Armor Frame Battle (5)
What caught the eye was Jing, climbing the mountain.
"What is he doing?"
Houssein watched Jing's strange behavior and brought the railgun to bear. It was a perfect moment to snipe, and yet a peculiar unease kept him from rousing his will to take the shot.
"I cannot fathom what he is plotting."
In that interval Jing gained the high summit, a vantage from which the whole field ahead lay open in a single glance.
Jing and Lightning.
The two Armor Frames stood well apart. Nothing obstructed the space between them, and Laurent was exceedingly satisfied with that.
"The Force boils and overflows!"
"Talk straight. You mean the energy charge is complete."
"Silence!"
He barked like an old man and drove his will across. It was a will he had bitten down and endured all this while, waiting on a single chance.
"Behold! Lance Charging!"
"Sorry, but Jing is holding an axe."
"Hah!"
A petty quarrel could not dam the greater current. Receiving his will, Jing ignited its boosters.
A tremendous blast erupted behind Jing. Plasma gas pouring from the main booster and the auxiliaries smashed the hard glacier to pieces.
"Ha ha ha!"
Laurent laughed, great and loud. On the omnidirectional display the scenery whipped past like the teeth of a comb.
Jing drew a dead straight line and leveled its tomahawk at Lightning, waiting out ahead.
A reinforced crystal tomahawk — an axe hewn from a special crystal that existed out in the cosmos. The weapon in Jing's grip still ran on a mechanism from the Stone Age.
"Now! Fly!"
He hurled the tomahawk. Flung like a cannon shell, it crossed a long stretch of ground without shedding speed, thanks to the low gravity of Planet Diras.
"What! An axe, all of a sudden?!"
Houssein jumped. He had never expected a tomahawk to come flying.
An instant later a nasty shock came through. There was no other way to describe the impact of the tomahawk burying itself in the railgun.
He had barely avoided a clean sever, but the railgun would never fire again.
"Ha ha... so I've been had."
Houssein laughed, hollow. It lasted only a moment. He soon recovered his wits and separated the broken railgun from the craft.
"Do not think this is my end!"
He set his will alight. A professional duelist could not abide failing even to reach the finals, and crumbling here.
To be eliminated now was something the years he had given to Armor Frame battle would never accept.
With a clack he cast the railgun aside and drew a secondary arm — a shotgun he carried against contingencies, though he had no love of close combat. Fitted with a high-capacity drum magazine, it was a piece capable of rapid fire.
"Here he comes!"
Light. A brilliant light.
Jing was charging, some short cylinder gripped in its hand, blue plasma gas jetting from the boosters. The figure was the very image of a knight from long ago, from the age when humanity still lived shut inside the Earth.
"Very well! I shall face you as much as you please!"
Houssein sent his will. Clearer than at any moment before, it passed straight into Lightning, and the machine leveled the shotgun to the fore, poised to fire the instant Jing entered effective range.
A straight line. Jing's path was a perfect straight line — and then Jing broke to the side.
"Blast!"
In the space of Houssein's startlement, Jing had swung wide and seized the ground around Lightning.
And then something hazy burst upward, as if exploding.
"Steam, out of nowhere!"
Met by the ferocious cold, the steam became numberless crystals of ice. Crystals scattering like powdered jewels caught the light and struck Lightning blind.
"Tch! At this rate my vision—!"
It was unforeseen, but Houssein answered swiftly instead of panicking. The will he raised sprayed rounds — bang, bang, a rattling burst. Buckshot ripped the white ice fog, hunting for the Jing that had to be somewhere beyond it.
"Where are you!"
Jing did not permit a hit. Its speed was beyond what even wide-covering shot could chase. Old frame though it was, Jing had been rebuilt with the latest technology, and the name high-mobility type was not wasted on it.
Houssein shifted his eyes. With the view cut off, it was time for the radar. Laurent's Jing was famous for never using stealth.
"The radar is dead?!"
A voice of shock rang through the cockpit, and just as those words declared, Lightning's radar was not working. It had not merely failed to acquire the enemy. It was throwing an error message outright.
