Editing HEAVY OBJECT:Volume15 Chapter 2 (section)

===Part 8===

The person on a high-rise building roof had also come to a stop.

They were only 70cm away from one of the floral security cameras set up based on the theory of multiple plants providing mutual pollen range coverage, but that did not matter since they were outside the visual range supplied by the trumpet or megaphone shape.

Manhattan’s limited land meant it was densely packed even for New York. The building density was even greater than Shinjuku or Hong Kong. Jumping from building to building might sound like a superhuman action, but as long as you had the guts, it was perfectly possible with average muscle strength. You just needed the mentality to treat a tightrope walk the same whether it was 1 meter off the ground or 1000 meters off the ground.

The subway station that Heivia and the other Legitimacy Kingdom potatoes had run inside had 4 entrances. The slender person had taken up a position where they could see all of them, but they finally released a quiet sigh. They left their firing stance and leaned out over the concrete edge using the semiauto sniper rifle as support. Viewing the situation on the surface was more important than that device covered in cameras and sensors.

They set their emotions aside and rationally analyzed the situation.

…The targets had apparently escaped. There may have been a “hole” somewhere.

That was when the person heard an unpleasant buzzing as if from a mosquito or fly.

The device looked like a three-sided square frame holding a giant top instead of a globe. It was similar to a gyro, but somehow different. It was a serverless unmanned drone that used coaxial rotors to fly and used its simple circuits to guide its power system.

It did not matter whether or not it was aiming any weapons the person’s way. As long as it transmitted their location, a precision-guided missile or special unit could be sent in.

But there was no concern on the person’s face.

They reached for their skinny waist, pulled some things from a too-large waist pouch, and attached them to their face: a nose, eyebrows, lips, and – just to be on the safe side this time – left and right cheeks. It looked like the Island Nation’s ''fukuwarai'' or like a joke nose and glasses.

Or it would have if they had not been acquired by stripping the raw flesh from unknown youths.

It was an utterly grotesque montage, but they could not hide their eyes that way. They dealt with that by covering their eyes with their golden bangs.

“Yay. Peace, peace.”

That must have been enough for the facial recognition to fail. The person formed peace signs with both hands and the drone landed on the roof like it had lost sight of its target. It used top-like motions to move around the slender figure a few times, but ultimately flew off into the air again.

The person’s face was covered by a cold and damp sensation similar to putting a used shirt back on, but they did not seem to mind.

They caused the existing preparations to crumble away so they could achieve results greater than should have been possible.

And to that end, they would not hesitate to do things that would have been unthinkable under the standards of clean wars.

…The facial feature they had the least of was upper lips at just 3. They had a full 8 sets of 10 fingers for fingerprints. They knew they would have to replace them frequently, but at this point, just the harbor security group did not feel like enough. They might have to head down and “resupply”.

The person had infiltrated Manhattan using essentially the same method.

Innumerable uncollected corpses from both the Legitimacy Kingdom and Information Alliance had been floating in the ocean around New Caribbean Island. And Faith Organization ones had joined those after the Olympia Dome incident. The person had made their preparations by collecting a random person, removing their skin, and wrapping that around their body like a costume. Then they had floated on their back as if doing the backstroke to let the ocean current carry them to Manhattan’s harbor area while disguised as a corpse.

Of course, if an actual human had seen that, they would have immediately realized something was off about the suspicious figure wearing a bloated skin, but once the person was close enough, that hardly mattered. Defeating the harbor security had been easier than slaying a dragon in a hunting video game and then it had been time for the skinning.

…The person had not expected Heivia and the other Legitimacy Kingdom soldiers to be so concerned for their surroundings. Such a wonderfully extraordinary Object was right in front of them. And what was more important than teamwork?

If they were to crush the Information Alliance, the person really wished those soldiers had gone on an indiscriminate rampage and gathered lots of unnecessary attention.

But a failure was a failure and they would never get anywhere if they did not accept the truth. They set aside the sniper rifle covered in cameras and sensors and quickly switched to a different weapon.

This was the weapon they really wanted to use.

“Yes. Hand Axe.”

The person put back on the backpack filled with the clay-like plastic explosive and spun one of the pen-like electric fuses in their hand.

Acquiring the genuine product had not been easy given the circumstances, so they had to make sure they made it count.