Burst Linkers inevitably felt a sense of joyous luck or ominous foreboding the moment they saw the duel stage with its diverse characteristics, attributes, and idiosyncrasies. For instance, the Purgatory stage, with metal insects wriggling around organically twisted buildings; the Primeval Forest stage, its pools of purple poison welling up in forests of withered trees; and the ultimate dark type, Hell stage, which Haruyuki had never seen himself, were all ominous; while conversely, the Sacred Ground stage, with its countless crystals floating in a snowy white field; the Moonlight stage, where a full moon hung in the night sky; and the Heian stage, in which madder-red torii gates rose up in the midst of red and yellow autumn leaves dancing through the air, were thought by pretty much everyone to be fortunate stages.
Praying that the setting for the all-important general meeting with Prominence would please be a lucky stage, Haruyuki slowly opened his eyes.
A strangely yellowish-green sky and damp, gray earth filled his field of view. The brilliantly leafy green beeches of the real world had been transformed into massive lopsided and twisting trees with trunks as white as bone, while the buildings of Central Park that he could see on the south and east sides were half-rotted, reddish-brown rusty liquid coloring their walls.
“Gah. A Corroded Forest stage?” Haruyuki muttered.
Before he could reject the idea in his head, a chocolate-colored, chocolate-flavored young lady poked his back. “What ridiculous nonsense are you speaking here? There aren’t any buildings in a Corroded Forest stage!”
“R-right…”
Choco, you’re still wildly different on this side! Unable to voice his thought, Haruyuki searched the list of stage data in the back of his mind. Scenery-wise, it seemed like a natural type with wood affiliation, but this poisoned atmosphere could also mean it was a dark type.
Before Haruyuki could reach a conclusion, however, a slender F-type avatar whose entire body was wrapped in reddish-purple film-type armor muttered in a rough voice, “We got another rare stage here, huh?”
It was Magenta Scissor. She shrugged.
“Honestly.” Black Lotus nodded, her onyx-colored crystal armor shining. “And it’s a somewhat—no, a very annoying one, too.”
“Huh? What do you mean, annoying?” Haruyuki asked his mentor, giving up on remembering the name on his own. “It looks a lot like a Corroded Forest, but at first glance, there don’t seem to be any poison swamps or insects.”
It wasn’t Kuroyukihime who answered him, but rather Fuko, the duel’s starter. “Come now, over there, Corvus.” Seated in her wheelchair, the avatar in the white dress pointed off to the north.
Squinting, he saw a sinister pink mist seeping out of the school-like building on the opposite side of the road. At last he succeeded in extracting the data and slapped a fist into the palm of his other hand. “Oh! This is that one. Um…A Plague stage!”
“Correct. And it does seem like that poisonous mist is coming this way,” Kuroyukihime murmured, narrowing her bluish-purple eye lenses.
Categorized as a mid-level dark type, the Plague stage was not exempt from the troublesome field gimmicks that characterized a dark stage. The poison mist before Haruyuki now was one of these, gushing up from the ground at random. If you touched it, you were “infected” with the plague. Depending on the color of the mist, you would be hit with slip damage, nullification of special attacks, visual impediments, aural impediments, or loss of balance, among other de-buffs. Not to mention that since the mist was no simple poison, but rather a pathogen, the duel avatars who came into contact with it also became a source of infection, bringing about the same symptoms in nearby avatars. In a normal duel, a player would actively try to use these to take down their opponent, but drawing this stage in the Territories was basically the worst. And it wasn’t much better if you were using the stage as a meeting venue, as they were doing now.
“And I’m pretty sure a pink mist is slip damage, right, Lotus?” Fuko said. “Pard and I will be the only ones infected, since we’re the duelers, but it won’t be much of a meeting if the deputies keep losing health.”
Kuroyukihime groaned. “I suppose we have no choice. Shall we discuss with the Prominence side and try for a new stage? That reminds me. Where are they?”
The entire party looked around. When the duelers were so far apart that they could not visually confirm each other’s presence, a guide cursor indicating the enemy dueler’s position was displayed in each one’s field of view. Given there were no guide cursors in view for either Fuko standing before them or the other player, Pard had to be somewhere nearby at least, but there was no sign of anyone in the desolate park or the rotted buildings.
“Are the Promi peeps really logged in?” Plum Flipper, aka Yume, cocked her head and its round hat to one side quizzically.
“Whoa, whoa!” Mint Mitten, aka Satomi, jabbed her with a mittened fist. “Leopard’s health gauge is displayed right there.”
