Editing HEAVY OBJECT:Volume8 Chapter 3

“They spent billions of euros on the thing, so they’re not going to give it a pathetic name,” pointed out Heivia. “The submarine mother ship project being worked on by the Faith Organization was probably influenced by this. The Island Nation’s ideas really are leaking out.”

Once the Megalodiver circled around the perimeter of the island, it would set its sights on the fleet out at sea. They had to inform the princess and Frolaytia of a weakness in the Megalodiver before it could directly target them. The most they could do was create a situation in which the Object would be defeated when it attacked.

“Before I can put the entire world in checkmate, there must be a demonstration of the Amaterasu system, so I suppose about 2 billion people will starve to death in the great famine caused by artificial weather changes. But in the decade after that, the world population should grow by about 2.5 billion. In that time, the Legitimacy Kingdom, Information Alliance, Capitalist Corporations, Faith Organization, and…well, every world power will be destroyed in the chaos.”

“You can do as you wish. I would be lying if I said I was not interested in whether the world you now live in can surpass my brain. Listen, Ayami. In the end, a battle is nothing more than a zero-sum game in which it is determined who will taste victory. I have come here in order to pluck that sweet apple. However, as you try to stop me, you too have already been taken in by that fruit’s flavor. No one can stop victory itself. It is merely an issue of which side will achieve that victory.”

They knew Ichirei Shikon’s trump card.

The twelve reactors and the Megalodiver would be used to completely control the complex ocean currents and ocean temperature. That would create a global weather control weapon. That truly horrible card allowed them to freely control the food self-sufficiency of all nations and name themselves the king of the world.

Currently, one major problem presented itself.

“There’s nothing we can do if we can’t find a weakness in the Megalodiver,” groaned Heivia within the rusty tanker. “It may still not be able to dive, but it’s enough of a monster on the surface! Its Tatami Shield defense system lets it parry or sweep aside any attack!! Isn’t there something we can do about it!?”

“It’s technically known as the Hiding Clothes of Water and it has a few important points. Do you remember what they are, Heivia?”

*The Tatami Shield or Hiding Clothes of Water increased the viscosity of the seawater and then produced giant pillars of water to deflect enemy cannon fire. Raising the seawater’s viscosity was fine, but that would affect the seawater it used for its water jet propulsion, its reactor cooling, and its oxygen supply secured via electrolysis. How did it allow those elements to coexist?

*When they had run across it in the deep sea, the Megalodiver had presumably used a water intake on the top, but it had continued using the systems requiring seawater after surfacing. Did it have another water intake on the bottom? What was the condition for switching?

*The Tatami Shield defense system was overwhelmingly accurate. Simply relying on sound would not allow it to keep up with ultra-high speed laser beams, so how was it so accurately grasping its surroundings amid all the noise?

Those would create a problem while fighting on the surface, so some kind of system had to make up for that. Revealing that system could allow them to drive a wedge into the Megalodiver’s impenetrable defense system.

Quenser explained it to everyone there, but that was not enough to come up with a dramatic new idea.

Real work was needed.

They could only compare the data they had brought back from the tanker graveyard and search for any possibility.

“Do we have any data on pipes or pumps?” asked Heivia as he searched through the paper documents scattered on the rusty floor. “It’s constantly taking in seawater while fighting on the surface, so it has to have a water intake on the bottom. Unless it has a ridiculous system to take moisture directly from the air or something. Where is it, dammit? Where is that data!?”

“Hey, does this have anything to do with it? There seems to be a Y-shaped selector for the seawater pipes near the reactor. It might have more than one intake system.”

“It was holding back on that while at the bottom of the ocean, but why? Quenser, you remember when we dived down in those hard diving suits?”

“We used the submarine volcano’s lava to cover the water intake on top.”

“If it has more than one water intake system, it should’ve been able to continue its mission, but it didn’t hesitate to surface. And yet fighting the princess on the surface has to have held some level of risk.”

