Outbreak Company: Volume 7

by Ichiro Sakaki

  “I’m very calm,” Minori-san said. “But I’m not amused by any of this. Are you aware that Shinichi-kun was attacked once before by special forces?! How much thinking does it take to realize how anxious he and I would be with you guys skulking around out there?!”

  “I understand what you’re saying, but we had our reasons!”

  “Well, perhaps you could enlighten me, Captain Satou.”

  Minori-san sounded polite, but she obviously had Captain Satou by the short hairs. In a rank-based organization like the JSDF, a Private First-Class like Minori-san was farther away from someone like Captain Satou than she was from God, and for her to take him to task like this would normally be unimaginable...

  “Koganuma,” Captain Satou said, straightening up with a discreet cough and a less than discreet glance at Minori-san’s chest. “You’re the reason.”

  “Me?”

  “Yes, you. Your, uh... your body!” Captain Satou clenched his fist emphatically.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “You may not know it, but there are many silent fans of yours throughout the Eldant expedition,” the captain said, speaking fluently now. “When it became known that you and Kanou-kun were going to be beachgoing—or maybe I should say lakegoing in this case—in any event, that you were going to go swimming, well, the demand for a picture of you in a bathing suit was immense...!”

  Minori-san was absolutely dumbfounded. I’m not sure what Captain Satou made of that, but he nodded and continued, “Requests came in for those of us who were going to be on break the same time as you to please get photographs. I myself could hardly sit still when I heard you were going to be here in a swimsuit. The thought of your profound assets—that they—the image of them cradled by a swimsuit—how could I not—!”

  Captain Satou boldly made a confession that could easily have been the most embarrassing moment of his life.

  Hmm. A man’s man, indeed.

  “Once we had agreed to the plan, the rest was easy, and our unity was unquestioned. We immediately requisitioned photographic equipment from Japan, including Russian-made items like these.” He gestured toward the sniper rifle-like stock and scope. “They were only too easy for those of us accustomed to modern weaponry to use...”

  Minori-san raised a beach-sandal-clad foot... and brought it down hard on the camera. There was a snapping sound from inside the long lens that made me want to cover my ears.

  Yikes...!

  “K-Koganuma! Do you know how much that cost?”

  “Like I care!”

  That wasn’t the end of Minori-san’s destructive rampage, either. The pro-quality digital cameras, the video recorders, equipment totaling I didn’t even know how much cash was smashed like so many toys under Minori-san’s enraged hands and feet. And it wasn’t just the cameras themselves that fell victim to her. She even pulled the memory cards out of their slots and made sure they were thoroughly mangled.

  It might have looked to the untrained eye like she was just going berserk. But there was a method to her madness. She was launching kicks straight down. She was a trained martial artist, and no delicate precision equipment was going to withstand her moves.

  “Ahhhh...!” The pained exclamations came not just from Captain Satou, but from every member of his unit. “Oh... Our blood and sweat and tears...”

  I did, in fact, spot a genuine tear in Captain Satou’s eye. He must have really wanted those swimsuit shots of Minori-san...

  “Captain Satou... and all of you!” Minori-san shouted at the seated soldiers when the destruction was over. Her shoulders were heaving. “What you’ve done is a disgrace to your Ranger abilities! Is this what you all went through three months of hell for? Is this what those badges symbolize to you?! And think about what would happen if you pulled a stunt like this and caused an international incident! If you spark a war between Eldant and Japan, how do you mean to pay for it?!”

  “Erk...” Captain Satou flinched, thoroughly intimidated. After a moment, though, he said, “I will admit that this was shortsighted of us. But Koganuma, I must disagree that we’ve disgraced our capabilities as Rangers. This was not a waste of our training!” He wiped the tears from his eyes and puffed out his chest. I couldn’t quite decide if he looked really manly or completely pathetic.

  “I don’t think you understand,” he said, “how many hearts will be buoyed by the pictures we took of you, or how much it will improve our morale! This is—yes, it is the love and dream of every man!”

  “There’s nothing to understand!!”

