Editing HEAVY OBJECT:EX Chapter 5 (section)

===Part 2===

After receiving a thorough beating, Quenser was taken to a stone building that had once been used as a monastery and he was thrown into a room.

There was no real furniture and all four walls were made of cold stone. It had likely been lit by a lamp or candle originally, but a fluorescent light and power cable had been crudely added in much more recently. The lighting was reminiscent of a construction site or a tunnel. In what may have been part of the original design, the window had a heavy metal shutter over it and the thick door could not be opened from within. He did not want to imagine what kind of life the person in here had lived.

There was not even a blanket. He hoped not, but the small bucket in the corner may have been his toilet.

As he gloomily looked around the room, he finally started feeling along the walls and floor. He doubted he could easily escape a maintenance base zone with around a thousand soldiers, but he at least wanted a weapon. The building was solidly built without any crack between stones, but he still hoped he could pull one of those stones out.

Then something unexpected happened.

As he grabbed at one of the wall’s stones and managed to move it, the center of the floor split open. There seemed to be a trapdoor there. Through the one meter opening, he found a rusty ladder.

“Wait, wait, wait, wait! Why!? Why is this happening the instant I get here!?”

He shouted to himself, but when he thought about it rationally, he recalled this was an old monastery and not part of the Faith Organization maintenance base.

In which case…

(Do they not know all the details of the old building they’re borrowing?)

But his quizzical look was interrupted by footsteps from beyond the thick door. He could not let them discover the secret trapdoor. It was an incredible discovery, but he could not just vanish through it when he did not know where it led.

He was not going to waste this valuable opportunity.

He moved the stone on the wall again and managed to close the trapdoor.

(I’m not going to eventually trigger a giant metal ball rolling down a slope at me, am I?)

The footsteps stopped in front of the door.

He heard a key being inserted and then the heavy door opened.

He recognized the Faith Organization soldier.

“Eric, you made it back here?”

“That doesn’t matter. Just put on some clothes. Saint Urd is entirely useless because she won’t stop blushing and covering her holy face with her hands. Honestly, she’s too busy shrieking and wiggling around to focus on her mission.”

Eric Kingsvalley had brought him a brightly colored prisoner’s uniform. As he put it on, Quenser realized their positions had been entirely reversed.

(So that was Urd. I guess that means I still have to meet Verdandi.)

“Is my interrogation about to start?”

“Yeah. Although the higher ups really aren’t sure what to do now that they know you’re a student and not a soldier. Still, I’m not sure the war treaties are going to protect you. You should be prepared to see what look like dental or sculpting tools. I can’t stop them.”

“Are you serious…? You really can’t save me?”

“Sorry.”

Once Quenser finished dressing, he was taken out of the room. They did not restrict his information with a blindfold or anything else. Two soldiers with rifles escorted him down the stone hallway.

Eric looked like he wanted to say something the entire time, so Quenser finally asked about it.

“What’s the matter? You aren’t glad to be home?”

Quenser could hear the raucous voices of people celebrating their victory. Norse Mythology apparently had no taboos about food, so they were likely going to town with fish and booze. Eric’s gloomy atmosphere had to stand out in the unit.

“I don’t know what’s right,” replied Eric.

“…”

“You let Saint Skuld escape. I heard that was why you were captured. What was I supposed to do? What would really have been best for Saint Skuld?”

Quenser did not have an answer for him.

The monastery’s front entrance was made of thick bronze. It was only locked by a bar across the inside, but that had been replaced with an alloy bar and a hydraulic cylinder arm. It was simple, but that meant it was difficult to open from the outside and had no lock to be picked.

They left the old monastery building and he was taken to a circus tent.

Surprisingly, it was Urd Silent-Third he found in the small interrogation room.

The soldiers got to work as she used a hand to toy with her long golden braid.

“Handcuff the interrogation subject and attach the chain to the table.”

“Oh, dear,” said Urd. “Is there any need to go that far?”

