Editing HEAVY OBJECT:Volume15 Chapter 3 (section)

===Part 3===

When Heivia Winchell awoke next, he initially could not piece his memories together in order.

What had happened to Skuld, Oh Ho Ho, Myonri, Lendy, and, well, everything?

But the first thing that moved into view was a different face.

He was lying inside a room that felt like a steel box and the Legitimacy Kingdom officer who had abandoned him was looking down at him.

It was Frolaytia Capistrano.

“!!”

(I’ll kill that traitor for abandoning us!!)

The chain of command and hierarchical society meant nothing. Heivia practically sprang up, moved his arms out on reflex, and tried to grab her collar and constrict her carotid artery, but she grabbed his wrists and mercilessly threw him to the floor located a level below the medical bed.

“Ugh, uwehh… Dammit, I see our busty commander is as sadistic as ever. That rules out this being a convenient dream…”

“So you’re awake. That’s what I wanted to know. Now, get back out there. We are seriously lacking in personnel.”

“…Wait, what happened now? You don’t even need to question me?”

“Time was not frozen while you were asleep. Myonri has already filled us in on most everything and the Information Alliance group has corroborated it. That group being Melly Martini Extradry, Lendy Farolito, and Wraith Martini Vermouthspray.”

Hearing the name of the girl who had shot Quenser felt like having a nail slowly driven into his heart. But if he let that get the better of him, he would be no better than Oh Ho Ho and her rampage in the Manhattan.

Frolaytia had referenced the Legitimacy Kingdom and the Information Alliance, but that did not cover everything.

“…Then is the Faith Organization’s Skuld Silent-Third still at large?”

“That is certainly a problem, but let’s start with what we can handle now. That means the Manhattan.”

The busty silver-haired commander gestured back with her index finger. She was apparently telling him to go with her. That suggested he really was being sent back into the war. He could not expect any special treatment for being injured. He had essentially taken a step into the afterlife, but as Frolaytia guided him to the medical room’s exit, she looked back and spoke to him.

“There is a lot I would like to say…but for now, good job returning alive. For that you have my praise.”

“…A lot more of us didn’t make it.”

“Yes. It’s a shame what happened to Quenser.”

Once they stepped out into the corridor, it became clear they were on some kind of warship. He found it unlikely, but had they approached the Manhattan to collect him and the others as they floated in the ocean? That did not seem realistic. It would have honestly been suicide.

“It was fortunate that coincided with our fourth recon mission. The battle line had moved somewhat because the Princess was engaged in a quick battle with the Manhattan, so we collected you once that area of ocean was free. Then again, one side of the Baby Magnum was fried as a result.”

“…”

“To be honest, we have to conclude defeating that thing with an external attack is not possible. Even if it was risky, we wanted to collect some people who had internal information.”

…She must have used that excuse to forcibly convince the higher ups.

Heivia’s group had not simply been abandoned and written off in the paperwork. They had been collected alive. The Manhattan had to be moved away to do so. Just how much of a tightrope walk had the Baby Magnum risked to push that monster back a mere meter? And how many times had she had to do so back to back? The Princess had fought on the front line with no hope of victory and Frolaytia had fought against the high-ranking officers back in the safe countries, so they had to have worn down their souls.

They had given it their all.

But if they had only been a little faster…

“The crux of the issue has shifted from the Martini Series to the Information Alliance Idol Elite. Is that correct?”

“Yes…”

Once they arrived at the ship’s briefing room, many eyes gathered on Heivia. In addition to the Legitimacy Kingdom soldiers, he saw Lendy, Melly, Wraith, the aide young man, and some other Information Alliance people in one corner. Their respective standpoints had changed. It was now their turn to be on a bed of nails, but given how they had treated him, Heivia was not about to show them any kindness. They needed to be thankful they had been collected at all.

Heivia then realized that he stood out as much as the Information Alliance group.

It was true most everyone here was Legitimacy Kingdom, but they were primarily new faces who had been gathered together here. The losses had just been too great, so Heivia and Myonri stood out even though they had been with the group from the beginning.

“Hi, Lilim Gazette, Age 17. So you managed to survive too, huh?”

“…I’ve realized something. The trick to a happy life is to blend into the group and not stand out. I can’t believe you people who push your way to the front at times like that…”

The dark-eyed girl was apparently carrying another trauma with her. She was curled up on a folding chair with her arms around her raised knees.

Frolaytia left Heivia, stepped up onto the podium, and operated the projector as she opened her mouth.

“We were already aware the Manhattan was a problem, but the situation has changed. This here is Melly Martini Extradry. She is the Martini Series tasked with defending New York and, hard as it is to believe, she is also the Object’s original Pilot Elite. As you can tell from the fact that she is here and Manhattan continues to move, it has left her control.”

