Armor Frame Battle (3)

That fight.

The fight on which Count Hogus's fate depended.

What had begun as the round of thirty-two had, before anyone quite noticed, reached the very stage of closing out the round of sixteen.

The commentators declared Laurent's victory. The rising star who had shown overwhelming skill in both of his matches had already captivated a great many people.

Waaaaah!!

The cheers burst out like fireworks, and every one of them was for Laurent as he climbed down from the cockpit. He did not wave. A considerable fanbase had gathered around him, and still he offered not a shred of fan service. He was arrogant. He was aloof. And he was stubborn. Even after cutting down a formidable opponent, he showed not a flicker of excitement. Helmet in one hand, Laurent made his unhurried exit.

And so the round of sixteen came to an end.

A few days later, Zack had been grinning since morning, flushed and smiling like a bachelor possessed by a virgin's ghost.

"Hahaha! Well done, partner!"

"......"

"What's with you?"

"Hardly the look of a backseat pest."

"Backseat pest? I've never given you a single piece of advice."

Zack treated a plain fact as if it did not exist, and peered into his laptop. On the screen was a banking app's balance page.

"Do whatever you want! Hahaha! Do exactly as you please!"

The payout for winning the round of sixteen had just landed. It fell short of Laurent's share, but what Zack himself had gained was no small sum. He went on grinning for a good while longer, then his expression hardened — or rather, it would be more accurate to say it turned serious.

"All right. Let's get ready for the quarterfinals. What should I mount for you? A coilgun? A missile launcher? Or a railgun?"

A weapons list unfolded. All of it was tournament-legal, and yet any one of those arms, properly landed, could reduce an Armor Frame to scrap and still have force to spare.

"Name it. I'll back you with everything I've got."

"A sword."

"A sword?"

"Yes. A sword."

Zack turned the word over in his head. Sword. The thing Laurent had said snagged there and set his thoughts spinning. It would not be chewing gum. It certainly would not be cum. And there was no chance the man had simply misspoken and meant gun — because the patient in question was a terminal case of knight-disease, the sort who declared outright that guns were cowardly.

"Don't tell me. That sword?"

"That is correct. A sword."

"...I'm gonna lose it."

As a knight, Laurent wanted an honorable weapon. He wished for one proper, knightly duel, sword in hand.

"Ah, and I should like a cape fitted as well. It is an essential of knighthood, you see."

The cape could not be left out. A knight who bore a sword and let his cape stream behind him was a knight among knights, and if a heroic tale clung to him besides, he would become a legend unforgotten even after a thousand years. Laurent smiled with proud dignity. Looking at him, Zack shook his head as if the sight were pathetic.

"Sorry, but Armor Frame parts don't come with capes."

"And why is that?"

"Don't ask me. They just don't exist."

"A disappointment."

The knight was disappointed. It would not do, and one ought not to be, but disappointed he was all the same. Yet disappointment was no grounds for despair. The knight did not break his will. As with the sword he ever held upright, and as with his two legs, he set his will upright as well. He set it stiffly upright. He did not, however, raise the middle leg. Raising that one would have been a problem.

"Very well. Then I shall ask this of you."

Laurent pointed to a single entry on the weapons list. What he wanted was there.

Zing went into a full overhaul. They had time to spare before the quarterfinals, and so they undertook it. The machine was borrowed property, and modification required consent, but the broker granted it without a single condition.

The broker was a devoted son. With that consent secured, the work went forward, until one day a man came to the hangar. He was a guard of this private bay.

"Hey. He in right now?"

The guard entered without so much as a greeting, passed Zack by, and looked only for Laurent.

"What is the matter?"

"You've got a guest."

"I decline reporters."

"It's not that."

"Then show them in."

"Really? Without even checking who it is?"

"A knight is no coward."

Laurent squared his shoulders. If it proved to be a polite fan, he meant to press a signature into their hand and advise them to devote themselves to self-cultivation.

A moment ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠later, a ball of fur came into the hangar — a ball of fur packed with dust and grime, as if it had been sleeping rough for days.

"You?"

Laurent's eyes went wide. The guest was none other than the Gang-race traveler he had met in the city district.

