Signal Fire at the Water’s Edge Read online

  Haruyuki sat down at the foot of the table and took a drink himself, with Current on his right. Once all three had had a chance to breathe, Current casually remarked, “Right, we’ll start, then.”

  From the bag beside her, she brought up a portable XSB cable with a round cord reel. She pulled out one of the plugs and offered it to Haruyuki.

  “Huh…? Um, uh.”

  “Direct connection’s easiest. Hurry.”

  Left with no other choice, he took the plug and then glanced to his left, where Kuroyukihime gave him a faint, wry smile. “If it’s necessary, then you have no choice. See you in a bit.”

  “O-okay. I’ll be just a minute, then.” Haruyuki inserted the plug into his direct terminal.

  However, Current, who had already connected the other end, spoke immediately.

  “Burst Link.”

  In subjective time, it had been an acceleration of about ten seconds—so not even one-tenth of a second in reality. So short that the instant they returned, Kuroyukihime murmured as if dumbfounded, “That was a quick trip.”

  To speak of what had happened in the direct duel, Aqua Current, having appeared at the minimum distance from Silver Crow, briskly walked over to him and placed her water-covered hands on his helmet, pushed her forehead up against his, and said simply, “Memory Free.”

  That was all. So even after the acceleration was over, it was hard for Haruyuki to believe anything had changed. Current wound the recovered XSB cable back up and tucked it away in her bag, so the thing that was to be done had been done, he supposed. But…

  Pssh, pssh, pssh.

  Haruyuki could hear the sound of water flowing, and he looked back, wondering if he had forgotten to turn off the tap in the kitchen. But when he thought about it, if that were the case, a warning would have been displayed in his vision already. And what he was hearing wasn’t the noise of flowing water roughly splashing against the bottom of the sink, but rather the light murmuring of a small brook deep in the mountains. When he listened carefully, he came to realize that the source of the sound wasn’t outside himself, but rather inside. The cool, clear water flowed through his head and brought back routes that had been blocked.

  “……Huh? What?” Haruyuki’s jaw dropped, and he stared at the (probably) girl in glasses sitting to his right. “…Aqua Current…So you’re that Aqua Current…aren’t you? Just like Raker and Maiden. One of the Four Elements—a senior executive of the first Nega Nebulus.”

  Why had he forgotten something that important until now? Hadn’t he just heard Aqua Current’s name during the mission to rescue Ardor Maiden that had taken place a mere nine days earlier? And in this very living room?

  Nega Nebulus, which two and a half years earlier had ranked in power alongside the current six Great Legions, had dared to attack the Castle that sat at the center of the Unlimited Neutral Field. But they had been routed by the Super-level Enemies that guarded the four gates—known as the Four Gods—and destroyed. At that time, the leader Black Lotus and the wind elemental, Sky Raker, had fought Byakko, the guardian of the west gate, and just barely managed to escape, but the three senior members who had attacked the other gates had all been trapped in Unlimited EK.

  On Suzaku’s altar at the south gate was Utai Shinomiya, aka Ardor Maiden, the fire elemental. On Genbu’s altar at the north gate was earth, Graphite Edge. And on Seiryu’s altar at the east gate was water, Aqua Current.

  It was true that at the time, his head had been full with the mission to rescue Maiden, their top priority, but even so, it was pathetic that he would forget the name of an Element so easily. Haruyuki held his head—and its meager memory-storage capacity—in his hand and groaned.

  But surprisingly, that wasn’t the end of it. In his mind, another route opened up, and a new, large-volume memory flowed into his mind:

  Aqua Current. Also known as “The One.” The reason she was called that was because she was a particularly special level-one Burst Linker. Despite the fact that normally, level-one newbies had their heads full of earning points for themselves, Current had made a name for herself as “the bouncer,” accepting requests to guard newbie Linkers who were on the verge of running out of points.

  Specifically, she took requests from level-one and -two Burst Linkers and fought in a tag team with that Burst Linker until their remaining points were back up to fifty. Her remuneration for this protection was not points, but rather exposure in the real. When the Burst Linker went to the café where they were to meet, they entered their avatar name in a tablet terminal left at the specified seat, and a camera app took a photo of their face. This photo was sent to the terminal belonging to Current, who hid herself nearby.

