Editing HEAVY OBJECT:Volume14 Chapter 3 (section)

===Part 1===

This was the worst.

The clean wars had never provided any particularly nice experiences for those two idiots, but this time it truly was the worst.

“Hey, Heivia, weren’t we working to bring love and peace to the world not long ago?”

“Don’t talk, you bastard. That’ll use up more of our oxygen.”

They were in a cramped living space no larger than two bathtubs stacked on top of each other.

The capsule-shaped device had thick anti-pressure armor, two thin arms with propellers on the end that could turn in any direction, a powerful light, and a round window.

It was a small submersible that looked like the product of a startup’s hard work. It seemed to show off how handmade it was, like it was meant to demonstrate how its production had breathed new life into a failing downtown factory, but it was surrounded by complete darkness. However, it was not currently nighttime. The hot sun shining on the Atlantic seemed to have forgotten that autumn had arrived, but the sunlight could not reach this depth.

They were more than 200 meters deep.

The water pressure at the depth was not enough to crush the human body like a punctured basketball, but it was too deep for free diving. It was undoubtedly a deadly region of sea.

To intentionally recover the ocean’s oxygen, thin wires had been laid out lengthwise and widthwise and seaweed had been planted along them. However, that oxygen plant had been split apart by a giant mass of steel that had torn a line across the ocean floor.

In place of sunlight, pale ultraviolet lights revealed the identity of the dark mass: an 85m missile submarine.

Heivia grabbed the radio mic which was attached with something like a phone cord.

“Hey, hey, heyyy. We’re as short on time as you are and we’re only going to bother with humanitarian aid while we’re in a good mood. If you don’t want this to end in a fight over invisible oxygen, then obediently follow our instructions, Capitalist Corporations.”

“Unique Publishing to unidentified craft. The hit to our propeller shaft that ruptured our ballast tank was caused by a torn wire from your oxygen plant, Legitimacy Kingdom. That is a serious case of sea route disruption and a violation of international law. If we get back alive, we will see you in court.”

“Could you put someone else on the line? Overly-serious student council presidents and class reps only work when they’re girls. I think coming down here was a complete waste of time.”

“And do the Capitalist Corporations auction off the right to name their weapons? Y’know, like they do with sports stadiums?”

At any rate, they had to get to work.

There were a few different ways of rescuing people from a sunken submarine. For example, they could send out a small submersible, attach its hatch to the submarine’s, and ferry the crew to the surface bit by bit. However, that would take time and only worked if the submarine had plenty of oxygen to spare.

But there was another way:

“We’ll be going the balloon route on this one. After attaching a few nitrogen-deployment balloons across the submarine to secure some buoyancy, we will use several submersibles to pull it to the surface.”

“That could easily fail,” replied the submarine. “What if the submarine breaks in two on the way up!?”

“Trust in the sub you guys designed. We’re not as greedy as you in the Capitalist Corporations, but we aren’t stupid enough to rescue enemy soldiers for free. We’re building up experience by testing out an experimental method. Here we go.”

With no motivation at all in his voice, Heivia watched as the various submersibles surrounded the submarine. After getting the submarine to float up, they had to do some work alongside it, but it was not actually supported by pillars. If it suddenly tilted, it would crush them underneath it, so they had to see just how stable it was first.

“We’re risking our lives here, so you’d better be thoughtful enough to greet us with a crew full of bikini babes.”

“Heivia, they can’t violate causality. We were sent out only after the sub sank. No matter how thoughtful they are, they couldn’t have selected the crew for our benefit.”

“We’ve got a teacher’s pet over here too!? How many times do I have to tell you only girls can get away with being that straight-laced!?”

If possible, they wanted to avoid being anywhere near that submarine and all the dangers it presented, but then they would have to ask themselves why they came down here in the first place. So Heivia kept in contact using the short-range radio while they hesitantly took wires attached to large spheres and directly welded the ends of the wires to the submarine’s exterior.

