Editing HEAVY OBJECT:Volume6 Chapter 2 (section)

===Part 1===

In the northern portion of the North American continent was a freezing land where everything from the ground underfoot to the sky above was covered by a white blizzard. A convoy of 5 large military trucks drove amid all the white. Eight-wheeled armored vehicles with tank-like turrets defended the convoy at the front and back.

Something was obviously different about the convoy.

Quenser and Heivia had been thrown into the canopied back of one of those military trucks. Twenty to thirty other soldiers were crammed in along with them. It seemed all of the trucks were in a similar state.

Heivia was facing the similarly aged soldier who had happened to sit next to him.

“Really, I’m not lying! Her tits are like ‘Baboom’! ‘Baboom’!! I know it’s a weird sound effect to use. Normally, it would be something like ‘boing’, but only ‘baboom’ does our commander’s justice.”

“I-I see. But I’m still not quite sure how to picture that…”

“If you saw them, you’d get it right away. Is there a picture of her on the military network? Even just a bust shot would be enough for you to see what a presence they have.”

It seemed the only redeeming feature of the young male soldier Heivia was speaking to was that he had a chef’s license.

Quenser decided to help him out by saying, “How can you talk so much when it’s so cold we can see our breath?”

“I feel like I’ll freeze to death if I don’t keep talking. I want a fireplace, a bed, and a beautiful woman.”

“That’s what you would want no matter where you are.”

“You’ve got that right,” said Heivia in annoyance. “All we’ve been doing here is digging shells out of the snow and freezing the fuse with liquid nitrogen before pulling them out. And those old style weapons wouldn’t be used by a proper military with Objects. It must be local guerillas. I can’t stand this. They’re the ones that scattered these duds everywhere, so why can’t they clean them up?”

They then heard a metallic clanging noise.

They all looked in the direction of the sound and saw the woman who acted as their leader lightly beating her fist against the floor of the truck bed.

“Attention,” she said. She had a headset on so her voice could reach the other trucks. “We gathered you disposable supplies from different parts of the world and are going to put you to work on plenty of dishonorable missions. Our unit has no official designation. After all, it would be a problem if we actually existed. If we die, we will not be counted in the international lists of war dead, so be careful. But it would be inconvenient to contact us without a name, so we do have an unofficial one. The Background Unit. We melt into the background. We never step forward. You should make your motto ‘the nail that sticks out gets hammered down’.”

“Sure thing,” said Heivia with a grin. Apparently nothing else mattered for him as long as she had a pretty face and large breasts. “What’s our job this time? Eliminating the other party in a high official’s affair?”

“An excellent question, Private Heivia Winchell. About half of the unit does not know how things work in Background since half the unit was blown away the other day and had to be replaced. I will now explain what Operation Christmas Boot is before we begin. It all began with an obsolete stealth bomber,” said the woman simply. “That said, it was not being used to turn some city into empty land. Its mission was to transport a secret material. But its identification signal was switched off to allow absolute secrecy and that resulted in it being shot down by a fellow Legitimacy Kingdom surface-to-air missile. It performed an emergency landing deep in these white mountains.”

“What idiots,” muttered Quenser.

The woman ignored him and continued, “Someone must recover this secret material. That is why we were deployed. The retrieval of unexploded ordnance was a decoy mission to hide our real one. Even other members of our military will see us as moving around to recover those unexploded shells. Do you understand what I am saying?”

“That we need to lie even if questioned by the commander of the base?”

“Yes. No matter who asks you, you must not tell them about the secret material. And do not worry about what this material is. If it was passed over to Background to deal with, it must be surrounded by some rather dangerous circumstances. Looking into it will probably lead to your death. At any rate, just take the secret material from the stealth bomber and load it onto one of the trucks. The closest military airport is 80 kilometers away. If we can transport it there, Operation Christmas Boot will be complete.”

“Is it some panty thief’s collection?”

“That kind of joke will only invite death, Private Winchell.”

Still curled up thanks to the cold, Quenser raised a hand and asked, “Why are we loading the secret material onto one of the same trucks we’re riding in?”

“The Athabasca District is a battlefield country. It neighbors an Information Alliance base. If anyone intercepts information about the secret material, there is a great risk of being attacked. By having a few dummy trucks, the risk of the secret material being lost lessens."

