Outbreak Company: Volume 5

by Ichiro Sakaki

  That was when, to my surprise, Minori-sama suddenly turned back, the hand with her “SureFire” waving. There was a screech of metal and then a flash.

  Two shuriken buried themselves in the wall of the nearest building. They were the same sort of weapon Amatena-san had used earlier, but this time I was sure she hadn’t moved. They seemed to have come from the opposite direction.

  “Elder sister, are you all right?” someone asked as they emerged from the darkness. This new person was a weretiger girl wearing a military uniform much like Amatena-san’s. However, she appeared to be about ten years younger, and her hair and fur were a light brown.

  “Clara,” Amatena-san said quietly. That must have been the girl’s name.

  Clara produced two more throwing stars from her sleeve and prepared to use them.

  “This looks bad,” Minori-sama whispered.

  This still made us three on two. But if Clara was as powerful as Amatena-san, then our numerical advantage wasn’t going to be much advantage at all.

  In fact, I could hear footsteps rushing in from every direction. It seemed the sound of our fighting had attracted other people in the area. There was no way we were going to win now. It looked like we had been caught.

  “I think it’s time for a tactical retreat,” Minori-sama said softly. “Myusel, Elvia, hold my hands.”

  Then she took some kind of cylinder out of her bag, pulled a needle-like thing out of it, and tossed the cylinder on the ground.

  What in the world was she doing?

  No sooner had the question crossed my mind than a thick smoke began billowing out of the cylinder.

  “What?!” Amatena-san exclaimed.

  The white smoke immediately filled the narrow alleyway, until I couldn’t even see my hand in front of my face. I suspected our opponents couldn’t see anything either. Minori-sama pulled me and Elvia-san by the hand down the street.

  “Sister!” I heard Clara shout through the smoke.

  “Don’t pursue them, Clara!” Amatena-san said back. “I need you to contact the research facility holding center. Inform them that bandits may be targeting Kanou Shinichi. Tell them not to take their eyes off him until he’s at the treatment center for his conversion tomorrow at noon!”

  “Ma’am!”

  I could hear the patter of Clara’s feet as she ran in another direction.

  “Minori-sama,” I whispered.

  “Yeah, I got it,” she said. I couldn’t even see her face for the smoke, but I could hear the smile in her voice. “For as bad as she beat us up, you’ve got a pretty nice sister, Elvia.”

  “Huh?” Elvia-san sounded genuinely surprised. “Nice? What’s nice about her?”

  “You heard her, right? Shinichi-kun is in a research facility holding center They’re going to move him from there to some sort of treatment center at noon tomorrow.”

  “Oh...”

  The droop in Elvia-san’s voice made it sound like she probably hadn’t realized what her sister was doing.

  “Eh, I guess it could be false information to lure us into a trap,” Minori-sama said.

  “If it was, she was awfully obvious about it.”

  We got away from the smoke and let go of Minori-sama’s hands. Then we set off running through town.

  There were lights on in several buildings, perhaps people alerted by the commotion. We made out several faces watching us, but nobody seemed to be moving to stop us. I guess a little shouting and thumping wouldn’t be enough for everyone to know we were enemies.

  “Elvia, what do you think about this?” Minori-sama asked as we ran along. What she meant was, could we trust what Amatena-san had told us?

  “Wh-Why’re you askin’ me?”

  “Out of the three of us, you’re the one who knows her best, right?”

  “Yeah, I guess so, but...” Elvia-san sounded hesitant. That was understandable. They had been fighting, really and truly in combat, just moments ago. How would you know whether to trust someone like that?

  We kept running in silence.

  Huffing and puffing, I looked back, but it didn’t seem like anyone was coming after us from the direction of town. At length we reached the shadow of a huge boulder sitting in the wilderness outside of town, and we were finally able to stop and catch our breath.

  “About Big Sister Ama,” Elvia-san said suddenly. “I don’t think she’s lying. If she was just going to lie, why tell us at all? Or why not wait until we were gone to tell that girl what to do?”

