Editing HEAVY OBJECT:Volume16 Chapter 1

Quenser and the others could not turn invisible. Nor was there a secret rotating door in the wall or a blind spot in the hallway they could hide in.

And yet.

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The diligent maid overlooked the new Legitimacy Kingdom potatoes. They were in view, but she did not see them. Even though she would have found it highly suspicious if anyone but hotel staff left a room that was supposed to be vacant.

So what had happened?

The answer was as follows:

They changed into the maid uniforms supplied in the closet.

That of course included the busty young woman.

But it also included Battlefield Student Quenser Barbotage (♂).

“Good evening.”

He greeted the maid by grabbing his skirt in both hands and giving a polite curtsy. No one questioned glasses maid Quenser.

Yes.

It would look unnatural for anyone but a cleaning maid to be in a vacant room, so they only had to become internal staff. Instead of sneaking around, it was best to walk out like they belonged there.

The real maid did not doubt him for a second, so it was the young woman who whispered in disbelief.

“(Are you serious? Why do you look so at home in a maid uniform!?)”

“(Heh. I am Quensette, the legendary star of my safe country’s local cultural festival. Although I’d sealed this away ever since Monica tearfully kicked my ass for stealing the spotlight from her when she was just getting started.)”

Adding a thick layer of makeup to the surface would not help. Creating a proper foundation underneath mattered more, so it was lucky they had acquired some professional makeup equipment after attacking Monica’s group earlier.

This was not about the insulating gel that let the idol wear a black cape and a bat bikini during a November night.

Quenser did not have the subcutaneous fat of a girl, so the collagen gel helped prepare the skin which would act as a foundation for the makeup.

(But this means Monica is still using that same gel. She’s upgrading to a more professional version, but it’s the same brand. Is she still using the makeup technique I taught her way back when?)

…No one could ever be allowed to know that an idol like Monica had learned how to put on makeup from a boy!!

Only beginners used the chest, hips, and thighs to show off their femininity.

The nape was much more destructive.

Quenser had always been androgynous enough to look like a boy when wearing pants and a girl when wearing a skirt, but everyone was forced to consider the wonders of the human body when they saw that “transformation”.

They heard some hurried footsteps. The men in black were likely the old man’s bodyguards. They walked right past Quensette and the rest of the culprits and barged into the room where the phone was hidden.

“It worked.”

“It’s been about 10 minutes since the speech was interrupted, right? We need to buy another 30 minutes, but won’t they find the phone almost immediately? I know you hid it in a planter, but it’s making noise. You can’t hide it like that.”

“Knowing this works is enough. Next, we’ll go one floor above the 3rd floor balcony. And to fix the flaw you mentioned, I want something they can’t remove so easily. Yes, a rotten stench would work nicely. But something utterly ridiculous instead of something that might be a toxic gas. We can walk around the back of the hotel in this maid camouflage, so let’s put something together using what we can find in the staff rooms and storage.”

“Do you get bolder when you crossdress? Like someone whose personality changes when they get behind the wheel?”

He ignored her nonsense and got down to business.

“A hotel should have a powerful industrial acid detergent. We use the undiluted stuff as a base, add raw eggs and mayo, and maybe include some onion and garlic…well, if they have it. Add some alcohol even if it’s only disinfectant. Crab and shrimp would be nice if you can find it, but the real secret ingredient can be either vinegar or Italian dressing.”

“You sound like you’re planning a meal, but some of the ingredients don’t fit. What are you trying to make?”

“A powerful vomit smell.”

“…”

“Stomach acid contains hydrochloric acid. Pure gastric juices don’t actually stink very much; it’s the food being dissolved that really makes an odor.”

The young woman fell silent with her mouth forming a small triangle.

That was the proper reaction for a woman…no, for a human. There was something wrong with anyone who could discuss it with a straight face.

Let us discuss the school Quenser attended.

The professors there had made historic discoveries directly linked to Object development and they all fell under the category of “something wrong with them” because they would laugh their butts off while doing this kind of thing. If you forgot your homework, it was not unusual to be punished with an iron claw to the face using an extremely intimidating glove. Quenser remembered when the usually indomitable Monica had ended up in tears after receiving one of those. It was a bitter memory because he had been punished in the same way for trying to cover for her.

“Although it’s a lot faster to run into the bathroom and shove a finger down your throat than to try to precisely reproduce it with chemicals in the lab, so you could say this is the world’s most pointless field of research. But when building it up from scratch, you can adjust the concentration to your liking, so you can create a much more pungent odor than the real thing. Now, old man, how long can you preserve the serious atmosphere you’ve created?”

Of course.

The old man on the podium knew some unseen person had infiltrated the hotel to ruin his time in the spotlight.

A biting chill ruled the November night.

