Editing HEAVY OBJECT:Volume12 Chapter 1 (section)

===Part 3===

“Should I go with this one or this one…?” asked a voice as clear as a bell.

Quenser wore casual clothing and watched the girl’s back as he tried to keep the boredom from his face.

He was with Catherine Blueangel.

She was a 12-year-old girl with her long blonde hair tied in a waist-length braid. And she wore a blue special suit that showed off her juvenile bodylines as clearly as the Princess’s did hers. Second Venice was known as one of the world’s largest resort cities and she had made a certain request as soon as she had arrived here with Quenser.

“I want to buy some clothes! Or a swimsuit!!”

(Why couldn’t she have been at least three years older? Whyyy!?)

It was disappointing, but he could not fast-forward or rewind time. Idiot #1 did his best to motivate himself by deciding he would train her now to become a wonderful beauty in the future. As an advertisement for an official tie-in, the G-cup Oh Ho Ho idol was winking and pressing her breasts together on the store’s flat-screen monitor. The contrast was incredible.

Catherine turned around, causing her long braid to sway, and showed Quenser the two products she held in her hands.

“Big brother, should I go with the bikini or the one-piece?”

“Catherine, they have a swimsuit known as a monokini for greedy people like you. It looks like a one-piece from the front and a bikini from behind, so it provides the same enjoyment as a naked apron.”

“Ehhh? I see.”

It was not that she was disturbed by how seriously he took his answer.

“It’s not fun if you just give the answer. I read in a book that the fun is in trying on a bunch of clothes and trying to figure out what you like best!”

“Oh, so is it like taking your time eating instant noodles so they fill you up more?”

“…How insensitive do you have to be to use a comparison like that in front of a girl?”

Catherine decided to try them both on and disappeared behind the fitting room’s curtain with both swimsuits in hand.

This mall on the south side had soft lighting, cool air conditioning, and music playing from the store speakers, but there were no other customers and no employees. For the operation to intercept the satellite drop weapon, the normal citizens had already been evacuated to sturdy facilities such as theatres and stadiums.

Quenser sighed and a transmission reached his earpiece.

“You seem to be enjoying yourself…”

“Princess?”

“You may not have had a choice since these were your orders, but keep in mind that you are being paid with everyone’s taxes, Quenser. Hmph.”

The Princess seemed to be in a bad mood.

However, she needed to do a perfect job.

There was of course a good reason for the Legitimacy Kingdom’s 37th Mobile Maintenance Battalion to be enjoying themselves in this world-class luxury resort (and spy’s paradise).

“…The satellite drop weapon?”

“Yes.”

That was a bombing weapon that was placed on standby in satellite orbit and would damage an enemy nation by changing its orbit to drop down toward earth when needed.

The one causing problems now was a Legitimacy Kingdom one known as the Supernova.

The model was loaded with a thermobaric warhead that would turn a 1.2 kilometer radius into ashes and the satellite itself was designed for stealth. It normally remained on standby in orbit, so its boosters did not provide much of a heat source. That made it a powerful but difficult to track weapon.

“I wish this was some kind of joke,” complained Quenser Barbotage.

Most of the large shopping mall was covered in glass, so he could see the outside bay area from the swimsuit section. Second Venice was a giant artificial island that moved as it pleased through the Mediterranean Sea and it was currently “moored” at Malta to resupply. The protruding south side of the megafloat was attached to the natural island. The coasts almost looked like mirror images with their rows of high-rose buildings and a fifty meter mass was located near those coasts.

It was the 1st Generation Object known as the Baby Magnum.

It had a spherical main body, an upside-down Y-shaped static electricity propulsion device, and seven main cannons supported by the seven arms attached to its back. Those main cannons could switch between laser beams, low-stability plasma cannons, and other varieties like a microscope swapping out its lens.

Seeing it through a layer of glass made it look like something happening on TV.

But saying that would only piss off the Princess more, so he held his tongue.

“I really wish they’d done their job managing that thing up there. That bomb was supposed to have been abandoned more than twenty years ago, so why is it about to fall down on us now? And it’s going to fall on an Information Alliance villa region? If this causes any damage, it’ll start a war…”

“It can’t be helped,” said the Princess. “Disarming bombs is part of the military’s job.”

Quenser heard humming from beyond the fitting room curtain. Catherine’s little butt must have been bumping into the curtain because it would sometimes nearly flutter open.

