Outbreak Company: Volume 13

by Ichiro Sakaki

“Petralka?” I turned around to find the empress hanging off my arm, holding me back with all her strength. It looked like she hadn’t moved since I shifted to put her behind me. “Sorry, but maybe you could let me—”

  “Get away from Shinichi-sama!” Myusel demanded the very next second.

  All of us looked at her in shock. The only one who was anywhere near me right now was Petralka. That made it pretty clear who Myusel was speaking to.

  Then she went a step further. Tearfully, but also assertively, she declared, “Enemy presence detected. Eliminating!” The jet-engine whine increased again, and she floated straight towards us. Evidently, to “eliminate” Petralka.

  “Just—whaaaaaaat?!”

  “H-Halt! Stop right there!”

  At that moment, two royal guards came into the room, staggering slightly. Both had dents and chips in their armor, suggesting they had already tangled with the power suit once, but it was their duty to put their lives on the line for Her Majesty, and they launched themselves at Myusel without hesitation or fear.

  But she—or rather, the armor—gave one dismissive sweep of its huge arm and launched them through the air, until they slammed against a wall. This was no good. That thing was exponentially more powerful than anything we had. Saying it was like a child fighting a grown adult would have been an understatement—we were like fairies attacking a mythical Titan.

  This was very bad. Whatever Myusel may or may not have really meant, she had threatened to “eliminate” Petralka. She could try to blame the armor, but the fact remained that a half-elf maid had threatened the life of the absolute monarch of the Empire. If she harmed a hair on Petralka’s head—voluntarily or not—somebody would have to take responsibility...

  “Here’s where we run!” I exclaimed, and swept Petralka up in my arms.

  “Wha?! Eep!” she yelped.

  It looked like Garius and Minori-san, along with Lauron and Elvia, intended to try to stop Myusel, so that would buy us some time.

  Alright then...

  “Ia redoro imu shigamu reuobu dona euruto uoi, diifurisu ekamu toshifu dona ekirutsu taato imene!” I intoned, although it took me a few false starts. It meant “With True Words and my magic power I command thee, sprites of the wind, form a fist and smite my enemy!”

  I hesitated for a moment—but this was an emergency. I didn’t have a choice. I held tight to Petralka as I stuck out my right palm toward a window facing the front yard. “Tifu Murottsu!”

  I unleashed the offensive magic with as much power as I could muster. The glass shattered. I jumped through the now-vacant window and made for the yard. I was glad we were on the first floor. If we had been up a level, there might have been no way out.

  Anyway, we had to run. Had to escape.

  But where?

  I was thinking desperately when I felt Petralka’s arms squeeze my neck. “Shinichi...!”

  Ahhhhh. I was already carrying her in my arms, but with her squeezing, squeezing like that, like that, I might... I was...! Then Petralka looked at me with those huge, emerald eyes and said...

  “We knew fifty kilos was an indulgence!”

  “Are you still stuck on that?!”

  Okay, so it was because Petralka was so light that even a wimp like me was able to pick her up and run! And notwithstanding Petralka’s somewhat out-of-place satisfaction and my completely out-of-place rejoinder, that was what I did.

  Shinichi-kun leaped out the window with the empress in his arms—and Myusel, still trapped in the forbidden armor, followed him. Minister Cordobal headed around to the front door, leaving me, Elvia, Hikaru-kun, Lauron, and a few groaning knights in the living room.

  “Hikaru-kun, Lauron, take a look at the royal guards. Help them out of their armor if you can. Broken shoulders or arms we can deal with later, but if anyone has a broken collarbone, it could puncture a lung.”

  “Right, I’m on it.”

  “Understood.”

  They both nodded.

  “I’m going after Shinichi-kun,” I said, and then I left the room. Instead of just barreling straight after him, I thought I would have better luck coming around from the opposite direction from Minister Cordobal; we might be able to catch Myusel in a pincers movement. The fact was, I didn’t think a sword or even my 9mm was going to stop that armor, which looked like it had jumped out of the pages of some manga, or come alive from an anime. But Myusel was trapped inside it, and that meant I couldn’t just open up with an anti-personnel weapon like a 110mm LAM. I switched the safety on my weapon to AUTO and headed around the back of the house.

