Editing HEAVY OBJECT:Volume6 Chapter 1 (section)

===Part 5===

The wind grew stronger.

As Heivia and the others continued to dispose of the stockpile of bullets, a man wearing a black mask shouted angrily at them from behind.

“Hurry it up, you tax thieves! You’re nothing but trash. You have to keep working until you finish your quota even if a storm blows in or you have to continue into tomorrow!!”

Heivia clicked his tongue and the marriage scam artist muttered quietly to him.

“How about you ‘accidentally’ shoot him?”

“If I knew some technique to fire a gun 180 degrees behind me, I could probably sell it to an action movie director.”

The Night Edge Platoon had not been charged with watching over them. It seemed the man was simply shouting at everyone he came across. He had already headed off somewhere else.

Heivia made sure to raise his middle finger to the man’s parting back, but then he realized something.

“Hey, you said they’re the Night Edge Platoon, right?”

“They’re famous for going overboard while acting as bodyguards for VIPs. The councilors they guarded didn’t like how the excessive violence caused their approval ratings to drop. But that’s no reason to send them out to inspect the battlefields. They just get in the way.”

“…Well, they don’t look like it.”

“?”

Genelia frowned and Heivia ran his thumb across his throat as if slitting it.

“That guy must have given in to the heat because he lifted his black mask up a little. That’s when I saw it. He had scars from stiches circling around his neck. He’s from the 202nd Mobile Support Company. They go by the name Unicorn and that’s their distinguishing sign. Apparently it symbolizes their decision to ‘kill’ their former self and be reborn upon entering the unit.”

“You’re saying that’s not the Night Edge Platoon but some other unit?” Genelia sounded skeptical. “Maybe someone left Unicorn and joined Night Edge. I hear people often regret it when they try to unite their unit with tattoos.”

“Sure, if it was just him.” Heivia removed the scope from his assault rifle and handed it to Genelia. “Look at the one over there and the one jogging on the bridge. Check around their necks. They have the same scars.”

“…You’re right.”

“You could be right and they officially changed units. But the percentage is just too high. For all intents and purposes, they’ve only changed their name and are still Unicorn.”

“So who is this Unicorn?”

“They have a lot of dark rumors. Their official mission is to destroy enemy lifelines. They’ll blow up trucks carrying supplies whether they’re military or civilian, they’ll destroy public facilities such as bridges or phone towers, and they’ll cut off communications with jamming. They make tons of money behind the scenes of the clean wars.” Heivia took the scope back from Genelia and reattached it to his assault rifle. “They’re an independent unit that ignores their allies’ opinions and carries out whatever destruction they deem necessary for their allies to win in these clean wars between Objects. They do a lot of things that can’t be made public, so they usually remain undercover. There is even suspicion that they have set up a side business with spies from the Capitalist Corporations in the process. Supposedly, they were involved in some attacks on gold mines and black market weapons sales in battlefield countries.”

“They certainly sound dangerous. …But this a top secret facility filled with top Object designers. What are they doing here disguised as the Night Edge Platoon?”

“Who knows. But if they didn’t have to hide their presence here, they wouldn’t go to the effort. This might be related to their side business with the Capitalist Corporations. Simple honor students are annoying enough to deal with, but Unicorn is an entirely different kind of dangerous. This goes beyond wondering if they’ll betray us. They might not even be on the side of the Legitimacy Kingdom in the first place. Who knows when they’ll shoot us in the back.”

Heivia decided it was best to assume the platoon going by the name Night Edge had been absorbed into the company known as Unicorn.

Naturally, all the Unicorn members spread out across the world would be sharing information between themselves.

Having the Night Edge Platoon hiding their identity inside the collection of classified information that was the Cook Addition Islands was a very, very bad situation.

That was when a tone came from Heivia’s radio.

Not long before, it had become nothing but a karaoke microphone toy he shouted abuse over to relieve his stress, but now some unwelcome information came from it.

“Hey, Heivia. I’m inside that building filled with top secret information right now. What do you think about the fact that the signal is reaching you?”

“Not good…” Heivia brought a hand to his forehead. “I found something bad on my end of things too. That impertinent Night Edge Platoon has been swapped out for a different unit called Unicorn. That’s the unit suspected to have a secret side business with the Capitalist Corporations!”

“Wait, wait, wait! You don’t mean…!!”

“That’s right, you idiot. If data is being sent back and forth under the military’s radar doing exactly what you’re doing, then it’s possible one of the designers in there is working with the Capitalist Corporations!!”

“By the way, it was a coincidence we ended up getting sent off somewhere, but it seems one of those designers influenced where we were sent. So could the same have happened with the Night Edge Platoon?”

“Probably. A designer could have influenced things to gather the pawns she needed.”

“Dammit. Why do we always stumble onto things like this?”

“It’s the curse of those who are just too skilled and good looking. It can’t be long before they make a movie about us.”

The situation had grown troublesome.

A designer inside the thick walls of the building was sending signals out via radio and Unicorn was receiving them outside. If the information was then sent off the island with some larger equipment, a hotline between the designer and the Capitalist Corporations could be constructed.

And on top of that, the “justice” of that small island was completely controlled by Unicorn disguised as Night Edge and the designers in the Center. If the two were working together, the proper law and military regulations would not necessarily come into play if Heivia and the others made a fuss about it.

They had to search out a communications device or line out of the island that was not controlled by the enemy and use that to report the situation elsewhere. And if the enemy tried to stop them, they would of course ignore the usual methods and attack.

Genelia then started tugging on Heivia’s sleeve.

“But there are around 30 genius girls living inside that building, right? Do we know who to suspect?”

“We just have to follow Unicorn’s actions. Not all of them are here on the island. Even the entirety of the Night Edge Platoon would only make up a third of Unicorn. The main body of the unit is elsewhere.”

“How can you know that?”

“Because of all the dark rumors. There are journalists that figure they don’t have to worry about putting food on the table if they just follow Unicorn around. Then again, some have gotten killed for getting too close. Their area of activity can be found on normal news sites.”

“It may not be as bad as where Quenser is, but this place isn’t so lax that we can just play FPSs over the wireless LAN.”

“True. And so I can’t get the latest information. But I do have what I saw while on the transport plane taking me here.” Heivia paused for a second. “Southern Africa. They were doing some dirty work related to water resources using clouds. Any ideas, Quenser?”

The only response from the radio was the sound of a head slamming against the wall.