2

School had been unpleasant, to say the least, and Haruyuki trudged home, eyes on the ground, completely beaten down.

This experience was once a totally normal, run-of-the-mill thing for him. When a bunch of kids in his grade bullied him horribly and mercilessly last year, he’d counted the paving tiles of the sidewalk on the trek to his condo pretty much every single day. But having Takumu—the Takumu Mayuzumi—next to him, head hanging and dragging his feet in the exact same way, was a first.

Takumu had skipped kendo practice on the pretext that he wasn’t feeling well, and they walked silently together on the road from Umesato Junior High to the condo where they both lived.

“Come over,” Haruyuki said as they slipped through the front gate.

“…Okay.” Takumu nodded listlessly, and they rode the elevator together to the twenty-third floor.

Opening the door to his empty apartment and heading into the living room, Haruyuki dropped his bag on the floor and sat at the dining table. Takumu sat down across from him, and for a while, the pair simply sat in silence.

We sat facing each other like this before, too, Haruyuki thought absently before finally realizing that this “before” had been a mere twenty-four hours earlier—i.e., the incident after school on Monday.

Haruyuki had fought Seiji Nomi for the first time the previous day, during a free period, and lost the silver wings on his back to Nomi’s special attack.

Suspecting something was up with Haruyuki and Chiyuri, who had been there for the whole thing, Takumu came over after practice and sat down in that very spot across from him. Haruyuki was in a sadistic, self-torturing kind of mood and said some terrible things to Takumu. For his trouble, he received a solid fist to the face. After that, he jumped on a bus to Shibuya and despairingly threw himself into an accelerated duel. His old enemy, the bike-riding Ash Roller, cursed Haruyuki and his apathetic attitude before dragging him to the old Tokyo Tower in the Unlimited Neutral Field.

There, he was brought face-to-face with Ash Roller’s guardian and former Nega Nebulus member, Sky Raker. She taught Haruyuki about the Incarnate System, a Burst Linker’s ultimate power, and marched him through an extremely Spartan training regime so he could learn to use it.

For him to really grasp the first step toward the power of will, it took a full week in the Accelerated World, where his consciousness was accelerated by a factor of a thousand. Which is why, in a certain sense, it was only natural that he felt like the whole thing with Takumu and everything else had happened ages ago.

Unconsciously, Haruyuki raised his right hand and ran his fingers first over his lower jaw, where Nomi had punched him during the break the day before, and then his right cheek, where Takumu had hit him after school. There was hardly any visible trace of either anymore, but a convulsion of pain shot through him. He could accelerate his mental state and lock himself up in that other world all he wanted, but it wouldn’t heal the wounds to his physical body—his actual pain.

This gesture as he replayed recent events caught his friend’s eye. “Haru, I told you when I hit you that I didn’t care who Chi was with, so long as she was happy,” Takumu said with a self-deprecating laugh. “But I take it back. There’s pretty much no way I can accept this. I mean, Chi partnering up with that Seiji Nomi kid.”

“Forget accepting it,” Haruyuki responded hollowly, dropping his hand to the table. “I can’t even believe it. I mean, it’s true there’s no rule in Brain Burst saying you have to be on the same team as your friends in the real or anything, but…I just can’t believe Chiyu’s so focused on points, she’d betray us to join Nomi…”

“Well, from a points perspective, hooking up with Nomi’s definitely going to be more effective than joining us. Now that he’s got your wings, Haru, Dusk Taker’s battle power’s way over the top. And if he makes his duel debut with the healer Lime Bell on his team, there’s not a midrange Burst Linker who could seriously take them on.”

“Considering how depressed you are about it, that’s a pretty levelheaded judgment, Professor.” Now it was Haru with the wry smile playing on his lips, but a sigh soon pushed that aside. “But still, Taku…This is Chiyu we’re talking about here. Chiyu, the girl who completely does not get games at all. I swear, she could even get her entire party wiped out in a story-mode battle in an RPG. You think she actually has any idea about the most effective way to get points?”

“I—I don’t, not really. Dammit…”

As Haruyuki talked with his best friend, the shock of Chiyuri’s declaration of farewell eased, if only slightly, and in a very muted way; slowly, he pulled himself to his feet and headed for the kitchen.

He took a frozen pizza box out of the large freezer and tossed it in the microwave before taking out a bottle of oolong tea and grabbing two glasses to go with it. He carried these out to the table, along with the pizza—which had finished defrosting and cooking in mere minutes—and set everything down.

“Thanks,” Takumu murmured as he poured oolong tea in his glass.

