Chapter 157: Three Families Scramble for Amano Rei
[Professional identity detected. Recording now in progress.]
[Professional Identity: "Soul Binder"]
[Beneath the earth of the lower districts, a Earthbound God of supreme malice sleeps, dormant for ten thousand years.]
["Only by binding a duelist with a burning soul can Scar-Red Nova be awakened."]
Amano Rei looked toward the Soul Binder's D-Wheel where it had flipped off the track, slammed into the burning wall, and gone up in flames.
All that remained visible through the roaring fire was the wreckage of the pitch-black D-Wheel. There was no sign of the Soul Binder himself.
Just like the Dark Game against the Soulswindler earlier tonight: the moment the Dark Game ended, these people simply vanished.
All that was left behind was a cryptic system notification.
His system, it seemed, had absorbed something strange again.
With the Soulswindler, it had been a Wicked God card of uncertain authenticity. With the Soul Binder, the system was now referencing a Scar-Red Nova tied to burning souls.
Amano still remembered the plot of the 5D's anime. Scar-Red Nova belonged to the Earthbound God mythology. Near the end of the series, Jack Atlas awakened the Burning Soul within himself, absorbed the power of Scar-Red Nova, and through that awakening gave birth to his double-tuned ace monster, the Scar-Red Nova Dragon. The card the Soul Binder had played in the final turn, Earthbound God Scarlet Nova, was the card corresponding to that legend.
He genuinely wanted to open his Eva Terminal right now and check whether absorbing the Soul Binder's professional identity had added another unclaimed card to his inbox.
But that would have to wait.
"That was incredible, Amano! We won another Dark Game!"
Finesse's voice came from within the shared space of their minds.
This was the second Hacker Invasion of the night. Still riding in backseat-spirit mode inside Finesse's body, Amano would need to wait over an hour more before he could separate out.
He was not sure whether it was from spending too long inside a woman's body tonight, or from the system absorbing the same Burning Soul that had belonged to Jack himself.
Either way, he had the sudden thought that women were genuinely inconvenient. This situation was slowing down the entire process of checking his new cards.
Finesse's voice came through in a panic: "Amano, my older brother is here. You should probably start thinking about what to say."
Karl's black sports car pulled up alongside Amano's D-Wheel.
Karl's expression was spectacularly complicated. The look he directed at Finesse on the D-Wheel swam with disbelief he could not quite contain.
His little sister, in the middle of a duel, had summoned a god.
Was Karl actually supposed to believe that?
"Who are you, exactly?" Karl demanded.
He could not believe it for a second.
Believing that Finesse could summon a god card would require Karl to believe he himself could awaken the HERO cards. Beyond that, since when did his little sister know how to Riding Duel? Everyone knew the HERO archetype had the worst possible synergy with Riding Duels. And during the duel, whoever was inside Finesse's body had produced a whole string of perfectly suited Speed Spells.
The inconsistencies stacked up fast. As her older brother, Karl had already reached his conclusion.
The person in front of him was absolutely not Finesse.
At least, not entirely.
"Karl, actually..."
Amano had decided there was no point trying to explain his way out. He was going to come clean. These were practically family, after all.
"Amano! Are you all right?"
Just as Amano was about to lay everything out for Karl, Rin Seiya's voice reached them from the distance, urgent and close, engine noise rising fast.
"Senpai? What are you doing here?"
Amano looked at Rin Seiya pulling up on her D-Wheel, still wearing her pink pajamas, and took a moment to process the image.
Rin Seiya, however, did not pay Amano any attention. Or more precisely, she paid no attention to Amano inside Finesse's body. She killed the engine, walked straight past, and headed directly for the passenger seat of Karl's sports car.
"Amano! Amano, wake up!"
Rin Seiya shook the unconscious body of Amano Rei with a look of naked worry on her face.
"Please don't die on me, Amano!"
She kept shaking him. When he showed no response at all, something close to tears crept into her voice.
"I'm not dead, senpai."
The line felt familiar. The very first time he had played a Dark Game against Rin Seiya, she had said something almost identical. The wheel had turned.
"I'm over here, Seiya-senpai."
