It took him about ten minutes to explain the tragedy that befell Exercitus, the red portal contained within Tezcatlipoca, and the ten Drive Linkers that came through it.
He’d spent most of that time on Urocyon’s strength, talking about how all of his normal attacks were enhanced with Incarnate and smashed any armor, no matter how heavy. How every part of his body was similarly guarded by Incarnate, so he could easily repel even a thirty-millimeter bullet. The toughness to leap from a height of sixty meters and walk away without a scratch on him, the nimbleness that made him hard to follow with the eye. And the high-level Incarnate techniques he called “Psion Arts.”
“…I only saw a technique called Cerdocyon that launched a fox head aura from his fist, and one called Chrysocyon that transformed him into a werewolf, but I totally don’t believe that’s all he’s got. And I think in the fight with me, he wasn’t giving it half of what he actually could…”
Haruyuki closed his mouth there and looked around at the Legion members.
The first to react was an F-type with a distinctive large visor patterned after a bowl cut, a member of the popular idol group Heliosphere, Freeze Tone.
“N’kay, Crowboy,” Freeze called in a somewhat low and mellow tone, and then gave voice to an utterly unexpected question. “So the transform, not a werewolf, werefox, yeah?”
“S-sorry?” he stammered.
“Nah.” She shrugged. “Just the guy’s avatar name, his technique names, all fox stuff, y’know?”
“Huh… Are they?” He stared at her, baffled. “Actually, now that you mention it, he did say Cerdocyon was a crab-eating fox…”
“So first, Urocyon, n’kay?” Freeze began to explain smoothly and at length. “That’s the scientific name for a gray fox. Most primitive of all living Canidae. And that first Incarnate technique, the Cerdocyon one, true, we call ’em crab-eating dogs in Japan, but as a species, they’re more fox than anything. The second Incarnate technique, that Chrysocyon thing, that’s a maned wolf. And this big bad, too, we say it’s a wolf in Japanese, but if you’re gonna pick, I personally think it leans fox. Y’know?”
Y’know, she says… Haruyuki was taken entirely aback when a rich baritone filled the silence.
“Regardless of the genetic lineage, given that the transformation was the maned wolf, I think he should be called a werewolf—or if you want precision, a were-maned wolf man.”
The speaker was an M-type with massive horns, Cassis Moose, one of the Triplex.
Instantly, Freeze Tone began to rattle on at top speed. “I’m tellin’ ya, the maned wolf’s nowhere close to being a wolf! Like, hundreds of thousands of years ago, n’kay, like four lineages split off from this ancestor Canidae named Tomarctus, and yer so-called wolf’s one of the first of the Canidae, and the maned wolf is just the one species, one genus all on its own. But the crab-eating fox and the culpeo are in the same South American lineage, so as a species, they’re about as far apart as a house cat and an ocelot!”
“That analogy does not make things clearer,” Cassis Moose said, groaning, and Freeze Tone took a large step toward him, her pale-blue miniskirt armor swinging.
“What Free’s trying to say,” Aqua Current noted, her voice reminiscent of tranquil water, “is that since his avatar name uses the scientific name for a gray fox, which is neither a dog nor a wolf, there must be a reason for that…I think.”
When Haruyuki had first met Aqua Current, she had been known as a level-one bodyguard by the name of “The One,” and after the resurrection of Nega Nebulus, she’d been a pillar of the Legion as one of the Four Elements. But he still found her mysterious even now.
Freeze, called “Free” by this very Aqua Current, pulled back the right foot she had set forward, stood up straight, and replied in a respectful tone, “’Zactly—I mean, yes, you’re right! If this fox bit’s this guy’s identity, then, like, if we keep that in mind, we could get a hint or whatevs about his attacks, maybe.”
“The fox is his identity,” Haruyuki murmured, and he glanced at the Burst Linkers surrounding him.
The duel avatars in a multitude of colors had each been automatically created by the BB system in the forge of their individual mental scars—trauma and complexes…or so it was said. If Dread Drive 2047 had the same mechanism, then it was no coincidence that Urocyon was a superhero with a fox motif. The key to understanding him and his attacks might well have been hidden there.
