Editing HEAVY OBJECT:EX Chapter 2 (section)

===Part 9===

They left Skuld in the depression with her hands still bound behind her back.

Quenser got up and spoke to his awful friend.

“Let’s go, Heivia. Let’s end this.”

“Are you serious? We’re going to run through this catastrophe on our own two legs!? They’d better make a movie out of this!!”

Heivia tearfully complained as he ran alongside the other boy. They left the jungle and reached the plain covered in lovely flowers. The ground had been torn into here and there, leaving the dark soil exposed. There were also plenty of smashed helicopters and armored trucks lying on their sides. That was the fate of the armored weapons that had instantly welded their wires on with aluminum or iron oxide. Soldiers performing first aid were gathered behind them like bugs preparing for winter underneath a stone.

Quenser joined a group of them, tapped on the armored truck with the back of his hand and spoke to a medic wearing a military uniform and a nurse cap.

“Hey, you alive? Can anyone move? And do you know how many of these battered shields can still run?”

“I-I can share my map data with you. But what do you hope to accomplish against that monster? Everyone’s too scared to do anything.”

“You say they can’t do anything, but they’ve got two hands and two feet, right? Then you can break though their cowardice by telling them to help out if they want a new pick-up line to use at the bar!”

Another blinding light and deafening explosion illuminated and tore up the late night flower field. The giants were duking it out. The Princess was having a hard time of it in her First Generation, but not because she could not hit her enemy. She simply could not pierce the enemy’s onion armor because the pieces would gather at the predicted point of contact.

Quenser slapped the medic girl’s back to cheer her up and then similarly asked for help over the radio. Meanwhile, he ran out from behind that puny shield while staying low to the ground.

Heivia looked about to die despite not having been hit by anything yet.

“What are we supposed to do!? If all of the Princess’s low-stability plasma cannons can’t break through, then how are we supposed to damage it from the surface!?”

“Heivia, everyone’s working hard right now. At the moment, we have fewer minds than weapons. I don’t know how much a student like me can manage, but we need to get our hands and feet moving!”

“I’m asking what good that will do! Outdated bullets and shells can’t get through armor that can withstand a nuke!!”

“Don’t be so quick to say that.”

Immediately after Quenser’s baffling answer, a unique sound came from the surviving armored trucks. They were attacking the Trinity Style from behind while the Princess attacked from the front. Instead of weapons using gunpowder, they were firing wires from the five meter crossbow-like devices. The violent roar sounded a lot like a thick flat spring snapping after being bent too far.

The long arrows were launched one after another, but they did not stab at their target with their weight and speed. That would only have gotten them deflected by the Object’s armor. Instead, they used aluminum and iron oxide chemical reactions that created instantaneous heat of a few thousand degrees to fuse onto the armor panels.

However…

“Ahh, I knew it,” lamented Heivia as he ran through the battlefield of flashing light and explosions. “That isn’t going to stop it! The trucks are being swung around instead!!”

They could see the soldiers scrambling out and diving to the ground just before the armored trucks were pulled up into the air. They never could have reacted that quickly if they had not already been prepared to escape at a moment’s notice. None of them had thought they could win.

Except one, that is.

“That’s what I wanted.”

“What?”

“Hey, Heivia. It’s true the Trinity Style looks invincible at first glance. That fifty meter and two hundred thousand ton mass is made up of small robots that can remake the entire thing to match any conditions, environment, or enemy. It’s the ultimate Second Generation. No, since it can fight no matter the weather or environment, maybe it’s gone back to being a premium model First Generation.”

“What does it matter when we can’t beat the thing!?”

“Have you forgotten? All it’s doing is rearranging its materials. It doesn’t have a factory inside to create new blocks. It hasn’t overturned the conservation of mass.”

“If you’re actually planning to explain this, then just do it already.”

“If they’re prettying up one spot, wrinkles have to appear elsewhere. I’ll put it so simply an idiot could understand: It wants to make its armor thicker, but where is it taking those parts from? When it takes that armor away, won’t it be thinner there?”

Quenser and Heivia jumped inside an armored truck lying on its side. It could no longer drive around on its tires, but the turret-like weapon on the top still just barely moved.

“Wait, so you mean…?”

“That’s right.”

Quenser pointed at the screen and Heivia took care of the actual aiming.

Around them, several welded-on wires and their heavy trucks swung through the air before finally breaking off, flying into the distance, and stabbing into the ground. However, careful observation showed that something was different.

The wires were not snapping and the welding was not coming off.

The small robots – that were called Dvergr according to Skuld – and the armor panels were being peeled away. The Object was a two hundred thousand ton mass, but each individual robot was only the size of a brick. It was not that difficult to forcibly tear them away with the weight and centrifugal force.

This was helped by…no, caused by…

“The armor on the very back should be a lot thinner with the Princess’s main cannons hitting it on the front.”

Quenser grinned.

They had invaded Skuld’s cockpit and he had seen the off-ramp curve of the tunnel on the way there. The other hatches had likely been hidden by the robots and armor panels, but if all three cockpits were positioned at the three corners of an even triangle, then he could take a good guess where the other two were.

He made sure to point at and verbally repeat each item on the screen.

“I’ve removed the safety, the fuse is set, and the final targeting is complete. I just followed the help guide, but is that enough? Will this work, Heivia!?”

“Yeah!! But just to be sure, cover your ears and open your mouth! I’m gonna fire!!”

“Then fire right up the filthy ass inside that naked apron!!”

The armored truck shook from the blast of firing.

This scene may have been out of place in the modern age of clean wars.

It may have been no different from firing a single puny shell.

But at this moment, things were different.

An intense shaking had to have reached the cockpit. The Pilot Elite who felt protected even from a nuke would have been filled with supposedly impossible fear.

And they would have learned that they were under attack from the Princess in the front and the tanks, armored trucks, and shoulder-fired launchers from every other direction.

The Trinity Style’s round armor had pieces missing like toy blocks had been removed. The contents were exposed, especially on the back.

The Dvergr could not immediately rearrange to fill the holes. If they did that, the Princess’s fierce attack would break through on the front. However, leaving the holes might lead to the surrounding infantry crushing the nearly exposed cockpit.

“Hey, what do we do? It’s still moving after all that. We haven’t destroyed the cockpit yet! What do we do now!?”

“Wait.”

If the enemy truly intended to drag this down into a drawn-out battle of possible mutual destruction, then the outcome was still a mystery. If it used its nearly one hundred cannons to slaughter all of the infantry and continued fighting the Baby Magnum despite the damage it would accumulate, it might just turn this around.

But would the Trinity Style go that far? Was it willing to accompany an outdated First Generation and a handful of infantry to the depths of hell?

The next thing they knew, the Trinity Style had stopped firing as it took high-speed evasive actions.

A transmission was already coming in from Frolaytia.

“We’ve received the White Flag signal again. We could always destroy them since they already ignored the rules, but we don’t want to take any more damage either. Do not pursue. Wait for them to retreat.”

“We’ve won for now, but this is no time to celebrate,” said Quenser inside the overturned armored truck. “The Trinity Style can redesign itself to match the current conditions and environment. This weakness will probably be gone the next time we see it.”