Editing HEAVY OBJECT:Volume19 Chapter 2 (section)

===Part 5===

Their situation could hardly be worse, but it was also curious.

The enemy had their weapons trained on the 37th group’s vitals, so they only needed to fire – no warning necessary. Yet the mysterious Unit X opted to wait. That was strange and it reminded Quenser of the fact that Unit X was still here when they could have shot Elina Silverbullet and left.

The two idiots whispered to each other while being held up.

“Maybe they want the assistance of my staggering intellect.”

“No, they’re hoping to get some ransom money out of this handsome and influential noble.”

It turned out neither of them was right.

They were guided inside the log cabin by soldiers in all white jabbing them in the back with sniper rifles.

(…? They’re holding us up, but they aren’t confiscating our weapons? And our mobile devices are chock full of Legitimacy Kingdom classified data and decryption keys.)

Unit X was not interested in weapons or data.

But they had still left the Legitimacy Kingdom soldiers alive and taken them inside the log cabin.

Quenser was only more confused now. They hadn’t been tied to a chair and tortured with endless eyedrops or ear cleanings, but it was still worrying to not know what these people wanted. …In the worst case, they might be used to film a torture video using some innovative new tools, or they would be lined up and forced to clear out some landmines.

Even up close, Quenser and Heivia could not tell which world power Unit X was from. Were they even professional soldiers? They could always be guerillas or terrorists.

The log cabin had a plain interior.

[[Image:HO_v19_BW5.png|thumb]]

It was all one room except for the bathroom, so the bed and kitchen space were right next to each other. The poor excuse for a fireplace must not have been enough to keep out the cold because an extra wood-burning stove had been added in one corner.

A small girl sat in a rocking chair next to the fireplace.

The 9-year-old girl had shoulder-length blonde hair and she wore a knit poncho, sweater, and skirt which all looked handmade. That outfit had to be nice and toasty, but with that level of dedication, even her underwear may have been wool.

She did not appear restrained by the mystery unit. In fact, two soldiers in white masks carrying cutting-edge sniper rifles were standing on either side of her rocking chair like bodyguards.

She stopped moving her knitting needles to look up.

She gave the newcomers a somewhat sleepy look. How could she be so relaxed right now?

“A second group this deep in the forest? Today is the day for visitors, it seems.”

“Elina Silverbullet?”

“I don’t know what your exact mission is, but surely you know what your mission objective looks like.”

She breathed an exasperated sigh this time.

What was going on here? It seemed safe to assume Unit X was not interested in harming the girl. Having a masked and armed group wandering around your home was a lot like being under house arrest, but she seemed awfully relaxed dozing off in front of the fireplace. They didn’t seem to be her soldiers, but then who were they?

Meanwhile, Elina Silverbullet shifted her focus to someone other than Quenser.

“?”

That person was Louisiana Honeysuckle. Louisiana herself tilted her head curiously, but Elina nodded with her rocking chair creaking below her.

The genius girl slowly shut her eyes in acceptance and finally spoke.

“I see… So that’s what this is about.”

Maybe she understood, but Quenser and the others felt left behind.

Once she eventually reopened her eyes, she pointed at Unit X with one of her knitting needles.

“Are you after the same thing they are? Or have you not reached that point yet?”

“What? What are you talking about?”

“Confused? The latter it is, then. They are a step ahead of you. Getting killed without even knowing why is a tragic way to go.”

Quenser did not like the sound of that.

The guns surrounding them weighed a lot heavier on his mind.

“Everything you need is on here.”

The 9-year-old girl reached into her pocket, pulled out a flash card smaller than a stamp, and flicked it his way.

“This paper was suppressed by academia and got me branded a heretic. But if it wasn’t true, they wouldn’t have been so desperate to make sure no one read it.” Elina spoke in a pleasant but somehow cold and inhuman voice. “Do you know what my specialties are?”

“Geology and environmental engineering.”

“I also have doctorates in 31 other related fields.”

She must have been at a bragging age.

That was weirdly childish compared to her emotionless eyes.

“But all of those are just classifications on paper. If you ask me what my specialty is, I have just one answer.”

“…?”

“The severe influence on the natural environment from the dams, skyscrapers, and other massive structures we foolish humans have thoughtlessly produced – with a focus on remotely triggered earthquakes caused by distortions to the tectonic plates.”

Quenser couldn’t find anything to say, so no one stopped the genius girl from talking.

“My life goal is to divulge the devastating lies that have created the current clean wars. Especially in regard to the global artificial disasters caused by the mass usage of Objects.”

Silence followed.

Quenser and Heivia both turned toward Louisiana Honeysuckle. What had she wanted to do so badly she had even constructed a space elevator measuring 100 thousand kilometers long?

