Editing HEAVY OBJECT:EX Chapter 7 (section)

===Part 8===

Urd slammed her hands against the cramped cockpit’s console, but that was not going to trigger a malfunction in the 50m machine. They had left the primary control with Skuld, but that did not explain this.

The controls were not responding at all.

No one had pressed the button and the Object should have been in perfect working order, but the emergency ejection countdown was the only thing on the screen. She tried a variety of methods and processes for stopping it, but none of it worked.

“Verdandi, how are things on your end?”

“Since you’re asking that, I take it you’re faced with an inexplicable ejection too!!”

There was bitterness in her voice.

There was only one possibility Urd could think of.

The Legitimacy Kingdom had infiltrated their maintenance base to rescue the student named Quenser Barbotage.

To temporarily stop the Norn, they had installed virus in a Dvergr work robot they had previously captured and then slipped that into the Norn to infect the entire system.

The Faith Organization had thought they had fully eliminated that virus.

But it was possible a second virus had entered the Norn along with the first one.

And just as she considered that…

“Hee…hee.”

Her thoughts were cut off by laughter so full of young brutality that it rubbed her nerves the wrong way.

“Hee hee hee hee hee hee!! Ha ha, ah ha ha ha ha!! Hee hee. Ee hee ha ha ha ha!! Ah hah hah hah hah hah hah!!”

That reminded Urd that Skuld Silent-Third had temporarily been in Legitimacy Kingdom custody. She had leaked information on the Faith Organization base zone and joined in the operation to rescue Quenser (so that she could finish him off herself).

Who had slipped the Dvergr work robot into the Norn?

What if…?

“Sku…ld?”

“Were you planning this from the beginning!?” asked Verdandi.

“Planning? Planning what? Do you really think this was a single straight path!? All I do is kill as many people as I can in the moment. I look at the situation in front of me and make the choice that will cause the most death. But I certainly never expected to have a chance to take the whole Norn for myself!”

It was all adlibbed.

There was no plan.

When an opportunity rolled out in front of her, she kept it rolling in the worst possible way. Since that alone had led to stealing an Object, she may have been a true genius.

“How insane are you!?”

“Let’s just say ‘completely’. Now, now. No one can stop me and no one can stop the Norn!! Ah ha ha! Death seen through a screen is flavorless because it feels like a video game, but it might not be bad to go all out here and escape with this. With this thing’s air cushion, I can cross both sea and land, so I have any number of escape routes. It won’t be long before I find my way to a safe country!!”

''Oh, no,'' thought Urd as her throat grew dry.

Skuld could not be left to her own devices. If that lunatic blended into a safe country, the damage would spread without end. That was why the three of them shared control. (In practice, the two older sisters restrained Skuld.) If that system crumbled away and Skuld alone held the Norn, it would lead to a true catastrophe. The button to begin Ragnarok would be in the bloody hands of a serial killer.

“Skul-…!!”

“Farewell, my sisters. I will always remember what a perfect ''mis''understanding you had of me. But don’t worry about what happens after you eject. My anti-air lasers can shoot you a hundred times over while you float down with your parachutes.”

Urd knew that, but there was nothing more she could do.

The countdown reached zero. All of the barriers opened and the chairs holding the two sisters raced up the rails and were ejected from the Norn.