  “Minori-sama!” Elvia, moving unsteadily, caught up with me.

  “What do you think you’re doing? You’ve already been on the losing end of a fight with that forbidden armor. You shouldn’t be running around. If you have any internal injuries—”

  “It’s my fault for breakin’ the box...”

  Ahh. Elvia hadn’t been there when Minister Cordobal cautioned the rest of us about the armor, so she hadn’t known how dangerous it was. She must have somehow gotten her hands on it while Lauron was trying to bring it to us.

  I pulled out my phone as I jogged alongside Elvia. We had a wired network running between the mansion and the garrison, so I could communicate with the JSDF via my phone, which was hooked in by wireless LAN. I could get in touch with Captain Satou and the others there, get them to bring a Type-89, or an M-24 sniper rifle. The forbidden armor might be tough, but it was always possible we could find a weak point. And if we could hit it with pinpoint accuracy, we might be able to render the armor harmless without killing Myusel. For that, we would need a very precise weapon. Something better than a handheld pistol, or a machine gun that sprayed bullets.

  “Hrgh!” Beside me, Elvia suddenly doubled over. Had she tripped?

  I knew she needed rest. Normally, her sense of balance was almost impossible to upset, but the forbidden armor must have really done a number on her, because now she was stumbling in a sort of diagonal, looking into the distance...

  “Hey, Elvia!”

  “Buh?”

  I was too late. Trying to get her balance back, Elvia reflexively reached out for the wooden box right nearby.

  “Wha-huh?!”

  I guess the lid had come loose when it was taken down from the carriage, or maybe it had shaken free with the other forbidden armor running around. Whatever the case, Elvia’s hand slipped right into the opening as if springing a trap. Her face froze.

  She fell down, hard. Her hand, still trapped in the box, flipped the whole thing over.

  “Elvia, are you o—”

  Then I saw it, and the words died in my throat. A ball—there was no other word for it—rolled out of the box. Then it suddenly split in two, like a giant pair of jaws, and swallowed Elvia’s whole body.

  “Elvia!”

  This had to be—yes, I knew what was happening.

  “Ahhhhhhh!” Elvia shouted.

  The “ball” split apart, pieces sliding out even as Elvia’s clothes appeared to melt away. In their place, a kind of red bodysuit enveloped her from the neck down.

  “What on earth...?” I said vacantly, as the second suit of forbidden armor wrapped itself around Elvia.

  I went as fast as I could, Petralka in my arms. I ran desperately—around the house. I’m sure it would have looked completely stupid to anyone watching me. Just circling the same place like a chicken with its head cut off. Where was that going to get me? But it was really the only option left to me by the terrain around the mansion.

  My house, see, was built adjacent to a big forest near the Eldant capital. The grounds of the mansion itself were neatly tended by Brooke, but take one step outside the property and it was all weeds and uncut grass as far as the eye could see. I wouldn’t be able to go very fast at all trying to run through that; I might even trip and fall. So in an effort to avoid that possibility, I had to stick to the inside of the property line.

  There was always the path out the front door, the one
that led to the capital—it was paved with stones and relatively well-kept, but at the moment several of Garius’s carriages were parked on it, and I would have had to work my way around them. The bird-drawn conveyances were essentially a big, feathery roadblock.

  Then there was the little fact that Myusel was behind me in a powered exoskeleton. I felt like the moment I slowed my pace, she would catch up to me.

  Solution? Dash in circles around the mansion like a chicken with its head cut off.

  “Faster, Shinichi, faster!”

  “I’m going—as fast—as I can...!”

  I was a former shut-in, not a former gym rat, and I didn’t have the strength or the explosive power for this. I had hardly been running for five minutes, but my breath was already coming in gasps, and my heart felt like it might burst. Not to mention I was carrying another person, even if she was relatively light...

  “Come—to think of it—Petral—ka...”

  “Hm?”