“It must have had an even greater risk,” said Quenser. “It has multiple water intakes, but in the off chance that all of them are plugged, the Object becomes a cold coffin at the bottom of the sea. That’s why it acted quickly. …There must be something to the water intake on the bottom. It must be an Achilles’ heel that it really doesn’t want to use.”

“Here we go!”

That hysteric voice came from the female soldier who had rescued Quenser on the island.

“Isn’t this it? It calls it the Bamboo Pipe. While fighting on the surface, it extends a water intake pipe about five meters straight down from the bottom of the Object. That’s what takes in all the seawater needed for water jet propulsion, reactor cooling, and oxygen from electrolysis!”

“Five meters,” groaned Quenser.

He showed everyone the backlit screen of his handheld device.

“I found some data here too. The increased viscosity seawater used for the Tatami Shield or Hiding Clothes of Water extends about two meters around the Megalodiver. That means the system is simple. It uses a thick pipe to directly suck in the fresh seawater below it.”

That allowed it to use seawater to cool its reactor and accomplish other tasks while also using the Hiding Clothes of Water defense system.

Heivia grabbed his radio.

“We need to report this. It’d be best to let our huge-breasted commander or the princess know about the Bamboo Pipe. The device extends beyond the thick onion armor. The seawater might get in the way, but it’s possible the Baby Magnum’s cannons can bend it.”

Suddenly, the rusty tanker shook with tremendous force.

A blinding flash of light entered from the opened watertight door. Quenser was sitting on the reddish-brown floor, but the impact was enough to almost knock him over. He could feel unpleasant sweat pouring from his entire body.

“That was a laser beam.”

He got up and shouted at the others.

“The Megalodiver is attacking! We need to get out of here!!”

“What? Wait, what is going on? Did it detect our heartbeats!?”

“If so, it would be attacking us directly. Ichirei Shikon’s soldiers probably found where we’re hiding. It’s attacking after receiving our coordinates, so it doesn’t have a direct lock. That’s why it’s thoroughly destroying the tanker, starting with the bow! It’s stabbing in countless ‘skewers’ from the side!!”

Everyone turned toward the tail of the ship and Heivia spoke while looking on the verge of tears.

“What good is running? Where are we even supposed to go!? If an Object is directly targeting us, there’s nothing we can do!!”

“I said they don’t have a lock on us! Ichirei Shikon’s soldiers are monitoring the tanker from outside and an Object’s cannons are so powerful they’ll turn any corpses to ash! That means the enemy has no way of knowing we’re alive if we make it through this attack!! If we can endure this bombardment, we can slip into the darkness once more!”

They had a chance and knowing that was enough.

They all ran toward the back end of the tanker and they abandoned the documents scattered on the floor. Quenser stuck the handheld device in his pocket and continued through a rusty watertight door.

More flashes of light swept across the tanker.

The explosions of light behind them hurt their eyes like welding.

Starting from the bow, high-temperature laser beams pierced large holes in the rusty tanker.

“Are you serious!? I think it’s catching up to us!”

“Don’t look back! If it catches up, we’re dead! Run, run, run!!”

At that point, the female soldier ahead of Quenser stopped.

“What is it!?” he shouted.

“The door is rusted shut!!”

“Quenser, the laser beams are getting closer! What do we do!?”

“Goddammit!!”

He swore and pulled a plastic explosive from his backpack. The task was simple, but it was unclear if they had the time to move to a safe distance and detonate it.

At any rate, Quenser ran to catch up to the group in the lead, but then something unexpected happened to him.

The reddish-brown corridor suddenly gave out and he fell straight down.

“Waah!?”

“Everyone jump down! That’s faster than trying to fight with the door!!”

Seeing his colleagues jumping down with no warning, Quenser frantically rolled out of the way. If he had messed up his timing, he would have been crushed to death by a body press from a filthy man.