“What a strange sight. This isn’t going to cause a water vapor explosion, is it?”

“Wait,” protested the submarine.

“There’s a method to this. Offshore oil rigs are made of metal, so they’ve developed ways to weld underwater. Not that that’s our specialty or anything.”

“Can we please play a word game or something?” asked the submarine. “They play classical music even when you’re under general anesthetic for surgery, so being stuck here listening to your terrible conversations is going to make my heart burst!!”

This was not a life-risking group date with several girls, so they were not about to play a party game with a bunch of filthy guys. Instead, Heivia and the others moved on to the next stage of work.

Once they had successfully attached the balloons, the submersibles temporarily moved away. After they sent an electronic signal, the spheres of synthetic fiber ruptured from within.

They were balloons, but they were not like airbags.

The large deep-sea lights showed a translucent sludge covering everything.

The gel was lighter than water and detonating several balloons at once had coated the heavy submarine in the gel, giving it buoyancy.

Quenser commented on the unnatural haze floating in the ocean.

“It’s like seeing the aftermath of that one kid in the pool who couldn’t hold it in and betrayed everyone.”

“Please stop surrounding our submarine with your horrific imagination!”

However…

“Crap, some of us were too slow. #7 and #9, watch the portside tilt. Don’t get caught by that piece of junk!!”

“We really are going to sue you!!!!!”

“If you’re okay with telling the world how you got your own sub sunk and then had to get help from an enemy nation, then go right ahead! If it gets out that you sank the sub plastered with your sponsor’s name, won’t you have to pay damages!?”

The submarine just about rolled over, but with the eel-like slippery substance surrounding it, it began to float up instead.

The gap of a few centimeters below it was the beginning of a miracle.

Once it began to float, the submarine moved so easily it was hard to believe it had been stuck in place just a moment before. Now that it had buoyancy, it floated so lightly that a push from the hand was enough to move it in any direction.

“Let’s grab that thing and drag it up. I can’t believe everyone in there has such a stick up their butt.”

“Oh, you poor thing. Why are all you Legitimacy Kingdom boys so irritable? Try smiling every now and then☆”

“Please don’t force that falsetto! It’s creepy!! Why is it that hard workers tend to put all their effort into the wrong things!?”

The amount of oxygen in the submarine was a concern, but there was also a danger of the buoyancy-providing sludge coming off during the rapid ascent.

“How long is this going to take?” asked the submarine.

“Think of it like an elevator. 200 meters would be taller than a trendy hotel’s observation deck restaurant, wouldn’t it? That’s not a height you can travel in a flash.”

“Gather the best of the Capitalist Corporations and we could create a silent elevator that travels a 1000m building in a minute. And the ride would be so smooth that it would not rouse a sleeping baby.”

“Do you die if you don’t brag about something every five minutes!?”

The arguing continued during the careful twenty minute journey to the surface.

Eventually, the scene outside the round window changed.

The surrounding water remembered that sunlight existed. And they saw schools of small fish swimming ever downward as if afraid of something.

As their ascent continued, they could see some larger fish floating around. They were clearly not here of their own free will.

They felt a low rumbling.

It was clearly coming from above.

“Wh-what?” said the submarine. “What is going on???”

“It’s the same as landmine fishing. The fish hit by the shockwaves are knocked out. Honestly, they had even built an oxygen plant to help the bluefin tuna population recover, but that’s all ruined now that some idiot has come to this marine reserve. The conveyer belt sushi chains are going to get a lot of international criticism again.”

“So they’re gonna continue rubbing lard on random deep-sea fish to pretend its tuna, are they? That Island Nation-obsessed busty commander is not going to be happy…”

They had so longed to reach the surface, but they only found gloom as they approached it.

The submersible the size of two bathtubs broke the waves as it floated to the surface.

And they saw the two combatants.

The Baby Magnum and the Nitrogen Mirage.

Those Legitimacy Kingdom and Information Alliance monsters were firing back and forth on this marine battlefield.

