Editing HEAVY OBJECT:Volume19 Chapter 3 (section)

===Part 5===

Quenser clicked his tongue and reached out from under the truck. After feeling the pain in his fingers, he grabbed a piece of dry ice presumably thrown out by a food stall cooking up fresh fish. He used a cooking knife about as short as his thumb to cut a hole in the radiator pipe to sprinkle the coolant water on the dry ice.

White steam that would obscure the vision of the harmless crowd spread out from below the truck.

“Whoa!?”

Hearing a Faith Organization police officer cry out while slowly approaching the truck, Quenser and Putana crawled out from under the truck.

Several dry gunshots rang out right next to them.

Quenser looked over in surprise to see Millia sending a horizontal line of bullets into the side of the truck, pulling the pin from an incendiary grenade, and tossing it into the driver’s compartment.

“We’ve gotta cover our tracks! We aren’t supposed to be in Rome!!”

“Ugh, and that means killing the hostage?”

“Teacher. You don’t sound all ''that'' bothered by it.”

The truck was convenient, but it had always been meant as a temporary thing. They had to leave it behind now that it was time to abandon it. They contacted Heivia and Myonri via radio while quickly vacating the area. The grenade must have ignited either the fuel tank or pipe because they heard a much louder explosion behind them. It caused less of a commotion than expected, perhaps thanks to the tens of thousands of firecrackers and bottle rockets set off during the parades.

Quenser yelled to the others while hiding among the crowd costumed in masks and cloaks.

“Putana, you be on alert for snipers or the Valkyries. Millia, if there’s anything you’ve been keeping from us, you need to tell us now!!”

“Why do you make me sound like the bad guy here?”

“If we get into trouble and nearly die because you forgot to tell us something, I’m giving you a spanking.”

Millia Newburg looked exasperated while she flipped her reversible hoodie inside out to change its color.

“I honestly don’t have much more information. Only a list of radio codes, I guess. The Information Alliance code is probably the one used by the Electric Drills, but he also had a decryption program for a Legitimacy Kingdom code. I don’t know who he hoped to contact using that, though.”

Quenser came to a stop.

Putana and Millia looked puzzled, but he had some extra information he had obtained with his own two feet.

This was not his first time dealing with a Bad Garage group.

In other words…

“Stick that tight ass out my way, Millia.”

“Now really isn’t the time for that, Quenser!”

“Dammit. They have a Legitimacy Kingdom group too: the Chain Cutters! Come to think of it, we just kind of assumed they were dead and didn’t actually count their bodies or anything!!”

“Teacher?”

“Bad Garage used the internet to corrupt and recruit a Legitimacy Kingdom unit. And that godawful unit ignored their orders and fired a ton of cruise missiles in the Northern Restricted Zone. …This is bad. Are they going to fire hundreds of missiles into Rome like that!?”

He heard a deep sound like several tremors occurring at the same time.

Those were sirens.

This was an air raid warning. But did all the Roman residents and tourists really understand what that meant while they were trying to enjoy the carnival? Some assumed this was part of the parade or some other event, so they threw their hands in the air, smiled, and shouted back at the disaster speakers. A lot of the others simply aimed their phone cameras at the speakers.

A Faith Organization radar station must have detected something, but they could not get through to the ordinary people out there.

The Chain Cutters had to know the Electric Drills, another Bad Garage group, were in Rome. Were they willing to blow away their own allies if it would achieve their goal?

Then it happened.

At first, Quenser thought he was seeing giant smokestacks like those found at an industrial complex. The thick metal extended more than 100m into the air. The high-rise structures looked horribly out of place in Rome since it was known as a citywide museum where individual houses and shops were selected as world heritage sites.

He thought this must be a giant cage surrounding an especially-large temple in the center of Rome.

But it was not.

They slowly slid to the side. They were moving. They had left standby mode and were taking up the optimal position to physically eliminate the incoming threat.

“Those are the defense Objects used to protect Rome,” explained Putana Highball while watching the distant movement.

There were seven of them.

And if these were the direct defenders of their home country, they would be the best of the best.

That girl had once been a Faith Organization Pilot Elite, so what did she see when she watched those 7 smokestacks…no, those colossal main cannons. Even now, the 7 Objects were moving to the outskirts of Rome. They were like a giant flower blossoming to fortify the city’s defenses in each direction.

There was envy, jealousy, and even pure terror in Putana’s voice as she continued.

“Septimontium. Those are the ‘seven hills’ that protect Rome, teacher.”