Editing HEAVY OBJECT:MonicaSS (section)

===Part 5===

Headmaster Cliff French-Connection.

“Another name I don’t know,” groaned Quenser in a corner of the sunset-dyed gym.

Super-mini dress Monica, who worked as an idol, apparently did not recognize it either, so Allen explained.

“Just like the Board Chairman, he was appointed as Headmaster quite recently. And while the position of Board Chairman has been given to the Champs-Élysées family for generations, the Headmaster is publicly recruited from civilian corporate executives. The idea is for nobles and commoners to join together and create the nation’s treasures. It’s actually such a simple pretext for gathering power that it would seem unrealistic in entertainment.”

“There was actually a condition for replacing my grandmother with me,” spat out Elritta. “Since it was assumed someone my age could not handle the complexities of running the Academy, a specialist in financial transactions was appointed as a new Headmaster. But he noticed and began abusing the false funding plan far too quickly. It’s possible he had his eye on it for a while beforehand. And in that case…”

“?”

“My grandmother’s stroke starts to sound suspicious.”

She said it in a low voice.

Elritta was very clear in what she said and her voice contained hatred unthinkable for a 10-year-old girl.

“He is pretending to be on the teachers’ side while he avoids the fighting, but he is also using his mobile device to act as a student and stir up more fighting. All while guiding the students to target areas that will not place him in danger. I tried destroying some of the communications equipment, but it did not seem to work. The students and teachers both have tons of pirate antennas and he might also be using antennas located outside the Academy’s grounds. Cutting out Cliff’s duplicitous tongue will not be easy.”

“Hold on,” said Quenser. “This…Cliff was it? It’s probably going to take me a while to remember some old guy’s name. Anyway, why is the Headmaster even still on campus???”

“You don’t know?” Monica pouted her lips with her foil sitting next to her. “Were you not listening, servant? The Headmaster is agitating the students into eliminating the teachers investigating his misdeeds. That way he can eliminate the evidence of financial malpractice. He has to remain in harm’s way until that is complete.”

“But he’s manipulating people through a mobile device, right? Then couldn’t he cross the fence and have the police protect him while he hides his smartphone behind his back and agitates the students with it?”

“Ah.”

Allen’s mouth fell open in obvious realization.

And Quenser shrugged.

“He might be setting the teachers up to be slaughtered, but the students are only amateurs. It’s not exactly a sure thing. Don’t you think there have to be some cleverer ways of handling it? For example…yeah. The Academy’s biology lab building is developing bacteriological weapons, so he could claim the entire campus…no, all of Paris is at risk. He just has to tell the military that there will be no stopping an outbreak unless they don’t hurry up and chuck a thermobaric bomb onto the Academy to heat treat it all.”

“That is certainly a horrifically devilish idea.”

Elritta gulped and gave that assessment from his lap.

That student was the same as always.

“But the Headmaster hasn’t done that despite being a devil. He’s put such a largescale plan into action and he hasn’t made any major mistakes yet, so I doubt it’s because he has a conscious or because he’s too stupid to come up with the idea. There has to be a good reason why he can’t just raze the Academy to the ground and why he has to stay here.”

“I see. It almost makes it sound like he’s searching for something. I can practically see him skulking in the shadows and preparing for some kind of search.”

But what exactly was he searching for?

Quenser, Allen, and Monica all looked to Elritta sitting in Quenser’s lap.

That Board Chairman looked puzzled at first, and then…

“Are you suggesting it’s me? No, that can’t be it. It might sound heroic to have the Board Chairman and Headmaster as the kings in a life-size game of chess, but I seriously doubt I am that valuable at the moment. I was never able to find any proof of Cliff’s financial malpractice.”

“No,” cut in Quenser. “If he thought you were worthless, he wouldn’t still be here manipulating everyone. Remember what he’s done. If we assume all of the students’ actions have been under his control, then he was the one who convinced them the Headmaster and Board Chairman were the villains here. That means he put himself in danger to apply pressure to Elritta. Why? There has to be a reason.”

“Wait.” Allen, who had been one of the manipulated students, rubbed his chin as he began thinking for himself after freeing himself from that yoke. “There is one place the students would attack first if we thought the Board Chairman was our enemy: her office. We might find here there, but even if we didn’t, we could smash up her stuff to work off our frustrations. But if we were manipulated to think that way…”

“It would be perfect for the Headmaster. He could enter that normally-restricted area, pull out all the desk drawers, pull up all the carpet, and check behind the cabinets without anyone knowing he had been there. Because the place had already been trashed.”

