Outbreak Company: Volume 13

by Ichiro Sakaki

  I was walking down the hallway after breakfast, thinking it over, when:

  “Myusel? Petralka?” I saw them squatting in the hallway, facing each other, seemingly talking about something. They looked unusually serious. Was there going to be another fight? I rushed over to them. “What’s wrong?!”

  They looked up at me, startled. “Sh-Shinichi? Get lost!” Petralka shouted.

  “Hrk?” I came to a screeching halt.

  She must have been awfully angry, because her face was bright red, and the look on her face and the tone of her voice were unusually sharp. My instincts told me to just do as she said, but from a distance of about two meters, I managed to squeak out, “N-No fighting... Let’s just all stay calm...”

  “No one is fighting here!”

  “Erk! Then why are you so mad?” I looked at Myusel with an expression I hoped communicated: What’s going on?

  When I caught Myusel’s eye, she shifted uncomfortably and looked at the ground before responding, “It’s... It’s nothing...”

  “Really?”

  “Y-Yes...” Her thighs sort of rubbed together in a way that was strangely erotic... or would have been, if not for the surreal click-clack-click from the forbidden armor. “It’s nothing unusual... except I wanna go to the friggin’ toilet so bad!”

  I kind of jumped.

  “Oh!” Myusel slapped her hands over her mouth, but it was too late. Oh yeah... the forbidden armor had a nasty tendency to make you spit out your most secret thoughts. Myusel, turning more and more red, tried to walk it back. “Sh-Shinichi-sama, I... I’m at my limit. I can’t hold it anymore!”

  “Oh, uh... Oh.”

  Red-faced and eyes brimming, nonetheless Myusel’s mouth continued running itself. She looked kind of perverse, like this was some bizarre S&M game, and... argh, what was this sudden impulse I was feeling, this desire to pick on her? No! Get it together!

  Okay. Being serious now.

  Anyway, it was natural enough. She’d been trapped in the armor since yesterday, meaning there’d been no chance to, you know, answer nature’s call. But she had been able to eat and drink like normal, meaning biological processes would eventually have their effect. She still couldn’t get the forbidden armor off, though. And so she and Petralka had been crouched in a discreet corner, trying to decide what to do—until I bumbled along.

  But now what? Having been clued in to what was going on, I could hardly just say, “Welp, okie dokie then!” and walk away. But I didn’t exactly have a lot of advice to offer...

  The limit was fast approaching. Both of them looked at the ground, trembling. This was starting to become an issue of, like, human dignity, I thought. Whereupon:

  “What’s goin’ on?”

  I turned and found Elvia standing behind me. She looked a little perplexed, but otherwise perfectly normal. At the very least, she didn’t look like someone straining to hold in number one. In fact, she looked downright relieved.

  “Elvia?”

  “Uh-huh?”

  I went over to her, then gently ushered her behind an especially prominent pillar. “Say, uh, Elvia, you’ve been wearing that thing since yesterday, right?” I whispered.

  “Yeah, so?”

  “And you ate a normal breakfast this morning.”

  “Minori-sama’s cooking’ll never beat Myusel’s, but it’s not half bad.” She sounded even more energized than normal.

  “And, uh... how are you doing with your, uhh, toilet needs?”

  In some cases, putting a question like that to someone of the opposite gender would be considered outright sexual harassment, and I wasn’t eager to ask—but just then was no time to hesitate. I swallowed my embarrassment and asked the question.

  Elvia’s reply was immediate: “Aw, the armor just absorbs it for ya.” She pointed downwards. Just between the legs was a little piece of armor, almost like it was designed to support the area...

  “Say what?!”

  “Yeah, this morning I just couldn’t wait any longer. I didn’t really mean to, but I—”

  “Okay, stop! I get it! I don’t need the details!” I said.

  Come to think of it, a lot of work suits that weren’t easy to get off once you put them on—things like spacesuits or jet pilots’ suits—came equipped with that sort of functionality. But who would have guessed the forbidden armor was one of them?