“Get up, you idiot! Are you gonna wait here to die, Quenser!?”

“How about you thank me a little!?”

High-power laser beams shook the tanker once more, so they ended their scuffle and ran toward the stern.

“Hey, can we use the radio!? We should pass our information on to the princess and Frolaytia!”

“I’m trying, but I can’t get through!! We’re inside a giant tin can, so the signal’s cut off!!”

The entire ship gave a deafening creaking sound.

“Not good,” said Heivia as he ran.

An instant later, the entire tanker broke in two like in a hot dog commercial.

The tanker had been abandoned in the sea and deterioration had eliminated the safety standards and durability. With the laser blasts tearing large holes in the ship, it had lost its balance and it had tilted on the rocks like a seesaw.

If it had been stubbornly solid, it would have shaken back and forth like a set of scales.

That might have been a problem for them as they ran through it, but that had not happened here.

The tanker had been unable to withstand its own weight and it had broken down the middle.

Cracks ran through the ship right in front of their eyes.

“What the hell!? What the hell is this!?”

“Jump!! The laser beams are still approaching!!”

The cracks continued to expand and the jagged edge looked like a giant beast’s maw.

“That’s three meters!”

“So what? The hoarder’s house in my neighborhood had garbage piled up to five meters! Just hurry!!”

“Dammit, you’re even worse than my monster of a maid!!”

Quenser took a running start and defied gravity.

He felt the sense of weightlessness, messed up his landing, and rolled along the reddish-brown floor.

The back half of the tanker shook and toppled on its side.

“What? I just heard static from the radio. It’s connecting a little bit, but why!?”

“Because the thick tin can was split open. It isn’t exactly good news, so keep running while you give the report!!”

More and more blinding flashes of light lit up the area.

The Object seemed to be thoroughly burning away the front half that had toppled first. The attack was persistent and merciless. If they had remained in that half, they would certainly have been covered in orange molten metal.

Having survived, Quenser’s group continued running for the stern.

In less than two minutes, the laser bombardment would return to the back half and begin melting the jagged edges.

They had no time.

“There’s a water intake pipe called the Bamboo Pipe on the bottom of the Megalodiver! It extends five meters down and is related to all of the bastard’s main functions!! At any rate, think up a strategy to destroy-…”

“Oh, honestly!” shouted the female soldier up ahead. “Another door! It’s rusted shut!!”

“Do we have another route!?”

“Does it look like we do!?”

Quenser attached a plastic explosive and electric fuse on the mass of rust the door had become.

(If all the doors follow the same standards, it should be three centimeters thick with a single rod on the top, bottom, left, and right. But it’ll have deteriorated enough to ignore everything but the areas the rust is sticking on.)

“Stand back at least ten meters!!”

“I don’t think we have that much space,” said the female soldier.

Quenser looked behind them and saw that the Megalodiver’s lasers had already blown the corridor away up to a small crosswalk’s length away. The metal glowed orange and flowed like lava.

They had to destroy the door to advance, but their own bomb would kill them if they did not move a safe distance away.

They were cornered.

Quenser began to panic, but the other soldiers began jumping straight up on one person’s signal. Quenser did not initially understand, but he belatedly figured it out.

This was the same thing he had done before.

The burden of several dozen people landing was enough to break through the rusty floor.

With a crash, the soldiers fell through the large hole and Quenser and Heivia soon followed.

But…

“Shit,” groaned Heivia.

The corridor that should have continued ahead of them was blocked by a watertight door that had completely fused with the wall thanks to the rust that seemed to expand out from the wall. It was obvious at a glance that they could not get through in the normal fashion.

Directly behind them was an open hole with orange steel flowing down from the floor above like a waterfall.

“What do we do, Quenser? Should we try breaking through the floor again!?”

“We’re already at the bottom. We can’t go any lower!”

They could not use bombs.

Two especially large male soldiers tackled the rusty door with all their strength.

