Editing HEAVY OBJECT:Volume16 Chapter 3 (section)

===Part 6===

For the time being, not being trampled by the confused and preoccupied giants was top priority for Quenser and the others gasping for breath and crawling across the 40-degree desert.

Operation Southern Cross Grim Reaper had completely changed without warning.

“Has the world gone completely insane!?”

Quenser could no longer see Heivia even as he heard the boy shouting. A stray shell fell a short distance away, the circular corn field exploded from below the ground, and dirt poured down to block his view.

He reached out, but he could not find his awful friend’s sleeve.

“Heivia, Heivia!”

(Damn, we’ve been separated!!)

Quenser clicked his tongue.

This meant a change of plans.

“Come here, Rosa! I won’t let you die here!!”

The woof and the tug on the leash were all he could rely on.

Like a proper arms dealer, Woodstock had driven cracks through the coalition force just by making a business proposal.

While chunks of dirt larger than light vehicles flew, Quenser grabbed his radio.

“Frolaytia! What’s our plan now!? What side are we on!?”

“We do not negotiate with criminals!! Support the Princess and get us through this! Also, the Legitimacy Kingdom has sent in the Escalibor to join her. Don’t you die out there!!”

That was a relief to hear.

If he had been told to grin and shake hands with the arms dealers, he might have faked his death and deserted.

“Princess! You can manually control the reactor, right? If things get really bad, open valves 3, 8, and 12!!”

“What kind of power up is that supposed to be? It would overload the system and the secondary cannons would explode.”

“Who cares if those tiny secondary cannons blow up in a battle between Objects? Use that to create a big flashy explosion when you take a light hit. Then you can play dead until the backup Object arrives!”

“Quenser, you need to get out of here. No one will notice if you sneak away with all this going on.”

“…”

“You are our trump card. Hiding you below the table is far more useful than playing dead. We can’t afford to lose you.”

“Sorry about this!!”

“I expect you to find a way to strike back at them.”

The Baby Magnum sent more power than necessary to its static electricity propulsion device and filled the air with a cloud of dust mixed with crackling electricity.

He could not waste the chance she was giving him.

He crouched low and worked his brain.

This could not have happened naturally.

The economic and financial situation had been set up to manipulate people through profit and loss.

Grinov Quarterdeck.

This looked like a chaotic brawl between multiple Objects, but he decided to assume the overall situation would work in Woodstock’s favor. Quenser needed to start by taking the first step. He did not want to be hit by a stray shell. Having an Object lock onto him was out of the question, but the circular farms were also filled with 50,000 soldiers. A lot of those had been taken out on the way here, but he doubted that was all of them.

Moving too far away was not an option. There was only so far he could travel by foot and, if he moved out into the desert alone, the enemy soldiers would spot him and surround him.

He needed a safer option.

He needed somewhere with lots of things he could hide in or behind.

And what area would be safe from being trampled or shot by the Objects?

(That’s it.)

Quenser raised his sandy head.

(The Southern European mansions where Woodstock lives! That’s a small town housing 50,000 soldiers. And they were recently gathered from around the world, so they won’t recognize each other!! If I remove my uniform, they won’t know I’m not one of them!)

With the leash in hand, he walked through the tall corn and poked his head out of the dust cloud. He heard some of the corn stalks rustling on the way, but he had no way of knowing if that was an enemy or ally wandering the field.

He crossed a few of those circular farms and approached the lake.

Breaks in the dust cloud gave him glimpses of the Southern European mansions that looked out of place in the desert, but he was certain they would be surrounded by cameras and sensors.

He needed camouflage.

He needed to transform into one of the people who lived there.

He changed his destination to one of the prefab huts he had seen in the gaps between circular corn fields. Unlike the ones dotting the desert, these ones had air-conditioning units sitting outside. When he peeked in through the window, he found this one was a combination of a storeroom and a rest area. The door was locked, but he blew off the entire knob with a plastic explosive the size of his fingertip. With the Objects clashing not all that far away, he doubted anyone would investigate such a small blast.

“Come here, Rosa. It can’t be fun having all that dirt on you. Here, I’ll brush it off of you.”

The inside of the cramped building was quite humid, so the air-conditioning must have been off.

The German shepherd whined sweetly and rubbed up against him. He grabbed a towel from the table, balled it up in his hand, removed her bulletproof jacket, and wiped the dirt off of her fur. Either because he was cleaning her or because he had removed the heavy jacket, Rosa wagged her tail happily. He looked around while looking after her.

He initially only saw some simple tea and pasta-style cup noodles, but when he opened the small box on the table, he found it stuffed full of rings and necklaces bearing diamonds and emeralds. The quality of the everyday items and the valuables was clearly out of the ordinary. He opened another box to find a luxury makeup set likely used to prevent sunburns. As a criminal organization, they were probably simply distributing their assets as something other than cash, but instead of careless, this felt more like they were so oversaturated with treasure that it had found its way out here. Just how rich were they?