  “Wouldn’t it be—faster—if you ran—yourself?”

  It was very, very late to be thinking of this, but in between gulping breaths I managed to suggest this new strategy. Petralka, though, adopted a pouty expression and looked away.

  “...We refuse.”

  “What? But...?”

  “We said, we refuse! Keep running!”

  She could order me around all she wanted, but I was close to my limit... I groaned, but continued my mad dash. I was just rounding a corner of the house when—

  “Huh?”

  There was the forbidden armor. But how?! How could it be here?! I came to a halt so quickly that my shoes kicked up dirt, and was about to go running the other way when—I stopped.

  As I turned around, I saw Myusel in her forbidden armor behind me.

  “There’s another one?!”

  Now I saw that hanging from the torso of this new suit of armor was Elvia. Where Myusel’s armor had blue highlights all over, on Elvia’s they were red.

  “But why?!” I wailed.

  The colors may have been different, but Elvia was now just as much a “mecha girl” as Myusel. Her usual midriff-exposing white tube top was gone, replaced with a full-body leotard—it didn’t show nearly as much skin, but it did highlight her curves to much better effect, giving the whole thing a fresh—no, not the time!

  Elvia looked shaken—she had probably put the armor on by accident, just like Myusel—but in spite of that, her arms and legs were moving, and she was coming our way. By now it was pretty clear that the forbidden armor acted based on the wearer’s most deeply buried feelings. And not long before, Elvia had been fighting over me just like Myusel. Which meant that the target of her attack had to be Petralka.

  She was truly the “tiger in front,” Myusel the “wolf behind.”

  “Shinichi-kun, watch o—” Minori-san rounded the house from Elvia’s side, shouting, but it was already too late.

  “Wh-Wh-Wh-Wh-What am I supposed to d-d-d-d-do?!”

  “Run!”

  “There’s nowhere to run!”

  It was a perfect pincers movement, and I was exhausted, anyway. And then...

  ““Shinichi-sama!!” Myusel and Elvia shouted at almost the same time—and then they both charged madly.

  “Heek...?!”

  I’m gonna be crushed!

  With nowhere to run, I instinctively hugged Petralka tight and ducked down. There was an earsplitting clang of metal just over my head.

  Slowly, fearfully, I looked up, and discovered Myusel’s and Elvia’s suits just above us, their hands locked together. It was like we were playing a very surreal version of London Bridge, and we were under the bridge.

  Oh, I see.

  Myusel and Elvia were both fighting over me. Myusel had gotten first blood, so to speak, on Elvia, and it made sense that Elvia might now consider her the biggest threat.

  “U-Um, Elvia-san, please let go...!”

  “You... let go... first, Myusel...!”

  There was an awful scraping sound as they leaned into each other. For sheer strength, Elvia obviously had the upper hand, but when they each had a suit of powered armor, it looked like the contest was a lot closer to even.

  “N-Now’s our chance!” Still holding Petralka, I sort of rolled out from between Myusel and Elvia. When we got to our feet, I wasn’t carrying Petralka in my arms anymore, but I had a firm grip on her hand, and pulled her along as we ran toward Minori-san.

  ““Shinichi-sama!””

  Myusel and Elvia broke up their shoving contest and set off after me again. This was bad. I was right back where I had started, except this time there were two people chasing me!

  “What are we supposed to do about this, Minori-san?!”

  “I’ve already contacted the garrison, they should be bringing us a sniper rifle or something soon,” Minori-san said, jogging alongside me. “Though whether it’ll be here in time, I’m not sure...”

  “A sniper rifle... Wait. Are we going to shoot Myusel and Elvia?”

  “You think we can stop them without help?”

  “No, I don’t, but—!”

  “I’m not suggesting we use a rocket launcher or something. I’m hoping a rifle would allow us to hit a weak point, or at worst, injure instead of kill them. I don’t want to shoot those girls any more than you do, but I can’t think of anything else.” Minori-san looked genuinely disturbed.

