Editing HEAVY OBJECT:MonicaSS (section)

===Part 9===

Headmaster Cliff French-Connection was confused.

(I haven’t noticed any activity inside.)

He doubted they had escaped through the underground route. None of his randomly-placed sensors had detected anything. It was also unlikely they had escaped through the windows on the opposite side of the building. He had found the time to place a few cameras on tripods on the lawn there, but those had not detected anything either.

The only remaining option was that they were still inside the building, but…

(Are they curled up in fear with nowhere to go while everything melts around them? Or…)

The radio duct taped to the armored snowplow’s driver’s seat continued to receive messages for the teacher who had originally operated the Branding Iron.

“Hans! What is your plan here? The students have already left the special classroom building, so there’s no reason to keep attacking it!!”

“You can hear that request for backup, can’t you? We’ve taken a lot of casualties at the physics lab building! The Branding Iron is our most powerful weapon and its mere presence acts as a show of force. Hurry back to your post!!”

“No, wait. Is…is that not Hans? Who are you!?”

Cliff did not need to reply.

He could stop them simply by turning around the Branding Iron’s planetarium-like barrel and firing on a few targets. The Branding Iron brought the speed of light to the battlefield, so it was an absolute presence in an open space. No matter how much they fortified themselves, they could not approach.

And thanks to the superconducting generator built into the system, the energy problem was almost entirely solved, unlike with a battery or high-voltage power line. It was nigh impossible to defeat it with a silly strategy like “waiting for it to run out of gas”.

He had a much more important issue to focus on.

(I doubt they’re headed higher just to escape the immediate threat. If they were that cowardly, they would never have searched out the secret file. But what is it? What exactly are they thinking?)

That was when the possibility of a long-term battle entered Cliff’s mind.

After all, he was most frightened by the idea of a stalemate end where they might be alive or dead. He was burning down the entire building, so it would be a problem if nothing else happened. The more he stuck with this, the more the students and teachers would suspect there was more to this. And as time passed, the councilors might overcome their shock and throw out their pride as a lawful nation by providing special authorization for the military to keep the peace within the safe country.

He wanted to escape outside the fence before that happened. If possible, he wanted to fan the flames of anxiety to ensure a largescale bombing of the Academy to vaporize the teachers…no, the Elritta supporters who were trying to find evidence of his financial malpractice.

So Elritta’s group had no real reason to fight back.

They did not even need to give any hints they had been hit by the lasers.

Taking no action was an action.

In other words, simply waiting and allowing time to pass would do plenty of damage to Cliff.

This entire incident had been intended as a shot in the arm for Cliff since the walls had been closing in on him as things were. If the passage of time returned things to normal, he was done for. In that sense, he was the same as a terrorist. Terrorists selfishly used violence to inspire social unrest so they could control the world as they saw fit, so what they feared most was to have nothing special happen and everyone to just continue living their lives like normal. Because if they were wielding a gun and shouting at people, it meant they were already hopelessly cornered from the very beginning.

(I want some proof. Some proof that this is over.)

Right to left. End to end. Cliff clenched his teeth while continually firing the laser to transform the third floor of the special classroom building into a scorching sauna.

(I’m not going to just assume it’s over. I need to know for sure. I need to know I’ve destroyed the secret file that Elritta and her supporters found!!)

Theoretically, repeating these straightforward actions was the most surefire method available to him.

He would fill all four floors with light and heat. And while that heat lingered, he would start again from the bottom up. Then he only had to let time pass. If he kept the entire building too hot to survive even with a fire-resistant suit, it would not matter which room’s corner they were curled up in. He disliked not knowing what format the secret file was in, but he could search through the corpses and steal it afterwards.

He had to ensure they were dead and then allow the heat to dissipate so he could get inside.

That meant this was indeed a race against time. If it took too long, the students and the teachers or the police and military outside could come rushing in at him.

So he set the lasers for maximum damage.

Elritta’s group had clung to the fantasy of truth to the point of abandoning their own safety. He knew they would choose to nobly lose their lives if he cornered them.

But then something else happened.

An arrow was mercilessly fired at the armored snowplow.

It was all short-term. His enemy had never even considered choosing a long-term battle that presupposed their deaths.