“We can never know what he will do out of desperation. Also, we will be taking this.”

The soldiers took something from the table.

It was a bowl full of colorful fruits.

“Ahn! Those are my snacks!”

“You are about to speak with an enemy POW. Please refrain from using a knife and fork.”

“Even a plastic fork?”

“Even a plastic fork.”

“Boo. That means I can only eat the banana. Surely you aren’t going to take that away from me because I might step on the peel and hit my head on the corner of the table.”

“Saint Urd, please keep in mind that your presence can influence the fate of our entire unit…no, of the Faith Organization as a whole.”

“Even when I’m a replaceable spare Elite?”

The saint smiled a little as she toyed with the banana in her hand.

The soldiers pretended not to hear her sarcastic comment as they handcuffed Quenser to the table, had him sit down, and backed away. They waited by the wall instead of leaving the room altogether.

Urd took the opposite seat.

She looked at Quenser’s face, swallowed the line she had been planning to start with, and…

“…Kyah☆”

She remembered something, blushed, and covered her face with her hands.

She seemed to be the oldest of the sisters, but she might have had a dirty imagination.

Also, something she had said had caught Quenser’s attention.

“A replaceable spare Elite…? What does that mean? I mean, aren’t you so desperate to hunt down Skuld because-…!!”

He was cut off.

Someone had walked in from the door behind him, grabbed his hair, and slammed his face against the table.

There was a loud bang and the boy was left dazed, but the person then brought their lips to his ear and whispered to him.

“We are the ones asking the questions here. Don’t get full of yourself just because you have information on Skuld, you student. All we have to do is wring that information out of you.”

“Who…are…?”

Just as he groaned that question, they grabbed his hair again and shoved his face into the table. With another loud sound, he sensed a rusty flavor flow into his mouth from his nose.

“Verdandi, I know how you feel, but we won’t get anywhere like that.” Urd sounded exasperated. “Now forgive him already.”

“And you! Don’t just use my name like that! Why are you giving the POW our information!?”

“Oh, dear. But aren’t you the one that confirmed that’s your name by responding to me?”

“~ ~ ~!!”

The twintail girl named Verdandi let go of Quenser’s hair in frustration, walked around the table, and stood next to Urd. She crossed her arms and sat directly on a corner of the table.

Urd smiled and asked a question.

“Now for your questioning. Do you know anything about Skuld’s whereabouts?”

“Good cop, bad cop, huh? Going old-fashioned, I see.”

“If you would prefer, we can always use a cutting-edge truth serum.”

“Verdandi.”

Urd lightly shook her peeled banana to lightly scold her sister and then peered at Quenser’s face. But she seemed to give up before he could react. She blushed and looked away.

“What’s the big deal with seeing some guy half-naked?” asked Verdandi with an exasperated sigh.

“Y-you can only say that because you didn’t see it yourself! He…he went…! Ahh, the image is burned into my eyes! What am I supposed to do!? K-kyah☆”

“This just means you have a dirtier mind than you thought. You hidden pervert.”

After spitting out that comment, Verdandi turned the conversation back toward Quenser.

“You seem to be mistaken about something. We are not trying to capture Skuld because we want to hold a public execution or anything like that.”

“…”

“You don’t believe me, do you? What lies has Skuld been telling you?”

“You have no reason.”

“Do you think the Faith Organization is an irrational murder cult just because we’re an enemy nation?”

“As Urd said, you’re spare Elites. I don’t know what kind of tech you use. I hate to admit it since I’m a future engineer, but I really don’t. But if the Trinity Style is an Object with multiple Elites, then you have no reason to be so fixated on Skuld. Either of you can pilot it instead. You might even be able to recruit people to find yourself a second or third Skuld. But you set that possibility aside and you’re working hard to hunt down Skuld. Why? I can’t imagine there’s a logical reason. And I can’t imagine it’s some tear-jerking reason just cause you’re sisters. You’re letting your emotions drive you as you punish her for your own dark pleasure, aren’t you!?”

