Editing HEAVY OBJECT:Volume20 Chapter 5 (section)

===Part 5===

“The Island Nation Object will now be referred to as the Asian Monster. I repeat, the enemy codename is Asian Monster!!”

“Oh, shut up! Quit wasting time naming the baby and get us out of here!! Evacuate!!”

Heivia proved how well trained he was by snapping back at their commander’s radio transmission.

The firing rate of the fortress gun atop the Mount Fuji was unknown, but a single shot could erase a ship from the sea. They couldn’t ignore the Asian Monster directly in front of them either. It had four diamond-shaped air cushion floats, with one in the front, back, left, and right, and the long main cannon on its right side was probably a low-stability plasma cannon. That cannon was an obvious threat, but it could probably also sink a destroyer just by tackling it.

So now was not the time to be huddled together in a bunch of landing ships. Quenser and Heivia’s group hurriedly operated the lever to unfasten their synthetic belts and clung to the amphibious armored truck to leave their ship.

Fortunately, they were not just adrift and helpless.

The Baby Magnum and Rush moved out and clashed with the Island Nation Object long enough for the potatoes to head for Tokyo Bay’s reclaimed land.

Of course, the one Object wasn’t the extent of the Island Nation’s defenses.

“Ice Girl 1 here. I have confirmed enemy fighters preparing for takeoff at Haneda. We will now attack that airport as an enemy military facility.”

“Burning Alpha here. Haneda is an unstable airport constructed on a reiver delta and reclaimed land. So instead of simply dropping a ton of missiles on them, I recommend calculating how the impact will propagate across the surface and trigger soil liquefaction to prevent them from taking off.”

“Do I need to shove a big fat missile down your throat to shut you up first, Burning Alpha!? Anyway, commence attack. Engage!!”

Quenser’s eyes widened when he saw some flashing lights across the dark ocean and then a nearby part of the ocean swelled more than 10m straight up with a deafening roar.

“They’re firing something from the north!? Hey, isn’t that where that famous theme park is located!? When did that place arm itself!?”

“The Island Nation clearly has no fear of god.”

But if the enemy had made their test shot and were preparing a corrected shot next, they couldn’t just wait around here. Land was right in front of them now.

They needed to get on land before the second shot arrived.

They didn’t need to fear direct targeting if they used the buildings as shields.

Just as Quenser’s group arrived at the end of one of the reclaimed land sections, they heard several muffled explosions from an inland point to the west.

Quenser ducked down, thinking it might be a sign of mortars about to fall their way, but fortunately he was wrong.

“That appears to be some bridges and tunnels blowing up,” said Putana Highball while inspecting her assault rifle nearby. “I don’t sense any eyes on us.”

The reclaimed land contained a lot of parks and fish markets. It was still mostly undeveloped, so there was a fair bit of unpaved gravel and weed-filled fields. That meant a shell could easily reach them.

“–––”

The radio transmission wasn’t quite silent.

Quenser heard a suppressed sigh from the old maintenance lady. Ayami Cherryblossom had chosen to leave the Island Nation and join the Legitimacy Kingdom, so how did this homecoming feel to her?

Unfortunately, someone wasn’t so considerate.

“This is the legendary Island Nation?” groaned Frolaytia, an Island Nation fanatic, viewing the footage coming from the potatoes’ small body cameras. “I had high hopes after seeing Mount Fuji light up like that, but where are all the geishas and ninjas? What’s keeping you, Island Nation? Where’s the samurai unit that can slice through an Object with no more than the power of their own muscles and a katana?”

“Has this bitch completely forgotten our lives and the fate of the world are on the line here?” grumbled Heivia.

Things might have been differently in Kyoto or Shimane which had been taken by the Faith Organization or were highly influenced by the Legitimacy Kingdom, which valued history and tradition, but Tokyo and Kanagawa belonged to the Capitalist Corporations and Information Alliance who preferred math and logic. Frolaytia wasn’t going to find anything she had hoped for here.

