Editing HEAVY OBJECT:Volume12 Chapter 5 (section)

===Part 2===

It was midnight as they ventured into the dark sea.

“Oh, god. Are we really using a handmade submarine tank? If water gets in through the gaps in the duct tape, it’s all over. You’re not supposed to go 120 meters deep in a school summer project!!”

“My school built a lunar probe. It was crushed underfoot after we sent it on a mission to the girls shower room, though. Besides, a solid tank can bear a fair bit of water pressure to begin with. We closed up all the holes in the gun and radiator, so with the long snorkels attached to let oxygen in and exhaust out, we can travel along the bottom of the ocean just fine.”

The snorkels he mentioned were the firefighting hoses from before. The ends floated on the water’s surface and the floats were camouflaged as planks of driftwood so they would not be noticed.

They had no sense of direction, so they were reliant on a compass as they travelled through the darkness.

But even if the submarine tank could travel freely along the ocean bottom, they could not travel in a straight line. When avoiding those, they had to keep their detour to a minimum. Otherwise, they could lose their sense of direction in the dark sea and end up driving in circles.

“So I guess that bastard Evans survived. Didn’t he fall to the ocean bottom in a powered suit?”

“If he didn’t survive, than who’s that in front of me right now? I don’t believe in ghosts.”

“I can’t believe you two. You forgot about me, didn’t you!? You were so moved by what happened with Catherine that you forgot all about me, didn’t you!?”

“Shut up. What good is wasting valuable memory space on guys? I’m more surprised about Myonri. Didn’t you get shot just three days ago!?”

“Uuh… I really would prefer to be sleeping in a bed in the medical room, but then I heard what happened with Catherine. I’d feel bad sitting around when someone is so much worse off than me.”

“You don’t seem to understand that people normally die on the battlefield, Myonri. But anyway, congrats on your return to hell. I’m just glad we have a nice feminine scent to counteract the rest of us guys.”

“Hmm, well, I guess I’m glad you’re as perverted as ever. If Catherine had awoken a spirit of justice inside you, I figured you were going to die here.”

The submarine tank was an extremely effective way of crossing national borders while slipping past radar and satellites, but it was also slow going. They had to make sure the environment did not crush their hearts, so the topic of conversation kept jumping around. The trick was to avoid any silence.

“Oh, yeah. We got some information on that Zombie Object.”

“The Old Fashion already sank it, right? Do we really need that?”

“Well, it is a Zombie Object.”

“It never hurts to be careful. It’s a Faith Organization Second Generation and our codename for it is Lizard Tail. That means this wasn’t its first battle.”

“Then why didn’t we find anything in our database? Is the electronic simulation division getting lazy?”

“We thought it had been destroyed, so it was removed from the list of search candidates. Tee hee.”

“The first part makes sense, but that last part is unforgivable. If some bearded old man tried to play it off with a ‘tee hee’, I am so punching him.”

“Well, to be more serious, there’s some suspicion that Lizard Tail isn’t the name of a specific Object. It might be a disturbance tactic where different Objects are given similar exteriors to look like they’re the same. The Faith Organization apparently calls it Dionysus. I’m not entirely sure where the name comes from. I just remember it’s the god of a sect with a perverted ritual.”

It was a self-harming Object with a death wish.

That Second Generation increased its own value by destroying itself over and over.

“How bizarre can you be?”

“Yeah. Objects are all really weird, but I’d never want to pilot something like that. Even if it’s an efficient way of staying alive, it’s like how bugs and crabs will let their leg tear off if something grabs it. I can’t bear to watch trivia show footage like that.”

But this was being done by the Faith Organisation that loved gods more than food. The design may have been to fulfill an ideal of reincarnation or human sacrifice rather than efficiency.

“…”

“How many more kilometers is it? We’ve run out of things to talk about, but this silence is going to drive us insane.”

“Then let’s do the usual. Y’know, how we kill time during the night shift on guard duty.”

“Oh, you mean Boobs Concentration?”

They heard someone do a spit take.

It was probably Myonri.

“Wh-wh-wh-what are you talking about!?”

“Do we really have to explain it? If you can name two female soldiers with the same chest size, you get a point. Get one wrong and the other guy gets a turn, so it’s pretty simple. The only problem is it leads to some fights if you don’t have someone else to act as a judge, so can you take that job, Myonri?”

“There’s something wrong with this! Why do so many people know our sizes!?”

“Because we’re bored.”

“And you can make a pretty good guess by looking.”