Editing HEAVY OBJECT:Volume1 Chapter 1 (section)

===Part 4===

However, an amateur student could not properly use a survival kit so easily. It was unclear if Quenser would even have been able to catch a fish with a proper fishing pole, so it was no surprise when he did not catch anything no matter how long he waited.

He heard intermittent gunfire in the distance.

Of course, it was not enemy soldiers drawing near; it was Heivia chasing deer in hopes of getting one for dinner that night. In that day and age, the idea of flesh-and-blood soldiers attacking a maintenance base zone that held a giant Object was unthinkable. It was like trying to destroy the wall of a nuclear shelter by tackling it.

Just as Quenser was thinking that, he heard crunching footsteps in the snow.

“What is going on?”

He spun around and saw a girl with a puzzled look on her face. The girl looked to be around 14 and looked even less suited for the army than a battlefield student like Quenser.

She had fluffy blonde hair that reached her shoulders and white skin. Rather than a pure blue, her eyes were a light sky blue and she seemed to be staring off into the distance so it was difficult to get a grasp on her emotions.

The delicate lines of her body went beyond merely slender.

Her question seemed to have been in regards to the distant gunshots rather than to Quenser himself.

Quenser gave a blunt response.

“We’re going to have a barbecue tonight. I’m in charge of the salmon and Heivia’s in charge of the deer. I may have been the one to bring it up, but I don’t even know if deer meat is any good. I’ve never had it before, so I’m a little unsure. I just hope it doesn’t taste too strange.”

“…You’ll come to an early death if you have a barbecue with no vegetables.”

The girl gave a sigh with the expression of someone who had opened a box and found something uninteresting inside.

Quenser looked away from the fishing pole that showed no sign of a bite no matter how long he waited.

“Where are you headed, princess?”

“Are you trying to provoke me?”

The girl’s expression usually remained relatively unchanged, but she looked slightly offended there.

However, Quenser and the girl were barely acquainted and he was unsure what to say. She had likely only spoken up on a whim. He doubted any situation would come up where he would need to communicate with that girl.

After all, she was an Elite, a pilot of the giant weapons known as Objects.

While he had helped out at the Alaskan maintenance area, he had exchanged simple greetings with her, but he doubted that was enough to create any kind of friendship. Their positions were simply too far apart. He was a dime a dozen student and she held a position that very few had even within a single nation.

Unlike Quenser and the others, she wore an outfit exclusive to Elite pilots. The suit was rather difficult to describe. It was clearly different from a normal military uniform. It was a mainly indigo blue skintight suit that started at her neck and covered even her hands and feet. The boots and gloves seemed to be detachable and they were connected on with fasteners.

Over that, she wore a black armored vest to protect her torso and a type of pocket that spread out like a miniskirt. Apparently, the bottom of the vest and the top of the pocket attached when she was piloting the Object. In what may have been a military tradition, the neck of her suit had a sailor uniform collar attached that somehow looked like part of a school uniform from a safe country.

The suit was highly water resistant so it could be worn while working underwater and it would even stop blood from flowing to her lower body to preserve the functionality of her brain just like air force suits did. The special suit was very Object-like in the fact that it outdid each of the previously existing branches of the military.

Quenser recalled being surprised when he had first seen her light sky blue eyes in the maintenance area. At first he had thought they were truly glowing, but he had been wrong. When piloting the Object, weak infrared rays were used to allow even the movements of her eyes to act as an input device. Long exposure to that laser had lightened the original blue color of her eyes.

[[Image:Heavy_Object_v01_026.jpg|thumb]]

That lightening was not an unwanted destruction of the functionality of her pupils’ lenses by the laser. Instead, it was an advancement allowing the laser to be even more effective, so her eyes would not grow any lighter once they reached a certain point.

The girl turned those light-colored eyes that were the sign of an Elite toward Quenser and spoke.

“The Object is being serviced. I had nothing to do, so I was wandering around outside. That was when I heard what sounded like gunfire.”

“…Oh, crap. You could hear that back at the base? We probably have a lecture waiting for us then.”

“And the old lady chief was yelling something about ‘that stupid kid’ running off and wasting a perfect chance to learn something since the Object was undergoing maintenance.”

“Oh, crap! This is worse than I thought!!” 

He started running back toward the base zone, but then…

“…No, wait. Even if I run back now, I’m still going to get that lecture, so my options here are really to get yelled at empty handed or to get yelled at after catching some salmon. …I see, I see. I’m not going back until I catch at least one even if I die first.”

“If you acted more maturely and did not do things like that, they would not get mad at you so often.”

Quenser returned to the fishing pole mostly out of escapism and the girl looked at him with a shocked look in her eyes. Either she truly had nothing better to do or she was not used to someone who was not a proper soldier (to the soldiers, piloting the Object was a matter of life or death, so they tried to keep their distance from the Elite girl to make sure nothing unexpected happened) because she continued to hang around. This was unlike when he helped out with the maintenance because then they would only exchange a few businesslike words.