And on that note…

“I’m not delusional like Frolaytia, but this is the ''Island Nation'',” said Quenser. “I was expecting half the scenery to covered in symbols or to find ourselves inside a giant hologram.”

“Oh, you’re delusional all right,” said the old maintenance lady over the radio.

A new figure emerged from behind some roughly-stacked steel beams.

Someone wielding no guns or knives spread his arms and dark red flames surrounded him.

Quenser watched as those flames surged up and descended toward him. It felt like he was a frog being swallowed by a big snake.

“I want you all to take back everything you said about this place being too normal!!!!!!” shouted Heivia while they all scattered.

The flames crashed into the gravel ground and scattered in every direction. The flames were unnaturally sticky like with a Molotov cocktail or a flamethrower.

Quenser had been slow to react and froze up, so 12-year-old Catherine had to push him to the ground and drag him behind a pipe. The boy shouted while clinging to the little girl’s hips.

“What was that!? Some occult stuff like with Putana!?”

“Teacher, our powers are mostly boosted sensory abilities, so they are not actually what you would call psychic powers. We cannot shoot fire from our hands or bend a spoon with our minds. If you see anyone doing that, they are probably tricking you in some way.”

The flames bent like a great serpent, so the rules of bullets didn’t apply. They could easily circle behind whatever cover you were using.

But it was being used by another human.

Putana could predict the attack timing using his “gaze”, so she gave some pointed instructions and the maid group, led by Wydine and Karen, nodded from behind different cover a short distance away. They pulled the pin from a smoke grenade and threw it to rob the enemy of his sight and oxygen while Heivia, Frank, and some others fired bullets and grenades in from multiple angles.

No one could avoid coughing or crying in the smoke. No one but the dead.

“It’s a high-tech flamethrower.”

Heivia approached the corpse and lightly kicked a weapon resembling a thick gun.

He knew what had given the man his pyrokinesis.

“I think it’s called a Kagutsuchi 9. It uses microbubbles filled with particles of flammable fuel to distribute them over an area. The bubbles can be burst at the desired timing so the fuel mixes with the oxygen in the air and is detonated. Basically, it’s like microscopic napalm bombs. It lets you create midair designs with the flamethrower, so you can make your own dragon breath or flame sword if you want. I guess it’s like a small Be Ablaze.”

“The Kagutsuchi series was originally used for musical parades, you know? The Island Nation must really be desperate.”

The old maintenance lady’s words were full of doubt and suspicion since she alone knew what the Island Nation had really been like.

The corpse didn’t look Asian. He must have been a foreign mercenary or only half-Island Nationer because his hair was a bright blond. Hadn’t the old lady mentioned something about this already?

Quenser gulped.

“If this is what their individual equipment is like, what are their Objects like?”

That thought scared him, but he couldn’t come to a stop.

That one man naturally wasn’t the only enemy they came across. Soon, they saw steel construction beams and a tunnel-like pipe floating in the air. Just when they noticed something small gathering together, one of them coughed up blood and collapsed.

But all of it had to be magic tricks.

If they didn’t let the legend of this place influence them, they wouldn’t panic or take unnecessary damage.

“Is that an experimental tornado generator?” said Quenser. “Basically, it’s a drone that alters atmospheric pressure using an extremely powerful vacuum cleaner. I’m guessing he coughed up blood because of microplastics. They’re probably meant to be mixed with the air and ignited.”

“I don’t see how any of this is better than an old-fashioned bullet,” said Heivia.

“It’s not and they know it. That’s why they’ve set things up so we can’t use bullets. Once they realize we’re not falling for their tricks, they should shift back to the basics.”

Quenser’s group traveled across the reclaimed land to reach a beach TV station where they found the giant bridge had entirely collapsed. But that didn’t matter much to them. Once they crossed the ocean with their armored trucks designed for crossing rivers, they would be in Tokyo proper.