The cause was a bizarre wave that had begun beyond the ice fog — a wave that had completely neutralized Lightning's radar.
"A Psychic Field! Don't tell me he is a Force adept!"
Houssein recognized what was happening and felt his defeat. In the interval he sat utterly stunned, Jing pierced the ice fog and closed in along Lightning's flank.
"Farewell, Houssein."
Together with the cold sentence, red plasma particles surged high. Plasma shaped into a sword sought Lightning's head. The blade took the head — and in the same instant the omnidirectional display filled with noise.
"Ha ha ha... I've lost completely."
Houssein raised both hands. Had he been able to raise both feet as well, he looked ready to do that too.
The commentary booth had gone to pieces, cheering like madmen over a scene no one had expected. GBN's people were well pleased with the ratings climbing by the moment, and Count Hogus, who had been watching the match, broke into laughter.
"Ha ha ha! That fellow is remarkable! I shall mark this very day by showing my sincerity!"
The moment Count Hogus moved to play the glorious sucker his name had always promised, the high personages of Kaidal-4 rejoiced in the open. The Count's sincerity would surely not be meant for Laurent alone.
"Hmph. He does well enough."
The Countess lifted a brow as if displeased. Even so she did not put away her smile, as though she still had margin to spare.
At that same hour—
"Hurry! I said we have to get that interview!"
Becky took off running for the hangar, desperate to meet Laurent, while Zack and Yass had their arms around each other, already toasting prize money that had not yet fallen into their hands.
Laurent, for his part...
He had written a post on the battle gallery, and his identity had been found out.
"How did they know?"
Laurent had no idea. From the start, his life had shared no fate with online communities.
Then a colossal column of water shot skyward. A pure white jet, plainly distinct from the red lightsaber — subterranean seawater erupting from a rift in the glacier. Planet Diras's warm ocean made itself known, rising through a thick layer of ice.
The seawater that had burst free leapt high into the sky as if congratulating the victor, then froze and scattered snowflakes.
"Oh! Magnificent-nya!"
It was a scene to stir inspiration, and Yass could not sit still.
"It blew its load so clean-nya! Not some tiny little squirt-nya!"
"What is even packed in that skull, that those are the only images that come to you."
Zack gave him the scolding, but Yass did not stop at images. True to his promise to Laurent, he wrung his head for a triumphal ode.
A short while later every manner of shitty noise began to run wild. It was, however, the sort of noise one takes in through a single ear and lets pass. The sight before the eyes was far too beautiful for sitting there savoring shit.
"So you held it in until the duel was done. I see. You are no quick-shot either."
Laurent gazed out over Planet Diras.
He had advanced to the semifinals.
The match was not yet upon them, but already a great many people were looking forward to the final four.
The space colony Kaidal-4 — one colony among the countless fringe star systems, and a place truly starved of anything to enjoy. Citizens sick to death of boredom were buzzing over the birth of a star, and over an event that had not come along in a long while.
"Difficult."
Laurent came into the hangar wearing a troubled face. At the look of a man with something weighing on him, Zack closed the laptop he had been peering into.
"Difficult?"
"There is a certain matter."
"Now I'm curious. Say it. What's it about?"
Zack pressed for the answer, the better to look after Laurent. Laurent brought in enormous sums. Most of that money remained his, and yet the portion his partner Zack carried off was staggering in its own right. Laurent had to win — for Zack, and for himself. In that sense, Laurent's condition mattered every bit as much as the maintenance on Jing.
"Don't take it as a burden. Clearing up your stress is part of my work as your supporter."
"It was no great matter. Merely a nuisance."
Only then did Laurent open his mouth, and begin to tell what he had met with on the road to the hangar.
"A girl who called herself a fan came running at me."
"Came running? Don't tell me you knocked her down or threw her."
"What manner of man do you take me for."
"A cold-blooded, tearless boomer barbarian."
"You are misinformed. Not a cold-blooded boomer barbarian — a knight who knows honor and justice."
