.hack//AI Buster - Volume 2 - Chapter 2.4

.: 4 :.

Colorful kites danced on the wind. Located on a steep mountaintop, Dun Loireag seemed to float above the clouds.

"Long time, no see;' Hokum said as she smiled with the command "/ smile."

Hokum was the only other character who had witnessed Lycoris. Other than an occasional e-mail, this was our first meeting since we separated at the Hidden, Forbidden, Sacred Zone.

"I was surp.rised you wanted to see me, AI."

"I requested to meet YOUt main character."

"W B. Yates felt that H okuto should come."

I shrugged. "1 guess it doesn't maner as long as it's you."

Hokuto was far calmer than in our previous encounter. Now thar I knew her secret, that she was the web poet Yates, she stopped role-playing as a newbie.

"Do you have any information regarding the cat or a Wavemaster named Tsukasa?"

"You don't waste time, do you?" she laughed. "Don't I even get a 'hello, how are you?'"

I sighed. "Hello, how are you? Now if you're done playing games, tell me what you know."

"Have you seen the boards lately? Don't you know what everyone's asking about?"

"What?"

"They want to know how a character obtains a monster-handling skill. That's all anyone cares about--how can they do whar's nevet been done. How they can get something new?"

"That's not surprising."

"But hardly anyone cares about what happened to the player who got knocked out. Now that's news!" She paused. "Well, I shouldn't say no one cares. Ever since the Captain was defeated, I hear criminal acts ate running rampant."

Rampant? "What are your thoughts on th is matter?"

"I ralked to one of my contacts in the Crimson Knights, Lady Subaru. She knows the player behind the Captain in real life. Anyway, his injuries weren't as bad as everyone's saying. He's already back online rrying to hunt Tsukasa down. Supposedly, the two of them talked to a player who said he could contact Tsukasa."

"Really?"

The Crimson Knighrs hadn't bothered to inform me of this new development. Perhaps they were taking it personally and wanted to handle it themselves. I could understand the sentiment, but 1 doubt they had any clue what they were really up against.

"What was the player's name?" I asked.

"I don't know. But a few days ago, one of the Crimson Knights spotted Tsukasa during their watch. Tsukasa slipped through the gate and contacted one of the players in the area a few days later."

"On the Dun Loireag server?" I asked, shocked. "How?"

What Tsukasa had done, jumping ftom one server to another, was impossible to do in the current system, which meant Tsukasa had somehow bypassed the system altogether.

"I don't know. But during their conversations with this player, an item was brought up. Have you ever heard of it?"

Hokuto typed in the name:

Hokuto: Key of the Twilight

"It's bogus." I muttered.

"So you do know of it! Well, you are a heavy player from the beta version, aren't you, AI?"

Hokuto didn't know that I was a system administrator. Or, at least, if she did, she never mentioned it. It was considered taboo to ask real-life questions online. No matter how close you became in cyberspace, the moment you asked to meet in real life, the relationship usually dissolved. I had additional restrictions placed on me, since there were corporate rules against debuggers ever meeting players, so I did my best to remain aloof.

She continued, "The Key of the Twilight is rumored to help bypass the system. I read ehe it on a German BBS. Do you wane me co translate ie?"

"You can translaee?"

"I sure can. I'm so cool, aren't I?" I could almost sense Hokuto's player beaming with delight behind her FMD.

"I'm not interested in false rumors."

From a player's viewpoint, it made sense that Tsukasa had an illegal item that could bypass the system. But the Key of the Twilight was a myth. There were no items like that in the current version of the game.

"A system administrator!" Hokutu shouted, seemingly out of the blue.

"Huh?" My heart stopped for a moment.

"CC Corp. could send a system administrator to look for a logged-in user, right? And they'd have personal information from each player's registration. If Tsukasa was a cheat character, then they could restrict his access."

"True."

"But since the company hasn't done that, Tsukasa hasn't done anything illegal-yet. So isn't it logical to think that maybe Tsukasa found an item within the system? It doesn't matter if it's called the Key of the Twilight or something else ."

I stroked my chin. "It's not easy to restrict access and delete accounts. There are legal issues. CC Corp. would need evidence of a user agreement violation. Maybe Tsukasa is a Player Killer and the Crimson Knights are making up allegations for revenge. The real question is: how did Tsukasa control a monster?"

"You're starting to sound like a system administrator."

I smiled, uncomfortably. T his woman was curious, tenacious, and way too smart for her own good. "Yeah, right. Anyway, I have to go. Thanks for the conversation."

"You're going already? But you just got here. Let's hang out!"

"I can't. I'm busy".

This was true; I couldn't keep on talking regardless of how much I'd like to stay and get to know Hokuto better.

"You just use me for information and leave. That's not fair!" She stomped her foot.

The main reason I wanted to talk to Hokuto was because she knew Lycoris. Against my better judgment, I had told her how Lycoris had changed into a red spider lily. 1 wanted to tell someone who would understand the significance of that.

"Lycoris," I inadvertently muttered.

"Lyco?" Hokuto asked. "What about her?"

"It's interesting that she chose to become a spider lily. They're just such peculiar flowers-blooming in the autumn and pointing their leaves toward the winter sun. In spring, while the other flowers bloom, they die alone."

"When I was a child," Hokuto said, "I visited my family's grave in the country during autumn. On the edge of the rice paddies, the red spider lilies bloomed so thick it looked like a red carpet. Since they were so pretty, I picked them and made a large bouquet. But when I returned to the house, my grandmother told me to wash my hands immediately because they were poisonous."

"I didn't know that:'

"They say that when you see someone that you'll never meet again, spider lilies carpet the path in red."

I wondered whom I was supposed to meet on this path.

"Are you tired?" Hokuco asked.

I looked at her. "Me?"

"Yeah, your voice--you sound tired."

I guess I was. Ever since I started working on the development team for the Japanese version, I pulled a lot of all-nighters and sometimes would only go home on the weekends.

"Maybe you should rest? Do you have co work tomorrow? J don't know what you do for a living, but if you can-you should take the day off."

"Thanks for your concern, but I'm okay." I couldn't say anything more without crossing the line.

I logged out.