Editing HEAVY OBJECT:Volume16 Chapter 2 (section)

===Part 4===

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Things could hardly be worse.

The girl wore a Hawaiian shirt and a tennis-style pleated skirt. She had a hibiscus flower decorating her semi-long black hair and a straw skirt accessory worn over her actual skirt. The overall outfit provided a tropical mood, but the tears in her eyes and metal ball chained to her ankle filled the air around her with a gloomy weight.

“Uuh…”

“Excuse me. I just want to take a look.”

Quenser crouched down to her eye level and reached toward her slender ankle while she remained sitting on the floor. He could just about see her underwear up her short skirt, but she held the skirt down with one hand while he touched her warm and slender ankle.

He was interested in the shackle.

Even this much was progress. She gave a shrill cry whenever Myonri or the others approached. The armed potatoes may have looked like a gang of villains to her. Given what had happened, that was not too surprising, but she seemed to view Quenser differently since he had hit and silenced Heivia before the boy reached her.

Quenser felt a little guilty when he realized it was a lot like the good cop, bad cop routine.

“It’s a lot lighter than it looks. It’s a capsule made of aircraft materials. Does it have a GPS transmitter inside?”

Speaking loudly or looking down at her from above seemed to scare the brown girl, so Myonri made sure to be careful when she spoke up.

“Is this what they use to monitor sex criminals? Why are they using that to track a young girl like this? …Wait, but aren’t those attached to the ankle with a belt? That way you can hide it in your pants leg and live a normal life.”

“They’ve intentionally designed this one to eliminate the wearer’s dignity. Is this what the Capitalist Corporations does with all its cash?”

But unlike a narrow wire, they could not cut through this with a knife and their guns and bombs were too powerful. They had plenty of special tools back at the maintenance base zone, but…

“Lady, do you mind if I take a look at this?”

“No…go ahead.”

Quenser borrowed the ID on the girl’s flat chest.

It had a sticker of a cartoonish man carrying a fishing pole with the sun in the background. It may have been some kind of local mascot.

“Hina Liqueurball? I’m not familiar with that last name.”

“If she isn’t from the four world powers, is she a local Hawaiian girl?”

“But this ID is for a researcher at Kilauea University with a student loan. Hm? That’s odd.”

She was 12 years old, but Quenser had seen plenty of students who skipped grades back in his safe country school. It sounded like something from movies or dramas, but it did actually happen. However, it was something else he found odd. Why did the ID need to specify that she had taken out a student loan? He could only guess that was a Capitalist Corporations thing. This showed how they viewed people who had no money and had to borrow money to get by. That would also be why she had to wear the humiliating shackle designed so she could not hide it.

The Capitalist Corporations had effective control over Hawaii.

That was an unofficial thing and it was not actually registered that way, but the Over Cavitation was already acting like it owned the place.

Quenser looked up toward heaven.

“I think I get it. Their major corporations and investors are recruiting talented people, trapping them here with student loans, and promising to pay off the loan if the students work for them. That’s what’s happening here. This lab is near the front line, so they man it with those indebted students.”

That must have been entirely normal here because brown-skinned Hina only tilted her head. Myonri felt a chill when she realized what they had nearly done.

“They’re all innocent students. I’m glad we didn’t carelessly shoot any of them. Good work, Quenser.”

“Please, please. That’s not nearly enough praise.”

By the way, after being hit in the temple by Quenser’s “good work”, Heivia remained collapsed in the hallway while convulsing a bit, but no one was paying any attention to him.

“Lady, were the people with scary guns friends of yours?”

“No, I don’t know them. They came from the army.”

Quenser had suspected as much, but the confirmation was still a relief.

Even if those snipers had opened fire first, they had still been burned alive in their ghillie suits. Sleep would have been hard to come by if it turned out those were civilians.

Those snipers had been professional soldiers. Since Hina had not been supplied with anything to protect herself, the Capitalist Corporations military must not have trusted her or the other indebted locals. Those locals had plenty of reason to hold a grudge, so the soldiers had been afraid to give them guns.

Quenser was thankful for that.

That gave them a convenient way to tell who they could kill and who they had to keep alive. If the civilians had been forced into some kind of combat training, the distinction would have been a lot harder to make.

“So are all the researchers like this?” wondered Quenser. “We need to evacuate them before blowing the place up.”

“Um, do you think they’ll actually listen to us at this point?” asked Myonri. “We did break into the place looking ready to kill everything that moved.”

“Here, take a look at this.”

“What?”

Quenser showed her the colored ball launcher he found alongside the axe in the emergency box on the wall. It used compressed carbon dioxide gas to fire those things found next to convenience store registers. It was shaped a lot like a single-shot grenade launcher.

“I’ll mess with its power output so it will knock people out. The rest of you create projectiles by stuffing socks or stockings full of rice or flour. Make them the same size as these colored balls. If you can’t find any grains, you can use the stuffing of a beanbag or pillow, but don’t use any kind of metal balls. Those will kill someone.”

“Um.”

