Editing HEAVY OBJECT:Volume20 Chapter 5 (section)

===Part 10===

After removing the radio from his mouth, Quenser stared off into the distance.

“Yeah, that’s the job I should’ve been doing all along. Why am I even on this mission?”

“You don’t want to spend time with me, big brother?” asked his sweaty sister with a glare.

But as much as the blonde braid girl put her hands on her hips and puffed out her cheeks, she still had a lot of growing to do and lacked the seduction skills needed to draw that idiot’s attention.

After escaping the burning Ichigaya garrison, they had removed the powered suits. The armor had done the job, but those weren’t specialized firefighting gear. The overheat alarm had been beeping at them the entire time, so they hadn’t been comfortable staying in them longer than necessary. Staying at the site of the fire would have cooked them alive in those oversized foil wrappings.

Azumaya.

They had names and faces to search for now, so they wouldn’t have to shoot all of the PMC soldiers here in Ichigaya. Well, they would unfortunately still have to silence those soldiers if they resisted.

Just as Quenser was thinking that, he heard some heavy tires tearing at the ground.

It was an eight-wheeled…something. The hunk of metal was about the size of a large fire truck, but it didn’t seem to be a black armored truck. It appeared to have a boxy silhouette at first, but it actually had a folded-up crane arm on the back.

“That’s an armored recovery vehicle!!” shouted Wraith Martini Vermouthspray, eyes wide.

“Eh? It’s a what???”

That was apparently a type of military vehicle. Quenser wasn’t sure what it meant, but it didn’t particularly matter right now. He could only think of four people who would try to escape in the confusion right now. Unlike an ordinary bus or van, it had no rear windows, but Quenser still glimpsed the young man in the driver’s seat.

That was Caines Ambrosia, one of the Azumaya members in the data they had extracted. Quenser had also glimpsed some other people inside.

“You’re not getting away!!”

“This sounds like a job for us.”

An armored truck started forward.

Most of the potatoes had come here on foot, so they didn’t have many vehicles available for a car chase.

When the Martini triplets’ truck passed by, Quenser grabbed onto the side. The tank-style continuous track seemed like it would be slow, but the truck could actually move at highway speeds.

“Big brother!!”

“You stay there, Catherine!!”

“Your clothes will get caught in the track! Climb up on top!!”

His stepsister cutely formed a megaphone with her hands to give him some very helpful advice that made his balls shrivel in fear. He was now intensely aware of the track grinding away as loudly as a chainsaw. He was dead if he didn’t obey her and fast.

He found Heivia had climbed atop the truck from the other side. When their eyes met, the idiots exchanged a greeting.

“Wanted to be a part of ending this mess?” asked Quenser.

“Nah, I just don’t trust those triplets,” said Heivia. “Who knows what they’ll do once we’re not watching.”

That was the way of things in a messy war.

The elevated highways had already been destroyed by the Island Nation, so the vehicle the size of a large tour bus was trying to escape along the labyrinthine collection of ordinary roads. It couldn’t quite make the turns, ignored the lights, and covered both sides of the road. That was all necessitated by its size, but it still felt like too much.

“Yikes. Am I imagining things or is the rubble burning over there?”

“That isn’t the explosives. There was a parking lot below the highway and the crushed cars would have been full of gas. That could explode at any time.”

Anyone who would have been out this late was staying indoors due to the war, but they would have run over quite a few people in just a few minutes otherwise.

Heivia checked the blue sign hanging over the road as the wind whipped at him.

“Looks like we’re headed west. They aren’t driving all the way to Mount Fuji, are they? Come to think of it, that laser fortress gun is still up there, isn’t it?”

“Are they trying to get help from whoever’s at the summit? Or they could be trying to lose us in Aokigahara forest at the foot of the mountain. The thick forest creates a tunnel that satellites can’t see through and I’ve heard compasses malfunction in there too. Not to mention the self-defense PMC has a largescale training camp at the foot of the mountain.”

Simply put, they needed to take those four out before they left Tokyo.