“Again!” frantically cut in Elritta. She was desperately trying to course correct as they strayed in an odd direction. “That doesn’t make sense. If I had Cliff’s Achilles heel, none of this mess would have happened. I have nothing. If I had evidence of his financial malpractice using that secret project, I would have climbed over the fence and handed it over to the military. Then the Black Uniforms could have imprisoned him in a ‘nonexistent camp’!”

“…”

“Listen, you mustn’t rely on false hope just because things seem hopeless. Cliff excels at showing illusions of straw to drowning people. That’s how he’s manipulating the students with his mobile device and that’s how he mocked the high school Student Council President as Foie Gras and had her find a school play…script…”

She trailed off.

She suddenly stopped speaking.

“That’s it.” Quenser snapped his fingers. “I knew something seemed off about that to me. The pieces didn’t fit together right. The attack on the beautiful Student Council President would make for some sensational news and it would inspire exactly the kind of anger needed to agitate and control the students. …But doesn’t it seem like a little much? Would the Headmaster really attack her just as a trigger? Doing it himself would be risky and tricking someone else into doing his dirty work isn’t what a villain like him would do.”

“But it was as effective as he could ever have hoped, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, and Operation Foie Gras was very real,” said Elritta. “Unfortunately, everything she found was a script created by Cliff. None if it led back to the real secret project.”

It did not sound like she was lying.

But Quenser breathed in and out.

He had no evidence.

But he said it anyway.

“Are you sure about that?”

“What???”

“It may have begun as a school play script. He may have mocked her with the name Foie Gras. But that decoy project was prepared by the Headmaster, right? That means there was a link between the beautiful Student Council President and the Headmaster, albeit a thin and twisted one. So she might have actually found the answer. She might have made it past the decoy and found the reason why he had to create that school play in the first place. And if so…”

“The President really was looking at the secret project?” said Allen in a daze.

Quenser nodded.

“Or she started catching glimpses of it and the Headmaster panicked and attacked her before she found any more. And if someone investigated that, it could easily lead back to him, so what was he to do? What kind of mayo would he slather on that rotten food to hide the flavor?”

“Are you saying that’s why he split the Academy between students and teachers!?”

He had started a war to hide his crimes.

It was crazy, but it was true no one had made it back to his crimes.

A lot of people were lost in a war, so who would notice an extra person or two had died?

“While everyone is fighting, he can stroll through the off-limits areas and search for the secret file in the already-damaged school buildings. And that includes both the space shared with commoners and the space exclusive to nobles. Hey, Board Chairman, which one is…whatever that old shit is named?”

“He is a commoner. Since he was meant as an opposite to a noble like me.”

“And if he was a financial specialist, I doubt he had any special technical qualifications,” added Allen.

“Exactly. He’ll be paranoid the beautiful Student Council President left something behind,” continued Quenser. “But even if he wants to comb through the entire Academy for his treasure hunt, there are a lot of places he can’t go, like the labs and salons. But he can’t allow that. So he made his move. Now he can search anywhere: the Student Council Room, the Board Chairman’s Office, the labs, the clean rooms, the girls locker room, and so on. He can even strut right into the highly restricted and recorded areas that deal directly in Object tech research. This is his biggest chance.”

“Then, Quensette, if we can find the President’s hidden file before Cliff…”

“It’s checkmate. We can end this manufactured war between the students and teachers.”

They had seen something.

It was the bright light of hope.

“Wait.”

But Board Chairman Elritta cut in.

Once she had their attention, she carefully continued.

“That sounds great and all, but there is no actual evidence, right? The existence of a secret file hidden at the Academy and the idea that the President had seen what lay beyond the school play are both no more than assumptions.”

“True enough,” agreed Quenser. “But I can’t imagine any other reason that devil of a Headmaster would still be here in the Academy. Also…”

“Also?”

“Hey, Allen. The rumored beautiful Student Council President is pretty, sexy, smart, athletic, rich, a noble with an impeccable upbringing, popular, kind as can be, and just all-around perfect, right? Do you really think someone like her would be entirely duped by an ugly old guy like Cliff? Do you really believe she was called Foie Gras and taken out of the picture for something as silly as money and authority???”

