Editing HEAVY OBJECT:Volume8 Chapter 3 (section)

===Part 15===

The rubber boat raced across the orange sea.

“This is strange. The boat won’t go straight. It’s like we’re in thick mud.”

“That’s due to the Tatami Shield. It uses natural macromolecules to increase the seawater’s viscosity.”

“Well, damn. This isn’t going to burn out the motor, is it?”

They were approaching the Megalodiver.

The Summer Vacation was in the same area of the ocean. The back of the ship had been badly damaged, but it had yet to sink and they seemed to be fine for the moment.

The Baby Magnum was also there.

The princess’s Object stood in the Megalodiver’s way and the two were caught in an intense battle.

Quenser and Heivia could not relax because a stray shot could easily sink the Summer Vacation.

Also…

“Hey, what’s that? It didn’t do that before!!”

“This is how final bosses work in the Island Nation,” groaned Heivia while facing the threat before them. “How many forms does it have left, dammit!?”

The Megalodiver had jumped.

Its tremendous propulsion had come from firing ultra-high pressure water jets. It had fired massive amounts of seawater from the giant nozzles on its back like angel wings, but it would now occasionally fly over one hundred meters upwards by firing the jets straight down.

Its great weight caused it to sink down into the ocean upon landing and it would soon surge back up and break through the surface once more. It also moved in all directions at high speed and shook up and down. It was obvious even at a distance that it was toying with the princess who was fighting nearby to protect the Summer Vacation. Its repeated unpredictable actions seemed to make it difficult to target.

“I’ve heard of toys that point water jets straight down to let a person fly around, so this must be a larger scale version of that.”

This was enough output to instantly raise a 200 thousand ton mass. If a flesh-and-blood human approached it, they might be turned to mincemeat. Rather than being torn apart, they would be crushed. It was certainly not a good way to die.

“We know how it’s moving, but how is it keeping up with the princess!? This tuning fork torpedo should be sealing off its eyes and ears!!”

“Were we completely wrong? No, that can’t be. If it was perfectly fine, it wouldn’t overlook human-sized targets like us. It would have picked up on our heartbeats and the motorboat’s propeller after approaching this far. We are interfering with it.”

“Then how is it still fighting!?”

“Its analysis can vaguely make out the loud noises caused by something as large as the Baby Magnum or Summer Vacation. It can pick up on their general location.” Quenser gulped as he answered. “From there, it’s an issue of the Pilot Elite’s skill. She’s managing to read the princess’s movement patterns based on just that vague data. Our princess doesn’t dodge the laser beams and railguns after seeing them fired either. She detects the subtle sounds and movements of the targeting lenses and cannons to predict when they will be fired. This Elite is doing the same with the overall movements and locations of the Baby Magnum.”

“Hey, wait a second. You mean the Megalodiver is a samurai girl who can fight like normal even while blindfolded!?”

“Technically, it’s not quite like being blindfolded. It’s more like fencing while wearing the thick glasses of the shy library committee girl with braids.”

“It’s the same either way! We’ve been doing everything we could and it’s for nothing!”

The princess’s main cannons were a threat even to the Megalodiver, but she could not necessarily protect the Summer Vacation forever.

That was when a drop of water landed on Quenser’s cheek.

He initially assumed it came from the spray being sent into the air by the Megalodiver shooting seawater out with tremendous force as it fought at high speed, but it was not.

All of a sudden, buckets of rain poured down despite only some thin clouds being visible in the orange-dyed sky.

“Shit!! What now!?”

“Is this just a sudden rain shower? No…”

The rain was pouring down at a rate of at least fifty millimeters an hour and that rain gradually changed the situation.

Simply put, a deviation appeared in the princess’s targeting.

“Infrared, ultraviolet, and radar. All the media she uses for targeting are weak to rain. What is this? It’s like the weather itself is taking the Megalodiver’s side.”

“The weather…is taking its side? Wait a minute! You mean-…!?”