Rin Seiya bit her lip. Her gaze traveled slowly toward Finesse. Her hands still had not let go of the unconscious Amano's body.
"Amano, are you saying you're... does that mean..."
The moment she understood what had happened, the worry that had flooded through her transformed, abruptly and without warning, into a feeling she could not quite name. Something quietly sour, turning over somewhere in her chest.
"Does that mean!!"
She had been so worried about him just now.
Rin Seiya's hands shifted from Amano's shoulders to his cheeks. Slender white fingers closed on the flesh of both sides of his face and pinched, hard.
It looked extraordinarily painful.
Senpai, that grip is brutal.
"Amano Rei! You are actually Amano Rei right now!"
Karl had been listening to the exchange. With his intelligence, the suspicion that had been building was now essentially confirmed.
"Right, Karl, actually..."
Just as Amano prepared to come clean with Karl for the second time, a convoy of headlights in the distance swung toward them all at once.
Amano had seen this particular formation before.
The Nanki'in family's escort convoy.
Nanki'in Muramasa and Nanki'in Sakuya stepped out from the central protected vehicle.
Sakuya had recognized Amano's Eve cards from the moment the first Dark Game lit up the sky. The outcome of that first battle had clearly gone to Amano's side. But when the second Dark Game erupted and the city started burning, Sakuya had been too worried to sit still. She had left the house the same way Rin Seiya had.
The difference was distance. Rin Seiya lived nearby. The Nanki'in estate was much farther away, and with the Earthbound Gods setting the mid-district ablaze, traffic had collapsed into gridlock and accidents. Sakuya had explained the situation honestly to her grandfather, requested the family convoy to clear a route, and only then managed to reach the scene in the shortest possible time.
"Amano!"
Sakuya arrived on the scene and caught sight of Amano's unconscious body in the sports car under the sweep of the headlights. The composed mask she usually wore cracked, and something unmistakably close to fear moved across her face.
But Muramasa's gaze went elsewhere. It settled on Finesse.
He was wearing the prosthetic eye Master Vail had custom-crafted for him. That eye could see through the surface of a body to the truth concealed within.
"Sakuya, do not worry. Young Amano is fine. But listen to your grandfather: I need you to look a little upset when the time comes."
"Why would I do that, grandfather? If Amano is fine, why should I be upset?"
"Your grandfather is not going to lead you astray."
Muramasa tucked both hands into the sleeves of his wide-sleeved kimono and walked, unhurried, toward Finesse.
"You are, I take it, Muramasa, the former head of the Nanki'in family."
Muramasa's sheer physical presence was enough for Karl to place him in an instant. What Karl could not understand was why the Nanki'in family had shown up here at all.
The Wein family and the Nanki'in family had been bitter rivals for years, locked in mutual hostility that ran deep. Both families had clashing interests across overlapping business territories, and the conflict between them had played out in both open and underhanded ways. The former head of the Nanki'in family, now arriving with an entire convoy in tow, gave Karl a sharp and immediate sense of unease.
He suspected the Nanki'in family intended to use the chaos of the Dark Game as cover for something.
Muramasa walked past Karl without acknowledging him.
"The Wein girl, is it..."
The old man looked down from above. Muramasa was already tall, and from Finesse's height, the weight of his presence was considerably heavier.
"It was you, working through the Wein girl's hands, that won the Dark Game just now. Isn't that right, young Amano?"
Even at that banquet the other night, Muramasa had noticed that Amano and Finesse shared something beyond an ordinary connection. At the time, he had not imagined for a moment that his own granddaughter, Sakuya, with all her grace and intelligence and charm, could come in second place to an illegitimate daughter from a family that barely acknowledged her existence.
And then came the Dark Game involving Onikiri, which had forged something between Amano and Sakuya that ran deeper than strategy or circumstance. Muramasa had long since decided in his own mind to treat Amano as the Nanki'in family's prospective son-in-law.
So the Wein girl had turned out to be more capable than he had given her credit for. Interesting.
Sakuya was far too trusting and good-natured to feel any particular sense of urgency about this kind of thing. But as her grandfather, he was not about to watch the right opportunity slip away from his granddaughter without doing something about it.
"Young Amano. You understand the relationship between the Nanki'in family and the Weins, I imagine?"