“It moved. It was just a bit, but we can do this!!”

The orange waterfall behind them was eliminated by the Megalodiver’s lasers.

“Dammit!!”

“Again, again. Do it, please!”

With Quenser urging them on, the two large soldiers stepped back away from the door and tackled it in unison once more.

With the sound of breaking metal rods, they toppled through the door they had opened.

“It opened! Hurry!!”

His urging was not needed.

The several dozen soldiers scrambled to be the first through the door.

But then they stopped again.

“You’ve gotta be kidding me.”

The corridor was blocked, but not by another watertight door. This was one of the barriers used when a fire broke out inside the ship. The tanker was no longer in use, but it had originally carried fossil fuels such as heavy oil. The fire door was made much thicker and sturdier than the door meant to hold back water pressure. The steel door was meant to cut off explosions in addition to the standard flames, heat, and smoke.

Quenser traced his fingers across the fire door and then pounded his fist against it.

“I can’t blow this away with the bombs I have on me! And even if I tried to, the entire blast would turn right back towards us!! It’s simply impossible unless we drill a hole in it and pack the door itself full of explosives!!”

“Then what do we do? We can’t break through the floor again! You aren’t stupid enough to suggest we go back, are you!?”

Bright light as if from welding assaulted them and the corridor was melted away behind them.

It was much closer than they had thought. The limit was drawing close.

“Is prayer the only option left?”

They all pressed their backs against the thick fire door.

All the while, the laser bombardment slowly yet surely tore away at the corridor they had passed through. It would not take long to reach them.

“Is this the end, goddammit!?”

As Heivia raised his voice, Quenser squeezed his eyes shut.

His breathing sounded oddly loud in his ears as he waited for the final moment.

A second passed, then two and three.

Once his count reached thirty, doubt finally entered his mind.

He slowly opened his eyes.

“What? The laser bombardment isn’t coming.”

“It doesn’t seem to be attacking somewhere else either. The tanker isn’t shaking. The attack has stopped.”

“But why?”

They could not rest easy.

Their survival seemed like some kind of mistake.

It felt like being strapped into the electric chair but having the current not reach them due to a poor connection. They could not accept their survival because the cord could be reconnected at any moment.

“Did it run into some kind of trouble?”

“I don’t know.”

“Did it find a higher priority target?”

“Is it ignoring us because it can kill us later?”

An unpleasant silence filled the air and no amount of thought gave them an answer.

That deadlock was broken by Heivia’s radio.

“…via…”

The transmission quality was poor.

Even if it had been filled with holes, they were still in the bottom of a tanker covered in a thick hull.

Nevertheless, he immediately recognized the staticky voice.

“Can you hear me, Master Heivia Winchell?”

“Karen?” he asked in confusion.

Given the situation and the timing, a certain possibility presented itself.

Quenser had suggested that the Megalodiver might have found a higher priority target.

“Wait a minute. What the hell are you doing? What’s with that disturbingly kind voice!? Answer me, Karen!!”

The Summer Vacation, the armed cruise ship belonging to the Legitimacy Kingdom’s Winchell family, was primarily a luxury cruise ship despite the many weapons, so the bridge was located on the bow.

Karen I. Winchell was receiving a report on that bridge.

“According to the data from the wired kite, the infiltration unit including Master Heivia Winchell is confined to be within a tanker abandoned on the east side of the island.”

The wired kite was precisely that: a kite.

It used a camera and communication cable to check on the state of the battle from a position higher than the ship.

The earth was round, so it had a horizon. Five kilometers was the approximate visual limit, but a ship’s guns had a maximum range of almost forty kilometers and some multistage rocket weapons could exceed one hundred kilometers.

A wider vision was needed to actually make use of that range.

That could be obtained with radar, satellites, or scout airplanes.

Compared to radar which could only detect “points of light”, a camera’s information was much more flexible. Satellites were convenient, but they were common enough that they were often jammed or shot down before entering a real battle. Manned scout planes were a poor match for a battlefield with an Object that could fire anti-air lasers.