Just as she said, the avatar name BLOOD LEOPARD was neatly inscribed beneath the right-hand health gauge. And if Pard hadn’t been there, Fuko wouldn’t have been able to generate the duel stage in the first place.
But then why hadn’t anyone from Prominence shown up despite the fact that it had already been over a minute since the start of the duel? Maybe the enemy forces were obstructed by…some kind of unexpected situation? Haruyuki began to wonder beneath his face mask.
“SRY. Late.”
A quiet voice echoed from above, and the entire party hurriedly turned their heads to see a silhouette slipping soundlessly down the trunk of a twisted tree. The slim torso, four powerful limbs, and long tail belonged to none other than the Prominence deputy “Bloody Kitty,” Blood Leopard.
“Oh. Um. How long have you been up there?” Haruyuki asked when Pard reached the ground mere seconds later, neglecting to say hello.
“Start, basically,” Pard responded briefly.
“Th-then why didn’t you come down right away?” Haruyuki frowned.
“Minor situation,” she said, with a sigh for some reason, and raised a hand to point toward the building on the east side of the park, Central Park East.
“……”
Haruyuki and the other ten people silently turned their attention in that direction. The half-rotted East building fell back into silence. Nothing moved. And then suddenly a loud voice thundered overhead.
“Sorry for the wait, Nega Nebulus!!”
Two silhouettes—both fairly large, arms crossed tightly in front of their chests—appeared on the roof of the East building. For some reason they stood far apart. They were followed by two new figures from behind, and then another two behind them, and then, in the blink of an eye, a couple dozen silhouettes had formed a long row on the roof until finally a small duel avatar appeared with some force in its center.
This middle avatar raised a silent hand and pointed at the yellowish-green sky. As if this were a signal, the thirty-odd people took on poses from ancient tokusatsu masked-hero TV shows and shouted in unison, “We are Promineeeennnce!!”
Four or five sparks were launched from the rear and exploded together with a pa-pa-pa-pum! sound that was a little lacking in impact.
“……”
The eleven members of Nega Nebulus found themselves at a loss for words.
“SRY,” Pard muttered with another sigh.
“…Leopard,” Fuko said. “Are you saying the reason it took a while for them to appear was because they were…getting that ready?”
“Yes.” The crimson cat avatar nodded apologetically. “Rain says stuff like this is decided in snap judgments right at the start.”
“Ha-ha-ha! That does totally sound like something Niko would say.” Haruyuki waved a hand at the Red King, “Bloody Storm” Scarlet Rain, posing smartly in the center of the duel avatars lined up neatly on the roof of the East building. “Heeey!”
After about two seconds, Niko released her pose somewhat awkwardly and kicked off the edge of the roof to jump down to the ground. While her comrades jumped one after another, she trotted over to the Nega Nebulus group and jabbed Haruyuki in the side.
They were both members of the Gallery, so naturally he took no damage, but even so, he reflexively groaned before protesting, “Wh-what are you doing?”
“Now look!” the smaller girl snapped. “Don’t ‘heeey’ me there! Ruins the whole impression!”
“Th-then what should I say?”
“Time like this, you all gotta snap to attention and give us your poses in return!”
“Wh-what? Like, how?” Haruyuki was honestly baffled.
“Like, you’d be all ‘Nega Nebulus on the scene!’” Niko suggested. “‘Nega Nebulus unite!’ or something.”
“We absolutely will not,” Kuroyukihime responded extremely curtly. Shaking her head in exasperation, she cleared her throat loudly before continuing in a slightly louder voice. “At any rate, I appreciate that you are here participating in today’s meeting with all your Legion members as promised, Red King. We don’t have much time, however, so I would like to get to the central issue soon.”
Niko took a step back from Haruyuki, and her voice when she responded was so dignified, it made him realize all over again that whatever else, she really was a king. “Oh! And you, Black King, coming all the way to Nakano One. Sorry for the hassle. I’d like to suggest we get right to it, but…”
She cut herself off and glanced toward the north side of the park, so Haruyuki also turned his eyes in that direction and saw that the problematic pink mist was already on the verge of crossing the road and drifting into the park.
“Dang. We really drew an annoying piece of work here. Plague stage.” She shook her head. “Can’t let Pard and Raker get poisoned, so maybe we should restart this jam?”
Before anyone on the Nega Nebulus side could react, a fairly intimidating voice rang out from the Prominence side. “I’ve got a good idea, boss!”
“Yeah?”