“So what don’t foxes like?” he said to himself, and Kuroyukihime replied immediately from atop the rock behind him.
“Guns.”
“N-no, well, I mean, yeah, but…,” he said as he turned around. The instant he looked up at her magnificent avatar, body covered in smoky quartz, his virtual heart leapt. The softness he’d felt hours earlier came back to him, and he flapped his mouth beneath his visor for a moment before he continued. “…All animals don’t like guns. And, like, this guy, I mean, he was totally fine taking a direct hit from a thirty-millimeter.”
“Mm.” She nodded. “There is that. Well then, there’s a dog or a wolf, or sour grapes…”
“Wasn’t it that the fox tried to eat the grapes but couldn’t reach them?” Fuko pointed out, breaking her silence thus far.
Kuroyukihime cocked her head to one side. “Was that how it went?”
While this exchange was going on, the chattering among the meeting members quieted down, and silence returned to the field. Five minutes left in the duel.
Haruyuki figured it was basically decided that they’d go for a second round, but Niko cleared her throat and stepped in to tie it all together.
“At any rate, we know the victory condition,” she said. “If we can protect at least four of the seven Beings in the message until midnight on July thirty-first, we win, and if more than four are destroyed, we lose. The gang from the DD side is coming in hot for real day after tomorrow, midnight on the twenty-ninth. Do I got that right?”
“Y-yes.” Haruyuki nodded firmly and added, “The real attack starting the day after tomorrow at midnight’s not a rule set by the system, though. Urocyon just decided that, so I think it’s risky to accept it wholesale. The Beings could take turns watching the red portal in Higashi Ikebukuro, but some of them say they’re going to help us, and some of them say it’s each of them for themselves.”
“Mmmm.” Niko crossed her arms and groaned at length and then spoke, sounding somewhat confused. “Our girl Metatron saved us during the Territories, and she’s a member of the Legion now, so I figure she’ll fight right alongside us. But the other six are all major dungeon boss Enemies, yeah? They’re gonna be not so into helping us, so much as they’re gonna come attack us or what?”
It seemed that a lot of the meeting members had the same question. It wasn’t only the various faces of the Red faction shrugging uneasily. Chocolat, Mint, and Plum from the Black faction joined them. They had formed a bond with the Lesser-class Enemy they named Coolu, and because of this, they didn’t care for Enemy hunting in the Unlimited Neutral Field. Not only had they never fought the top-ranked Legend class, they would have never even encountered one of them.
During the Territories against Oscillatory, they had seen a Devil class, and it was only natural that they couldn’t imagine fighting alongside the Four Saints, who were of an even higher rank. Even Haruyuki, who was linked to Metatron, had cowered with fear at the intense air of intimidation emanating from Storm King Rudra and Queen Mother of the West Xiwangmu.
Niko’s concern was exactly on the mark.
“…I think some people here know this, but…” Haruyuki said by way of introduction, and he took a deep breath to firm up his resolve before continuing.
“The seven Beings that were singled out as targets in this battle. These boss Enemies all exist in a first form, which is a huge monster, and a second form, which is human-shaped. That second form is their real self, and it’ll show up if you defeat their first form without using any assist gimmicks in the dungeon. The issue is, they can’t control their first forms themselves. So even if the Drive Linkers made it to the boss room of whatever dungeon, if we went into that room to protect that boss, the first form would attack both groups indiscriminately.”
“Are you for really serious…? How’re we supposed to guard ’em like that?” It was Ash Roller who spoke up there, having maintained his silence up to that point. He had apparently finally gotten over his nervousness at being wedged in between Centaurea Sentry and Aqua Current.
Haruyuki looked at the skull face of the century-end rider and gave voice to the provisional conclusion he’d come to in conversation with the six top-ranked Beings.
“We either attack the Drive Linkers before they reach the boss room. Or we destroy all of the first forms ourselves first.”