Editing HEAVY OBJECT:EX Chapter 8 (section)

===Part 4===

The handmade speargun named Big Game Hunter had a range of 20m in the water and 100m in the air. That might sound weak compared to a normal assault rifle, but there was a trap there.

The destructive power of a bullet was determined by more than just the amount of explosive used.

In addition to the explosive used to fire it, the weight of the bullet was crucial.

It was like the difference between the same person hitting you with a wooden stick or a metal rod.

The bullet portion of a rifle round was only a few centimeters long, but a speargun shaft could be between 50 and 60 centimeters. That drastically changed the weight.

Not to mention when it was fired with a custom blank packed with so much gunpowder that a normal rifle would burst from within.

That meant it was unstable and did not fly far, but it had incredible instantaneous power.

The shot was as destructive as an anti-materiel rifle as it broke through the door and pierced the wall.

“…!!!???”

Quenser was not even able to clench his teeth.

As soon as the door was destroyed, he was blown backwards by the ferocious blast. If the shaft itself had hit him, his torso would have been torn apart. Since that had not happened, he must have been hit by the fragments of the wooden door instead.

Even so, it was not fun having several sharp splinters stabbing through his thick military uniform. He screamed and writhed atop the wet wooden bridge.

“Gaaaahhhhh!! Agggaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhh!?”

“Hee hee.”

The girl’s laughter was far too poisonous to call lovely.

“Hee hee. Eh heh heh. Ah ha ha ha ha ha ha!!”

“Ah, gh, hah!!”

The twintail girl wore a green special suit.

She was a lunatic, a murderer, a serial killer.

She was Skuld Silent-Third.

When Quenser saw that monster step out of the building while loading some kind of arrow to her weapon, he bore with the pain and rolled to the side. He was lucky she could not fire in quick succession. Skuld loaded the shaft, pulled the cocking lever to expel the empty cartridge, and loaded something like a rifle bullet. She aimed the speargun downwards and the shaft fired with the power of gunpowder.

The wooden bridge broke.

Quenser nearly rolled into the surging river along with the pieces of the bridge, but he somehow managed to keep his balance.

(There’s a…bomb! Right at her feet. If I can detonate that…!!)

Meanwhile, Skuld finished reloading.

They glared at each other from opposite sides of the broken bridge.

He held out the radio connected to the bomb and she held out the brutal speargun.

“This is over, Skuld!! There’s a bomb below the bridge. Resist any further and I won’t hold back!! I’ll detonate it!!”

“Resist? Me!? Are you confused about which one of us is the hunter and which is the hunted!?”

“Skuld!!”

“And I haven’t had a single bite of my feast yet.”

[[Image:HO_EX_08_017.jpg|thumb]]

Skuld aimed her speargun away from Quenser’s chest, seemingly throwing away her card in this standoff.

No, that was not it.

Something rolled out from the broken door to the leisure shop she had left. She was aiming toward that. Anyone could tell it was a hostage with his hands tied behind his back.

“Gah, kh, ghh…you!?”

“Hee hee. Don’t move, okay?”

Skuld’s eyes narrowed seductively, the heat of ecstasy remained in her cheeks even in the pouring rain, and she let out a sultry breath.

She would occasionally glance back toward the house and lick her lips.

“I would love to have the greatest feast first. I can’t stand lukewarm water after running and running. So if you don’t move, I’ll overlook you. Until I’ve had a much, much more delicious feast.”

The lunatic’s words were not enough to understand the whole picture.

But in this short time, Quenser had grasped a few facts.

(There haven’t been any victims in the village yet.)

He glared at Skuld so intensely the air seemed to strain.

(And the target she most wants is back inside that leisure shop. I won’t let her kill anyone here. If she gets in there, there’s no stopping this tragedy!!)

“And you.” Skuld spoke to Quenser while still aiming her speargun at the shop manager. “Listen. There’s still a chance everyone will survive this. But if you try anything here…if you move so much as a finger, you’ll lose that chance. At the very least, that man will have this thing driven straight through his chest. Oh, dear. You would be causing an international incident, wouldn’t you? And soldiers aren’t supposed to slaughter civilians, are they?”

“How can you so blatantly ignore your own role in this!?”

“But I’m right. So what will you do? Will you obey my instructions or will you recklessly rely on your bomb? It’s your choice.”

“…”

The leisure shop manager’s mind finally seemed to be recovering.

His arms were bound in the pouring rain and tears welled up in his eyes.

With that strange half-tearful look, he called out to Quenser rather than Skuld.

“Do it.”

He was not begging for his life.

His legs were trembling, but he still stood up and spoke for himself.

“Don’t worry about me. My family is in there! My wife and my son who only just turned seven!! So do it. I don’t care if I’m skewered, but I can’t let her in there with that weapon!! That space is only meant for my family!! So please!!”

“You heard him. So…what – will – you – do?”

Quenser clenched his teeth so hard he thought the back teeth would break.

Should he obey Skuld by throwing away the radio and try to negotiate, or should he accept that one sacrifice and trigger the explosion? Both options held possibility and risk. If he obediently threw away the radio, he and the shop manager might be shot to death. If he triggered the explosion, the odds were good the shop manager would die. He wanted more than anything to not have to make this decision.

But time was not going to wait.

Doing nothing was not an option. He had to choose one or the other.

Finally, he breathed a heavy sigh and raised both hands.

“Okay, fine. I’ll throw away the radio.”