He considered grabbing a few souvenirs, but he had only just been swallowed up by that thundercloud. He wanted to avoid receiving some divine punishment for trying to swipe these treasures.

He focused only on survival.

And for that, he had to change clothes.

He could take on any role as long as he changed out of his Legitimacy Kingdom uniform.

He was hoping for a farmer’s clothes or a work jumpsuit, but…

“Man, you can find these anywhere, can’t you? Well, they are using fancy mansions for their headquarters.”

He reached for the hanger on the wall and spread out the outfit it carried.

A true man would always choose the maid uniform.

His decision was greatly influenced by the luxury makeup set he had found among Woodstock’s treasures. It felt a little weird so soon after the incident with Hina Liqueurball, but the set contained high-end collagen gel. With production halted, the price of the remaining stock had to be skyrocketing. After using that for the foundation and adding some makeup on top, he just had to put on the maid uniform to complete Legendary Maid Quensette.

“Whew, this is pretty thick and heavy-duty. Is it for actual work?”

Rosa only tilted her head when he muttered to himself, so despite being a girl, she must not have known much about maid uniforms. Speaking of Rosa, he could not leave her equipped with collar, leash, bulletproof jacket, camera, and communicator. That was far too much Legitimacy Kingdom military equipment. He started by removing everything except the bulletproof jacket and stuffing it, his uniform, and his backpack in a garbage bag for fallen leaves. Digging a hole and burying it would have left a noticeable mark where he filled in the hole, so he instead stuffed the bag in the vent at the bottom of the foundation below the prefab hut.

Quensette, who grew bolder while crossdressing, looked around.

(Now, what to do about Rosa?)

Once back in the hut, he found a few bags of pet food on the shelves. The food was for large dogs and the packaging advertised how it kept teeth sharp and jaws strong. Rosa was a gourmet, so she stubbornly refused to eat the unnecessarily hard food.

But unlike in the mansions or apartments, the presence of food in a hut like this suggested they kept quite a few dogs here. He was honestly a bit worried about that. If they only kept some other breed, like Dobermans, a German shepherd like Rosa would stick out like a sore thumb. And it could still be a problem even if it was not that extreme. He did not know how many dogs they had, but it had to be fewer than the 50,000 soldiers and their families. The odds were good Rosa would arouse more suspicion than Quenser.

(Could I release her here?)

A military dog like Rosa had much stronger legs than Quenser and she could locate and avoid the mines or other traps hidden in the ground. If he released her, she would likely arrive back in the maintenance base zone pretty quickly. If he removed her collar and leash, Woodstock would have no way of knowing she was not just a stray or a pet. As long as she did not attack them, there was little chance of them shooting her even if they saw her.

“Rosa.”

She responded with a gentle woof.

She must have been in a good mood because her tail was innocently wagging.

“Rosa, you can go now. You’ll be safe then. Go, Rosa!!”

But the dog remained sitting at his feet. He was pretty sure she would follow him at a distance even if he tried to drive her away. So she could protect him while he was all alone and unarmed in enemy territory.

(Man, she’s such a good girl.)

Quenser decided to accept the risk.

He pulled a Woodstock collar and leash from the shelf and disguised Rosa with them.

“Rosa, don’t make a fuss, okay? Don’t bite anyone until I give the go ahead, even if they hit me.”

She woofed in response again, but had his instructions really gotten through to that earnest lady who would follow three steps behind him even in the modern age?

He had no weapons and no way of contacting anyone in the middle of enemy territory, so trying to hide some Legitimacy Kingdom equipment on his person could easily mean his death. If it was discovered, he would either be killed on the spot or tortured since the war treaties held no power here. He just had to remember the strange swarms of flies and the mystery huts out in the desert beyond the circular farms. If he was in need of a gun or bomb, he was already in a situation where he would be surrounded and brutally executed. He had to stay on the attack as he worked his way further in.

(Grinov.)

Quenser’s long maid skirt fluttered as he and Rosa left the prefab hut.

(Grinov Quarterdeck! I have to capture their leader and bring an end to this ridiculous business negotiation that has the world powers so rattled!)

He might also find the plans and specifications for Woodstock’s Second Generation Gangster, but ending the business deal took precedence. At the moment, they only had the verbal promise of the Gangster’s Elite. That did not guarantee Grinov Quarterdeck himself would approve it. It was unknown what form that approval took, but it was probably done through some kind of electronic device. For Quenser, the best option was to use Grinov’s computer to stop the business deal even if it meant pretending to be Grinov himself.

