Outbreak Company: Volume 13

by Ichiro Sakaki

  “Wh-Who’s there?” I looked around, but I didn’t see anyone else. Which had to mean...

  “Goal designation. Remove all obstacles to actualization of wearer’s wishes.”

  “Wha...?” There was that voice again. I looked around once more, but I was still alone. Was I hearing things? Or... “What are these obstacles, please?”

  “Two women. Both acknowledged threats.”

  When I asked a question, there was an answer, like a whisper in my ear. No—more like a voice in my own head. I was sure I wasn’t hearing things. At least, assuming I hadn’t simply gone crazy. Hadn’t they said that this forbidden armor was technically classified as an item that used some kind of mind control magic? Could the forbidden armor be speaking directly into my own heart...?

  “These two women...”

  “Designations: ‘Her Majesty,’ ‘Elvia-san.’”

  I nearly choked. The armor believed Her Majesty and Elvia-san were “obstacles.” And that these obstacles had to be eliminated...

  “I—I don’t believe that about Her Majesty or Elvia-san!” I retorted to the voice—or rather, to the armor. In an effort to calm myself down, I picked up the laundry I had dropped.

  The way I heard the voice seemed similar to the way the magic rings worked. At first, the words I heard were in an unintelligible foreign language, but then their meaning floated into my mind, overlapping with the sound. But in order for the magic rings to work, both you and the other person had to be wearing one, and each of you had to expend a modicum of magical energy to use them. That meant whatever this was, it only seemed similar, but had to function some other way.

  “Wearer acknowledges that these two women, ‘Her Majesty,’ ‘Elvia-san,’ are potential obstacles to goal, strategic operations concerning ‘Kanou Shinichi.’”

  “Strategic operations? Concerning Shinichi-sama?”

  Could that possibly refer to my personal desire that Shinichi-sama’s affections should favor me, much as I knew it was a foolish wish that reached beyond my station?

  “I—”

  Without meaning to, I bit my lip. It was true, my heart ached every time I saw Her Majesty or Elvia-san with Shinichi-sama. Seeing how close he was with them, I felt... jealous. I wanted to be closer to him, too. Closer than anyone. I wanted to feel the heat of his body, catch the scent of him, always...

  “Er...?” I suddenly discovered something about the laundry I’d picked up: I’d torn it clean in two with the armor’s hands.

  This particular outfit belonged to Elvia-san.

  “Did I...?” I stood there, astonished at what I myself had done. Yes, I was jealous of her. Maybe I even felt things were unfair. But perhaps more: maybe, without even realizing it myself, I had come to hate Her Majesty and Elvia-san from the bottom of my heart.

  I loved them both so much.

  At least, I should have.

  Her Majesty, for one, was so kind as to be friends with me, a commoner and half-elf. It was essentially thanks to Her Majesty that I had even been able to meet Shinichi-sama. She was so pretty and so delightful, truly a wonderful person. As for Elvia-san, she always smiled and complimented my cooking. I was only average when it came to housework—I knew how to cook a little, do the laundry, keep things clean—but she was continually amazed. She was cheerful and outgoing, and being with her was always fun.

  And yet... I didn’t want to let the two of them monopolize Shinichi-sama’s feelings. I didn’t want him to see only them, to stop looking at me. The thought that he might not talk to me as often, might start to smile at me less—that, that was the one thought I couldn’t bear. A fact I couldn’t deny.

  “Goal designation. Remove all obstacles to actualization of wearer’s wishes,” the forbidden armor repeated.

  I didn’t say anything back to it, but stood where I was, frozen.

  Everything is a matter of perspective—or so I chose to tell myself.

  When it came to the forbidden armor, at first I had been all: How dangerous and deadly! How can we get it off?! Oh, poor Myusel and Petralka and Elvia! What a tragedy! You know, terrified and confused and moe—I mean, uh, mournful.

  But the suits wouldn’t come off for now, and that was that. It wouldn’t help anyone to get fixated on the worst possible outcomes; I knew from experience how that kind of thinking tended to take you to strange places. So I decided to find a different way of looking at things. Most people are about as happy as they make up their minds to be, and all that.

