Outbreak Company: Volume 13

by Ichiro Sakaki

  “I’m sorry...?”

  “If this box gets to that room, you go back to making breakfast, right?”

  “Well, yes, but... er, Elvia-san?”

  “All right, I’m on it! Let’s get you back to breakfast duty, Myusel!” And then, before I could stop her, Elvia-san grabbed the box from the puppet. She was so strong, she could easily carry the box all by herself, and faster than Lauron-san’s doll. The puppet really did look large and ungainly.

  “Oh—!”

  “No, don’t—!”

  My voice and Lauron-san’s sounded at almost the same time, and the wooden box creaked ever louder. An instant later—

  “Huh?!”

  Perhaps the box really had been under too much strain, or perhaps something had simply come loose—whatever the reason, the chest flew apart in Elvia-san’s hands.

  “Ohh...!”

  The contents of the box—the “forbidden armor” Minister Cordobal had described—fell out and went rolling on the floor. It looked like a round, smooth lump, just big enough to put your arms around. Instinctively, I reached out to stop it from rolling away.

  Reached out with my hand.

  After all those warnings not to touch it. After they had brought in a puppeteering expert specifically so no one would have to.

  I shivered. I felt a strange sensation in my fingertips. The surface, which I had taken to be steel, was hard and smooth, but lacked the chill of metal. It wasn’t warm either, though—it was a very odd feeling. They kept saying it was armor; maybe it was made from something other than metal, the way hard leather armor was.

  “Wha—?”

  Then, the lump split apart. It swallowed my right hand, like the jaws of some beast.

  “Oh—!”

  I tried to pull my hand away, but it was stuck fast. Worse, the lump had proceeded to swallow my arm. In a flash, it had my right arm up to the shoulder—then, shifting shape, the lump attached itself to my back and covered my shoulders, then my chest, and finally my legs.

  Chik. Chik-chik-chik-chik-chik.

  With a sound like a chittering insect, the former sphere attached itself to my body, covering my arms, legs, and torso in shapes much like those of Lauron-san’s puppet—in fact, even more angular. I was ensconced in something like a bubble, with no idea where it had come from.

  “Myusel?!” Elvia-san exclaimed in shock. Her voice somehow sounded slightly different from usual—was it because of the bubble? I realized that perhaps it was more of a transparent membrane.

  Everything up to this point had truly happened in the blink of an eye. I discovered that my arms were fully exposed, but my legs had something like greaves on them. And none of it showed any sign of coming off again. Maybe even more surprising, I realized I was no longer in my maid uniform, but a thin, form-fitting outfit of some kind.

  Minister Cordobal’s words echoed in my mind: forbidden armor.

  So I was...

  “Myusel!!” Elvia-san grabbed my hand—or rather, the armor surrounding my hand. But: “Huh?”

  That was the only sound she made before she went tumbling backwards through the air.

  We sat in the living room and waited for this “forbidden armor” to arrive. “We” included me, Petralka, Minori-san, Hikaru-san, and Garius. The knights who had come along as bodyguards were stationed in the next room. We thought that would be best, because it would give us the most space to deal with this forbidden armor, whatever it was. If anything happened, the knights could be here in an instant.

  And so I sat there, scratching my cheek. “So, uh... Petralka.” I didn’t need a mirror to know my face was bright red.

  “Yes, what is it?”

  “Aren’t you a little, uh... close to me?”

  “Are we? Th-This is where we always sit,” Petralka said, but her cheeks were flushed, too.

  When we had all sat down on the sofas, Petralka had plopped herself next to me as if it were the most natural thing in the world. There was lots of open space, but she squeezed as close to me as she could. She stopped short of cuddling up, but her leg was pressed right against mine, and I could feel the softness and warmth of her body. I was feeling—maybe not embarrassed, exactly, but kind of antsy.

  Heck, she had sat on my knees before, so really, this was nothing. Of course, back then, I didn’t know anything about her being in love with me, if she even was. But now?