  An instant later, Minori-san’s iron fist was planted squarely in Captain Satou’s face.

  Anyway, that’s the story.

  Several days after our adventure by the lake...

  “Thank you for the other day,” I said, bowing to a JSDF officer.

  I was at the JSDF garrison at the training grounds on Amutech business. Today was the day that the items we’d ordered were due to arrive. Minori-san was all excited about the new BL stuff she was going to get. She’d been restless all day, and the moment we opened the door of the bird-drawn carriage, she bounded over to the containers.

  “Ahh. It’s you.” Captain Satou greeted me with a thin smile. Despite taking Minori-san’s best punch, he didn’t show a single sign of injury now. I guess training really does elevate you above normal people.

  With him, oddly enough, was Matoba-san.

  “Say, I wanted to ask you,” Captain Satou said suddenly, turning to me. “We got a good photo. Maybe you’d like to buy it?”

  “I’m sorry? Photo?”

  He couldn’t mean...

  “Gimmie.”

  “I like that decisiveness,” Captain Satou grinned. He took the two thousand-yen bills I held out and traded me for a photograph. It was a glossy thing that showed Minori-san’s bikini-clad body with remarkable clarity.

  “But Satou-san...”

  “Yeah?”

  “I thought Minori-san smashed all your cameras. I even saw her destroy the memory cards. So where did this come from?”

  “Oh, that.” A corner of Captain Satou’s mouth tugged up, and he seemed just the tiniest bit pleased with himself. “Under the circumstances, I’m not surprised you didn’t notice. We weren’t the only ones out there. There was another squad—two others, in fact.”

  “What?! Really?”

  Captain Satou had to suppress a laugh. Was my reaction really that funny?

  “They were the ones who were really tasked with taking the photographs. Our whole squad was a diversion. And by the way, all the memory cards had communications functions built in. As soon as we took a photo, they went to a simple server in the LAV. So she can smash ’em, but we’ve still got the data!”

  Such careful preparation...!

  I was belatedly shocked at how trained and prepared the JSDF was. If they had been really serious, and also out to kill us instead of photograph us, we would all have been dead by that lakeside, no question. After all, they had eliminated a squad of trained knights within just a couple of hours.

  I thought back on the special ops squad that had come after me before. I saw now that their fatal flaw was that they didn’t know the territory well enough. If they’d had time to train in the Eldant Empire before the attack, the outcome would have been very, very different. The thought gave me the chills.

  “Well, such is strategy,” Captain Satou said. “We got to see just how good we are and came out with some pictures of her. I’d call that a win.”

  “You’d do all that just for some pictures of a girl in a swimsuit? Geez, the JSDF doesn’t mess around,” I said. “But we’re lucky it didn’t become an issue, huh, Matoba-san?”

  “An issue?” he asked.

  “I mean, I know Captain Satou and the others were just trying to get some photographs, but they really did knock out those knights. If the Eldant Empire found out about it, I don’t think they’d be happy...”

  “Ah,” Matoba-san said, with a meaningful look at Captain Sa
tou. “Well, maybe I can let him in on it.” Then he looked back at me. “That operation was conducted with the full knowledge of the Eldant Empire, so I don’t think there will be any problems.”

  “Huh? The full knowledge?”

  “The knights weren’t in on it, though. It was the JSDF’s way of teaching them a thing or two about strategy.”

  “Teaching strategy? What are you talking about?”

  “Simply put, we were showing them how to fight,” Captain Satou said. “Minister Cordobal and a lot of other retainers of the Eldant Empire are most interested in the Japanese military’s modern tactics. We did bring down a dragon, after all.”

  “Ah...”

  It was true: they had done it when we were filming our movie. The knights could only barely handle a dragon even with their mages to help them, yet the JSDF had done it with hardly any casualties. That’s the sort of thing that would get an empire’s attention.

  “At the time, everyone assumed it was just a difference in firepower,” Captain Satou. “But they’ve started to think maybe it’s not just the guns. Maybe the way we fight is different, too. So they reached out to us.”