A staticky voice from the radio cut Heivia off.

It was Frolaytia.

“It seems the organization named Ichirei Shikon is using Amaterasu. The higher ups of the military apparently were just notified that a global weather control weapon was about to be tested and proven effective. If this demonstration succeeds and the higher ups lose their nerve, it’ll be checkmate! An age will begin where everyone must bow down to a rogue state. Do whatever you can to support the princess!!”

“We are!! Dammit… Has Ichirei Shikon finally started doing god’s job for him!?”

The rain would produce a lot of noise which should have been detrimental to the Megalodiver’s acoustic search, but it seemed to have prioritized interfering with its opponent more than speeding its own recovery. From beginning to end, it was thinking of nothing but winning.

“We can’t do anything now! We sealed off the tuning fork torpedoes and the entire area is filled with noise due to the rain it caused, but it’s still accurately attacking the princess. I can’t think of anything that would work!!”

“What we did to the tuning fork torpedoes wasn’t completely useless. It’s stopped using the Hiding Clothes of Water which was the biggest problem. It can’t use that defense system because it required extreme precision. That’s why its movements have grown broader,” said Quenser. “Also, it may be sticking with the large targets such as warships or Objects, but it’s ignoring small human-sized targets like us. And we know its weakness: the Bamboo Pipe water intake on the bottom. Let’s attack that weakness that even we can get at.”

“If it’ll save Karen and the others, anything’s fine. What exactly do we have to do?”

“It’s simple. The Bamboo Pipe is a monstrous pump that takes in several tons of water every second. It extends…I think it was five meters into the ocean. If we place something in the water there, it’ll suck it up like a giant vacuum cleaner.”

“I don’t know how wide the Bamboo Pipe is, but we’ll need a pretty big cap.”

“We just need a plastic sheet or a blanket or something.”

“Then let’s ask the maids. They’re on a cruise ship. It must have over 3500 beds, so we can have them throw us all the sheets and blankets they’ve got.”

“Hey!” called Heivia while waving his arms toward the Summer Vacation.

Unfortunately, a blast from the two Objects reached them at that moment.

The metal shell of the princess’s coilgun crashed into the ocean surface and the huge wave almost flipped over the rubber boat. Quenser somehow managed to hold on to the edge of the boat, but Heivia had both hands in the air and he fell right out.

“Heivia!?”



Meanwhile, a communication reached the Summer Vacation’s bridge.

“We have detected what appears to be Master Heivia Winchell. He is two hundred meters to port.”

“Honestly. What are we even risking our lives for if he is going to do this?”

The maid next to Karen avoided commenting on the words that spilled from Karen’s mouth.

Karen’s expression had told her nothing good would come from speaking now.

Instead, she silently held out a pair of binoculars.

(Ahh, ahh. Really now, Master Heivia.)

Karen approached the port window as instructed and checked outside using the binoculars.

To be blunt, she was feeling a powerful twinge in her heart. It was to the point that she was on the verge of seeing everything with high halation and with colorful flowers blooming in the background.

(This is inefficient, illogical, and goes against all reason, but you are so dear to us specifically because you were able to make this sort of foolishly honest decision while in the noble society.)

But when she saw their Master Heivia Winchell…

“Ah.”

Some sort of monster seemed to grow from the sticky ocean surface.

It was a sea monster with so much thick and sticky liquid covering its body that its features and even number of fingers could not be seen.

When Karen saw that monster released into the world with its arms spread, she recalled an old horror movie that had very nearly traumatized her as a child.

The girly filter was instantly blown away from her vision.

In fact, the mental whiplash made the shock even greater.

“Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!! Slime monsterrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!”



Quenser heard heavy machine guns firing and he shouted into his radio as he shrank back from the pillars of water bursting into the air.

“Cease fire! I repeat, cease fire!! Stop the machine gun turrets!! What the hell are you doing!? That isn’t the slave race from the Cthulhu mythos!!”

