Outbreak Company: Volume 3

by Ichiro Sakaki

  “Hey, you, give that back!” one of the soldiers shouted.

  “If you don’t give it back, Private Freakout here is gonna let loose with that gun!” another added.

  “We soldiers usually have to be really repressed, so when we finally get a chance to let it out, we don’t hold back!” said the third.

  That’s some twisted logic, I thought, but notwithstanding my mental interjections, the soldier closest to Elvia took a flying leap and managed to grab onto her right arm.

  “Bow-wha?!” Elvia sounded mad. She was definitely not quite sane—or more precisely, she had gone back to her animal roots. Her exclamation sounded like a dog, and dogs were descended from wolves. She juked and tried to run away, but at the exact same time, the ball popped out of her hands and fell to the ground.

  It bounced in front of her; she tried to reach out and grab it, but there was still a JSDF soldier attached to her. He wasn’t an especially big guy, but he was enough to make it hard for her to move her arm.

  “Oooh!”

  Elvia went racing after the ball again. Wait a second—she could run with a full-grown man hanging from her elbow?!

  I guess that’s a beast person for you. Just like when she had pinned me the morning before: if you wanted to try to force Elvia to do anything when the “phase” was on her, you had to realize you were taking your life in your hands.

  With a certain exasperation, I grabbed Elvia’s left arm. Now she couldn’t hold the ball.

  “Elvia! Elvia, come back to us!”

  “Grrr!”

  Elvia kicked.

  Kicked the ball, that is.

  Apparently realizing that she no longer had the use of her hands, she started kicking the ball to keep moving. She would give it a gentle tap with her foot to roll it a little and then run after it, then stop it again with her foot, like a game.

  And all this with a soldier hanging off one arm and me hanging off the other.

  Hey hey hey hey hey hey!

  “Wow!” A collective expression of surprise went up from the other JSDF troopers. Partly because she was doing all this while supporting the weight of two people, but mostly because, in a world where soccer supposedly didn’t exist, she was adroitly dribbling the ball. If you didn’t find that surprising, what would ever shock you?

  There was a distinct possibility that we were all witnesses to the birth of soccer in this world!

  Not that it was easy for me to appreciate all of this with Elvia whipping me around.

  “Aaaaaahhh! My golden ball! That’s a limited edition!” Minori-san, still restrained by her fellow soldiers, was growing more and more agitated. I could see why: the soccer ball was a bit of anime memorabilia, never intended for real use. Plenty of people would have been upset at so much as a scratch on the box, let alone to see the actual ball getting kicked around and covered with dirt.

  “Elvia!”

  “Yarf!” She clearly disagreed with the fact that the soldier and I were still holding onto her; she gave us both a great shake. Distracted by Minori-san, we had relaxed our grips ever so slightly, and Elvia neatly slipped her arms away from us, sending us flying to the ground a good two meters away.

  “Eeowowow...”

  I landed with a thud right on my behind, feeling the impact all the way to my bones. It hurt so bad I almost fainted. The JSDF guy, however, said, “You okay, kid?” and offered his hand to help me out. He must’ve jumped to his feet after he was thrown, unlike me. That’s the JSDF for you; they’re a cut above us former home security guards. Which, uh, I guess is to be expected.

  Then I looked around. “Huh?” I had only been on the ground about thirty seconds or so, but the situation between Elvia and the soldiers had changed drastically.

  “Hey!”

  “Yarf!”

  “Over here!”

  “Yarf!”

  ............Huh?

  All of a sudden one of the troopers had the ball... at his feet?

  Maybe there were some soccer players in this unit, because the JSDF soldiers were dribbling the ball around, dodging Elvia as she jumped at them. In her crazed state, Elvia had extraordinary physical abilities, but it also gave her a sort of tunnel vision—it was like she couldn’t see anything but the ball. The soldiers, working together as a team, were successfully able to keep it away from her.

