Editing HEAVY OBJECT:Volume16 Chapter 2 (section)

===Part 8===

More than his ears, it felt like all the organs in his gut were being squeezed. It may have been an issue of pressure instead of the noise or shockwave.

“Ghhh!!”

Quenser doubled over but was not blown to bits. There were a few reasons for that. First, he had not modified the plastic explosive for anti-personnel use, such as wrapping a hard zip tie around it or filling it with metal balls. Second, it had blown up in the air a short distance away from him instead of right at his feet.

And third…

“Hina!?”

“Que’ser!!”

Hina Liqueurball had stepped forward and held the handmade shield overhead. The one blast broke through the cushioning made from copy paper and snapped the plywood in two, but he would have been killed without it there.

Hina was defenseless without the makeshift shield, so he picked her up with both arms and moved back on unsteady legs.

The woman with only a loosely wrapped ribbon covering her nudity had yet to do anything.

“Now, then.”

She spoke for the first time.

She was finally taking action.

Were the red wings meant to make her look like an angel or like a demon?

She grabbed a red flower petal from the small bottle hanging from her neck and placed it on her tongue like it was the forbidden fruit.

In what almost seemed like an afterthought, the symmetrical weapons – probably an armored version of a flying car – moved casually out.

They gave a roar of their electric razor sound.

Now it was Quenser’s turn to save Hina. He got on the ground with her below him while the wings passed by overhead with a weight closer to a car than a motorcycle.

“Eek!?”

“Don’t worry, lady. We’re still alive!”

A single hit would kill them instantly.

Hina’s body temperature and sweet scent were the only things proving they were not yet ghosts.

Flying cars might sound impressive, but some were modeled after airplanes and some after helicopters. These were something like multicopter drones weighing more than a ton. Their streamlined bodies did not have the crane fly shape of the recon drones, but that was only because the rotors were contained inside and the air was released through vents, just like fans that hid their blades.

“Wait, I thought they were all about cheap and reliable!!”

Quenser gave a shout and somehow managed to get back on his feet. He grabbed Hina’s warm hand and half-dragged her back some more. Being in that naked woman’s field of vision was too dangerous. The red wings had not returned after passing by, so they must have circled all the way around the cylindrical hyperbaric oxygen chamber so she could retrieve them. They were cars, after all, so they moved much faster than people.

An unhealthily saccharine voice reached him from around the curved metal wall.

[[Image:HO v16 BW6.png|thumb]]

Had his comment drawn her attention, or was she trying to distract them while she planned an attack from behind?

“These are actually surprisingly cheap.”

Once they saw each other once more, one side or the other would lose their life.

And at this rate, it would be Quenser and Hina.

“We have already built a commercial model. As long as you don’t have any weird dealers acting as middlemen, you can buy these for as much as a used car.”

The cost of various different military vehicles varied wildly, but the most expensive tanks could cost as much as 10 million euros each. Not even hitting the jackpot at the lottery would be enough for that. Given the price of vehicles that could survive in this field, that probably was incredibly cheap.

“Who are-…?”

“Dora Blue-Hawaii. You can address me as queen, mistress, honey, or whatever you like really.”

He was not about to just believe her. That was indeed a Capitalist Corporations last name, but it seemed a little too convenient to find someone with “Hawaii” in their name while actually in Hawaii. Plus, he doubted someone from a criminal arms dealer would offer their real name so easily.

“I assume you already know what this place is used for. And why I ignored the others to eliminate you first.”

“…”

Small Hina tugged on Quenser’s uniform. She pointed past the cylinder wall behind them. She probably wanted to say that continuing to move back would take them all the way around and back to the exit where they could escape the room, but Quenser doubted it would be that easy. When he patted the top of her head to calm her elevated heartrate, she had a somewhat ticklish reaction. They would only have an instant to act. For example, if Dora sent the two wings around the cylinder in different directions, Quenser and Hina would be caught between them at some point.

(If they really are as bulletproof as an armored truck, a normal gun won’t work. Throwing a randomly balled-up bomb won’t work either. I need something made to pierce armor. I don’t know how we win without a shoulder-fired missile like Heivia carries around.)

It was a lot like a driverless car with impenetrable tires charging straight toward a checkpoint. If you could not shoot out the tires or the driver, stopping it with bullets would be no easy task. And what if the entire thing was covered with thick bulletproof armor?

These things could crush the enemy with their speed and weight and they could also act as a shield to protect their user from gunfire. This special equipment was the best of both worlds.

“Your product wasn’t a new propulsion device. It was a much more important core component.”

“That is correct.”

“What we saw out there was no more than an optional feature added for balancing purposes. It was not the main point.”

“Exactly. Which is why I must kill you for revealing our precious Parasite Plan. Although after coming this far, I would still silence you even if you were completely off base.”

Either Dora felt no need to carry a gun herself or she was not accustomed to using her own “products”. He had no definite proof, but Quenser decided not to be optimistic. No matter how absurd it might look, this woman had found a way to survive on the front line. And she did so without joining a world power or using the clean war system. That was a shocking thing for someone who was protected by the system.

“That explains why the Capitalist Corporations couldn’t ignore you. And why they immediately sent out the Over Cavitation to protect a foreign criminal group.”

“Oh, is that what you call her? The Second Generation Antoinette is already ours. The parasite process is complete. It now works for us more than the Capitalist Corporations. Nh, hh.”

