Editing HEAVY OBJECT:Volume14 Chapter 3 (section)

===Part 14===

The single blast violently shook the 200m battlecruiser and Quenser’s group could not stay on their feet. The bridge, which was located a bit to starboard, took a direct hit and the ship as a whole twisted. The walls and pipes that could not stand the stress burst one after another.

“Oh, no. The pipes are bursting! The red ones carry steam, so make sure you don’t get scalded!!”

“Wraith, why did you bring that old woman here!?”

“Are you suggesting I should have left her in the submersible? That is an impressively meaningless philanthropic spirit. I will only follow humanitarianism for as long as it is useful to me.”

“Ding dong ding donnnng.”

Then someone made an obvious call for attention over the ship’s speakers.

The surrounding sailors would hear this too, but the girl did not seem to care any longer.

“I can make a pretty good guess based on the chaos in the ship. It’s another Martini who’s boarded us, isn’t it? Well, I guess you had no other way of surviving that situation, did you?”

“Is she crazy? She shot her own ship with her own Object!?”

“It’s a very Martini Series kind of thing to do.”

What they said here should not have reached her, but she may have predicted their question.

“Don’t worry, don’t worry. The Laser Beam 069’s precision is quite something, so it can whittle away at the ship with its nitrogen lasers without actually sinking the ship. When I solve a problem, I rid myself of every hindrance in order of severity. And that applies to the enemies that have infiltrated the Flagship 019, the senile old man restricting my authority here, and the defeatists who gave up fighting and neutralized themselves.”

“Not good! Get away from the windows!!”

Another fearsome beam of light struck the battlecruiser from the side. The bright light blinded Quenser’s group, but it had not hit where they were. Had it vaporized another Legitimacy Kingdom unit that had boarded elsewhere, or some Information Alliance sailor uniform girls who had tried to climb over the railing and jump into the sea?

With the young man protecting her, Wraith held her mobile device’s microphone to her mouth. She was probably disguising the route taken as she used her Information Alliance officer privileges to access the ship’s broadcast system.

“I am Wraith Martini Vermouthspray. I specialize in troubleshooting. Attention everyone!! Piranirie is attempting to bind her allies with fear. She killed the captain in order to leave all authority with herself, so don’t be shaken by her sweet words or threats! None of you will need a court martial given the situation!!”

“Nyaaa ha ha!! I was trying to show some respect to a fellow Martini, but what’s this? It’s only #49? Damn that’s low. Can you actually hear me? Oh, and watch out for sudden lightning strikes while you’re moving around. And just to be clear, I’m one of the single digit successes of the genius girl project. I’m #7. Even if I can’t see any silhouettes out the window, I can still mostly predict the movements of the game pieces. Ah ha ha ha ha!!”

“Sh-she’s completely insane… There are pipes and firepower everywhere in here. She’s on the same ship, so isn’t she afraid of setting fire to the engine room or ammo!?”

Heivia was utterly shocked, but a contrasting voice spoke up in response.

“She is only putting on an act to make negotiation seem impossible. That way you think failing to unconditionally obey her means death. Piranirie’s usual trick is to restrict the flow of people and information, divide up the battlefield, and then fill the atmosphere with panic. You could call it the necessary preparations before actually getting to work. …When my mother, Casandra, would target some food reserves, she started by inciting a riot in the surrounding area.”

Katarina’s gentle but blunt statement received a hostile glare from Wraith who had been built based on that woman and the girl’s hand wandered through empty air as if in search of a pen.

“This changes the difficulty of achieving them, but it does not change our plans. With the bridge gone, Piranirie must be in the combat command. I doubt we can stop the Object’s lasers without stopping her.”

They began to move further into the ship.

And once they let their guard down even a little, female Information Alliance soldiers appeared from the cabin doors all around. After that broadcast and the Nitrogen Mirage’s actions, their adoration of Piranirie had probably faded some.

But that did not matter.

“Prepare yourselves! Prepare for battle, everyone!!”

“Please no. We really are going to get shot. What happened to the clean wars? Why are we in danger here?”

“Shut up. If it looks like we aren’t going to fight, the Object will fire on us. And I don’t want to get vaporized because of you, so if you refuse to do this, I’m shooting you myself. So just get going!!”

Trapped by the fear of death, they attacked with looks on their faces no girl should ever let anyone see.