“Heh.”

Only after hearing that did Allen finally laugh quietly.

He had yet to recover from the shock of having shot innocent teachers, but he may have been trying to make progress in his own way.

“You’re right. Could a beautiful flower like that really be so easily plucked by some greasy old guy? That just doesn’t sound right at all.”

“That settles it then.” Quenser snapped his fingers. “If I have to flip the coin of fate, I’m betting on the hot girl. Win and I can grin like an idiot, lose and I can smile in resignation and die. This unseen hidden file sounds worth searching for to me.”

Elritta, who sat in his lap, and Monica, who was eating a spicy chicken sandwich, exchanged a disgusted look. They clearly did not want to have someone bet their lives on that heroic but ugly logic.

So Quenser said more.

“Y’know, Elritta, you’re a part of this too.”

“?”

“It may have been the beautiful Student Council President’s secret file that clinched it, but the Headmaster was also cautious of your actions. He probably mistakenly assumed you were working with the President to track down evidence of his misdeeds. Or maybe the President really did try to send the secret file to you using some unseen route. Otherwise, I see no reason the Headmaster would trick the students into attacking your office. It would have made more sense to attack the Student Council Room instead. But he focused on your office instead.”

“A line between me and the President? There is one possibility.”

If they knew what that was, they might be able to get ahead of the Headmaster and bring an end to the conflict between students and teachers. Finding the secret file hidden somewhere in the Academy would change everything.

But something else happened before Elritta could give them a specific answer.

The fellow(?) students occupying the gym approached them.

Those boys and girls held the thick metal poles used to support a volleyball net or the sport rifles used for clay pigeon shooting.

“Are you about done?”

“Excellent work. That’s her right? The villain who attacked the President?”

“We can’t decide whether to interrogate her in the soundproofed music room or publicly execute her on the sports ground. Either way, it would be best to let everyone see us arrest her. It’ll improve morale.”

They were grinning.

There was disgusting, sticky hatred and dark joy on their faces.

Quenser sighed and found they were already surrounded by more than 10 boys and girls.

Even if those students did not understand what Quenser’s group was talking about and even if they made no attempt to understand, it must have been clear they were getting along with Elritta.

And those students were still affected by the Headmaster’s manipulation, so they must have hated anyone who had anything to do with the Board Chairman.

“I should’ve expected this. If I was the Headmaster, I would’ve made sure of it.”

“What do we do, servant? We cannot afford to lose Elritta here, but beating down every single one of them like something from a kung fu movie seems a tad optimistic.”

Monica spoke cautiously to him even as she reached for her stun sabre.

Quenser kept his head stationary and moved just his eyes to check the situation.

They were near the wall and the exit was quite close by. But they would have to break free of the surrounding students to get there. If they just went for it, they would be ganged up on and, even if they were lucky enough to get past that human wall, they would only be shot in the back by projectile weapons. A distance of a few meters held absolute meaning here.

Plus, escaping while covering for Monica and young Elritta was entirely hopeless. Escaping was impossible unless they were willing to make a sacrifice.

But even with that in mind, Quenser grinned.

“Let’s go the kung fu movie route.”

A stir ran through the boys and girls surrounding them and through Allen and Monica as well.

Quenser ignored them and continued.

“Isn’t it great that projectile weapons are allowed nowadays? People don’t bat an eye at people holding twin handguns sideways and firing away in their kung fu movies. By the way, this here is my weapon. It’s a slingshot bow gun made from a bicycle tire tube.”

The student lowered Elritta from his lap and slowly stood up.

“It can only punch through a 3cm-thick piece of plywood from 20 meters, but you can do something nifty with it. Replace the arrowhead with a glass fiber bag and you can give it additional effects: explosives, liquid nitrogen, tear gas, sulfuric acid, naphtha, whatever. There are a lot of neat ways to use it, but my current recommendation is this: titanium tetrachloride and a few other chemicals.”

The fact that Quenser was armed with a bow may have been why the surrounding mob was so confident. He would have to nock an arrow and pull back the string to use it. And they could shoot him if he showed any sign of doing so.

And so they made a mistake.

