After wrestling with the question of whether to hold a dive chat with all the Legion members or use a normal duel field, he decided to leave it to the judgment of Kuroyukihime and Niko.
For a normal duel-style meeting, where two of the participants dueled and the remaining attendees registered as part of the Gallery, all of the attendees had to gather in the same area in the real world. At present, Nega Nebulus was in possession of a large territory made up of all of Nerima area, all of Suginami area, Nakano No. 1, and Minato No. 3, so naturally, the members’ homes were also scattered over a broad region. Minato Ward was out of the question, but even if they held the meeting somewhere in Nerima, Suginami, or Nakano, more than a few members would be forced to travel kilometers to attend.
It was already almost nine at night, and for a moment, he thought they should do a dive chat where people could join from their own homes. But the matter for discussion being what it was, it would take half an hour to simply explain the situation, and no matter how many hours they had for the subsequent discussion on how to respond as a Legion, it wouldn’t be enough. Since time wasn’t accelerated during a dive chat, it was possible they would greet a new day while still in the meeting.
Thus, Haruyuki had added to the message he sent Kuroyukihime that if it seemed impossible to have an all-hands meeting that day, they could make it tomorrow, and he would explain the situation to just the executive members that evening.
But the reply that arrived from Kuroyukihime a mere three minutes later was somewhat incomprehensible. The all-hands meeting would be held at nine, normal duel-style. But Haruyuki, Takumu, and Chiyuri wouldn’t have to move from their current position for the meeting.
Meaning what? He cocked his head to one side, and before too long, a new message arrived. A mail containing the exact same text sent to all Legion members, including to Haruyuki.
“Umm.” Takumu read the message aloud. “We will hold an all-hands Legion meeting in a normal duel at nine PM. The starters will be Black Lotus and Sky Raker. All members able to participate should be on standby in their home or a place where it’s safe to accelerate, after confirming automatic Gallery settings. At eight fifty-nine, tap the link below. Use of dummy avatars for viewing is not possible, barring exceptional circumstances…”
After reading that far himself, Haruyuki stared at the last line. It was a global net URL, but a shortening service had been used, so he didn’t know where it connected to. And…
“Hey, Taku?” he asked. “You ever see this ‘sss’ link shortener before?”
“Mm, it’s not familiar.” Takumu shook his head. “And, like, how can it be okay for us to be at home for a normal duel-style meeting? We can’t watch the duel if we’re not in the same area as our masters, right?”
“Right…”
The two boys both frowned.
Chiyuri slapped their backs from behind. “If Kuroyukihime says we can do it from home, then we can do it from home! C’mon, we only have ten minutes, so let’s get this table cleared! Hop to it!”
“Okay.”
“Yeah.”
Haruyuki and Takumu replied at the same time, and they carried the dishes on the table to the kitchen.
While the Aritas did have a dishwasher, Chiyuri began to wash the dishes herself with a practiced hand, so Haruyuki took on the role of drying them. Takumu was charged with putting them away in the cupboard, and within five minutes, they had finished cleaning up.
They made three cups of café au lait in three minutes—instant, of course—sat down on the sofa next to one another, and by the time they took a sip of their coffees, it was 8:58 PM.
After exchanging looks with Takumu to his right and Chiyuri to his left, Haruyuki opened the mail from Kuroyukihime once again. He suddenly wondered if it was okay for him to attend an all-hands Legion meeting of Nega Nebulus. But without him, there would be no explanation of the war of the worlds.
He told himself that it would go how it went and checked the clock display in the bottom right of his field of view. As soon as this display showed fifty-nine minutes, he tapped the mysterious shortened URL.
“Ah…” he heard Chiyuri say. She was as surprised as he was.
There was the low hum of vibration, and a shining blue emblem appeared in the center of his virtual desktop—two swords arranged in the middle of a diamond, surrounded by flowers. In between the two swords were the letters “SSS.”
The emblem disappeared in a mere two seconds, and for some reason, the URL noted at the end of the mail also vanished. He closed his mailer and looked in every nook and cranny of his virtual desktop, but it didn’t seem like anything in particular had happened.
“…What was that crest thing just now?” Takumu murmured, and Haruyuki was about to say he had no idea but then snapped his mouth shut.
SSS… Triple S. He’d heard that name from Kuroyukihime.
It had been six days earlier, on Sunday. For certain reasons, he had ended up in the bath together with Kuroyukihime at her house in Minami Asagaya, and she’d confessed to him the fearsome secret of her birth.
She had not been born through a normal pregnancy and delivery but rather as an embryo fertilized outside the body and grown in an artificial womb, a so-called machine child. While she was still in that artificial womb, she had been equipped with a Neurolinker and overwritten with the soul of another human being via the soul translation technology.
And what she had used in order to ascertain these facts, kept strictly confidential by the major corporation Kamura Company, was SSS Order.
At the time, she hadn’t explained in detail exactly what this SSS Order was, but he was certain it had some deep connection with the blue emblem. And normally, when he opened a URL in a mail, his browser launched. But when he opened this URL, only the 3D image of the emblem was displayed, accompanied by a sound effect, unnatural behavior for his Neurolinker.
He was forced to cease his investigation there, however.
The instant his clock display showed nine, the familiar sound of acceleration echoed in his ears, and his mind was flown away to the duel stage.