“Urp. Why are they all girls!? Please, I’m sick of this sailor uniform hell! When I said I wanted to slay 100 girls, I meant in bed!!”

“The gender bias is probably due to all the guys leaving and getting their asses kicked back when they attacked your island. So the world is cruelly fair in this case.”

Heivia, Myonri, and Wraith shot more and more of the Information Alliance sailors that pressed in at them. The ship’s crew could not take advantage of their normal potential even when they gathered greater numbers. That was because they had been ordered to make an immediate all-out attack instead of waiting for a better opportunity. Just as in poker and boxing, rushing right in every time would only get you badly beaten. It was a lot like firing at the paper targets moving along rails in a shooting range.

“Tch!”

Wraith clicked her tongue when she saw the sailor girls leave red paint-like marks on the walls as they collapsed to the floor. Of all things, she was crouching down and pulling out a tourniquet during this chaos.

“We don’t have time to get sidetracked! If we stop shooting them here, we’ll be pushed back!!”

“The rules of combat here are different. I will grow as coldhearted as necessary to stop this chaos, but that is not what is needed here. Piranirie’s threat didn’t make them betray us out of self-interest! They’ve been driven entirely beyond their own control, so they themselves are blamele-…!!”

Wraith was cut off by a gunshot.

A bullet from Heivia’s assault rifle had shot through the head of an injured soldier sitting on the floor. Blood mercilessly splattered across Wraith’s white cheek as she tried to keep her allied soldier alive.

She snapped back with the kind of pure emotion that was very unlike the Stopgap Grim Reaper.

“You bastard…!!”

“Look closer. She was holding her sidearm! It isn’t over until they’re dead and stopping before then will only get you shot at point-blank range!!”

The black-uniformed girl grimaced when faced with an unexpectedly good argument from that idiot.

Heivia had of course not wanted to bring that bloody flower to bloom.

Wraith was overwhelmed by the sight and was close to losing her will to fight, so the delinquent noble dragged her along. He continued the massacre parade, but he could be seen holding a hand to his mouth on occasion.

“Now this is a result-focused tragedy. Urp. I feel sick to the stomach.”

Heivia groaned and Wraith held her mobile device to her mouth.

Her own voice exploded from the ship’s speakers.

“Piranirie intends to use up all of the personnel and supplies she was given! Just like an officer who doesn’t want the higher ups to feel too comfortable and reduce their budget next year!! Do you really want to waste your lives like a frivolous road construction project at the end of the year!? Listen, Piranirie has already left the Information Alliance chain of command. Dutifully obeying her will only get you court martialed!!”

The gears of the all-out attack jammed slightly.

However…

[[Image:HO_v14_379.jpg|thumb]]

“Ohh? Wraithy, do you want to hold a student council election on this sinking ship? Well, a debate over the school broadcast system is fine by me.”

“Everyone, get down!!”

A fearsome beam of light punched through the wall right in front of them.

It was not aimed at Quenser’s group. It was clearly targeted elsewhere and the confused Information Alliance sailor uniform girls were vaporized along with the melted steel.

The ship-wide broadcast continued.

“Hey, #49. A democratic decision only really works when the people are at least guaranteed their lives. If you line them up and hold a gun to their heads, do you really think you can call that a proper decision or a free vote?”

“Piranirie!!”

“You too are just using up the soldiers like they’re part of your paperwork. Okay, okayyy. Everyone, who do you think will win and survive this: #49 or #7? Those who side with the loser will of course be slaughtered, so make sure you fight good and hard☆ If you don’t, I’ll provide you with more motivation until you do. Don’t worry. Truth can be twisted every which way. As long as there are no witnesses, that is.”

She was being ridiculous.

But that ridiculousness once more changed things for the Information Alliance.

After rationally coming to a stop, those soldier girls despaired at the fact that ideals would not protect them and they resumed charging at the enemy.

“Yes, I’ve seen this before…”

“Quiet.”

“It was the same when my mother stole baby food for me. She drove the starving people to action and kept them going by later informing them they would be slaughtered if they failed. And once they could not stop and began fighting for their lives, she used the chaos to ensure that only she could safely escape without being tracked.”

“Shut your stinking mouth, you old hag!!”

Wraith snapped back as if in a fit of rage.

But there was no guarantee that every enemy would arrive from a distance.

While Heivia and Wraith used their assault rifle and handgun to push back the charge, a half-open watertight door slowly moved right next to them.