She punctuated her sentence with an odd breath because she had removed a flower petal from the small bottle and placed it in her mouth.

That said, if she was following them around, there was a way to fight back. He could not change the plan on the fly with the remote option removed, but if he set the timer to 30 seconds or a minute and placed the explosive on the metal wall or a corner bordering the floor, he could lure Dora into the blast range.

(And those wings are flying cars. She can have them charge toward a destination point, but they shouldn’t be able to remove any garbage located around the corner. That’s the hardest part of designing a cleaning robot!)

They no longer had the handmade shield.

Simply circling around the curved metal wall was not enough. At the moment of detonation, Quenser tightly held Hina’s warm body and curled up.

A deafening boom filled the space and a faint sweet aroma scattered around.

This one had not been knocked back. It would have exploded at her feet.

However…

“So did you really think you could kill me with that?”

(It definitely went off! Wait, did she do what I think she did!?)

“My shields are much more precise. Do you want to try a chemical round next? Maybe some napalm or white phosphorous? These multirotor ‘flying cars’ are giant fans powerful enough to keep a 1-ton mass afloat at all times. Did you honestly think flesh-and-blood soldiers stood any chance against their control of the air currents and air pressure?”

That powerful wind pushed up a literal ton of metal.

They could divert the current of poison gas or a flamethrower. It was possible even a long-range sniper rifle would be useless against her.

Either the thick shields would deflect it or the air power would divert it. Either way, her defenses were impregnable.

(What do I do?)

There was no time.

She was not going to wait around for him to think.

(Normal explosions don’t work. I can’t even touch her without doing something about those wings first! But how is she controlling them with this jamming in effect!?)

Due to the explosion, they had circled a good bit around the cylindrical hyperbaric oxygen chamber. When viewed as the face of a clock, Quenser and Hina were at 4 o’clock, Dora was at 9 o’clock, and the exit was at 12 o’clock. Hina tugged on his uniform again, but this was not really their chance to escape. Dora was trying to end this inside the large room. That meant 12 o’clock was their time limit. It was a giant hornet’s nest. If they thoughtlessly arrived there, she would immediately send both red wings their way. She would have them circle around on either side at more than 100km/h. They would be trapped between the two weapons with no escape.

(All signals are being jammed. IR would be easily blocked by fire. Ultrasound would be affected by the strong winds. Are they just fully autonomous using an offline program? No, that would put her life at risk. If they malfunctioned like a shoplifting sensor, she’d be screwed, so she wouldn’t rely on that. There must be some kind of wireless interface that lets her make direct adjustments!!)

He would only be able to make one or two more moves.

There was little time left until the flying armored cars made their final charge, but he could not afford to make any mistakes.

“The Parasite Plan? You mean your product was the Pilot Elite, don’t you!?”

“The Antoinette was an excellent Second Generation, but it seems her Elite came down with an endemic disease. It would have taken a while for them to finally die, but it was not difficult for us to ‘fine-tune’ a new one.”

That had to be a lie.

It could not have been that easy, but Dora made it sound like nothing.

“That said, Objects are generally only compatible with the one pilot. It is not easy for two Elites to pilot the same Object at the same level. So the Parasite Plan needed to alter the structure of the Object for the new Elite while keeping the basic frame the same. So we had to create the world’s best Object for her specifically.”

Even the best Object was worthless without someone to pilot it. A weapon that only absorbed maintenance expenses would only create greater and greater losses as it sat in storage. It would have to be scrapped.

But the arms dealer had said they could breathe new life into it.

For the Capitalist Corporations, it must have felt like selling their soul to the devil.

“This hyperbaric oxygen chamber might look like an execution device, but it was actually used to make adjustments to the Pilot Elite, wasn’t it?”

“It apparently feels like a comfortable hammock to her. But, well, it has made her very concerned about weather data. She apparently gets headaches when the pressure changes.”

Quenser doubted the outside pressure could actually affect someone inside an Object cockpit, so it was probably a psychological thing. What had happened to the original Elite who fell ill? Had they had headaches, or had they requested the meteorological data for some other reason? There was no way to know now.

Quenser came to a stop.

Hina kept tugging on the side of his hip and turning toward the exit with a sweet scent coming from her black hair, but they could not fall back any further than this.

They had arrived at the oxygen chamber’s submarine-like door and console.

(Think.)

Quenser fought with his pounding heart.

(She has those armored flying cars, she’s naked and doesn’t have a gun, and those things always stay by her side to protect her. The jamming isn’t causing her any trouble and they can manipulate the air. There has to be something there. There has to be a logical solution!!)

“Que’ser…”

While clinging to his hip, Hina looked up at him and spoke as if her heart could not bear the pressure.

And he looked down at her.

He saw the tears welling up in her eyes, her healthy chocolate-colored skin, her glossy black hair, and the hibiscus decoration on her head.

(Could it be?)

It was like a piece of trick art.

He had not noticed it at all before, but once it occurred to him and he observed his surroundings again, something was definitely off. It made no sense for that to be here. And if that meant Dora must have snuck it in for her own purposes.

He had to bet on this.

He gripped some of the clay-like Hand Axe plastic explosive.

“Dora!!”

“Come to think of it, I never got your name.”

A single hit would mean instant death.

Neither one knew the other’s real name, but they both prepared their deadly weapons as the final clash began.