A misunderstanding had cropped up in the midst of talk. Once he had set it right, he went on with what followed.
"She looked shy of twenty."
"What did you do?"
"She was about to fall as she came running, so I caught her in my arms."
"And then?"
"I admonished her properly. I told her not to trail after a man like me, to study diligently, and not to wear her skirt cut short. I also told her a pretty girl like her must not do such things."
"And after that?"
"She laughed. I know not what pleased her, but she laughed as though glad."
Zack smacked his own forehead.
"You womanizing bastard! Flirt with that face and of course the girl laughs like she's delighted!"
"Flirting? I did no such thing."
"Son of a—! This is why the handsome ones—!!"
Zack stormed off in a fury, and he did not come back.
In the meantime Laurent put into practice the creed that a hero does not stoop to study. Which is to say, he did nothing at all. Befitting a hero, he refused even the act of stacking up knowledge or experience, and set about loafing. Had the lazy cat Yass laid eyes on him, the sight was one to wring out a reverent Big Bro all on its own.
"Big Bro!"
A sudden shout, and a large ball of fur came running. He had said Big Bro, but it was Yass carrying urgency in place of respect.
"Big Bro, this is no time to be like this-nya."
"No time to be like this?"
"An invitation came-nya."
"An invitation?"
"Yeh. Count Hogus sent it-nya."
"Why did an invitation arrive in your mail?"
"Big Bro wrote my address in the contact-mail field-nya."
Only then did he remember. Mail had poured in without end after the round of thirty-two, and the moment Yass joined him, the fretting Laurent had entrusted every contact with the outside to the cat.
"I see. You have labored much."
"It's no labor-nya."
Yass smiled with dependable ease and showed him Count Hogus's mail. The text, which opened in courteous phrases, was an invitation to a party.
"We shall decline."
"Yeh? But it's the Count's invitation-nya?"
"Decline it regardless. A knight does not draw near unto pleasure."
"You don't like buffets-nya?"
"......"
He did not dislike them. Where a buffet was concerned, he liked it to the point of madness.
'I want to go! I want to go! I said I want to go! Please, just let me go!'
Contrary to the face he wore, his heart was welcoming the Count's invitation. He wanted to eat the foods he liked at a buffet, to his heart's content. The Chivalry trait, however, stood guard against greed and gluttony.
"In any case, I decline."
"Got it-nya."
Yass sent a reply in the fluent sentences of a poet. Whether they were truly fluent, none could say, but they were sentences into which he had poured his utmost.
"Big Bro, there's one more invitation-nya."
"Who else has sent one?"
"Countess Hogus-nya."
"The Countess... suspicious. The Countess's champions I have already struck down number three."
"Right-nya. The intent is suspicious-nya. The Countess is a famous wanton-nya."
"You were aware?"
"Not knowing would make me an idiot-nya."
Yass began to parade the rumors he had picked up while wandering the cosmos — every sordid, filthy tale about Countess Hogus.
"Indeed. The root of all evil."
"Is it a bad thing to be faithful to desire-nya?"
"Desire that knows no restraint is certain to bring harm to others."
"Oh, a splendid line-nya."
Yass recorded Laurent's words on his device, meaning to use them someday as material for a poem.
"What's the next line-nya?"
"There is none."
"None-nya?"
"Correct."
"A disappointment-nya."
Yass let the corners of his eyes droop and opened the mail application on his device once more. As the one in charge of Laurent's correspondence, he still had a task.
"Then we decline the Countess's invitation too-nya?"
"Of course."
"It's a buffet-nya?"
"Of course!"
Laurent refused through gritted teeth. It was that accursed filter.
'I'm hungry... a buffet... a buffet...'
Hunger came over him all at once, and he wanted to eat something — anything. Having let a buffet slip away before his very eyes, the hunger was all the clearer.
"O poet."
"Yes, Big Bro."
"Summon Zack. Let us go and eat."
"Big Bro's treating-nya?"
"Of course."
"For real-nya?"
"Of course!"
Laurent clenched his teeth. Once again, it was the filter.