"Oh! Big Bro! So you remember me, you do!"

"A fellow who knows his letters, I see."

"An honor that you'd remember, it is!"

"What business brings you?"

"I came to attend Big Bro, I did!"

"You speak of me?"

"That's right, it is! I, Yass! Upon the silver vine I swear I shall follow none but Big Bro, I will!"

In that instant Laurent's face went rigid. Rigid-faced, he stared at the Gang traveler, Yass.

"What did you say your name was?"

"Yass, it is. Yass."

"Ya...ss?"

"Yes, Yass. Father gave it to me, he did. Please call me Yass, you will."

While Laurent had locked up ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠stiff as a board, Zack — who had been picking his nose — extracted a hardened booger. Then he flicked it straight at Yass.

"The hell is this filthy furball?"

"Kyaooong!"

A showdown between human and Gang, the endless war of butler and cat, a battle to stake a life on — it was just about to break.

"Enough!"

Laurent rendered his decision. He needed to know why Yass had come looking for him.

"Why do you mean to follow me?"

"Yass is an aspiring wandering bard, he is."

Having declared his dream for the future — a dream with a ninety-five percent chance, or better, of never coming true — Yass's eyes sparkled. He blew his pupils wide and put on the most innocent look he could manage.

"Big Bro is a solid lump of inspiration, he is."

"I am...?"

"That's right, it is. That day's duel — the round of thirty-two. This Yass saw it and creamed, he did."

Laurent looked at Yass's lower half. So did Zack.

"Ah, sorry, I am. Wrote it. I wrote it, I did."

Yass owned the slip of the tongue.

"Then please listen, you will! A poem this Yass wrote after seeing Big Bro's round of thirty-two, it is!"

Yass closed his eyes. Eyes shut, he began to recite in a voice thick with atmosphere.

It was not something a person could bear to keep hearing. Laurent and Zack alike grimaced and covered their ears. Zack in particular opened his laptop and wrote down the poem he had been forced to hear.

"Writing like actual shit. I'm posting this to the boards."

"And why would you post it?"

"Because there's no way I'm the only one who has to feel this goddamn awful."

A nod came of its own accord. One line from Zack, an ordinary human, drew even Laurent — a knight among knights — into sympathy. Then Yass lifted his device. On the screen was some community site.

"Already posted, it is."

Yass's poem sat at the top of the community site. The very top, at that.

"Got a ton of upvotes, it did!"

He displayed the poem in full, then the comments hanging beneath the post.

Laurent nodded. He was satisfied by a sense of kinship he could not quite name.

Wait. Am I actually a genius at empathy?

He was far from the only one thinking as Laurent did. And Zack was no different.

"People all think pretty much the same, huh."

Zack shook his head and looked at Laurent. The look asked what he meant to do.

"Big Bro, please take Yass in, you will. Yass is confident he can do well, he is. Really confident he can do well, he is."

"......"

Laurent was silent. What that silence meant, no one but Laurent knew.

"What's the matter, it is?"

"No. It is nothing."

Laurent thought. And the thought, with the filter not applied, was surprisingly rational.

Better not to have dead weight...

A thought according to reason. That was not a bad one. But the world never once went as a person thought.

"Very well! A great knight requires a poet to sing his fame! I shall take you as my own poet!"

"Thank you, I do!"

The filter trampled reason underfoot.

Zing's overhaul entered its final stage. They checked the compatibility of the added armament, and on the machine's two legs they mounted, besides the thrusters, high-performance boosters on par with main-grade units. In other words, the standard Zing was reborn as a high-mobility Zing.

The quarterfinals were not far off now. Laurent spurred his training to prepare for the match — the calisthenics he had always done, of course, and he neglected neither strength work nor the cultivation of the mind. While Zack poured everything he had into inspecting the machine, only the wandering bard Yass rolled about on the hangar floor. Once this way. Once that way. Rolling with nothing to do, he grabbed his device. For a moment it seemed he might write a poem; instead he logged into the community and cackled over shitty posts and shitty pictures.

And then he found something, and shot to his feet.

"Big Bro! Yass has something good to show you, he does!"

Something good, from Yass? For an instant Laurent pictured something red. Not red in any political or economic sense — red in the other sense entirely.