His destination was beyond the corn fields. He traveled on foot while avoiding the remains of a few collapsed grain silos and a toppled-over tractor that looked self-driving. He was headed for the main Southern European mansion by the large lake that acted as a water supply. There was also a section full of identical apartments arranged like a library’s bookcases, but he was only interested in finding Grinov Quarterdeck. After going to the trouble of donning camouflage to slip past the cameras and sensors, he had no reason not to go for the main building.

The circular farms were in utter chaos, but things changed the closer he got to the lake. It was a subtle thing, but the cacophony of clashing Objects felt more distant. It was like viewing it through a pane of glass or watching a fire on the other side of a river.

Different rules applied here.

Once he was quite close to the mansion, he heard a rustling in the corn stalks right next to him.

Acing weirdly courageous was the wrong move here.

“Kyaah!?”

He made sure to shriek and did not forget to cower down. All while holding Rosa like a stuffed animal so she would not jump out at whoever it was.

It was two men in unfamiliar military uniforms.

They wore gold necklaces, emerald rings, and other things no actual soldier would be wearing.

“Pardon us, lady. Didn’t mean to scare you.”

“If you’re taking shelter, then head further in. But where are you from, señorita? I get wanting to have your loved ones around, but I don’t get bringing them to a battlefield country.”

One of the swarthy maintenance soldiers reached out a hand, but Quenser did not move any closer and only squeezed Rosa’s neck in his arms. He made sure to turn a frightened look toward the men’s guns and knives instead of their faces.

The man was not wearing gloves.

The large gem in his pure gold ring glittered in the bright sunlight.

The chest and butt were not the only areas of concern. Due to differences in subcutaneous fat, a man and a woman’s palm could feel quite different. He had tried to mask those differences with the collagen gel, but the fingers were a risk due to the concentration of peripheral nerves. He remembered this causing a lot of disappointment back at the cultural festival café.

He slowly stood up while acting frightened and used that time to analyze the maintenance soldiers’ intonation.

(I was expecting the kind of Central and South American Latinos you would hear talking about nachos and jalapenos, but they end their words surprisingly crisply. So is this less Castilian and more Eastern Slavic?)

The soldiers had apparently gathered from all around the world, but language habits could be surprisingly infectious. When taking a trip within your own country, it was not uncommon to find yourself slipping into the local accent after just a few days. If he wanted to work his way deeper in, it was worth checking on these things.

An identical tone sounded from both the maintenance soldiers’ radios.

“Lady, you need to get to the mansion instead of the apartments! But don’t go underground. The water purification plant was taken out and the whole place might be flooded!!”

“Sorry we can’t escort you to safety. Let’s go, Ramon! We’ve got work to do!!”

Quenser sighed while watching the two men run off in a different direction.

(Did I act too scared? I should’ve listened longer to learn more about how things are in Woodstock and what might rub them the wrong way.)

He started thinking like the handsome lead of a spy movie, but that was a bad habit for Quensette, who grew bolder when crossdressing. And he only started thinking like that after the danger had passed. If he had actually tried it and extended the conversation, they would likely have noticed something was off in a flash.

Anyway…

“Let’s go, Rosa. We have permission to go to the mansion.”

She gave a reassuring bark.

After continuing toward the largest mansion, he saw more noncombatants on their way there: a girl in a sailor uniform, an old woman in a nun habit, and a house-husband with a small child in tow. There were also some girls in maid uniforms. It looked like there were different designs for farm work and indoor cleaning.

They were all carrying suspicious-looking boxes and bags, so they were likely carrying whatever their criminal family members had given them without knowing what was inside. Did they contain precious metals or weapons and ammo?

(I can’t believe this. There’s even more than Frolaytia predicted.)

If they had just sent the Objects in under the assumption that “They’re all bad guys! Yahoo!”, the debriefing might have been enough to make him vomit. Had this been a lucky mistake or a joke come true?

As expected, there was no sign of any corpses around here.

Not even those global sons of bitches must have wanted their families to see that.

He had been worried about traps like mines at first, but it was looking more and more like that would not be an issue. Even if there were mines, they would not be within the circular farms. The soldiers would not want to bury mines somewhere their family or friends might be walking.

There was a maintenance soldier with a gold bracelet at the gate, but he was not asking for an ID or a biometric scan. He was only doing a simple pat down over the clothes, but he was letting most of the women and girls go right through without that.

From here, Quenser could tell the mansion had a stereotypically symmetrical design, but a garage appeared to have been added later. There was an area sticking out unnaturally on the right side. The number of windows suggested it was a three-story building, but there might be some attic and basement rooms added on as well.

It looked quite fancy from the outside.

They may have gotten the help of a famous architect for the design. Whether they used drugs or sex workers to convince the architect was the only real question there.