  “Good points. I agree,” Minori-sama said, a smile splitting her face. Then she patted Elvia-san on the back as if to comfort her.

  Chapter Four: The Great Shinichi Rescue

  I thought I had an idea now of how condemned prisoners must feel waiting to be executed.

  My mouth was so dry I could hardly swallow. I was awake all night, but had nothing to do—I didn’t even have any writing utensils to leave a will with—so I just tossed and turned on my bed, restlessly checking my watch.

  “Time to go.”

  Soldiers showed up and ushered me out of my cell. Amatena wasn’t one of them. It looked like she had finally decided to wash her hands of me.

  They led me down the stone hallway, then out of the building. From the outside, the research facility looked like a single huge structure, but actually (apparently), the towering fence that enclosed the entire area hid several more buildings. I had been in “Storage,” the building where they kept subjects for experiments, and now I was being ushered to “Procedures.” The fact that I got to see the sky one more time before they did their work felt like a tiny blessing.

  Then again, if I was going to try anything, this was literally my last chance.

  There were five soldiers transporting me: three in front of me, two behind. All of them were carrying swords. Why no spears or axes? Maybe because they assumed they might have to fight inside the prison. It didn’t really make a difference; for a complete combat layperson like me, the enemy could be armed with swords or spears or daggers. I was still gonna get stabbed.

  So going toe-to-toe with them was out. I considered whether I could bowl some of them over with Tifu Murottsu. If I could somehow get the two behind me in front of me instead, then hit all of them at once, I might be able to knock them down. Of course, there was always the danger that they would notice me chanting, but if I were careful to do it softly and with minimal lip movements, I might be able to pull it off.

  “You,” one of the soldiers behind me said, giving me a smack on the back of the head. “Pick up the pace.”

  “Y-Yeah, sorry.”

  Crap. Why did I reflexively apologize? Stupid me.

  No! That’s not the point!

  This was very, very bad. If I chanted a magic spell, there was a distinct possibility I would be cut down on the spot.

  A deep despair began to weigh on me.

  “Ahh...”

  I suddenly found I couldn’t stop imagining moments from the past, memories that flitted through my mind. Was this what they meant when they said your life flashes before your eyes?

  I thought of my life in Japan, with my parents and sister. I remembered being brutally shot down by my old friend when I confessed my feelings to her. I recalled shutting myself up in my room and doing nothing but playing online games, watching anime, participating on various major message boards, (etc., etc., etc.).

  I remembered being deceived when I tried to apply for a job in Akihabara.

  And then...

  I remembered the first day I came to Eldant. Meeting Myusel and Minori-san. How much seeing Brooke shocked me. The way Petralka decked me when we first met. The day Elvia came to our house.

  I remembered setting up the school, being captured by terrorists, getting to know Myusel and Petralka better and better, being attacked by the JSDF Special Forces, the soccer tournament, the movie production...

  Yeah. It had all been a lot of fun. I felt like my life had really blossomed after I came to this world. And always i
t was thanks to Myusel and the others, thanks to the people of this world.

  “Myusel...”

  They had accepted me. A worthless otaku of a home security guard had come to them, and they had cared for me.

  I really wish I could have seen everyone one last time.

  And then there were all the anime and manga that hadn’t yet finished their runs... You know, I remembered seeing an article in some magazine about season two of Rental☆Madoka. I wondered what they decided to do about the voice actors for the new characters. Plus, the computer game Step on my Corpse 2 was supposed to be in production. Would it ever come out? And I had that Kamen Rapper Weathered model kit I had never built...

  And on and on.

  It appeared I was and would remain a lost-cause otaku to the bitter end.

  But at that moment, one of the soldiers noticed something. I don’t know who spotted it first, but one of them said, “H-Hey, what’s that?”

  All of them looked up. Almost unconsciously, I craned my neck, too.

  And then just about choked at what I saw overhead.

  The sun was so bright it hurt to look at the sky, but even so, I could tell immediately what I was seeing.