The somewhat muffled explosions they heard in the distance were probably the Island Nation troops blowing up their own elevated railroads and highways. Quenser beckoned some girls over.

“Putana, Catherine, come here. You too, Wraith!”

“Hmph. At least it’s better than being stuck in that truck with those dangerously stubborn triplets.”

Quenser invited over the Martini Series commander and then pulled her up onto the roof of the Battlefield Cleanup Service truck. She tried to play it cool, but as short as she was, he basically had to pick her up like a kitten.

The truck’s continuous tracks were grinding across the artificial beach to reach the dark ocean. They were less than 2km from the other side.

“Once we arrive on the other side, our primary landmark is the Keihin-Tohoku Line,” said young Wraith up on the roof. “After we follow that coastal route north and reach Akihabara, we turn west. Follow the Sobu-Chuo Line from there and we reach Ichigaya.”

Their amphibious truck followed the fallen bridge through the rubble-strewn ocean. Following the road using the railroad as a landmark wasn’t the shortest route, but Quenser agreed it was for the best. Trying to take a shortcut in this complexly laid out enemy territory could get them lost, stranded, or dead.

[[Image:HO_v20_BW9.png|thumb]]

“I need to recharge, big brother!”

“Whoa, don’t hug me like that, Catherine! We’re in the middle of a battle! Keep an eye on your surroundings!!”

“Heh heh heh. Our boat is all floaty, so try not to fall off, big brother!”

And…

“…”

“Mh?”

Catherine made a confused noise.

Wraith Martini Vermouthspray toyed with her pen-like device in one hand and grabbed at Quenser’s uniform with the other.

Catherine puffed out her cheeks while hugging him from the front.

“And who is she, big brother? Just so you know, he belongs to me! You can tell because my name is Catherine Barbotage. Heh heh.”

“Cough, cough! Y-you married this small child, pedo teacher!?”

“Please don’t make this more complicated than it already is, Putana! She’s my stepsister!!”

But there was more than one eye of the storm here.

Wraith spoke up, still spinning her pen-like device.

“You can have this average and filthy potato if you like, but I retain the right to borrow him for some fun whenever I like.”

“Borrow!?”

“How’s that for mature? (Why would This wriggling wharf roach crawl all over him when ''she'' is out there in the ocean watching it all? Has she no sense at all?)”

The younger girls were engaging in some kind of battle here, but Quenser couldn’t make sense of it. He also wasn’t sure why Wraith puffed out her (flat) chest so proudly or why Catherine grew pale and trembled.

Heivia, meanwhile, muttered to himself with a shadow over his face.

“God, why couldn’t my little sister be even half that cute?”

After being defeated(?) by Wraith and reduced to trembling in Quenser’s arms, Catherine decided to change the subject.

“Anyway, big brother, won’t the Azumaya weirdos run away with all this going on? It was just those four who started the world war, right?”

“How are they supposed to run away? Listen, Catherine. On paper, they’re just low-level grunts. They have no special rights. If they leave their posts without permission and run, the Island Nation will shoot them in the back for deserting. And even if they get away, they’ll stand out once recorded as wanted deserters. Running away dooms them sooner or later, so they won’t run away. They know taking any conspicuous moves will mean their deaths.”

“Wow. You’re so smart, big brother.”

“This really isn’t something I should be explaining to a 12-year-old kid.”

But even if the self-defense PMC soldiers were mercenaries gathered from all over the world, Quenser felt kind of bad killing them to get at the villains they had no idea were hiding among them. But holding back for that reason would be playing right into the villains’ hands.

Meanwhile, their truck arrived at the opposite coast.

The tank-like continuous tracks made a loud grinding noise. It was incredible they could reach 70km/h with those.

After crossing the ocean from the reclaimed land and climbing up onto land, the scenery changed entirely. This was prime waterfront property. Fancy high rise office buildings and luxury apartments created a world for the winners of urban life. They probably drank more vintage wine than chlorine-filled tap water here. One of the countless windows around here probably had a beautiful woman pressing her boobs against the glass while having sex.