(…Could it be that this princess is also tired of the rations, so she’s interested in the salmon?)

Quenser did not dare speak that thought aloud because he was sure it would make her most displeased.

He continued trying to come up with something to talk about, but the girl continued speaking before he could come up with anything.

“You came here to study the Object, correct?”

“Yes. If I can survive helping out with the maintenance here at the base for 3 years, nothing but success awaits me when I return home.”

“Why this base?” asked the girl curiously. “You know what kind of Object I pilot at this base, don’t you?”

“It’s a Composite Multi-Role Object. …In other words, it can be freely used in any environment on the earth and in any weather conditions. It’s the most standard type of the giant weapons. It’s fine on land or in the sea.”

“Standard is another way of saying old-fashioned.” The girl sighed. “The second generation Objects are not so greedy as to claim to work anywhere. An Object developed to fight in the desert without any thought to fighting anywhere else will outdo a normal Object in a desert battle.”

That was a theory that had started to gradually spread throughout the Object manufacturing industry.

When the first Objects had started appearing on the battlefield, a composite Object that could fight the same in any battlefield in the world was a king of beasts with no natural enemy. However, when multiple Objects started popping up in the various battlefields across the globe, the situation had changed.

A composite model that could be freely used anywhere had no real weaknesses. However, this also meant that it had no real strengths. When the situation had changed from an Object crushing normal weapons to an Object fighting an Object, the question of how to make one’s own Object stand above the rest came to the forefront.

One suggested answer to that question was to create an Object that had definite strengths even if that would destroy the even balance of its functionality. Afterwards, that Object would have its activities kept to the environment it excelled in, giving it an advantage over other Objects when it fought.

“Here in Alaska is the same. We have a normal Object with no disadvantages and they have an optimized Object with definite strengths. In this snowy area, my Object may not be able to win.”

“But you’ve continued to use that Object, right, princess?”

“…I have no choice,” the girl known as an Elite said with some hesitation.

All the previous giant 50 meter weapons had become “old generation models” due to the latest weapons, but not just anyone could become an Elite that piloted those Objects.

They were the people who met every desired condition under a search carried out using the army’s flowchart of conditions.

Also, a human only became a terminal that controlled an Object after they had abilities developed that easily overcame those of your standard genius by having their nature artificially honed, refined, and improved by chemical and electrical means to match an individual Object.

Once an Elite was developed so utterly, their fate was linked with that of their Object.

Elites could not pilot just any Object. They could only pilot the Object they had been fine-tuned for. In fact, it might not be wrong to think of an Elite as someone who had their brain fine-tuned for a specific Object.

Elites could only pilot the Object developed for them or an Object further developed from the one that used the same tree diagram.

In that case, what would it mean if the type of Object you used was becoming obsolete?

“I might not be able to win,” the Elite girl who piloted the invincible Object said suddenly. “I might not be able to keep up.”

That girl had had her brain fine-tuned for the sole purpose of piloting that Object.

“As someone who has actually worked on the maintenance of the Object rather than just believing in it, you should know. So why did you come here?”

“Because I value things differently,” responded Quenser after thinking for a bit. “Only the soldiers get so obsessed over what is strong and what is weak. I’m a student. If I don’t stay with an Object with academic value, I won’t gain the knowledge and skills I need.”

“…?”

“If I learn about a standard, basic model, I can use that knowledge anywhere. On the other hand, if I study a model that has already been optimized in one direction, I can’t use that knowledge anywhere else. For a battlefield student, your Object is the best option.”

His opinion did not take any of the serious issues like winning the war into account, but he could say that kind of thing because he was not a soldier.

“If you try for too much on the battlefield, you will not live long.”

“True, and that’s why battlefield students have such a low survival rate. But I’m butting in here on the battlefield in the hopes of getting rich quick, so I won’t complain.”

Hearing Quenser say that, the girl who was a veteran of many battles tilted her head in puzzlement like a normal girl.

“So you’re prepared.”

“Yes, well, I hate working slowly through normal schoolwork, so I’m desperate for this chance to skip ahead. I need to be prepared for whatever it takes.”

“Hmm,” said the Elite in a reaction that gave the impression that she was a little slow.

And then…

“Really?”

“?”

This time Quenser was left staring at her in puzzlement. However, it seemed the girl had no intention of continuing the conversation. She turned around and left that forested area of Alaska, leaving the boy with his rifle and fishing pole.

In real life, people often did not think back on strange things that happened.

In just such an example, the reason that Elite girl had spoken to him like that was something Quenser probably should have thought back on a little more.

After all, Objects were synonymous with war and flesh-and-blood soldiers had no value.

However, that also meant that just thinking about it may have been pointless.