  She was right, a gun might give us the chance to take it easy on them, in some sense. There was some question about whether a pistol or other small arm would even have any effect on the forbidden armor. Those things looked a lot like powered exoskeletons from some anime or manga, and I had to assume they were pretty sturdy. Those transparent coverings seemed likely to be screens of some kind, or even force fields, and I got the distinct impression they would stop a bullet. That sort of thing was, like, the bare minimum requirement for a mecha girl.

  “I’m going to try to at least buy you some time—you run on ahead with Her Majesty.” Then Minori-san stopped and drew her 9mm pistol. “Hold it right there! Stop or I’ll shoot!”

  She probably knew the warning was pointless, but she gave it anyway. Then she fired a few shots into the ground near the girls’ feet, as a warning.

  I heard the pistol bark behind me, again and again. Little plumes of smoke dotted the ground in front of Myusel and Elvia. The two of them, though, didn’t seem bothered. Well, to be fair, the girls, inside the suits, looked very scared, but the suits themselves didn’t so much as slow down. In fact...

  ““Hostile activity detected. Deactivating weapon safeties,”” Myusel and Elvia intoned together.

  “Minori-san!” I stopped in spite of myself and shouted. “Run aw—huh?”

  A second later, Myusel and Elvia—or really, their forbidden armors—stuck out their right arms and launched something.

  There was a bam! I could feel in the pit of my stomach, and then the ground split, and Minori-san’s small form was thrown through the air.

  “Minori-saaan!” I shouted, but Minori-san was... not slammed mercilessly into the ground. She twisted in midair and landed on her feet, bracing herself with one hand before pushing herself up again. What was she, an acrobat? I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised. I knew what an experienced martial artist she was.

  For a second, I thought maybe the suits had fired cannons, but I was wrong. They hadn’t used a firearm at all, but...

  “Rocket hammers?”

  Each of the suits had launched something with a rope or wire attached to it. The thing the wire was attached to appeared to be a globe, now half buried in the earth. Then each of the suits gave a tug, and the globes jumped backwards: the forbidden armors had clearly fired them. The things were shaped like cannonballs, and they were about as big around as a man’s fist.

  So these things got shot out as if from a cannon, but the ammunition wasn’t lost after one round. It could probably be fired multiple times. Infinite ammo, if you will. And probably more destructive than Minori-
san’s gun. If one of those connected with a human body, it would tear it apart.

  “What are you doing?! Run away!” Minori-san said, starting to run herself. I quickly set off again, still pulling Petralka by the hand.

  Boom! There was that sound again. This time it was Petralka and me who were tossed into the air. Not as high as Minori-san had been; I think I only made it about a meter before coming down, largely unharmed. But Petralka—

  “Eeeeeeek!”

  “Petralka!”

  She was lighter than me, and although we had been thrown the same short distance, she tumbled along the ground for several meters more.

  “Wait...”

  She was tumbling right towards a wooden box. Minori-san and I watched in horror as she slammed into it, bursting it apart.

  No. No, no, no. That can’t be what I... This is too much!

  “P-Petralka...?” I said timidly, as she sat up, woozy, from among the remains of the box.

  I saw immediately that she was wearing the white third suit of forbidden armor.

  Her Majesty and Minister Garius en Cordobal had already departed for Shinichi-dono’s mansion, leaving me to look after the castle, when the witch in charge of our special storehouses came up to me in a veritable panic.

  “Prime Minister Zahar, please forgive the interruption—we have found it!”

  The witch was speaking of the archives just nearby—specifically, of written records that had been discovered regarding the forbidden armor. As the records themselves were paperwork, and not a magical item, they had been stored separately from the armor, and their existence had gone forgotten. The keeper of the archives had noticed a four-digit number scrawled on the wooden boxes containing the armor, and had determined that it must be a classification and location code for the archives, which led to the discovery of these records.

  “And? What did they say? Are there any hints, any clues?”

  “Yes, Prime Minister.” She walked up to my desk and set the papers in front of me. She proceeded to give me the gist of them, and a rather shocking report it was. The forbidden armor, it seemed, “possessed” those so careless as to touch it—but only women, or so the records said. Men could handle the armor safely.