“If they refuse to listen, just knock them out like Heivia over there and drag them outside. We don’t have much time. If we don’t do something, the Princess will lose to the Over Cavitation. Don’t aim for the face because you take an eye out. Also make sure they aren’t near anything they could hit their head on like a desk corner or a protrusion on the floor.”

“Wow, you definitely don’t put the ‘gentle’ in gentleman, do you?”

The potatoes could be a little too passionate about ditching work and getting sidetracked, but they could still get the job done once they had a clear goal in mind. Quenser started by making five of the modified launchers.

“Heivia, wake up. It’s work time.”

“Ugh, what happened?”

“A nightmarish superweapon showed up and we were facing certain doom, but my courageous actions saved us all. You can use this, so make sure to pay me back for my moving heroics.”

After Quenser made up a story and gave the other boy a launcher, they cleaned up the facility with Hina Liqueurball in tow.

“Squeeze.”

“Excuse me, lady.”

Quenser had a simple reason for grabbing Hina’s small head with one hand and having her press against the side of his hips: her Hawaiian shirt was pretty baggy, so when there was space between them, looking down at her would have given him a tunnel-like view of her undeveloped chest. He had needed to prevent that somehow.

The launchers were never put to use. It was over before they could even think about firing. As soon as the red laser pointer dot reached them, the chocolate-colored researchers (no, given Hina’s circumstances, they may have been indebted students as well) shrieked and put their hands up. Some of them were carrying a cat or a birdcage. They were generally harmless, so the potatoes felt bad doing this even though it was necessary.

They also spotted the occasional squid and eel mascot character that may have come from a local legend, but that was all. There were no cruel tricks like a grenade on the doorknob.

“Damn, there’s a lot of them!” said Heivia. “Does this lab have bus service? If not, we can’t bring them all back with us!!”

“Why would we bring them back with us, you idiot?” replied Quenser. “Once they’re outside, they can get back to their own homes. Unlike us, they aren’t being targeted by the Capitalist Corporations.”

“What about their GPS signals?” asked Myonri. “I’d prefer they weren’t advertising their location while they’re with us.”

“Lead is the all-time champion when it comes to blocking signals,” said Quenser. “This uses microwaves just like a cellphone, right? Then we can block it with a fine wire mesh like they use in microwave doors.”

A couple of gunshots rang out.

This was not from the nonlethal launcher Quenser had given them. Heivia clicked his tongue with a large military handgun in his other hand.

“Someone else stole a Hawaiian shirt from a locker to hide among the researchers. Check out the tattoo on his arm. He’s from White Harpoon, an elite naval PMC. But he was obviously a fake since he didn’t have the ball-and-chain on his ankle. That’s what you get for lying, buddy.”

“Hey, couldn’t you have used the launcher?” asked Quenser. “You just cratered all the good will we’d been gradually building up.”

“Was he the last one?” asked Myonri. “I found this high-quality thermal sensor in here. It’s meant to read the water temperature, but it interfaces with my gun’s multipurpose sight just fine and it isn’t showing any other heat signatures.”

“We can have them do a roll call. But if anyone is hiding their thermal signature behind a special shield, we know they’re not a civilian. And who cares if some professional soldiers were late to evacuate and get killed. Sounds win-win to me.”

“We’re never getting that good will back, are we?”

Quenser sounded exasperated while Hina tearfully clung to his hips like she was hugging a giant stuffed animal after having a nightmare. He could feel her somewhat high body temperature and a faint sweet aroma coming from her black hair tickled at his nose. The more the others scared her, the more she felt she could only rely on Potato #1.

During all this, they had set up the bomb on the boiler in the basement and Quenser contacted someone with his radio.

“Aloha. How you doing, Princess? It looks like you’re being carved up a fair bit, but it’s not at the level of a gore video yet, is it?”

“Hurry up. I feel like I’ve lost 2 kilos from the tension alone.”

“Ha ha ha. So you’re a kilo away from getting down to your original weight?”

A powerful blast stabbed into the ocean nowhere near the enemy.

“Hold on, don’t draw the enemy’s attention this way!!”

“I have not gained weight. I know how to manage my health.”

“I bet it’s all that coconut milk. Maybe you should rethink having a fridge in the cockpit. Anyway, we’ve secured the lab, so we can stop the transfer of weather and ocean data at any time. I’ll leave the detonation timing to you, so tell us when to trip up the Over Cavitation.”

Quenser gestured for the others to leave the lab.

“Start the countdown at 30 seconds,” said the Princess.

“Will do. If things change, feel free to cancel the countdown and start over. Don’t do anything dumb because you feel bound by the time you set.”

“Who do you think you’re talking to?”

“The person who’s losing and having her dress shredded. Okay, begin the countdown.”

Fortunately, they did not need to redo it.

It was the Baby Magnum vs. the Over Cavitation.

After walking outside the reinforced concrete wall and looking to the ocean, Quenser heard the end of the countdown.

“3, 2, 1.”

“Zero.”

An explosion burst up from the ground behind him and the prison-like research facility collapsed.