Editing HEAVY OBJECT:Volume17 Chapter 3 (section)

===Part 12===

“Phew,” sighed Frolaytia Capistrano.

This conference room had been full of commotion earlier, but it was empty now. She had tried her best to fight from behind the scenes, but the battle outside had ended before she could accomplish anything worthwhile.

“Major Capistrano.”

The female officer who acted like a secretary quietly called her name.

“Yes?”

The busty, silver-haired woman had her shapely butt seated on the long table instead of the chair and she did not remove the long, narrow kiseru from her mouth when she replied.

The female officer must have been accustomed to it because she did not seem to mind.

“The 21st has suffered devastating losses. They seem to be begging the higher ups to send a ceasefire command, but it is too late for that now.”

“Well, they were the ones who set things up to delay that very decision.”

“The bottleneck for us will likely be recovering the stranded Baby Magnum. It might be faster to transport the maintenance equipment up Mont Blanc to repair it on site.”

“This is all so very depressing.”

“We are almost done now, Major.”

Frolaytia viewed the smile on the female officer’s face.

And she removed the kiseru from her mouth before continuing.

“By the way, lieutenant, I have one question.”

“Yes?” asked the female officer with a polite tilt of her head.

Frolaytia Capistrano was not smiling.

“When were you planning to reveal your true colors and attack me, you 21st dog?”

The female officer drew her knife – no, her secret gun that used the knife’s grip to hide the suppressor-equipped barrel – at about the same moment Frolaytia threw her lit kiseru at the back of her hand.

“Hot!?”

“Why would you draw it right in front of me, you moron? And you were aiming for my heart? How were you supposed to pass that off as suicide?”

Without a moment’s delay, Frolaytia swept the other woman’s legs out from under her. The assassin had reflexively placed her other hand on the burn, so she failed to catch herself and slammed shoulder-first into the floor. She grimaced in pain and tried to get up, but Frolaytia pressed the bottom of her boot against the other shoulder to force her back to the floor.

She felt a dull sensation similar to operating a car’s shift lever.

That had dislocated both of the assassin’s shoulders.

“Gh, kh!?”

“Now you can’t even kill yourself. Resist any further and I will dislocate both legs as well. To be clear, a dislocated hip hurts a hell of a lot more than a shoulder. I will respect your choice, but I do not at all recommend it.”

The 21st had reacted too quickly.

The 37th’s server had been cut off mere minutes after sending the warning email to the social media company in order to reveal Bullrank Happy-Youth for who he really was. The response would never be that sharp if they were simply patrolling the internet as a whole. A large company would receive hundreds of those coaxing targeted emails every single day, so not even an AI search could have responded with such accuracy.

Thus, it must have come from within the 37th.

Someone very close to Frolaytia Capistrano must have sent out a warning. She had asked a member of the electronic simulation division to investigate who was secretly sending out a signal despite the datalink being down and the server being useless. That would be who was accessing a different server to leak information.

(But I didn’t expect it to be her.)

That said, not enough time had passed since the incident in the Arctic Ocean for a spy to have been sent in response to that. The 21st had not sent one of their dogs in response to anything; they had already had people everywhere.

The Princess, Quenser, and Heivia had all worked themselves to the bone for this, so Frolaytia had known she could not just wait safely for the result.

That was why she had laid this trap without knowing who would spring it, but…

(This is so very depressing.)

“We never did find any compromising information on Bullrank Happy-Youth. Except for what you might have, that is.”

“!?”

This woman had covered everything up.

And the busty, silver-haired demon spoke cruelly to that person she had thought of as an ally fighting alongside her at this desk.

She spoke her words of farewell.

“I’m glad I managed to lure you out. To be honest, I would have been out of ideas if you hadn’t attacked me here. Did you think I would leave you with the intelligence division? How naïve of you. I don’t know where your spies are located, so this is a job for someone I know I can trust.”

“You mean you will be interrogating me yourself?”

“No, I know someone even better suited for the job.” Frolaytia gave a vicious smile while shaking free of all sentimentality. “Sergeant Elise Montana. You used to be a part of the 7th Special Training Unit yourself, didn’t you? One of their strict instructors can whip you into shape. Until you tell us everything.”