Opening the box, Haruyuki grabbed a slice of the seafood pizza, and just as he was about to shove the tip, with its thin, dangling strings of cheese, into his mouth, he suddenly heard a voice.

Aah! You’re eating this stuff again! Well, I guess I’ll just have to get Mom to make you something.

But of course, it was not a real voice or even a PCM file played back by his Neurolinker. The flavor of the lasagna Chiyuri had brought over only a few days earlier came back to life on his tongue, and he took a huge bite of the mass-produced pizza to try and kill it.

As he chewed on the strangely salty pizza, head in his hand, he heard the sniffling back of snot. He raised his eyes slowly to witness Takumu, head also hanging, mouth also masticating pizza, rub his eyes intently beneath his glasses.

Abruptly, a completely different pain pierced his heart.

Taku’s always so calm and collected, and so clever he runs circles around me. But he definitely can’t take a real hit.

He tried to do everything he could to help me after my wings got stolen and I got reckless. So now it’s my turn. It’s my turn to cheer him up and have his back, Haruyuki murmured to himself. He closed his eyes, scarfed down the rest of his pizza, drained his glass of oolong tea, and slammed it back down on the table.

“Taku!” he shouted. Takumu’s shoulders shot up and he turned red eyes on Haruyuki. Meeting those eyes squarely, he continued, “Taku, I believe in Chiyu! Which is why I don’t believe what she said!”

“Huh?”

“I said it before, didn’t I? Joining up with Nomi because she wants points? That’s not like Chiyu at all. So we just scrap that possibility completely. Probably—no, I’m like ninety percent sure that our first guess was the truth. Nomi’s threatening Chiyu to make her his partner, and he forced her to tell us that. That just makes so much more sense. Doesn’t it?” Still holding his glass, Haruyuki laid out his thinking confidently.

Takumu considered this carefully. “Mm-hmm,” he responded eventually, in a tone that was more or less back to his usual calm voice. “That does sound plausible. But, Haru, there’s a bit of a contradiction there. ‘Scrap completely’ but ‘ninety percent sure’? So then the remaining ten percent uncertainty is the possibility that Chi voluntarily went over to Nomi, right?”

“Yeah. But for a different reason.”

“Reason? Are you saying there’s something other than points that would make Chi turn against us?”

Looking up at Takumu as he cocked his head, Haruyuki instinctively shrank back. “That would be…,” he whispered, “the leader of our Legion Nega Nebulus…Her…”

Takumu’s eyelids fluttered rapidly, as if he had been caught off guard. But soon enough, the same uneasiness that was on Haruyuki’s face descended upon his. “I—I see. If Chi thinks there’s no way she’s going to be subordinate to Master—Kuroyukihime…”

“Can you definitively say she wouldn’t?”

At Haruyuki’s question, Takumu shook his head from side to side, a fairly complicated expression on his face, and expelled a lengthy sigh. “But if that’s the case,” he added, almost groaning, “then we really do have to finally tell Master about everything and get her to help us fight. If she finds out that Chi betrayed us and healed Nomi all because of her…”

“She might totally destroy Lime Bell, along with Dusk Taker.”

He knew only too well how severe she could be, Kuroyukihime, the person behind Black Lotus, the level-nine duel avatar who was the Black King and the leader of the Legion Nega Nebulus. Anyone she decided was the enemy was mercilessly cut down with the swords of her hands. It was pretty hard—no, impossible—to believe that she would not apply this same general principle to Chiyuri.

Haruyuki dropped his gaze to the surface of the table and then yanked it right back up to Takumu. “She’s coming back from the school trip Saturday night, so we have four days,” he said, like he was trying to convince himself. “We just have to sort this out before then.”

“Sort it out? How?”

“Either Chiyu’s being coerced or she’s actually doing all this of her own free will. But if we take Nomi down, if we push him to the edge and he loses Brain Burst, then everything ends. Right?”

Takumu took a deep breath at Haruyuki’s words before a slightly bitter smile crossed his lips. “Easier said than done, Haru. Even if we somehow did manage to figure out what keeps him from showing up on the matching list, who knows how many times we’d have to win to get Dusk Taker down to zero points.”

“Dunno,” Haruyuki said shortly and began thinking out loud. “Nomi just started at Umesato, and he’s been burning through points to build himself up, what with the test and the kendo matches. Especially in kendo with the ‘physical acceleration’ command. That costs five points. I mean, he’s still at level five. Do you think he really has that many points to spare?”