In that jewelry box of a world, Heivia, Myonri, and some others climbed down onto the ground and readied their weapons.

The low rumbling of a motor was impossible to miss. Unless some wealthy female company president had a tungsten toy with the power of a jackhammer up her tight skirt, that had to be the enemy approaching.

“Here they come, here they come, there they come. Spread out and stay alert, everyone. There’s no point in keeping just one line of fire with this many people! They’re sending in the ordinary troops this time!!”

It happened suddenly.

A giant roll of something rolled out across the giant intersection of two 6-lane roads like the red carpet for a visiting noble. Tire spikes were deployed across the entire area. Then something emerged from behind a building: a thick powered suit. Even with its great size, it must have had trouble fully controlling the recoil of its 155mm sniper rifle because it had a special device attached around its legs. It looked like it was permanently sitting on something like a wheeled office chair. The chair legs moved on their own to get over bumps and the two humanoid legs out in front could be used to change direction.

“Is that from the Walk Optimization Project? It’s been decades since then, so why is the Island Nation still playing with those toys?”

“What’s even the point of it being a powered suit anymore!?”

No one bothered listening to Quenser’s complaint. With deep booms of gunfire, the Battlefield Cleanup Service truck was torn through like a stick poking into a clump of clay. The average armored truck couldn’t have survived, but Wydine and the others couldn’t escape the truck while the gunfire continued. Heivia kept his head low and ran away while pulling the pin from a stun grenade.

A lightning-like flash hung around as an afterimage.

The powered suit briefly froze up, not because the pilot had been blinded but because the camera footage had automatically switched the negative and positive in response to the intense brightness. That was the most effective method, but it still confused people when it happened without warning. It was a common problem when enclosed inside a powered suit.

Wydine and the other fake maids used that moment to escape the (wreckage of the) truck. The Martini triplets’ truck was still functioning, so they opened fire with their 40mm autocannon. That was only meant to hold the powered suit back, not defeat it. They aimed for the exact moment the powered suit fired, adding to the recoil and causing it to lose its balance while essentially seated in a chair.

“Yikes, yikes, yikes, yikes!!”

Keeping his head low and tearful with fear over being hit by a ricocheting bullet, Quenser ran toward the enemy. He threw a clay-like Hand Axe bomb with a pen-like fuse in it and it attached itself to the powered suit’s armor near the right collarbone.

That was supposed to be the most fragile point with a powered suit that could not escape the limitations of the human skeletal structure.

Quenser practically leaped to the asphalt in order to get down as he pressed his radio’s switch and blew up the powered suit.

He had gotten closest to the intersection, so he was the first to notice and shouted back to the others.

“One powered suit down, but there’s something else further back!!”

“Only one, foot soldier?”

“I’m just a student!!”

Quenser heard an exasperated female voice over his radio and then the continuous track of an armored truck passed by right next to him. It accepted whatever malfunctions the tire spikes would cause it and charged straight toward the second powered suit. This one was leaning against something like a giant stepladder set up in front of it. The stepladder was part of it. That looked like it would affect the movable range of its arms, but it must not have wanted to crawl on all fours like a dog. It all came down to using the poorly-balanced human body as a base. The truck seemed to tilt back as it partially drove up onto the enemy, keeping the powered suit from moving.

At that close range, the long 155mm sniper rifle was meaningless. The giant powered suit struggled like a little girl trapped underneath a large pet dog, so Heivia launched a shoulder-fired missile into it.

“One more down! I’m not letting that skinny boy get all the credit!!”

“Oh, shut up! There’s shrapnel way worse than nails flying all over the place, dumbass! You turned this blast area into a danger zone!! I’d be dead if I hadn’t gotten down!!”

“You should be thanking us,” said the triplets. “We had an entire continuous track taken out by the tungsten spikes. On that note, could you grab any usable repair tools from the scraps of the Battlefield Cleanup Service truck? They don’t need them anymore.”