While the Princess switched out her seven main cannons to swap out shell type and moved all around on her attached naval floats, her opponent was a Second Generation Object with nitrogen laser main cannons and an aircushion propulsion device specialized for marine combat. It had three main cannons stacked vertically on either side. It seemed to fire the thick bluish-white beams in the wrong direction, but then they suddenly bent in various directions and accurately targeted the Baby Magnum.

[[Image:HO_v14_267.jpg|thumb]]

“Ultraviolet nitrogen lasers… Those are hundreds of times more harmful than sunlight, so don’t they violate the treaties?”

“According to the electronic simulation division, the reactor is surrounded by several low-temperature conduction power generators that use liquid nitrogen. They use the reactor’s excess energy to generate even more power to throw into the cannons. Either way, a direct hit will vaporize you, so the cancer risk is kind of irrelevant.”

Laser beams were not visible to the naked eye, but they fried and reflected off of the dust and moisture in the air, which left something like an afterimage behind.

The thick ocean water had cut off the signals, so they found a lot of radio chatter once they arrived on the surface.

“Princess!! Update your meteorological data and reference the nitrogen and temperature distributions! That thing alternates between liquid nitrogen and a mixture of iron oxide and aluminum to create extreme temperature differences, those create mirages that disturb the ocean’s surface, and that is used to bend the light!!”

“Understood, Frolaytia.”

“Listen, Princess,” added the old maintenance lady. “The light should change direction as if being drawn from the high temperatures to the low temperatures. Once you understand the rules, you can predict this mirage laser-bending trick.”

Several clouds of white smoke expanded around the Nitrogen Mirage, but the sound was too soft for something meant to kill. It was reminiscent of the fireworks used to indicate the beginning of an athletic festival. There was a plate-like component raised above the spherical main body and container-shaped ejection devices were lined up along its edge. Most likely, they had exposed -195 degree liquid nitrogen to the outside temperature so that it would expand explosively.

Meanwhile, the Princess moved back and forth with MMA-like steps and accurately dodged all of the blue light dancing around her. To reiterate, what Quenser and the others could see was not the laser beams themselves. It was only the bluish-white afterimage left after the lasers passed through and fried the dust and moisture in the air.

The timeframe and world in which she fought was on an entirely different level.

This was a battle at light speed. By the time your senses could catch up, the attack would have already punched through you.

“…Wow. Is it just me or is the color fading from the Princess’s armor?”

“The dense nitrogen and laser heat being scattered around the area is causing a chemical reaction in the onion armor’s surface. It’s called nitrogen iron oxide.”

“What happens if we carelessly breathe in that colorless fog…?”

“Nitrogen itself isn’t toxic, but it drives out the oxygen and creates a state of hypoxia. I don’t know where the invisible minefield is, so we just have to be thankful we’re inside an airtight submersible.”

“The temperature difference is affecting our radio signals!” said Frolaytia. “The thermomagnetic effect is probably being used to produce an extreme electric potential difference in the air. Watch out for any adverse effects on your radar locks!!”

“But when I use visual confirmation, it looks like the thing is floating,” said the Princess.

“Use the meteorological data to calculate back!” said the old maintenance lady. “It’s only using mirages, so it can’t create an image out of thin air! The giant plate-like meteorological radar on its head is proof of that!!”

Quenser could picture the troubled look on the Princess’s face as she received that avalanche of instructions. Worst of all, they were doing it out of concern for her, so she could not ignore them either.

He also heard a voice of surprise from the sludge-covered submarine they were towing.

“H-how did this happen? You never said anything about this! We’ll sue you for guiding us into danger like this!!”

“Is that your catchphrase or something!? If you like, we can always cut the wires and let you sink back to the bottom again!!”

“Why is the Information Alliance interfering in this…?”

“That’s what we’d like to know.” Quenser breathed an exasperated sigh before continuing. “What exactly are you carrying in that submarine?”