  To put it more succinctly, I decided to enjoy the situation. I mean, we were talking about mecha shoujo, girls in powered suits, the sort of thing I’d only ever seen in anime and manga and light novels, walking around before my eyes. It was incredible! And it wasn’t even cosplay or something! And the girls wearing those suits included a gorgeous half-elf, a gorgeous young empress, and a gorgeous beast-eared girl! Real ones! It was an embarrassment of riches! An otaku’s dream come true! I would moe until I could moe no more, until I was consumed by my own burning moe passion and reduced to moe-ified ashes!

  And sooooo...

  “All right, smile! Everyone say ‘Cheese!’”

  And so I was smack in the middle of a little photo shoot in the living room with Myusel, Petralka, and Elvia, using my smartphone for a camera.

  “That’s it, perfect! The camera loves you, girls!” I was getting so into it that I wouldn’t have been that surprised to hear myself blurt out, “Okay, why don’t you start by just taking off those tops?”

  Petralka and Elvia, seeming to feel, like me, that they might as well enjoy it, were happily striking poses and goofing around. I guess they were used to it from that cosplay photo shoot we’d done once. Myusel, though... she didn’t seem in the mood. In fact, she looked sort of down.

  “Myusel? Something the matter?” I ventured.

  “Huh?” She looked at me as if snapping back to reality. Then she looked right, then left, as if she wasn’t even sure she had been spoken to—then she finally found me, and shook her head. “N-No.” Then she tried to smile.

  I say tried because it clearly wasn’t natural. It looked awkward, obviously forced. I saw her smile every single day, so I knew. I was sure there was something wrong now.

  Well, why was I so surprised? She was stuck in a powered suit, or armor or whatever, with no idea when she would be able to take it off. If we couldn’t figure it out, she might be stuck in that thing forever. Who wouldn’t feel a little anxious, knowing that? At least we knew from the records that whoever had worn the armor last had gotten out successfully, so maybe there was a ray of hope to cling to.

  “Aren’t you quite the little mercenary?” Hikaru-san said to me. He was watching the photo shoot from the sofa, leaning against an armrest, his head propped against his hand. He gave a dramatic sigh. “Your whole mood can turn on a dime.”

  “Well, what am I supposed to do? We don’t know how to get those things off right now, anyway. We have the chance to take some pictures! Show this really happened! So why wouldn’t we?” I clenched my fist for emphasis: yes! We had a real chance!

  I understood Myusel’s anxiety! I did! But!

  “We may never get an opportunity like this again!”

  Hikaru-san didn’t say anything. He didn’t even bother to open his eyes all the way as he glared at me.

  What? I would have expected Hikaru-san to be the first to get on board with this, so why was he looking at me so skeptically?

  “Look how cute they are!” I protested. “I know what a surprise it was at first, but all three of them are just adorable!”

  And cuteness was justice!

  “You... You think so, indeed?” Petralka, overhearing my impassioned argument, asked shyly.

  Not only that, but the way you asked that question makes you even cuter. It’s double cuteness. A double dose of adorability! Ahhhh, I can’t stand it!

  Elvia too, and even the slightly dispirited Myusel, looked a bit embarrassed, but happy. If you had asked me to rank them in
order of sweetness and lovability, I could never have answered you.

  “If the armor won’t come off, then the only thing for us to do is have some fun with it!”

  “Indeed. Shinichi is quite correct,” Petralka nodded with a smile. And then she said: “So tell us, which among us is the cutest of all?”

  “......Er.” She was still smiling. I had been in such an excited state, but now I froze. “Well, uh...”

  I didn’t know what to say. I suddenly found myself in a very dangerous position, walking a tightrope with no safety net. I was reminded that the very presence of the armors was in part the result of a problem I had tried to sweep aside, but one which had neither been resolved nor gone away. One big issue that was literally right in front of me.

  “U-Um, you’re... all... cute?”

  Well, it was worth a shot.

