Editing Cute Kunoichis:Volume2 Chapter2 (section)

===5: Stroll Through the Weapons Plant===

The center of New Sapporo Domain was methodically laid out like a shogi board, but this workshop area was an intricate arrangement of narrow roads with lots of one-way and no-entry signs. Not to mention the snow. Not only did it cause visitors to get lost, but certain locations could be cut off from their surroundings by several lesser-used roads.

At first glance, it was not obvious what route to take. Without the use of a satellite service, they would have stood out from their surroundings.

“Continue as planned,” whispered Sugiyado.

In their ninja outfits that perfected a combination of sex appeal and practicality, Ouka, Bara, and Hoozuki vanished upwards in the blink of an eye. They had jumped up to the single-story rooftops with some help from the layer of snow thicker than a meter below their feet. With their physical abilities boosted by the special flexible material of their ninja outfits, a jump like that was nothing. And they were not dumb enough to step on a rooftop trap and tumble back down to the ground along with a thick layer of snow.

Black-haired and white-uniformed Asagao remained on the ground, but…

“W-wait, Sensei, what am I supposed to do? I can’t fight or jump up onto the roofs even with the same equipment as them.”

“…”

“That kind look! I’m the one left behind while the rest enjoy a secret date today, aren’t I!?”

He ignored her protests. When fortunate enough to be working in a group, it was best to leave one person behind so they could respond in case of emergency.

From here on, moving swiftly was more important than blending into the crowd, so he removed his down jacket and tossed it over Asagao’s head while she puffed out her cheeks.

“You wait here. And hold onto that for me.”

“Pwah. I’m not a kitten you can leave at the pet hotel while on vacation! You can’t…you can’t placate me with…ahh, I can feel your warmth. No, I won’t let this work!”

Bara’s manic voice reached them over the radio.

“Oh ho ho! I’m going to be extra demanding today after being left out yesterday, Sensei!!”

He could have called Ekaterina or Murakami Michihiko in for support, but he did not know either of them well enough. He wanted someone he knew would be able to respond immediately.

So he trudged off through the snow on his own.

The entire area was a 5km square, but each individual workshop was smaller than a convenience store. They were all packed in tight, so there was simply not enough time to sneak into each of them to check them out. He wanted to pinpoint target the right one, but they did not know which one was the center.

“Asagao, how’s the data look?”

“Why am I stuck with a no-touching-allowed long-distance internet relationship? Boo. …Anyway, this is tricky. Data security here might be even stricter than at New Sapporo Castle.”

“Because unlike the castle, there’s no defined honmaru or server room.”

It was best to use the process of elimination at times like this.

The warehouse district had no obvious symbols of authority. There was no tenshukaku, president’s office, or other seat of power, but there was also no supercomputer, server room, or centralized manufacturing equipment. All of that had been made as parallel and distributed as possible to avoid having an obvious “giant core”.

But.

What had to be kept all in one place no matter how much they tried to distribute everything?

This northern land’s defense system had been expanded to the point that it required as much power as 10 nuclear reactors to run. No matter what system they used, that would make for one hell of a toy.

Sugiyado sensed a stir up ahead.

The roads here were narrow and labyrinthine, but he still hid himself in an alley off to the side. An old wooden board with several long nails sticking out of it was left on the ground nearby, presumably to act like a beartrap.

“…”

The combined electricity/gas/water meter on the wall nearby was displaying a warning color on its small LCD screen.

Something was wrong.

But this was not just an electrical or gas leak.

There were no sirens sounding, but that may have been borrowing the logic of submarines. Everyone in the area had been swiftly and silently notified to not give away their presence. Most likely, every worker and guard in the 5km area had received an emergency email on their mobile devices.

A few roars of engines he guessed belonged to snowmobiles passed by on the road he had just vacated. They had the light but violent roar of a chainsaw.

(That’s fine. I figured we would be detected eventually.)

This was effectively a defense weapon development base maintained by the Stonewalls, so they would have a failsafe in place. If an enemy attack was detected, they would have to go through a few steps.

For example:

1. Lock down all the major entrances and exits so no one else could get in or not.

2. Use overwhelming numbers to search out and restrain the intruders.

3. Report any human or material damage or theft and run a search for any bombs or traps that might have been set up.

And they were using as much energy as 10 nuclear reactors, so…

4. Temporarily shut down any dangerous experiments underway behind the thick walls.

No one would want to be killed by their own invention blowing up.

People’s actions were a reflection of their heart.

Blindly making waves would never end well, but if you put together a careful plan, knew where to look, and made careful observations, you could learn something from it.

That said, ninja strategies lacked a decisive blow. Ninjas sought two kinds of power: the power to put together a detailed plan and the power to adlib their way through problems.

So they generally played things by ear.

He chose to follow this route to the center since their presence had been noticed, but if their opponent had behaved differently, he would have taken a different route to his goal.

“Now, then.”

Once he heard some dogs released nearby, he climbed onto a nearby rooftop and abandoned the surface route.

Nowhere here was safe.

It never was in enemy territory.

