Editing HEAVY OBJECT:Volume9 Chapter 2 (section)

===Part 2===

However…

“Our job today is in the northern mountains. You each need to secure your own transportation and hurry there. Oh, and Quenser! Putana may be from the city, but I doubt she’s left the Faith Organization base much. Show her around Lost Angels while also teaching her our way of doing things. Teaching the newbies is a job for the old newbie. Heivia did the same for you, remember? Have fun☆”



“ ‘Teacher’, if you’re going to show me the way around Lost Angels, I’d like you to show me a lot more ‘shortcuts’ and ‘back streets’!!”

“Noooooo!! I’d always wanted a girl to invite me into an empty back alley, but not like thiiiiissssssssssssss!!”

In a supermarket parking lot near the run-down motel, Quenser screamed like a girl stopped by an old man wearing nothing but a trench coat.

The city of Lost Angels was as insane as ever. A nearby store was blown up, black smoke rose into the blue sky, and a '''Pizza Deliveryman''' ignored it while riding his scooter down the road.

“By the way, teacher, I have a question.”

“Wh-what is it?”

“Who was it that thought up the plan to steal my Sarasvati? From what I’ve overhead, it was an idea suggested by a normal soldier.”

“Ha…ha ha ha ha ha!! I-I have no idea what you’re talking about. That was a plan to steal a Second Generation Object, right? To think up that, you’d have to be a sexy genius from some new breed of human!!”

“Mhh… Come to think of it, you’re right. A normal person like you wouldn’t know anything about that.”

Anyway, they were not out here to pick up some food.

A clattering sound made it clear Quenser was in the process of stealing a light off-road motorcycle.

“If I connect this…to this… Wow, Heivia was right! It actually started up! I can’t believe it. How cheap is this thing!?”

“No matter how complicated they make it, it’ll still get stolen, so I doubt anyone tries that hard. That motorcycle was probably stolen from another parking lot.

Starting up the engine was one thing, but Quenser could not drive a motorcycle.

After seeing a macho man quickly running over from a store with a handgun at the ready, Putana Highball hopped onto the seat and Quenser clung to her back. She must have made a mistake operating the clutch because the off-road two-wheel vehicle hopped up in a flashy wheelie.

This was a common sight in Lost Angels.

Dry gunshots rang out behind them.

“I see,” said Putana. “So this is why they call it the city of corruption.”

“Eh? What was that!? I can’t hear you over the wind!”

“Lost Angels is a part of the Faith Organization, but it doesn’t look like it, does it? Rumor has it it was a giant experiment to see what happened to people after they lost their faith. …And it’s making my skin crawl, so don’t cling to me like that, teacher.”

“Buhahhh.”

“Why are you sniffing at me so obviously right after I warned you!?”

“Nothing you say will change the fact that I’m in a good position here. So no matter how much you’ll hit me later, I’m gonna do it! Oh, your body is so soft and warm. Girls are the best!!”

That was when Millia Newburg’s familiar voice came in over the radio.

“Hey, there! Looks like you’re going at it already, so I’m glad to see you’re making progress with her training.”

With a deep roar of an engine, a motorcycle pulled up alongside theirs. Millia was driving, Heivia sat behind her with his arms around her waist, and neither of them was wearing a helmet. They had clearly had a rough ride because Quenser’s horrible friend was completely pale and did not seem able to enjoy the warmth of his beautiful commanding officer. He was clinging to her for dear life.

To prevent the wind from drowning her out, Millia was speaking through the radio despite how close they were.

“This is a good opportunity. How about we have a race to our destination in the northern mountains? We both have a guy loaded on the back, so the conditions seem fair to me. Think of it like a welcome party to get to know each other.”

“Your bike is the large kind used in professional races. I can’t hope to match those specs.”

“Finding the best ride is part of the challenge here in Lost Angels. Or are you afraid that a great Elite is going to lose to a normal soldier in a vehicle race because of a slight handicap like that?”

“……………………………………………………………………………………………”

“Oh, no!” shouted Quenser. “I think this Elite had too sheltered an upbringing to know when someone’s provoking her!”

The two motorcycles stopped side by side in front of a lowered railroad crossing barrier.

As a rusty freight train slowly passed by, Millia gave a simple explanation of the rules.

“The goal is our original destination and you can choose whatever route you like. The witnesses can be the luggage we have sitting behind us. Any other local rules necessary?”

“Only that we ban gunfire and running each other off the road.”

“Hah hah! Sounds like you’ve figured out how this city works!”

[[Image:HO_v09_091.jpg|thumb]]

The final car of the freight train passed by, a bell sounded like the clattering of an empty can, and the barrier lifted.

Intense acceleration immediately pressed in on Quenser and Heivia’s guts.

The scenery flew by and a blast of wind struck their entire bodies. The two motorcycles passed some cars waiting at a light, did not hesitate to drive right out into the traffic flowing like a river through the intersection, took a sharp curve, and started down the major road. Once again, the world was wasting all sorts of energy and the hands of the World Clock were moving ever faster.

“Abah. Abababababababah!?”

“Teacher, not so loud.”

Despite Putana’s casual tone, Quenser did not have it in him. If not for his overflowing passion for enjoying this girl’s body temperature for as long as possible, he would almost certainly have been thrown off already.

At first, Putana fell behind due to her inferior engine. She kept her position about ten meters behind Millia Newburg and used her superior off-road ability to switch between lanes and take the shortest route, even if by only a meter or ten centimeters. The way she took the inside of every turn to the point of just about hitting things was taking years from the lifespan of Quenser’s heart, so the World Clock was now the least of his worries.