  This thing was getting weirder and weirder.

  I couldn’t exactly imagine myself going up to Myusel and exclaiming, “Hey, turns out they just suck it up for you, so go ahead and let ’er rip!” And if I did manage it, I could hardly imagine Myusel responding, “Oh, okay!” and taking my advice.

  “Uh, Elvia?”

  “Yeah? What’s up?”

  “Could you, uh... Could you tell Myusel and Petralka about that?”

  “About what?”

  “I mean, about not having to hold it...”

  “Oh! On it!” She went trundling off in the direction of the others. I spent just a second watching her go—and then I beat feet.

  So that solved the toilet problem, I guess. But there was no way Myusel and Petralka and Elvia could go on living like this. While I was unconscious from taking a giant metal fist to the head, a messenger had arrived from Prime Minister Zahar at the castle with word of some kind of description of the forbidden armor that had been discovered elsewhere in the archives. It told us a lot about the armor, but unfortunately, how to take it off wasn’t one of the things it explained.

  “So, to summarize...” I was in the living room with Minori-san, Hikaru-san, Myusel, and Elvia, along with Garius and Petralka, who would be staying with us. Lauron went back to the castle with Zahar-san’s messenger and the injured royal knights. I didn’t love that this meant Petralka had no bodyguards—but then again, she wasn’t exactly vulnerable in her current state, and she still had Garius with her, anyway.

  “To summarize, the forbidden armor automatically attaches itself to any woman who touches it, causes them to say everything that’s on their mind, and in a broad sense, can influence their actions.” Minori-san tapped a finger on her cheek as she spoke.

  “We don’t know who built it,” Garius said, crossing his arms with a frown, “and I certainly can’t imagine why. It’s far too indirect to prove a useful trap against one’s enemies. And if that’s what it were for, why even bother including the ability to deal with one’s... business?”

  He had a point.

  “I’m speculating here,” Minori-san said, “but I don’t think this armor is really ‘cursed’ or a trap at all. I think it might even have been intended to help soldiers in war.”

  “Help them?”

  “If you’ll pardon my asking, Minister Cordobal, do you have experience of real combat? Not just a sword duel, but—”

  “But a killing contest on an actual battlefield?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Several times. I haven’t exactly kept count, but I would estimate five or six different engagements, including close-quarters combat with soldiers from Bahairam,” Garius said.

  Wow. Garius had ceded the succession to Petralka, but until she got married or had a kid or something, he was next in line for the throne—I wouldn’t have expected them to risk him in front-line combat against enemy troops. I guess his I’m a hottie! exterior didn’t mean he couldn’t be a warrior at heart.

  “I see. Then this should sound familiar: you’re in the middle of a battle, and you know what you’re supposed to do, but you’re so agitated that you can’t seem to do it.”

  “Yes, I recognize that...” Garius nodded. “That is the point of intensive training—so that when the moment comes, a soldier need not think at all, but can trust his body to act on its own. But there are limits even to that.”

  “Uh-huh. But what if you could force your body to surpass those limits somehow?”

  Then Garius connected the dots, and his eyes went wide as he surveyed Petralka’s armor. “You think that’s what it’s for...?
”

  “Yes, sir. And I think you understand, too, that there’s a lot more to a battlefield than swinging your sword around. Unit cohesion is paramount in group combat, but sometimes excitement or panic can keep you from saying what needs to be said. All the more so for inexperienced soldiers.”

  “I see what you’re saying...”

  “Right. What if you could get around those sorts of problems by just automatically saying whatever was on your mind?”

  “Indeed. Experienced veterans might not need such help, but the untested...”

  What if you could unlock the utmost potential of even the most inexperienced soldier?

  “I think that might be why they lack helmets, too.”

  “Do you, now?”

  “Again, sir, you probably know this, but helmets obviously limit field of vision. If you’re not used to them, they make it impossible even to run forward, let alone wield a weapon.”

