Outbreak Company: Volume 8 (Premium)

by Ichiro Sakaki

  “Oh. Sure, okay.”

  “And I brought someone else, too.” Romilda tugged on someone’s hand, pulling them out in front of the crowd. “Here’s Lauron, just like you asked.”

  A dwarf girl stood there, with short gray hair under a black cap. Romilda gave her a little push, and she stepped forward, bowing her head in our direction.

  “Lauron Selioz, at your service.”

  Lauron was about a head shorter than me. Her baby face and big eyes gave her a youthful appearance—I would have believed you if you’d said she was in primary school. But as I recalled, she was actually Romilda’s age. So... in her teens?

  “I’ve heard about the situation,” she said. “I appreciate your asking for me. I look forward to working with you.”

  “Oh, uh, me too, definitely.”

  She bowed her head again, and I found myself bowing back.

  Lauron came across as really... serious. There was something formalistic about the way she talked, almost like she’d learned the right phrases to use and was reciting them from memory. Well, maybe she was just anxious, like the others.

  “I’d like to speak to you privately,” I said. I had to give her the details of her other assignment: not just building the Petralka doll, but learning to make it act like the empress.

  “Shinichi-kun?” Minori-san asked dubiously. “This girl is—”

  Oh, I’d forgotten. All of our discussions had been about the actual production; I hadn’t mentioned picking someone to control the puppet to Minori-san.

  “She—”

  I started to explain, but Romilda jumped in. “Sensei was set on Lauron at first sight!”

  “Shinichi-kun,” Minori-san said in a tone of exasperation. “I know you talk about how every man dreams of having his own harem, but this—”

  “That’s not what this is about!” I exclaimed. “Romilda, I thought I told you not to say things that could get me in trouble like that!”

  “Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.” All the same, she shrugged and stuck out her tongue. With that, I was certain: she had done this on purpose. On purpose!

  Romilda, do you really want to make me out to be some kind of perverted manimal, heaving with lust?! I may have a whole parade of two-dimensional bride-sans, but I’ll have you know that on their three-dimensional counterparts I’ve never laid a hand!

  “I mean, when you start out by asking to talk privately...” Minori-san looked at me, less reproachfully than expectantly.

  Wait... was it Minori-san spreading the “Kanou harem” theory?!

  “In any case,” I said, coughing and shooting a look around, “Lauron isn’t here for production. I picked her to handle the next phase. I just want to talk to her about the details. Hikaru-san, Minori-san, come with me, please. Myusel, please show everyone else to the outbuilding. Brooke is around back.”

  “Certainly.”

  Myusel nodded, and I left Romilda and the other dwarves with her, while Lauron and I headed for the living area.

  I asked Lauron to have a seat, then took a place on the other side of the table.

  “All right.” I asked Hikaru-san to serve tea in place of Myusel, who was showing the dwarves around, and turned back to Lauron. “I’m sorry to make you come all the way over here.”

  “It’s all right,” Lauron said. She sat up straight, hands on her knees. It was a very “proper” posture—it made her serious character perfectly clear.

  “Uh, maybe I should start by introducing myself for real. I’m Kanou Shinichi.”

  “Yes, I’ve heard from the young lady.” Lauron looked straight at me. She must have been talking about Romilda. They were the same age, but Lauron wasn’t a student; she was a laborer in the workshop. Romilda was, for her, the daughter of her employer. “She described you as an evangelist for otaku culture. Teacher at the school. From a country called Ja-pan.”

  “Er, oh.” Well, that saved me time introducing myself.

  Then Lauron, still looking straight at me and perfectly serious, continued, “And also a total bottom.”

  “Uh... Pause there, will you?”

  “A man whose main hobby is surrounding himself with women to serve him.”

  “Waitwaitwaitwait!” I interrupted her, more desperately than I meant to.

  What had Romilda been telling people?! I was starting to think there were some pretty ugly rumors about me going around!

  “That’s not true! None of that is even remotely true!”

  “He’s right, it isn’t,” Minori-san said from beside me. “He’s a slutty bottom.”

  “Pipe down, you rotten WAC!” I was practically in tears.

  “So it’s... not true...?” Lauron was looking at us, puzzled. There was a note of confusion in her voice.

  Was it really that surprising? Anyway, she seemed a little strange herself...

  “Absolutely not.”

  “I... I see...” She nodded, still not looking entirely sure. She sounded so different from before, in fact, that it was almost like she was another person.

  Then again, the first time I’d seen her—the time that dwarf was getting angry at her—she’d reacted more or less like this. Maybe this was baseline for her.

  But anyway...

  “I don’t fully understand the expression ‘total bottom’... Is a ‘slutty bottom’ the same sort of thing?”

  “Let’s save the lessons for something more productive,” I said, forcing the conversation back on track. “Ahem. So Romilda has pretty much told you what this is about?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “All right. On that note...” I took an action figure I’d put in here earlier and flipped it faceup. It was a girl with golden hair, wearing a short pink leotard and skirt. Pureheart, from Prepure.

  Lauron looked at the figure with a mixture of surprise and curiosity. Since she didn’t go to the school, she had probably never seen one of these, even if maybe she’d heard of them.

