Editing HEAVY OBJECT:Volume15 Chapter 2 (section)

===Part 15===

There were more and more sizzling sounds like water on a hot grill.

They were of course coming from the 4m idol piloted by the Information Alliance’s Oh Ho Ho. Those bizarre cannons looked like reinforced glass lab equipment with composite armor forcibly added on top. Those giant rapid-fire beam cannons were meant to be carried by truck and fixed to the ground with metal stakes, but she was holding and swinging them around with machine arms. The Bullmites were built to deflect a normal(?) assault rifle bullet, but they could not “hunt” as intended when their opponent was a bipedal powered suit. The Multi-Gyros, those giant tops filled with 800,000 volts of electricity, were also having little luck.

More and more fist-sized holes were torn into the unmanned weapons’ armor and they were soon melted like sugar sculptures and blown away.

The university had a lot of straight hallways and the Bullmites could only just barely fit their large armored forms around the corners. It was not conducive to nimble movements that used excellent footwork to approach while moving from cover to cover. They could not avoid the rapid-fire light coming from the two cannons.

“As usual, the star of the battle is the Elite. Oh ho ho!”

“More importantly, watch your head. Seeing a fancy Nau Yoke idol’s head smashing through the ceiling and fluorescent lights is one hell of a visual!”

This seemed to be the logic of a Pilot Elite born in the age of Objects.

The powered suit was unstoppable while tilting its head at a diagonal angle but still scraping its ringlet curl head against the low ceiling. Instead of individual ingenuity, it was direct firepower backed by technology and resources that eliminated the threat. Without even using cover, she ruled the battlefield with the simple idea that a strong offense was the greatest defense.

“I can’t believe they would gather all the civilians in one place and then send their unmanned weapons there…”

“Give them enough time and those monsters will decide to use them as hostages. Let’s end this before any bored wives are tied to one of those rodeo machines made of composite armor.”

“? You are being awfully malicious this time. Oh ho ho. Has the Legitimacy Kingdom been teaching you to feel more hostile?”

That said, Heivia’s group had to think about more than just the fight against the Martinis. Their top priority was getting Oh Ho Ho’s father, Royce, out of Columbia University.

Unlike a middle or high school, universities gave the students a lot more freedom, but that increased the risk to them. Some of the faded posters on the bulletin boards were asking for information on missing people. That included a journalism club that had gone missing after leaving for a battlefield country (in the name of gathering materials, but who knows what they were thinking).

“Once we’re done with this, you really will work your fingers to stop the Manhattan and Capulet, won’t you!?”

“Oh ho ho. …I would really rather do that right away, but the doctors and counselors are all stopping me.”

“Only a sage living deep in the mountains can control their own heart.”

“I really wish all of you would stop treating this perfect international idol like she has a father complex.”

“Wait, did you just add another trait in there? Idol, Elite, busty, father complex…how many scoops of ice cream are on this cone?”

It seemed idols needed to be multi-talented in this age.

They checked inside a nearby classroom and saw a few frightened students with their hands in the air. The shelters for the gathered civilians were apparently in the larger facilities like lecture halls and gyms.

“…We really should have gone there right away. Oh ho ho.”

“And where exactly is ‘there’? Will we have to check each one in turn?”

That was easy enough to say, but Columbia University had several dozen schools from both the liberal arts and the sciences, so it was an enormous educational organization with more than 20,000 teachers and students. Even a low estimate for the number of school buildings and related facilities on campus could not be counted on your fingers. Oh Ho Ho’s rapid-fire beam cannons were quite effective, but they could not get overly optimistic. For one thing, she was wielding prototype assassination weapons and those large-caliber, high-power cannons were poorly suited for close ranges. And just like the Bullmites, the powered suit could not move freely inside the complex indoor environment.

If the Bullmites used the coordination of their simple circuits to all jump out at once, the entire situation could be turned on its head. It would be very bad if the unmanned weapons used their lack of a life to carry an anti-tank chemical warhead with them. Whatever the case, they wanted to avoid wandering around if it could be avoided.

Heivia thought for a bit.

“First, let’s head to the cafeteria. With this many civilians here, they’ll have to do something about the food. If there’s a memo in the kitchen listing where they’re sending all the food, we won’t have to wander this educational labyrinth without any kind of hint.”

“Heivia, you do tend to handle everything perfectly as long as an Object doesn’t show up,” said Myonri.

“Oh ho ho. In other words, he is useless in this age of Objects.”

“Just so you know, I’m going to remember what you say here!” shouted Heivia, but they easily ignored him.

Now that they had a plan, they walked across a pathway and ran into some masses of composite armor as soon as they entered a different school building. It was those Bullmites, but while scraping her tilted head against the ceiling panels and wielding her rapid-fire beam cannons like dual pistols, the 4m ringlet curls came to a stop.