“…So we’ll be blown away as one of the fakes.”

Quenser clicked his tongue and peered outside through a nearby gap in the canopy.

He saw a raging blizzard and several white mountains. The area they were in had plenty of conifer trees, but the mountains were not completely covered in trees. In a few areas, the trees had been chopped down to create a smooth slope. He also saw some places with lines of metal towers presumably for a gondola.

“And this area was on the verge of being declared a safe country… I can’t believe all this came from the unstable condition of a single ski resort.”

“I hear the animal protection groups love it, though. Something about the falcons and bears that had almost been poached into extinction recovering their numbers.”

“Those people amaze me. The unemployment rate is going up and both soldiers and the homeless are dying off left and right, but they’re saying we need to use tons of tax money to protect the crows in the cities. Also, why is this truck tilted to the right?”

“That would be thanks to the ridiculously huge powered suit curled up over there.”

Heivia pointed with his thumb and the unrefined powered suit waved lightly at them with supple feminine movements.

A rectangular container case big enough to fit Quenser inside and likely filled with heavy weaponry was attached to the back of the suit’s left shoulder.

“Apparently it’s a fallen idol inside. She could supposedly sing perfectly, dance perfectly, and put on a perfect smile, but she was so perfect she wasn’t cute. She ended up taking part in these clean wars since her options were to be a battlefield reporter or go into porn, but she seriously messed up and got sent out here.”

“Is she beautiful?”

“They say she’s so beautiful she’s boring. I’ll never understand the idol business if that’s possible.”

“That’s the kind of tagline that would make other women hate her.”

“Oh, yeah. There were rumors about that as well. Some idiotic advertising firm said she was ‘more beautiful than the princess of Volga’, so she was forced to resign from her regular TV show due to lese majesty. It’s quite a tragedy since the Perfect Idol herself never said a thing about the princess of Volga and it was just those around her getting carried away.”

“Do you think maybe the princess of Volga was behind it?”

“I saw her at an evening party once. Naturally I didn’t get a chance to speak with her at length or anything, but she hid behind her guards that were twice her height the entire time. She’s just a kid that knows nothing of jealousy.”

Quenser and Heivia were bored, so they decided to make a pass at the Perfect Idol. They moved over closer to the giant powered suit.

“Hey, hey. Do idols need to get a powered suit license for concerts these days?”

“I did have to get a construction license when we had a project to construct a small castle on my TV show.”

“Since you’re so heavily defended in there, do you have an insurance policy on your face?”

“The renewal period was last week, but it was most likely not renewed thanks to my mistake.”

“But your idol office must not want you to get hurt if they issued you that powered suit.”

“That depends on how much of an injury it is. I think they might actually want me to gain a certain level of weakness.”

Quenser lightly tugged on Heivia’s sleeve and whispered to him.

“(They certainly have quite the collection of people gathered here. But I get the feeling this isn’t going to be a case where every member of the team uses their specialty to bring success to a reckless mission like in an action movie.)”

“(Yeah, freckles boy over there is just pissed that his handheld game system froze up. Come to think of it, why is he even playing an FPS on a battlefield?)”

They seriously began to wonder if the Background Unit’s quick soldier replacement cycle (aka its high rate of deaths) was not due to facing powerful enemies but due to members of the unit tripping each other up.

“Men,” said the female leader as she knocked on the truck bed once more. “We will soon arrive at the site of the stealth bomber’s emergency landing. Operation Christmas Boot will begin once we do. Before we arrive, make sure you have your cocoa. That is the stick-shaped bag handed out to you all.”

Quenser frowned and asked, “What are we supposed to do with this? If we drink something strong smelling, we’ll be chased by dogs.”

“We might have to worry more about starving soldiers picking up the scent,” said Heivia.

“No, no.” The woman shook her head. “If unexpected trouble splits us up, we will not put together a team to retrieve you. Walking the 80 kilometers back to the military airport in this blizzard would be harsh. If your rations freeze over, they will be of no use. If that happens, you might be able to shed some tears onto the cocoa powder. Licking it bit by bit may save your life.”

“Seriously?”

“I see this job has a great welfare program,” commented Heivia.