  “Here you are.” Hikaru-san put tea down in front of each of us.

  “Thanks, Hikaru-san,” I said.

  “Thank you very much,” Lauron said, looking up at Hikaru-san.

  She reached out. I thought she was going to take a drink immediately, but instead, she gave the cup a small push with her finger. Maybe the angle had bothered her somehow? It seemed a bit obsessive.

  What was that about...?

  “Umm. May I go on?”

  “Certainly.” She nodded.

  “I want you to move this,” I said, pointing to the figure. “Realistically. I want you to make it look like Her Majesty the Empress, if you can.”

  At the workshop, I had seen for myself how talented Lauron was when it came to controlling puppets. And what I’d witnessed in the classroom had shown me that the same magic that controlled clay dolls could manipulate action figures. So if we took a genius like Lauron and gave her a life-size doll to work with, would she be able to make it look human?

  That was the real question. Of course, if we just wanted the doll to stand at attention during ceremonial occasions, or wave to the people from a balcony someplace, it might not have required that much magical skill. Someone other than Lauron might have been able to operate the body double. That’s why we had started working on it before we actually confirmed whether Lauron would be able to do what we wanted.

  But if possible, I was interested in using the doll as more than just a display piece. If it could trick someone when they were close enough to reach out and touch it, make them think it was the real person, then the situations in which we could use the stand-in would increase exponentially. The absolutely ideal outcome? Maybe the doll could even help reduce Petralka’s workload a little bit. That was my thought.

  “Can you do it?”

  The figure, by the way, had been manufactured with plastic joints, but we had stuck a bit of metal into each of the points of articulation. That would make it easier for the dwarven magic to work on it.

  “Making it move won’t be a problem,” Lauron
told me. She didn’t qualify that: no maybe, probably, or I think. A simple declaration. She was back to the seriousness she had displayed at first.

  “I can control three clay dolls at once, so I should be able to control one doll with three times as many joints. Though it may take me some time to figure out exactly what’s possible.”

  “Wow...”

  My understanding was that one of those dolls had at least a hundred points of articulation—maybe even two or three times that, depending how you counted. Of course, you weren’t focusing on each and every one of them at once when controlling a clay doll, but still.

  “However...” Lauron frowned at the action figure. “What does moving it mean, specifically...?”

  She sounded less sure of herself again.

  “I’m not sure what you’re asking.”

  “There are all kinds of movements. Walking, sitting, eating... And the definition of realistic—that could be any number of things. As far as making it look like Her Majesty, that’s a rather... open-ended order as well...”

  “Ah...” Even I could understand what Lauron was getting at. I had been thinking that because the clay dolls were roughly humanoid in shape, making the movements look more “human” would just be a matter of refining them.

  Petralka had said herself that the clay dolls were used much like forklifts or earth movers, or like the robotic arms you see on an assembly line—they were designed for labor purposes. It didn’t really matter what they looked like. Yes, they were based on people, but they had never been intended to replicate them. The dwarves had never given any thought to how to make the movements “more realistic” because that had never been the point.

  “Hmmm...”

  What to do? I could try to model some movements, but just having someone dance around in front of her didn’t seem likely to help much. I needed some example of something that wasn’t human, but seemed like it was.

  That was when it hit me. “Oh. I’ve got it. I’m sure I have it downloaded here somewhere...”

  I pulled my smartphone out of my pocket and started going through my folders of video files.

  There. I selected one file in particular.

  “Something like this. See?”

  A jaunty melody played through the phone’s speaker.

  “What’s this...?” Lauron looked at the screen, eyes wide.

  It was the ending song from Prepure.

  Prepure was a typical anime, done the old-fashioned way: by stringing 2D images together so they looked like they were moving. The ending, though, that was different. It showed 3D renderings of the characters from the show, dancing and singing in virtual space.

  In other words, acting like dolls moving on their own.

  I’d heard that the characters in this ending clip did more than just flounce around. There were a lot of little gimmicks worked in that the uninitiated would never notice.

  Human motion is nothing like mechanical, motor-driven movement. Bundles of muscles expand and contract, creating movement. So for example, the animators did a lot of research into how to make an arm go up and down, trying to figure out how to make the doll’s joints move in the way that most closely resembled a human doing the same thing.

  Hence why characters who didn’t really exist appeared almost as if they were flesh and blood. Add in shadows and hair movement, and they started to look really real.

  Lauron watched the Prepure ED with rapt attention. Finally the song ended, the video freezing on the characters with their hands in the air and big smiles on their faces, but Lauron continued to stare at the smartphone for a moment more.

  Then she said, “You want it to move like that, is that right?” She didn’t even look away from the screen as she spoke.

  “Yeah, more or less.”

  “May I see it again?”

  “Sure.”

  I started the song again and handed my phone to Lauron. She stared fixedly at the screen, her violet eyes wide. She seemed to be drinking it in; when the song ended, I reached out and started it again.

  Lauron watched it five times through.

  Then she nodded and handed the phone back to me.

  “Understood,” she said.

  “Understood? What do you understand?”