An old man who had apparently been stripped of everything he owned was sitting in a daze on the roadside. He only wore underwear and the luxury car next to him had all of its bulletproof glass broken. Quenser was pretty sure he was the '''Jeweler''' famous for laundering, but from now on, he would have his hands full finding a cardboard box to sleep in.

Millia’s voice arrived over the radio again.

“How about we kill some time by reviewing the mission?”

“…!!”

Suggesting that in her spare time seemed to have stoked Putana’s competitive spirit.

The brown girl violently twisted the throttle lever and Quenser’s scream rose in pitch.

Up ahead, Millia moved into the opposing traffic to get around a slow-moving truck and she spoke calmly with cars zooming by on either side.

“Our job today is to support the 37th Mobile Maintenance Battalion. Specifically, we’re going to be supporting their Object, the Baby Magnum.”

“The Princess’s?”

“The northern mountains are considered a part of Lost Angels, but the other side of the mountains doesn’t fall into the safe country category. A battlefield country juts sharply in there and there’s someone there just asking for a nice heavy punch.”

While ignoring three lights in a row, Putana continued pursuit, but she was not closing in any.

More than just the difference in engine specs, Millia was a skilled driver.

“Our opponent is a Second Generation Faith Organization Object named the Flyaway.”

“Because it’s frivolous?”

“The name does have a meaning, but not in a good way. That’s why they want the Princess to blow it to smithereens.”

Putana’s control of the handlebars grew a little stiff when she heard the Faith Organization mentioned.

The distance between them opened up, even if by only a few meters.

Millia Newburg passed by a few cars as if shaking her butt in Putana’s direction.

“The simplest way to explain its fighting style is ‘always flee’. As soon as things get dangerous, it releases its main cannon and uses the reduction in weight to escape the battlefield.”

“Its main cannon? But isn’t that full of military secrets?”

“That’s why the main cannon is like a beehive made of large containers. It’s got a ton of large-capacity batteries and bug legs, so it can run around on its own for a bit even after being abandoned. It can’t fire without the reactor, but it can regroup with the Object or be picked up after escaping the battlefield. And if you try to stop it by firing on it, it’ll melt like candy. Either way, you lose your chance to get those secrets.”

“Another pain in the ass…”

“Agreed. The information we’ve gathered says it uses its beehive-like coilgun to scatter eighty percent of its ammunition in the first five seconds, abandons that main cannon, and uses it as a diversion to escape. And if it’s about to be caught, it won’t hesitate to send out the White Flag signal. …It uses that combination of surprise attack and retreat for months at a time while waiting for its enemy to be worn down.”

In an age where clashes between nuke-resistant Objects had become daily topics of conversation, the six or seven billion people on earth had not gone extinct due to a few ridiculous implicit understandings about the battlefield. The White Flag signal was one of those. If one of the Objects was destroyed or unable to continue fighting, that signal would be sent out to avoid a slaughter of the people in the undefended maintenance base.

However…

“The White Flag is supposed to be for emergencies, so if they keep using it like that…”

“Yes. They’ll create a situation where people are so fed up with it that they ignore it. This one idiot could easily ruin one of the rules of the battlefield. That’s why we have to settle this before it happens.”

There were a few different ways to do that.

1. Destroy it with a single attack before it could use the White Flag.

2. Obstruct its propulsion device so it could not escape after abandoning its main cannon.

3. Somehow prevent it from transmitting the White Flag.

Of course, if they could pull off #1 with no real preparation, this enemy would not have been a problem in the first place.

[[Image:HO_v09_096.jpg|thumb]]

“The battlefield is in the treacherous mountains I mentioned before and that’s where the Flyaway works best. It uses its eight legs with a static electricity propulsion device, so it almost seems to slide up slopes as steep as sixty-five degrees. If it wanted to, it could slip back and forth between this side and that side of the mountains.”

The Princess used a multi-role First Generation Object, so it was designed to work just as well in a desert or the Antarctic Ocean. However, that meant it did not specialize in any one environment, so she would be slower than the Flyaway on a mountain slope.

“To put it another way, would the Princess be able to take it out if its legs were dealt with?”

“I’m glad you catch on so quickly. No matter how special its design is, the Flyaway still uses static electricity to float. If we do something to the ground below its feet, we can still interfere with its movement.”

Lost Angels was a city of two million, but as they traveled north, the buildings gradually grew shorter and a wasteland covered in fine, orange sand grew more obvious. Looking down the path of tall metal towers carrying high-voltage lines brought a wall of treacherous mountains into view.

Those were the northern mountains.

The tallest of them was not even two thousand meters and there was no hint of snow.

Instead, a hydroelectric power station and a ropeway were visible on the slope even from the distance.

“We don’t need any mountain climbing equipment. There’s an observatory on the peak, so you can get up by winding road or by cable car. We can easily take our bikes up to the top, so don’t worry.”

“A winding road? So a series of hairpin curves? …That means I still have a chance!!”

Millia likely understood that as well, but she still needlessly opened up the throttle and produced an explosive backfire to provoke the new girl.

But all of a sudden, the mountains up ahead shook.

A great cloud of dust blew down from the mountains and there was nothing the puny humans could do even though they saw the wall approaching.

Their vision narrowed considerably like they were caught in a sandstorm, the bright sunlight itself was cut off, and the area grew as dark as dusk.

A stinging pain ran across their cheeks. They had no helmet visor or goggles to protect them, but they continued the race. After switching on the headlights, Putana opened the throttle despite the limited visibility.

“Ugh. Peh, peh!! What just happened!?”

“Damn, that was sooner than predicted. This must be what they call an unexpected turn of events. It looks like the Princess has run into the Flyaway!!”