Frank noticed immediately and fired his cannon-like magnum into the cabin, but it did not end there. The enemy’s blown-off arm flew through the air with a pin-less grenade still in its grasp.

“!?”

They only had 3 to 5 seconds.

If it detonated like this, everyone in the narrow corridor would be hit by the blast and fragments.

And it was obvious what Wraith Martini Vermouthspray intended when she immediately stepped forward instead of back.

But someone interfered before she could complete her action.

Before Wraith could cover the blast with her own body, Katarina kicked an opened door from where she had fallen to the floor. The movement of the door knocked the grenade into the cabin where it exploded inside the sealed metal box.

“Why did you save me? That was the perfect chance to have one less of the Martini Series you so despise.”

“You have likely inherited the side of Casandra Martini that restored order and reconstructed a shelter to provide safe clothing, food, and water. But at the time, my mother was so focused on the overall threat that she was nearly stabbed by a robber who snuck up to her…”

“Not the point. If you know our weaknesses, you could have spread that information and let us die.”

The old woman’s expression crumpled at the girl’s cold questioning.

“I knew that would be the most efficient method. I of course knew what the best choice was.”

Katarina looked like she could not believe what she had done.

She shut her eyes in the center of her wrinkled face.

“But once I saw you, I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t say it was better for you to be dead.”

“…”

Wraith gave a quiet snort.

She did not have time to persistently ask what the woman meant. Even now, more and more Information Alliance girls, her supposed allies, were rushing in to shoot them in the back.

There was nothing but harsh gunfire and the colors red and black.

Wraith could not see them as an enemy to be defeated, so even now, she only attempted to neutralize them by aiming her handgun at their arms and legs. But Heivia followed through by firing right between their eyes or into their hearts.

The delinquent noble clicked his tongue and raised his voice.

“This is a waste of ammo! If you’re gonna do this, then do it right!!”

“~ ~ ~!!”

“If they can move a single finger, they can pull a trigger or a grenade’s pin. Our only option is to cross this minefield in front of us! Myonri, you too! Your submachinegun is firing low-caliber suppression rounds for a PDW, so firing at their arms and legs will still break bones and tear arteries! It won’t save them!!”

He was right. But to Quenser, who was irresponsibly avoiding the fight, it looked like Heivia and the others were being drawn into the atmosphere here. He felt like the baseline of morality only continued to drop on both sides of the battle.

This was Piranirie Martini Smoky.

This harshly colorful world had come from within her.

“Are the only options here the whip or the whip!?”

“Oh, honestly. This gun is too powerful… There are other operators in the CIC, aren’t there!? Why aren’t they trying to restrain that girl!?”

Wraith seemed to enjoy those sensible questions from Quenser and Myonri. They seemed to distance her from Piranirie’s extreme rationalism and Heivia’s competing logic.

“That’s obvious. In this colorful hell, Piranirie’s location is the only safe zone. If she dies, it’s all over. Even if she’s causing it all, who’s going to play the hero when it means giving up their own sanctuary?”

But the Information Alliance sailors were clinging to that false hope.

Which side did they most fear being killed by? Faced with that ridiculous choice, they continued rushing in with sweat covering their faces.

“I recognize this…”

“Did you glimpse your mother again?”

“No, this was in a research paper that Piranirie herself wrote. It was titled Free Control of Lifeforms Using External Stimuli. The actual paper was about putting rats in a steel maze and placing a burner below them until they reached the goal, but this is a similar concept.”

Quenser heard a quiet squeaking sound.

For this to happen now, it seemed like some kind of curse.

“…A rat?”

It had likely gotten onboard while the ship was at port. He recalled that one of the wharf roach spy robots had been destroyed by a rat.

And more than just the one rat was squeaking.

Several of them were staring out from the space between equipment.

Quenser felt a chill down his spine when he realized what that meant.

“Are they waiting for us to die and become meat for the taking?” asked Katarina.

“More importantly, are the Information Alliance sailors the only ones being monitored? If they have cameras on their uniforms or guns, we’re in trouble too! It’s about time for that goddamn Object to fire again!!”

“!!”

They had to have made it pretty far down in the ship, but they doubted the Nitrogen Mirage would care. Even if they were below the waterline, the Information Alliance could always shut all the surrounding watertight doors before firing the shot.

A thick beam of bluish-white light pierced the ship nearby and an entire group of hesitant Information Alliance sailors were annihilated.