"Elder, now is not the time for either family to keep treating the other as an enemy. You saw tonight's Dark Game. What we are dealing with is far more dangerous than Onikiri was. Whatever is behind this threatens the whole of Eden Tower."
Muramasa's white eyebrows rose slightly.
He had originally planned to bring up the old hostility between the two families only to nudge Amano gently toward keeping some distance from the Weins. A simple warning about divided loyalties.
Instead, Amano turned it around in a single sentence, lifting the entire conversation from family rivalries and romantic competition to a matter of the safety of Eden Tower itself.
That was the measure of a man the Nanki'in family had chosen to recognize. Worthy of the word "principle."
Amano's response left Muramasa more satisfied, not less.
And looking at what tonight's Dark Games had actually done to the mid-district, what Amano was describing was no exaggeration. Muramasa had lived through his own era of darkness spanning fifty years. He understood better than most how dangerous duelists who had fallen into the dark could become.
"Are you telling me, young Amano, that you know the truth behind these dark duelists?"
"Yes." Amano gave a single, firm nod. "Which is why I am asking, Elder: I want the Nanki'in family on my side for what is coming."
The Nanki'in family owed Amano a significant debt from the Onikiri situation. Especially Ryuma, who had knelt before Amano and offered his own life if it meant saving the young master. Amano had not asked for his life. He had only hoped, when the moment came to confront whatever was hiding in the dark beneath everything, that he would not have to face it with too few allies.
Because Amano was certain: tonight had shaken whatever was concealed down there. The final confrontation was not far off.
"Very well."
Muramasa did not hesitate.
"Young Amano. You were the one who helped this old man walk out of fifty years of darkness. When it comes to facing these dark duelists, the Nanki'in family will commit itself fully alongside you and the Wein family."
Karl, standing nearby, had gone very still.
His little sister, or rather, Amano inside his little sister, had just convinced the head of the Nanki'in family, the Wein family's oldest and most entrenched rival, to agree to a joint alliance with a single sentence.
The combined weight of those two families was not simply 1 plus 1 equals 2. With the Nanki'in family entering the picture, the political pressure that had been working against the Wein family from multiple directions could be reversed. The balance could shift from defensive to offensive.
"Naturally, what this old man has agreed to covers only the matter of the Dark Games."
Muramasa's gaze shifted to Sakuya, who was in the middle of quietly disputing with Rin Seiya over which of them had the right to watch over Amano's unconscious body.
"Sakuya's situation is a separate matter. Young Amano: do not do anything that would cause Sakuya grief."
"So you really are Amano Rei!"
Karl had listened to Rin Seiya's exchange earlier and been only half convinced. Now that Muramasa had said the same thing with full certainty, Karl had no more room for doubt.
"Right, Karl, actually..."
Amano had the distinct feeling he had started this sentence three times already. Every single time he reached the middle of it, someone cut him off.
This time, Amano deliberately left a pause. He waited, watching to make sure no one was about to interrupt, and then opened his mouth to continue.
"Actually, I..."
An abrupt surge of wind pressure, and the rhythmic beat of rotor blades cutting through the air, descended from the sky.
Finesse's voice came immediately: "Is that... a Blue-Eyes White Dragon?"
More precisely: a helicopter styled to look like a Blue-Eyes White Dragon.
The searchlight mounted on the helicopter swept down and locked onto the cluster of people below.
Hanging off the side of the aircraft in an utterly unrestrained fashion, clearly ready to drop the moment conditions were right, was Kaiba Corporation President Kaiba Chiaki.
Most of the mid-district's traffic had already been paralyzed by the Earthbound Gods setting the city on fire. So Kaiba had simply arranged to have herself airlifted directly to the scene.
Which, in fairness, made sense. After watching two battles between gods unfold in succession, there was no possible version of Kaiba Chiaki that stayed in her seat.
She was not about to reenact the move from the anime where Kaiba Seto leapt from a helicopter at altitude, though. That was strictly a superhuman stunt.
To her credit, Chiaki observed the laws of physics. She caught the steel cable the helicopter let down and rode it to the ground, her custom boots throwing a sharp shower of sparks off the cable all the way down.