“And despite the impressive-sounding specs, Frolaytia said this won’t be a very difficult mission.”

“Yeah. A satellite drop weapon gives us a lot more opportunities to intercept than a ballistic missile. Plus you’ve got a Generation One, Princess. You have the means to deal with normal weaponry instead of just other Objects. You’ve got a ton of anti-air lasers, so this shouldn’t be hard at all. I mean, your Object was developed to handle an MIRV that breaks apart in midair and scatters twenty or thirty nuclear warheads.”

“H-heh. It’s not that impressive. Heh heh.”

The Princess must have enjoyed having her Object’s specs complimented because it sounded like she had grown imaginary dog ears and an imaginary dog tail.

While looking at the buildings, sea, and sky out the window, Quenser continued with clear annoyance in his voice.

“And I’m not too happy with Frolaytia either. More than half of this is cleaning up after her.”

“You mean that game of musical chairs?”

“This place is called Second Venice, right? And it was originally an Information Alliance luxury resort. But then 37th comes in, accidentally scares off the Object of the group protecting this area of sea, and then takes over Malta as a supply base.”

“But we couldn’t take over Second Venice because it’s a safe country.”

“I think that just put more of a burden on the people defending it. And on top of that, this is where the Supernova is going to fall. That thing was abandoned by the Legitimacy Kingdom and now we’re the only ones that can defend against it since the Information Alliance military withdrew. The timing couldn’t be worse! Why do we have to risk our lives to protect the bulldogs of an enemy nation!? Is this all I’m going to get to do this summer!?”

“Are you that eager to get to the next battlefield, Quenser?”

“Why are enemy nations and battlefields the only options for my summer!? And when I’m standing in a world-class resort no less!!”

Then another transmission reached the radio.

It was from Frolaytia.

[[Image:HO_v12_029.jpg|thumb]]

“It’s about time for the shooting star to arrive. The fireworks show will begin shortly. Princess, remain on standby in your cockpit.”

“Understood.”

“Done!” shouted a high-pitched voice before the fitting room curtain burst open.

“Heh heh. Bikinis are in this year, aren’t they?”

“I know. Anything but a bikini isn’t even an option. One-pieces are too kiddy.”

For some reason, the Princess agreed with her.

Catherine Blueangel had apparently chosen the black bikini. The student viewed her with the look of a classy gentleman walking through a quiet art museum.

(Yes, her taste shows promise for the future. Now I just have to hope she develops all the right curves.)

Frolaytia interrupted Art Appraiser Quenser.

“And Quenser, you need to regroup with Heivia and get to work.”

“Will we be taking Catherine’s little hand and guiding her to a shelter?”

It was unlikely, but there was a chance they would fail to shoot down the satellite drop weapon. And if it was shot down too low to the ground, the nearby windows could still shatter and create a downpour of glass shards.

Quenser focused on the conversation in his earpiece and used his empty hand to gesture Catherine over.

But…

“Unfortunately, we discovered someone on the list who was not evacuated. His name is Faires Appetizer. He seems to be an Information Alliance astronomer, but the point is we can’t find the old man. Search the city before the fireworks show begins. Looking at the situation, you have less than twenty minutes.”

“Oh, goddammit! We’re stuck working to the very, very end!?”

“The site isn’t far. It’s in the south side where we are. We fortunately, picked up his smartphone’s GPS signal, so you can use that. If you don’t collect him soon, you’ll be caught in the middle of the fireworks show. Even if the Princess intercepts the Supernova itself, the shockwave could shatter all the windows in the buildings. If you don’t want shards of glass pouring down on you, then get this over with and find a building basement to shelter in. That is all.”

“That is all!? What about Catherine!?”

“Take her with you. Think of this as a form of recreation. You aren’t her guardian and when it comes to pure combat technique, she’s a hundred times more powerful than you thanks to the various measures taken to artificially strengthen her.”

“…A hundred times?”

“I’m not exaggerating. And I’m hanging up.”

The transmission ended.

Quenser sighed and the 12-year-old girl placed her hands on her bikini-wearing hips after listening in to the conversation.

“That’s right. A hundred times. Nee hee.”

“Well, that’s good to hear. …Princess, talk to you later.”

“Understood. Don’t do anything reckless, Quenser.”