As Niko turned around, a smallish duel avatar jumped out from the group. From the timbre of the voice, it was probably an M-type, and that was about all Haruyuki could say about him. Because he was wearing a hat with an excessively large brim, and the cloak wrapped around his body was so long that it dragged along the ground.
“Mm. This guy,” Kuroyukihime muttered.
“Do you know this person, Kuroyukihime?” Haruyuki asked in a low voice.
“Probably. But let’s hear him out now. Although I have a feeling he won’t say anything particularly helpful.”
Kuroyukihime’s prediction immediately became reality.
“And what’s this good idea, Dine?” Niko asked.
“Make the stage a Battle Royale!” Dine called back confidently, as if that were the smallest deal in the world. “Then I can sterilize that poison mist in a flash!”
The only ones who could currently take or deal damage or interfere with the stage were Sky Raker and Blood Leopard. But the instant the rules switched to Battle Royale mode, Haruyuki and every single person in the Gallery would become a dueler, and the likelihood of an unforeseen situation occurring would certainly increase, the most extreme possibility being that either Kuroyukihime or Niko would be retired through total point loss, according to the level-nine sudden-death rules. Naturally, Niko would reject the idea out of hand—or so Haruyuki thought.
“Hmm.” The small crimson girl avatar turned her large eye lenses up at Kuroyukihime. “So we got this proposal. Whaddya wanna do, Lotus? Quitting the duel and accelerating again’s a whole hassle on its own.”
“Mm.” Kuroyukihime also didn’t immediately reject the idea, but rather turned toward Fuko. Apparently, some instantaneous telepathic communication took place there, and when she turned back to the Red King, she was nodding. “Well, I suppose. And going back to the start would mean you’d have to perform your ultracool appearance sequence again, which would be, well, you know.”
“Hey! What d’you mean by that?!” Niko erupted, but soon reined her outrage in and sent Pard a signal with her eyes.
The leopard avatar deftly moved a finger down her Instruct menu, and a duel mode change confirmation window appeared before all the members of the Gallery. Haruyuki had a vaguely bad feeling about this, but given that Kuroyukihime had already agreed to the change, he couldn’t exactly object. Not to mention that Takumu and Chiyuri were nonchalantly tapping the YES buttons in the windows before them, along with Chocolat and her friends, who were below Silver Crow in terms of level. So Haruyuki sent a brief prayer up to the gods of the Accelerated World that the meeting would end without incident as he pushed his own YES button.
The word “god” called to mind the thirteenth member of Nega Nebulus. She would normally have been present, but there was no way he could summon her today, unfortunately. If anyone on the red side questioned him and demanded to know her true identity, the inevitable ensuing commotion would take up the whole thirty minutes of the duel.
I feel bad for Metatron, but I’ll introduce her to the red people once the meeting is over.
While he was thinking this over, all the YES buttons had apparently been pressed, since the flaming text A BATTLE ROYALE IS BEGINNING!! blazed up before his eyes, followed by the start of a ten-second countdown. The readout quickly hit zero, and the health gauge in the top left changed from Sky Raker’s to Silver Crow’s own. In the top right, the gauges of the other Burst Linkers were displayed vertically in a compressed format.
As soon as the duel mode switchover was complete, a figure started to run toward the northern side of the park, the Prominence avatar in the hat and cloak who had proposed the change to Battle Royale. Niko had called him Dine, and Haruyuki looked to the right again to find the avatar’s official name. But there were far too many gauges there for him to be able to pick out which one was Dine’s.
Dine stopped about fifteen meters from the group and shouted, “All riiiiiight!” He thrust slender arms out from beneath his cloak. Ahead of him, the poisonous pink mist writhed like a living creature. Dine had boasted that he would make the mist disappear with a single blow, but how exactly would he do that?
With forty-some pairs of eyes focused on him, Dine struck a pose like he was about to launch a special attack and froze like that for about two seconds before turning just his head to say, “Sorry. Someone charge up my special-attack gauge.”
“““……”””
Once again, everyone on the Nega Nebulus side was speechless.
Niko let out a long sigh. “We don’t have a lotta time, so I’ll charge you up quick and simple!” She drew the small pistol Enhanced Armament from her left hip. Shk! She rotated the cylinder, froze in position, and nonchalantly pulled the trigger.
The energy bullet shot mercilessly through the long, brown cloak but seemed to only graze the avatar body hidden within it. Dine simply shook slightly at the hit. His special-attack gauge now apparently charged from the damage, he called the technique name in a loud voice: “Here we go…Antidote Mist!!”