  As for why Haruyuki had such detailed knowledge of the procedure, it was because he had been Aqua Current’s client. Last fall, back when he was still very much a little chick, he had gotten so carried away in his delight at having finally gotten over three hundred points that he’d completely forgotten to leave himself a safe margin when he’d gone up to level two.

  As a result, his points had dropped down to a mere eight, putting him in the desperate, perilous situation of having Brain Burst forcefully uninstalled if he lost even one duel. The person who rescued him from this tight spot was the mysterious One, Aqua Current. In the Jimbocho area, they had fought a succession of level-three and -four opponents in tag-team matches to bring Haruyuki’s points up to seventy. If she hadn’t guarded him, he might have lost Brain Burst long ago—no; he almost certainly would have.

  “…Curren.” When Haruyuki lifted his head, he called her name with a totally different feeling than he had up to that point. He stared into the eyes of the faintly smiling, silent girl, eyes reminiscent of the shimmering surface of water. “Curren. I—I…all this time, I’ve…wanted to see you.”

  The instant he said this, a wave of a certain kind of Incarnate was launched at him from the left, like something catching fire; but as if in a trance, he continued on without noticing it. “I wanted to see you and say thank you. Because you were there for me, because you saved me, I’m here…” He was unable to put the rest into words; instead, something hot welled up in both eyes.

  Aqua Current turned to Haruyuki and nodded slowly before replying gently, “I wanted to see you again, too. I wanted to meet you and hear all your stories.”

  More flames. A second wave of emotion came at him, and Haruyuki finally turned his gaze toward the source. Instantly, his entire body tensed up: Behind the quietly smiling Kuroyukihime, he saw an attack-power overlay.

  “Haruyuki?”

  “Y-yeah?!”

  “Sorry to interrupt when you’re having fun, but perhaps you could explain? I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Y-y-yeah!” Bobbing his head up and down, Haruyuki told her the sequence of events of meeting Aqua Current, half in a daze. Kuroyukihime listened quietly, nodding occasionally, and Haruyuki wrapped it all up with, “So that’s the story.”

  “…You idiot!!” Her thunderous roar ripped through him for the first time in a while. Kuroyukihime leaned forward on the sofa, pinched his left cheek tightly, and started ranting without pause. “You were near death at the point when you reached level two?! …No, I won’t reproach you after all this time for leveling up without leaving a margin of safety. That’s my fault; I didn’t teach you well enough. But why did you not come and tell me immediately?! If you had just told me, I would have given you however many points you needed!”

  “B-but back then you were in the ICU in the hospital, and you weren’t allowed visitors—”

  “This game isn’t some demo or off-the-shelf product! Even if we couldn’t direct, we could have dueled via the hospital net, couldn’t we?!”

  “B-but back then, your remaining points were—”

  “I got them back in no time at all hunting Enemies!”

  …Kee-hee.

  Abruptly, there was restrained laughter, and both Kuroyukihime and Haruyuki turned their heads at the
same time.

  Aqua Current, who had remained essentially expressionless this whole time, had covered her mouth with a hand, and her shoulders were shaking in tiny increments.

  Huh, Haruyuki thought simply. So Curren can really laugh.

  But Kuroyukihime, Haruyuki’s cheek still pinched between her fingers, opened both eyes wide in surprise. After blinking several times, she let slip in a completely different tone, “…Curren, I’ve never seen you laugh like that before…Well, this is the first time we’ve met in the real, so maybe that’s to be expected, though…”

  Aqua Current continued her stifled laughter, but finally, she cleared her throat and said, “I’m sorry. I wasn’t laughing because it was funny. I was just happy…I mean, Lotus, it was like back then, back when you used to fight with Raker and Graph in front of me and Maiden…”

  As she touched the red frames of her glasses, the young woman closed her eyes, and when she lifted her head again, her face was composed again. She sat up straight and set her hands on the knees of her jeans, then focused her transparent gaze on Haruyuki and Kuroyukihime. “I’ll introduce myself once more. I’m Aqua Current. My real name is Akira Himi.”