As a Pilot Elite, Catherine seemed to have quite a lot of money. She operated the card reader to pay for the swimsuit with electronic money. Being able to pay without a cashier present was convenient.

“Here, big brother, give me a stamp!”

“Yes, yes.”

Catherine held out a waterproof case and Quenser pulled out something like a cardboard bingo card and made a round stamp on one corner. This was her quota for a normal life. Once she completed everything on the card, she levelled up to the next stage. This was effectively the first and last hurdle and she only had a simple interview afterwards. The process was known as the Civilian Acclimation Assistance System. It sounded strict, but it was actually made so hopeful participants could efficiently be given the go-ahead on moving to a safe country. It worked differently than the exams for an elite university or an international certification where failing was the standard outcome.

“Heh heh heh.”

“Hm? You’re in a good mood, Catherine.”

“You don’t get it? A girl’s swimsuit has a special meaning!”

Catherine stuffed her special suit inside the waterproof paper bag to a trendy store that would likely act as a status symbol itself. She then walked with Quenser through the large mall while still in her bikini. People must have dropped things during the confusion of the evacuation because bouquets of flowers and bead accessories were lying on the floor. Of course, they were all products with an egregious mark up to rip off ignorant tourists. Those tourist traps were apparently found in malls as well as along the roads near the airport.

After leaving the air conditioned building, they found Heivia in his uniform that had to be torture in the sweltering sun.

“Took you long enough.”

“What’s with the camo pants? Second Venice is all about operas and musicals, so there’s no place for a street dancer here. Yo yo.”

“Dammit, just you watch. Ahh, I shouldn’t have left her with you just because she’s outside my strike zone. All I did was enjoy the view of that busty commander in her bikini, and this is what I get. I’m right back into my uniform. Anyway, your bomb-filled backpack is in the sidecar.”

However, that awful friend of a noble was not on a motorcycle.

He was on a water scooter floating in a seawater canal. He must have been planning on picking up Quenser and Catherine to begin with because something like a motorcycle sidecar was attached.

“Let’s go nab that old astronomer and get to shelter. I can’t stand seeing all this luxury. It’s pointless if I can’t visit here on my time off!!”

The water scooter had two open spots: behind Heivia and the sidecar.

(Well, Heivia’s a pervert, so I guess I’ll sit behind him so Catherine can have the sidecar.)

With that in mind, Quenser stepped from the edge of the canal and toward the back seat of the water scooter.

Then he heard an odd voice behind him.

“On you go!”

“Wait, Catherine? Dwabh!?”

Just as he started shifting his center of gravity, she kicked him in the back. He flipped over, missed his target, and rolled into the sidecar.

And it did not end there.

The small 12-year-old in a black bikini hopped on top of his lap. She ignored the confused student and opened up the sidecar’s dashboard.

“ ‘Use a map to give someone directions.’ …There it is. That’s another stamp!!”

“Check inside the dashboard if you like, but don’t lift your hips like that, Catherine. Your butt is in a pretty dangerous spot there. And it’s only covered by a black bikini.”

“Oh, whoops. How indecent of me. A lady needs to sit properly, doesn’t she?”

“I’m not sure nestling down on my lap like that is better. Your butt just likes to cause trouble, doesn’t it?”

“You really are completely indiscriminate now, aren’t you?” commented Heivia while holding the handlebars.

“I don’t like being blamed when I’m the one under attack here. And I don’t know why she’s so fond of me either. Hey, Catherine, why am I the only one you call ‘big brother’?”

“Hm? Because you’re big brother!”

She had plenty of energy, but her answer was not very helpful. Meanwhile, the clock was ticking and they could not wait around. Heivia twisted the handlebar grip, opened the throttle, and sent the water scooter racing along the canal that reflected the bright sun.

The scenery around them was an endless spider web of various-sized canals and countless bridges passing by overhead. A boat loaded with containers or an empty aquatic bus would occasionally pass them by, but they must have been unmanned.

To complete the task on her quota card, Catherine pointed out the way and Heivia steered them through the many canals. As usual, Quenser was nothing more than ballast as the young girl sat on his lap.

“It’s amazing how there really isn’t a single road in this city.”

“Second Venice is all about reminding you of the good old days. If you were making a city of slopes and stairs, adding an elevator would ruin it, right? They dug a bunch of grooves along the surface of the pizza and let the seawater fill them. This kind of ‘comfortable inconvenience’ is something you see in the hospitality industry as well as tourist sites. If everything is too perfect, people get tired of it pretty quickly. It’s the same as a popular restaurant intentionally reducing the number of seats so a line forms out front or like increasing the difficulty level in a video game.”