  “But, uh, isn’t that sort of contrary to the policy the Japanese government is pursuing? I have to think there are all kinds of legal hurdles here...”

  “No, the government was quite forward-thinking about this exercise,” Matoba-san said with a shrug. “Otherwise, we certainly couldn’t have deployed the troops.”

  The government wanted this? But what in the world for?

  “There was a certain instance in which the Eldant forces overcame a Japanese special ops unit, as I recall,” Matoba-san said, his voice laced with sarcasm. “That incident has caused the Eldant side to somewhat undervalue the achievements of the JSDF. To fail to give us our due, as they say. So while this was about imparting strategic principles, it was also something of a display of strength.”

  “Geez...”

  “Now, legally, as you say, there would be many problems with the JSDF conducting actual strategic training. We are a peaceful country that’s renounced war, after all. Still, though, Minister Cordobal has been most inquisitive regarding the state of our military strategy. And again, the JSDF was eager to demonstrate their capabilities to the Eldant side. So we hit upon the idea of strategic training in the form of what you might call a mock battle.”

  “As shades of gray go, that’s pretty close to black...”

  “The Eldant forces get to observe our tactics up close, and we get to show them just how able we are. Everybody gets what they want.”

  “Uh...huh.”

  Apparently, just under the surface, there had been a whole lot of shady dealings. Political maneuvering was way over my head; my only response to it was sheer exasperation. For better or for worse, though, it seemed like the Japanese government was taking a lot of different angles, and I couldn’t help being impressed by that.

  “Sensei!! Satou-san!!” The voice of a boy I recognized reached us from the training ground.

  “Oh—Loek?” Yes, there he was, the elf boy. “What are you doing here?”

  Loek jogged up to Captain Satou, ignored my question, and instead pelted the officer with a burst of enthusiasm. “Satou-san! I hear you’re selling photos of Minori-sensei such as men treasure!”

  “Hm?” Captain Satou said. Then he grinned and took Loek by the shoulders. “Quite a grapevine you’ve got, kid.”

  “My burning passion for Minori-sensei makes the impossible possible!”

  “That’s what I like to hear. Now... What’ve you got?”

  “L-Let me see the goods first! Then we’ll talk!”

  “Fine. Feast your eyes on... this.”

  Captain Satou pulled several pictures out of his bag—photos in which the vivacious, and largely bare-skinned, Minori-san featured prominently.

  “Y—Yes!! Minori-sensei’s boldly bikini’d body! Here I believed I had fixed it in my memory, and yet—! This Ja-panese technology truly is incredible! It produces such clear pictures...! What kind of ‘ca-me-ra’ did you use?!”

  Loek gazed lasciviously at each of the photos with an enthusiasm that bordered on the frightening.

  “Ahh, this and this and this and this! I can hardly choose! What wonderful pictures!”

  “Hmm? Which wonderful pictures are you talking about, Loek?”

  “All of them, obviously! I could spend my entire allowance on these without regret! These Made-in-Ja-pan magical items are just...! Don’t you agree, Romilda—”

  And that was when it hit him.

  “Huh?!”

  Loek turned his saucer-sized eyes from the photos to what was immediately behind him. A small dwarf girl had inserted herself between me and him, standing there with her arms crossed.

  “When did you get here?!” Loek exclaimed.

  “You... You perverted elf!”

  “Hrgh?!”

  The next thing that hit him was Romilda. She may have been a girl, but dwarves were known for their strength. Loek’s slim body went tumbling through the air, then he crashed face-first into the ground.

  Look, he’s twitching.

  “Let me handle this pointy-eared creep,” Romilda said, then she grabbed Loek by the collar and dragged him away.

  Captain Saotu and I watched them go. All we could do was look at each other and exchange wry smiles.

  Carefully. Carreeefully.

  Slowly and with utmost care, I picked up the eyeball. If I held it too tightly and it broke, that would get me nowhere. But at the same time, the slick surface meant it would slip away from me if I didn’t hold it tightly enough. Actually, I had already burst two of them by pinching too hard and had dropped another while trying to carry it, where of course it broke on the ground. When holding one, you had to work within a very small window of strength.