“Well, would you look at that?”

“Yes, more of our information has gotten out than I thought.”

So would they silence him?

That was Quenser’s first thought, but their response was a surprising one.

“Munch, munch. Well, it isn’t entirely wrong to say we’re driven by emotion.”

“Just so you know, we’re trying to catch Skuld because we want to help out your Legitimacy Kingdom.”

“…What?”

Quenser could not help but voice his confusion.

They were enemies and he was being interrogated. Some high-level information warfare was underway, so he could not trust everything he was told. Nevertheless, he was taken aback.

“What do you mean it’s to help us out?”

“Skuld will defect to your Legitimacy Kingdom if we don’t do anything, won’t she? If that happens, she’ll first provide research assistance in a military facility. And once she earns their trust, she’ll be given a free pass to a safe country.”

“Yeah, I don’t even want to imagine that future.”

Quenser could not understand what the two Elites were saying.

“Wait a second. What are you talking about? All of that is perfectly normal.”

“Oh? Even if it throws a Legitimacy Kingdom safe country into enough chaos to makes Jack the Ripper look small time?”

A strange feeling was growing in his fingertips.

Unpleasant sweat poured down his forehead, but he could not wipe it away while handcuffed to the table.

“Jack the Ripper…?”

“What does Skuld look like to you? A poor little birdie? A girl whose life is about to be snuffed out?” Verdandi spoke with a mocking tone. “You’re wrong if so. She’s an Elite. She pilots an Object all on her own and blows away, fries, or vaporizes 1000 or even 10,000 people if need be. She can do all that without batting an eye. She casually bears all the responsibility of the war. That’s the kind of monster all three of us are.”

“But Skuld is somewhat out of tune. She’s difficult to manage,” added Urd with a smile. But a worrying shadow hung over the smile. “She is highly aggressive and not even we can always control her. She will sometimes blow away the enemy soldiers even after they have raised the White Flag. In fact, she does not always stick to the enemies. She will mercilessly pull the trigger on her allies, on journalists, on smugglers, and on medical groups. And all while laughing.”

“She is a deviant. She could never preserve her reputation if the military were not protecting her. In this world, only soldiers, police officers, and executioners are allowed to kill. She just so happened to choose the military.”

“You’re lying…”

Quenser shook his head, but it changed nothing.

“And on top of the direct damage Skuld will cause, she kills in a very contagious way. Let her out and who can say how many copycats you’ll have on your hands. It will become an epidemic, a major boom. That is another reason why the military needs to manage and conceal the information.”

“You’re lying!!”

Urd and Verdandi did not even flinch. He turned his head with his hands bound, but the soldiers by the wall had not reacted either. Only Eric looked back at Quenser as if he did not understand what was going on.

“This is not public knowledge. The Faith Organization has a reputation to uphold after all,” readily admitted Urd. “But every time we station our troops, a new soldier or two will go missing in that battlefield country. The official story is that they grew sick of war and deserted, but is it really just Skuld doing a good job of cleaning up after herself? That isn’t entirely known.”

“I hate to admit it, but we do have deserters. And once they lose the protection of the military, it isn’t too surprising for their corpse to turn up later on. And when a corpse is found on the front line, no one is going to investigate it too carefully. The corpse and the scene of a possible crime cannot be preserved. Or rather, it can be set up that way. When Skuld is given control of the Object, she will sometimes fire a shot entirely unrelated to the battle. It wouldn’t surprise me to find out there had been a corpse there she needed to hide.”

“Then why do you let someone so dangerous go free? No, why did you make her a Pilot Elite!? That makes no sense! You would normally keep her away!”

“That’s just how skilled she is. She truly is a natural killer. I’ve never known anyone who comes so very alive when it comes to killing. Urd said it’s because she’s ‘out of tune’, but I don’t believe it. She was holding this bomb from the moment she was born.”

Quenser strained his neck to look back.

Eric was sweating profusely too, but he had to accept it.

