Outbreak Company: Volume 3

by Ichiro Sakaki

  The ashen faces of the JSDF players were visible even from this distance. If the goalkeeper thoughtlessly tried to block a shot like that, there was no guarantee they would survive.

  The knights’ team, on the other hand, seemed practically overjoyed.

  “Did you see that?!” they were exclaiming from their bench. “This is the very specialty of the First Knights!” Standing by the bench was a collection of men and women in robes that made them look very much like wizards. Apparently, they were using magic...

  Suddenly, I heard two voices from just behind me.

  “My goodness! An overwhelming opening gambit!”

  “So it would seem.”

  I jerked my head around and saw Matoba-san and Prime Minister Zahar standing with microphones in their hands.

  When did they get those?!

  The Prime Minister stood alone, but Matoba-san was accompanied by a member of the Royal Guard, who was interpreting everything he said. This wasn’t because the man spoke Japanese; he simply took the understanding granted to him by his magic ring and repeated it verbatim. The rings were only good for one-on-one interactions; they wouldn’t help the people in the stands understand Matoba-san’s words as they were broadcast through the microphone. That was why “interpreting” like this was necessary.

  Apparently the two old men (plus one interpreter) intended to commentate the soccer game. I didn’t recall making these preparations...

  “The Jay Ess Dee Eff team seems quite stunned.”

  “Well, I doubt they’ve ever experienced a ball traveling faster than the speed of sound before.”

  “Tell me, don’t you use magic back in your country?”

  “No, I’m afraid we don’t. We had to permit the use of magic here, though, in light of the beast people’s tremendous physical and athletic abilities.”

  “Certainly. What else could you do?”

  They sounded as if they weren’t even involved. Which, I guess, they weren’t really.

  “Erm... It seems rather one-sided,” Petralka muttered.

  In just a brief period, the knights’ team had scored a whole ten points. I guess that’s what happens when your kickoffs blast straight from the kicker to the goal. On the rare occasions when the JSDF managed to get a foot on the ball, they would be slammed in the face with wind magic, and the opposing team would pluck the ball away from them. The Japanese armed forces were as helpless as babes.

  This was all exactly what I had been worried about. There was a real question of whether it was acceptable for the wizards to “play” from the bench. Strictly speaking, they weren’t directly involved in the game. Even those hyper-speed kicks were only facilitated by “tunnels” of acceleration magic the wizards laid down; it was the knights on the field who actually kicked the ball.

  “This Jay Ess Dee Eff of yours is not so impressive after all,” Petralka said, sounding disappointed.

  “They’re, uh, considered pretty impressive by human standards,” I answered, a bit put out. This was soccer beyond anything a person from Earth could imagine. We could have put a World Cup team on that field and they would have had problems. The JSDF squad was composed of guys who knew about soccer, but they weren’t pros or anything.

  The commentary continued as these thoughts ran through my head.

  “Ooh! Something appears to be happening on the JSDF team.”

  “What could it be? Several of them have—what are those?”

  I didn’t know exactly what was going on, but Matoba-san sounded excited. In fact, he was about as happy as I had ever heard him. He had a pair of binoculars in one hand and was looking down at the field.

  “Koganuma has her 9mm out! She’s drawn her pistol!”

  “.........What?”

  Maybe I misheard him. Because I’m sure he didn’t just say...

  “Oh ho! Perhaps inspired by Koganuma, the other JSDF players have drawn their Type 89s! That’s a small automatic weapon which—”

  “Guh?!”

  They have their guns out and you’re doing commentary?! How did they even get in here with those?!

  I was just about to cut in on Matoba-san’s narration when—

  brrraaaaapppppp!!

  The air was filled with the sound of small-arms fire.

  Now, to be clear, even a small-caliber gun is still a gun, and it makes a serious noise, but after hearing the ball fly around at subsonic speeds, this was really nothing.

