Editing HEAVY OBJECT:Volume1 Chapter 3 (section)

===Part 14===

Quenser seriously thought his heart had stopped, but apparently it had not.

“(Dammit. Hey, Quenser! Wake up!!)”

“(What? We weren’t crushed?)”

“(The roof was supported by multiple columns like a gym and we seem to have managed to get in one of the gaps those created.)”

The roof was cracked enough that they would be able to crawl out.

However, they were not stupid enough to exit without thinking.

At the very least, the Elite piloting the Generation 0.5 thought Quenser and Heivia were dead. As long as he thought that, he would not continue his attack. Now was their only chance to prepare for their counterattack.

“(But what exactly are we going to do? Him thinking we’re dead is great, but he’s going to head off and attack the nearby villages at this rate!!)”

“(You saw that firepower. We can’t face it head on. The only way is to destroy the reactor via that plug.)”

“(Did ''you'' see that firepower!? We won’t have time to walk up and plug in the power cable like we’re working at a power station for electric cars!! How are we supposed to get close!?)”

“(We just need to get the electricity there without getting close. C’mere.)”

Quenser stuck his head out of the cracked roof.

He could see the giant form of the Object in the dark night. Its 70 odd sub weapons were making slight movements, but it did not seem to be searching for them.

“(Is it continuing its warm up exercises before heading out to attack those villages? God dammit.)”

“(It’s possible the reactor is acting up a bit due to being powered up for the first time in 2 years. Let’s go.)”

“(Hey, you never told me what your plan is!)”

Quenser climbed up out of the cracked roof and crawled along it. He wanted to move more quickly, but that would have caused too much noise. If the Object noticed them, it was all over.

Luckily, the cameras were the Object’s only major sensors. It had poor reception of sound. The fact that the cameras numbered in the 70s was a problem, but they could escape the Elite’s notice by blending in with the darkness of the night.

Quenser eventually reached what had originally been the maintenance facility’s wall.

There, the large container-shaped capacitors were lined up. Most of them had been crushed by the roof, but a few were still functioning.

Heivia crawled up shortly thereafter and whispered to Quenser.

“(Are you seriously planning to take that cable and charge in at the Generation 0.5!? You’ll die!!)”

“(That’s not my plan. Hey, is there any water around here? Even just a storage tank or a fire hydrant would work. I just need enough water to create a pool on the ground!!)”

“(What are you talking abou-…Wait, you mean…!?)”

“(Exactly. The torn power cable connected to that plug is dragging along the ground. If we create a huge puddle of water and run the electricity through it, it’ll pass through that cable and into the Generation 0.5’s reactor!!)”

Suddenly, they heard a sound coming from the Generation 0.5’s main gun.

“It noticed us!!”

“Quenser, over there! There’s a water storage tank!!”

It must have wanted to finish them off with its main gun because the Generation 0.5 was going out of its way to turn around.

Meanwhile, Quenser stabbed an electronic fuse into some Hand Axe and threw it as hard as he could in the direction Heivia was pointing.

A rusted water storage tank lay in that direction. Instead of being located on the building’s roof, it was on top of its own steel tower.

Just as the bomb was about to strike the tank, Quenser sent the detonation signal.

With a loud roar, the tank ruptured and the steel tower itself collapsed.

However…

“It was empty!! Was that just part of the dummy facility disguise!?”

“!!”

Meanwhile, the Generation 0.5 Object had finished turning their way.

With a slight creaking noise, the main coilgun finished its last bit of careful aiming.

They were doomed.

At the same time, the steel tower struck the ground. The tower had merely been a fake to fool the satellites, but the impact of it striking the ground tore up the earth below it. Dust flew into the air and dirt flew above Quenser and Heivia’s heads.

However, that was not all.

It must have burst a water pipe buried in the ground. A pillar of water erupted from the ground. It could not have been a normal water pipe. The water erupted a few dozen meters up into the air and rained down on the entire area.

(Was that an industrial water pipeline? Did they use a machine tool that used water to cut out the parts for the Object?)

Really, Quenser did not particularly care what they had used it for.

A great amount of water rained down on the ground, connecting the cable hanging down from the Generation 0.5’s body with the large capacitors in the crushed building.

“Ruuunnnn!!” shouted Quenser as he turned from the Object and ran.

Heivia followed just behind him.

They were not fleeing from the Generation 0.5’s coilgun.

That was not something they could escape from on foot.

They were fleeing from the quickly expanding pool of water.

And then a clear path was created between the crushed building and the Generation 0.5.

Immediately afterwards, they heard a great explosive noise.

At first, Quenser thought the ground had exploded in brilliant light.

However, that was not what had happened. The massive amount of electrical power stored up in the large capacitors had spread through the pool on the ground. In an instant, it had raced 200 meters across the ground and directly to the Generation 0.5.

The target was the power cable dragging along the ground. Twenty or thirty percent of the high voltage current entered the Object and forcibly activated the laser emitters used to heat the reactor.

The main body of the Object seemed to swell from the inside.

However, Quenser did not have time to keep watching.

Heivia tackled him to the ground and covered both his eyes with his hand.

“You idiot! You’ll go blind!!”

Just before Quenser managed to grasp what Heivia meant, he heard a loud roar.

At the same time, a brilliant flash of light stabbed into his retinas despite Heivia’s hand covering his eyes. His vision and his consciousness were filled with nothing but pure white. An intense pain stabbed through his ears and into the center of his head. He then thought he felt a liquid oozing back out. He didn’t know where he was hurt, but he must have been bleeding.

He had no idea how long it took for his vision to recover.

It was possible he had lost consciousness a few times before it happened.

He was not even sure of that.

“Quenser! Open your eyes, Quenser!”

As Heivia shook him, Quenser finally opened his eyes.

He could vaguely see Heivia’s face.

“The Generation 0.5? What happened to it…?”

“Take a look,” said Heivia as he pointed with this chin.

Quenser looked over and saw the Oceanian Object ripped open from the inside. The spherical body had folded outward like a blooming flower, and its 70 odd guns were scattered about and stabbed into the ground. Due to the explosion of the reactor, the huge pool of water was gone. It had all been evaporated. The eruption of water from the ruptured industrial water pipeline had stopped. It was possible the ruptured portion had melted and sealed once more.

There was no question what had happened to the foolish leader piloting the Object.

Even if he had used an escape device, he would have been roasted in the air as he floated down in a parachute.

“It’s over.”

“Yeah. This isn’t just an issue of an Object or two. The war in Oceania is now over.”

The two sat there blankly for a bit, but they finally stood up.

Then, not one, but both of them said, “Now let’s do something about that damn Councilor.”

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