It sounded like Quenser would have to give a thank you foot massage to those triplets who couldn’t perform their own maintenance. He cautiously approached the damaged truck that could blow up at any moment, raised it with a jack, and swapped out the track that was linked together like rosary beads.

“Th-this is terrifying. It’s not right that I just get paid ordinary wages for this. I should get hazard pay and more for all this extra work I do.”

“Did you forget we’re in Area By Chance now? We aren’t working for an actual military, so we don’t get paid at all until the world war is over. Did you still think we were with the Legitimacy Kingdom?”

“I swear being a hero is nothing but a big scam!!”

At any rate, Quenser and the others didn’t like the idea of charging on foot at such a heavily-equipped enemy group. They needed as many functional vehicles as they could get.

But even if they didn’t explode like a tank gun, the Island Nation was firing back with enormous 55m sniper rifles. Weren’t they afraid of destroying a piece of their own city with stray shots that could punch right through a tank’s composite armor?

“This is weird. Really weird.”

“What is? Don’t assume the Island Nation is going to make any sense. Oh, look. That blue sign says Akihabara.”

“Hold on. I thought it was weird this didn’t look like the electronics district I’d heard so much about, but are we on the end full of office buildings? We’ve gone too far past the station,” said Wraith. “Turn back! I don’t care how confident you look; we’re headed the wrong way. The partially-destroyed elevated railroad must have confused us. We need to turn back and pass below that railroad to reach the main road.”

Once they did reach the electronics district, they found Akihabara to be a desolate place this late at night.

Even on the main road Wraith had mentioned, all the stores had their shutters down. Worse, several powered suits had set up a barricade that resembled a giant concrete box. These ones hadn’t tried to forcibly make up for the inherently poor balance of the humanoid design, so they simply stood on two legs. The concrete block with an anime-style drawing on it was apparently meant to stop their vehicles and provide cover, but couldn’t they have just thickened the armor around their cockpit so they wouldn’t need cover? Quenser found it odd. And if they just made it so that block could move and shoot, wouldn’t they need fewer parts at those specs, which would make for easier mass production?

“Humanoid weapons are so wasteful,” said Quenser. “Why is the Island Nation so obsessed with weapons like this?”

“Hey, I wouldn’t be badmouthing humanoid weapons or railroads in the legendary Akiba,” said Heivia. “You’re liable to get yourself surrounded by an angry mob.”

“The greatest advantage of powered suits is the ability to intuitively operate it like your own body without needing to read through the manual. That can still be worth it even with the balance issues,” said the old maintenance lady. “And let’s not forget that Objects are pretty wasteful too. Especially in the earliest stages when they were built for no other purpose than ending the nuclear age.”

Simply put, powered suits were a convenient weapon that let you kill as easily as operating a smartphone.

But Quenser wasn’t interested in being killed by a shiny kuro gyaru’s device of choice.

An exchange of high caliber gunfire began in a strange area with only gyudon shops open despite the lack of customers.

“Ohhhh!! Don’t you dare mock me and look down on me just because I’m the indoorsy type studying to be designer! What’s so great about being the gaudy popular girl in class, anyway!?” shouted Quenser.

“Eh? You sure are throwing a lot of bombs. What’s gotten into you? Do you think the powered suits in Akiba are being piloted by a no-name underground idol or by a phony maid who normally hands out fliers on the street corner?” asked Heivia.

“Akihabara’s maids do get a lot of attention, but maybe think twice before assuming they are the same as the popular kids at school,” warned the old maintenance lady.

Since the powered suits had prepared their own cover, their armor had to be no thicker than an armored truck’s, so specialized equipment could punch through them. Quenser’s group turned west while using shoulder-fired missiles and the armored truck’s autocannon to shoot the powered suits on the ground or hiding behind the rooftop billboards for 3D printers and mobile games.