"Amano Rei! It was you who summoned that god, wasn't it!"
The same as Muramasa when he arrived: Chiaki's attention went immediately to the unconscious Amano's body in the sports car, not to Finesse.
Karl had now exceeded the limits of his capacity for shock.
Kaiba. Wein. Nanki'in.
Three of the most powerful families in Eden Tower, gathered in one place because of a single man born in the slum district.
If someone could genuinely unite those three forces, it was no exaggeration to say that person would have the power to reshape the order of the entire tower.
Amano was reasonably sure that Chiaki had come for the god card. Whether he could bring her into the alliance the way he had brought in Muramasa was not at all certain.
But he also had something more pressing on his mind.
This was the third time tonight that he had been interrupted.
He was going to finish this sentence if it was the last thing he did.
Ignoring Kaiba Chiaki's dramatic arrival entirely, Amano turned to Karl and looked him in the eye.
"Karl, actually..."
A strange unsteadiness crept through him. His vision began to alternate between light and dark, the scene in front of him swimming in and out.
That was odd. The Hacker Invasion timer should not have run out yet.
He raised a hand to steady himself, and in that instant, an enormous wave of exhaustion hit him from somewhere deep inside, the kind that came from the soul rather than the body.
His legs gave out. He lost his balance and dropped, but Karl caught him before he hit the ground.
Can I not finish one sentence.
"Amano?"
"Young Amano!"
Those were the last voices he heard before consciousness left him entirely.
He had been running on empty for a long time, it turned out. The unbroken stream of people showing up had been the only thing keeping him upright.
In the dark behind his closed eyes, Amano drifted into what felt like a pure white space.
White, and still, and open. Like Rin Seiya's inner soul space from earlier tonight. Or rather, like the place outside of it: what the network called the depths of Eva.
"Honestly, Amano Rei. You really do push things too far."
Standing in the white space was a girl Amano recognized without question.
"Eve? What are you doing here?"
"In the Dark Game tonight, you summoned Majestic Star Dragon, and after that you forced through the summoning of a Wicked God. Did you think summoning monsters in a Dark Game was free? Your mental energy ran completely dry."
"Wait. Are you actually Eve?"
Something felt wrong.
The Eve standing in front of him looked exactly like the Eve he knew. She even had the signature flat chest.
But this Eve was far too composed. Too measured. Too calm.
The Eve he actually knew, faced with this exact situation, would have said something like:
"Ha, what an idiot, you played cards until you knocked yourself out! That's the funniest thing I've ever seen!"
That was the kind of mockery the real Eve would deliver. This version only looked at him with a quiet, gentle smile.
"Even so. Because of the summons of Majestic Star Dragon and the Wicked God, your body has undergone some changes. Perhaps from here on, you will be able to see certain truths that were hidden from you before."
"Truths I couldn't see before? What do you mean?"
Before Amano could get an answer, the white space and the figure of Eve dissolved together.
Amano's eyes opened.
The ceiling above him was the familiar one he had woken up under countless times. His dorm room.
Outside, it was already light.
He had been unconscious the entire night.
"Rei, you're finally awake."
Kikawayu's voice came from beside the bed, warm and soft.
His good friend had apparently watched over him through the whole night. This kind of thing had happened more than a few times back in District 32. Every time Amano had worked himself to the point of collapse trying to earn money, Kikawayu would stay beside the bed and refuse to leave until he woke up.
"Rei, last night you suddenly got sent home by all those people and I was terrified. They said you were fine, though. Apparently Kaiba Corporation ran you through their most advanced diagnostic equipment and the result came back as severe exhaustion, nothing more."
"Sorry, Kikawayu. I keep making trouble for you."
"Don't apologize. Looking after you is not trouble. Do you want some water?"
Amano turned his head toward the sound of Kikawayu pouring water beside the bed.
He blinked. His mouth would not fully close.
Who are you?
The voice was Kikawayu's. The face carried Kikawayu's features. But the figure in front of him, with its striking proportions, the white slender legs beneath a school uniform skirt, and the silver-white hair falling from a narrow waist:
This was, by any measure, an extraordinarily beautiful girl.
What did you do with my friend?