  You know, I thought I’d read in some manga somewhere that a full-face helmet made fighting extremely difficult. Humans derive a surprising amount of their sense of balance from their vision. You could find out exactly how much if you closed your eyes and tried to stand on one foot. With your eyes open, you could probably do it all day—or at least until your legs got tired—but with your eyes closed, it’s much harder.

  So a restricted field of vision made it harder to move. If you could have a wide field of vision but still be safely defended, that would be ideal. If those screens were at least as strong as bulletproof glass, they would certainly serve for armor. And they wouldn’t shatter like glass. But then there was extra armor around the arms and the lower legs—the parts of the body that held weapons and moved along the ground, the areas most likely to get hurt. Hold on... Could it be that the whole “mecha-girl” look was unexpectedly logical?

  “My guess is that this armor was created for new soldiers or conscripts—for amateurs. Japan no longer has a draft, but there are countries that claim every citizen should be a soldier and encourage everyone to keep weapons in their homes and participate in military training. Some of those countries have even had special weaponry made that’s adapted for use by nonprofessional soldiers.”

  Ah, now it all made sense. My dad, a light-novel author, had explained sort of the same thing to me: in Switzerland, he claimed, there was practically a rifle in every house. The country looks peaceful and has vowed to remain neutral in conflicts, but most of the adult men there are actually in the military reserves, and if it ever came to a fight, they could all be part of it. Supposedly there won’t be any more wars that involve the mobilization of entire populations, so maybe it’s merely a point of historical interest now. But still.

  Think of the FN P90 that you see in so many movies and anime—it has a sort of sci-fi look. The construction makes extensive use of polymers, and it looks a bit like some kind of tropical fish. You might think it was designed for the special forces, but apparently it was originally created for military reserves to keep at home to use in case of an emergency. It was developed as a so-called Personal Defense Weapon, or PDW, so features like small size, rust resistance, and intuitive usability were primary concerns—all because reserve troops were going to be keeping them in their houses.

  Hmmm... The more I thought about it, though, the more these things looked like sci-fi weapons. Who could possibly have made them? No country I was aware of in this world—not Eldant, not Bahairam, not Zwelberich—had the technology to do something like this, or even to conceive of the idea. In fact, Garius and the others were so unfamiliar with the concept that the armor hardly seemed to bother them at all, but for me, it was like a mob**e suit had suddenly walked into the middle of The Lo** ** the Rings.

  “What became of the other armors, if I may ask?” Garius said, looking around.

  “We put them in my room,” I answered. “In the office.”

  Five separate suits of “forbidden armor” had been discovered and brought to the mansion. Figuring it wasn’t a good plan to leave the remaining two lying around, I enlisted Brooke’s help to move them into my office.

  “I figured Brooke and I would be safe if we happened to accidentally touch them.”

  I had thought it might be a bad idea to leave the armor in Hikaru-san’s room, because frankly I wasn’t sure how the armor distinguished between men and women. If it was actually about external appearance, then there was a real danger that—

  Huh?

  If this stuff was really some kind of Personal Defense Weapon, then why did it only work for women? I guess it was possible we had happened to only find suits that worked for women, but wouldn’t it have been more convenient to make the armor work for anyone?

  Speaking of Hikaru-san, he was studying Myusel and the others, and finally said softly, “I don’t know. These things look a lot less like armor than like some sort of powered suit.”

  He was right about that. The design was simple—there was no complicated mask or helmet, none of the decorations or embellishments we associate with medieval weapons and armor. The only aesthetic here was practicality—a very modern touch.

  “Plus it can shoot beams and stuff...” Not that you couldn’t do something similar with magic. “Could it be...”

  There was a common trope, and not just in fantasy stories: ages in the past, there was some super-advanced civilization, so ancient it isn’t even in the history books. The civilization is destroyed for some reason, but some artifact of it remains—an artifact like this forbidden armor. That would explain the whole sci-fi mech look.