  “D-Do not pay it any mind. We c-certainly aren’t.” Petralka pointedly looked away from me. Her silver hair fluttered as she turned her head—and revealed her ears, which were even redder than her face. And there was that skin, the little stretch from just behind her ears, down her neck—the delicate curve was undeniably alluring, even kind of... sexy...!

  Was this it? Was this that “new side” Hikaru-san had talked about?! This new sexiness of Petralka’s had my heart on overboost, and I felt like it was going to explode! I hoped she couldn’t feel it pounding away in my chest. Arrgh, where does an omnipotent imperial ruler get off being so dang cute?!

  But while I was busy losing my mind with moe, Hikaru-san apparently had a thought. “I wonder what Myusel and Elvia would think,” he mused, “if they saw this.”

  “G-Geez, Hikaru-san!”

  Don’t start that again!

  “I should take a picture. I bet I could blackmail you for the rest of your life, Shinichi-san.”

  “Huh. G-Good point.” That was when I realized Minori-san, who for some reason was nodding vigorously, had a camera-pen tucked into her breast pocket. Ugh, so had she already taken a picture?!

  “Speaking of Myusel,” Minori-san said in an effort to distract me, “she and Lauron sure are taking their time.”

  “Now that you mention it...”

  They were just going outside to get something from the carriage. I wouldn’t have expected it to take so long. Even if they had to go really carefully, I assumed it wouldn’t take more than five minutes or so. Or maybe that puppet was even slower than it looked?

  “Think we should go check on them?” Hikaru-san said, standing up from the sofa.

  BOOM.

  “Uh...?”

  That was when we heard what sounded like an explosion—I mean, you could practically have put a “B-O-O-M” sound effect over it.

  I flinched, startled. An explosion was bad enough, but what really bothered me was that it sounded very, very close. This wasn’t some distant echo. It seemed as if it had come from just near the mansion. As if to prove my point, a vase in the living room shivered, shaking several petals from the flowers it was holding.

  So we were close enough to feel the shock wave. What if it had come from inside the mansion?

  Garius and Minori-san stood up almost simultaneously. Minori-san grabbed the 9mm machine pistol from the suitcase at her feet, while Garius put a hand on his sword. Almost as if they had rehearsed it, each of them took up a position, Minori-san by me, Garius by Petralka, and then they watched the entrance to the room.

  “What’s going on? Report!” Garius shouted, presumably to the knights nearby.

  “Wh-What was that?” Petralka asked, clinging to my arm.

  “Not sure...” I said.

  Minori-san and Garius both seemed to be operating on the assumption that whatever had caused the blast, it was an enemy, but I didn’t think that was very likely. If Bahairam or whoever else was planning to attack my house, they could have chosen a way better time to do it. Why deliberately strike when a minister was here with a squadron of armed knights?

  Unless they weren’t after me or the house—but Petralka. As many knights as we had here, it was still less than they had at the castle, making this the better target. But that still left the question of how they would have known Petralka would be here today. The earliest she could have decided to come would have been the night before, not enough time to plan and execute an entire ambush.

  Then there was the fact that Minori-san’s cell phone hadn’t gone off. The various sensors around our mansion had even d
etected the Eleamachi Tribe—trained killers from Bahairam who possessed natural abilities practically equivalent to active camo. But whatever caused that explosion hadn’t so much as tripped an alarm. Which all led to just one conclusion...

  “Eeyikes!”

  Suddenly, the door to the living room came flying off. I don’t mean it flew open. I mean it literally burst off its hinges. And it was accompanied by... one of the knights of the royal guard?

  “Wha...?”

  Even Garius looked surprised when he saw the knight at his feet, clanking faintly as he shifted. To send a grown man flying was hard enough—but an armed knight in full equipment probably weighed something in the neighborhood of a hundred kilograms. Not to mention the stopping power of the door he’d just gone through. That must’ve been some explosion.

  I looked again, and this time I noticed the huge dent in the chest of the knight’s armor. If he was especially unlucky, he might even have some broken bones.