“I guess not. Especially since he doesn’t seem to be fighting any regular duels. His point supply should be limited.” Takumu nodded, narrowing eyes, which, behind his glasses, had regained a bit of their former sharpness. He met Haruyuki’s stare and continued quickly, “But, Haru, if that’s true, then it’s just a race against time, and Master’s return to Tokyo has nothing to do with it. Now that Nomi has a specialized healer in addition to the flying ability, the time’s totally right for him to make his duel debut. If he limits himself to tag-team matches, he won’t be able to fight too often, but even still, he’ll win the majority of the duels he does fight.”

“So in other words, we have to cut the head off the beast before he starts racking up points,” Haruyuki said decisively, after a quick glance at Takumu. “Okay. I’ll figure out whatever trick he’s using to block duels by myself, somehow.”

“Wh-what are you talking about? We’ll—”

“No, there’s something I need you to do while I’m doing that.” Clenching both hands on the tabletop, he lowered his voice dramatically. “Taku, you must remember, since he used it right on you. The way Dusk Taker made things disappear with his hands, basically nullifying whatever he touched.”

“Y-yeah. I still can’t believe it.” Takumu shook his head sharply, as if doubting his own memory. “I mean, he was emitting that crazy light, but his special-attack gauge didn’t go down. And I can sort of get how it would work with punches and kicks, but he even sucked in my nonphysical attack, Lightning Cyan Spark. I mean, that kind of top-level thing, it’s impossible. What kind of ability could do that?”

“Um, it’s not a system ability or special attack. I’m not sure how to put this…I can’t really explain it well.” Furrowing his brow and earnestly searching for the right words, Haruyuki clumsily tried to communicate to Takumu the knowledge he had only just gotten the day before. “It’s like a superspecial attack and the energy source is the Burst Linker’s own imagination. The proper name is the Incarnate System. It’s the strongest attack power in the Accelerated World. You make things real with your heart and your will.”

It took almost a full twenty minutes to finish explaining the main points of the Incarnate System that the recluse in old Tokyo Tower, Sky Raker, had taught him, and how he had managed to acquire the Incarnate sword of light.

As he spoke, Haruyuki was once again made aware of the fact that he himself still had a mountain of questions about the system. It could be a technique made possible by a bug, creating a hole in the program, like Sky Raker said, but then why didn’t the administrator take care of it? If the admin was leaving it there deliberately, what was the point of that?

Brain Burst was, in fact, an extremely unfriendly game in that it came with no manual and there were no guide-type NPCs, but he felt like the existence of the Incarnate System just made the whole thing even more baffling. What exactly was this application…?

With these thoughts racing through his mind, Haruyuki somehow managed to explain everything he knew.

When he was finished, Takumu stared, dumbfounded, as Haruyuki gulped down oolong tea. “I don’t know what to say,” he finally murmured hoarsely. “Haru, you really reel in the older ladies, don’t you?”

“Th-that’s your first reaction?”

“It’s just…To be honest, I’m having a hard time swallowing this Incarnate or whatever thing. Changing something as vague as the power of an image into an actual attack…I mean, I get what you’re saying, but this goes beyond the domain of a fighting game.”

“Well, yeah. And I can’t explain how I get the sword to appear or anything.” Staring fixedly at his round fingers, he kept thinking out loud. “But probably, what the will comes down to is something like, ‘If you imagine it, you can make anything happen.’ Maybe it’s intimately connected to an avatar’s attributes…or the nature of the Burst Linker themselves…or something. Like, my being able to get a sword to come out of my hand is because Silver Crow’s arms were in a shape like that right from the start. I feel like it’s maybe something like that.”

“Hmm. So then, hypothetically, if I did the same training as you, I wouldn’t necessarily be able to produce a sword of light the way you can?”

“Prob’ly not. But if that’s the case, I think you would get a form of your will more suited to you, to Cyan Pile. The problem is, what do you have to do—what kind of training do you need to get it? When I think about it now, she—Sky Raker—made me climb that wall because she saw from the start what the optimal training for me would be. And this is just a guess, but I bet a high-level Burst Linker who had completely mastered the Incarnate System would probably also understand the way to train one’s will.”

Takumu bit his lip lightly, seemingly deep in thought. Finally, he opened his mouth, eyes still lowered. “In which case, even if I did dive into the Unlimited Neutral Field and blindly train, it’s pretty unlikely I’d be able to grasp the Incarnate System on my own. So that means…you absolutely need the guidance of someone with a thorough knowledge of the System?”