Quenser let the old nun go through first and then passed through the gate to reach the rose garden. It felt a lot cooler than when he was in the circular farms. Everything felt refreshing here, so it was easy to forget this was the middle of the desert. He could probably head right into the mansion now, but a small concern occurred to him.

If his cover was blown, he was as good as dead, so every little thing felt like handling unexploded ordnance. At the same time, he could not ask anyone else for help. He had to figure it all out himself.

In other words…

(Oh, no. I never checked to see if they allow dogs inside the house here.)

Those family rules could be the most troublesome. You could not research them in advance, but getting them wrong really made you stand out. Instead of going with the flow, Quenser walked through the rose garden to take a look around. He spotted a stable for livestock at one end of the property. Based on the excited neighing he heard in response to the distant rumbling and explosions, it likely held horses. He did not see any dogs around, even though there had to be quite a few of them here based on the dog food in that prefab hut.

(There don’t seem to be stables for pigs or cows either. What do I do? Are the more practical ones located off the property?)

Quenser had no intention of letting Rosa go after coming this far. He needed to come up with some method.

Then the guard with the gold bracelet gestured at him and spoke in a deep voice.

“Girl, hurry!!”

“Is there a doctor in the house?”

Quenser spoke in a coquettish voice quieter than if someone had just dumped icy water over his head. He could tell he was gradually getting into the role. Tearful eyes and an upturned glance were Quensette’s greatest weapons.

“This pup protected me from some falling furniture. She’s normally running all around everywhere, but she doesn’t have any energy since then. She won’t eat her food either. Oh, whatever am I supposed to do!?”

“Is she hurt? Like dragging a leg or something?”

“I don’t know. Ohh, I just don’t know. This is all my fault for being so slow!!”

Dogs and cats were living creatures, so he had heard they would come down with PTSD when hiding in a bomb shelter over the course of a long bombing campaign. Rosa was not eating the food because it was not what she was used to, but that was fine as long as it fit what Quenser was saying.

Also, psychological wounds were invisible and intangible. The maintenance soldier could not make a judgment right here and now.

There was more rumbling in the distance.

“Argh, just come here!”

“Um, what about her!?”

“She can come with us! …Go ask Doctor Sandra about it later. But don’t take the dog into the examining room!”

He had expected the big boss’s base to have a medic or other doctor. In an isolated hideout, you could not use the standard infrastructure, so a simple case of appendicitis or a cavity could mean a crisis. They could not exactly pick up the phone and call an ambulance.

The main entrance’s doorknob appeared to be solid gold instead of brass.

The pleasant chill of air-conditioning welcomed them inside.

Based on the mansion’s size, they may have had the kind of industrial model used for high-rise buildings.

Once he and the dog were inside the Southern European mansion, he found it to be quite spacious. It had an open floorplan, but that made the entrance hall look so large Quenser felt it had to seem lonely most of the time. There were a lot of paintings, sculptures, and other pieces of artwork and antiques, but were those the result of Grinov’s taste or simply a desire to distribute their assets in a readily liquidable form?

They were doing well enough to support 50,000 direct members and their families. Thinking of this as the headquarters of an international corporation, this may have been relatively restrained.

There was no scent of death here.

But that was not a natural thing. It felt more like antiseptic had been sprayed around.

How many deaths had they caused to distance themselves from death?

(Now, then.)

“We are safe inside this mansion! The Objects will always do what benefits us. Victory will come to us if we wait!!”

That announcement was probably more about preventing a panic than giving an actual evacuation plan. Quenser pulled on the leash and left the hall while glancing back at the noncombatants in a sailor uniform or nun habit who had stopped to listen to the DJ soldier.

The mansion itself was symmetrical and it looked like an E when viewed from above. The main hall was at the intersection between the vertical line and the middle horizontal line and a hallway extended back from there. The view from outside suggested that led to the garage. That was all he knew and he was not even certain how many rooms there were per floor.

Although the design of the doors was enough to tell the normal rooms from the supply closets and storerooms.

(Hm? Newspaper and magazine clippings???)

He tilted his head at the clippings he saw pasted on a door, but he did not have time to read through them. A patrolling maintenance soldier could show up in this hallway at any time.

“First I need a weapon.”

The storerooms were big enough to walk around in. In addition to cleaning supplies and a first aid kit, he found money counters and cash from various parts of the world hastily bound with rubber bands. He could have taken some of them with him, but given their criminal origins, the bank might freeze his account if he tried to deposit them without doing a bit of laundering first. He decided it was best not to touch them. There were hammers and saws in the tool boxes, but there was no explaining those if they were discovered hidden in his skirt. He could not forget that blowing his cover meant death.

“What are these? Ingots???”

The metal bars lying around did not appear to be gold or silver. They were printed with the text “Pt, 99.99%”. If that was true, then these were platinum. With a density of 21.4, enough to fill a 1-liter carton of milk would weigh 21.4kg. He traced his finger across that metal which was too heavy to easily lift in one hand.