A wired kite was made of materials easy to acquire even by civilians and a new one could be put up immediately after the old one was shot down. They were primitive but were still quite useful when used in conjunction with radar.

“The Megalodiver is attacking the tanker. It appears to be thoroughly destroying the entire ship, but it will not last long.”

“Understood. B Team, continue observation. A Team, have you determined its location?”

“We have.”

“Have you really made up your mind?” asked a maid standing next to Karen.

“…”

Their armed cruise ship had performed a large-scale bombardment of the island Heivia’s group had infiltrated, but the attack had not been so one sided because Karen and the maids were the superior fighting force.

They were a mystery force with no obvious affiliation to any military and yet with too much firepower to be called civilians.

If the armed cruise ship was sunk in a counterattack, it had been unclear how it would influence things. Sinking the ship could have turned any number of forces against them. That was why they had hesitated and that was why the cruise ship’s attack had been so successful.

But the situation had changed.

The Megalodiver was the enemy’s trump card. It was worth more than the replaceable equipment and supply personnel. If the ship entered the battle to rescue Heivia’s group, the Object would certainly fight back.

In war, one usually targeted the weakest point.

Even with fifty centimeter guns, the ship was nothing more than a cruise ship with added weapons. It contained a great amount of excess fat when compared to a real warship designed to fight from the ground up.

Also, this was the age of Objects.

If that monstrous weapon directly targeted them, it was obvious what fate awaited them.

Karen let out a small sigh and adjusted her grip on the microphone for the communication equipment.

“Prepare for battle. The Summer Vacation will now leave the Legitimacy Kingdom’s 37th Mobile Maintenance Battalion for independent action. All but I-class defense personnel, please leave the ship immediately. There should be enough rescue boats and the Legitimacy Kingdom will soon rescue you. Over.”

“No one is going to leave. Just like you.”

That response came without a second’s delay.

Karen I. Winchell scratched at her cheek and switched to an external transmission.

“Master Winchell. Can you hear me, Master Heivia Winchell?”

“We will now head out on our own and draw the Megalodiver’s attention. We will also use our guns to reduce the number of enemy soldier’s monitoring the tanker. Please escape while they are thrown into confusion.”

“Draw its attention?” gasped Quenser.

It was plain as day what would happen if they did that with an Object.

“Don’t be ridiculous!” shouted Heivia. “Don’t be ridiculous!! What do you even gain from that? I’m the problem child all my relatives are opposed to inheriting the family! With all my brothers and sisters, I’m sure you’ve got someone to serve. You should ''want'' me to die in battle since I’m getting along with the Vanderbilt family my family hates so much! Right!?”

Quenser gradually grasped the situation.

Heivia may have understood as well, but he refused to accept Karen and the maids’ decision to throw their lives away.

“We could not let our approval be known, but were deeply moved by your plan to destroy those old traditions and prevent any further bloodshed,” continued Karen. “All our abusive remarks were products of our weak hearts that desired to protect our positions. We did not have the courage to face the ire of your family as you did, so we helped them throw stones to protect ourselves. We would like to apologize.”

“Don’t say that! You can stick to verbally abusing me!!”

Frolaytia had said it cost 200 thousand euros to use a large cruise ship for a single day.

They had not just so happened to come across the battalion for no reason.

Being in the nearby area may have been a coincidence, but they had clearly had a reason to alter their course and meet up with the battalion. When they had heard about the defeat in the battle concerning the Island Nation and the Ame-no-Darin, they had come to assist Heivia.

They had risked their lives.

Even if they were fully-equipped, they were still civilians.

They had understood what it meant to get involved in a real war, but they had done so regardless.

“It is crucial that you remain within the Winchell family. We cannot allow you to be lost here.”

“Hey, stop! Hey!”

But a question occurred to Quenser.