“Just one is 200 thousand tons,” said Elina in a singsong voice. That disturbing lullaby sounded like something that would summon disaster if you were to carelessly hum it. “They move at speeds of 500 or even 1000km/h and they battle with constant quick movements similar to mixed martial arts footwork. The main cannon blasts that can pierce through a nuke-resistant Object do not all hit their mark. The effect on the tectonic plates and the earth’s axis itself cannot be overstated.”

“…”

Louisiana Honeysuckle had said something similar.

The colossal Objects battling all over the world had caused the earth’s rotation to shift, so she had tried to use a 100 thousand kilometer balancing weight – the space elevator – to fix the earth’s motion before it shifted too far.

Quenser, Heivia, and the rest of the 37th had heard her claims when working to stop her.

But they had not reached a consensus on how seriously they should take those claims.

If they rejected the age of Objects, they would be throwing out the hopes and dreams that had brought them to a battlefield full of real bullets. For Quenser, that meant becoming an Object designer so a commoner like him could financially surpass the royals and nobles. For Heivia, that meant proving his worth on the battlefield so he could become the head of his family and end the fighting with a rival noble family. The others all had their own reasons as well, but the most reliant on Objects was the Princess. That was why none of them had shared Louisiana’s claims with her yet.

Quenser wished he could just forget he had ever heard it.

The difference between a genius and an eccentric was paper thin, so he had hoped Louisiana was just delusional.

But she wasn’t.

An aerospace expert like Louisiana Honeysuckle and a geology and environmental engineering expert like Elina Silverbullet had both arrived at the same conclusion from different directions. Quenser knew they were both far more intelligent than him. If it came down to their sense of what was reasonable and his, he didn’t stand a chance.

There was no escape now.

He could not look away from the coming failure of the clean wars.

“B-but isn’t that all theoretical?” asked Heivia, a tremor in his voice. He was probably trying to smile, but he only let his strained mental state show on his face. “It’s the same as the expanding sun engulfing the earth one day or the earth’s axis slowly shifting out of place over time. It might happen someday, but it’s not something we have to live in fear of today.”

“And what pray tell,” said the rocking chair girl with a cold tilt of the head, “makes you think that ‘someday’ isn’t today? It is already too late to stop it.”

Even Heivia was rendered speechless by that.

Those who profited off of the Objects were so frantic because the situation really was that pressing. They had to take such desperate measures because the change could be seen right there in the numbers. If a country was reliant on fishing or diamond mining, what would they do if their marine or underground resources dried up? They couldn’t exactly let someone publish an article proving they had nothing left to sell, so they would plot to assassinate the journalist to protect their people from starvation and thirst.

There was no time left.

The devastation had already begun.

Quenser gulped.

“Th-then are you saying the Information Alliance didn’t bring their Ghost Changer-equipped Retro Gunner out here because they wanted their genius girl’s brains? Did they send in all those forces to make sure they killed you to silence your theory that puts Objects at risk!?”

“Is the Information Alliance here too? I am not about to defend the people trying to assassinate me, but it would be wrong to treat the Information Alliance as the sole villains here.” The genius girl’s rocking chair creaked in front of the fireplace while she fully relaxed in the heat. “Maybe the Information Alliance are the only ones who directly sent troops in to assassinate me, but don’t you think the other world powers indirectly support that attempt? The Information Alliance aren’t the only ones who reap the vast benefits of this age of Objects. If you ignore the borders, it becomes obvious that the people who benefit from the clean wars control a majority of the world. Thus, all four world powers are colluding to eliminate someone who could take those benefits from them. And if you need some evidence…”

Elina Silverbullet cast her gaze at someone again.

This was the person whose presence had informed her what was going on here.

“Louisiana Honeysuckle here should be locked away deep inside a Legitimacy Kingdom special prison, yet here she is out on the open battlefield. And some other war criminals were thrown in with her to help hide that she was the true target.”

“…”

“The world powers’ plan is obvious: gather all the scientists who threaten the clean wars in one place and kill them all. And include some other notable people to hide the inconvenient truth when people see the bodies.”

The white-masked soldiers next to Elina held a hand up to their ears. After hearing something over their radios, they got moving fast.

But it was already too late.

If their comrades outside had sensed something was wrong, then ''it'' was already close. The Information Alliance’s trump card here was the Ghost Changer-equipped Retro Gunner. It was best to assume they were already trapped in the eerie ghost story that had led to 800 Legitimacy Kingdom soldiers killing each other at the frozen cape at the southernmost point of South America.

Elina had seen this coming from the moment she saw Louisiana here.

So she remained calm and composed as she spoke.

“You poor things were sent here as nothing more than camouflage corpses.”

An unbelievably powerful attack crushed the log cabin like it was a tissue box.