  After a slight pause, the girl with the name Akira—at once a girl’s name and a boy’s name; very fitting to the neutral air around her—turned toward Kuroyukihime and dipped her head. “Lotus. Silver Crow had no choice but to keep quiet about his connection with me, because I locked away the relevant part of his memory.”

  Five minutes later.

  Once Haruyuki and Kuroyukihime had also finished introducing themselves and they were mostly settled on what to call each other in the real, Haruyuki confirmed with Akira once more. “Um, so then, eight months ago, you sealed my memory with the Incarnate technique Memory Leak, and you unlocked it with the Memory Free you used when we direct dueled just now. Is that it?”

  “That’s exactly right.”

  “B-but why would you…?”

  “You already know half the reason. Because you saw my real face, Haru.”

  “Oh? And how did you crack Akira in the real, Haruyuki?” Kuroyukihime asked, mildly surprised.

  “No,” Haruyuki said, scratching the back of his head. “It wasn’t like I cracked her on purpose—I’m just always clumsy…I tripped when I went to the washroom in the designated café, and Akira just happened to be nearby…” The memory of slamming into her, knocking her down, and then accidentally touching her inappropriately finally came back to life, and Haruyuki slammed his mouth shut. Body frozen, he moved his eyes and saw the Akira in question picking up a plum rice cake, looking as though there was nothing at all to tell, so he omitted that detail as he finished the story. “…Akira’s bag fell, and the tablet we saw before came out, and my picture was on it…”

  “I see.” Kuroyukihime nodded, albeit with a slightly doubtful look on her face. “So even Aqua Current was done in by Haruyuki’s powers of carelessness, hmm?”

  “N-no, I mean, they’re not that great.”

  “I wasn’t complimenting you…So, Akira, what was the other reason?”

  Their eyes turned on her, Akira pointed the rice cake between her fingers squarely at Haruyuki. “I also explained that to Haru at the time.”

  “Y-you did? …Um…” He replayed the memories he had only just recovered and finally arrived at the relevant scene. As she was on the verge of using her Incarnate technique on him, Haruyuki was pretty sure she had said something like, “…‘For me and you to meet—in other words, it is still too early for Curren, one of the Four Elements, to get involved with the newly restored Nega Nebulus…’ Was that it?”

  “Exactly. I thought the first one to rejoin you should be Sky Raker. And anyway, Maiden, Graph, and I…”

  “You’re in Unlimited EK…yes?” Kuroyukihime finished with a pained look, and Akira nodded softly, lowering her eyes.

  As he looked at each of them in turn, silent for the time being, Haruyuki realized—no, remembered—something and took a sharp breath. He had felt it in the middle of the Battle Royale earlier, but this conversation highlighted one massive contradiction for him:

  Akira’s duel avatar, Aqua Current, was sealed at the east gate of the Castle in the Unlimited Neutral Field. In this condition, Akira was active in the normal duel field as The One, a level-one bodyguard. But.

  “…B-but, um, you can only go into the Unlimited Neutral Field from level four,” Haruyuki said, finally blurting out the conclusion his brain had come to, and the two girls turned their eyes on him. They blinked together several times before Akira touched the bridge of her glasses and opened her mouth.

  “That’s a natural question. In fact, I wondered when you’d ask it, Haru.”

  Next, Kuroyukihime nodded slightly, her brow furrowed. “The answer to that question is simple. When Nega Nebulus took on the challenge of the Castle attack, Curren was level seven.”

  “S-seven?! That’s the same as Maiden now! So how did she get to level one…?” Completely baffled, Haruyuki gaped, only to have a voice come to him from deep in his mind. Refreshing like a breeze parting tall grasses, clear like a polished sword, this voice was that of the mysterious young samurai avatar he’d met inside the Castle. A precious friend, he had first introduced himself as “Trilead Tetroxide,” and when they were parting, he’d revealed his real name: Azure Air.

  Haruyuki was pretty sure that when they were considering the route for Haruyuki’s and Utai’s escape, Azure Air had said he couldn’t recommend the east gate because the God Seiryu, the Super-level Enemy guarding it, had a terrifying special power.

  “…Level…Drain,” he murmured.