So he could see the fireworks, he spoke from a balcony large enough to hold a tea party.

“For my next question, urp, I imagine the rivers flowing in from outside your borders – cough! Oh, excuse me – will be your primary water source after independence, but…ugh!!”

The press were forced into a constant battle with themselves. Smells were invisible, but their footage would not be fit for broadcast if they vomited. They had spent an absurd amount of money for their press passes, so they could not ruin it all by replacing their live broadcast with a “please wait a moment” graphic.

It was truly a trial.

The press’s pride was being tested.

This is a rather vulgar topic, but while shit and piss are the usual examples used for odors, vomit was actually more “contagious”. Few people would vomit the instant they set foot in a public bathroom, but it was easy to imagine other people following suit after someone used a barf bag on a closed bus or plane. Different smells affected the vomiting center of the brain differently.

With dangerous chloride gas or propane gas, they would probably have put on serious expressions, called off the press conference, and quickly evacuated.

But this was different.

Could they really call off a historic event because something smelled like puke? This was the south’s independence, the first page of their new history, and their first national event, so how could they cancel it over something like that? It would forever remain in the public record!!

“(Where is that coming from? They are serving alcohol here. Someone didn’t drink too much, did they?)”

“(This is an old hotel. Maybe a pipe in the wall burst.)”

There was no denying this was out of the ordinary.

But no one was willing to say anything about it. They were afraid of that wise old adage: whoever smelt it, dealt it.

“Calm down. Please calm down everyone.”

The old man’s low, deep voice was not enough to settle them down. It was looking more and more like anyone who tried to take the situation seriously would be seen as a fool.

His schedule was being delayed.

The more this was drawn out, the further he would fall behind. And the more delays, the more the damage would grow.

The old man knew what to do at times like this.

Namely…

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(I must get things moving to reset their impression of me before this gets out of hand.)

“There are no more barriers standing in our way. Any problems we face have been transformed into mere hurdles which will only strengthen us as we overcome them. We have gained the power to grow. Just as a snowball grows as it rolls down the hill, there will be no stopping us now that we have picked up speed! Allow me to introduce you to the power we will use to take an equal position in international society. This is the Shield Machine 002!!”

The maids stared in shock at the TV app on the smartphone they held sideways.

“The son of a bitch just blurted it all out there real quick!!”

“I don’t think he’s even stopping to breathe.”

“It’s 10:50.We have to find a way to stall for 10 more minutes!”

“But how can we interrupt now? We already used the 4th and 2nd floors located directly above and below the 3rd floor balcony!”

According to the intelligence division, the Object had a scorpion motif. It weakened the enemy with the two coilgun main cannons on either side, approached once the enemy had lost mobility, and then rotated 180 degrees. The circular shield machine on the end of the tail on its back would tear through the onion armor to finish them off. It was equipped with the bare minimum of anti-air lasers and such, but it was mostly just a hunk of steel. Quenser wanted a chance to see it to help learn about Object design, but he was not going to sacrifice the world for that chance.

Was there any gimmick he could use to interfere with the large room and balcony where the speech and press conference were being held?

“This declaration of independence is meant to state their intentions to the world. It’s meaningless without any cameras.”

“Then are you going to target the TV crews? But how!?”

In his anti-facial-recognition glasses, Quenser thought of all the vertical pipes he could think of: the water pipes, the sprinklers, the air ducts, the fiber optic cables, the power cables, and the chimneys. But…

“No, that won’t do it. We would be cornering ourselves in a dead end.”

“Quenser?”

“Since we’ve used up the 2nd and 4th floors, there’s only one option left: the 3rd floor!”

“They’ll notice if we go there now! Cameras from all around the world are focused there!”

“Then what about the next room over? I need a few of you to collect a few drones from the windows. Can you do that for me!?”

They would have been too conspicuous dressed as classic maids and carrying lightweight drones on their arms like hawks, so they stuffed them in translucent laundry bags and carried them around like that.

“Are you going to send some drones down to mess with the old man on the balcony?”

“Flying off with his toupee while the cameras roll would be pretty funny, but we don’t have time to mess around. Just come with me.”

The master key from the linen room apparently worked on every floor, so they had no trouble entering the room adjacent to the press conference.

“Frolaytia, check the list of press in attendance. Do any of them use a pacemaker or breathing device!?”

“They’re all healthy. Why do you ask?”

“You’ll see.”

Quenser the Maid (whose anti-facial-recognition glasses were perhaps the least interesting part of his outfit) entered the room so none of the hotel workers could see him, placed the drones on the floor, disassembled them with a flathead screwdriver, and bound some of the internal parts together like honeycombs. Altogether, it was about the size of a tray.

The busty young woman tilted her head.

“The collision-avoidance microwave radars?”

