Editing HEAVY OBJECT:Volume1 Chapter 1 (section)

===Part 11===

He thought he heard someone calling his name.

All he could see was strange scenery that was neither black nor richly colored. It seemed like he was seeing the images coming from his two eyeballs in mosaic without his brain processing them. While Quenser had lost his sense of balance, feeling like he was going to vomit, and stared blankly at that scenery, he heard someone call his name for sure.

“…Hey, wake up, Quenser!! Don’t go to sleep! Wake up!!”

“Heivia…?” Quenser muttered in a scratchy voice.

His body had to have sunk into the snow, but he could not feel it at all.

“Why? Didn’t you run away…?”

“Shut up. I had no choice.”

Heivia had a portable anti-tank missile hanging from a strap. He had to have known it would be of no help, but he must have wanted to bring as much firepower with him as he could. Quenser could tell Heivia’s body was still trembling.

Fear of that Object was not something that could be so easily wiped away.

Even so, Heivia had followed after Quenser.

“…Was I hit…?”

“You amateur. The grenade wasn’t directly aimed for you and it only blew some fragments off of a nearby rock. Your upper body was hit by the fragments of scattered stone. If you had been hit by shrapnel from the grenade, it would have ripped your flesh apart. They’re made so they’ll do that.”

“I see. Damn I’m pathetic… Did I pass out from fear after just a few scratches?”

Quenser tried to get up, but he groaned after feeling a powerful pressure on his chest. It seemed the mental shock had been great enough to make his heart contract too much. He coughed and finally managed to pull himself out from the snow.

“Oh, crap! Where’s the Elite princess…? Was she taken away while I was passed out?”

“What are you saying? You won. You took out all those bastards, so don’t worry. Look, hero. The princess you saved is right over there.”

Quenser looked in the direction Heivia pointed and saw the Elite girl standing about 2 meters away. She was standing stock still while staring at Quenser’s face as if she were looking at something she could not believe.

Her expression was rather difficult to describe.

Extraordinary fear was certainly present. As was incomparable shock. She also looked as if she could not yet tell if she should feel relieved. Overall, her expression was not one easily described using any standard emotion.

“Why…?” she said with a wavering voice that she could not hold still due to the waves of emotion roiling within her. “Why did you come to save me…?”

After that, her true thoughts spilled forth as if from a hole in her heart.

Or perhaps she had felt something that made her not want to lie any longer.

“You are not the one who is meant to fight. You are not an Elite. You were not protected by thick nuclear-shelter like armor, so why did you come here?”

Quenser pondered her words silently.

Something deeper than what she normally showed on the surface was present in her words.

“And I would mock you in my heart.”

Her words continued to spill forth.

That may have been inappropriate for the Elite pilot of the Object that was the cornerstone of their military force and, in a way, the representative of their nation.

“I mocked you because you always needed me to protect you and because you would all be killed without the Object!”

However, that unseemly inappropriateness was what made it seem truly human.

Quenser realized that her too-pure image was not something like natural water; it was more like tap water that smells of chlorine.

“I wanted to deny it and I wanted to have a more proper opinion, but I would always have those horrible thoughts about you!! So why did you come here to save me!?”

Quenser and Heivia exchanged glances.

They then looked back at the Elite girl.

They looked back at that girl who had lost her role with the loss of the Object.

“What do you mean ‘horrible thoughts’? That’s the truth.”

“Eh…?”

“I’ve tried to study as much as I can about Objects, but I only just now understood something upon actually fighting one today. Those things are monsters. Really, truly monsters. And who was it that has been fighting all alone this whole time to make sure those monsters did not come destroy our base zone?”

The girl looked at Quenser with a surprised look.

The long time spent buried in the snow and the mental shock he did not seem able to shake off had stiffened his face, but Quenser moved the stiff muscles to force a smile.

“But no longer,” Quenser said as he picked up the rifle that had fallen to the ground nearby.

He pulled out the empty magazine and replaced it with a new one Heivia gave him.

Compared to an Object, it was a puny weapon.

With it in hand, Quenser faced the girl and gave a truly horrible expression.

“You no longer need to fight alone. Is there any real reason you have to?”

The girl did not seem to know how to react to that.

She was an Elite, the pilot of one of the giant weapons known as Objects.

