Editing HEAVY OBJECT:Volume8 Chapter 3 (section)

===Part 3===

The eyepatch maid named Karen I Winchell led Quenser and the others through the armed cruise ship named the Summer Vacation. Bright lights so thoroughly swept away the darkness and shadows that it was easy to forget it was the middle of the night.

Seeing the inside showed Quenser this truly was a luxury cruise ship. It was a stark contrast to the Scarlet Princess which had been primarily a military vessel and thus had been cramped and uncomfortable inside.

“Now I’m worried about being so wet,” he groaned.

The corridor was carpeted, so his wet footprints bothered him. If he was later asked to pay for any damage, he doubted a commoner could ever clear the debt.

He was also a bit worried about his crotch, but he figured he was unlikely to catch the kind of tropical rainforest disease that made the contents of his pants grow all wet and swollen.

“We have no clothing for guests as the ship was only meant to carry maids,” explained Karen apologetically. “We only have bathrobes and maid uniforms.”

“Heh. Sorry, young lady, but I’ve already sworn to forever seal away the legendary Quensette.”

“Eh!? You’ve worn one before!?”

Mariage’s hysterical question brought a distant look to his eyes.

“It was during a cultural festival back at my safe country school. Uniting the guys to all vote for a maid café was good and all, but the girls were so angry they employed a scorched earth tactic and made all the guys play baseball in maid uniforms.”

“Uheh…” groaned Mariage as she imagined that hellish scene.

For some reason, Karen held out her index fingers and thumbs to create two L-shapes and formed a rectangular picture frame from those. She used her one eye to point the finder of her heart toward Quenser’s face and then body.

“Hm. Now that you mention it, you have a cute face and a slender body, so you wouldn’t be bad. Heh. But even if we put you in a maid uniform, you wouldn’t have a partner! Putting our tree bug in that role just wouldn’t have the proper beauty!!”

“No…um…?”

A chill ran down Quenser’s spine and he decided to change the subject.

“A-anyway, I love seeing nothing but maid uniforms on the ship, but is that wise? Isn’t it dangerous if you fall overboard?”

“Do not worry. The uniforms are made for quick removal in case we fall overboard or our skirt is caught in a machine.”

“…”

Quenser was momentarily overcome by the wicked urge to push her into the ocean right that instant, but they were unfortunately walking down an internal corridor. He of course left it a secret that the idea of immediately removable maid uniforms filled him with an indescribable fuzzy feeling.

Their destination was one of several dance halls that took up multiple floors. The grand piano and snack table were pushed to by the wall and a simple blue sheet covered the entire floor. The sheet was covered with tidy lines of documents and burnt, misshapen pieces of metal.

The scene seemed somehow ominous and reminded Quenser of a line of body bags after a plane crash.

In truth, each of them may have been dyed with death.

“We gathered as much as we could in the fifteen minutes before the Object arrived. If that unit was in charge of supplies and maintenance as we suspect, these documents may help you learn how the Megalodiver works and where a weakness may lie.”

“That’ll really help.”

The look in Quenser’s eyes quickly changed.

Large machines, especially Objects, had a way of gathering his focus.

“So where was this unit hiding anyway?”

“On a rust-filled island here in the New Caledonia District. It’s used as a tanker graveyard and no one lives there. It’s about fifty kilometers from that prison.”

“Oh, so it’s a workshop where they dismantle old, rundown tankers? The point is to sell the parts as scrap metal, right?”

“They use crude acetylene burners, so there is no end to the accidental explosions. None of the locals except for those who work there ever get close and those workers have no reason to be there without a new tanker to work on. It seems like a decent place to hide.”

The eyepatch maid bowed and left the dance hall.

“Now then,” said Quenser as he cracked his neck. “Perhaps it would be wrong to call this a pile of treasure.”

“Stop licking your lips like that. Only slightly sexual girls should be doing that.”

But Quenser was not one to be stopped by that. The entire reason he had ducked through showers of bullets was to gain information on currently-active Objects. Not to mention that this Object was a second generation developed in secret by the Island Nation that was a legend in the field of Objects. If this was not enough to get him excited, he would be better off heading back to his safe country to stare at a blackboard.