“Yeah. I’m sure Sky Raker would teach you, too, but the problem is, I don’t have any way to get in touch with her.” Haruyuki sighed, and Takumu furrowed his brow.

“She’s not an NPC,” he murmured. “So the only way I’m going to get to see her is if I climb the old Tokyo Tower in the Unlimited Neutral Field. But we’d have to get in touch in the real, coordinate the timing, and then dive.”

“That’s just it. You’d probably see her eventually if you just waited at the top of the tower, but you’re accelerated a thousand times on the other side, and who knows how many months or years could go by…There is just one way: We can duel Sky Raker’s child Ash Roller in Shibuya and get him to make an appointment for us, but…dunno.” Haruyuki cut himself off there and propped his fleshy cheeks up in his hands.

Takumu’s face quickly turned serious. “Hey, heeeey, I don’t owe you nothin’, whiny babyyyy!” He skillfully imitated the bike-riding avatar. “That’s what he’d say, no doubt about it.”

The truth was, Haruyuki already owed Ash Roller an enormous debt from yesterday for bringing him to Sky Raker in the first place. He had to say that asking for his help—a member of an enemy Legion—on top of that was a pretty weak thing for a Burst Linker to do. He took another slice of the cooling pizza and racked his brain as he bit into it.

Normally, he would ask his guardian and Legion Master Kuroyukihime straightaway. She was the Black King; she would obviously be well versed in the Incarnate System. But she must have had her own reasons for not telling him about it up till now, which made him feel like she wouldn’t tell him right away, even if he did ask her. And anyway, with her currently in the distant south of Okinawa, he had no way to meet her in the Accelerated World.

Then there was Takumu’s guardian—or at least, that’s where he wanted to go next. But he was a member of the Blue Legion and had already been retired from the Accelerated World via the Blue King’s Judgment Blow for being the ringleader of the backdoor program incident six months earlier.

And there was really no other Burst Linker who would likely know all about the Incarnate System and also have a reason to lend Haruyuki and Takumu a—

“Oh…Oh!” Haruyuki chirped, having thought the problem through this far. He didn’t notice the chunk of shrimp that tumbled from his mouth. “Right! Right! There is someone, a super-high-level Linker who owes us a huge favor, in an area just north of here.”

The corner of Takumu’s mouth spasmed faintly. “H-hey, hey, Haru. You don’t mean…”

“There’s no one else. Prominence Legion Master and Red King, Scarlet Rain. She’s level nine; she has to have mastered the Incarnate System.” He lowered his voice as he spoke, and the deep red avatar who occupied one of the seats of the Seven Kings of Pure Color sprang to life in the back of his mind.

The Red King. With the flame power of her enormous Enhanced Armament, a weapons array several times the size of her actual body, she set her enemies and entire fields ablaze. If, despite this incredible power, she had not mastered the Incarnate System, they would indeed be forced to push ahead in some new direction, something Haruyuki deeply did not wish to contemplate.

“And that’s not all,” Haruyuki continued. “You haven’t forgotten the serious action we got into at Scarlet Rain…at Niko’s request, right?”

“N-no, I definitely remember.”

It had been a mere three months earlier that Niko, aka Yuniko Kozuki, had abruptly shown up in the flesh at Haruyuki’s apartment. Her objective was to get Haruyuki to help her subjugate Chrome Disaster, a Burst Linker from her own Legion who had gone mad. She came to Haruyuki after determining that Silver Crow and his wings were the only thing that could catch Disaster, who had been able to move freely through all three dimensions.

Together with Takumu and Kuroyukihime, Haruyuki accepted the mission, but before they could get to the real business, they ended up in a seriously tight spot, caught up in an unexpected series of battles when assaulted by a large group from the Yellow Legion. Or rather, in truth, it ended up being Takumu going blow for blow with a large enemy avatar.

“But, Haru, as payment for helping subjugate him, didn’t Prominence agree to a cease-fire with Nega Nebulus? Wasn’t that her way of paying us back as the Red King?”

But even Takumu sounded skeptical at his own words, so Haruyuki puffed his cheeks and rebutted, “Th-that’s like repaying a meal of curry with a plate of SPAM!”

“Uh, I don’t really know about that example.”

“A-anyway, there’s no other high-level Burst Linker we can contact in the real. And if we’re planning to fight Nomi, we definitely need this power, if only to avoid his Incarnate attack. So…all we can do is bet on Niko being in a good mood…” Haruyuki trailed off, and his last few words were overlaid with the sound of Takumu taking a deep breath.

