Editing HEAVY OBJECT:Volume20 Chapter 5 (section)

===Part 9===

The Baby Magnum and the Rush needed to gather information and come up with a new plan fast. They were the ones being exposed to enemy fire after all.

Time didn’t actually stop when the unexpected happened.

In her cockpit, the Princess glared at the unbelievable sight through her special goggles.

“How is it still operational!?”

“Oh ho ho. Could it have another reactor attached elsewhere?”

That couldn’t be.

Even a bare reactor was 10m across. There was no way it could be hidden in the main cannon or propulsion device. There would be an obvious bulge there if it was. That was how it had worked with the Extra Arc.

They were making some kind of fundamental misunderstanding.

And if they didn’t figure it out fast, they would be in serious trouble.

“This one looks stronger than the Lizard Tail, so we need to find a solution fast. But it sounds like the important people like Frolaytia and Lendy aren’t going to be much help here.”

“Hey!”

“Hey!”

She had forgotten to switch off her radio, but she didn’t have time to worry about those complaints.

The Princess nodded with a completely serious look on her face.

“'''Help me, Quenser. I’m scared.'''”	

“Hey, no fair!! What kind of puppy dog voice was that!?”

They were up against an immortal Object they couldn’t seem to destroy and a laser fortress gun accurately firing from Mount Fuji’s summit.

When she explained the situation over the radio, Quenser Barbotage responded with exasperation in his voice.

“So you have two problems: you don’t know where the Asian Monster’s reactor is located and there’s a laser fortress gun using an absurd amount of energy on Mount Fuji’s summit. Sounds simple enough to me. So, Princess, what is the surrounding EM situation like? Have you encountered any radar or communication interference? Like a bit of static or a drop in transmission speed?”

“Yes, but it isn’t on the level of jamming. The Island Nation is desperate, so aren’t they sending all their radars out from Tokyo, Chiba, and Kanagawa?”

“That’s not it at all.” He fully rejected her idea and gave the real answer. “It’s wireless power transfer. And the communication interference confirms the medium they’re using is EM. Simply put, the reactor is located up on Mount Fuji and the naval Object is running off of the power sent from there. We thought it was waiting for you out in the middle of Tokyo Bay because fighting in the complex urban area is tricky – and I’m sure that is part of it – but all the buildings would get in the way of the EM waves while the open ocean doesn’t.”

“Oh ho ho. But it rose from below the surface at the start of the battle. EM waves have trouble penetrating water. That’s why sonar is used instead of radar.”

“That’s probably why it uses an air cushion. The initial surfacing action was just it using its floats. It only started receiving the wireless power after reaching the surface. …The 400mm railguns on the artillery islands didn’t have reactors either. Heivia guessed they used an undersea cable, but they didn’t need to. It was all EM.”

“…”

“And if the Object isn’t acting scared after you’ve given it such a beating, I doubt the cockpit is there either. But drone-style remote control signals are pretty distinctive, so you would have picked those up by now. It may use a form of human body communication instead.”

“Human body?”

“The body is mostly water, so it conducts electricity. Human body communication uses that fact to send and receive data using the body in place of an antenna or wire. The idea is to keep the data inside an implanted chip or a wristwatch and have it sent when two people shake hands or something. That way the signal can’t be intercepted by a third party. …Isn’t that perfect for this? Tokyo Bay is full of salt water, so if you wanted to, you could send electrical signals through it and control the Object floating in it.”

Simply put…

“The Object’s true identity is Tokyo Bay itself. The Pilot Elite’s nerves reach every part of that ocean, so what looks like a clean hit doesn’t really matter. Even when it reacts like it’s hurt, that’s just an act like the bit parts in a samurai movie who have to be ‘safely cut down’ by the samurai’s sword. You’ll never deliver a finishing blow to the Asian Monster if you fight normally and strike where you think will work. But now that you know the trick, you have nothing to fear. Existing tech gives you plenty of ways to scatter and attenuate the EM waves and the electrical signals in the ocean. Wars aren’t won by clever tricks. Show this monster just how frightening the fundamentals can be, Princess. You can win this.”