“Myusel? What’s wrong?”
“Oh, I—” She seemed to be looking past the semi, up into the clear, blue sky. “I heard a sound...”
“A sound...?”
Myusel, with her elven blood, had sharper senses than the rest of us—especially her hearing. If she was picking up a sound...
One of the soldiers outside pointed past the trailer and shouted something I didn’t understand. We looked where he was pointing and saw—
“A helicopter? Another one?”
A helicopter was coming our way. But if it belonged to the Americans, why were the soldiers so upset? I squinted hard...
“A Huey...!” Minori-san whispered.
A Bell UH-1 Iroquois, popularly known as a Huey. A versatile military craft capable of everything from materials transport to armed attack missions, the Huey was a masterpiece of aircraft design. It’s pretty much guaranteed to show up in any Vietnam War movie. It has a truly classic “helicopter” shape; it’s probably what a lot of people think of when they think “military chopper.”
Of course, the American military in Japan used them, too—or had, in the past. They were outdated now, so the US forces in our country were replacing their Hueys with the successor model. Still, the choppers were so accomplished that most countries still had some in service.
Like Japan, for example.
“That’s—”
As we watched, the Huey hovered just overhead, and the side door opened. We could see a man inside. He was holding a long rifle with a prominent scope. A sniper rifle?
There was a noise—ba-shoom! —and the semi trailer rocked from side to side. There was a lot more shouting in English by the soldiers. They were talking too fast for me to catch most of what they said, but I thought I could pick out the word “sniper.”
The trailer rocked several more times, and the soldiers’ shouting grew more agitated. It seemed like the guy in the Huey was sniping the trailer. When I looked close, I could see the trailer’s tires were deflated, punctured by sniper bullets. The Sea Stallion looked like it had tried to get away, but the Huey had positioned itself above the Stallion first, pinning it in place.
Yes: the Huey was on the attack against the American army.
“He’s on our side...?”
The enemy of our enemy was not necessarily our friend. This could easily be the Chinese or the Russians trying to butt in and collect us again.
Mr. Smith shouted something. The soldiers all turn their guns on the Huey...
“Oh...”
There was a sort of poink, an almost disinterested sound totally at odds with the fraught atmosphere. A lump about the size of a clenched fist went falling into the street. One of the soldiers nearby shouted and threw himself to the ground.
“Grenade!”
That word, I got.
The soldier wanted everyone to know that thing was going to explode.
An instant later—the blast the soldiers and I were waiting for didn’t come. Instead, there was a spray of dense, white fog that spread out and left us all but blind.
I could hear lots of confused shouting from the soldiers, along with the occasional pop of gunfire. Thanks to our now-foggy world, though, it was impossible to tell exactly what was going on.
“Just what in the heck... Huh?”
I felt someone take my hand firmly, and realized Myusel had come up just beside me. She didn’t understand what was going on, either, and she was worried. I squeezed her hand back, and—
“Hrk?!” That was when someone reached through the smoke and grabbed me by the collar. “Wahghghgh!”
“Eek!”
Myusel, still holding my hand, was dragged out the window of the bus along with me. Beside us I could see Petralka, Elvia, and Minori-san, as well.
“Wha...?”
I finally registered that the hand that had pulled us out of the vehicle didn’t belong to one of the American soldiers. At the very least, he was wearing a different uniform, and he wasn’t carrying an M4A1.
In fact, it looked like some other group had shown up in the meantime and was engaged in a firefight with the American forces. The crack of gunfire. Stumbling American troops. Their body armor kept bullet hits from being fatal, but with all the extra padding they had brought to protect against Tifu Murottsu, their movements were slow and restricted. The mysterious attackers appeared to be running circles around them.
“Where did they...?” I mumbled vacantly.
“They seem to have come from beside the highway just after the smoke grenade went off,” Minori-san informed me.
“Shitaato a doneirufu?!” They’re our friends?! Elvia asked.
“Esu imene fuo esu imene yamu ton ebu a doneirufu”—Our enemies’ enemies might not be our friends, Petralka cautioned her.
Everything had happened so suddenly, all we could do was stand there.
“This way, run!”
The order came to us in Japanese. We saw the black-clad man who had pulled us out of the bus gesturing to us. We could only see his eyes under his headgear, so we didn’t know what his face looked like, but this was about as suspicious as a person could get.
Still...
“Don’t just stand there, go!”
We all glanced at each other—then shared a nod and hurried toward him. I still wasn’t sure who this guy was, but his fluent, unaccented Japanese made him more likely to be an ally than an American soldier. I had one simple thought in my mind: that this almost had to be better than getting captured by the Americans.
We let the man all but drag us over toward the side of the road. We had to get down on all fours to manage the climb up the concrete-reinforced incline beside the street; we worked our way up for the better part of two meters, tumbling into a forest at the top. It made sense: the street was blocked by the semi, but you could get around it on foot if you left the road.
“That way,” the man said, pointing into the trees. We started running. We stumbled and almost fell several times, but worked our way ahead, supporting each other. It felt like we had been running forever, but it probably had been hardly more than a minute. We emerged into something of a clearing. And there...
