Combatants Will Be Dispatched - Volume 7 - Chapter 1.4

4

“Hey, Boss, there’s a supopocchi lying over there! Seems like we’re in Bashin tribe territory! Since we’re here, why don't we take it home with us?”

“It’s not just lying there. The Bashins impaled it on the tree branch to dry it out.”

The cheerful, hungry chimera leads our group as we trek into the dangerous depths of the woods.

Rose isn’t the only one who’s in a good mood.

“Finally, our time to shine! Demons live to fight! I’ll show ’em what an elite soldier of a demon lord’s army can do!”

"The whole maid bit was starting to mess with my head a little. Time to get back to what a combat chimera was made to do. Sorry, Heine, but I’ll be taking most of the glory on the battlefield.”

The POWs who are usually employed as green electricity generators also sound enthused, eager to take out their pent-up frustration on the enemy.

And...

"We live to fight, too! After all, it’s even in our names! We’re Combat Agents!”

“Busty and Rusty can wait in the back. Don’t get in our way!”

“There was talk of dragons, but a lizard’s a lizard at the end of the day. I’ll admit, I was scared when I first heard about ’em, but they’re a damned sight less scary than the giant robots the capes use!”

My colleagues also puff out their chests, resigned to fighting dragons and unwilling to let the locals have all the glory.

“D-did you just call me ‘Busty’?” asks Heine.

“Could you not call me ‘Rusty,’ please?” Russell adds.

Since this is our first combat operation in a while, we’ve got a lot of people eager for blood in our little party.

It's me in the lead, two combat chimeras, the booby slave, and three expendable Combat Agents.

"Hey, Six, given that she’s throwing us into this meat grinder, where the hell did Alice get off to?”

"I mean, she has her problems, but at least she’s sharp. It's a little unnerving thinking you're in charge down here.”

“Look at the party composition, man. It’s four dudes and three girls. I mean, sure, Alice is an android, but if she were here, it'd at least be fifty-fifty. C’mon, man, think before you let her walk off like that.”

The expendables complain about Alice’s absence.

“This is a recon-in-force mission to check in on the giant monsters and the Hiiragi tribe. There’s no need to bring Alice. She’s busy enough as it is building up Hideout City. Leave the rough jobs to me.”

“Um...why am I being considered a girl for the count?” asks the cross-dressing chimera with a troubled look, but no one responds to his comment.

Just then:

“Something smells good. Boss, are you getting a whiff of it, too? What a delicious aroma... like roasting meat...”

Rose, leading the charge, sniffs hungrily at the air.

I guess combat chimeras have a sharp sense of smell. Russell is also sniffing frantically...

“Yeah, something’s burning. It’s a pretty nice aroma... No, wait, this smell!”

He takes off toward the scent.

“Russell, what’s going on?! Don’t go off on your own—it’s dangerous!”

“Don’t try to claim it all for yourself! If there’s feral meat out there, we should split it!”

“I’m not just gonna eat something I found lying around. And what the heck is feral meat anyway? Heine, this smell... It’s Isaac! Isaac is burning! The scent’s coming from just up ahead!”

We follow Russell to a small clearing in the woods where a griffin with wounds all over its body lies resting.

“Isaaaac!” screams Heine with tears in her eyes as she rushes to the griffin’s side.

“Miss Heine, you can’t just name it to try to claim ownership! I want the thigh meat!”

“You idiot! Isaac is my pet! He’s not for eating!”

Heine clings to the griffin, then tries to shield it from Rose with her back.

“Oh, right, I forgot you used to ride a griffin. I was wondering what happened to it. I guess you were keeping it out here?”

“I couldn’t do anything about being taken captive, but I didn’t want to drag Isaac into it, so I let him go free. Griffins are strong, so I figured he’d be fine out in the woods. But...it seems I was wrong. Oh, Isaac, I’m so sorry...”

As Heine weeps, Rose continues to eye Isaac as if he’s a roast chicken.

“Hey, if Isaac was released into the woods, that means he doesn’t belong to anyone, right?”

“...R-Rose, 1-let me just note that griffins don’t taste very good. If you try to eat Isaac under these circumstances, I'm gonna find it hard to keep thinking of you as a cousin.”

Russell's face twitches as he holds his hands out to Isaac and chants.