“Dammit, that thing’s got complete control! What is our Princess doing!?”

“Let’s just pray she isn’t at the bottom of the ocean…wah!?”

Quenser’s group immediately ran into a large room.

They waited for a bit…but the nitrogen laser they were expecting never arrived.

A pause was not enough to relax. It felt like being given unexploded ordnance to hold instead of a body pillow. Where was the Nitrogen Mirage and was the Baby Magnum still safe? They knew the answers would not put their minds at ease, but the dearth of information still applied pressure on them from all sides.

“…? Are we safe here?”

“What is this place? A central computer room? There’s a huge-ass supercomputer here.”

“The Flagship 019 is an electronic information control ship, right? Piranirie must be plotting something for her attack on Manhattan. And I doubt it’s a way of directly sending in the Nitrogen Mirage. So she’s probably using this big computer to calculate out all the necessary conditions.”

“Since she is hesitant to fire on us here, you might be right.” Wraith joined the conversation while bashfully looking down at her mobile device. “Still, I doubt destroying this computer would be enough to stop her plan which is as foolish as it is ambitious.”

After overcoming that gruesome scene, even the Stopgap Grim Reaper may have been starving for contact with someone capable of a proper conversation.

“Why?”

“If that would be enough, she would be panicking and siccing those sailors on us.”

Wraith took a step in front of the young man and narrowed her eyes toward the machines beyond the reinforced glass that looked like large refrigerators.

“Anastasia, hm?”

“What? Did you give it a girl’s name like the Capitalist Corporations does with Objects?”

“It’s simpler than that. This is a DNA computer made using my biological mother’s cancer cells. Instead of using the normal system of 1s and 0s, it uses ATCG combinations to quickly compute complex calculations. When my biological mother learned how long she had to live, she agreed to be a specimen so she could offer something to the world.”

Was Wraith emphasizing the “biological” part because it reminded her of the time before she became a Martini? Or was it because Katarina was here?

If that woman had not died, it was possible Wraith’s last name would not have changed.

“You mean…?”

“Yes, no matter what form it takes, this is my biological mother. After all, the chromosome design was completely broken, so you just place it in a Petri dish and it multiples without end. The Anastasia Processor’s excellent results led to more and more production, so now there are apparently about 400 tons of her cells around the world.”

“I thought this was going to be a moving story, but you just had to give it that Information Alliance twist, didn’t you!?”

At any rate, this DNA computer may have been one of the reasons why Wraith Martini Vermouthspray had sought a place for herself in the genius girl project that filled the gaps in their AI culture. This way she could support what her biological mother had created.

“The question is what she’s using this Anastasia to calculate. It has to be something related to the attack on Manhattan.”

“Can you operate it?”

“Was your mother – our original – a cute technophobe who grew tearful trying to hook up a TV and DVR, designer? I am part of the Martini Series built into the giant administrative system to eliminate any unforeseen errors produced by machines like this one.”

A DNA computer sounded strange when you heard how it worked, but the console screen was the same as a normal computer. It felt weird that you only had to move the cursor to the icon and double click.

As Quenser watched over her small shoulder, he grimaced at the many windows she browsed through.

“Wait…”

“?”

“Yes, yes. This is bad. Heivia, do you remember the Nitrogen Mirage’s trick? It uses artificial mirages to bend its nitrogen lasers however it wants!”

“What does that matter at this point?”

“Did you ever wonder where the bent lasers went after they missed!?”

“Ah…???”

Heivia did not seem to get it, so Quenser reached for the console himself. Since he was standing behind short Wraith, he was practically leaning on top of her.

“This is serious… The drones are…yes, they’re flying. A water solvent, the first battle was several days ago, a girl’s name, a hurricane, the westerlies, ETA, meteorological weapon, and even the conditions needed for dissemination in the air! …You’ve gotta be kidding. This means that thing’s nitrogen lasers may have been no more than the primer. It’s electrolytic corrosion. They’ve been firing that big thing to hide their real goal. It was all so we wouldn’t notice they were using optical pumping for excitation of the energy…!!”

“H-hey, how about an actual explanation? Nn, don’t breathe in my ear!”

In a rare display, Little Wraithy blushed and struggled in vain while Frank the Butler expressionlessly exuded killer intent, but Quenser was too preoccupied to sniff the nice-smelling girl.

The wolf leaned on the girl with a serious look on his face.