“Saint Skuld had a bad habit. Despite the great difference in rank, she would eat with everyone and spend her free time with us. But some soldiers would mistake her intentions and try to get more intimate with her. …When they went missing, the rumor was that the Valkyries in charge of religious morals had purged the guys who tried to lay a hand on her.”

“We aren’t that cruel a place. We are free to love whoever we like.”

“Really, though. If they banned us from love, it would actually build up our frustrations and we might stop listening to our orders. …Although that explains why everyone has kept their distance from us.”

“In your case, it’s just a lack of feminine charm. You put too much focus on pure love and things like that.”

That was the worst possibility.

Just thinking about it made Quenser’s head spin and his mind melt like butter.

He managed to force out a question.

“Then what is Skuld trying to do…?”

“That’s what we want to know,” readily admitted Urd. “In order to get an easy win, we went along with her idea and gave her control of the Norn so she could feign defeat. …But after taking a single hit from your Object, she purposefully let you find and capture her. You can’t count on a lunatic’s ideas to make sense, but it looks like she was fed up with our ‘birdcage’ and wanted to fly free.”

“The Legitimacy Kingdom thought you had had found the Norn’s hatch on your own, didn’t you?” interrupted Verdandi with crossed arms and a derisive laugh. “But the Norn’s hatches are not normally exposed. The surrounding Dvergr should have completely covered it up. She intentionally showed off the hatch to expose herself to the enemy. She abandoned that nuke-resistant weapon to enjoy herself on a field where a single bullet can kill her. That isn’t normal.”

“Skuld has been taught killing techniques by the military. There was plenty of suspicious behavior, but since she was never court martialed, the higher ups must have turned a blind eye. But not even that was enough to satisfy her. She wanted to see enough blood to bathe in. So she decided to leave the Faith Organization to use the ignorant Legitimacy Kingdom. …That way she can eventually blend into a defenseless safe country and kill to her heart’s content.”

“…That’s ridiculous.”

Quenser had almost stopped thinking altogether.

Then he started shouting like a spoiled child.

“That can’t be true! Skuld really was trembling as she asked for help!! She felt cornered because of you! She’s a murderer? A war criminal? How can I believe any of that when I only have your word to go on in this interrogation room!? You might have gotten your story straight in advance so you could trick me!!”

“True. We could have.” Urd did not deny it. “This brings shame on us, but we aren’t actually obligated to do anything. It would pain me for a safe country to fill with blood, but they wouldn’t be Faith Organization people. If you absolutely refuse to cooperate, the bomb named Skuld will simply be passed to you. And that bomb is guaranteed to detonate eventually, killing a hundred thousand if not a million people when it does.”

“And we aren’t joking about that. Skuld’s thirst for blood is so great that war wasn’t enough to quench it. She must be planning something even greater in a safe country. Normal firepower will never be enough to stop her. In fact, you won’t even be able to find her once she thoroughly blends in. The housewives who have never known anything but peace will lose their lives in the blink of an eye. And if she triggers a surge of copycats, it could cause a country or two to fall.”

“Yes, her killings have a way of bringing in a great number of ‘fans’.”

The Trinity Style had been a giant birdcage for Skuld.

These two sisters had done everything they could to create a place for their thoroughly broken younger sister.

But Skuld had betrayed them.

She had smashed that birdcage, flown out, and feigned innocence to pave the way to her new feeding ground.

Yes.

She would enjoy herself with a deluge of death in the safe countries that knew nothing of bombs or shells…in the very safe countries where Quenser’s friends and family lived.

“That is why we are asking you this,” said Urd. “Where will Skuld escape to? If she slips past the initial search and this becomes a long-term affair, where will she hide? Tell us that and we can nip this problem in the bud.”

“…There’s no way I can tell you that,” answered Quenser despite all his sweat.

And not just because he could not entirely trust the Faith Organization.

“I don’t know the answer!! All I did was give her the uniform as a last ditch effort to help her escape!!”