Editing HEAVY OBJECT:Volume9 Chapter 3 (section)

===Part 19===

A muffled popping rang out.

It may have been an earsplitting explosion above the water, but not to Quenser and the others under the water.

“Acting tough to that brat is great and all, but is there really anything we can do!?”

“Didn’t I explain it to you already?”

Quenser let go of what he held.

It was a plastic bag full of air.

Millia operated a battery-powered electric pump. The tube attached to it extended out from the ocean’s surface like a snorkel.

One after another, round inflated bags rose toward the surface like helium balloons.

As soon as they were exposed to the air, the powerful microwaves roasted them and caused them to burst.

The intelligence division members would be doing the same thing elsewhere.

“My men say they’ve distributed the proper amount!”

“Then let’s do the rest as planned!!”

Quenser controlled his small submersible. The wire attached to the back was connected with rubber adhesive to the spear floating near the surface.

Quenser, Heivia, and Millia moved in different directions.

They each pulled a spear around with a wire.

“Anything you do is a waste of time.”

The same unfamiliar voice came from the radio.

It belonged to the mastermind on the Nataraja.

“The Second Generation Kali on the surface will not die. Surely you’ve noticed the three-body problem by now. Combining that with optical refraction technology neutralizes the ballistic calculations of any main cannon. As long as the Kali continues disturbing this area, we can freely swim through the dark ocean!!”

“Did you want me to agree with you? This isn’t a customer service center, so I’m not about to say anything that would calm you down.”

“We won’t lose!!”

“The three-body problem isn’t as perfect a defense system as you claim it is.”

As soon as Quenser said that, he heard a tremendous explosion and something tore into the Oriental Magic’s spherical body.

“Quenser! I have a report from the ‘periscope’. The Princess’s low-stability plasma cannon got a clean hit on the Oriental Magic! Another two or three hits and it’ll sink!!”

“Did you hear that? What do you have to say now?”

“Impossible…! It doesn’t add up… No, we set up the three-body problem so it ''wouldn’t'' add up, so how did you find the answer!?”

“It’s called the restricted three-body problem.” Quenser laughed. “You can’t accurately calculate the influence of three or more astronomical bodies pulling on each other. That’s the three-body problem. But that’s not true under certain exceptional conditions. For example, if three bodies with identical pull are arranged at the vertices of an equilateral triangle or if they’re all lined up. That’s the restricted three-body problem. You don’t need a huge supercomputer for that. A simple formula gives you the answer and the very first shell will hit.”

“That isn’t the issue. Are you saying you kept waiting until the conditions just so happened to fit the restricted three-body problem?”

“No. We could always connect submersibles to the ‘spears’ with wires and drag them around. By putting each one in the proper position for an equilateral triangle or a line, it raises the odds a bit.”

“No, not that!! Which ‘spears’ were turned on and off was determined randomly. Just because you positioned some of the ‘spears’ in an equilateral triangle or a line doesn’t mean those three will actually be used.”

“Of course,” Quenser readily admitted. But he was not done. “But the random number generation of whack-a-mole is way easier to analyze than the three-body problem. We only had to give each ‘spear’ a number and send their positions to the Princess and Putana up above. We bet it all on the genius brains of those Pilot Elites.”

“You communicated with them? But the wireless power microwaves would have kept you from…”

The voice trailed off and seemed to realize something.

“Oh, those popping sounds. You sent something to the surface, didn’t you!? Did you create a simple signal of zeroes and ones using the presence or absence of that popping!?”

The student did not answer the question.

He said something else instead.

“As long as the Oriental Magic is stopped, the ability to search the Indian Ocean returns to normal. We’ll know the second something ten thousand meters long starts moving. Checkmate, brat.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure.” The mastermind slowly breathed out. “Even if you have eliminated the three-body problem defense, you haven’t actually sunk the Oriental Magic. This isn’t over yet.”

“It’s two against one.”

“But one of them is worn out after continually evading for so long. We only have to target that one.”

“Does the Princess look that weak to you?”

“No,” said the mastermind. “But the thoughtless and naïve try to protect their allies. That’s why the newcomer will die first.”