“On the Central and South American line of the Atlantic, the westerlies head north. The giant hurricanes that appear here hit the east coast of North America, so you’re probably pretty familiar with that.”

“Y-yes. What about it…?”

Wraith asked while shrinking down and trembling like he was occasionally poking her side, so Quenser continued while focused on the screen.

“So a giant cloud that appears here will reach New York. Assuming you don’t have to worry about it maintaining a hurricane shape. Just like a meteorological weapon that messes with the upper atmosphere to alter the amount of rainfall, Piranirie has used this direct combat to mix a specific solvent into the clouds and then excite them using the Object’s lasers. This list here is the ingredients for the dye laser. But the dye laser itself uses water – in other words, the primary component of clouds – to amplify the energy.”

“What does any of that matter? They’re amplifying the electrical energy in the clouds? So are they going to trigger lightning strikes exactly where they want? Or are they going to use an EMP or something to damage the computers over a wide area? Nothing like that can bring down the world-renowned and shockingly well-protected Manhattan!”

“Sorry, but this is much worse than that.”

While more or less embracing Wraith’s slender shoulders from behind, Quenser placed his hand over her small hand and the console mouse she held. He began searching for and opening a few files.

“Are you familiar with electrolytic corrosion? When a massive amount of electricity flows into the ground from a giant factory or subway line, the ground and moisture function as an electrolytic solution and the buried metal and cables are corroded through electrolysis.”

“Wait…”

“Yes. There are a few different conditions necessary for electrolytic corrosion, but only one of them is important here. When a thundercloud approaches, the electric charge in the ground shifts, as if dragged along by the cloud,” explained Quenser. “If thunderclouds with more energy than any natural cloud could contain passed directly over a metropolis, it would cause extreme electrolytic corrosion. The underground power lines and communication cables, the foundations of the skyscrapers, the subway tunnels, the gas and water pipes, and everything else buried belowground would fall apart like someone dumped sulfuric acid on them. So if something like that passes over Manhattan…”

“The ground itself will grow soft and all the buildings will collapse…?”

“If the water flowing from the pipes is broken down, it will become a whole lot of oxygen and hydrogen. And when the gas pipes burst, it’ll be more direct. In the worst case, the ground below Manhattan will become a giant bomb.”

Of course, normal electrolytic corrosion would not cause anything like this. It would only cause the underground pipes to gradually rust over the years and decades.

That was why Piranirie Martini Smoky was not relying on “normal” thunderclouds. She was using an accelerator pumped full of electricity to create something that did not exist in the natural world. She was using the immense power of an Object to invite in something too extraordinary to naturally exist.

With a tremor in her voice, Wraith once more brought her mobile device to her mouth.

“…What are you trying to do, Piranirie?”

This was beyond the point when she could convince anyone of anything, but she must have felt the need to ask anyway. Her own voice left the speakers across the ship.

“Why are you so intent on firing on the very center of the Information Alliance!?”

“Ohhh? What a strange thing to ask, Wraithy. As a troubleshooter, how many times have you executed one of our own people when they screw up? Y’know, a bullet through the back of a corrupt soldier’s head as they beg for their life.”

“Kh.”

While leaning over her from behind, Quenser thought he felt her firm shoulders shrink down a bit.

Was she afraid of someone knowing about that?

But who? Quenser’s group? Or Katarina?

Piranirie had replied over the ship-wide broadcast that was not encrypted and anyone could hear. She did not care who heard this. She was stubbornly doubling down here, but if handled correctly, could that give her a sharp-tongued charisma?

“We are spare personnel meant to use human ingenuity to make up for the vulnerabilities in Capulet, the administrative system forming the AI network at the foundation of our Objects. #49, you must be the type of person who will kill any number of people so long as it will preserve order on the battlefield. I am no different there. When various factors bring the warfront to a standstill, I apply some oil and reignite the fire. To keep war running on schedule.”

That was one of the two major families from Romeo and Juliet. Only the Legitimacy Kingdom would choose a name for having a noble ring to it, so why had they chosen that name? Quenser silently thought about that for a bit.

Meanwhile, Wraith groaned a question.

“…What are you talking about…?”