  “It seems the only thing we can be sure of is that we can’t be sure of anything,” Garius said, letting out a breath. “Including how to remove the armor. Most distressing.”

  “If it’s not cursed and it isn’t intended as a trap, then there has to be a way to take it off,” Minori-san said. “If it’s supposed to be for personal defense, then maybe there’s some kind of safety, something to keep it from accidentally coming off in combat.”

  “How do you mean?” Hikaru-san asked.

  “If the armor is really intended to protect inexperienced or untrained soldiers, then it wouldn’t be very useful if it came off too easily, would it? Maybe it’s designed so it can’t be removed until the mission is accomplished, or until all threats in the area have been eliminated or something.”

  “The mission?” I said. “Like, a combat mission?”

  I didn’t think there were any threats around Myusel and the others right now—no enemies to speak of. So did that mean it was about accomplishing some sort of mission? But it was a total accident that the girls had put on the armor. There was no mission. “Does that mean... they can never take the armor off?”

  Myusel, Petralka, and Elvia let out a cry.

  “And we certainly can’t take Her Majesty back to the castle in this condition,” Garius said gravely.

  Yeah, it would probably cause a bit of a stir if Petralka went around looking like that. Not to mention that if rumor got out that the empress had been trapped in some sort of “cursed armor,” things could get out of hand in a hurry. Plus, in that case, suspicion would probably fall on Garius before anyone else. I’m sure he didn’t want that. As I’ve mentioned, if Petralka were to be conveniently gotten out of the way somehow, he would be next in line for the throne.

  “Our people at the castle have been instructed to search for any possible clue. Luckily, it seems that eating, drinking, and other... daily necessities are not impacted, so while it pains me to say this, Her Majesty will simply have to endure for a while. As will you and your household, Shinichi.”

  “I wondered if that might be the case.”

  Myusel and Elvia, of course, and the rest of us, had no choice but to roll with this bizarre situation. I would probably have to suspend classes at school for a while.

  I looked once again at Myusel and the others in their forbidden armor, and all I could do was sigh.

  I gathered up the laundry and took it out into the yard. It was a p
erfectly ordinary, everyday chore, but with the massive, powerful arms of the “forbidden armor,” I could easily carry a load that would have been a heaping armful otherwise. In fact, because I wasn’t using my own hands, it didn’t really feel like I was carrying anything, and I was more worried that I might drop some clothes along the way without realizing it.

  After an entire day wearing the armor, I had started to feel like I was getting the hang of moving in it. When you grabbed something, there was no sense that you were touching it, which was confusing at first. Seeking more tactile feedback, I would put more strength into my fingers and end up crushing a dinner plate or something. I felt no bodily fatigue. Nor were there actually any... elimination problems, although even knowing this, I found myself hesitant—but in general, I was able to lead a basically normal life despite being unable to remove the armor. In fact, it made some things easier.

  Not that I would go so far as to suggest I didn’t want to be able to take off the armor. For example, I couldn’t take a bath like this, and I was afraid my body odor might get so bad I couldn’t hide it with perfume. Or perhaps, as with my bathroom needs, the armor had some way of attending to my personal hygiene...

  I looked up at the blue sky, perfect laundry weather, and began to dry the wash.

  How... How can I get this armor off?

  If I had correctly followed what Minori-sama and the others had been discussing earlier, the forbidden armor couldn’t be removed until all threats in the area had been eliminated, or until some kind of mission or objective had been completed.

  “Objective...” I hadn’t put on this armor in order to obtain any objective. But the armor seemed to believe I had one. Perhaps one I didn’t even realize was there. “An objective... A goal?”

  “Request confirmation of goal designation.”

  “Huh?!”

  I dropped the laundry in my giant metal hand. Was it just me, or had I just heard a voice? I didn’t recognize it, and it seemed to come from nowhere, surprising me.