  A Type 89 is fully automatic. Technically it’s an assault rifle, but it has an automatic firing mode like a machine gun. You can just hold down the trigger and it’ll spit out ten rounds a second, a shower of 5.56mm bullets.

  But come on—!

  “Incredible! This is incredible! The JSDF is meeting the oncoming soccer ball with a hail of Type 89 fire!”

  “Say what?!” I exclaimed.

  I looked at the field, and that was exactly what was happening. The ball came flying at the speed of sound, and the army people shot at it with their rifles. Minori-san alone had her 9mm pistol out, but in the rain of bullets it didn’t make much difference.

  Now, you might think that a hail of small-arms fire would lead to one deflated soccer ball. And you would be right.

  Normally.

  It appeared that a magical barrier of some sort was protecting the ball (it must have been, or the ball would have exploded every time it was kicked), and none of the shots succeeded in striking their target.

  Gunfire, however, is still gunfire. The kinetic energy of a wall of bullets traveling three times the speed of sound, impacting the ball again and again, had to have some sort of effect. The ball was ever so slightly diverted on its course.

  Thud.

  It was the same sound the ball had made earlier, but rather than flying into the goal, it lofted high into the air, over the wall protecting the spectator seating. A collective exclamation rose from the crowd.

  Ooooooh!

  The spectators might not have been able to explain the nuances of the game, but they already grasped that the point was to kick the ball into the opposing team’s goal. They also understood that the JSDF, which had been at the mercy of the knights until that moment, had just found a way to fight back.

  “Did you see that?” Minori-san exclaimed, throwing her arms up in excitement. “The JSDF isn’t so powerless after all!”

  Microphones all around the stadium picked up and broadcast her voice. This Minori-san was nothing like the laid-back, warm and fuzzy girl I knew. Or maybe this was the real her...

  “At last, the armed forces succeed in defending! Amazing,” Matoba-san said, sounding practically excited.

  I mean, I guess it was amazing... in a sense. Full-auto weapons or no, hitting an object traveling at practically the speed of sound was no mean feat. So, yes, amazing! Sure!

  “Master?” Myusel looked at me, probably wondering why I suddenly had my head in my hands. “Is something the matter?”

  “No,” I muttered, “nothing at all.”

  What the heck was this? It wasn’t soccer.

  Normally the use of weapons like that would be totally inexcusable, but insofar as their opponents had magic and the JSDF had no way to fight back against it, who could say it was unfair for them to pull out their guns?

  “Now it seems the royal knights are really getting into it,” Zahar remarked.

  “Indeed it does,” Matoba-san responded. “Oh! What’s this? One of the knights is—flying?”

  A member of the opposing team had jumped straight into the air, almost ten meters off the ground. Magic again, no doubt. What was more, the ball floated up along with him.

  “A high-jump shot?!” Matoba-san exclaimed. “Incredible! Astonishing! A veritable meteor strike!”

  Boy, he really is enjoying himself.

  Right at that moment, though, I didn’t have the time to appreciate discovering this unexpected side of the old bureaucrat. The floating knight executed a bicycle kick, and now the ball wasn’t just traveling at an ungod
ly speed, it was coming down from overhead. The JSDF had no answer.

  “Ah, but what’s this? The knights’ team has overreached itself! He’s lost control—the ball is going to miss!!”

  And so it happened: maybe shooting from midair was too much to ask, because the ball missed the goal, slamming into the ground just in front of the net and bouncing way back up into the air.

  “Say! What’s that? Has the JSDF team just thrown something? Is that a hand grenade?”

  No sooner had Matoba-san spoken than the grenade exploded in midair.

  The force of the blast pushed the ball back down to the ground, where a waiting JSDF trooper started dribbling it. The wizards on the bench began intoning spells to throw up obstacles, but a flashbang from the armed-forces team interrupted them. The mages couldn’t aim their spells when they couldn’t see.

  And so, at last, the JSDF scored their first goal.

  “How about that?!” Minori-san howled.

  “And the JSDF puts its first point on the board!” Matoba-san said.