“This is the heat-resistant reactive compound. Is this scorched thing the transparent reflector for a laser beam? And these documents here…”

“Hey, Quenser! Explain your plan. What am I supposed to focus on here!?”

“Everything!! For the moment, everything!! A-amazing. Is this a layout overview for the braces that distribute its weight!? B-back in a safe country, you’d never see this without sneaking into a national research lab!! And this is…pant pant!!”

“You pervert! I’m gonna call the Black Uniforms on you!!”

Mariage whimpered and then spoke up to focus the two idiots who were veering way off track.

“U-um… Aren’t we in a lot of trouble if we can’t find a way to sink the Megalodiver? Shouldn’t we look through the Tatami Shield defense system first as it’s the greatest threat?”

“Oh, that’s right!! Anyway, who even is this huge-breasted glasses girl? I think her wet clothes are a little see-through.”

“That’s Mariage Nightcap, the girl who was thrown in a cell. However, she’s the NTR type, so letting your guard down won’t end well. The more you push, the easier she ends up somewhere else. In other words, she’s easy to make yours, but it’ll end up hurting you later.”

“Sounds exciting to me!!”

Mariage jumped like a small animal and began keeping her distance from Heivia.

Karen I Winchell happened to return to the dance hall just as the noble boy started breathing heavily, so she performed an unrestrained middle kick on his side.

After the sound of a blanket being struck, he had been defeated.

“N-nfhhn!?”

“Yoooooooooooooooooooooooooooouuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu really are creepy. Even your sounds of pain creep me out.”

As he lay collapsed on the floor, Karen stared down at him like she was looking at the contents of a balled-up tissue. She carried a silver tray so smoothly it did not produce any clattering noises and she lined up a tea set and a few baked sweets on the snack table by the wall.

“Have you found any useful information?”

“Wait. I think this might be it. It’s titled ‘Weapons for Zero Water Pressure’. This is a list of equipment used when fighting on the surface, right? Wouldn’t the Tatami Shield fall under that classification?”

“But doesn’t the Tatami Shield simply fire normal cannons at the ocean surface to create pillars of water?”

“No naval Object has pulled off that tactic before, but this one is turning aside 100% of attacks. We should probably assume it has a unique targeting system, a special type of shell, or some other secret.”

“I see. Oh, I have Ceylon and Assam tea prepared. Will that be a problem? Milk and lemons are over here. If you would like apple peels, just ask.”

“This is fine, this is fine. I want to focus on these documents right now. But…what are these symbols? This is the language unique to the Island Nation, isn’t it? It doesn’t use the alphabet, so I don’t even know where to start!”

“Is this their ancient writing system?” asked Mariage. “I’ve heard you read it top to bottom and back and forth at the same time. I don’t know much about it either.”

“Please eat these muffins and crackers with a spread of your choice. If I may, I would recommend the anchovy and cottage cheese spread.”

“Just looking at the diagrams, it’s…what? Looks like it’s pumping something into the water, but it doesn’t look like a shell.”

As Quenser muttered to himself, he suddenly gasped and stopped moving.

He had completely forgotten about something, so he grabbed his radio with a trembling hand.

“F-Frolaytia!! I just realized something!!”

“What is it? Did you learn something about the Megalodiver!?”

“This ship has normal food instead of nothing but eraser-like military rations! But why!?”

“Sigh. This is a civilian ship with self-defense weaponry, so we are not bound by military regulations,” explained Karen. “To maintain a sense of what day it is, the workers eat fish on Mondays and veal on Fridays, but we are free to eat what we wish on any other day.”

“Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!”

Quenser shouted so loudly he thought he would shed tears of blood.

He was forced to eat flavorless erasers to maintain an even potential for all missions, so it truly felt like the ultimate luxury to have not just a meal fit for a noble but tea and snacks as well.

Meanwhile, Frolaytia sounded annoyed.

“Don’t forget that your paycheck comes from the people’s taxes. And don’t get carried away. You can maintain a sense of what day it is by making curry once a week and preparing all those ingredients adds an extra logistical burden. That isn’t going to fly with the military.”

“No fair! Don’t act like it’s that much of an issue when you always have your tobacco and mini-fridge with you!!”

Their inability to read the characters of the Island Nation’s unique language left them stuck, but Karen I Winchell spoke up.