The rooftops were also covered in a thick layer of snow. Step in the wrong spot and you would fall to the ground along with a slipping sheet and the snow on top of it. In some areas, the snow melt cables had been intentionally shorted to leave a high-voltage current for someone to unwittingly stumble across. He had to assume the traps were more dangerous in the places ordinary people would never tread.

“…”

When he took a careful look from above, he saw some guards equipped with cross-country skis that could be folded up and stored in the shin of their boots. They gave some instructions to a large dog and then moved elsewhere. They were also equipped with submachineguns that had a grip and a ski pole built in, so they were presumably meant to be fired from the hip while aiming with a laser pointer. All this equipment confirmed his suspicions that these were Stonewall ninjas.

(They may have sealed the place off, but it’s a big area. Some footprints in the snow isn’t enough to put them on alert.)

Then there was the dog. His back felt funny at 5kg and it exploded with pain at 10kg, so he would be trapped if he was pinned by a dog of that size. He needed to be careful.

They photographed his footprints.

If he wanted to avoid being caught that way, he needed to change the soles of his shoes. Plus, how he carried his weight could be used to identify him. His own legs felt weird with every step he took thanks to the extra sole and insole he was using.

That was a pain, but he looked way from his feet.

There were a surprising number of people around. Some of those were of course pursuing the intruder that had entered the strategic military research institute known as the Teine Workshop District and that had taken out On-Site Commander Taganuma Yukizasa, but there was something else going on as well.

It felt like he was seeing a scattered minority trying to escape while the majority were on the attack.

For example, he saw a teenage girl who did not look like the fighting type and he saw an old lady wearing a workshop jumpsuit. The trick to being a courier was ''not'' to be strong and tough. It was to be nondescript enough to never stand out in a crowd. In that sense, they were perfect.

''Because they were not acting.

No one acted more naturally than an actual amateur. That was why careless travelers might end up with a strange plastic bag shoved in their travel bag at the airport while they were not paying attention. In the same way, these people may not have been told what it was they were carrying.

“…”

He found that much more interesting, so he spoke into the small mic hidden below his scarf.

“Ouka, Bara. I’ve marked some runners who look like amateurs to me. Cut off their escape and restrict their available routes. Hoozuki, you provide backup.”

“Will do, Sensei.”

Ouka sounded excited.

He had only climbed onto the roof to prevent the dog from following his scent and there was no completely safe place here, so he hopped down from the roof at a convenient place and then moved below the eaves. He made sure not to step on any of the makeshift caltrops made with broken bottles while he waited for a surveillance drone to pass by overhead.

“Coordinate DD32. Using ID card in 3, 2, 1…”

As Ouka made her countdown, the drone unnaturally turned back the way it had come. Just as he heard the quiet roar of a snowmobile engine on another street, several bullet-shaped objects flew from one roof to another.

“…”

Word of Yukizasa’s defeat would have reached them by now, so what would happen when Ouka used the stolen ID card? But that could be extremely useful when you wanted to put the hornet’s nest in a frenzy.

While security was focused in that direction, Sugiyado stealthily pursued the amateur girl and old woman.

(Okay.)

The more intense the defense team, the more the escape team stood out by moving in the opposite direction.

They might as well have been dunked in glow-in-the-dark paint.

They also cautiously (or fearfully) avoided the area where Ouka had used the ID card knowing it would be detected. As amateurs, they were not going to take the long way to check for anyone tailing them and they did not know how to use diversions or distractions.

But even though he could defeat amateurs like this with ease, Sugiyado did not immediately go in for the attack. He observed them from a reasonable distance to figure out where they were headed.

The answer surprised him.

“Asagao, I’d like some analysis. What is this?”

“So you can’t forget how sweet my presence is even when we’re apart? Grin, grin. Anyway, that’s officially designated as a park, but it’s effectively an empty lot since they removed all the playground equipment and banned playing there with a ball or whatever because it’s too dangerous.”

“So it’s really nothing? Not what I expected.”

The rectangular space was about half the size of a soccer field and covered in more than a meter of white snow.

The escape team had gotten here ahead of him, so where had they gone?

He had retired from active duty, but he still had the skills he had built up.

He was not about to lose sight of an amateur.

The footprints in the snow just stopped all of a sudden and there was no sign of a car or snowmobile having driven through.

They could not have been picked up by helicopter either. He would not have overlooked a hot-air balloon, flying car, or any other vehicle flying through the wide-open sky.

They must have used some other method.

This area had none of the traps made with everyday items…but that did not mean it was unimportant. They might have chosen not to lay any traps here because a normal person stepping on one could end up drawing attention to the place.

He looked down at where the footprints completely vanished.

“Wait, could it be?”

“Sensei?”

He put off answering Ouka’s question over the radio.

“Asagao, you must have already checked on the map. I want to know how deep the snow is here.”

“Since it’s artificial, you can’t use the weather maps for that. But if we can trust the laser measurement data, it’s 103cm in that area.”