Their maintenance base zone was made from more than one hundred giant wheeled vehicles, so it was poorly suited for Second Venice where canals were the only form of travel. The base was deployed on nearby Malta.

They passed through the gap between high-rise buildings and squeezed past an aquatic bus as they continued on their way to the astronomer.

“Didn’t they say the land here is twenty times as expensive as in London? That’s why these tall buildings are all crammed in so tight.”

“The construction companies are the ones making the real money. They use fancy words like artificial island and megafloat, but it’s really a bunch of giant boxes made of aluminum. They’ve just marked up the price like crazy. It’s worse than the diamond or gold markets.”

“Yeah, the winners tend to win big. …Catherine, don’t squirm like that. Try to keep in mind what your little butt is sitting on.”

“Nn,” was all the braid girl said, but she seemed to be in a bad mood.

But not because she was focused on reading the map. She was having trouble breaking into the two idiots’ conversation.

“But it’s a hell of a coincidence that this is where the Supernova is falling, so I believe it’s partially a form of divine punishment. God is watching and the commoner’s prayers are reaching him.”

“Aren’t you a super-spoiled noble?”

Quenser sat in the egg-shaped sidecar with Catherine on his lap. Like a human seatbelt, he naturally ended up wrapping his arms around her slender body to take a look at his handheld device.

It showed a map of Second Venice’s south side. But unlike Catherine’s paper map, it was zoomed in and their target was displayed as a dot.

“An astronomer, huh? …Why did that old man run off?”

“How should I know? Rumors spread pretty easily during disasters. Maybe he’s afraid the Legitimacy Kingdom has an ulterior motive for rounding all the tourists up in one spot. Maybe he thinks we’ll ransack the city while everyone’s away or slaughter everyone on the indoor ski slope. Putting unseen worries into concrete words is a stereotypical way of dealing with that anxiety.”

“A disaster?”

“You didn’t know, Quenser? Natural disasters aren’t the only kind. Our military receives funding for retrieval of unexploded ordnance as disaster relief.”

“So we bury the ordnance and then get paid to dig it back up?”

As they chatted, Heivia stopped the water scooter on the side of the canal.

“He’d probably notice if we drove any closer.” Heivia reached toward the sidecar. “Little bikini devil? There’s a pair of binoculars in the dashboard.”

“I can see without them. The package is 120 meters ahead.”

But since she could not share that information, Quenser reached below the girl’s arms and pulled out the binoculars. This required leaning forward, so he could not help but stick his nose toward the nape of her neck.

“Big brother, that tickles.”

“Hmm, so they have a feminine scent to their hair even at this age.”

“I get it, so just let me do my job!!” tearfully shouted Heivia.

Quenser handed him the binoculars.

“Oh, there he is. That old man must be Faires Appetizer. But something isn’t right.”

“What is it?”

“He’s at the harbor, but there aren’t any boats. He’s holding his hands in the air. And there are several men and women around him. The one behind him is holding out something long and narrow. What is it? An assault rifle?”

Swimsuit Catherine added her own information from Quenser’s lap.

“There is a boat. Check the water’s surface more carefully. You can see a glimpse of a sunken yacht’s mast.”

Quenser was a complete amateur and had no way of checking on the situation, but he could tell this sounded like a pain in the ass. The old man had ignored the need to evacuate despite the risk and now someone had the kind of high-firepower gun unlikely to be found in the hands of anyone respectable.

“Who are they?”

“It doesn’t matter. As long as they aren’t amateurs.”

“We’re about 120 meters away, but do you think you can take them out with your rifle, Heivia?”

“I could shoot them easily enough, but don’t forget what I just said.” Heivia gave an annoyed shrug. “We have to check to make sure they aren’t amateurs. Simply put, we have to say ‘stop’ and ‘put your hands up’. We can’t shoot unless they show intent to resist. This isn’t a battlefield country after all.”

“Even though they have a hostage?”

“Waste time doing that and they’ll shoot the old man,” said Catherine.

“Yeah.”

Quenser’s awful friend grinned.

And then he pointed up at the sweltering sun.

“I know a bit of a trick we can use. Care to try it, student?”