“New York is the center of the information world, but it is actually the world’s most uncooperative city when it comes to information collection. The more information the people are in contact with, the greater their information literacy, so they aren’t so easily fooled. They block facial recognition, they reject having their search history saved, they use a decoy server for the internet and email, they hide their IP, they prevent anyone from tapping into their mailbox, and some of them even have multiple social security numbers. But what does that look like to the AI network running everything? The answer is simple: it doesn’t look like anything. It seems several Martinis have been sent in to fill in that electronic blind spot, but it would seem none of them were successful. Something which cannot be measured is determined not to exist, so Capulet has dropped New York a long way down the priority list.”

“…”

“Yes, yes. Didn’t this ship run into some trouble in the Asian…what was it? Oh, right. The Mekong District. I believe it was something about using the tanks’ drive-by-light systems for civilian self-driving cars. That was apparently their last chance. If they could have sent those weapons on wheels through the streets and observed New York that way, they could have corrected for the error. But they apparently screwed that one up. And wasn’t that what you wanted?”

Quenser and Heivia exchanged a glance.

They would not do anything different even if they could relive that part of their lives, but they had not known this was hidden behind the plot involving Dorothea Martini Naked. …Of course, this was a deeply hidden facet of the whole, so those greedy tank drivers probably had not thought it through that far.

“But in terms of production and consumption, New York is overwhelmingly on the consumption side. And when an error message reports that a supposedly empty ghost town is devouring more resources than anywhere else in Information Alliance territory, it doesn’t seem strange at all the administration system would try to plug that hole.”

“I’m impressed you could get things so backwards… The people of New York don’t exist? Because they don’t exist, there’s no problem with attacking them? Have you completely forgotten why the Martini Series was given our special privileges!? Our entire purpose is to control things manually when the machines make this kind of mistake!!”

“Is it really? I have given myself the role of ensuring the AI network runs as efficiently as possible. It is true Capulet made a mistake. But if that very mistake is a simulation of how to most efficiently bring prosperity to the whole of the Information Alliance, I will follow that detour.”

“AI is not god, Piranirie.”

“Of course not. That is why it must be supported by human hands. I must ensure that those myopic fools do not reject Capulet’s answer as a mere mistake.”

That was the end of it.

Piranirie may have had no real reason to offer up further information and Wraith may have realized nothing she said would get through to the other girl.

The small girl simply looked up toward heaven and groaned a question.

“…Has she abandoned her free will?”

“?”

“We are meant to fill the gaps in the AI network connecting the central servers of our safe countries, so our own opinions are constantly being pitted against Capulet, the administrative system that collects big data from billions of people. Which is right and which is wrong? …If you let it sweep you away, you end up like that. Island Nation ''shogi'' players will train using AI software, but they maintain indirect control because they can raise and lower its skill by tweaking the parameters. Piranirie has become a slave to the machine. She has accepted that things are much easier if you just ignore matters of good and evil.”

She could not be the same as everyone else.

She could not face in the same direction and feel the same enthusiasm.

Not with the general population and not even with the rest of the Martini Series.

“The entire genius girl project was based on a woman who hid the fact that she was a rational killer…”

“What about it?”

The old woman seemed confused why Quenser was bringing this up now, so he spat out the rest.

“This problem is even more fundamental than that. I can’t even imagine the kind of isolation that must be pressing in on Wraith, Piranirie, and the others from all directions…”

Wraith gave a quiet snort.

Was she thankful that someone was worried for her, or did she feel ostracized for being written off as something that could not be understood? Quenser did not know.

No, that was the way it was for people in general. Of course you could not understand someone at a glance.

Far too much simple loyalty had been expected of the Martini Series.

“They’re thrown into situations that would break anyone and then criticized when they do break. How is that right? And the adults mass-produced thousands of these created geniuses so there were replacements when they broke.”

“Enough. …You are ridiculously kind-hearted.” Wraith cleared her throat. “We don’t know which cloud is the meteorological weapon which will trigger electrolytic corrosion, do we?”

“It might not be just one. Since their balloon bombs are reliant on the natural westerlies, they might have prepared a full barrage.”

“I would also like to know how much time until it arrives. That will change how we put together an evacuation plan or even a countermeasure in which we fire our own meteorological weapon to transform the weaponized cloud into harmless rain.”

In that case, what did they need to know in order to protect Manhattan?

How many weaponized clouds were there and where were they floating now?

There was only one accurate source for that information.

“Let’s get to the combat command. We can drag all of that out of Piranirie Martini Smoky.”

“Let’s get to the combat command. We can drag all of that out of Piranirie Martini Smoky.”