(No, is this an imitation alloy given a similar weight? But why? I thought the police had developed these to use as a decoy ransom.)

He doubted Woodstock had simply been fooled.

Were they analyzing the enemy’s tech to research ways to tell the difference, or were they used to fool other criminal organizations?

“Did they use mechanical alloying? Well, that’s not important.”

He could not wield something this heavy as a weapon. He was more likely to drop it on his little toe.

What would pack a punch but not raise any eyebrows if he carried it around? After some thought, he selected the item he wanted.

(It can’t be a blade or a blunt object. So does that leave something electric?)

The heating elements for bug zappers had a surprisingly high voltage. With the farms nearby, they must have suffered from a lot of mosquitos and flies because there was quiet a selection. There was the kind that hung from the eaves and there was a portable vacuum that linked with a bug zapper box with the heating element wrapped around it, but Quenser was focused on the electric bug sprayer you wore around the neck. It was a camping supply that ran on a lithium battery, but he removed the cover, exposed the wiring, made some modifications so two metal clips acted as electrodes, and placed the cover back on.

(The standard amount would be 20,000 volts, I think. To be honest, grabbing a glass ashtray and conking them on the head might be a faster way to knock someone out at this range.)

It was small for a stun gun and there were ridiculous models out there that were more than 200 times as powerful.

Still, when he activated it as a test, Rosa looked up in surprise at a distinctive sound a bit different from the buzzing of bug wings. She was well trained, but the unfamiliar could still startle her.

A stun gun was not all that special a weapon.

The specifics will be omitted here, but you can see how ubiquitous the necessary parts are if you consider what handheld products can produce a lot of electricity at once. Of course, if you lack the proper knowledge, you are liable to shock yourself or blow up the battery, so do not try this at home. A plastic device smaller than a pack of cigarettes was now creating bluish-white sparks. What mattered now was a camouflaged weapon, not a powerful one.

Instead of hiding it in his pocket, Quenser placed the string around his neck to wear it as originally intended.

“Let’s go, Rosa. Time to search the place.”

They walked back out into the hallway.

Leaving the group and acting alone was frightening. It was not surprising he wanted the dog and a weapon to protect him.

“Sandra? Doctor Sandra?”

He was of course really looking for Grinov Quarterdeck. He had not forgotten that.

But as insurance in case he was discovered, he quietly called out the name of the doctor he had been told about while quietly knocking on and trying each of the doors he came across. This was not the time to press against the walls and hide on the ceiling like a ninja. The trick to staying alive was to limit his actions to ones he could explain if he was found.

Only about half the doors were locked.

This was Woodstock’s home base. That seemed careless for the headquarters of an international corporation of 50,000, but it felt overly strict for a home.

He saw a game room with a pool table and a dart board, a jacuzzi with a home theater system, and a bar with plenty of vodka bottles, but no sign of any people.

There were still precious metals and suspicious stacks of cash lying around, but he was more interested in the newspaper and magazine clippings. They were everywhere – in scrapbooks or on corkboards.

(An Eastern European forest, 30,000 missing people, and a joint military exercise?)

What was all that about? Were they connected to some previous job as an arms dealer?

There were also some things like an oddly scorched plastic doll and a toy plane with broken wings. That felt strange when Woodstock had all their jewels and gold bars just lying around.

However…

(None of that is going to tell me where Grinov is.)

Quenser made a mental note of what he had seen and got back to his main objective.

He still had a powerful weapon.

(The best spot would be…here, I guess. As the master of the mansion, Grinov would want the best seat in every room. I can look at the angle of the TV, the location of the air-conditioning vent, and the position of any plants that might block the view. Now what other items are in here?)

“Rosa. Sniff this chair and…oh, I know. The stock of this hunting rifle.”

After receiving a woof in response, he had her smell the most luxurious seat at the bar which had so many cruel items around it.

Rosa was a German shepherd and she could do the work of a police hound as well as a combat canine. Even if the human eye could not see anything, her nose could pick up the trail.

…Grinov had an electric scale to measure out the powder and various small knives for carving out the wooden stock, but what was he planning to shoot with that hunting rifle out in the empty desert? Quenser really hoped it was not a bipedal mammal known for wearing clothing.

Quenser started down the hallway with Rosa leading the way while occasionally moving her nose to the floor. There was apparently a small stairway other than the one in the main hall and they used that to reach the third floor and approach one door in particular.

“Doctor Sandra, are you in here…?”

When Quenser whispered the name of someone he knew was not there and quietly knocked on the center of the door, he heard a deep noise from within.

The scent of the mansion’s master had led him here.

That had to be Grinov Quarterdeck.

