Editing HEAVY OBJECT:Volume12 Chapter 5 (section)

===Part 4===

After their last ray of hope in submarine tank form was destroyed, Quenser and the others groaned inside sweaty diving suits.

“Couldn’t Oh Ho Ho show at least a little bit of ''dere''!?”

“An idol’s got to seem out of reach. Once they start to seem like an individual, they can’t sell anymore.”

They had never been aboard the submarine tank. No matter how silently it moved, they had decided it was impossible to slip past the Second Generation.

So where were they?

On something camouflaged as driftwood.

“Th-this snorkel will ride the waves to the Olive Garden even though the submarine tank was destroyed, right?”

“If the map had the currents right. If not, we’ll just have to pray. We’re in the middle of the Mediterranean, so we’ll have to pray we get washed up on a shore controlled by the Legitimacy Kingdom. It’d be a real tragedy if we ended up in the Faith Organization.”

A long snorkel much like an antenna buoy had extended to the ocean surface to circulate oxygen and exhaust to and from the submarine tank. That was why their busty silver-haired commander had attached a fire hose with duct tape.

Quenser and the other three had assumed the submarine tank itself would be destroyed, so they were clinging to the air intake floating on the surface. They had let the engine pull them along as far as possible and, now that the submarine tank was gone, they would ride the current.

This was still a deadly sea. If the Rush noticed the trick, they would be killed instantly. The four idiots were still restricted to a slow pace.

“Hey, isn’t the smallest nuclear weapon the size of a rugby ball? It fits in a suitcase, right? Couldn’t someone use this method to slip a nuke past an Object’s defenses?”

“Use a heavy element like californium and you can make a nuclear weapon the size of your thumb. The nuclear age is supposed to be over, so let’s just hope mankind doesn’t get any cleverer.”

“Ugh…”

“What is it, Evans? I know you’re nervous, but try not to vomit. There’s nowhere for it to go in these diving suits. You don’t want to drown in your own vomit, do you?”

“It’s not that… Sorry, I’m not sure why, but that Object is scaring me so bad it’s giving me a bit of a boner.”

“Welcome to the club, Evans. Now you’re a true member of the 37th!”

“Wait, are you including me in that!?” protested Myonri, but the idiots did not care.

After more than three hours, they finally left the Rush’s territory.

“Is that the party that doesn’t seem to care there’s a war going on?” asked Heivia as he clung to the driftwood.

It was past four in the morning. The late night was shifting to early morning, so the black was changing to navy blue. But one section of the sea contained a flood of light that was never extinguished. It was not a natural land. A giant square area of reclaimed land was located alongside the coast. The only connection to the mainland they could see was a single large illuminated bridge.

“They built a floating city for no reason and without thinking about the economic efficiency or environmental effects? Sounds like the location of a school in an Island Nation light novel.”

“There are better analogies, you know? Like a bay airport.”

“Anyway, we’ll be there in less than twenty minutes. Men, prepare yourselves.”

The end of the reclaimed land had been made into an artificial beach, but it did not seem to be very popular at night. The casino was the real draw at this time.

After safely reaching land, Quenser and the others stripped off their diving suits and removed the items packed in plastic and attached to the bottom of the driftwood. They had everything they needed: assault rifles, submachineguns, handguns, knives, hand grenades, grenade launchers, fully-auto shotguns, light machineguns, anti-materiel rifles, and even plastic explosives and shoulder-fired missiles.

“Everyone gave us way too much stuff! We can’t carry all this!!”

“Heh. This just shows how much everyone loves Catherine.”

Quenser took some explosives and Heivia took an assault rifle with a grenade launcher attached. Myonri took a fully-auto shotgun with a box magazine and Evans took a semi-auto anti-material rifle. The four idiots complained, but they all grabbed the weapon they wanted.

“Oh, it’d be a pain if someone picked up the extra weapons, so should we bury them in the sand?”

“This place is amazing. They’ve got a luxury hotel and an industrial complex’s huge-ass cylindrical tank right next to each other.”

“Please help me out here. U-um, where is the actual olive field? Isn’t this supposed to be a facility for making alternative fuel?”

“It’s probably one of those plant factories that are all the rage these days. The olives will be growing with the protection of air conditioning and water purifiers inside a building or dome. They might have more comfortable beds than we do.”

Their first step was finding Elizabeth Schnozzle who had miraculously survived and getting her to tell them who in Hermes Pharmaceuticals gave her the antidote. The next step was grabbing that person and getting the product or a chemical formula out of them. Fortunately, Hermes Pharmaceuticals was also planning to throw a large party at the Olive Garden.

If they failed at any point, Catherine would not survive.

Quenser took a deep breath while carrying a backpack full of bombs.

“Let’s get started. Where’s Elizabeth’s castle?”

“Um, I think it’s one of the monster-sized casinos. This one is called Olympus. The Olive Garden has a ton of casinos, but based on the flow of money, that’s the only one with a lack of an upper limit on bets. She’ll be making a ton of money at once there instead of betting little bits at a time elsewhere.”

“So she’s one of the honored guests that the normal people don’t even get to know about, huh? That’s perfect. It gives one less reason to hold back. I was asked to protect everyone and that includes Catherine.”

“She’s apparently drawn in a lot of customers by acting like a goddess of fortune ever since her miraculous survival. Let’s get her to share some of that love of god she bought. Catherine could really use it.”

The Olive Garden itself was a five kilometer square of reclaimed land. Somewhere in the flood of lights was the Olympus casino.

Quenser and the others made their way straight there.

They got some weird looks from bored limousine drivers waiting for the few customers who remained in the casinos at this hour and from the call girls who had been kicked out of the fancy hotel lobbies.

It was a small area full of lots of money.

That meant security would be strict and there would be more cameras and sensors covering the entire area. They were not tuxedo-wearing spies, so they could not remain hidden forever. But that had never been part of their plan.

“Hey, Quenser. Do you know what the Olive Garden is classified as?”

“It’s officially a Faith Organization military base. I’m sure the fuel reserves they use to buy back the chips are a way to avoid taxes, though.”

“But that makes it a battlefield country, right?”

“Yeah, and so there’s no problem if some soldiers get into a firefight. It won’t even make the news.”

They heard the disconcerting sound of military tires tearing at the ground. A boxy truck-sized mass ignored the traffic light to secure a line of fire. It looked like the fusion of a firefighter’s hook-and-ladder truck and an armored truck, but it was not painted red and it had no front windshield. It had arrived within five minutes of Quenser’s group reaching land, so their reaction speed was quite good.

Heivia asked a question while hiding behind some nearby cover.

“What is that?”

“Either a military firetruck for base security or a modified killer water truck.”

“Um, doesn’t water have the opposite effect with an oil fire?”

“Don’t cry before it’s even started, Myonri. It probably uses a chemical based on incombustible oil. This is an alternative fuel base, remember? And a sticky liquid will be released with more force than normal water. The high-pressure chemical used for oil fires can push a parked car to the side or break your back even through a bulletproof vest.”

“It’s probably a necessity for security when they can’t afford to trigger any explosions. Ugh…”

But the resort security may have been a little too well-mannered.

The four Legitimacy Kingdom idiots no longer cared much who their opponent was. They just wanted to know who they needed to shoot at.

Quenser took a baseball-sized plastic explosive, stuck a pen-shaped electric fuse into it, and did not hesitate to chuck it toward the killer water truck.

“Your friend Quenser is a little different. Today, you can call me your angry big brother, baby.”

He hit a button on his radio and a flower of explosive flames blossomed.