“While preparing health foods for the Winchell family, I grew fond of the Island Nation’s cuisine and green tea, so I learned a bit of the language.”

“I doubt this is terminology found in a housewife’s cookbook.”

They had no other option, so Quenser handed Karen the classified document.

“I see, I see,” she said surprisingly cutely. “It seems these are natural macromolecules. After being heated to sixty or seventy degrees by the heat of the reactor, they are fired into the sea.”

“W-wait a minute. What the hell is a macromolecule?”

“Yoooooooooooooooooooooooooooouuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu are-…”

“Fine! I won’t say anything else!! Keep going!!”

Heivia had tears in his eyes, so Quenser kindly explained.

“Heivia. A natural macromolecule is what you also call starch. It’s taken from potatoes and other plants. Do you get it now?”

“What!? Then why not just say starch!? Why would you go out of your way to make it confusing? Oh, I get it. You’re obsessed with specs, aren’t you?”

Karen grabbed a ceramic pot of hot water and pressed the bottom against Heivia’s forehead. It was not a thermos, so the outside was hot too.

“Because that’s what it says on the paper!!”

“Gyabaaah!? That’s more or less a brand!!”

Incidentally, fifty degrees is apparently the limit for hot water in the reaction business, so do not try that at home.

“Dammit…dammit! What do you have against me!?”

“I have no particular hatred for you, but I cannot stand you in general.”

“Don’t say that so nonchalantly, you idiot! It pisses you off that I’m on the battlefield, doesn’t it? You hate that someone who’s getting along well with a member of the rival Vanderbilt family is trying to inherit the family, don’t you!?” he spat out. “But I don’t care what you want! It’s wrong to be influenced by hatred from centuries ago, especially when no one remembers why it started. I’m going to end that in my generation! I swear it! And I’m not going to ask you for help, so I don’t need your approval. I’ve decided to do this even if I have to do it alone!!”

“Sigh. You can get as hot-blooded as you like, but have you forgotten that ''I'' hold the even hotter water?”

“Gyawaaah!!!???”

Mariage ignored the comedy act and asked a question.

“Why do they put starch in the ocean before using the Tatami Shield? And if they heat it to sixty to seventy degrees…”

“That temperature makes starch sticky like paste, doesn’t it? Does that mean what I think it does?”

“Yes. I think they’re trying to make a substance that will thicken the water,” cut in Karen while ignoring Heivia who writhed in pain. “A shame they aren’t using it for cooking.”

“Pillars of water tall enough to completely cover the Object are enough of a shield, but does using starch to increase the viscosity of the seawater help it even further?”

“Something bothers me about this,” muttered Quenser.

Mariage seemed to be thinking the same thing.

“I get that it’s making the water all around it sticky, but the Megalodiver itself cools its reactor and gains propulsion by taking in seawater, right? But can it really suck up that sticky water?”

(Not only that, but it was using a water intake on top when we met it in the deep sea. How is it handling it on the surface? Does it have another intake on the bottom? Did it surface for a short term battle because it was afraid of sucking up sand from the bottom of the ocean? But if so, it doesn’t make sense for it to create impure seawater with the starch. Does it have some further system?)

He could not find an answer, but the mystery needing solving was growing clearer.

“Frolaytia.”

“If this is about food, it can wait. If you put in for leave, I’ll turn a blind eye to any fish you catch during that time.”

“It’s about the Tatami Shield. …Or the Hiding Clothes of Water? Is that the official name? Anyway, I have a few simple topics concerning the Megalodiver’s defense system, so please contact the electronic simulation division.”

“Give me more details.”

He did so and she fell silent for a moment afterwards.

“I will of course have the electronic simulation division work on this, but I want you gathering information at the same time.”

“Of course. We will search through all these documents and-…”

“Not like that,” cut in Frolaytia. “The Megalodiver’s emergency maintenance will be complete soon, so we don’t have time to search randomly through a pile of documents. The only other source of useful information would be the tanker graveyard they’re lurking inside.”

“You don’t mean…”

Quenser had a very bad feeling and Frolaytia’s answer was simple.

“You discovered this mystery, so it’s your responsibility to solve it.”

At that time, he did not know that he would be punched by all the soldiers of a landing team in ten minutes time.