just because I can fly in the Accelerated World that I can forgive it now.”

As he pulled down his arm and stuck it behind his head, Haruyuki added with a wry smile, “Either way, my singing was really awful. Thank God recording’s not allowed at school.”

“It wasn’t that bad, Haru.”

Haruyuki turned his head then and saw Takumu smiling as he stared up at the ceiling.

Takumu closed his eyes gently. “You probably didn’t notice, but Chii was secretly crying,” he murmured, as if remembering the lesson the day before. “While listening to you singing your heart out with that piece.”

“Huh.” Haruyuki was speechless.

His friend continued gently, smile still in place. “The me of a little while ago would have probably been torn up with jealousy and self-loathing seeing Chii like that. But…but, you know, I was happy then, too. I was happy watching you sing that song so proudly and Chii crying while she listened to it. That moment…In just that moment…the circle of the three of us…was like it used to be…” Takumu’s voice suddenly trembled, and from his tightly closed eyelids, transparent droplets once again flowed silently.

Struck with emotion, Haruyuki clenched his teeth. But he soon turned over toward Takumu, propping himself up on one elbow as he started speaking. “Not ‘like it used to be.’ Like it is. This is us now. Taku, Chiyu and I need you now just as ever!”

For a moment, Takumu turned his face away, as though trying to escape from the declaration.

But Haruyuki was certain his words would reach his best friend’s heart. They had gone up against each other with everything they had in the Accelerated World, and, fist on fist, they had spoken.

A few seconds later, Takumu turned back to him with damp eyes. “Haru,” he whispered in a shaky voice. “I…Maybe I can change like you. Maybe I can keep fighting the black emotions in my heart and aim for the ‘sky.’ Maybe I can keep walking forward.”

“O-of course you can, Taku! I mean, you’re always changing. The way you shot yourself with that Lightning Spike at the end of the battle just now is proof of that.”

Haruyuki inched a little closer to Takumu and gripped his friend’s shoulder. He looked hard past the blue glasses, damp with tears. “Taku, give me just a little more time. Tomorrow, Thursday…at seven tomorrow night, I’m definitely coming back alive from the Castle with Shinomiya. She should be able to purify your ISS kit, too. One more day. Hold on against the temptation of the kit for one more day, Taku.”

Takumu lowered his eyes against Haruyuki’s earnest plea without immediately responding. “Last night, I got the kit from Magenta Scissor in the Setagaya area,” he finally squeezed out in a strained voice. “It was still in the sealed card state. But…after I got home and ate and took a bath, when I was falling asleep in bed…it started talking to me. Not in words—in feelings. Rage, hatred, jealousy, all kinds of negative emotions poured into me. And when this was happening, I wasn’t wearing my Neurolinker. All night, I had this long, long nightmare. When I woke up, my heart was full of black things…”

Haruyuki could feel through the palm of his hand Takumu’s sturdy frame shaking.

“Haru,” his friend whispered weakly, lowering his face even farther, as if he were a child again. “I’m scared. It’s not in the realm of Neurolinker memory anymore, it’s inside my head. Now that I’ve broken the seal, what will it show me tonight? Can I make it to tomorrow morning as the same me I am now? I’m so scared of it, I can hardly stand it. I mean, already—I didn’t even hesitate to hurt you so badly in the battle.”

Interference from the Accelerated World even when his Neurolinker was not equipped. In principle, it was impossible. However, it was a phenomenon that Haruyuki himself had experienced. He had, more than once in the past, heard the voice of the Armor of Catastrophe in an unaccelerated state or when he wasn’t wearing his Neurolinker.

But thinking about it, the acceleration of thought the Brain Burst program pulled off as a matter of course was itself an extraordinary phenomenon. And that wasn’t all. Two months earlier, Haruyuki had witnessed an actual Burst Linker lose Brain Burst and have his memory tinkered with therein, to the point that memory of the program was ultimately erased.

Which meant the program had the power to interfere with human consciousness—with the soul itself. In which case, anything could happen. Accept it and fight. That was all they could do.

“So then, Taku, come stay at my place today,” Haruyuki said, gripping Takumu’s trembling shoulder even more tightly.

“…What?”

It was quite unexpected, after all. Faced with the dumbfounded expression on Takumu’s face, Haruyuki began rattling on at high speed.

“If we fall asleep in a heap, playing games like we used to, you won’t have time for scary dreams or anything. Although I guess you can’t call it a heap with only two people. So then let’s get Chiyu to come, too. If we say the three of us are gonna do homework or something, her parents’ll let her. And I mean, we actually do have math and Japanese homework, right? So then, you take care of the math, Chiyu does the Japanese, and I’ll get the tea. And did you know? If you open homework files in the initial accelerated space, that stupid stingy protection doesn’t work, so you can copy-paste answers!”

As the tidal wave of Haruyuki’s argument crashing over him, Takumu opened both eyes wide and stared. But finally, after staring at his friend’s chattering mouth for a while, Takumu sighed in resignation, a wry smile crossing his lips.

“You always used to do this to me: get so carried away that I get caught up, too, and then you’d convince me to do all sorts of things. I used to get into so much trouble, you know.”

“Did I? I don’t remember that.” Releasing the shoulder he had been clutching, Haruyuki scratched his own head pointedly.

The wryness gradually disappeared from the smile on his face, though, and Takumu soon removed his glasses and wiped his eyes roughly. “I guess that’s that, then. I can’t let exhaustion from doing homework affect the Castle escape mission tomorrow. I’ll come over and help you. But as senior Burst Linker here, I can’t let you use a point and accelerate just to copy-paste homework answers. I’ll teach you the concepts, but you have to do the calculations yourself.”

“Whaaat…” Pursing his lips, Haruyuki blinked several times and cleared away what threatened to blur his vision.

The ISS kit lodged inside Takumu still existed. Even as they lay there, it was watching vigilantly for its next chance. Just like the Armor of Catastrophe inside Haruyuki.

But Haruyuki had been able to push back against the armor’s control and summon the original Destiny, albeit just once and only one arm of it. But it was proof that Takumu should be able to do it, too. To keep resisting the temptation of the kit for just another twenty-four hours, until Ardor Maiden, the “purifying shrine maiden,” came back alive from within the Castle walls. Because Takumu had already stepped back from the brink of despair once and was trying to walk away from it.

“Okay! Now that that’s decided, let’s head over to my place! On the way, we can stop at the mall downstairs for food. Or no, wait. If we call Chiyu, maybe she’ll come with a bonus item.”

Haruyuki fell into thought, and Takumu lightly jabbed at his chest, laughing.

“You don’t want to call Chii. What you really want is to invite the dinner her mom’ll make us.”

“N-no! I mean, the two are just kind of indivisible. Like, mention Chiyu, you get provisions. Mention provisions, get Chiyu.”

“Uh-huh. Go ahead and try saying that to Chii.”

“N-no way! O-okay, I’m gonna mail her, so you go get your mom to say yes.”

Making like he hadn’t said the offending line in the first place, Haruyuki stood up from the bed.

Just when he was about to casually pull out the XSB cable still plugged into his Neurolinker, the faintest neurovoice reverberated gently, deep within his brain, like a droplet falling on the surface of a pond.

“Thanks, Haru. I’m so glad…we can still be friends.”

Back still turned to his good friend, Haruyuki reflected heavily on this before returning in the same tender neurospeak:

“Me too, Taku.”