“Bubble bubble bubble…”

Heivia had come to the surface to breathe, but his entire body had been thoroughly coated by the seawater that’s viscosity had been increased by macromolecules. Giant bubbles had formed around his mouth and nose and he looked like some sort of creepy lotion monster. Of course, Quenser could understand why a proper woman would be as repulsed as by a roach.

“Then what is that!?” replied Karen. “It’s creepy!! It must be from an unexplored jungle or deep below Antarctica!!”

“Do you like unwittingly shooting people you know just because they have a mask on!? That’s Heivia! I’ll admit it’s really creepy, though!!”

The shooting finally stopped.

Fortunately, the Summer Vacation’s maids had panicked. If they had been firing accurately, Heivia’s grotesqueness factor would have risen by about 200%. Quenser had to wonder if these were the same maids who had made such a moving speech just ten minutes earlier.

“You’re kidding… Ugh. That’s Master Heivia?”

“You may have whitewashed your memories because you don’t see him very much, but isn’t he always like that?” asked Quenser. “I’ve never particularly liked looking at him.”

“Excuse me, but could you stop acting like you know more about Master Heivia than us? I may not look it, but I was a prodigy who was left with one of the Winchell family’s manors at the age of ten and I have been with Master Heivia since he needed a baby carriage.”

“I’ve completely lost track of what kind of character you’re supposed to be.”

As he spoke into the radio, Quenser reached out of the rubber boat and helped Heivia in.

The boy’s hand was warm and slimy, so he briefly considered asking them to resume firing. He hoped the rain would quickly wash it all away.

“Anyway, we want to borrow some equipment. Give us all the bed sheets you have. And do you have any scuba gear, even if it’s just for leisure use? We need something to move around underwater!”

“What for?”

“To quote Heivia: ‘A tear-jerking story isn’t my style. I’ll destroy all of this and have a good laugh afterwards.’ The two of us will handle this somehow, so hurry!!”

The maids did not hold out any longer.

A few dozen appeared on the armed cruise ship’s side deck and began throwing the needed equipment into the ocean. The bed sheets floated down like giant confetti.

“Heivia, it’s time. Get the boat moving.”

“Ugh…cough cough! Was it just me or did I hear some horrible comments while I was legitimately drowning?”

“You must have imagined it.”

Heivia forced the rubber boat along the seawater that was as thick as mud. The large raindrops hitting their cheeks were painful and their speed dropped considerably. As Heivia had feared, the motor was beginning to burn out after using it for so long.

The boat raced on through the orange glittering rain shower.

Quenser reached out from the edge of the boat and toward the fallen equipment.

He grabbed several dozen soaking wet sheets and two scuba oxygen tanks. He had asked for them all, but it was impossible to collect the hundreds of bed sheets scattered over a wide area.

“Let’s go, Heivia. We need to get directly below the Megalodiver and plug the Bamboo Pipe water intake with the sheets.”

“I have to go back in there!? You haven’t experienced that true hell yet!!”

They both put on oxygen tanks and put the mouthpiece in.

“The Object is fighting on the surface, but we can’t relax just because we dive down,” said Quenser quickly in the rain. “The Bamboo Pipe sucks up seawater more than a drain and the Megalodiver sinks into the ocean after jumping. If we get caught in that, it’s all over.”

“But we can’t leave this to anyone else. A proper master has to rescue his maids when they’re in trouble, dammit!”

Quenser and Heivia jumped into the orange dyed sea.

Even the splash sounded oddly thick.

(What is this? It’s disgustingly warm!)

As the unpleasant sensation crawled across the tips of his fingers and toes, Quenser continued deeper and deeper.

After passing a certain line, the surrounding seawater grew smoother and he could no longer hear the rain.

They could not speak over the radio while underwater, so they communicated using vague gestures and began swimming in a certain direction.

(The Megalodiver is…over there.)

The sunlight was reflected to the point that he could not tell the situation on the surface just by looking up. Everything was filled with orange light.

However, he immediately located the Megalodiver.