For a while, his tall friend, downturned face hidden by long hair, stayed silent. He loosely clenched his right hand on the table, and in that motion, Haruyuki understood that he was remembering the savage battle with Seiji Nomi.

When he finally lifted his face, the light in his strong eyes was different. And the voice he spoke with rang out in the dim living room. “Right, it’s just like you say, Haru. In the battle against Dusk Taker, I thought we were evenly matched right until the middle of it, and then after he started to use the Incarnate, I couldn’t do anything, which totally sucked. I could feel how we were just on totally different levels. If we’re going to defeat him and get Chi back, then I can’t be hesitating at a thing like this.”

“Taku…”

“And, hey, Haru?” He stopped and stared right into Haruyuki’s eyes over the rims of his glasses. “Your sword of light was just as—no, even more amazing than Dusk Taker’s purple fluctuation. Even I could tell that you worked crazy hard to master that. You…A long time ago, you said it, didn’t you? That time when we fought. You said you couldn’t beat me in the real. I can’t beat you in the virtual. So we’re equal.”

“Oh…N-no, that was…” Haruyuki was about to offer the excuse that it was just something he had said in the heat of battle, but Takumu rebuffed his objection with his right hand and continued.

“B-but, you know, I don’t think that’s real equality. We can get to be true equals by competing with each other and acknowledging each other in the real and in the virtual.”

Abruptly, the look on the face of his childhood friend seemed somehow nostalgic for a distant past.

“When we were in elementary school, whenever I got a new game, I’d basically head straight for the walkthrough sites. And not just for action games. I’d even play RPGs with a chat window open, and then I felt like I was really adventuring. Which is why Brain Burst makes me so uneasy, I can barely stomach it. It doesn’t have a manual, much less a walk-through. Thinking about it now, I wonder if that isn’t why I turned to something like that backdoor program. But I finally get it now: This game doesn’t go in for hand-holding. You have to stand up on your own and cut your way through. So an ability like the Incarnate System, that goes beyond the framework of even this crazy game…I want to master it. So that I can stick with you, with Silver Crow.”

Even after Takumu closed his mouth, Haruyuki stayed silent, digesting his friend’s words.

These last six months, Takumu had been so self-deprecating. He was convinced he had committed an unforgivable crime in giving in to the fear of losing Brain Burst and going so far as to infect Chiyuri’s Neurolinker with a virus and hunting Kuroyukihime in dealing with that fear, and it was this conviction to an attitude of no forgiveness that led to him sacrificing himself over and over again in a variety of situations. And now, despite the huge blow he had been dealt by Chiyuri turning her back on them—whatever her motivation might have been—once again, he was trying to face his own weakness.

You really are strong, Taku. Stronger than me in every way. You can say it all you like, but I’m nowhere near your equal in the real world. Haruyuki kept this thought to himself and finally smiled.

“You gotta do it. Master some technique so that Nomi’s pulsing thing’s not a problem, take him out in a quick attack, and get Chiyuri back. Although Niko’s training’ll probably be a hundred times more brutal than Sky Raker’s.”

“I-I’m ready for it.” Takumu returned a slightly stiff smile.

Haruyuki glanced away, at the time display in the right edge of his field of vision. With the frozen pizza break added in, the strategy meeting had taken a lot longer than expected, and it was already getting to be seven PM.

At level nine, the Red King Niko was one of the strongest Burst Linkers, but in the real world, she was still in sixth grade at a boarding school. Unfortunately for them, the place was fairly strict about going out at night, and it would be difficult to get her to meet them now.

“We’ll call her tomorrow after school and go over to Nerima. Taku, will it be okay for you to skip kendo practice two days in a row?” he asked, and Takumu nodded right away.

“Yeah, I mean, I don’t do kendo to make a good showing in the tournaments anymore. The coach and the captain will glare at me a bit, but whatever.”

“Okay, it’s settled, then.” They met each other’s eyes and nodded again as they stood up. Heading toward the entryway, an entirely different question jumped into Haruyuki’s head.

Taku, right around the end of the duel today, did you hear a strange voice?

But no words came from his open mouth. When Takumu gave him a funny look, he shook his head lightly and raised his hand in farewell. “See you at school tomorrow.”

It was just my imagination, he murmured in the depths of his heart. There were no duelers, and certainly no gallery, in that field. I couldn’t have actually heard anyone’s voice.

After watching Takumu head off toward the elevator, he closed the door; once the automatic lock clicked shut, his apartment was blanketed by a deep silence. Suddenly, he was terrifyingly certain someone was standing right behind him, and he pushed his back up against the door before returning to the living room at a trot to clean up.