When everyone’s gazes fell on her, the girl in a two-piece surgical gown made of crimson paper began to tremble for some reason. Unlike the previous potatoes, these were all new faces, so her tension value may have been reinitialized.

“Gh!?”

Melly seemed somehow excited and then her spine jerked backwards like a jolt of electricity was running down it.

“Ah, ghh… When I’m not linked with the Manhattan 000, this is really hard on my spine.”

She seemed to be putting up with something.

Also, her voice was no longer supported by the ring’s speakers. The ring was apparently a wireless accessory for the Manhattan 000 rather than a device linked directly to Capulet. It could function on its own in safe mode, but that only allowed the ring itself to move around slowly.

She took a deep breath to suppress something and then switched over to her serious mode. She folded up her arms and legs like a fetus on the giant ring and she held the thin game system to her chest.

“This probably goes without saying, but none of this would be a problem if I was capable of regaining control of Manhattan. That Idol Elite has completely taken it from me. 831. Sorry about that.”

An image of Manhattan was displayed on the wall, but it was very different from the streets Heivia and Myonri had run through. The electromagnetically-launched reactor cannon in Central Park had already been there, so this went well beyond that. Large cannons jutted out on either side like giant wings and cannons the size of normal Object main cannons were artlessly lined up throughout the streets. Radars and camera lenses had also grown all over.

It now looked more like a weapon than a city.

“Those of us in the Martini Series pitted our opinions against Capulet’s to eliminate the errors and lead it to the optimal action,” said Wraith. “So keeping our losses to a minimum was seen as the best course of action. If we lacked our full numbers, we could not draw out 100% of our specs. …But that innocent yet dangerous Idol Elite is different. She does not even need to converse with Capulet. She’s doing it all manually. And she’s easily producing more than 100% of the expected performance. Think of children working away with cooking implements in a cooking class only for the kind mother to gently confiscate the knife from her child’s hand.”

“A manual interface. …AI is generally meant to support people’s tasks. So even if there is a fundamental difference in speed, a human should be able to perform any task an AI can. 299. Even if the Gatling 033 and the Manhattan 000 are different machines, if Capulet can do it, then so can the Idol Elite who looked after the directly-related Juliet. No, she might even be able to find a superior line. But even so, it’s hard to believe she can control such a massive system with keyboards…”

“If she did simply try to pit her opinions against Capulet’s, they would only trip each other up and she could not gain the initiative. Just like a cat that keeps getting into trouble no matter how many times you scold it. The Idol Elite was smart about that. AI is meant to support human work. So by controlling the Manhattan 000 all on her own, she isn’t leaving any room for Capulet and she is also displaying more interesting tasks so it will redirect its resources on its own.”

“She kindly confiscates it like a teacher and she tempts it away like a demon. 992.”

“Of course, this is all based on the extraordinary assumption that she can do a faster job without Capulet. What a pain. I’ve heard of AI making humans lazy, but I’d never heard of the opposite until now…”

“Anyway.” Frolaytia ended that line of discussion to reclaim control of the conversation. “Currently, the Manhattan is being controlled by the Elite in charge of the Information Alliance Second Generation Rush. The relationship between Object and Elite is supposed to be one-to-one, meaning an Elite cannot control a different Object, but the software for these two apparently had related development histories. They’re like a parent and a child. And those similarities in the design phase apparently mean Manhattan can be controlled with the Juliet and Capulet’s shared control system.”

“So which one is Oh Ho Ho really controlling? Capulet or Manhattan?”

“We should look at it as both, Mr. Foot Soldier who is only earnest when it comes to clinging stubbornly to life. She is redirecting Capulet’s attention and then controlling Manhattan 000 as a weapon. Like someone avoiding the cat playing in their room while also working on some paperwork on the computer.”

Heivia scrunched up his entire face in response to Wraith’s words. He could not even imagine doing anything on that scale.

“So if cute little Capulet can do something, then the young G-cup wife can do an even better job? You can say that if you want, but is this really limited to just Manhattan anymore? We aren’t going to have other metropolises transforming into humanoid robots and attacking us, are we?”

Frolaytia responded to Heivia’s question by glancing over at the Information Alliance group. Wraith sighed quietly.

“This is only my intuition talking, but I think we can view this problem as exclusive to the Manhattan 000.”

“Wait, so you have no proof?”

Frolaytia’s voice lowered in tone, but Wraith was unfazed.

“That Idol Elite is using some other interesting material to redirect Capulet’s focus, but she’s mostly treating it like a nuisance. She’s holding Capulet’s reins so she can focus on controlling the Manhattan 000. That suggests she won’t use the AI network to spread her rampage to the other side of the globe. The gears aren’t set up that way.”

“Also, there aren’t many AI-controlled Objects. The Information Alliance is on the cutting edge there, but even we primarily use human hands to control Objects. It should be fine. It’s all good.”