“Damn, it was all men inside. Now I wish I had just shot the powered suits along their center lines. Were they from a butler café or something?”

“Can you please stop thinking about Island Nation cafés, Quenser?”

“(Beep!) Ehh!? You have to be in Akiba to find the Baby Magnum? Why didn’t anyone tell me? No wonder I couldn’t find it on any of the other battlefields we visited!!”

“What the hell, Myonri? Do you have your personal phone with you?” shouted both idiots.

The battle to determine the fate of the world was changing positions.

They were now following the Sobu-Chuo Line. Using the elevated railroad blown up by the Island Nation itself as a landmark, they walked down a road following the Kanda River and finally approached the city center.

But the closer to the center they got, the more desolate things seemed.

The buildings were all so short.

“That domed stadium is past Ochanomizu. There must be something there,” said Quenser, hoping he was wrong.

“What, did it only now occur to you they might have something waiting for us at the baseball stadium? Look, more enemies are coming!!”

A patrol boat traveled down the cramped concrete-banked river. It looked a little bigger than a fishing boat, but its front and back deck were equipped with a 20mm Gatling gun and an 81mm mortar. Fortunately, the river was a level below the road, so the boat’s firing range was extremely limited. Putana and Catherine descended the gentle slope and threw grenades from a blind spot so they landed on the boat’s deck and blew it away.

The stadium combined with the theme park did indeed have something waiting for them.

“Charge!! Hurry!! That’s a railway gun reinforced with earthen walls and armor panels. They used the nearby railroad to send in the materials they needed to set that up. Quenser, we’re stuck here if you don’t blow that up with one of your bombs!!”

“Why should I have to do it when I’m not even getting paid!? Okay, Myonri, show us how it’s done!!”

“Bff!? I was trying to be inconspicuous so no one would notice me, but you just had to ruin that, didn’t you? Stop using me as a dumping ground for all the jobs you don’t want to do. Besides, this was Heivia’s idea, so he should do it!!”

The idiots started arguing and grappling, so Karen and some others took swift action and slaughtered all of the enemy soldiers.

With a caliber of 800mm, a single shot from that railway gun could obliterate an entire school with its powerful blast and shrapnel, but it was fairly helpless within a range of a kilometer. Since they hadn’t shot it earlier, the Island Nation must have set it up in a hurry and didn’t manage to complete their final targeting in time. Remember, the Island Nation had been caught by surprise, forcing them to hop out of bed and prepare at the last second.

Quenser’s group followed the railroad from there until they saw the river pass below the road. That was called a culvert, wasn’t it? It was extremely noticeable and stank like a ditch.

“Are we almost there? Ichigaya has a fishing hole, right?”

“Wait, wait. We still have a station to go. Don’t get it wrong. This is the station after Suidobashi, so we’re still at Iidabashi.”

“After Iidabashi, you won’t be following the Kanda River anymore. It changes to Sotobori there,” said the old maintenance lady via radio. “The green algae is just as bad either way, though.”

When a 110mm cannon fired on them from the roof of some short buildings a short distance from the station, Quenser’s group quickly hid behind the station mall. It was another of those powered suits. That made it a job for the Martini triplets’ armored truck. It helped that they had attached a mortar they had picked up somewhere. Alisa – or was that Rica? – crawled out from the hatch, crouched at the back of the roof, and performed some kind of work.

Heivia aimed his assault rifle toward the night sky and checked through the scope to detect something through all its sensors.

“Air temperature: 2 degrees. Humidity: 50%. Not much dust or dirt in the air. The wind is mostly 3m/s from the southwest, but the skyscraper walls are creating their own winds too.”

“Got it.”

With what sounded like a louder version of a popping cork, a projectile flew like a long throw in baseball. The first shot exploded near the roof, catching the powered suit in the blast.

The enemy had been silenced.

The filthy potatoes used their binoculars to check where the mortar had hit.

A building labeled “Kadokawa” was now tilting at an angle.

“Uh, oh. Let’s get outta here.”