  One thing was clear: this was bad. I didn’t know exactly why, but it definitely was.

  “Garius-san,” I said, eyeing our now doorless entryway and shifting so Petralka was sort of behind me. “I think this is—the thing.”

  “Thing?” he said, but my guess was he had put the pieces together, too.

  It was unlikely to be an attack by a third party. So whoever—or whatever—had sent the knight sprawling had to have come from inside the house. From inside a box brought from a nearby carriage, say.

  “The forbidden armor,” I said.

  “One supposes,” Garius replied, nodding darkly.

  It almost had to be. That was the explanation that made the most sense.

  We were talking about an ancient, cursed magical item. If it was “forbidden,” that had to be because it was dangerous. Maybe, for example, it could move on its own and attack people. Maybe something had caused one of the suits of forbidden armor to awaken and begin its dark work.

  Then Hikaru-san said, “Do you hear something? It’s like... a high-pitched jet engine noise...”

  Now that he mentioned it, I did. Kind of a “fwoooo,” an awful lot like a jet or helicopter sounds when its engine revs up for a landing. Not very bassy or anything, but a mechanical noise that definitely said “power.”

  “It’s coming,” Garius said, and drew his sword.

  In the space where our door used to be, there appeared a bizarre shape. The first thing I could make out looked like... an arm. The roughest, meanest arm you ever saw. The hand, or what I thought was the hand, looked as big as a park bench. You wouldn’t want to get squeezed by that... or punched by it.

  Then the elbow appeared, and finally the shoulder, and then.........

  “Huh?” I said stupidly.

  “Myusel...?” Petralka, peeking over my shoulder to see this “forbidden armor,” said from behind me.

  She was right. Standing there was... Myusel.

  But “standing” wasn’t quite the right word. She looked nearly crucified on the armor, like it was the armor that was standing, and she was sort of dangling from it. Her legs were covered up to the knees by armored pieces, but much of the rest of her body was exposed. From her legs, the armor wrapped around behind her like some kind of lurking ghost. From her sides, pushing her shoulders forward, extended two things that definitely looked like robot arms; they seemed to be connected to her arms and to move in concert with them. Maybe the best equivalent I could think of would be the Power Loader from Alie*s. This thing looked less like armor than like heavy machinery that you wore on your back.

  On closer inspection, though, I noticed that the parts of Myusel I could see looked slightly distorted. And everything about her seemed a little pale, like she was covered by something translucent. She looked vulnerable in there, but the armor probably had some sort of shielding. It wasn’t as obvious as glass or plastic, though—maybe it was more like a mirage, incorporeal—or like a gravitational field.

  Whatever the case...

  “Is that... the forbidden armor?”

  It looked less like armor and more like something created by an otaku: Armored Girl, or MS Girl, or some kind of weapon anthropomorphized into an adorable young girl—a classic powered suit! Especially the way the chest and hips and everything round was exposed! She was practically naked! O, great Armored Girl!

  ...No, wait.

  What the heck was that thing?! As gadgets went, it sure looked out of place in a fantasy setting.

  “Myusel, what in the world...?”

  “I—I don’t know, sir...!” Myusel said, sounding as if she might cry.

  “It must be the forbidden armor!” Garius said, his face grim, and that was when I knew for sure that whatever else that thing was, it was definitely the dangerous, off-limits, absolutely-do-not-touch item he had brought from the castle storehouses. He had said it didn’t look anything like armor, and now I knew what he meant. It didn’t even have a helmet or chest plate.

  “Th-The wooden box broke, and this came out... And I, I t-touched it, and it just...! And I can’t get it off...! Elvia-san and Lauron-san, they...!”

  “Elvia? Lauron? Did you do something to them?” I pressed, but Myusel shook her head in a sort of panic.

  “It—It wasn’t me! My body moved on its own...! Me, I—I—!”

  Her twintails waved back and forth almost audibly. Her chest was bouncing, too, so that I inadvertently found my eyes pinned to it. It wasn’t as large as Elvia’s, but it was still generous, and so soft-looking, and—hey, let’s get our priorities straight, okay?