He dropped the glass fiber bag the size of a ping pong ball and crushed it underfoot.

Then there was only his voice.

“In other words, a smokescreen. Although you don’t see it as much these days because CG is used for everything.”

The color white filled their vision.

While surrounded by coughing, Quenser started by grabbing Elritta’s little hand and pulling hard. Then he shoved on Monica’s back to strongly suggest she head for the gym’s closest exit just a few meters away. He did not have time to worry about Allen, but he was a boy. He would have to figure something out on his own.

Dry sounds rang out from all around.

Angry voices shouted one after another.

“Dammit! Where are they!?”

“Stop, you idiots! We’ll just shoot each other!!”

It would have been dangerous if the students had lined up on one side and fired randomly into the smokescreen, but they had not done that. That gathering of fools had fully surrounded the table without considering line of fire, but some of them were at least smart enough to stop before they caused any friendly fire. The Academy students were wonderful.

Meanwhile, Quenser heard a few sounds like neon lights bursting within the smokescreen. Those would be Monica’s foil. Some of the students had been masses of muscle in colorful judo uniforms, but they could not wield their full strength in this situation.

Quenser used the confusion to slip past the students, find his way to the metal door, slide it open with a tackle, and burst outside.

The orange of sunset dazzled his eyes.

And outside, the teachers had an armored truck equipped with a pressurized gas cannon that vaporized liquid nitrogen so it expanded in volume.

“Goddammiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit!!”

Quenser crouched down, grabbed Monica and Elritta’s clothes, and dove behind a flowerbed elevated above the ground with stacked bricks.

He once more ignored Allen.

Just after he assumed that boy would be fine, a rapid series of horrifying dull sounds burst out.

It did not seem to be targeting Quenser’s group.

It was generally tearing down the gym’s wall. First, it opened a hole the size of a basketball and then tore down the surrounding wall from there. Allen was just about blown away by the shockwave alone, but he finally managed to dive behind the flower bed. He just about landed on top of the foil Monica had placed on the ground, so she quickly switched it off.

There must have been something wrong with Allen’s internal pressure because he had a slight nosebleed as he shouted at Quenser.

“That’s sexist! You need to save me too!!”

“Look, I’ve got a girl in each hand. That’s how the world is supposed to work. Besides, you managed fine on your own. But anyway, the students and teachers are about to clash, so let’s use that as a distraction while we sneak away behind this row of flower beds.”

Meanwhile, red-suited Elritta stuck out her tongue in disgust.

“Ugh, peh, peh!! What was that smoke? My mouth feels all prickly or like it’s full of something spicy. I want to wash it out with water…”

“I can’t exactly say that smokescreen was good for your health, but you sure are sensitive. It looked like you were avoiding any amount of pepper with those sandwiches. Even though the sweetness is stronger with the honey mustard chicken.”

“I know I need to overcome this. But my body just refuses to accept it.”

Elritta pouted her lips, so he gave her a pat on the head before moving onto their next action.

While a legitimate firefight broke out, Quenser’s group turned the other way and worked to escape the battleground. Angry shouts and screams filled the air.

“You bastards think you’re so great just because you’ve got a turret on the roof!!”

“Bring out the ballista! Use that and we can blast right through the teachers’ armor! Target that turret!!”

“Now, as you can see, the power of a gun is heavily reliant on pressure management, so…”

“Gulp!! There he is! It’s that infamous professor from the max difficulty setting!!”

Elritta looked back several times while Quenser pulled on her hand.

“The teachers don’t seem to have completely lost it yet. Well, except for that one freak. They probably blew a hole in the wall because they think I am being imprisoned in the gym.”

“…”

Her comment put a bitter look on Allen’s face. It may have reminded him of what he had done.

“Is there any building that isn’t occupied by either side?”

“That won’t be easy to find. At this stage, both sides are fighting over everything, even the filthy boys bathrooms in the clubroom building.”

“Hey, Allen, if we reach the chemistry lab building, there will be plenty of Geiger counters lying around, right? Can’t we tamper with a sensor to trigger an alarm from a CT scanner, an experimental hadron collider, or something else with that mark on it? That’ll send everyone running away in a hurry. Then we’ll have the perfect secret base.”

“Have you forgotten everything in the Academy is being weaponized right now? Everything usable is already in use. And if we fake some dangerous-looking data, they’ll actually rush in there with hazmat suits on.”