  Elvia, however, looked perfectly happy about this. Maybe she was more into chasing the ball than actually having it. She seemed to be enjoying playing with the ball—or rather, with the troops.

  “Hey, over here!”

  “Yarf yarf yarf!”

  “Yeah, that’s it!”

  “Yarf! Yarf yarf!”

  In fact, she and the soldiers all seemed to be having fun.

  Wait... Wait just a second.

  Was this like... like when you toss a frisbee for your dog? “Go get it, girl!” The dog doesn’t actually want the frisbee. It wants to enjoy playing with its owner.

  Wait a further second!

  Maybe that meant Elvia’s real goal wasn’t the golden ball. As obsessed as she was right now with chasing it around, she didn’t seem upset that she wasn’t able to get it back.

  As I watched the werewolf and the soldiers play ball together, an idea came to me.

  I clapped my hands. “That’s it! It’s perfect!”

  Even as I was having this epiphany, however, Minori-san was wailing, “Ahhhhh! My gollldennn balllll!”

  Which might have caused some serious misunderstandings if we hadn’t known what she was talking about.

  “A friendly game?” Petralka looked at me quizzically.

  It was several days after the ruckus at the army training grounds, and we were in the small audience chamber. I had suggested the idea of a friendly game of soccer to Her Majesty.

  “Or, you know, an exhibition for the empress or something. Whatever works.”

  The idea had come to me after seeing Elvia and the JSDF playing together.

  We had different races who were quick to get into fights with each other, and we had sports stories that didn’t seem to quite click for people. I was starting to think we could address both problems at once.

  We’ve gotten to where the term “friendly match” can sometimes seem like just an expression, but originally it really did refer to a game that was supposed to foster friendship. Through these games, teams representing different countries or groups could come to better understand each other. You know how they say people often get along best after they have their biggest fights? With sports, you don’t actually have to come to blows; you can “fight” within a framework of rules. You can put your heart and soul into it, and when everything is over, each side can admire how well the other did.

  At the same time, of course, I hoped that if my audience could discover even a little of what made soccer enjoyable, then soccer manga and anime might gain the same popularity as other things I’d brought over here. If we were lucky, interest in other sports-related stuff might blossom from there. Talk about two birds with one stone.

  “If you want to enjoy baseball manga, it’s best to have played some baseball,” I said. “Same with soccer. You don’t have to go pro or anything. You just need a general idea of what’s going on.”

  “Hmm.” Petralka crossed her arms.

  “From the prospectus you’ve submitted, it seems this ‘soccer field’ of yours is not so difficult to construct.” These words came from an old man standing beside Petralka, holding a sheaf of paper in his hand. The man had white hair, a white beard, and was thin as a twig—he looked more like a wizard than a bureaucrat.

  This was Prime Minister Zahar. He was one of the most important people in this nation, Petralka’s closest advisor after Garius. When you picture an old guy advising a young ruler, it’s hard not to imagine he’s trying to be the power behind the throne, or that he wants to use her as his puppet, but Zahar really didn’t give off any sinister vibes. He seemed more like a grandfather or a kindly old butler. Incidental
ly, his absence from the previous audience was, I was told, because he had been in bed with a backache.

  “If we are to provide Your Majesty with a special viewing area, security considerations would certainly enter into the planning. Otherwise, it’s simply a matter of leveling the ground and planting some grass.”

  Planting grass seemed like it could potentially be a bigger headache than you’d think, but according to Prime Minister Zahar, once you had chosen the type of grass you wanted, it was possible to use magic to grow it into a nice green carpet. One more reminder that I wasn’t in Japan anymore.

  “Hmm. A mock battle, is it? Most intriguing.”

  Support for my idea came from an unexpected quarter: the knight Garius. He had his index finger and thumb at his chin in a thoughtful expression; that alone made him look so much like a picture of a knight I could almost hate him for it.