(…)

Quenser removed the handmade stun gun from around his neck and glanced over at a flower pot decorating the hallway. Even with the door shut tight, there was enough of a gap to slip a piece of paper underneath. If he poured out the flower pot’s water and used the stun gun on it, he could send the electrical shock past the door. Even so, he was at a disadvantage here. He could hit the man if he casually grabbed the door to open it, but the man could always stay away from the door, pull a magnum from a desk drawer, and fire into the center of the door. Plus, there might be more than one person in the room. And it was all for naught if the man was wearing waterproof military boots. 20,000 volts might sound like a lot, but it was a far cry from a train’s high-voltage line.

Quenser could not afford to thoughtlessly wait around for the man to do something.

Several Objects were fighting a meaningless battle at this very moment and lots of soldiers had to be fleeing on the ground below them. No, in the worst case, those soldiers might be killing each other. Heivia, Myonri, and even the Princess. With every second that passed, someone he knew could be having their life snuffed out.

He had to end this as quickly as possible.

Now was the time for decisive action.

(G-…)

The doorknob (which appeared to be pure gold) shook.

It turned.

And the door slowly opened inwards.

“Go, Rosa! Get in there!!”

Quenser threw the flower pot’s water at the door and zapped the floor with his stun gun.

And to make sure the collapsing body did not block the door, he half-tackled the door with his shoulder.

He let go of the leash and sent the dog in first.

Once Rosa started moving, she did not bark at all until she had dealt with her target.

“Kh.”

Quenser was searching the mansion on the pretext of finding Doctor Sandra. If Grinov simply said “she’s not here”, that was that. Using that pretext was the safer option, but he would never get into the room that way.

Luckily, he heard no gunfire or yelling.

He only heard a gentle woof that would not let the rest of the mansion know anything was wrong.

[[Image:HO v16 BW15.png|thumb]]

The battle was over.

“What, was there no one else in there?”

Dogs did not have the ability to point, so Rosa simply kept her jaws clamped down on a large man collapsed on the floor.

That seemed to settle it.

“So this is Grinov. Grinov Quarterdeck.”

The stun gun had taken down a large white man with a Santa-like beard and short hair. He was muscular and his bare arms had a few notable tattoos.

He supposedly had his origins in an Eastern European gang, but that permafrost fashion must not have been bearable in South America. He still wore the fancy slacks, but he had removed the coat and tie and the white shirt’s sleeves were rolled up.

Quenser stepped over the collapsed man to enter the room and gave a quick pat of the German shepherd’s head when her attention shifted from Grinov to him.

“Is this Grinov’s office?”

There was a large desk and lots of thick law and economics books. Quenser ignored the usual money counters, jewels, and credit cards and passports held together with rubber bands, but there was also weapon concept art and 3D-printed Object weapon models. There was a flat-screen monitor on the desk and the tower computer itself was forcibly stuffed in the space for the chair. It looked like a fairly old model given how much money had been spent on the room. There was no sign of any tablets or AI speakers either.

Everything here had been realized and sent to the battlefield.

Quenser had worked with the military and gradually studied to be a designer while getting yelled at, so his efforts felt almost worthless when he saw all this. By using the underhanded methods of the Parasite Plan and the Gangster, this man had skipped past all that work to make the dream a reality.

How much money and treasure had he seen in this mansion?

Grinov Quarterdeck had everything Quenser wanted from his goal of outdoing the nobles as a commoner. And he had used a method the clever boy had never even considered.

“A dumbphone…”

Quenser had to smile bitterly when he picked up the mobile device sitting on the desk. Only those in the medical field used these anymore.

As an arms dealer, Grinov may have disliked the “extra features” of modern smartphones, like voice commands that could be recording at any time and sent the data to an external server or like mysterious data collection scripts embedded in the base OS.

Quenser’s nose detected the scent of old paper and glue.

Overall, it reminded him of a lawyer or accountant’s office.

There were some gaps in the bookcases on the wall. That gave room for doors on a wall not bordering the hallway. Opening those revealed a simple bathroom and a nap room. There was nowhere anyone else could be hiding.

“Kh…”

He heard an odd groan.

The shock had only been 20,000 volts. Unlike in movies or dramas, a real stun gun was not guaranteed to knock someone cleanly out. You should only expect them to keep someone immobile for 30 seconds to a minute.

Grinov’s right arm shot up.

Quenser spotted the unique dull glint of metal there.

“Sic him, Rosa!”

Quenser quickly gave a command, but the bearded man was fast.

He did not even hesitate to cut the side of his own neck with a knife.

Quenser had his own situation to worry about.

All weapon deals required approval from Grinov as their big boss. That could be used to end the verbal promise on the battlefield and restore order to the chaos there. That was the plan anyway.

“Dammit, Grinov!!”