“Is it really?” He had no proof of this, so he naturally grew more cautious in his wording. “Laser measurements are taken by sending IR down from a satellite, measuring the reflection, and comparing the result to the actual terrain. But that tells you more than just the altitude. You can combine the results to give yourself an accurate 3D diagram, similar to lining up gourd slices.”

“What’s your point, Sensei?” asked Asagao.

“But that only works when no one messes with the process. If someone sets up shiny mirrors or black carbon pigments that absorb any wavelength, the results will come back wrong. Then what about this place? The entire place is covered with unnatural artificial snow.”

“Oh.”

“The Stonewalls have been raising the land little by little while changing the reflectivity of the artificial snow so the satellite’s laser measurements won’t notice. The environmental defense policy lets them keep this snow out here year round, so no one would even notice if the ground below the hardened snow had been lifted, even by more than a meter. Or if the space below had been dug out to create a giant igloo or cave.”

“So is that park itself a giant lab?” gasped Bara over the radio.

“B-but wait a second, Sensei,” cut in Ouka. “We don’t know the scope of their experiment, but aren’t they ultimately trying to build a medium that can produce more energy than 10 nuclear reactors? You’re only talking about snow and ice. I doubt that could physically shield against an emergency!”

She had a point.

Or she would have if this snow had fallen from the sky and the ice had frozen on a lake.

“They used a special plastic,” he bluntly stated. “Something like polystyrene. It’s harder than metal and extremely light, so I bet they hid it below the snow.”

“You’re kidding, right? We’re talking about a lab that manages more energy than 10 nuclear reactors. I don’t know how much they built up the area using the snow, but you would need dozens of meters of that special plastic to create a physical barrier capable of preventing disaster!”

“What if it could change shape to redirect impacts, just like your ninja outfits do?”

That idea overturned the idea of heavy armor or a solid fortress.

But it was not a crazy idea.

They could do it here.

“They use an emulsion. Water and oil tend not to mix, but with a surfactant, they will ''appear to'' behave like a single mixed liquid. That was used to create the polystyrene plastics.”

“But doesn’t that end once it hardens?” asked Bara. “I doubt that would provide the muscle-like flexibility you’re talking about.”

“It hasn’t hardened.”

“Then how is it any different from a gooey adhesive?” asked Asagao.

He smiled a little at that.

Preconceptions were hard to shake.

“With an emulsion, Particle A and Particle B might appear to mix together, but they never actually combine and become a different substance. It’s more like B slips into the gaps between A. But if you mess with the water molecules filling that space, A and B will behave very differently. Did you forget, Bara? And Asagao too? New Sapporo Domain has the perfect toy for this.”

“Oh,” he heard Asagao say over the radio.

He nodded.

“The slow-melting artificial snow, which you can see all around you. That snow has clearly been altered in some way since it doesn’t melt at ordinary temperatures. If they combined that with the high-polymer water-absorbing gel used in your ninja outfits, then it’s doable. By controlling the water molecules that act as the solidifying core, they can create a new plastic that freely switches between rigid and flexible.”

The usual assumptions of construction did not apply here.

What should harden, did not. And what had supposedly hardened would ignore the usual rules by growing soft once more.

Ninja outfits were so thin they had more or less become a part of the wearer’s skin, yet they could hold back the force of a bullet. In the same way, a decently thick layer of this plastic could be placed over the lab to eliminate the risks presented by an accident.

Because…

“…”

A heavy rumbling reached him.

He slowly turned around to see a gray giant had partially crushed the roof of a small workshop across the road.

They already had it working at a military level.

This cutting-edge fighter was made by strengthening a slender girl’s body, with a focus on the arms and legs, and simply giving her thicker armor. A smooth mass of fine-tuned plastic stood over three meters tall.

It produced a sound like a pressure cooker or locomotive, so it may have used steam power.

Destroying the building’s roof seemed to have set off a few traps using tripwires or electrodes. Explosions and sparks from high-voltage lines scattered around, but the giant did not seem to care. Nor had she taken any noticeable damage.

The smooth surface gave off an unnatural rainbow light similar to a soap bubble or the surface of a movie disk. The unique structure was probably refracting the light. From the look of that, simple explosions would be useless and even a warship’s laser beam would only melt the surface a little while most of its power was deflected away.

This next-gen powered suit determined the behavior of an emulsion by messing with the core of water molecules that decided how hard the special plastic would be. Part of that likely used the same high-polymer water-absorbing gel found in the kunoichis’ ninja outfits.

If so, it could do more than just protect against bullets and explosions in combat. By adjusting its flexibility on command, it could also boost the wearer’s physical abilities.

Something was staring at Sugiyado from the center of the gray.

“Found you.”

It was Taganuma Yukizasa.

That youngest of the Stonewall elites used the humiliation burning inside her to get her murderous internal combustion engine running.

He had saved her life.

He had let her live when he could have killed her.

But she apparently had too much pride to view it that way.

Instead, his failure to finish her off only inspired more anger and humiliation over her defeat. The young kunoichi bit her lip and then gave a roar as if releasing all of the emotions built up inside her.

“I’ve found the intruder!!”