A thick pipe was extending down from the surface and moving at high speed. Also, it was constantly taking in massive amounts of water. He could see schools of small fish frantically trying to escape.

(What? Is it already sucking in fish?)

That pipe was directly connected to important systems such as the reactor cooling, propulsion, and oxygen supply. He doubted it would be designed to so easily take in unwanted materials.

Be that as it may, they had to do what they had come to do.

Swimming with balled up bed sheets was not easy, but they continued on toward the Megalodiver.

Quenser instructed Heivia with some gestures that he was unsure were getting through properly.

(If we get too close, we’ll be sucked in, too. We only have to leave the bed sheets on a route it’ll probably pass through. From there, it’ll take itself out.)

As he feared, the gestures did not seem to get through to the other boy.

Heivia tried to continue onwards, so Quenser made a show of spreading out the bed sheets and letting them go.

The balled up bed sheets expanded all at once.

He ignored Heivia’s surprised look and swam away. Heivia seemed to finally catch on because he let go of his own bed sheets and did as Quenser had done.

Quenser did not know what a safe distance was, so he arbitrarily fell back about 150 meters and observed from there.

Before long, the time arrived.

(That’s the Megalodiver. The Bamboo Pipe is sucking up the bed sheets!!)

It looked like they were being pulled up by a magnet.

The group of spread-out sheets moved unnaturally as they were sucked up toward the end of the Bamboo Pipe. The several dozen cloths covered up the end of the pipe and Quenser was reminded of a toy he had made as a child. He had made a toy rapier by attaching layer after layer of paper scraps covered in paste. Even without a clear core, it had been quite solid. Something similar was now happening on that water intake.

They had done it.

It was over.

They had torn out the Object’s Achilles’ heel. The water was needed for the reactor cooling, the water jet propulsion, and the electrolysis oxygen supply, so they had forcibly shut down those crucial systems.

Or so it should have been.

(…?)

The Megalodiver did not stop.

The Bamboo Pipe sticking down continued to move with tremendous speed. That meant the giant mass on the surface was still moving about as it fought.

Something white colored his vision.

It was a group of bed sheets. Just those sheets were skillfully removed from the water intake that had supposedly been taking in several tons of water every second.

(What? Did it stop sucking in the water for a second when it detected something there? Is the system that well-made!? No, wait. Is that…?)

Something floated in the ocean along with the many sheets.

It looked like a large yet thin disk.

Heivia tapped on Quenser’s shoulder and pointed straight up.

They could not talk here, so he was suggesting surfacing for a strategy meeting.

Quenser did so, but he had forgotten about the sticky macromolecule zone two meters from the surface.

“Bhbfh!? Bgbgh bkh!!”

“Cough cough!! Wah ha ha ha ha ha! Welcome, Quenser, to the monster zone where you lose all dignity as a human being!! Ew, it got in my nose!”

They could not waste time, so the two creepy lotion monsters exchanged their opinions amid the orange downpour.

“It looks like the bed sheet plan didn’t work. It sucked them in, but they immediately detached!”

“There was a weird disk in there with them and it was just as thick as the Bamboo Pipe.”

The intense battle between the Baby Magnum and the Megalodiver continued a short distance away. Angel wing-like water fired from the nozzles on the Megalodiver’s back as it freely moved around and it was clearly slowly pressing in toward the Baby Magnum.

It looked like the princess was the inferior of the two.

That showed immense skill given that most of the Megalodiver’s sensors were sealed off. Most importantly, there was no deviation in its movements despite the continuous irregular situations. That was the result of a powerful will backed by real skill. However, Quenser knew the princess would be upset if he said that aloud.

“That disk was a filter.”

“What?”

“It’s a filter to keep fish and other things from getting in. It might be the same as with a water purifier. At any rate, the filter is probably a few centimeters or a few millimeters thick and the Bamboo Pipe is actually just a bunch of them extending down.”

“Wait, wait. Are you serious?”