  Smack in the middle of the endless blue field was a hovering shadow. A shadow that was getting closer by the second...

  “Dragon!” the soldiers shouted, panic creeping into their voices.

  They were right: it was definitely a dragon. And not one of the little domesticated wyverns the Eldant Dragon Knights used. This was several times—several dozen times—bigger, a monster so violent and dangerous that every country was perpetually on the alert for them. A real dragon.

  Dragons, said to be part sprite, were the absolute apex predators of this world—and this one was coming straight down at me!

  “Run—”

  “No, get the puppet drake—”

  “Call a mage!”

  The terror of the dragon had sown evident confusion among the soldiers. This was my chance to escape! Or would have been, except that there was no particular reason a dragon would distinguish between me and the soldiers, meaning that I was probably still done for along with everyone else...

  “Shinichi-samaaaa!”

  “...Uh...?”

  I don’t mind saying I was pretty darn surprised at that moment. Maybe, I thought, the depression had grown so acute that I was starting to have auditory hallucinations. Because I was sure I had just heard a voice I couldn’t possibly hear, the voice of a girl whose smiling face I could picture in my mind’s eye even at that moment.

  “Shinichi-sama!”

  “It can’t be...”

  I looked up again at the dragon, which actually appeared to be slowing as it came inexorably nearer.

  I saw a face peek out from behind it. A face I knew.

  “Shinichi-sama!”

  She wasn’t dressed in her familiar maid uniform, but it didn’t matter. The person riding on the back of that dragon, reaching her arms out to me and desperately calling my name, was...

  “Myusel?!”

  “I’ve come to save you, Master!”

  Looking up at her framed against the sun and the blue sky, I felt a rush of happiness, astonishment, and a slew of other emotions I couldn’t even put into words, so many feelings all at once that I thought I might just burst into tears.

  With wind sprites supporting its wings, our Faldra landed in the courtyard of the facility (it was a bit of a squeeze). Released, the sprites went flying off in every direction, almost as if a large-scale Tifu Murottsu had been let off. It wasn’t enough to knock over the Bahairamanian soldiers nearby, but it certainly worked to confuse them.

  Then there was Minori-sama, who jumped from the Faldra’s back shouting and with something called an “em-nyne” in each hand.

  “Yaaaaaaaahhhhhh!”

  There was a series of earsplitting cracks, and clouds of dust flew up from the ground ahead of us. I had to assume the enemy soldiers weren’t aware of how powerful the em-nynes were, but the noise combined with the tiny holes appearing in the earth must have alerted them that this was a weapon on par with offensive magic like Terab Redonas, the lightning spell. They quickly dove for the cover of a nearby building.

  “Myusel!” Minori-sama called.

  “Right!”

  Just as we had planned, Minori-sama had drawn the Bahairamanian soldiers’ attention; now I jumped down from the Faldra, carrying the weapon I had borrowed from Minori-sama.

  My objective, of course, was Shinichi-sama.

  He was kneeling on the ground—he had probably been caught up in the whirlwind just like the soldiers. I went running toward him.

  “Shinichi-sama!”

  He didn’t immediately answer, but only stared at me distantly. He was probably too shocked for words. At last he seemed to come back to himself; he blinked several times, then shouted, “Myusel! Behind you!”

  I spun around and saw a Bahairamanian soldier, his sword coming down at me. I instinctively raised the weapon Minori-sama had given me.

  Clang! It blocked the sword that was coming at me. But...

  “Ergh...”

  “You—!”

  The soldier was forcing his blade down toward me. I simply didn’t have the physical strength to resist a trained, male soldier. I found myself forced to one knee...

  Then, suddenly, the pressure from above disappeared. In fact, the soldier went spinning through the air, then hit the ground hard enough to knock him unconscious. I stared at him in amazement.

  “Shinichi-sama!”

  Elvia-san, however, rushed past me. She must have pulled the soldier down from behind.

  “Are y’ okay?!” She hardly slowed down, all but slamming into Shinichi-sama as she embraced him.

