“Criminal AO, Fall confirmed. User has been logged out for twenty-four hours.”
Celsa sat in her negligee with an eye mask across her face. She didn’t need to see to know that her master was dead.
This time, Kaname’s goals had happened to align with those of the Mind, but they were still his enemy. After parachuting onto the shoreline, he continued with caution.
As far as the AI were concerned, the Legacies were nothing but a source of bugs. They needed to be stamped out. The fact that they hadn’t done so already must mean they wanted to observe the bugs and firm up the game’s code. Or perhaps they simply didn’t know what would happen if such an unpredictable element was destroyed.
“Wow, things look crazy out there…”
A highway patrol car—a low-bodied, high-speed model built for car chases—sat parked at the side of the road. Beside it, a girl in a ten-gallon hat leaned out over the railing and peered into the darkness with a pair of night-vision binoculars.
Her big brother looked over at her and sighed, as if they were sitting together in the living room.
“Ayame, careful where you point your butt.”
“Like what you see? Anyway, it’s not like I’m wearing a skirt; these are hot pants.”
“I can still see.”
“See what?!” Ayame shrieked. She sprang into the air, red-faced, hastily covering herself up. Far off in the distance, several searchlight beams lit up the beach like a theater stage. They were coming from the military helicopters and tilt-rotors dotting the sky. The whole strip was locked down with armored vehicles and barricades.
“All the clockwork soldiers seem to be preoccupied picking through the litter on the beach,” said Ayame. “What’s the plan, big bro? That was one of Criminal AO’s bases. It’s bound to have info on his Legacy vaults.”
It clearly wasn’t a good idea to go in guns blazing. It would be a pain to search through the kilometers of debris even during the day when they could see what they were doing, plus it might require trawling the ocean. It was suicide to go in there, not knowing how long a search would take, when the AI could call for more reinforcements anytime at the push of a button.
“Everything he needs to know is packed inside his brain,” said Kaname. It didn’t matter to him in the slightest. He lightly shook the Legacy he’d received from Takamasa, the quad-barrel ballistic door kicker. Each of the four barrels was thick enough for him to stick his arm in, and from out of one fell a single scrap of paper, folded in half.
…He only writes it down because he knows he might want to share it someday. I’d better get a move on if I don’t want to let him down.
There was no time for sentimentality. No time to stand around. Kaname got back in the mint-green coupe with Tselika, and Ayame returned to the highway patrol car with Cindy. Even though she was dressed in nothing but a paper-thin negligee, Celsa hopped over the door into her yellow convertible.
Kaname looked a little surprised.
“You can drive, Celsa?”
Usually when a Dealer Fell and was logged out, their Magistellus stood still doing nothing but waiting for their master to return.
“It is true that without our Dealers, we can no longer participate in shootouts or business ventures…”
Celsa was looking motivated. For some reason, she thumbed her lip in a coquettish pose reminiscent of a provocative selfie. Had her eye mask not been in the way, she probably would have been doing the upturned eyes as well. Presumably, she could see through it, then.
“On the other hand, we have a duty to protect our masters’ vehicles. They must use them to log in, after all. We can drive them without any issue.”
Following the written clue left behind by Takamasa as he fell to his death, Kaname and the others drove back to the peninsula financial district. Despite all the Legacies at his disposal, Kaname felt uneasy without his familiar short-range sniper rifle in his hands.
They soon arrived at a car rental agency. Takamasa supposedly owned the whole store. Dipping past the AI shopkeeper and their plastic smile, the group made their way into the showrooms. Takamasa’s note mentioned a car license plate number, which they soon found corresponded to a large semitruck nobody ever seemed to rent out. Opening the back doors, Kaname found a veritable armory within. With Takamasa’s Fall, the ownership rights to this place had fallen into chaos, and the parking space protection had already been switched off.
“There’s two more of these. I can’t drive them all by myself. Ayame, how are you with trucks?”
“You really need to ask? You know I don’t like doing backbreaking work in a game that’s supposed to be fun. I’ve trained Cindy to do all the things I don’t want to, so it’s her you should be asking.”