“You know, I chewed on Isaac a little when I fought Heine back in the day, but I’m pretty sure I didn’t like the taste because there wasn’t any seasoning. But he smells amazing right now... I think I could really warm up to it.”

“Stop it! Get away from him! Russell, hurry up and heal him!”

As Heine desperately shields Isaac, Russell’s hands begin glowing.

“Oh, cool. Water magic having healing properties is totally a fantasy trope. Hey, Rusty, I ended up getting a certain something caught in my zipper earlier. Think you can you heal that?”

“Rusty is both adorable and can use magic, as for the other chimera.. .sigh...”

"What about me, huh? Depending on what you were about to say, I may change my mind and eat you instead!”

“Could you guys shut up for a second? I need quiet to concentrate!”

They're making a scene in front of the griffin, but do they understand what’s actually happening here?

The fact that Isaac’s lying there with burns means that the one who gave it those wounds should still be nearby...

“...? Hey, it’s gone dark all of a—”

Heine looks up at the sky and falls silent.

Seeing her reaction, the expendable Combat Agents do the same and brandish their weapons.

As the sun is eclipsed by something above us and a darkness envelops our little party, I throw a flash bang into the air—

"Raaaaagh! Take that!”

A dragon, the most powerful lifeform on this planet, dives toward us, but the flash bang explodes in a cacophony of noise and light. The creature plummets to the ground, its eyes damaged.

“G-g-g-g-good job, Six! Nice use of your vast experience!”

“U-using a stun grenade to bring down a dragon in the air is common sense for anyone who plays MonPcm\ In the end, dragons are just giant lizards! Hah!”

“Bwah-ha-ha! Taste modern firepower, savage beast! Now’s our chance—get ’em!”

I don’t mind watching expendables get excited by my achievement.

“Sheesh, all I did was throw a grenade... Hey Rose, did you see how awesome your commander—”

“Gaaaaah!”

The three locals who were gazing up at the sky are all clawing at their blinded eyes.

“Screeeee!”

Then the dragon, having crashed into the ground, suddenly begins to thrash about wildly in a blind fury, cutting down the trees around it.

“Ack! S-Six, do something! It’s totally out of control!”

“Six, you idiot! Why'd you do that?! You knocked out three of our teammates with your dumbass grenade!”

A dragon large enough to level a mansion wildly thrashing about on the ground makes for a pretty intimidating sight.

“How was I supposed to know that would happen?! The dragons in the game don’t react like this!”

I make excuses to the expendables as I unload rounds from my assault rifle. However—

"The hell? Our shots aren’t working! Someone call in some heavier firepower! I don't have enough points to do it!”

Unfortunately, the clean living I've been doing lately means I’m a tad short of Evil Points.

But unlike me, this lot are pretty scummy, so I'm sure they’ve still got plenty of points...

'''''..........'''''

"Hey!”

I can’t help but shout at the expendables for not responding to my request, and they reply testily.

“I mean, what else were we supposed to do?! It’s lonely at night in the city!”

"We'd go crazy if we didn’t call in sniff from Japan using our points!”

“Hard for you, with a harem squad, to know how bad it is for the rest of us!”

So they spent all their Evil Points on pom. huh?

I want to chew them out, but for some reason, I can’t bring myself to do it.

It feels like I did something similar a while back...

“U-urmph.. .1.. .1 can finally see again...”

As I try to fish out the memory I’ve sealed deep in the recesses of my brain, Rose’s voice brings me back to the present.

“Okay, our weapons aren’t doing much to it. You guys take care of it with your magical stuff.”

“I can't deal with that rampaging thing! It'll crush me if I get too close! Why don’t you use your whateverbuzzsaw, Boss?!”

My whateverbuzzsaw is also a melee weapon.

“Tch, that’s a hell of a thing to do to us, you bastard...! I didn’t expect to have an ally blind me like that!”

"Heine, let’s kill him before we hit the dragon. We're in the woods; we just need to tell them the dragon ate him."

As Rose’s eyesight returns, Heine and Russell also get worked up.

“Oh? You two losers have never beaten me before. What makes you think you can do it now? I dare you to try me!”

As I taunt them and gesture for them to come at me, their faces start turning red with indignation...