  “Gurgh?”

  “Shinichi-sama!” I rushed over to him as well. “Are you hurt?! Are you all right?!”

  It was really Shinichi-sama standing in front of me. I was happy to see him for the first time in so long. I was transcendently glad that he was safe. I felt like if I wasn’t careful, I might break down crying right then and there.

  “I’m not... hurt, but...” Shinichi-sama groaned. “I think I might... choke to death...”

  “Elvia-san!”

  “Oh! S-Sorry!” She quickly let him go. She was as happy as I was to be reunited with him, and caught up in the moment, had forgotten her own strength.

  “But why in the world are all of you here?” Shinichi-sama asked.

  “To rescue you, of course!” Elvia-san said. “Big Sis Ama told us where you’d be!”

  “‘Big Sis Ama’?”

  “She means Amatena-san,” I clarified.

  “Amatena told you?” he asked. “And that dragon—”

  “Oh, Loek-sama and Romilda-sama—”

  Elvia-san jumped up. “Details later! Run now! We have to—geh?!” She hadn’t finished her sentence before something blew her sideways.

  “Elvia!”

  “Elvia-san?!”

  We watched in shock as Elvia-san bounced once on the ground and rolled several times more. Whatever had struck her must have been very powerful.

  It had to be some kind of—

  “Magic!” Shinichi-sama shouted.

  Yes: we could see several of the Bahairamanian soldiers peeking out from the shadows of the nearby building. The two closest to us each had a hand raised. I assumed they had used something like Tifu Murottsu on Elvia-san. Their uniforms looked subtly different from the other soldiers’; they were probably special forces trained in the use of magic, or perhaps they were a couple of the mages conducting research at this facility.

  “Elvia, are you okay?”

  “I—I’m fine!” Elvia-san bounced to her feet. “I’m nothing if not tough!” She jogged back toward us.

  The mages, however, appeared to be chanting another spell. Not the same one, but something probably considerably more powerful. I saw fire sprites collecting in the outstretched palm of the man closest to us
, gathering into a bright beam.

  I couldn’t imagine even Elvia-san standing up to a direct hit from something like that. For that matter, there was a good chance Shinichi-sama and I would be caught in the blast as well. And so...

  “Huh? Hey—Myusel!”

  “Elvia-san, take care of Shinichi-sama!”

  “Got it!”

  I saw Elvia-san grab Shinichi-sama up in her arms, while I took a step forward to cover them. Elvia-san might be carrying Shinichi-sama, but as for me, I was carrying the weapon Minori-sama had lent me.

  In the space of a breath, the globe of fire sprites had become so bright it was hard to look at. There was no question the mage intended to burn us all alive.

  It was terrifying. But all I could do was trust.

  The mage released the beam of light. I didn’t dodge out of the way, but instead ran headlong toward it.

  Your Majesty!

  The image of Petralka an Eldant III flashed through my mind. With my mouth, I was intoning a spell...

  BOOM!

  To either side of me, there was a deafening noise.

  But as for me myself—

  “What?!”

  “A magic shield?”

  “No, that was—”

  The Bahairamanian soldiers were thoroughly confused.

  I was wearing the battle dress Her Majesty had handed down to me. The dye was made from a rare ore which conducted magic readily; the cloak was woven of metal threads that incorporated the same ore, and the entire thing was made with magic-amplification spells that specialist mages had spent much time and effort developing.

  This was magic that made magic many times more powerful.

  Her Majesty had long borne anti-magic inscriptions on her honored body. Such charms of resistance would repel magical attacks up to a certain point, but they had their limits. A spell that exceeded the charms’ ability to defend her would overcome them, just like an ordinary weapon could pierce through a shield if it were strong enough.

  And on the battlefield, such powerful magicks were not uncommon. That was why Her Majesty had this “magic-amplifying magic” on her battle dress. When combined with the spells of resistance on her body, the cloak could withstand even the assaults of a magical siege weapon, let alone a troop of individual soldiers.