  “I can move it,” she declared. She sounded absolutely certain.

  “Oh, uh—really? Give it a try, then.”

  “All right.”

  Lauron raised her hands over the action figure. At the same time, I saw her lips moving slightly—I couldn’t hear what she was saying, but I was sure it must be the words of a spell.

  And then I practically jumped as the action figure started moving.

  First it bounced to its feet and stood stock-still. Then it did a half-turn and faced me. The movements had the same awkward, jerky quality I’d seen in the classroom.

  I guess she needs a moment to get used to it.

  “Huh...?”

  No sooner had I had the thought than the action figure started dancing. It re-created the ending from Prepure perfectly.

  “Whoa...!” I exclaimed. It was like the table was a stage, with the action figure dancing vigorously on it. It looked exactly like the ending dance I’d shown Lauron a few minutes earlier, as smooth as if the character had jumped off the screen.

  There wasn’t a hint of hesitation or reluctance. The figure’s expression didn’t change, true enough, but for someone who’d seen the video clip as many times as I had, she even seemed to smile at the right moments.

  What’s going on here? This is incredible.

  I watched the dance vacantly until, after the exact length of the ending theme, the action figure crumpled to the tabletop like a puppet with its strings cut.

  “Is that about right?”

  Lauron’s question didn’t sound proud at all, almost disinterested. She sounded like she’d simply shown me something totally normal and unremarkable.

  “It was amazing!” I exclaimed, pumping my fist.

  It was beyond my wildest dreams. And she’d learned the entire dance just by watching the video a few times. Every single movement. That meant she was more than just good at magic—she had a mean memory, to boot.

  “I mean it, seriously, that was great! You’ll be perfect!”

  “I’m glad I seem to have satisfied your expectations.”

  I was ecstatic, but Lauron still didn’t seem either prideful or humble. She still sounded like none of this meant much to her at all.

  So the construction of a life-size doll began. We had found the person to control it. Everything was going just the way I’d imagined—even better, in fact.

  That was fantastic. But taking on a whole project like this meant my responsibilities increased dramatically. Petralka had told me to prioritize this and let Minori-san and Hikaru-san handle things at school, but it wasn’t that simple.

  Here’s what I mean: in the mornings, I would go to school and conduct otaku training classes just like always; then in the evenings, I would come back home and go to the dwarves’ outbuilding to check on their progress. As each piece was completed—first the head, then the arms, legs, and body, I would point out things that should be refined, then make a note. I also handled all the red tape to get the paint, surface covering, and other supplies from Japan.

  And then, after dinner each night, I went over to the castle to report directly to Petralka on the day’s progress. As I’d promised, I was being more proactive about visiting her.

  On top of all that, Lauron was staying at our mansion for the time being. I had gotten my hands on some new video clips of 3D models, picked the best ones, and shown them to her so she could continue to practice re-creating their motions with the action figure. When I had some spare time, being a part of these practice sessions was another of my jobs.

  ...Yeesh. Spelling it all out like that makes me realize just how much I’d taken on.

  Anyway, that’s where I was at.

  “...r.”

  “...ergh...�
�

  “...-ter?”

  “Y-Yeah...?”

  “Master?”

  “Huh?”

  I snapped back to consciousness. All the hazy stuff around me suddenly came back into focus.

  “Oh, M-Myusel.”

  I looked up, and there was Myusel, looking concerned.

  Ohh. Her beauty was endlessly multiplied by looking up at her. The worry that wreathed her face only made her more lovely still.

  Ah, my blessed eyes! Er, okay, not the time for that.

  “Master, if I may say so, if you’re going to sleep, I think it would be healthiest for you to go back to your room first.”

  “Uh... What...?”

  I nodded dimly, not really grasping my own situation, and looked around.

  Myusel and I were in the dining area. I was sitting in one of the chairs, and Myusel was standing beside me. There were other people there, too. Minori-san and Hikaru-san, Elvia and Lauron. Brooke and his wife Cerise. They were all staring at me.

  “Oh, uh... did I fall asleep?”

  “Yes, sir.” Myusel nodded. “It would be terrible if you caught a cold. If you’re going to sleep, maybe your bed would be—”

  “No, uh, I’m okay.” I shook my head gently from side to side, trying to clear away the fog. “How long was I out?”

  “Maybe ten minutes?” Minori-san said, glancing at her watch. “We all ate, Myusel came in to start cleaning up, and you were off to dreamland.”

  When I looked down at the table, I saw that indeed, there weren’t many plates left on it.

  Yikes. I really just conked out.

  I had fallen asleep playing online games in the past, but never during a meal. It only went to show how tired I really was.

  Elvia looked at me, equally concerned. “You sure you’re okay, Shinichi-sama?” When I saw her usually sunny face clouded with worry, it made me realize how obvious my fatigue must have been to everyone else.

  “I guess I’m okay for the moment. Thanks.”

  “You have been working awful hard lately,” Minori-san said with a half smile.

  “Master, if you like, I can bring you a drink that will help with your tiredness...”

  “Thanks, Myusel. But I’m fine for now.” I forced myself to smile.