“LAVs?!”
Two squat hunks of steel were parked in the clearing.
They were LAVs, Light Armored Vehicles, used by the JSDF. And across from them was a so-called armored fighting vehicle that looked a lot like the LAVs. If I remembered right, it was what they referred to as a High-Mobility Vehicle, widely known as a Hayate.
It was designed for personnel transport—the military equivalent of our microbus, essentially. Obviously, like the LAVs, it was a hardy off-roader prepared for any terrain.
And in the middle of the group of vehicles stood soldiers holding Type 89 assault rifles.
There was no room for doubt now. The American army’s attackers had been the Japan Self-Defense Force.
The black-clad man ushered us into the back of the Hayate. “We’ll handle defense from here on out. Hop in and get to Mount Fuji.”
The Japanese forces still at the scene must have done a good job with the holding action, because the US soldiers didn’t come after us. The LAVs and the Hayate ran through the woods for a while before getting back onto a proper road and heading for the Sea of Trees.
The man in the passenger seat glanced back at us and said, “I think we lost them.” Presumably he meant the Americans. I thought he might be the same guy who had pulled us out of the microbus, but it was hard to tell one soldier from another when all you could see was their eyes.
“So, uh...” I said. “Thanks for saving us.”
“Don’t thank me. I’m just doing my job,” he said firmly.
“Oh, that reminds me, what about Reito-san... I mean, the man from the Cabinet Intelligence and Research Office?”
“Our air support confirmed that he and the others escaped the scene under their own power.”
I guess the Huey had been for more than just snipers and hand grenades. It w
as there to help the infantry insert and then keep an eye on them.
“Still...” the man said darkly. “Orders or no orders, I never expected to be rescuing you.”
“Huh...?”
It almost sounded like he knew me personally. Who was this guy?
The soldier took off the balaclava covering his face, revealing an imposing middle-aged man. His eyes were sharp, focused, like he wasn’t looking at anything except his duty. I found myself almost overwhelmed by the feeling that I was seeing someone totally committed to his job.
But even so, I just didn’t recognize him. For a second, I thought maybe it was Satou-san, the garrison commander from Eldant, but no.
I was sweating it out when the man’s expression softened into a wry smile. “Let’s just say when I was the one attacking you, I didn’t come off any better than those Americans.”
When he was... attacking me? Wait... No way.
I felt myself go stiff. Once before, when the Japanese government felt I wasn’t doing what it wanted, it had sent a JSDF special-ops unit to assassinate me. According to Matoba-san, the government had later tried to claim that the unit’s real goal had only been to “take me into custody.”
“Mass-ter?”
“Shinichi?”
Myusel and Petralka seemed to have understood enough of the conversation to catch on to who this man was. Petralka said something to Elvia in rapid Eldant, and the wolf girl poised herself to pounce. Of course, she was still wearing her seatbelt.
“Settle down,” the man said softly, looking directly at Elvia. “That mission is over. My job today is to get you all safely to the wormhole in Fuji’s Sea of Trees.”
“But why—?”
“Why? That’s a strange question,” the man said, the corners of his lips tugging upward. “Because they ordered me to. Because it’s my mission. We fight for the good of this country, just like we always have. It’s nothing more and nothing less than that. We leave our personal feelings out of the job—or don’t we?”
These last, ironic words were aimed not at me, but at Minori-san. She just shrugged, silent.
Fair enough—from the perspective of the JSDF, this man was right. It was like—how could I put this? For better or for worse, he was a professional. Obviously, it wasn’t like he was my new best friend or anything, but the unshakable confidence in his voice was bracing.
Geez... That whole thing was a seriously close call.
I thought back on the attack. With the help of the Holy Eldant Empire, we had been able to drive back the JSDF forces—but when I really thought about it, it was partly thanks to more than a little good luck. There had been a number of things stacked against the Japanese soldiers: they were in another world, something completely unprecedented; they were faced with magic and beast people and other things they had never encountered before, along with pint-sized female soldiers. If they had been ordered to make a second attempt on my life, would we have been able to repel them again? The men of Satou-san’s garrison had taken out some of Garius’s picked knights once, after all...
This guy was probably a member of a zombie unit like Minori-san. Officially, he was already dead. Officially, he might not even be a member of the JSDF. Maybe that was why he could engage the US forces, even if not exactly head-to-head. Considering that what the Americans were doing was blatantly illegal, they wouldn’t want to make a big deal about it in public.
Anyway...
“Elvia, it’s all right,” I said, and she relaxed.
“We’ll reach Mount Fuji soon,” the man said. “The facility garrison is waiting for you there. Link up with them and get in the elevator.” Then he looked forward again. Over his shoulder, I could see the familiar scenery coming into view.
We’re finally safe, I thought, letting out a sigh of relief.
Unlike when we first arrived, we skipped all the medical exams and everything as we left. They ushered us directly into the elevator and sat us down. We weren’t even given time to change clothes.
I sat in the center, flanked by Myusel and Elvia, while Minori-san and Petralka sat across from us.