"What is this?"

"It's about Big Bro's quarterfinal opponent, it is."

What Yass had brought was wholesome to a fault. Laurent was disappointed only on the inside, and arranged his face into solemnity.

"How did you obtain it?"

"From the Battle Gallery, I did."

The Battle Gallery. When Laurent showed no sign of knowing the name, Yass cackled and opened his mouth.

"The den of rotten humans who hole up in their rooms and do nothing but binge Armor Frame battles, it is."

"A rather scathing assessment."

"Facts, it is."

There was no lie in Yass's words, and the same held for the information he had brought. It was accurate enough that Zack, after looking it over, could not help but marvel.

"Oh! This is accurate. Extremely accurate. You could pass it off as something a professional analyst wrote."

At the string of praise, Laurent examined the information as well — not a casual glance, but the sort of reading that chews a thing thoroughly before swallowing it.

"Adept at long-range sniping? A fellow with cowardice worn into his very bones."

Laurent reached his conclusion. He made light of a troublesome opponent and radiated confidence. Certain of victory, he looked over the Battle Gallery on the strength of that overflowing confidence. The trial by combat Count Hogus had opened was far and away the greatest topic of the hour, and the trial's participants were mentioned without pause. Amid the talk of one contestant after another drifting through the community, talk of Laurent occupied a place of its own.

Positive with positive. Positive with negative. Negative with negative — stories of every stripe...

Among the countless comments, a few were so insulting they hardly bore speaking aloud.

"Have you ever beheld such insolent wretches!!"

"Big Bro! Calm yourself, you will!"

Laurent was rampaging, swearing he would board Zing this instant and punish the community shut-ins. Yass was breaking a sweat trying to hold him back.

"He's completely tilted. So he really is a quick shot?"

Zack said something absurd.

The day of the third match of the quarterfinals. Laurent was aboard a ship of GBN together with his Zing. The ship that had departed Kaidal-4 entered orbit around a colossal ice planet.

"I am Laurent! The mightiest knight of honor in all the universe!"

"I am no premature ejaculator!"

"On this day, in this place, I shall prove that I am no premature ejaculator!"

Zack's voice over the comm sank lower and lower. It meant he was nearing the boiling point.

Yass cheered Laurent with nothing but sincerity. And so — how much time passed? The sound that announced the start began to ring out.

While the broadcast crew worked their mouths at a furious pace, GBN reporter Becky went looking for one half of the quarterfinal pairing. Her target was the pilot of the deep-blue Armor Frame, Lightning.

"Houssein, a pleasure."

"The pleasure is mine as well, to ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠be granted the sight of such a beauty."

Becky did not so much as flicker an eyebrow at the obvious flirting. She focused ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠on the work alone, in a voice stripped of feeling.

"You'll be facing the rising star, Laurent, in the quarterfinals. A word on your feelings going into the match, if you would."

"Feelings, you say — it brings the old days rushing back all at once. Must have been about two years ago. I fought an Armor Frame battle right here on Diras. Back then, truly..."

When Lightning's pilot, Houssein, demonstrated the very essence of oversharing, Becky had to force her crumpling face back into shape.

"Ahaha... And there you have Houssein's thoughts. A truly memorable statement."

Finished with the interview, Becky set off in a hurry for the next location.

"Ah, Miss Becky! If you don't mind, perhaps even a dinner engagement!"

"Move! Quickly!"

She lightly ignored the voice at her back. Her real mission, and the staff's, lay at the next stop. A short while later Becky arrived at the hangar where the high-mobility Zing waited — the very place where Laurent was.

"Laurent...?"

Riding zero gravity all the way up to the cockpit, Becky came face to face with a Laurent who was anything but ordinary. The Laurent of this moment was wrapped not in arrogance, but in rage.

"Your business."

"Ah, well... you'll be fighting Houssein soon, and if I could get a comment..."

Becky could not properly finish. It was the worst mistake of her reporting career. Laurent paid it no mind.

Fwoom!

He simply thrust out an arm and seized the broadcast drone at Becky's back. Then he jammed the drone's camera against his own face.

A bleak voice.

That voice decided the future.