Editing HEAVY OBJECT:Volume9 Chapter 2 (section)

===Part 15===

“For example, people can sense light across their entire body. There was even an experiment that found shining a powerful light on the back of the knees could adjust the time people woke up in the morning. Because people have some faint sense of light even with their eyes shut, it is possible to prepare for in attack from any direction if trained properly.”

Putana recalled the words of the witch doctor who had examined her body.

“But that doesn’t seem to be what’s happening with you. A lot is still unknown about the process you use to directly sense other people’s gazes. When we line up a bunch of identical cameras, you can accurately tell us which ones are active, and that isn’t normal. Yes, yes. This is a truly fascinating case.”

Even the girl who used it did not understand exactly how it worked, but she did know how to use it as an Elite’s weapon.

“…”

Putana slowly closed her eyes in the almost pure darkness at the bottom of the valley.

The surges of invisible pressure were much like flashlights being rudely pointed this way and that. After estimating their locations and directions, she opened her eyes again and continued on while avoiding each one.

Not much had been done to keep rocks from falling into the valley, so some rather large ones were sitting here and there. She also saw some military-looking canopied trucks. They seemed to be ones that had blown a tire on the hard rocks. No one remained inside the trucks and there was no sign of the talent trafficking children stuffed inside the back. Instead, extra shotguns and light machineguns had been left behind, so they had apparently not had time to destroy them all.

(Are they still stuck here because of the blown tires?)

Putana weaved her way between the trucks.

She sensed several gazes, but one of them had an odd color to it.

She moved through the darkness to approach the gaze that trembled in fear and she reached an arm around from behind the person.

It was a boy of about ten.

“Mgh!?”

“Be quiet,” she whispered while dragging him behind a truck.

She turned the boy around to get a look at him and placed her index finger on her lips.

She then whispered a question from close by.

“Are you one of the children from the cable cars?”

“…”

The boy nodded again and again.

“They all went over there.”

“Over there?”

“To the Star. …They’re all going to get on the Star. I decided it was too strange and ran off at the last second, though.”

“The Star?”

She doubted the kidnappers could trick the children onto a car or airplane. They were young, but they were geniuses who already had PhDs. With that much involvement in the world of adults, those cold-eyed children would see nothing in that kind of farce.

In that case, was it some kind of metaphor?

What mattered was that this boy had parted ways with the other children.

“Did any other children escape with you?”

“No. They all happily continued on to the Star. And yet none of us has actually seen what it is.”

That was when the randomly searching gazes gained a singular focus like iron sand being sucked in by a magnet. An unpleasant sensation ran down Putana’s back and the gazes focused on the other side of the truck.

Whether a shadow or footprints, they had detected something.

Someone would be sent here to check, so she could not wait around any longer.

Still crouching down, she placed her hands on the boy’s shoulders and looked straight at him.

“Listen. You need to turn around and keep running in that direction. If you keep running in a straight line with the truck in the way, you will remain hidden from the hunters for a bit. Ignore any difference in height and keep running even if you have to climb over a hill.”

“Eh? But…”

“And then…”

Without letting him speak, she removed a hand from his shoulder and pulled out a card-sized firearm attached with reusable tape to her nurse-like green special suit.

It was a one-use flare gun.

“This will send a scramble signal to the white collars, Faith Organization navy experts that work with the Object rather than Viridian Edge. A unit commanded by the major won’t have been corrupted. After making it one hundred meters…no, two hundred, point this straight up and pull the trigger. The military satellite will detect the flash signal and the white collars will come to rescue you.”

“You aren’t running away?”

“I…”

Her way was cut off by Viridian Edge, the Faith Organization intelligence agency disguised as a gang, and the Clovers also known as white collars were also from the Faith Organization. As a runaway, she might as well have been surrounded.

However, she did not let that fact show on her face as she responded.

“I have something I have to do, so you go on ahead and tell them honestly everything that happened here. It would be bad to hide anything. Do you understand?”

“Yes…”

The boy seemed hesitant, but his small fingertips finally touched the flare gun.

He grabbed the grip.

“You’ll be okay, won’t you?” he cautiously asked her. “You’ll be safe, won’t you?”

She did not reply, but she rubbed his hair instead.

After pulling a pump-action grenade launcher from the back of the truck, she gave him a sharp command.

“Get going! Hurry!”

He left the truck as if struck by her words.

The sound of his footsteps gathered countless gazes in his direction, but Putana cut them off by moving out from behind the truck with the grenade launcher over her shoulder.

“Putana, Putana! I heard what happened from Quenser and Heivia. The smuggling tunnels have all crumbled or flooded, but we’re searching the routes for a way to send reinforcements to the bottom of the valley. Do you think you can last that long!?”

Millia spoke over the radio, but Putana paid little attention.

“There is no need. I will end it all before you even arrive.”

“Hold on. I thought Elites were supposed to be the steel queens of a clever and clean battlefield.”

A noise much like the removal of a champagne cork sounded behind her.

The burning of the chemicals in the flare scattered bright red light overhead and Putana Highball calmly responded with that light behind her.

“Not today.”

With a movement of her index finger, the girl used explosives to mow down the spies disguised as gang members.

The battle had begun.