The German shepherd finally managed to bite the godfather’s right wrist and tear the blade from his grasp, but it was too late. Quenser quickly grabbed a piece of weapon concept art from the table, thought better of it, grabbed a design idea for a tattoo instead, and ran over. Not even the best military dog could treat a wounded person. A human was needed to roll up the thin paper and press it to the wound on the side of the man’s neck.

“Don’t die yet. At least wait until you’ve told me how to approve and reject deals first!!”

By stopping the bleeding, Quenser could at least stop the man from “quitting while he was ahead”. But unless he stabilized the man’s vital signs, he could not force any information out of him using violence. It was all over if Grinov died.

(Dammit, he took the initiative from me!!)

After making sure the bleeding had stopped, Quenser wrapped some rubber around the paper to hold it in place and left Grinov in Rosa’s care. Getting anything out of the man would be difficult, so he had to gather what information he could on his own.

The dog stood on the man’s back while he lay face down.

Meanwhile, Quenser drew the curtains and both closed and locked the door to the hallway. He grabbed the lamp from the ebony desk and used the power cord to tie the man’s hands behind his back to prevent a second suicide attempt.

The middle-aged man with the distinctive beard forcibly twisted around to get a look at Quenser while speaking with a bit of a slur in his voice.

“Oh, what’s this? Having the dog take me in the ass?”

“Rosa’s a girl, you dumbass. And she’s too good for you anyway.”

For being so muscular and having so many tattoos across his body, he spoke with a surprisingly calm tone.

He may have run the arms dealer organization using clever economic principles in addition to simple violence.

“You are dead, I hope you know. No matter what you try, you will not leave here alive. My organization uses cars for its executions. You will be stripped naked, both hands will be tied to the back of the car, lighter fluid will be poured over your foolish little head, and you will be set ablaze. Of course, no one lives to see the flames fade.”

“Rosa, if you’re going to bite anything off, make it just the one ear. Don’t kill him yet.”

This was a criminal field where the war treaties did not apply.

He might have captured Grinov, but that was a temporary thing and the man’s soldiers would act once they noticed something was amiss. This room would be surrounded and there was no hope of winning then. What would happen once they broke down the door and dragged Quenser outside?

He refused to picture the rest of the scene and made sure not to let his imagination get the better of him.

This man was an expert when it came to these things, so he would see through any bluff Quenser tried to make. That was why the falsely polite man maintained his calm demeanor despite the wound to his neck cut and the dog holding him to the floor.

(Don’t lose focus. Do what needs to be done.)

Grinov’s approval was needed for all deals.

Quenser’s goal was to capture the top of Woodstock and use the computer or paperwork to end the business deal being made with a verbal promise. The Gangster was enough of a threat on its own, so they did not need the four world powers fighting each other here.

The enemy was intentionally using a method outside the norm to rattle them.

Quenser had saved his own life with a similar approach using his plastic explosives, so he understood. If they were going to the trouble of using this nonstandard method, it meant they were not confident of their ability to defeat so many Objects with just that mystery Second Generation.

So what did he need?

(The computer seems the most likely.)

That should contain all the contract formats used by Woodstock in its arms dealing. That would include the forms for annulling or freezing a deal.

Grinov was not needed to create the form. His job was just to approve it and that should only need his computer and account. Although it might ask for an electronic signature. At any rate, if Quenser sent the four world powers an electronic form saying Woodstock would not give them the Gangster, they would at least stop their fruitless popularity contest of a battle over it.

Quenser opened the heavy desk drawer, pulled out some jewels, a cigar case, and a scrapbook detailing an accident during a joint military exercise, placed them all on the desk, and found a few cables and what looked like an earphone. There was no obvious biometric scanner to read the veins in the palm or the iris of the eye.

(An earphone, huh?)

The shape of the inner ear could also be used for biometric identification. Back at his safe country school, he had heard of a method that sent out a tone and identified people based on how it was reflected back inside their ear.

He had to try everything he could.

He was the one who had tied him up, but Quenser lacked the strength and the desire to princess carry the bearded man. He tossed out that nightmarish option and instead slid him over in front of the computer. After seating the man in the chair with his hands still tied behind him, Grinov groaned at the somewhat painful position.

“Trying biometric identification? Try my fingerprint and eye if you like. I am curious to see what happens when none of it works.”

“…”

With his hands tied behind his back, he could only shake his head which was not enough to keep the earphone out.

Quenser tried measuring the shape of the man’s inner ear using the earphone connected to the computer with a cable.

“Error?”

“We are a Woodstock, a criminal organization.”

Quenser tried the same thing again, but no luck.

Trying too many times could cause the ID screen itself to lock up.

Grinov gave a snort of laughter.

“We always consider the possibility of attack. Were you satisfied when you found the same face in the photo you were shown? Plastic surgery is enough to-…”

Quenser did not even bother listening as he dug through the drawers and stuck a communication cable into a slot on the locked computer.