Kaname thought his sister sounded a little too proud about that, but instead of complaining, he simply sighed, and with some help from the succubus and dark elf, he plundered the three trucks. He needed to start the ignition in each one so that they became his property, but after that, the Magistelli could take care of the rest. Celsa, on the other hand, was busy with something else.
Tselika: Hey, what about my temple?! We’re not leaving it behind!
Kaname: Celsa’s coming by with a tow truck.
Tselika: LDFKSHLK YOU’RE JOKING!! She’ll keep crashing into things!
From Kaname’s point of view, the car was so beaten up that a few more scratches wouldn’t make much of a difference, but he opted to stay quiet. If he provoked Tselika’s road rage here and now, she’d probably start slamming her truck into his right there on the road, and he didn’t have time for minigames.
Cindy: Now we’ve pretty much collected all of Takamasa’s Legacies, right?
Kaname: Pretty much, yes.
Their progress had accelerated considerably, thanks to the cooperation of the Legacies’ creator, but even this wasn’t all of them. There were still some holes, like a jigsaw puzzle a few pieces away from completion. Specifically, they needed two more. And given that those two missing pieces still hadn’t turned up, there was only one place they could realistically be.
Kaname: The rest must have fallen into AI control. We saw it before with Bloody Dancer. The AI was using him to collect the Legacies. They know just how great a threat the weapons can be.
Everyone was silent. Their next goal was clear.
Kaname: All roads lead to the Mind. If we want to protect Midori, we have to take out one of the two sides anyway. This way we’ll kill two birds with one stone.
✦ ✦ ✦
Server Name: Omega Purple.
Final Location: Tokonatsu City.
Log out successful.
Thank you for playing, Kaname Suou.
✦ ✦ ✦
The boy looked up from his smartphone. Valencia Hikarioka was wiping down Midori’s naked back with a towel soaked in warm water. The girl was still asleep, silent as ever. Noticing his gaze, Valencia shook the towel at him.
“What’s the matter? Jealous?” she asked.
“No, not at all,” the boy replied. “I’m glad to have a girl around to handle this sort of thing. It’s just I’d rather you do it while I’m not in the room next time.”
“I must say, you’re surprisingly vanilla. And when you have the chance of a lifetime, too. You risked your life and saved the captured princess. I think most people would agree you’re allowed some kind of reward.”
“Now you’re starting to sound like the bad guy. Isn’t that exactly how her captor would think?”
Truth be told, looking after a comatose girl was beyond Kaname’s expertise. He had needed to spoon-feed his sister when she was sick, but at least she had been conscious at the time. If he tried to feed Midori, he might end up suffocating her. Plus, there must be certain problems only other teenage girls would understand, problems Kaname was currently trying very hard not to think about.
The static…seemed to grow and shrink with her breathing. Right now, it looked stable, but he got the feeling there was more of it than before.
Helping people was not about bragging rights. The boy was more keenly aware of this now than ever.
Valencia dipped the towel in a basin of warm water and wrung it dry.
“How did it go?” she asked.
“Well. So well, in fact, that I suspect we may have help.”
“Do you mean the angels or the demons?”
“Possibly both.”
Takamasa was a huge liability to both sides. They’d surely appreciate someone else taking care of him on their behalf.
“Whatever happens next, it’s going to be big. We need to be careful, or we’ll lose everything we’ve worked for. Our little start-up’s about to take off, and when it does, the vultures will be ready to snatch it all away. They always are.”
The Pocket Piglet was lying flat on its back, sleeping peacefully. It seemed Valencia had taken care of feeding it while the boy was occupied in the virtual world.
The animal had the right idea. It was humans who had adopted illogical behaviors, and the AI who had encouraged them. What had the angels and demons done to create a world like this?
✦ ✦ ✦
Log-in server is being masked.
Current in-game location undetermined.
Unexpected error: Unable to track Dealer.
Message: Probably can’t keep this up much longer.