As the elevator slowly began to move, Myusel’s fingers brushed mine, and she whispered, “It’s all right now, isn’t it?”
“I think so. Even the Americans wouldn’t follow us this far. I mean, if they even knew about this place, probably none of that would have happened to us. If worst came to worst, I guess we could probably jump out of this elevator and fall back to Eldant—I hope.”
I thought I remembered hearing that gravity reversed about halfway through, so that if you didn’t have a rope tied to you, you would slam right into the ground—but it probably wouldn’t kill you. Since you would be back on the magical side of the wormhole, you could soften your landing even more with a burst of wind magic.
“I think we’re safe for real this time,” I said.
“...Yes, sir,” Myusel said, looking truly relieved.
“Thank goodness,” Elvia said, letting the tension flow out of her body. Apparently she hadn’t been any more relaxed than I had this whole time. Seeing the way she flopped back in her chair, I realized how tired she must have been.
There had been moments when I wasn’t sure how things were going to turn out, but here we were, all safe. The feeling filled my heart and mind.
“But...” The gondola picked up speed as it descended. We would hit the gravity switch before long, and then it would be the Eldant side pulling us up. “I guess this means I’m not going back to Japan for a while.”
I was so happy to be able to see my family, and to savor Akihabara for the first time in so long. But if the Americans and the Russians and the Chinese and whoever else were going to be chasing me every time I showed up in Japan, then I wouldn’t be able to just bum around and shop. Imagine if I went to Comiket and the Americans showed up and started making trouble. It wasn’t likely, but picture the consequences.
“I think I’m all set on Japan for a while,” Minori-san said with a dry grin. “I’m not sure I could survive too many more visits like that.”
“When you’re right, you’re right.”
“Now that they’ve missed their chance to get their hands on us, all those other countries will probably pile on the diplomatic pressure trying to find out about our other world, but I guess whatever the government decides to do about that doesn’t really matter to us. The point is, by the next time we go home, I’ll bet the situation will have changed.”
“They should just go ahead and own up to this place.”
“The government’s put a lot of money into this. They won’t want to give it up too easily.”
If Japan couldn’t make back its investment with the resources, technology, or whatever else it could get from the other world, then it wouldn’t be eager to tell everyone else on Earth about it.
“Minori-san, hurry up and make it easier to get back and forth between Japan and Eldant.”
“Excuse me, but that’s not my job.”
From beside Minori-san, Petralka said, “We shall certainly go to Ja-pan again!”
“Huh? Uh, Petralka, you’re not freaked out or anything?”
She had been one false move away from being killed pretty much that entire time. But she looked more excited than any of us as she answered, “There are so many things we wished to purchase in Akiba, but were unable to. And we were not able to go to Ikebukuro’s Otome Road, which we wish to visit!”
She kicked her legs excitedly. I guess she really had a great time in Akihabara. Mmm. How awesome is the enchantment of the otaku Mecca.
“The next occasion ought to be an official visit on which we can meet Ja-pan’s king. Ruler to ruler.”
“King?”
I guess she meant the emperor. Or maybe she was hoping to meet the person with the most political power? That would be the prime minister. But prime ministers in Japan tended to go down to scandals on a pretty regular basis. What would an absolute ruler like Petralka think about revolving-door l
eadership like that?
As I was mulling over all this...
“I think we’re almost there,” Minori-san said. The vibrations in the elevator got smaller, and then it came to a stop.
“I guess we’re here.”
“Yes, sir,” Myusel nodded. As a half-elf, she was affected by the density of a location’s magical energy. She had kept several charged magical stones on her person during our trip to Japan, allowing her to feel normal, but it seemed she could still detect the difference with a magic-rich place like Eldant. Could feel it in her bones, if you will.
“We’re home...!”
The feeling dawned on me slowly.
It wasn’t like we had been in Japan for very long. Just three nights, in fact. And we weren’t back at our mansion yet or anything. But still, I felt a sense of relief, like I’d gotten back to the place I really belonged.
Geez... I guess I really had gotten used to life in Eldant. I wasn’t sure yet if that was a good thing or not.
“Okay!” Minori-san said, undoing our seatbelts for us. Then she opened the metal doors, and we disembarked from the elevator.
“Ooh...”
Waiting for us outside was a spreading vista of blue sky, full of white clouds, along with a field of grass rustling gently in the breeze. Translucent sprites flitted this way and that around the plain. And—
“.........Huh?”
There was something else there too, something that looked distinctly out of place amidst the idyllic scenery. A group of knights, standing with their armor shining and their capes fluttering. Not just a couple, either. I would have guessed at least a hundred. I knew there were several different divisions of knights in Eldant, and it looked like every person in at least one of them had turned up.
What was with the show of strength?!
On top of that, lined up behind the knights, looking like they could send the entire squadron flying with a flick of their forelegs, sat three gigantic monsters. Long necks, huge wings... Dragons.
I knew, though, that they weren’t the real thing. If you looked very closely, you could see seams running along the dragons’ “skin,” with metal armor just visible beneath.
Outbreak Company: Volume 10 Page 10