His hands shone a vivid yellow, and a light of the same color sprayed outward. The instant it touched the pink mist, the poison began to melt away with an effect perfectly befitting his technique’s name. Mere seconds later, the twenty-meter mass of poison mist was completely gone.
“And that is that!” Dine turned around, clapping his hands together dramatically.
Cheers and applause erupted from the Promi camp.
“Nice! The king of poison killers!”
“Gimme some detox, too!”
They’re setting the rhythm here, Haruyuki thought as he also clapped along.
“So that is Stronger,” Kuroyukihime murmured. “He’s still in Prominence then, hmm?”
“Stronger? Is that that Dine person’s nickname?” Haruyuki asked.
“Mm.” She nodded. “More precisely, Stronger Name. Take a look at his health gauge.”
Haruyuki obediently turned his gaze toward the column of gauges once more. Since only one had taken any damage, he was quickly able to spot what was presumably Dine’s gauge. The avatar name inscribed below it was IODINE STERILIZER.
“I-Io…How do you pronounce that?”
“It’s Iodine Sterilizer, Corvus,” Fuko said from the other side of Kuroyukihime.
“Whoa,” he said. “Sounds like two super-robot names stuck together.” Unconsciously reeling slightly, he stared again at the avatar in the broad-brimmed hat. He couldn’t fathom what was inside the cloak, and he didn’t know the meaning of the English word “iodine” or “sterilizer,” but at the very least, the name was the coolest of all the avatar names he’d seen so far. “Oh! So that’s why his nickname is Stronger Name, then, huh? But why just ‘Stronger’? With an incredible name like that, I think it should be the top level, ‘Strongest.’”
Kuroyukihime and Fuko exchanged a look and then giggled in unison.
“If your thinking’s made it that far, then you’ll arrive at the answer in another second,” Kuroyukihime assured him. “At any rate, it seems that the meeting is finally starting.”
He turned and saw Niko heading toward them, twirling her pistol on one finger.
“That stupid poisonous mist is gone,” she said. “So how ’bout we get right down to business? Lotus, you okay with deciding on the chairperson like we discussed in advance?”
“Yup. No problem,” Kuroyukihime replied.
“Wohkay. So then, Pard, Cassi, Pokki, step forward.” Niko snapped her fingers, and three avatars stepped forward out of the Prominence group.
One was the familiar Blood Leopard, but the other two were new faces: a superlarge M-type avatar with massive horns growing from both sides of his head, and a medium F-type avatar whose back was covered in long, fluffy fur. Even though they weren’t acting the least bit aggressive, Haruyuki felt a pressure on par with that caused by the executive branch of the Green Legion, Great Wall, the Six Armors.
“Oh,” he murmured. “Is that maybe Prominence’s…”
“Yes. The remaining two members of the Triplex.” At some point, Takumu had come to stand to his right, and now he explained quietly, “The big one’s Cassis Moose, and the small one is Thistle Porcupine. They’re both high rankers with abilities on par with Leopard’s.”
“That’s some aura they got. But our Elements are no slouches, either,” Chiyuri murmured from his other side. And indeed, as they stepped forward from the Nega Nebulus side, Sky Raker, Aqua Current, and Ardor Maiden showed absolutely no fear and stood tall in front of the Triplex.
With the six members of the executives of both Legions facing each other, the entire stage snapped to attention. And rightly so—this was the intimidating Battle Royale mode. If this tension reached its ignition point, a catastrophe large enough to rend the heavens and split the earth was inescapable. Haruyuki nervously watched over the six high rankers squared off between the two Legions.
“One, two!” Niko shouted from behind the Triplex. “Rock!”
All six Burst Linkers thrust their right hands up with astounding speed before bringing them back down again. The six fists froze in midair, and the shock wave that was generated beat at the earth and caused clouds of dust to rise up.
Before the dust had settled again, Kuroyukihime yelled, “Paper! Scissors!!”
Whp! The air shook even more fiercely, and bolts of pale lightning crackled in the space between the two sets of hands. Two of the six were eliminated after two more throws, and the process was repeated three more times until only Thistle Porcupine and Ardor Maiden were left standing.
While Haruyuki wondered if it was mere coincidence that the two smallest avatars remained or if speed worked as an advantage for rock-paper-scissors in the Accelerated World, the pair threw out their last hands inhumanly fast, and after an instant of stasis, the white-and-crimson shrine maiden avatar slowly raised her scissors hand above her head.