Melly’s words may have been accurate, but they did not seem to carry much weight. The black-uniformed girl must have been annoyed that even she had to risk her life based on speculation because she shrugged as she continued.

“As the Gatling 033’s Pilot Elite, she’s familiar with looking after Juliet which is directly related to Capulet. …The system structure might be easier to picture if you focus on the obvious hardware of that one weapon instead of on the vague idea of the whole AI network.”

The busty silver-haired commander winked at Wraith’s words.

“Meaning?”

“Don’t worry about anything else. Focus only on the Manhattan 000 problem.”

Some images of the G-cup Idol Elite were added above the footage of Manhattan as a weapon. The boxes for personal information were blank because not even the Legitimacy Kingdom’s intelligence department had been able to track that down. That showed just how much the Information Alliance treasured her. And that treatment would of course be the result of her extremely high level of skill.

“Her objective is unknown.” Frolaytia used a baton to point at an image of the sexy idol’s face. “But for some inexplicable reason, it was the death of Quenser Barbotage, a battlefield student from our maintenance battalion, that triggered this rampage. We can only speculate how that was processed in an enemy nation, but the problem is that the Idol Elite has left the military’s chain of command and holds the power to destroy the world.”

The Manhattan’s attack range (based on the electromagnetically-launched reactor cannon) was displayed around its location on the map in the ocean off of Central America. That covered the Information Alliance home country in eastern North America, the Capitalist Corporations home country to the west of that, and even some important Legitimacy Kingdom ports down in South America. Wherever it attacked, it was bound to drag the world into a long, drawn-out war that surpassed the usual clean wars.

“But the fact remains that we don’t know what it is she wants to do. Does she simply want revenge against the person who killed Quenser, is she aiming more broadly for the higher ups of the four world powers, or is she clinging to the desperate hope that she can resurrect Quenser Barbotage as a clone, robot, or AI program? Whether or not those would be possible, she can cause a lot of destruction in the attempt.”

“Have you predicted…how far she will go?” asked Myonri.

“What good is worrying about the worst case scenario when we have so little information? Would it help to speculate about an explosion large enough to hit us even if we fled the solar system?”

Hearing that girl being spoken about like a complete madwoman must have pushed her patience to the limit. Lendy Farolito, a silver-haired and brown-skinned commander with a different look to Frolaytia, silently raised her hand.

Once she had permission to speak, the Information Alliance commander opened her mouth.

“I will admit that the current situation is extremely dangerous. If that girl has a manual interface, she might very well be capable of distracting Capulet while manually controlling the Manhattan 000.”

Forcibly avoiding the points against her would have only earned suspicion.

To draw the enemy in and lead them in an advantageous direction, Lendy decided she needed to be careful what information she used here.

“But at the same time, she is the Gatling 033’s Elite and this is her first time using the Manhattan 000’s system. So she is not used to it. It might be similar, but the control system is not identical and she must make up for the discrepancies between the two Objects before she can control this one. She must focus on Capulet’s Juliet-related Object controls while also actually operating the manual controls, so it will be little different from climbing into a brand-new Object. You could say she is taking it for a test drive or breaking it in right now.”

That produced a groan not from Heivia but from the Object maintenance soldiers. They knew how much damage the Princess’s Baby Magnum had taken. That battle had been a series of miracles with her life at risk each and every instant, but for their opponent, it had been no more than a side job to learn the ropes.

Heivia clicked his tongue.

“So once she’s done breaking it in, the world will truly be exposed to Manhattan’s fury?”

“That could be in a few days or a few minutes for all I know. But she is not a dangerous element that is plotting to overthrow the world and she is not a cultist who believes in some apocalyptic theory. That I can promise you.” Even after all this, Lendy still intended to defend the Idol Elite. “I assume her actions here are impulsive in nature, so she likely has no concrete objective in mind. If anything, I think we should view this as the result of provocation by Skuld Silent-Third, that serial killer released by the Faith Organization.”

“And?”

Frolaytia remained coolheaded. She would use whatever she could, but she would throw out whatever she could not. So she would not necessarily flatly reject something she emotionally agreed with.

“As I said, I admit this is extremely dangerous. And with that in mind, we need to keep her desire for revenge above a certain level. Even if that means intentionally propping it up.”

“W-wait, she has her finger on a trigger that could destroy the world at any moment!” protested Heivia. “Didn’t we say she’s on a rampage that could start a war between the four world powers!?”

“That is my point.” Lendy enunciated each word carefully. “Her head is boiling over with an impulsive desire for revenge, but once she calms down, she will realize what it is she has done. And she will realize that the destructive power she has obtained cannot change the cold reality of the situation. Humans are most dangerous in the instant mania is replaced by depression. To prevent her from suddenly and utterly losing control, I believe we must keep her psyche at a certain level.”