  “Elvia-san, I—”

  As Myusel vehemently protested her innocence, I saw something just in front of her face. In the air in front of her—or rather, I guess, on the transparent screen surrounding her—characters quickly appeared and disappeared, scrolling through empty space. What were they? They were backwards, so I couldn’t make them out very easily, but they looked a bit like an alphabet...

  “Elvia-san, I—I’ve actually always thought she was in the way!”

  “...Huh?”

  What had Myusel just said?

  Surprised as I was to hear Myusel say something so out of character, I was no more surprised than Myusel herself. She quickly slapped her hands over her mouth—or tried to, producing a shower of sparks from the metal gloves encasing them.

  “In the way? You mean...”

  “N-No, I don’t...” Myusel shook her head. But in spite of the emphatic gesture, she went on speaking fluently: “...not mean it! She gets to slobber all over you because of some song and dance about the moon, Shinichi-sama, and I can’t stand it! It’s not fair! When I work so hard to restrain myself!”

  “M-Myusel?”

  The rest of us stood dumbfounded. We had never heard her express herself so directly, so bluntly. And yet her expression—she looked like she was about to burst into tears—was the complete opposite of what was coming out of her mouth. She herself couldn’t seem to believe what she was saying.

  When they said this armor was cursed, is this what they meant? Did it make the wearer say things they didn’t mean—or maybe even things they meant, but would never say themselves?

  Sheesh, I could see why it ended up forbidden.

  But that still left—

  “Lauron. What happened to her?” Garius demanded, his face still stern and dark.

  “She attacked me with her stupid puppet, so I took care of her! Elvia-san, too!— I d-didn’t mean to, my body just moved on its own...!” Myusel went on shaking her head, denying every other thing she said.

  I assumed that, in an effort to help the trapped Myusel, Elvia, Lauron, and Lauron’s puppet had attempted to remove the armor by force, and that the armor had counterattacked. The story was probably the same for the knight who had come flying through our door. There was a distinct possibility that the rest of the royal guard had met the same fate.

  Could this go on? I was especially worried about Elvia and Lauron, but just then—

  “Sh-Shinichi-sama
...” Elvia arrived in the room, carried on Lauron’s back—or, well, because of the height difference, more like half-dragged. She looked like she had been worked over pretty good, but she was still alive and kicking. Lauron looked unharmed; probably because it was the puppet, and not her, who had borne the brunt of the suit’s counterattack.

  Huh? But that meant...

  “If we don’t attack it, it won’t attack us...?” Garius, who had evidently had the same thought as me, mumbled.

  “Looks that way,” Minori-san said, lowering her pistol.

  If the suit were intent on attacking anyone and everyone within range, then it would have roughed up Lauron when it had the chance, not to mention the knight groaning on the floor near us, not to mention all of us in the room right then.

  “This suggests that the impetus for the prohibition on this armor is the unrestrained speech,” Garius said.

  “Yeah, having your innermost feelings come pouring out is a scary thing,” Minori-san said. She nodded at him.

  Uh. Did they really think that was the main issue?

  “Myusel says she can’t take it off. That might be a problem eventually,” Hikaru-san said. “I mean, at this rate, she’ll never be able to go to the bathroom again...”

  “Now that’s scary!” Minori-san said, wringing her hands.

  “Is that really what bothers you the most?!” I interjected.

  “Shinichi-kun, it won’t do to make light of a young woman’s toilet plight. Do you know why at Comiket and every other big event, the guys’ restroom is always practically empty, while the girls’ has a line that seems to go around the block?”

  “Uh, not as such...”

  Seeing as I was a boy and all.

  Even if we could figure out how to handle the toilet situation, being unable to take the armor off would definitely be an inconvenience. And constantly spewing your own darkest thoughts wasn’t super great, either.

  Hmm. What to do.

  Thinking that maybe a closer look at the armor would be a good place to start, I was about to take a step forward—when someone pulled on my arm and stopped me.