  “Will this turn the tide of the game?”

  “It’s always possible.”

  Yeah, maybe, but the knights still had a definite advantage, and they were quick to seize the initiative again.

  “Goodness! That burst of wind magic has blown away the JSDF players! Surely that’s against the rules?”

  “Ah, but the wizards weren’t targeting the JSDF troops, only their ‘eigh-ty-nines.’”

  Basically, when the troops were about to fire, the wizards released wind magic and scattered them. Naturally, the mages weren’t players themselves, and since they were technically aiming for the Type 89s the JSDF squad was holding, not the players as such, they shouldn’t get yellow or red cards. That appeared to be the logic, anyway.

  The result of this little strategy was that an already serious score deficit only got bigger...

  ...and bigger...

  “Now, what’s this?” Matoba-san said. “Has there been a breakdown on the JSDF team?”

  “They appear to be arguing about something,” Zahar said.

  For some reason, we couldn’t hear what the team was saying; maybe the mics weren’t in the right place. I could see Minori-san, looking as crazy as the day Elvia had stolen her golden ball, shouting and being restrained by her fellow players. Given the way she was looking, she was probably trying to bring a tank onto the field, or an RPG or something.

  Not that I didn’t sympathize with her... a lot.

  “Right, things seem to have settled down among the Jay Ess Dee Eff team.”

  “Yes, they’ve calmed down the member who was making a scene. Our armed forces certainly exemplify restraint and endurance.”

  “I’m sure I don’t know what she wanted, but I’m glad she’s come to her senses.”

  “The JSDF is very much recognized for its discipline. They must always be in control of themselves.”

  I wasn’t sure how I felt about Matoba-san waxing proud about the group that had tried to kill me. But hey, better keep it to myself.

  The first game ended with victory going to the First Knights, while I was still trying to fathom what had happened.

  So the first game, between the knights and the JSDF, turned out to be totally outrageous. You could hardly even call it soccer. What was it? Don’t ask me. No question, though, any soccer-type person who saw what I had just seen might well faint clean away. But it could have been worse—as the second game proved.

  “Goodness! The dwarf team appears to be using some sort of new magical tactic!”

  “Ahh. That’s a clay puppet. A standard dwarf spell.”

  “Yes, but marionette or no, doesn’t this make twelve people on the field? And that’s against the—Wait! Did he climb in? Did he just climb in?!”

  “Indeed he did.”

  “A dwarf has just entered the clay puppet as if he were being sucked inside! Are they trying to suggest that this brings them back down to eleven players?!”

  No words. I had no words.

  The short-legged dwarves were at a natural disadvantage against the tall, sinewy elves. Apparently, their plan was to use earthen marionettes—essentially, golems—to even the field, almost as if they were donning powered exoskeletons. Before I knew what was happening, eleven clay giants, each nearly three meters tall, were standing on the field. The bodies basically looked like oversized dwarves, but they didn’t have heads; instead, a dwarf would ride in them, the top half of the pilot sticking out where the head should be. All I could do was stare.

  And their opponents’ response?

  “The elf team is doing something—oh! What’s that?”

  “It’s large-scale magic. An enlarged version of tifu murottsu. Ho! They’ve succeeded in blowing over the clay puppets.”

  “The huge surface area of those suits makes them especially vulnerable to those gale-force winds.”

  The elves had brought wind magic to bear as if it were a hail of bullets.

  “Hah! Hah! Hah!” The high-pitched laugh came from the elf team captain, Loek. “Your ugly little dolls are nothing but trash for our wind sprites to blow away!”

  The wind was invisible but unmissable, gusting everywhere. It caused the dwarves’ golems to weave drunkenly from side to side. It was like Matoba-san said: their huge size made them easy targets. (I can hear some design otaku now: “I told you humanoid weapons would be at a distinct disadvantage!”) And it’s true, most weapons are built to have a slim profile in order to reduce vulnerable front surface area. From that perspective, a giant humanoid is sort of asking for it.