“The outermost filter stops unwanted materials form getting in. Once it reaches its limit, the old filter is abandoned along with whatever is clogging it up. That’s how it’s made.”

“That means we can’t plug up the Bamboo Pipe no matter how much we try! It’s just like a roll of cookie dough with an image running through the entire thing. No matter how much we attack, the very end will be cut away and a new filter will show itself!”

“…”

Quenser thought as he floated in the orange ocean with the rain pouring down on him.

As he did, a voice he had completely forgotten about came from his radio.

“U-u-um! This is Mariage Nightcap!!”

“Huh? Where are you?”

“On the Summer Vacation! I was onboard when it seems everyone started on an emotional suicide attack, but I have no connection to the Winchell family!!”

That was quite a tragedy.

Quenser knew he would not be happy if someone told him to die for that filthy boy.

“Anyway, I really don’t want to die and I’ll do anything to make sure I don’t!!”

“Thanks for the world’s lamest kind of determination. You really are a slut. So what do you need?”

“Well, I thought you could use this…”

“…?”

At first, Quenser looked puzzled at the term he heard over the radio, but his expression lit up when he realized what she meant.

“Amazing!! There is a possibility there. I’m so glad I rescued you from prison!!”

“Heh…eh heh heh. We still have to figure out how to solidify it, though.”

“We can handle that.”

“P-please do something about this. If this doesn’t work, I’m going to surrender to the other side.”

“You really will switch sides whenever it suits you, won’t you? Do you want me to send you back to prison?” After a pause, Quenser brought the radio back to his mouth. “Summer Vacation, can you hear me? We would like some additional materials. We only have soap-like rations, so we can’t rely on them. Your ship is our only option, so will you help us?”

“Hey, Quenser. What are you trying to do?”

“It’s actually Mariage’s idea. The infinite filter prevents anything but smooth seawater from entering the Megalodiver. No, it might even filter out some of the salt content.”

“Get to the point!”

“If it isn’t something solid, it can get through.” He wiped the thick seawater from his face. “A normal, smooth liquid will slip right through the filter, so we can perform a time-delay attack if we have a substance that will solidify once it enters the Megalodiver. That way, our attack can ignore the filter.”

“Where are we supposed to find that convenient glue-like substance? And how long does the water stay inside the Object after being sucked in?”

“The concept is simple, but you’re right. I want to know exactly how long it takes from the water being sucked in to it being sprayed from the water jets. Summer Vacation!”

“What do you need prepared?” asked Karen.

“A few things. First, can you still use the ship’s guns?”

“Seventy percent of our armaments are still functioning. We can fire the main guns without delay.”

“Load them with fluorescent paint rounds and fire near the Megalodiver. Those are the rounds used when recording a reference point for the guns. Can you do that?”

“They can be automatically loaded, but it will take two minutes before we can fire.”

Heivia grabbed Quenser’s radio and cut in.

“Do it in one. That’s an order!!”

“Zukyun☆”

“What kind of onomatopoeia was that!? If you’re gonna speak, use actual words!!”

“W-well, as a maid, I have a bit of a nosebleed, so-… That is to say, we will force them in manually and finish within thirty seconds.”

Heivia handed back the radio and the guns fired as announced.

The orange of dawn surrounding the Megalodiver was transformed into a disturbingly bright green and the Object took in that water.

“Keep count, Heivia.”

“48, 49…now! It took 50 seconds from being sucked in!!”

“Now we know. We need a liquid that solidifies in 25 to 50 seconds.”

“What kind of liquid is that? Instant glue would be too fast and normal glue would be too slow!”

“We have something a lot closer by.” Quenser brought the radio to his mouth amid the downpour. “Summer Vacation, we need all the milk you have. How much is that?”

“Milk?” Heivia initially looked confused. “Oh, I get it. It uses the cold seawater to cool its scorching reactor. The huge temperature difference could create something like the film on top of hot milk.”