“…Wait.”

He plugged the other end into a piece of plastic smaller than a pack of cigarettes.

After connecting the electric bug sprayer he had used as a stun gun, he tossed the device onto the desk.

“Wait, what are you doing!?”

“You don’t have a tablet or an AI speaker. You intentionally use an outdated computer so you can run a script of yours to keep it from gathering any data, don’t you? These days, everything connects to the internet. In the Information Alliance, I hear even their bidet toilets are monitoring everything with IoT functionality. Now, what about this? You intentionally limited the connections to this precious computer, but don’t you think it’ll be leaking data like crazy with this wireless antenna attached? It might be hard to tell since it’s invisible, but it’s sending its signal in every direction.”

“What!?”

“So what’s on here? A list of clients? Plans for new weapons? A map of all your secret transport routes? Or maybe photos of your family living back in a safe country, oblivious to these illegal dealings? I don’t care if it’s a mistress, an ex, or your first love from elementary school. Did you really bring everyone you care about to this mansion? The intelligence division isn’t exactly known for their mercy. If they find out you’re friends with someone, it doesn’t matter which of the world powers they’re living in; masked men will cross whatever borders they have to and take revenge. You can count on it. And the poor victims probably won’t know why it’s happening even as they’re being beaten and killed. But you know exactly why it would be happening, don’t you!? Even after all the people you’ve killed and buried out there in the desert, you don’t want the same thing to happen to the people I’m talking about, do you!?”

To tell the truth, he was only using the phone cable to charge the electric bug sprayer’s lithium battery. It could not transmit data and the intelligence division was not that monstrous. But the more nervous a person was in general, the more easily they would go up in flames if you gave them a spark.

“A biometric scan error? The earphone measures the shape of your inner ear. You can fool that by stuffing something in there. That doesn’t prove you’re a body double.”

“…”

“So here’s the deal: if you’re just a body double, you can ignore this, right? In that case, we’re only talking about the brutal deaths of complete strangers. But that data is making its way to the military servers as we speak. I don’t care which way this goes, so will you tell me what I need to know or will the electronic simulation division have to break the encryption to access it that way?”

Quenser only had one basis for making such a bold gamble.

Back in the maintenance base zone, Oh Ho Ho had said Grinov would not want to reveal any weakness to his subordinates and thus had never used a body double.

The muscular man with a large beard and short hear uttered a low groan.

“What do you want?”

“My friends’ lives. Just getting the data out isn’t enough to protect them. I need your identity to use this computer, so tell me how to approve and reject deals! What do I need after unlocking the computer!?”

He heard a dull thud.

The flat-screen monitor was on the desk, but the tower computer itself was below. The bearded man’s hands were tied behind the back, but he had kicked the computer as hard as he could.

For him, stopping the supposed leak of personal data was enough.

“Dammit!! Grinov!!”

This response to the private threat suggested this really was the real one. But Quenser had pushed him too hard. Silencing the arms dealer with another stun gun blast was meaningless since the display on the monitor had already died. He detected the unique stench of burning plastic. He pulled the tower computer from below the desk, but the plastic cover had split open.

(That isn’t all. Was there a plastic pack of chemicals in the empty space of an expansion slot? This is an elevated area with lots of seismic activity. Wasn’t he afraid of an earthquake triggering this on accident?)

If the man was this cautious, it was unlikely he had sent any evidence of his crimes to an external cloud. But a search through all the drawers and the underside of the desk did not turn up any kind of flash memory.

It was hard to imagine there were no backups at all, but could he really find it in a hurry? Flash memory could be smaller than a kernel of corn. There was not enough time to tear up all of the mansion’s carpeting and search through all of the circular farms. The farms extended beyond the horizon and it was even possible the backup was buried in the distant desert like a landmine. There was no finding that when he did not even know what color or shape to be looking for.

But he did have Grinov.

That man was needed to approve all deals. It might be possible to prove it was really him using the ear-scanning earphone. The broken computer might not actually be necessary as long as he knew that method. But he could not stay here. Even if he stopped the deal for the time being, the Woodstock soldiers would surround the room and take back Grinov once they noticed something was wrong. Then their godfather only needed to place the earphone in his ear and redo the approval work.

“…”

Quenser slowly inhaled and exhaled.

The computer was broken and he could not use the big boss here. So what did he have to do? Heivia, Myonri, and even the Princess. How could he stop the meaningless battle that was sure to destroy those familiar faces?

The answer was obvious.

If he did it here, the big boss would be taken back. But if he did the work beyond the criminal organization’s reach, they could not retrieve him.

The maid looked up and spoke.

“I don’t care if you’re alive or dead when we get there, Grinov Quarterdeck, but I’m taking you back to our maintenance base zone.”