  He went on, “Participants separate into two armies and attack each other’s bases. If the goal were, say, to attempt to carry an imarufe bisurupeguze into the other army’s base—this ‘soccer’ could prove quite a valuable training exercise for the royal knights.”

  “That sounds awfully dangerous,” I muttered. An imarufe bisurupeguze was a kind of magical weapon similar to a bomb. It looked like a metal ball supported by a frame; when activated, the angry fire sprites inside would come flying outward and cook whoever was nearby. I knew all this because I had seen one up close during a terrorist attack, and frankly, just hearing the name again gave me shivers.

  “Perhaps we needn’t look so closely for practical applications,” Petralka said soothingly. She gave Garius a wry smile. “The First Knights have not had occasion for a large-scale engagement for some time. Surely the troops are growing bored?”

  “I am... most embarrassed to admit it,” Garius said, pulling a face.

  It seemed that, for better and for worse, relations with neighboring countries had been at a stalemate for the past several months. Nobody was dying, so that was good, but the knights were finding themselves with a lot of free time on their hands.

  When we hear the word “knights,” we’re apt to imagine noble, elegant, cultured men—but that’s mostly an image we get from fiction. These are members of the military we’re talking about, professional soldiers. In reality, many of them have seen a lot of blood, and a lot of them are pretty rough customers. This can mean that during protracted periods of peace, they effectively don’t get to let the violence out of their system. Then the discontentment and frustration build up, and the knights start ignoring their rules and taking out their unhappiness on the citizens. (You know, it seemed a little bit like Elvia’s “phase of the moon” problem that way.)

  That got me thinking: Elvia might be an extreme example, but humans do get bored and restless over time. In most cases it’s not about being unable to make war, but just about not being able to exercise their bodies to the fullest; it leaves them at loose ends.

  “The First Knights have been stuck here in the capital. If we let them participate, perhaps they’ll be able to relax a bit. Maybe we can even present an award for martial valor to the winner.”

  “I don’t, ahem, think that will be necessary, Your Majesty,” Zahar broke in. “Awards for valor should not be bestowed too lightly.”

  “We understand that. But having such a reward on offer will bring this game that much closer to actual combat. A simple way of getting the knights engaged.”

  Zahar still didn’t look very pleased. “It is as you say, Your Majesty. But I’m concerned what might happen should someone other than the knights take victory...”

  Well, he wasn’t wrong. Military awards could take a number of forms, but in essence they all meant that the recipient’s social status would increase. A knight would have to really distinguish himself in battle to receive a similar award. But what if it went to a commoner? Would they suddenly become a noble? In other words, handing out these prizes too readily held the potential to undermine the entire class structure of the Holy Eldant Empire. I assumed that was what he was worried about.

  However...

  “Elder Zahar, I’m afraid I can’t let that pass,” Garius said with a frown. “The First Knights are highly trained and proud. Obviously, I don’t know exactly what this game of soccer entails, but we will all be equal in having no experience of it. Therefore I am confident in saying that my knights shall not lose to commoners or demi-humans.”

  Elder Zahar looked like he was in a bit of a pickle. “Erm, that may be so, but...”

  I guessed it only made sense that Garius, who was the knights’ leader and a knight himself, would think that way. It wasn’t a baseless opinion, either. Setting aside class considerations, knights spent every day training themselves and honing their bodies. Their endurance and fundamental physical capabilities would be different from those of commoners. The playing field would be even in the sense that none of the participants had tried soccer before, but this grounding in the basics would give the knights a distinct advantage. It made a certain amount of sense to think they couldn’t lose.

  I raised my hand. “In that case, I’ve got an idea.”

  “Shinichi?” The others in the room, including Petralka, looked at me.

  “The award doesn’t necessarily have to be military, does it?”

  “Not necessarily. But an official stipend or grant of land would be even more potential trouble,” Petralka said.