It was looking difficult to secure a sanctuary or safe zone.

Unable to move on or head back, they began a strategy meeting behind a roadside tree which provided no real defense.

The tiny Board Chairman waved her hand.

“The bigger problem is the Student Council President’s secret file. We need to find it before Headmaster Cliff does.”

“It looks like he thinks he can find the secret file if he captures you. Any ideas there?”

“I started to say it before.” Elritta held her index finger to her chin. “But I have actually asked the Student Council Presidents of the elementary school, middle school, high school, university, and graduate school to tutor me afterschool. While keeping it a secret from the other students, of course.”

“Tutoring you? The Board Chairman of the best technical school there is!?”

“Have you forgotten? Even if you call me a prodigy, I am still a 10-year-old kid. I need to focus on my own education even as I run the Academy.”

Elritta did not hesitate to state this.

She was willing to admit her own inexperience and reduce the status known as pride. And that alone made her seem plenty mature.

“Still, that would be a bad look for the Academy, so I can’t make it public. And it also helps them. The Presidents are both students and leaders. Being a genius at learning is not enough. We must support and occasionally test their talents at teaching.”

“So the beautiful Student Council President would have used something related to that, huh?”

“We always met at different locations because a single set location would stand out too much. Each of the Presidents made the teaching materials on their own computer.”

“But Cliff would have thought of something like that almost immediately.”

“What about the printer they used to print it out? Next to the high school Student Council Room is a storage closet…well, it’s more of a storeroom for outdated equipment that would be too expensive to have removed. Anyway, there is an old, yellowed industrial printer gathering dust there. Printers like that gather temporary data in their internal memory. It became something of a problem when people realized you could take data from a printer’s residual memory to avoid hacking through the strict security of a computer system’s server. The Presidents all used retired printers to leave as few hints as possible.”

“So…”

“Are you saying it’s possible some unnatural data has been placed in that memory?” asked Monica. “So you could hit a button to have it print out the entire secret file?”

They all exchanged a glance.

They finally had a clear objective.

They were no longer just firing projectiles at random or aimlessly fleeing.

“The Student Council Room. There are officially an equal number of nobles and commoners on the council, but in reality, the President and Vice President are always nobles and the main room is in the nobles-only area. Under normal circumstances, I’d have an easier time getting into the girls shower room than there.”

“We are only talking about the storeroom next door, so you need not degrade yourself so much, servant. (Really, you just need to serve me alone instead of worrying about everyone else. Mutter, mutter.)”

“Okay, let’s check the place out. Allen, where’s the Student Council Room!? The storeroom is right next to it!”

“Isn’t this your school too, Quensette!? But, yeah, it’s pretty far away. It’s in the special classroom building instead of the general school building, so it’s on the other side of campus. It’s enough for me to wish there was a bike share or community bus around here. Of course, it’s sure to be crawling with students and teachers. And it doesn’t matter which side fires the bullet; it’ll kill you just the same.”

“But we have to do this.”

“Wait, wait. Stop trying to look cool and face reality, servant. Crossing that wide-open lawn would be suicide. A volleyball launcher is firing bombs from the roof and experimental laser vehicles meant to shoot down drones are driving around. There’s no escape once they lock onto us. They’ll turn us into human torches at the speed of light.”

Elritta listened to their conversation and then glanced thoughtfully to the side.

And then she spoke.

“There is a way.”

“?”

“There are underground maintenance tunnels for the fiber optic cables connecting all of the buildings together. The students are not even aware they exist and the teachers might have heard them mentioned at most. Because the installation and maintenance is all handled by outside contractors. No one knows where the exact entrances and exits are, so I doubt anyone will be watching them.”

“You doubt? We have to risk our lives on that level of uncertainty!?”

“I said I tried to cut off communications a few times, didn’t I? I followed the VIP emergency evacuation manual into the underground area and snipped the fiber optic cables with nail clippers, but no one saw me. I just can’t guarantee that no one discovered them since.”

Once Elritta finished her businesslike explanation, she added one last thing.

She gave a personal opinion.

“I still find it hard to believe, but if that Student Council President really was more than foie gras and tried to leave something for me, I cannot let it go to waste. I won’t let Cliff destroy it this time.”