Together By Chance’s two Objects were in Tokyo Bay and Quenser’s group did not want to get too far away from their Objects in the unfamiliar Island Nation.

The Martini triplets used their radio to speak to them from within the truck.

“If we know they’re the villains, we can just kill them now, can’t we?”

“Wraith,” said Quenser.

“It would be best to leave one of them alive for a court martial, but the documents and data we have acquired is enough to prove their murder exchange and that they started the world war through Bad Garage. Think of taking one alive as a bonus. Now get firing.”

“You heard the lady.”

With the hum of a heavy motor, the gun on the roof slowly turned. It was a lot slimmer than a tank’s gun, but a 40mm autocannon still had more than three times the caliber of an anti-materiel rifle. A spray of bullets from that could tear someone apart along with the thick reinforced concrete wall they were hiding behind.

Two seconds before it started firing, something hopped up from the ground.

It came from the armored recovery vehicle. It was basically a large tow truck used to tow destroyed military vehicles and missile launchers from the battlefield. The wire had been released and the J-shaped hook that resembled a monstrous fishing hook had had bounced off the asphalt.

Orange sparks flew while the wild hook soared toward the Martini triplets’ truck. It crashed into the side of the autocannon barrel that was a bit thicker than a construction pipe.

The 25ton truck slid diagonally from the hit.

Quenser clenched his teeth and clung to the roof before shouting about what he had noticed.

“Stop!! Do not fire!!”

“Eh? Why not?” asked the triplets.

“The barrel is bent. Fire now and you’ll blow us up!!”

The truck had no device to detect a bent barrel with laser reflection, probably because the reflectors would get wet whenever the amphibious vehicle went in the water.

With more heavy clangs and crashes, the thick wire and metal hook flew into the air again. It was like a morning star used to crush a knight’s helmet. Quenser would be helpless to stop it if it happened to fly toward his head. And if it caught the edge of the truck, the entire truck would probably be thrown around.

Their only remaining weapons were the 12.7mm heavy machinegun attached near the hatch and the 81mm mortar forcibly attached at the rear.

Heivia slid back across the roof to get at the more difficult mortar.

“I doubt I can hit a moving target with this, but I can give you a shot if it lands in front of them and forces them to slam the brakes. Quenser! You aim for their ass with that machinegun! Just get it aimed and pull the trigger when the time comes! It’s fixed to the roof, so you don’t have to worry about the recoil!!”

When Quenser hesitated uncertainly, the nearby hatch burst open and triplets in red parade uniforms crawled out from between his legs while he sat on the roof.

Alisa Martini Sweet.

Rica Martini Medium.

Orsia Martini Dry.

They moved more like a single sea anemone than individual sisters. Quenser could only tell them apart by their hair styles and chest sizes.

“What are you doing? Hurry it up.”

“Oh? Do you not know how to use it?”

“Fine, we’ll show you how it’s done. First, hold this like this.”

They were all over him a moment later. If they were going to lean against him and move his arms for him, why couldn’t they just operate the gun themselves!?

Meanwhile, Heivia was shedding tears of blood.

“Why is it always him!!!???”

Also, hadn’t Catherine mentioned in her journal that she liked how he didn’t use guns?

Alisa Martini Sweet licked her lips and blew a breath in Quenser’s ear.

“Now, just move this like this and you can shoot out all of that hot stuff built up deep inside☆”

“Um, um, wait. I made a promise to innocent Catherine. Stop! I can’t betray a 12-year-old like this! No, I can’t stop iiiiit!!”

The 12.7mm bullets showed a complete lack of stamina by shooting out in full-auto mode at the lightest of touches. Sparks blossomed from the asphalt to the left of the armored recovery vehicle, so Orsia Martini Dry’s slender hand grabbed the long, thick shaft and yanked it to the side. The full-auto bullets formed a line like a sewing machine that finally found its target.

The bullets tore through thick metal and sent orange sparks flying. The flying wire thicker than a thumb was severed and the metal hook bigger than Quenser’s head flew toward them.

Terrified, Quenser accidentally buried his face in the boobs of one of the triplets.

