Editing HEAVY OBJECT:EX Chapter 2 (section)

===Part 6===

In truth, the next step was the hardest part.

After all, the Trinity Style’s tunnel was a steep slope that curved around like an off-ramp. Even if girls were light, they still weighed forty to fifty kilograms, so it was the same as carrying a bag of rice. The two idiots slipped several times on the way and were very nearly forced to start again from square one.

The twintailed Elite woke up on the way, but she seemed to decide resisting was a poor plan when she had no gun and her thumbs were bound behind her back. For how much she had struggled before, she was being quite docile.

They somehow managed to arrive outside.

When the two idiots showed up absolutely soaking with sweat, the old maintenance lady gave them a puzzled look.

“It wore you out that much to catch one little rabbit?”

“Do you want to try it? I don’t even remember how many times we almost died in there.”

Heivia was too exhausted to say anything more.

Quenser placed his hands on the back of the twintailed girl’s shoulders, but not because he was a sexually harassing lowlife. The Object’s main body was a round sphere and the Elite could easily lose her balance and fall with her hands bound. And that was true of an accident or an intentional act.

“What’s your name? You’ll be interrogated more than enough later, but I thought I’d ask.”

“Skuld. Skuld Silent-Third.”

That was all the Elite girl said.

Or maybe it was all she could bear to say. Even taking into account the moonlight illumination, her skin was unnaturally pale. Quenser also felt a tremor in the shoulders he held in his hands.

She must have just been that fearful and anxious of falling into enemy hands. Unlike all the random grunts, she was the one actually participating in war and killing so many people. She may have been aware of the grudges she would have made.

However, that did not seem to be the real reason.

Skuld looked back toward Quenser and spoke in a slow, trembling voice.

“I’ll be killed. I’ll ''definitely'' be killed.”

“Listen. We already received the White Flag. The battle is over.”

“No.”

Skuld shook her head, but not because she could not trust Quenser and the others.

“I’ll be killed by the Norn.”

“?”

Quenser did not initially understand, but…

“I’m talking about this Object!!”

By the time he grasped what she meant, the situation was already underway.

The round Object that Quenser, Heivia, and the others stood on began to move.

The Pilot Elite was no longer onboard, it should have been empty, and it should not have been able to move, yet it was. With the simple movement of a wet dog shaking off some water, it worked at throwing off the puny humans clinging to it. No, it even swung around the helicopters and armored trucks attached by wires. It looked like an amusement park thrill ride using centrifugal force.

There was nothing they could do.

By the time he caught on, Quenser had already been thrown out into the night sky. And he was not the only one. Heivia, the old maintenance lady, and the many other young technician soldiers joined him. They were all amusingly flailing around like awkward birds, but Quenser was no different.

A girl floated in the air nearby. Skuld had her thumbs bound behind her back, so he grabbed at her body and pulled her close.

There was nothing more to do.

The one piece of luck was just how huge the Object was. Instead of falling into the flower field directly below, they fell into a densely packed jungle a short distance away.

Narrow branches audibly broke and absorbed some of their momentum before they hit the ground.

“Gh…bah!? Aghgeh…gehah!!”

He landed on his back and had trouble breathing, but the pain told him he had not died quite yet.

Not wearing a lifeline had actually proved fortunate. Even now, some of the spider web or cat’s cradle wires remained and both equipment and personnel were being swung around like morning stars.

“Ah…ghah!! Skuld…are you…okay?”

He looked to the girl in his arms.

She would not have been able to land properly with her hands tied behind her, so Quenser may have been right to grab her. At the very least, it did not look like anything was broken.

“If you are, then explain this. What is that!? Why is the Trinity Style taking strategic action with the Pilot Elite removed!?”

Was she going to say it was AI-controlled and did not need a Pilot Elite?

That was Quenser’s thought, but the answer was something else entirely.

“The Norns are the three goddesses of destiny.”

“You don’t mean…”

“Urd, Verdandi, and Skuld. The Norn has three Elites.”

That explained things.

If the other two Elites could pilot the Object even with Skuld captured, the current situation made sense.

If the alternative was letting Skuld, who held highly classified information, fall into enemy hands, killing her here was the logical decision when the Elites were replaceable like that.

“Now I get it,” said Heivia who had fallen nearby.

Could a student like Quenser get away with calling him pathetic? That awful friend was beaten up and the old maintenance lady was practically grabbing at the back of his uniform’s collar to support herself.

“That busty commander was right when she said it looked like different Elites were boarding the Trinity Style. That’s exactly what was happening! But who would have ever thought that three of them were controlling the thing at once!? Goddammit!!”

“That would also be why the tunnel curved like an off-ramp. The shortest route would mean the tunnels leading to the three cockpits would intersect. They had to spiral around so that wouldn’t happen.”

But…

“What’s going to happen now that they’re forcing it to move!? It was already taken out of commission by that ablative shell, right!? It can’t move right with that damage and its main cannon was blown away and turned into a flower or something. Are they really going to fight the Princess like that!?”

“You understand nothing,” said Skuld harshly.

The machine she had entrusted her life to was now targeting her and she spoke in the face of that unreasonable reality.

“You understand nothing of how dreadful the Norn is.”

A moment later, the most unreasonable thing of all happened.

With a blinding flash of light, the Trinity Style’s supposedly destroyed main cannon fired.