A massive pillar of air bubbles appeared far in the distance. It looked like a white cascade, but it came from something over fifty meters tall sinking further and further down.

Underwater, nothing should have been visible beyond a few hundred meters, but Quenser still clearly saw the monstrous weapon sinking into the sea. That was just how big it was.

This was not the Princess.

In addition to the strategic weapons, it included a distinctive road roller and cultivator.

“Putana!!”

There was nothing he could do.

He could not reach her by stretching out his hand. And even if he could, his arms could not support something that weighed two hundred thousand tons.

He could only watch as the mass of metal sank into the dark, dark depths of the ocean with the brown girl closed inside.

“Ha ha ha ha ha!! Seems like it worked. And now it’s one against one, so it isn’t so easy to say who will win! And let’s not forget that your Elite is exhausted!”

“…”

He had known that this could be the result whenever someone stood on the battlefield or an Object was sent out.

But…

“I’ll kill you, you brat!!!!”

“How!? You can’t rely on your precious Objects. Or are you going to head out into the vortex of microwaves to face the Kali yourself?”

“That’s not what I meant.”

Quenser clenched his teeth and spat the words out like mud.

“Everything is set up now, you brat.”

“What…?”

Someone else spoke as soon as the mastermind trailed off.

“Quenser, I have a report from the ‘periscope’! The dust collector effect is working and it’s covering the surface of the ‘spears’!!”

“This is Millia. I’m hearing the same thing. It seems to be altering the direction of the microwaves being scattered everywhere. The plan was a success.”

Someone cut in.

It was the Nataraja’s mastermind.

“What…? What did you do now?”

“We made a dust collector,” said Quenser. “That’s the technology that removes dust from air ducts or blows powder coating onto metal panels. It mostly uses static electricity and electrified particles, but have you figured out what this means yet?”

“You don’t mean…”

“The aircraft carrier had tons of electrified powder coating for fire resistance. It’s probably made by breaking down the materials for blast furnace walls, but that was all we needed.”

“You mean what you sent to the surface wasn’t just a primitive signal to the Objects? It also scattered that powder coating across the ocean!?”

“The dust collector effect sent the floating powder coating to the ‘spears’. More accurately, it covered the disk-shaped antennae for receiving power.”

The scorching answer session continued.

“Those antennae were meant to collect the microwaves and convert them into power, but they were transformed into electromagnetic mirrors that reflect the microwaves. And funnily enough, the antennae were made to change direction like a sunflower to more efficiently collect the microwaves. …Simply put, they’re all set to constantly follow the Oriental Magic.”

“Oh, no! That’s what you did!?”

The mastermind seemed to have realized something, but it was too late.

For one thing, the Nataraja was at the bottom of the ocean and would have no way of directly contacting the Oriental Magic on the surface. That was all thanks to those microwaves.

And that meant nothing he could do would make it in time.

“Hey, what do you think will happen if the full power of the microwaves that Object is emitting is concentrated on a single point? Those electromagnetic waves are powerful enough to negatively affect life at thirty kilometers and to cause a slaughter at ten kilometers. Wouldn’t that energy far exceed your average main cannon?”

A brilliant flash of light surged out.

Visible light was a portion of electromagnetic waves, but focusing microwaves would never give them a visible wavelength.

That light came from the Oriental Magic melting as it turned red and scattered sparks due to its own massive microwaves.

That light signaled the destruction of the ultra thick armor that could withstand a nuclear blast.

An enormous mass plunged into the ocean in the distance. It had lost its original form and become a fluid, but it still sank into the deep, deep depths just as Putana had.

At the same time, the communications grew clearer.

The Princess’s voice arrived from the Baby Magnum which was the only Object remaining on the surface.

“It’s over. I’d like you to explain later what exactly happened, though.”

“Sure thing. We can talk till morning in your room.”

Even as he made his carefree comment, Quenser glared deep into the ocean.

The naked eye could not see into that deep darkness, but he spat some words into those depths.

“Now there’s no one left to protect you.”

“Ah…ah…”

“So there’s no one left to protect your dream. The next time you open your eyes, you won’t be in the paradise you’d imagined. You’ll wake up to just another morning in a world beyond the end of the World Clock where common evils and unfairness run rampant.”

“Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!! Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!”