“…!! Why!? Kill her! I’m telling you to do it!! Is it because I’m here!? Could you do something without me here!? Then I’ll just have her kill me right-…”

“Okay, stop. Make too much noise and I really will do it.”

She jerked the speargun toward him and his puny courage shattered.

His face twisted as tears and snot covered it.

“Stop. I said I’ll do what you want.”

“Oh, but maybe I should just do it anyway.”

“Stop!! I’ll throw it away right now!!”

Quenser spat out the words and chucked the radio in a long parabolic arc. Water splashed up from the river in the distance.

He kept his hands raised and glared at Skuld.

He was soaked with an unpleasant sweat very different from the pouring rain.

Skuld laughed.

“Oh? Are you sure you should have trusted a serial killer?”

“Yes. I know you won’t kill that shop manager.”

“What makes you say that?”

“You have another target to kill first: me.”

The twintail girl gave him a baffled look.

And then she burst out laughing.

“Ah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!”

“When I was captured by the Faith Organization, you came to save me despite the risk. Returning to your old base might have gotten you captured too, but you did it anyway! That wasn’t out of a sense of camaraderie. You couldn’t stand having your sisters take me away from you and torture me to death. I don’t know where I rank in your twisted mind, but I have to be higher than that man there!!”

“Yes! That’s exactly right!!”

Skuld’s back trembled as she suppressed more laughter.

The tip of the speargun shook irregularly as it aimed toward the civilian.

“I found you first! I had dibs! But they were so mean. They showed up late, pretended they had justice on their side, and stole my prey right before my eyes!! That’s why I ruined everything for them! Ah ha ha ha ha ha!!”

“…”

“But.”

Skuld’s smile vanished.

All emotion vanished from her eyes, like she was a strange insect.

“That doesn’t mean it applies here. After all, I simply choose the option that causes the most death in the moment. This situation is different from back then. And that changes my priorities. You can’t predict my actions. I mean, not even I can do that!!”

“Why are you so intent on killing?”

Quenser breathed heavily with his hands in the air.

Skuld still did not smile.

“People’s lives cannot be seen or heard. They are like water or air. We don’t understand their importance while we have more than enough.”

Her bangs were plastered to her forehead by the rain.

“So I want to know what a life feels like. Just like a drowning person driven to the edge and desperately seeking air, I want to know exactly what a life feels like. I mean, aren’t human lives noble things? They aren’t something you can take away just by staring at a screen and pressing a button, right?”

Had Skuld always thought this way?

Or had it been caused by the unrealistic exchange of lives she had seen in the cockpit as a young Pilot Elite.

Quenser thought about a great many things over a short period of time, but then he spat out his answer.

“Then kill yourself.”

“What do you think I’m doing? Ah ha ha!! What greater method of suicide is there!?”

She laughed confidently.

But Skuld’s speargun moved from the leisure shop owner and aimed at Quenser instead. The boy was unsure what exactly had tugged at her heartstrings or triggered her wrath, but that did not matter. He was sick of playing along with a lunatic’s logic.

He smiled thinly with his hands raised.

“Oh, so either way was fine with you.”

“That’s right. Either way is fine. I just wanted to know what a life feels like. I wanted to be driven to the edge for that. That could mean taking someone else’s life or it could mean exposing my own life. The most boring and insufferable thing is being raised inside a safe birdcage. Yes, inside that nuke-resistant Norn!!”

“Then I have no reason to hold back.”

“?”

“Hey, Skuld. Modern radios are pretty convenient. They don’t break just because you drop them in some water.”

“What are you-…?”

“And if you combine a piece of wood the size of a chopstick with a rubber band, a river’s current can remove the stopper while the rubber band presses the button.”

“…”

Skuld froze in place.

“…It can’t be!”

“Lastly, I threw the radio upstream. As the river sweeps it ''back this way'', it’s sending out the detonation signal. Now, what do you think will happen to the bomb at your feet once it enters the effective range!?”

Skuld did not hesitate.

She mercilessly pulled the trigger of the speargun aimed at Quenser.

At close range, the shaft had destructive power on par with an anti-materiel rifle.

But it was too late.

With an explosive noise, Skuld’s small body was launched several meters straight up.

The Hand Axe on the bridge below her feet had detonated.

The explosive blast must have thrown off her aim because the shaft did not even come close to hitting Quenser.

He slowly breathed out and waved at the leisure shop manager. The young man had fallen onto his butt with his hands tied behind his back, and he finally ran back into the house.

Skuld was caught on the roof of one of the single-story houses. The blast seemed to have smashed both her legs, but it had not been enough to sever them. The speargun was nowhere to be seen, but she had likely lost her grip and dropped it into the river.

Military boots belatedly pounded on the wooden bridges. Legitimacy Kingdom and Faith Organization soldiers climbed from the river and rushed in. They all aimed their guns toward Quenser and Skuld.

“Freeze! Put your hands on your head!!”

“We found both Quenser and Skuld. Damn, she’s passed out. If she had resisted, we could have shot her!!”

“This is technically a battlefield country, but we’re in a civilian village. Act with caution. I repeat…!!”

The deafening sound of wind passed by overhead.

A military helicopter from one side or the other must have arrived.

Quenser leaned against a wet wall and spoke to his awful friend Heivia.

“When can I put my hands down?”

“After we’ve retrieved all of the bombs you set up all over the place. Dammit Quenser, did you ''have'' to give us all this extra work!?”