“We have about a month’s worth. We only just resupplied, so it is quite a lot.”

“Bring it all out. Put it in a case and drop it down! And one other thing!!”

After he explained, Karen sounded doubtful.

“Are you sure?”

“Please. Mariage’s idea alone isn’t enough!”

Travelling along the sticky ocean surface would be a waste of time, so Quenser and Heivia put their scuba mouthpieces back in and dove down to return to the Summer Vacation.

When the two monsters burst from the ocean surface, Karen’s scream and heavy machinegun fire filled the air once more.

After resolving the misunderstanding, the two boys started collecting the milk tanks that had been lowered down.

However, the tanks were not attached to life jackets or floats. After all, they weighed three to four tons. Having learned from the mistake that had led to the boys being unable to gather all the bed sheets, Karen and the maids used a wire to lower a life boat filled with milk tanks.

It was surreal seeing a boat packed full of the thick metal tanks seen on farms.

“I have the rope for the life boat. Heivia, where should I attach it?”

“Give it here. By the way, will this be okay? The motor was already screaming at moving through this thick goop, so can we really tow all this?”

After attaching the rubber boat and life boat with a thick rope, Quenser and Heivia climbed aboard the rubber boat. All that remained was using its motor to forcibly pull the other along.

“Let’s go, Quenser.”

“Sure.”

The motor let out an even louder scream than before. Not only was the ocean so thick, but the weight had been increased. They had no idea when it would start spewing smoke and it was possible they could not rely on it to bring them back.

What they had seen underwater was nothing compared to the commotion on the surface due to the two Objects moving about at maddening speeds. They would be smashed to pieces if one of the Objects mistakenly struck them. Those 200 thousand ton masses were moving at 500 kph, so it would go far beyond a head-on collision with a train.

“This isn’t good. We can’t get close!”

“We don’t have to get too close. If we read the current and pour it in there, it’ll be taken to the Megalodiver on its own.”

“You aren’t suggesting we open up all the lids and pour it in one by one, are you? How many of these things do you think there are!?”

“Then cut the wire connecting the boats, Heivia. I’ll blow it up with this.”

Quenser stabbed an electric fuse into a plastic explosive and tossed it into the center of the life boat they were towing.

With nothing controlling it, the life boat floated helpless on the ocean current.

However, it turned out they did not even need to use the bomb.

The Megalodiver cut in at tremendous speed and plowed through the boat and the countless milk containers loaded on it.

The entire area was filled with a thick milky-white.

“That’s quite the milk bath. I think this counts as pollution. Won’t this place smell like a rotten rag in a week?”

“Oh, damn. Blowing up the boat with the bomb would’ve been better. And the entire planet’s environment will fall apart if Ichirei Shikon’s plan succeeds, so this is the better alternative.”

They waited a while after the life boat filled with milk was smashed to pieces.

Finally, something happened.

“The color’s changed,” observed Heivia.

He was focusing on the multiple nozzles on the back of the Megalodiver that formed the angel wings.

“The water jet is turning white!”

“That means it’s taken in the milk.”

“But this isn’t enough, right? If it just ejects it, we’ve failed! It has to turn into the film on hot milk and clog up the pipes!!”

“Don’t panic. We have more than one chance. The seawater it shoots out will be sucked back in and reused. We can afford some level of failure.”

Even so, the Megalodiver showed no sign of stopping.

“The hot milk film doesn’t form when the milk is heated,” groaned Heivia. “It’s when it cools down again. The pipes used to cool the reactor may be hot, but that isn’t enough! It doesn’t matter how long we wait around!!”

“No.” Quenser rejected his horrible friend’s lament with a single word. “We still have a chance.”

“How can you be so calm!? …Wait. What have you been doing for a while now?”

“I said we were using milk, but I never said anything about using the film that forms on hot milk.”

Quenser was working on something.

A cooler sat on one end of the rubber boat. After opening it and checking inside, he inflated the life jackets stored in the life boat and attached them around the cooler.