  Given they hadn’t actually won any wars lately, I couldn’t imagine they just had lots of extra land sitting around that they could give away, and as for a stipend—in essence, a salary increase—you wouldn’t want to risk distorting the economy.

  “What if we were to sponsor the competition?” I said.

  “What’s this?” Petralka asked with a frown. “Spon-sorr?” Garius and Zahar exchanged a look.

  Oops. There it went again. I’d run up against the limits of magical translation.

  “It means someone who hosts an event or a festival,” I explained. “They pay the money to stage the event.”

  Needless to say, a sponsor is technically someone who pays to advertise at an event, but there was no need to get hung up on the dictionary definition. As long as the general meaning got across, that was enough. Honestly, I didn’t even know if the Eldant Empire had a concept of promoting one’s business.

  “Like a patron, then?” Petralka said.

  “Hmm, yes and no,” I replied. “But don’t sweat the details.” I glanced at my audience again. “I know you’ve been thinking along the lines of military awards and stuff, but the prize doesn’t have to be money or land or whatever, does it?”

  “No, it doesn’t,” Petralka said doubtfully. She didn’t yet seem to have grasped what I was getting at.

  “Right now, only nobles and successful merchants—a fraction of all the people in the Empire—can get into our school. What if, for example, we created a special system where exceptional teams could gain admittance to study there?”

  Strictly speaking, we would give each member of the winning team the right to matriculate.

  As I pointed out earlier, our school was experiencing a bit of a boom among the nobility. The empress’s alleged fondness for Japanese culture caused many noble families to want to send their children to our institution. But with only two teachers (namely, myself and Minori-san), there was a limit to how many pupils we could take on.

  Right now, as a matter of fact, there were more than a thousand people who wanted to get into the school. Some nobles had actually gone so far as to negotiate with students who had already gotten in, asking them to cede or trade their spot in classes. If we were to offer a seat in the classroom as a prize, it would be very popular among the nobles. Even if a commoner with no interest in Japanese culture or otaku culture won the victory, they could sell the spot for a neat purse.

  “But Shinichi, did you not tell us that you had reached your limit when it came to students? Could you accept another ten or more pupils?”

&n
bsp; Soccer teams usually have eleven players, so at the very least we would have to have eleven slots ready for the winning team. That would mean a twenty percent increase in the size of the student body when we already just about had our hands full. Petralka was right to be worried. But...

  “We’d manage somehow,” I said.

  Truth be told, I had been considering bringing in Myusel—and maybe even the JSDF troopers stationed here—as temporary instructors for some time now. Myusel, in particular, could already read and write simple Japanese, so she could become something very important: our first local-born teacher. Actually, Myusel and Petralka were on about the same level when it came to Japanese language, but I figured we couldn’t have the empress running lessons in our classroom. We would, however, need that new maid for this to work.

  “Or...” I said, raising one finger, “maybe the prize could be some brand-new manga or other stuff from Japan.”

  This idea had come to me when I saw Minori-san fussing over her ball. When you tell people that something is a limited edition, you can usually see the gleam enter their eyes. It’s normal for uncommon items to be more valuable, but it’s purely a function of rarity, not quality or how much money was spent on distributing it.

  In that respect, I figured Japan and the Eldant Empire probably weren’t so different. Books weren’t common here, and if it was a brand-new publication from Japan, the value would be that much higher.

  “I see.” Prime Minister Zahar was quick to get on board.

  There didn’t seem to be a formal division of duties, exactly, but although both he and Garius were close to Petralka, it appeared that the knight handled military matters for the most part, while economic concerns were Zahar’s business.

  “That would solve our problem,” the Prime Minister said.

  If Amutech was fronting the prizes, they wouldn’t have to give away anything that might upset the balance of the carrot-and-stick system the Empire had going, and Zahar could rest easy.

  “Very well,” Petralka said. “Make it so.”

  After receiving the imperial blessing, I headed to the school, as was my custom after my audiences with Petralka.