They formed two perfect rows.

It was not that they had been stopped by congestion. This formation was clearly intentional. And then they made a coordinated charge like a train.

“Why you-…!!”

Oh Ho Ho quickly fired her two rapid-fire beam cannons while her extra-large boobs jiggled, but the brilliant beams of light only hit the leading pair. The amount of fist-sized melted holes grew and those shields crumbled like a melted sugar sculpture, but the next pair of identical Bullmites now took the lead. Then the process repeated. If just one of the unmanned weapons reached the powered suit before they were all turned to Swiss cheese by the horizontal hail of beams, they would win.

Unmanned weapons did not fear death.

The Bullmites were made to carry equipment or act as barricades, so they did not hesitate to use themselves as shields. Those serverless yet coordinated monsters trampled their allies’ remains and did not hesitate to take the lead even when they knew they would be trampled next.

“Crap, crap, crap!!”

“Wh-what do we do now!? If those futuristic beam weapons don’t work, our shotguns and handguns aren’t going to help at all!”

And lamenting their situation would not help improve it.

They could not expect mercy or pangs of conscience from unmanned weapons.

“Dammit!!”

Heivia fired handgun bullets into the lockers lining one wall of the hallway to break the locks. Changes of clothing, cellphones, video disks, and other student property spilled out across the floor.

“It doesn’t matter what, just blow everything to pieces, Myonri!!”

A shotgun blasted toward the floor nearby. Several small pieces of shot flew out and instantly turned the personal possessions to scrap. They were forcibly torn to pieces and flew up into the air as small fragments.

Wildly moving metal fragments could interfere with EM and IR communications.

Compared to her Object, the powered suit’s thick armor must not have been enough to keep out the fear. Oh Ho Ho crouched down as the threat approached, so the sizzling sound of the rapid-fire beam cannons ended. But a different loud noise erupted instead. The Bullmites had been accurately coordinating their movements to act as a single whole, but now they began running into each other like a multi-car pileup.

Myonri asked a hesitant question while watching the Bullmites self-destruct thanks to her efforts.

“Wh-what happened?”

“They weren’t using their usual submarine mode, right? To move so smoothly without causing any congestion, they had to be coordinating the distance between them using IR or radar. Interfering with that using chaff naturally caused a major accident. C’mon, Oh Ho Ho! How long are you gonna lie there!? It’s over!!”

“M-mghh… How could I let you see me like that?”

With shaky movements, the 4m killer weapon got up from its maiden-like crouching position. With a dull noise, her large head shattered a fluorescent light.

“One little prank caused all this? It may have been too soon for these toys to be fully automated. Oh ho ho.”

“There’s a prank where people shine a laser pointer in a soccer player or airplane pilot’s eyes, right? What do you think would happen if you shined it into a vehicle lens from a walkway over the highway? I feel like all the arguments about these things are only focused on the plusses. It’s scary.”

Normal knives and bullets would not have their expected effect on unmanned weapons that were never alive to begin with. You needed to use a separate logic that only applied to them: magnetism, salt water, acid, high temperatures, rust, an insect infestation, etc.

If the Bullmites were coordinating over the radio, they would also notice when the transmissions ended. Thus, they could not relax just because they had wiped out the enemy here. Heivia’s group hurried on to the cafeteria before reinforcements arrived.

They wanted to keep things quiet, but a loud rumbling burst out. Heivia and Myonri ducked down and saw that the 4m Oh Ho Ho had hit her forehead like a klutz.

“Goh?”

“Be careful when walking through doorways! You’re already scraping your head on the ceiling!”

There was a giant silver refrigerator in the kitchen and the door was so covered in memos that they had no idea what its original color was.

“Here it is, here it is,” said Myonri. “There are a lot of delivery records for gyms 1 through 3. They’re all north of here.”

“Only three?” asked Heivia. “I thought they were gathering people from all over the city here.”

“These gyms are huge facilities used for international basketball and hockey tournaments. Each one can hold tens of thousands of people.”

…That meant it would be difficult to locate an individual in the crowd even if they did figure out which location he was in, but they had to think of this as a step forward.

“Father…”

“Hey, old man pandering idol. If you have time to give dreams to all those wrinkly people, then get to work.”

“C-could you not falsely accuse my father of being old and wrinkly!?”

“Aren’t you forgetting to deny the most important part?” asked Myonri. “Weren’t you claiming you didn’t have a father complex!?”

While they argued, something rolled in through the kitchen’s entrance. The cylinder was about the size of a hair spray can. It was a grenade with the pin and safety lever removed.

“Wait!”

They did not have time to question it.

The kitchen was immediately blown away.