“The event is ruined if the press can’t broadcast it to the world. We don’t have to pass through the walls or ceiling ourselves. And a centuries-old monastery won’t use rebar. It isn’t as flashy as an EMP, but it should be enough for the exposed electronics of civilian devices.”

He pressed the honeycomb device against the wall with both hands and flipped the switch with his thumb.

“After all, microwaves are used in anti-electronic EM bombs.”

The actual attack produced no light or sound detectible to their eyes or ears.

So the thunderous explosion of sparks they heard beyond the wall would have come from the press’s cameras, digital recorders, and communication devices after the microwaves hit them.

“Did that do it!?”

“I can’t tell,” said the young woman. “The TV broadcast, online video, and official account have all gone silent!!”

“Then it worked. If none of them are getting an exclusive scoop here, then they were all wiped out. Either way, it’s 11 at night. We bought enough time!”

A moment later, they felt a rumbling.

Not a single lightbulb survived in the adjacent room or the balcony. With all the communication devices out, the old man and his aides could not get their instructions to the Object on a different mountain.

But the go sign had been given beforehand.

Their Pilot Elite would be unsure what to do, but they would normally decide their orders stood until they heard otherwise. So they were starting to move despite their doubts.

The Object had grown fat while devouring the inside of the mountain like a red-banded sand wasp larva and it was preparing to break out. Even if that meant destroying a 400-year-old monastery and dumping dirt down on the city as if building the foundation of their new country.

The busty young woman grew pale.

“This is bad.”

“No.”

The new Legitimacy Kingdom potatoes, the old man who kept running into trouble, and the Pilot Elite, who was being pressed to decide whether or not to act, all felt fear and anxiety about the unpredictable future.

There was one exception.

Only Quenser Barbotage had a fearless smile on his face.

“It’s past 11. That means checkmate.”

There was definitely a muffled rumbling.

But that was all. The mountainside did not crumble, the city was not buried, and the 50m weapon did not appear.

Yes.

“It would be one thing if the Object had a running start, but right now the mountainside acts more like a straightjacket. And if it tries to blow some holes in that using its coilgun main cannons and laser beam secondary cannons, it should just blow itself up since the barrels are all plugged up.”

He had bought the time needed.

He had wanted at least an hour to be sure.

That was the entire reason he and the others had been risking their lives moving back and forth through the monastery hotel.

This was the crux of the issue.

“With normal dirt, it could probably force its way through using its reactor and propulsion device. That’s why I needed an extra trick. With the ditches, storm drains, manholes, and so on, there’s a network of pipes running across the entire slope, so I poured in the filler material used when creating the maintenance base. That created something like the wire mesh used to reinforce windows.”

He only had to reinforce the mountainside.

Then the Object could not break out. Its greatest weapon was the shield machine on its back, but not even that excavation device could use its full power while buried alive. And even if it could, he doubted it could bore a hole wide enough for the entire Object to pass through. And since it did not officially exist, it would vanish into the darkness if it never showed itself. If its public debut failed, it would never clash with the Transylvanian Object.

The south’s path to independence was gone.

“Now for the finishing touch.”

“Eh? Isn’t the Object trapped in the mountain?”

“There’s still an important job left.”

He no longer needed to rely on the anti-facial-recognition glasses.

Quenser the Maid removed the unfamiliar glasses, threw open the large door, and walked into the chaotic press conference without worrying about camouflage or his footsteps.

The doors to the balcony were wide open, so the winter chill reached him.

He walked to the back of the dark room and shined a phone’s LED lights on the large balcony.

The 100 members of the press?

He did not care about them at all. It did not matter how many there were when none of them had anything to record him with. They could witness the truth of the world here, but they could not leave with any objective proof.

“Hi, old man! I don’t know your name and I don’t care to find out. A legendary maid is here to say what must be said, so make sure your senile old brain is paying attention. A mistake here would destroy what history you do have here.”

The bodyguards belatedly aimed their handguns Quenser’s way, but he only scoffed and continued without putting his hands up.

“Are you sure you want to try that? Powerful EM waves do more than mess with electronics. They can also cause malfunctions in sensitive fuses and detonators. Do you want to see one of your precious bodyguards get a hand blown off by their own gun? Or a bullet could fly off course and blow out your brains. This hotel is made of solid stone, so are you sure you can calculate all the ricochets?”

“…”

“Was it a satellite weapon? Or a drone? Maybe a bomber? Did it come from above at all? Hell, it’s possible this was the work of geomagnetism or volcanic activity.”

It was okay for this to be a bluff.

It was already over. The old man and his bodyguards had no idea how much this EM attack could do. They were trapped in the darkness with no information, so they would grow paranoid all on their own. The greatest camouflage was not a pattern of colors or light; it was the activity of the human brain itself.