It might have been that no one had ever said anything like that to her before. She had been given the burden of many lives, winning had been expected of her, and she had even been implicitly threatened that she would lose everything if she lost. She had been desperately fighting under those conditions. That was why she had never raised a voice of protest against that solitary fight no matter how damaged she became or how much unease she held.

The girl did not seem able to fully accept Quenser’s words.

She turned her troubled gaze toward Heivia, but he only shrugged.

“I’m nothing special. Quenser just said that you alone wouldn’t be enough of a decoy and that brought me to my senses. I realized he was absolutely right, so I had to prepare something that would function as a proper decoy or else we would all be killed. And then…well…as I said before, I had no choice.” With that casual response, Heivia glanced around. “Now then, my princess and her knight. It looks like we can’t stick around here much longer.”

“…?”

Quenser frowned, but he realized what Heivia meant shortly thereafter.

Heivia’s false courage was hiding his fear of the distantly approaching thundercloud-like noise that the Object made as it moved.

“Let’s go! You made quite a racket when you shot and killed those soldiers. Their Object must have noticed and is heading this way!!”

Heivia’s cry ended the heart-warming scene.

They had returned to hell.

The life-and-death game of tag with the over 50 meter Object had begun anew.

“Shit!! Where are we supposed to go!?”

The deep snow grabbed at his feet as he moved, but Quenser desperately kept moving. In response, Heivia shouted out as loudly as he could as if to rid himself of his fear.

“You need to memorize the map of the area you’re gonna be fighting in!! There’s a cave about 50 meters ahead. If we can get in there, we can escape from that giant Object!!”

Fifty meters.

That was a distance they could manage in 10 seconds even when fully equipped if they were on a paved surface.

However, the deep snow robbed them of their speed and the enemy Object used static electricity to smoothly approach around the slopes of the mountain. Its movements made it look like the surface below it was sliding it along.

It was about 3 kilometers away, but that was nothing to that giant weapon.

“It’s aiming the plasma cannons this way!!” shouted the Elite girl.

(With that Object’s aiming devices, there’s no way it can’t shoot us at that distance. Are they still not sure whether they want to capture the princess alive or not?)

The distance to the cave felt strangely long.

(It’s true that they might be able to get some classified information related to our Object out of her if they tortured her, but this response is inconsistent with the soldiers from before!!)

He thought his legs were going to cramp up due to fear, but he had no choice but to continue running.

“Hey, Quenser. You’re a combat engineer, right!? Do you have any explosives!?”

“I have about 5 kilograms of normal C4!”

“What!? Isn’t 10 kilos the standard equipment!?”

“I felt silly carrying around useless explosives around the clock! And what I have is meant for civil engineering uses! It won’t work against an Object!!”

“Give it to me! Just hurry up and hand it over!! And a fuse too!!”

As they approached the entrance to the cave, Quenser tossed over a clay-like mass about the size of a can of hairspray. The bomb was inside a package of clear film and Heivia set the receiver for the detonation signal through the film before stabbing the electric fuse into it. He then tossed it right next to the cave.

The main weapons of the approaching Object, the low-stability plasma cannons, slowly aimed toward them.

However, Heivia leapt into the cave before they could spew flames and Quenser followed. The Elite girl’s foot got caught in the snow and she started to trip, but she managed to turn it into a roll that brought her into the cave.

Quenser frantically caught the Elite girl before shouting at Heivia.

“Hey, what are we gonna do!? If it fires its plasma cannons into the cave, we’ll be cooked to death!! No matter how much this cave branches apart, all the air inside will be heated up to the point that the entire cave will be an oven!!”

“That’s what the C4’s for! Now, outta the way!! Get deeper inside!!”

Heivia urged them on and Quenser headed further inside the cave while half-dragging the Elite girl. After heading about 10 meters in, Quenser had a thought.

What was Heivia planning to do with the C4?

He may have been planning to detonate it when the Object was right up against the entrance to the cave, but Quenser doubted that would do any damage to it. After all, the Object’s armor could withstand a direct hit from a nuclear missile or two with no real issues.

“Sorry, I decided to test our luck from the beginning.”

Immediately afterwards, Heivia hit the switch for the wireless detonation device.

With a tremendous roar, the roof of the cave collapsed, sealing off the entrance.

It was true that he was testing their luck.

First of all, he had just buried them alive if there was no other exit.

Second of all, the compressed explosive blast flowed into the cave.

Thanks to that, Quenser felt as if his eardrums were going to burst.