“Watch ou- mgh!!”

“Oh, my☆”

“(Medium, do you really think ''he''’s going to notice we’re trying to make him jealous when he has his hands full driving?)”

“(He’s as dense as they come, so I seriously doubt it. But it’s his clueless and harmless side we fell for, so it’s not like we can complain.)”

The triplets were smiling darkly about something, but Quenser had bigger things to worry about.

A few of the heavy machinegun’s bullets had hit eight-wheeled armored recovery vehicle, but it was still running. Just like a fire truck or crane, its special equipment doubled as thick armor. Think of it like a dump truck full of gravel. That wouldn’t matter if they could fire directly to the front or side of the driver’s compartment, but it was hard to do serious damage when firing from the rear.

A light flashed in the night sky.

By the time he noticed that, a powerful laser beam had already sliced through the darkness and torn through Sendagaya. The luxury apartment buildings alongside the road glowed orange after being melted through.

“Damn them!”

“Are they twisting around in that shaking vehicle to use a binoculars-style handheld targeting device? I don’t see any other way an anti-air optical weapon would miss a moving truck like that.”

Quenser was boiling with anger, but the Martini sister supporting his face with her boobs kept her cool. And once he extracted his face from those soft cushions, he noticed something else.

“What?”

Quenser was forced to look back to get a second look at the destruction alongside the road.

“Those aren’t office buildings. They’re apartments where people live. But I didn’t hear any screams as they collapsed and I don’t see any bodies among the rubble.”

“They’re probably empty.”

But why?

He could understand an office building or department store being empty in the middle of the night, but it didn’t make sense for apartments. Those were people’s homes, so they should have been there sleeping at this hour.

(Have they already completed a largescale evacuation of all the residents? No, we caught the self-defense PMC by surprise, so they barely had time to get their railway gun set up. I doubt they would have had time to think about anything other than defense.)

But now was not the time to worry about this mystery of Island Nation culture.

He noticed a few signs for musical instrument stores and live music venues before they drove past a blue road sign saying Shinjuku. A distinctive building shaped like a rugby ball standing on end was visible in the distance. They also passed by the wreckage of an elevated railroad. Heivia gave a shout when he noticed.

“We’ve moved outside the Yamanote Line loop!? How far are we from the ocean now? We can’t move any further from Tokyo Bay. Nothing good comes from leaving your Object in enemy territory!!”

This was never going to end at this rate.

The buildings rapidly grew smaller and more closely packed after they crossed the Yamanote Line. That meant the layout of the roads would get more complicated as well. Only so many routes were accessible to the large armored recovery vehicle and armored truck, but Quenser’s group was still worried they would lose sight of the enemy at any moment.

That was when new instructions arrived over their radio.

“Ice Girl 1 to ground team. We finally neutralized Haneda Air Base’s ability to get aircraft in the air, so we can provide you with air support. You just want to stop that vehicle in front of you, right? I can take care of that before you leave Shinjuku. I’ll give you a countdown, so prepare for a bumpy ride.”

The unique silhouette of a Zig-27 fighter flew in from out ahead with an aerial bomb already detached from its main wing. Instead of hitting the fleeing armored recovery vehicle itself, it blew up the road ahead to keep the vehicle from continuing.

“That’s a hit.”

“What happened to the countdown!?”

To Quenser, the noise felt more like being hit by an invisible wall.

Even with its continuous tracks holding tightly to the road, their truck slid to the side. An expanding gray cloud of dust rushed in at them from the front.

That filthy screen blocked their view of the armored recovery vehicle up ahead.

But that wasn’t their biggest problem.

As the armored truck regained its balance and continued on ahead, it suddenly broke free of gravity.

Or rather, it fell into a large hole opened by the aerial bomb.

The actual fear crawled up Quenser’s spine after they were already falling. He clung to one of the triplets’ waists and buried his face in her boobs again.

“An underground…space!?”

“I don’t care if you bite your tongue when we land, but I have to admit I’d be mad if you bit my nipple off, okay?”