  Holding my breath, I placed the eyeball atop the face.

  It settled neatly, naturally, into the hole there—the eye socket.

  I breathed a sigh of relief. Now the eye was in, but there was still a lot to do. There was no nose and no mouth yet, after all.

  I laid those pre-cut objects atop the white face, once again being very careful. They weren’t as fragile as the eye, but they were still delicate pieces. I suddenly felt as if my hands would start shaking, and I struggled to make sure I was holding them not too tightly and not too loosely as I eased them onto the head.

  “Ahh... Phew...”

  It was actually starting to look like a person’s face. I was once again reminded, though, of how the human face is constructed on a set of subtle symmetries. The size of the eyes, nose, mouth, and ears. Their exact location. The relationship of the lines that make up the face. If any of these were even slightly off, it would look strange at best, or could even turn into an alien monster.

  “Done...” I said at last, wiping the sweat from my forehead.

  A girl’s face looked back at me, built from a collection of parts and with absolute dedication. A featureless white lump transformed into a face with eyes, nose, mouth, ears, and hair.

  But then, a bright voice from beside me exclaimed, “Me, too!” I looked over.

  Working next to me was Elvia-san.

  Elvia Harneiman. She was a beast person—in other words, she had ears and a tail like an animal. When just standing quietly, she didn’t make much of an impression, but the moment she laughed or smiled, she became brilliant as a flower, a true display of innocence as beauty.

  At the moment, her fluffy ears were flopping around happily. Apparently, she was more satisfied with her work than I was with mine.

  “Whatcha think?” she asked me.

  I looked at what she had done, and caught my breath.

  I saw two complete young men. They were wearing disheveled clothes, and although they looked as elegant as girls, they were definitely boys. Packed proudly there in that little bentou box, they looked as if they might start moving, and even the skin showing from under their clothing looked real eno
ugh to touch. In fact, I thought I could practically hear them exchanging the words of their forbidden love.

  That was some lunch.

  We’d had the same ingredients and the same tools, so how in the world was this possible? I could only stare blankly at what Elvia-san had done.

  “Man, that was hard work,” she said. “But I feel pretty good about how it turned out!” She smiled broadly.

  “You... You should.”

  As for me, I could only manage a vague nod as I looked back at the lunch box sitting in front of me.

  It was supposed to be a “magical girl.” Madoka, the main character from the show Rental☆Madoka. I’d made her hair the right light-pink color and even gotten the ribbon she always wore in her hair. The big, round eyes were correct, too.

  And yet, after looking at Elvia-san’s work, my own lunch box looked depressingly underwhelming. A girl? From the wrong angle, it looked more like a monster. I guess that’s the difference between real art and a child’s scribblings.

  I couldn’t help feeling depressed. Could anyone but me look at this and recognize it as Madoka? Would they know it was a kyara-ben, a so-called “character lunch box”?

  “.........Sigh...”

  Even if I wasn’t feeling confident about it, it was too late to redo it now. I started cleaning up the scattered knives and spatulas in the kitchen, heaving a long breath.

  I looked out the window, every bump the carriage ran over transmitted to me through my seat. The blue sky seemed to go on forever, and I could see groups of sprites weaving among the clouds. It looked like it was going to be another beautiful, pleasant day.

  But...

  “Shinichi-sama and Minori-sama are gonna be thrilled,” Elvia-san said with a grin from the seat across from me. On her knees she held the lunch she had just made, a kyara-ben—a lunch box that used ingredients to recreate a character from an anime or manga. The one I had made was sitting on my own lap.

  We were currently riding by bird-drawn carriage to the school where my master, Shinichi-sama, and his bodyguard, Koganuma Minori-sama, were teaching. We were going to deliver the lunches to them. The one I had made was going to Shinichi-sama, while Elvia-san would give hers to Minori-sama. We had created different things, but we’d had the same ingredients, tools, and containers with which to do it...