“I have one demand.”

The southern tourist area, the global press, and the Legitimacy Kingdom maid potatoes, who had shown up a little late, were all taken aback as Quenser faced a definite goal.

Yes, he had needed to raise his own status to the point that he could make a demand.

“We will be taking back our kittens that wandered into your secret base, so we would like them returned immediately. If you say you can’t, then you will regret that decision until the day you die.”

The old man must have realized the many members of the press were of no use right now.

This had clearly become a negotiation between just two people.

“What if I told you they were already dead?”

Quenser casually tossed a plastic explosive toward one of the bodyguards. It did not have an electric fuse, but it was enough for the tough-looking man in black to panic and fall onto his ass.

“The next one will have a fuse, so let’s cut the crap and actually negotiate. If you try anything, I just have to blow you up and try again with your #2.”

“You wouldn’t dare.”

“Do you think your life has infinite value or something? To me, you’re nothing but one possible contact point. If you aren’t working, I’ll swap you out for another.” Quenser showed no mercy. “Also, I’ll be telling the Transylvania District that the south secretly built an Object to slaughter them and their people, but ultimately failed. But I’ll make sure to mention that your foolish desire for mass murder remains. I doubt they’ll show any mercy after hearing that. They’ll make me seem downright friendly. Now, do you really think you can survive that without an Object?”

“…”

“Think carefully and either nod or shake your head. If you make the right choice, this legendary maid will tell the Transylvania District a very different story. We are from the Legitimacy Kingdom, but we don’t want to see the unilateral slaughter of civilians in an Information Alliance safe country. If that is what they try to do, then we will have a humanitarian reason to view the Transylvania District as a battlefield country and we will destroy their Object and all of their major military facilities. So which will it be?”

“What makes you think I have to choose?”

“Is that how you see it? You can try to act tough if you like, but the Transylvania District will act at midnight no matter what happens here. Let’s hope you can come up with some kind of miracle plan before then. Now, if you want our help, you need to release all of the kittens you captured. If even one is missing, I’ll wrap a bomb around your neck and move on to your #2. So which will it be: yes or no?”

And so he had a tearful reunion with his awful friend once they had both returned to the mobile base zone.

Quenser yawned while back in his usual military uniform.

“So where were you while we did all the work? It seems unlikely they had the help of some mysterious foreign mercenary unit that took you out in a flash.”

“They blew up the tunnel and buried us alive. It was like a mineshaft, so we were too deep in the mountain for our transmissions to get out.”

That was what had happened.

It had seemed unlikely the southern tourist area had any proper army when they had cosplay schoolgirls out on patrol, so when Heivia’s team of potatoes had suddenly been lost without a single scream or SOS signal, there had really only been one option: a surprise attack that cut off their communications.

In the end, that had been another form of camouflage for the south. They had wanted to keep out any unseen intruders by hinting at the presence of some highly-trained assassin squad. Although the phony call for help with the proper ID signal suggested they might have a competent hacker.

Yes.

That was supposed to be the whole story. But was it?

“There’s one thing I don’t get.”

“Yeah.”

If the south had really been complete amateurs in military matters, how had they managed to build an entire Object?

And how had they acquired a Pilot Elite who required a high-level and complex training program? Elites could not be mass-produced. They were a unique element that had to be created alongside the Object built exclusively for them.

“Someone supplied them with what they needed. Someone who was targeting them for their immense wealth.”

Someone had provided them weapons at a high price.

The assault rifles and landmines were one thing, but this included a colossal Object and a Pilot Elite.

Whoever that was would likely be the potatoes’ next enemy.

“A weapons dealer.”

See, what did I tell you?

It didn’t work.

It’s true this is the golden age of Objects. You can’t do business while ignoring that fact. However. A 50m and 200,000-ton mass isn’t going to go unnoticed. There are too many watchful eyes. And our clients don’t want to stand out. Because they don’t want international society to gang up on them. The supply and the demand are both off base here. There’s no point in even criticizing the marketing. The entire business model is a failure.

It costs 5 billion dollars to build a single Object and it takes years to reach completion, so if it’s discovered midway and international society puts a stop to it, our precious clients will be obliterated before they can pay us. You get that, don’t you? It’s too risky!!

That’s why I’ve always said that way won’t work. And just because it’s the age of Objects doesn’t mean we have to build a whole damn Object.

We aren’t a world power with tons of backers. But that’s also why we’re free to do things they can’t.

We shouldn’t let our situation restrict us.

Motivation is crucial and thinking outside the box is the key to success. It’s all about innovation, creativity, and…what other word was I looking for?

Well, the exact words don’t matter.

Now, let’s enjoy war!

I can start putting together the Parasite Plan now, right?