Editing HEAVY OBJECT:Volume12 Chapter 7 (section)

===Part 4===

The battle had finally begun.

When using multiple Objects, there was no real reason to fire from the same direction. In fact, spreading the Objects out and firing from multiple directions increased the odds of a hit.

Plus, the Rush’s main cannons were rapid-fire beam Gatling cannons. Simply by swinging them around while firing allowed her to fully cover 180 degrees to her left and right. A battle on land might have mountains or valleys to hide behind, but this was a naval battle. Most Objects could not escape the deadly sabre as it swept horizontally across.

But that sort of assumption did not work with the Old Fashion.

As soon as the rapid-fire beam Gatling cannons began pursuing him, Robert Mistynail did not hesitate to charge forward. He accurately decided which of his two-by-two floats to lift and which to lower to make sharp turns and position himself behind the Baby Magnum.

To avoid friendly fire, the Rush was forced to stop her Gatling cannons.

“Oh, honestly!!”

Meanwhile, the Baby Magnum was not just sitting still. She moved quickly left and right just like mixed martial arts footwork while constantly targeting the Old Fashion with her seven main cannons. This was like avoiding a tank’s gun by hiding behind another tank. He would normally get hit by a point-blank blast.

But even then…

“What…? I can’t hit him from this range!?”

“It isn’t that surprising. The instant laser beams were brought to the battlefield, Object battles were destined to become competitions in predicting each other’s actions. Distance and speed don’t matter. As long as you can predict it, it doesn’t matter what they try to do to you.”

The Old Fashion’s main cannon squirmed.

The targeting lenses whirred as they focused.

“Show me, cutting-edge Elites. It can be acrobatics or technology, but do something to surprise this aging man.”

Quenser and the others watched from the side, but they were not here as spectators.

“We need to get started too, Heivia!”

“That thing scares the shit out of me!! It’s a First Generation, so it has plenty of anti-personnel, anti-vehicle, and anti-fortress weapons, right!? It’s made to target us, so do we really have to get close!?”

The Baby magnum and Old Fashion exchanged cannons blasts while making detailed movements from less than 100 meters apart. But the countless secondary cannons growing from the Faith Organization First Generation’s spherical main body began to move as if blowing in the wind.

“Here it comes!!”

Quenser gave a yell and the entire army began taking countermeasures.

With a roar much like the fireworks signifying the beginning of an athletic festival, something was fired from the patrol boats and rubber boats. They burst in midair and produced a great quantity of bubbles. That region of ocean was covered by a ceiling of white bubbles. The entire fleet had likely been hidden from any satellites.

And a storm of laser beams did not hesitate to tear through it all like a downpour of light.

“Gyaaaaaaahhh!!”

Heivia covered his head with his hands and cowered down on the deck of the patrol boat.

The laser beams arrived dozens at a time and with only a few seconds in between waves. But none of them hit the patrol boat Quenser’s group used to navigate the bubbly sea. When the light hit the violently expelled bubbles, it was reflected randomly.

They had only managed this countermeasure because the Old Fashion was an old First Generation and because they had so much data on it.

And the older the Object, the more likely it was to prefer laser beams as an anti-air defense for nuclear missiles and the like. It was almost more a matter of faith than anything. It could have used railguns or some other method, but it chose lasers. Finding a solution had not been all that difficult.

But that did not mean they could rest easy. They could not see the lasers. The orange lines were only the afterimages of dust and moisture being burned. They only saw the result after the fact. They were repeatedly experiencing the same fear as cutting down some normal-looking grass only to find a landmine and realizing how close they had come to stepping on it. Of course their balls were going to shrivel up.

They heard an explosion from beyond the bubbles.

One of the boats had apparently been unlucky enough to be blown away by one of the reflected laser beams.

And the rest had no guarantee the same would not happen to them.

“Oh, god! Oh, god!! Urp, oh god is this scary!!”

“If you have time to scream and sob, then get working, Heivia! We need to drop our cargo!!”

Quenser kicked Heivia’s back as the boy curled up and wept and then he worked with the other soldiers to push something attached to a thick metal wire over the patrol boat’s railing. It was quite heavy and it sank instead of floating.

Meanwhile, the laser beams continued pouring down.

Someone must not have been able to stand it anymore because they shouted over the radio.

“This is Mermaid 9! We’re at our limit! The soap chaff isn’t enough to stop the laser beams. Preparing Plan 2! Emitting polarized smokescreen!!”

“You goddamn idiot!!” shouted back Quenser.

But before he even finished, some unnaturally colorful smoke rose from one corner of the bubbly sea. It was a blinding smokescreen. By scattering the light, it would deflect the laser beams, but…

“Wah…”

All the bubbles in that area vanished as soon as the smokescreen appeared. The fine powder and the bubble film collided, popping all of the bubbles in turn.

At the same time, the fine powder forming the smokescreen was caught in the liquid forming the popped bubbles.

So what happened?

They created a nice blank space with no defenses whatsoever.

“Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!?”

A blinding light revealed the result.

Heivia clung to the patrol boat’s railing with both hands.

“This is bad. We have no idea where the lightning is going to strike and the soap chaff and smokescreen don’t mix. As more ships are hit and scatter black smoke, our dubious shield is going to be filled with holes!!”

“If there was a perfect defense, Objects never would have ended the nuclear age. No matter what we might do, the Objects still have an unfair advantage. That’s just the age we live in! You knew that, didn’t you!?”

As they shouted back and forth, most of the ships dropped their cargo. There were quite a few sacrifices, but they used the time that bought them to make progress.

Beyond the bubbles, the Baby Magnum and Old Fashion were firing back and forth at close range. That strongest Elite was truly frightening. He moved around like a mixed martial artist, but also maintained his position behind the Princess to use her as a shield against the Rush who was constantly trying to target him with her Gatling cannons.

He made it look easy.

The Baby Magnum and the Rush would both have been outmatched while fighting alone and his pace did not falter even when facing them both at once.

Also, the Old Fashion used more than just its main cannon, which was a compressed metal cannon with an ultra small caliber barrel that used both a normal magazine and a drum magazine.

Again and again, sharp sounds of cannon fire burst from something like a boxy metal container on the opposite side.

The Princess continually shot down what it was firing.

“What are those? Missiles!?”

These were nothing like the shoulder-fired ones meant to shoot down fighters. They were a much more overwhelming sight and they looked like a nationally-funded rocket tilted on its side.

“It might be more accurate to call them reverse-thrust rockets,” clarified the Princess. “They attach themselves with instant glue and then fire against my wishes to rob me of my mobility.”

The Baby Magnum was covered in weapons meant for use against nuclear missiles. She did not even need to use her naval floats to dodge. Even with those rockets constantly fired from less than 100 meters away, not even one could slip through her interception barrage. But using her mental resources on that could easily lead to falling behind in the direct battle between Objects.

The Old Fashion was not especially fast, its main cannon was not especially powerful, and its armor was not especially thick.

And yet no one could defeat him.

No one could keep up with his thoughts and no one could damage his Object.

“It’s like a miracle, Faith Organization!!”

“Then we just have to rob him of that mystical movement of his!!”

After that shout, Quenser sent a signal via radio.

Everyone had been waiting for it, so they all responded immediately.

And then “that” happened.