  I wasn’t just trying to get out of the question. It was the real truth, how I felt deep down inside. But would the three girls accept that? No, of course not.

  “Yes, but we are the cutest, are we not? The one for which you ‘moeru’ the most?”

  “Er... uh.”

  “Naw, it’s me! Ain’t it, Shinichi-sama?!”

  “Well... umm...”

  “Shinichi-sama, I... I...”

  “Uhh, y’see...”

  As I hemmed and hawed, the atmosphere among Petralka, Elvia, and Myusel got more and more tense. Maybe hostility heats up a room, because I was sure starting to sweat. I could see where this was going...

  “I can’t believe you.” Hikaru-san managed to sigh again even as he was standing up from the couch and making for the exit. He was wearing a helmet. Where had he gotten that?

  A warm afternoon breeze blew through the front yard. It had no color, hardly any sound—you only knew it was there because of the way the grass and flowers bobbed as it went by. It’s almost like watching something’s shadow—we can’t perceive it directly, but only the traces of it after it’s gone by.

  And yet...

  “If this ends in tears, do not come crying to us.”

  There was a rushing sound, as if the wind itself were afraid. Petralka’s long, silver hair splayed out, glittering in the lengthening light.

  It was so beautiful. She was so beautiful, but it was the beauty of a Valkyrie on the cusp of battle. Her resolve was set; all excess had been wiped away, and only what was essential remained. Like an unsheathed blade, the beauty came from its functionality. Beautiful—and terrible.

  “I understand.” Nodding at Petralka, directly across from her, was Myusel. She sounded calm, but on her face there was no hint of her usual retiring nature. Maybe she was just as resolved to fight as Petralka was—or maybe it was the forbidden armor causing her to speak.

  “Y’ took the words right out of my mouth.” Forming the third corner of the triangle was Elvia. She was normally so footloose and fancy free, but now she looked like a woman prepared for battle. No—in her case, perhaps it was more appropriate to say she looked like a beast setting out on the hunt. Ready to attack, to maul, to claim victory. To judge by her smile, she didn’t even believe this would be a fight.

  The three girls stared each other down. The enmity among them was palpable, so strong it permitted no one to come between them. I could only watch helplessly...

  “Very well, then,” Petralka said, and the three of them took up fighting stances. “Let us fight!”

  The spark of battle was struck. All three of them lashed out with their “arms” at exactly the same instant. They held forth their hands as if to envelope something, as if to force some kind of energy into the space between them. And a second later, a glowing globe of energy appeared between them, spinning wildly...

  “Broom!”

  ...Gotcha. No, it didn’t.

  The forbidden armors’ huge, plier-like hands uncurled their fingers—or perhaps they were more like claws. Whatever they were, they had probably been intended to allow for fine manual work.

  A thin rope ran between those “claws.” Myusel moved quickly, tugging at the rope wrapped around the fingers of one hand as if pulling the safety pin on a grenade, until something very much like a broom appeared between her fingers...!

  It was the work of an instant for her. The claws moved so fast they left an afterimage; I could only goggle. But as for the other two girls...

  “A nice try, Myusel, but we have Broom as well!” Petralka had also completed a “Broom.” She, too, moved at an incredible speed. I could hardly see what had happened.

  And then there was Elvia, proclaiming proudly: “I’ve got Ladder!”

  Although more complicated than “Broom,” the product appeared in an instant. To create something of greater complexity in the same span of time was to say that you were the fastest. Even if a normal human couldn’t perceive the difference between one one-hundredth of a second and two one-hundreths.

  “What?!” Petralka exclaimed.

  “A-All right, then—Tokyo Tower!” The other two clapped their hands together, demolishing their “brooms,” and in the blink of an eye they had reformed the ropes between their fingers into something like Elvia’s “Ladder,” except it came to a point at one end.

  It was Tokyo Tower! It really was!

  Even if the distinction of tallest building in Japan had been usurped by Sky Tree, Tokyo Tower had been a symbol of a nation grasping toward prosperity for half a century after the end of the war, and there it was before my eyes...!

  “Wh-When did you learn to...?”