...before suddenly paling as the blood leaves their features.

"B-Boss...behind...”

The cacophony of the dragon’s tantrum has died down.

If the three of them have their eyesight back, then it must mean the dragon...

"Retreat!”

“““Ahhhhhhh!”””

I start running without bothering to look back, feeling the rumble of the dragon’s footsteps behind me.

As I dash forward, I pull the pin from a second flash grenade and toss it over my shoulder.

The flash bang explodes with a loud sound, but I don’t hear an accompanying screech of agony from the dragon. Evidently, it’s already wised up to the danger posed by my grenades.

Dammit, the flash bangs aren’t going to do much to slow it down.

I have no choice. I guess I’ll have to use my dependable colleagues as a distraction...!

“...Hey! Where the hell did they go?! Did they use me as bait?!”

I don’t know if they turned tail or hid using optical camo, but the three Combat Agents are nowhere in sight.

What assholes! Using their own allies as bait! That’s why agents of evil corporations can’t be trusted!

...It’s then that the griffin, healed by Russell’s magic, stands up and gazes intently at Heine, its former owner.

“Isaac, you can move again! Good boy, let us on!”

"..."

When Heine runs over to the griffin, it looks toward the dragon before very clearly turning its head away from Heine.

“What’s wrong, Isaac? It’s me! You can’t have forgotten who I am.”

Even as Heine shakes the griffin back and forth, it seems to pout with its beak and bleats.

“Miss Heine, Isaac is upset and thinks you abandoned it in the woods!”

“Heine! Apologize! Apologize to Isaac!”

“Isaac, I-I let you go because I was trying to look out for you! I didn’t want to let you go! It hurt to do it... But I didn’t have any choice. I was going to be enslaved, so you’d have ended up being abused, too...!”

As Heine and the griffin start playing out their little drama, I use a piece of equipment I just ordered from Earth, an enhanced tear gas bomb, on the dragon.

“Graaaaaaaaaaaaaagh!”

Tear gas works on dragons! I need to tell Alice about this!

I turn to the others intent on running as the dragon is suffering from the tear gas—

“C’mon, listen to me, Isaac. I’ve known you since you were small. I’ve always thought of you as my little brother... Ow! Why are you pecking at me?!”

“Miss Heine, Isaac is a girl griffin.”
“I was wondering why you chose that name... So you just didn’t know?”

“Who cares about all of that! Just hurry up!”

The three of them come to their senses and start to panic.

“I’m so sorry, Isaac! When we get back to Hideout City, I’ll use the money Alice gave me to buy you the best meats! And I’m never going to let you go again!”

At Heine’s desperate persuasion, the griffin spreads its wings and kneels down, signaling to us to get on.

We all hop on the griffin’s back, but it seems our combined weight is too much for it, and it starts thrashing about.

“Hey, what the...? Isaac can usually carry five fully armed ores. What’s weighing us down?!”

“It’s the Boss! Technically, it’s the Boss’s armor that's heavy!”

“Rose, let’s just kick him off! .. .Hey! Let go of my leg!”

I grab Russell’s leg, determined to take him down with me if he so much as tries to kick me off, but then I realize that while I could probably survive a fighting retreat through the woods, these three don’t have the experience to avoid becoming a tasty snack.

“You lot are going to owe me when we get back to base!”

I jump off the griffin, activate my R-Buzzsaw, and face off against the cautious dragon.

“I’ll buy you some time so you weaklings can get out of here! Even if the dragon follows you, Hideout City defenses should be able to handle it at that point!”

Free of my weight, the griffin spreads its wings and looks up at the sky.

“Boss! If you get back safely, I’ll share some of my dinner with you!”

Given how fixated Rose is with food, I guess she’s trying to be generous.

“Considering how much you’ve groped me, I’m pretty sure I'll still be ahead in terms of favors.”

“You’ve hiked up my skirt so often, you owe me! So forget about me repaying you!”

As for these two, I’m going to make them pay with their bodies when we get back to the hideout.

Just then, I hear the sound of the griffin kicking off the ground and taking off behind me.

“Compared to giant robots and transforming superheroes, you’re just an overgrown flying lizard! You’re nothing compared to a Kisaragi agent!”

“Graaaaaaaaaaaawr!”

"Boss!”