  Romilda, however, was unimpressed. “We won’t lose to youuuuu!” she bellowed.

  The clay giants slumped to the ground as if exhausted, down on all fours—but that was also the same pose dwarves used when casting magic.

  “Aha! The dwarf team appears to be building a barrier to protect against the wind!”

  “Oh, I don’t think that’s all they’re doing.”

  “Oh my goodness! They’re turning the soccer field into a maze! And does it feel a little more slanted than usual to you? Look! The ball is rolling toward the elf goal!”

  Yep: the color commentators were right. The dwarves had built some sort of labyrinth structure to ward off the elves’ wind attack—and by tilting it, they could cause the ball to roll toward the other team’s goal of its own accord.

  What strategy! Dwarves may not look like much for battle-planning, and yet here on this field—!

  Okay, forget it.

  I knew it was a little late to be complaining, but this wasn’t soccer anymore. It wasn’t anything.

  Not that the elves were ones to complain. Or anyone, for that matter. In fact...

  “Ahh, so that’s how it’s to be! Most interesting!”

  “So it is. A great many of their tactics would be highly applicable on the battlefield. This has indeed been a useful exercise.”

  “Oh—Master! Master! The elves stopped the ball.”

  Petralka, Garius, and Myusel—in short, everyone around me—were enjoying the spectacle immensely. I could hardly jump up, flip over a table, and exclaim, “This isn’t soccer!!” Not least because there weren’t any tables here.

  And at last...

  “The game is over! What a truly, profoundly close contest, but that final push gave the dwarves the victory!”

  “The home-field advantage is one thing, but taking advantage of the field—that’s something else!”

  This was live commentary? Two old men jabbering and making bad puns?

  I finally resolved to stop worrying and love this bomb.

  Every cloud has a silver lining, they say, and every bitter trial has an end...

  Okay, so this wasn’t anything that dramatic, but eventually enough mind-spinning games went by that it was time for lunch. Sweet, sweet lunch.

  As she promised, Myusel had brought a packed meal for me. She made delicious food. It’s like... most heroines in manga and light novels are bad coo
ks, but I remembered my dad, a light novel author himself, saying that that was mostly so they could get an episode of easy laughs out of putting her in the kitchen. Myusel, for one, didn’t fit the stereotype. Her stuff was seriously good.

  Granted, during my time as a home security guard, I pretty much had two food groups: junk food, and my mom’s cooking. So I didn’t exactly have the world’s most refined palate.

  “Here you are, Master,” Myusel said, holding out a basket to me.

  Hm?

  We were still in Petralka’s viewing box, but something felt off. Myusel had made me lunches before, but it was unusual for her to simply pass me a basket without opening the top. Normally, she was so into these packed lunches that it seemed like she would practically have spooned the food into my mouth if I asked; she always opened the basket and sometimes even set the food out on place mats.

  Did she want me to open the basket myself this time? I took it from her, somewhat perplexed.

  “Wha...?”

  I froze, and my eyes went wide. There was something very familiar there. Very familiar, and yet something I had gone a very long time without.

  “Are these... onigiri?” And they were: little triangular rice balls. They were even wrapped in nori, just like they were supposed to be.

  Close inspection revealed small differences in size and shape from one to the next; obviously, Myusel had hand-made them. I mean, that made sense, but how in the world did she—?

  “Myusel?”

  “I see you’re surprised, Master,” she said shyly, her cheeks flushed. “I asked Minori-sama to share some ‘rice’...”

  I took another look at the onigiri.

  Of course I knew that the JSDF troops sometimes imported things from Japan, including favorite foods. And yes, I had sometimes remarked how nice that was at breakfast, when Myusel would have heard me. But I never once expected her to take it to heart, then go out of her way to get Minori-san to bring her some rice. I assumed Minori-san had also taught her both how to cook the rice and how to make the rice balls. All just so I could have onigiri for lunch.