his guard and his goaler
9.
Ryoken realised he was right after all, and when Yuusaku greets him by his name – by "Ryoken" instead of "Revolver", he knew the other had realised it as well.
'Three reasons,' Yuusaku said, and there might have been a flicker of a smile on his face but it was gone too quick to know. 'Your manner of speaking hasn't changed.'
It hadn't, and he hadn't even realised he'd given himself away like that, when Yuusaku hadn't recognised him in the hospital.
'Your surname is "Kogami".'
'You broke into SOL Technologies?' Ryoken asked rhetorically. He must have had a skilled hacker at his side to manage it. Not even Baira could, but maybe that was because Baira had once worked for SOL Technologies, like his father, and they'd been prepared for her. She'd escaped detection, but she also hadn't made it inside.
'The starlight road, that you can see from your mansion… You mentioned it in your duel against Go Onizuka.'
He laughed shortly. 'So I gave myself away. But so did you, Fujiki Yuusaku. You declared your intentions right in front of me. You started working in a hamburger stand out of the blue, with the older brother of another Lost Incident victim who'd graduated from one of the best universities for computer science in Japan. You asked me about Link VRAINS after the Knights of Hanoi started showing up, but before they'd become publicly known.'
Of course, all of those were moot points when they'd called each other by their real names.
'It doesn't matter, though.' Revolver lowered his helmet shield. 'Hand over that Ignis before it destroyed the world.'
'I cannot,' Playmaker's gaze didn't falter in the slightest, even without a mask to protect it. 'Hanoi will destroy the world.'
'Ignis will destroy the world,' Revolve hissed.
They couldn't settle this with words, not ten years after the battle had started.
'Friend or not, I must defeat you here.'
'Me too.'