Editing HEAVY OBJECT:Volume12 Chapter 2 (section)

===Part 3===

When they left the building, it was still raining.

Black Bikini Catherine turned her palms up at waist height to wash away Myonri’s blood from providing first aid. The midair explosion of the asteroid and the collapse of the buildings had sent a lot of dust into the air. It intertwined with the water vapor in the sky to become the raindrops that poured down.

They walked behind the buildings to slip past the crowds out front. They did not want to be caught in a dispute with those frustrated taxpayers. A lot of them had created makeshift torches by sticking torn pieces of their shirts in bottles of strong alcohol, but that was obviously just one step away from a Molotov cocktail.

“What about the transformers? If they shock us, we’ll more or less explode.”

“It’s pitch black around here, so the power must be out. I bet our busty commander shut it off to prevent any secondary damage.”

They had no time.

To travel from the south side to the north side, they stole two water scooters they found in a random canal. These had no sidecars, so Heivia boarded one and Catherine the other. Quenser was of course just ballast.

“Hop on, big brother.”

“I might as well.”

“If you say you want to get on mine, I’ll drive off without you,” warned Heivia.

“I said I’m getting on the other one!”

There were no streetlights or illuminated signs, so the journey through the late night waterways was quite thrilling. They were arranged as complexly as a spider web and the curves could be sharp in places. And thanks to the asteroid’s midair explosion, ships had sunk and concrete rubble had fallen in. If they did not keep their lights on and keep an eye out for anything sticking up from the surface, they would have run into something and sunk almost immediately.

“ ‘Enjoy some marine leisure activities with a friend.’ …Hee hee hee. That’s another stamp.”

“Am I your big brother or a friend?”

“You can be whatever I need you to be!”

Quenser decided being somewhat flexible was fine. He was supposed to be her instructor, but some of these tasks were a bit much for an Elite who had just been released from a sterile facility.

Also, the water scooter meant for adults was a little large for the 12-year-old girl, but she was far better at driving it than Heivia. If she had not cheerfully moved out ahead while swerving left and right, Heivia probably would have taken the wrong course and hit a hidden obstacle.

Quenser knew just enough about marine leisure activities to know he never wanted to drive down this obstacle course of a canal.

“Wow. I guess you really are a Pilot Elite…!”

Simply wrapping his arms around her felt insufficient, so he grabbed onto her tiny hips and spoke from the back seat.

“Hm? Speaking of Elites, what happened to the Princess?”

“The round body is all bent up, but it didn’t explode,” said Catherine. “I think inside the Object is the safest place. And firing anti-air lasers into the empty sky is one thing, but we probably can’t expect much support while in the city.”

“Is that how it works…?”

“And stop thinking of some other girl when you look at me. That’s getting kind of rude. Hmph!”

He tried contacting the Princess by radio just to be sure and he got through just fine.

“You look like an orange someone stepped on, but I’m glad to see the communications infrastructure is still running.”

“Of course it is,” she replied. “Are you trying to pick a fight or motivate me?”

The Princess’s voice was flat but prickly, like she was irritated after her favorite dress had caught on a nail in the wall.

“I heard Myonri was shot.”

“Yeah. We’re busy searching for whoever was behind it.”

“Tell me if there’s anything I can do. I can’t move right now, but I can still act as a stationary gun platform. Mark your targets and I can blow them all away.”

“Wait, wait, wait. Do that while we’re searching for evidence and we’ll have nothing but ashes left. Besides, you wouldn’t be firing your lasers in the clean air of the higher altitudes. This is a straight shot from south to north. Your accuracy has got to drop with a curved shot over twenty kilometers and that just scares me.”

The nighttime canal was dangerous with all the wreckage and rubble sunk in it, so they did not pass any other boats on the way. It did not take them long to drive straight to the north side container yard.

“I’m afraid to get any closer. I feel like they’d hear us.”

“If we had a kayak we could probably approach silently.”

“In this dark canal full of rubble? We’d be noisily bumping into things all over the place.”

They stopped the water scooters a short distance away and climbed onto a nearby walkway.

“Okay. ‘Take a trip with a friend.” …That’s yet another stamp.”

“More importantly…”

The container yard was more than a hundred meters away, but it still looked like a dark mountain. That was just how many metal containers were piled up.

“There’s got to be five or six hundred in all. It would take months to open them all up and do a thorough check inside.”

“We just need to find some evidence of wrongdoing, so we can check something other than the containers.”

“?”

“The video archive for the security cameras. They need some kind of trick to sneak their secret cargo from the floating restaurant and mix it in with the containers. We don’t need something physical. Steal the data from the control room and Frolaytia can act.”

“Let’s do that. Oh, but we can’t steal the data with the power out.”

“What if we swipe the whole hard disk and have it investigated after the fact?”

“By the way, big brother.” Black Bikini Catherine tilted her head. “Are there people I can and can’t shoot this time?”

Quenser gulped a little, but…

“No, you should be fine this time.”

Surprisingly, it was Heivia who answered. He was peering at the pile of containers through his rifle’s scope.

“The entire city was tossed around by that asteroid explosion, but there are still armed guards making normal patrols. That would make nice camouflage normally, but it really stands out now. That’s the problem with having only one plan.”

“Wasn’t the Legitimacy Kingdom managing that port?”

“Officially, yeah. But we don’t have the personnel to staff all of the facilities. We send one of our people to take the top position and leave the patrols to the licensed locals. And from the looks of things, that top position is skipping out on his work somewhere.”

“In other words, those guards are only pretending to be Information Alliance port security…?”

“They’re Capitalist Corporations spies. Since they’re professional enemies, we can shoot them all. It’s time for the fireworks show.”