  “Minori-sama taught me once.”

  “What?!”

  In a word, the three girls were playing cat’s cradle. A fiery, fierce battle of cat’s cradle.

  I can hear you now: Pff! Cat’s cradle? you’re quipping. But the girls were using the fingers of the forbidden armor to do cat’s cradle faster than you’ve ever seen. If there were cat’s cradle tournaments in Eldant, these three would have swept the podium.

  The air was tense. Their faces were serious. This was a real battle, no question.

  “Nice job, Shinichi-kun, thinking of this on the spot,” Minori-san said from beside me, where she was also watching the contest unfold. She sounded half exasperated and half genuinely impressed. I was pretty pleased myself, if I may say so. I had suddenly remembered how my little sister Shizuki and I used to have cat’s cradle contests back when we were in grade school.

  “I was afraid that if they seriously started fighting again, there’d be casualties this time,” I said.

  They had been bent on knowing which one of them was the cutest. And as I had been at a loss to provide an answer, they had been on the verge of starting another fight to settle the question—whereupon I had come up with this idea in a panic. I thought it was a little crazy myself, but anything was better than for the giant metal fists to start flying.

  “I—I love girls with terrific fine motor skills!!” I had exclaimed.

  My thinking was this: equipped with the forbidden armor, Myusel and the others had many, many times their normal strength. They could move so fast that they could leave an afterimage almost at will—I had seen it myself (or not seen it, as the case may be). As long as they insisted on a physical contest, they would be locked in an eternal stalemate. And then would come the punching.

  That was when the idea had struck me. Everyone knows what it’s like to try to use a pen or a box knife while wearing mittens—suddenly, it’s not so easy. You have to get used to it. How much more so when you aren’t even using your own hand, but a gigantic metal arm. And so I suggested a contest that would pit them against an exceptionally difficult task. If it produced an obvious hierarchy, so much the better, but even if it didn’t, it would buy us some time.

  “Okay,” Hikaru-san said, looking at me questioningly. “But how is that a contest?”

  “........................Uhh...”

  I didn’t have an answer to that. The whole idea of a cat’s cradle contest was one that had just popped out of my mouth, a desperate bi
d to avoid an oncoming tragedy. It wasn’t like I had thought through the details.

  “Irresponsible...” Hikaru-san said, his voice heavy with criticism.

  “Come on, we can’t just let them start hitting each other!”

  “That’s not what I meant. ‘I love girls with terrific fine motor skills’? You’re just pouring oil on the fire. One wrong move and we’re all done for.”

  “Erk...”

  Well, uh, he wasn’t wrong. Nope.

  Myusel and the others could easily make a gigantic mess of this place if they got it into their heads. And given that the forbidden armors took a pretty broad interpretation of everything that went through their heads, the smallest thing could turn into the biggest problem if we weren’t careful. I didn’t know if those suits were really meant to help out inexperienced soldiers or what, but I was starting to think I had spotted some flaws in the design.

  Normally, Myusel would never in a million years have considered getting into a fight with Petralka. Elvia probably wouldn’t have, either. Now I had to use the time I had bought to come up with some kind of solution.

  “I wonder if Garius-san has figured anything out yet...” I was hoping as hard as I could that somebody would come to my rescue.

  “It’s practically been less than twenty-four hours. I really wouldn’t expect them to have learned anything new. Anyway, I’m sure they would tell us immediately if they had,” Hikaru-san said.

  “Blargh,” I offered. He was right as right could be.

  As we stood talking, the cat’s cradle battle got more intense.

  “This ain’t getting’ us anywhere!” Elvia finally cried, tossing her rope to the ground.

  Uh-oh. There’s the break.

  Well, if the forbidden armors all had the same capacities, then either Petralka or Elvia was going to be at a disadvantage in a test of finger agility. The armor itself could make up for simple disparities in reaction time or physical strength. It was so powerful that individual differences were subsumed. The difference between thirty and forty kilograms of grip force, for example, was significant—but when you started dealing with 500 kilos and more, subtle differences started to matter a lot less.