Heivia caught a glimpse of the contents just before Quenser closed the cooler. He had seen some fresh yellow items.

“I made an additional order from Karen,” said Quenser as he worked.

“What are those? No…wait…”

Heivia frowned as Quenser pulled a plastic explosive from his backpack, stabbed in a radio-controlled electric fuse, and attached it to the side of the milk tank packed full of yellow balls.

At that point, he finally caught on.

“Wait, wait, wait! Are you solidifying the milk with lemons!?”

Quenser tossed the cooler and life jackets into the ocean and grabbed his radio with his sticky and slippery hand.

“There’s more than one way to solidify milk and you can accomplish it with items you can find anywhere. Those maids seemed to know a lot about tea, so I knew they would have some.”

“Come to think of it, that’s used to make cottage cheese.”

“Milk can be thickened by mixing in lemon juice. This method is faster and more certain because it doesn’t need heating or cooling.”

The cooler slowly moved away.

It could not pursue the Object moving across the ocean at tremendous speeds, so they had to wait for the enemy to approach it.

That time soon arrived.

The Megalodiver jumped straight up to avoid the princess’s coilgun and it landed on the ocean surface as if crushing a landmine.

Strength gathered in Quenser’s thumb as if he were hitting the switch for some giant system.

“This will slip past its filter and the milk will solidify inside the Object. It can’t fail.”

As they watched, the Megalodiver’s movements ground to a halt.

A small explosion occurred right next to it and the scattered lemon juice was directly swallowed up by the water intake without being diluted in the massive amount of seawater.

The chemical reaction occurred quickly.

The pectin in the lemons combined with the milk to form a gelatinous substance.

The water jet propulsion device that shot out seawater like giant angel wings came to a stop, but that was only the tip of the iceberg. Inside the cooling pipes located next to the reactor, the solidified milk was burned by the immense heat. The scorched milk stuck to the pipes despite the great flow of water and the clog grew larger and larger. It formed a fatal blockage much like cholesterol clogging up a human’s artery.

The JPlevelMHD reactor was the Object’s “heart”. Without the necessary cooling, it ran out of control.

Quenser set his radio to an open frequency and spoke loudly to anyone who could hear.

“Get down and close your eyes!! The reactor is about to explode!!”

It took less than ten seconds.

A deafening blast and a blinding flash of light filled the orange dyed ocean.

The rubber boat was violently flipped over and Quenser and Heivia were once more turned into slimy monsters.

“Bghh!!”

[[Image:HO_v08_393.jpg|thumb]]

“Pkhh!!”

Everyone there wanted an explanation and they looked toward the true monster through binoculars or ultra-long range cameras.

Quenser was afraid their ugly state would give them a weird nickname. Something like the UMA boys.

The two of them waited for the rescue helicopter while grabbing onto the edge of the capsized boat so as not to drown.

The intense rain shower ended unnaturally quickly as if a tap had been turned off. It happened precisely when the Megalodiver exploded.

Heivia then asked a sudden question.

“Hey, Quenser. Why did you use an open frequency for that final transmission?”

“I could’ve used a military frequency, but I didn’t know the situation on the Summer Vacation. It would’ve reached the bridge, but I wasn’t sure it would reach the other maids working on the deck. That’s why I used an open one.”

“I see.” Heivia continued while holding onto the boat with his sticky and slippery hands. “What if that gave the enemy Pilot Elite a chance to escape?”

“We can just capture her. Plus, we need someone to ask about Ichirei Shikon.”

“There you go again. You always act so benevolent when the Elite is a girl.”

“The body doubles I saw up close weren’t very good looking, so I’m hoping the real one is different.”

“She’s not a girl with spiral glasses, so it won’t be that convenient. I bet you 100 euros she’s just as ugly.”

“You’re on. I’ve got 100 on her being a beauty.”

They were cut off by the arrival of a large transport helicopter.

That was proof that the threat of anti-air lasers was gone.

In other words, the battle was over.

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