  Kuroyukihime shrugged lightly. “…So you know it? That’s exactly right. In order to allow for all of her subordinates in the east-gate attack squad to retreat, Curren stepped up onto Seiryu’s altar to bravely fight. She was hit with the enemy’s unique attack several times, and as a result—”

  “My level dropped all at once.” As a Burst Linker, this was probably the greatest possible damage you could think of—excluding total point loss, of course—but the words came smoothly from Akira’s mouth. She took a small bite of the rice cake pinched between her fingers and a sip of cold tea, and then she smiled faintly at Haruyuki and his wide-open eyes—as well as at the tense look on Kuroyukihime’s face. “But I don’t think of that as me being more severely injured than Maiden, Graph, Raker, or you, Lotus. There is no difference in the strength of the Four Gods, the fearsomeness of them. When I was hit with the painless Drain attack, Maiden was being roasted in the flames of Suzaku, Graph was being crushed by a super mass, and you and Raker were being ripped apart by Byakko’s claws and fangs. In terms of simple pain and suffering, you all had it much worse.”

  “…But, Curren—pain in the virtual world disappears once the battle is over…But the damage you took…”

  “Of course, immediately after my level dropped, I was a little—more than a little—shocked, but it hasn’t been all bad. As the bouncer, I’ve been able to help lots of kids in trouble like Haru, and because of that…There’s no need to make that face, Lotus.” Akira’s intonation didn’t change much, but her voice was still full of emotion. She paused for a minute before starting again. “…But setting aside the Level Drain, the fact that if you go too deep into their territory, you will indeed end up in Unlimited EK is the same for Seiryu and all the other Gods, so…even after I found out that Nega Nebulus had reformed, I couldn’t make up my mind to contact you before now. Of course I wanted to come back. The truth is, I wanted to come back so badly, I could hardly stand it. But if I rejoined the Legion, Lotus, you…” She closed her mouth there and hung her head.

  In her place, Kuroyukihime slowly nodded. “Right after we were reunited two weeks ago, Maiden also said the exact same thing. If she rejoined, the new Nega Nebulus—no, its master, me—I would once again challenge the Four Gods to rescue her from the seal at the Castle. As a result, there might end up being more people sealed there. She was afraid o
f that.”

  “It’s only natural to be afraid. I mean, you finally come back, Lotus—Sach—to plant the Black flag in Suginami. I don’t want that tragedy to unfold again.”

  The nickname “Sach” that Akira used for Kuroyukihime was an abbreviation of the “Sacchi” he had heard Fuko Kurasaki and Utai Shinomiya use. With her simple tone, the bookish girl was clearly from the planet Impatience—although not to the extent that Pard was—and she opened her mouth again before Kuroyukihime could say anything.

  “But, Sach, Haru…you pulled off a magnificent rescue of Maiden from Suzaku’s altar. When I heard that rumor on the wind, I was just so happy. I kept thinking the day would definitely come when I’d meet you again and release the seal on Haru’s memories…”

  “…And so that was today, then?” Kuroyukihime remarked with a smirk.

  Akira nodded once, but then shook her head lightly. “The truth is, I was planning to wait a little longer. But a situation came up that won’t allow me to bide my time.” The sepia-tinged eyes on the other side of her glasses were colored with a sharp light. “…As you know, ever since the former Nega Nebulus was destroyed two and a half years ago, I’ve been protecting low-level Linkers as the bouncer. There are several reasons for that, but one of them is to gather information. The Burst Linkers I help convey to me critical information they learn in the Accelerated World even after they reach the middle zone…insofar as this doesn’t interfere with the activities of the Legion they belong to, naturally.”

  Haruyuki nodded at this, with a powerful understanding. If his memory hadn’t been deleted—no, sealed—he, too, would no doubt have felt at least some obligation to return the favor and would have stayed in contact with Aqua Current.

  “So even while I’ve refused contact with the new Nega Nebulus,” Akira continued, her voice strained somehow while still calm, “I’ve managed to get a grasp of sorts on the series of events happening over the last while in the Accelerated World. Specifically, the large-scale terrorist incident due to a fourth-quadrant Incarnate technique in the Hermes’ Cord race and the revival of the Armor of Catastrophe, the order to purify the Armor made at the meeting of the Seven Kings, the plague of ISS kits and the Archangel Metatron appearing at Tokyo Midtown Tower, and…the purification and sealing of the Armor by Silver Crow.”