How had the Summer Vacation stopped the Megalodiver from firing?

Even with its fifty centimeter guns and various missiles, it was up against an Object. It would normally be unthinkable for them to frighten a weapon that not even nuclear weapons could defeat.

There was something there.

Karen I. Winchell and the maids had figured something out.

(What is it?)

Quenser pulled out his handheld device. If the radio signal was getting through, he could receive data as well, so he called up all the information on the battle in the New Caledonia District.

“In my many years serving the Winchell family, I have been presumptuous and occasionally pretended to be a tutor, but…”

The Summer Vacation had already fired a few times.

They had done so with no warning to the Legitimacy Kingdom, so the battalion’s intelligence and information departments were in chaos. It had fired almost thirty kilometers to the southeast. That was empty ocean and the shots did not even scratch the Megalodiver or the island being used as Ichirei Shikon’s base.

However, that attack had definitely caused the Megalodiver to change its plans.

(It can’t be…)

[[Image:HO_v08_349.jpg|thumb]]

Quenser operated the handheld device and called up the data on something he himself had previously reported on.

(A tuning fork torpedo? Was it one of those things that assist the Megalodiver’s acoustic searching!?)

His pulse quickened and he could feel his vision closing in on a single point.

There had been three main questions concerning the Megalodiver, but the final came to mind.

*The Tatami Shield defense system was overwhelmingly accurate. Simply relying on sound would not allow it to keep up with ultra-high speed laser beams, so how was it so accurately grasping its surroundings amid all the noise?

He urged himself to hurry.

The speech was coming to an end.

The maids were going to take their final action.

He had to finish before then.

“Those of as humble birth as us became the foundation for your future which is one that will provide strong leadership for the Winchell family. That is a fact that brings great happiness to me, Karen I. Winchell, and the others here. Over.”

An unstoppable scream spilled from Heivia’s lips.

The woman on the other end of the radio was surely smiling.

Karen I. Winchell ended the transmission on the bridge.

A moment later, a subordinate provided a report.

“Hit confirmed! It appears to have been effective. The Megalodiver has changed course and is approaching!!”

It could not be stopped now.

However, they did not intend to.

After casting aside any lingering regret, she switched her train of thought.

“Understood. Everyone, prepare for battle! Ignore all future transmission from the Legitimacy Kingdom. Prepare to fire our main guns. Our goal is to confuse the battlefield enough for Master Heivia and his unit to escape. Target the southern coast of the island!”

They could not win this battle.

A tiger was on the loose and anyone who stood up to it would only be devoured.

All that remained was to see what meaning they could give to that fate.

“Please be safe, Master Heivia.”

The long night was nearing its end.

The color orange flared up along every corner of the vast ocean.

“Heivia.”

Quenser called out at the bottom of the falling-apart tanker, but the noble boy did not respond.

“Heivia, listen!!”

“Shut up!! What do you want now!? Are you still thinking of doing something after this irritating as shit ending, Quenser!?”

“I’m saying I won’t let it end this way!!”

Heivia fell silent and Quenser continued.

“I know what Karen and the others are after and I know why the Megalodiver lost its confidence and decided to sink them instead of us! What will you do, Heivia? I know what that bastard’s Achilles’ heel is, but attacking it means wasting the chance at survival that Karen and the others worked so hard to make. What will you do!? Are you prepared to continue ahead even if it means crushing their feelings underfoot!?”

“That’s perfect,” quietly groaned Heivia. “A tear-jerking story isn’t my style. I’ll destroy all of this and have a good laugh afterwards.”

Quenser extended his hand and Heivia Winchell grabbed it to stand up.

“First comes the fire door right in front of us. We need to do something about it and find a way up to the deck. We don’t have time. We need to bite into the Megalodiver’s Achilles’ heel before it can slaughter those maids.”

The fire door was thick because the tanker had been made to be filled with heavy oil and the like.

Simply attaching a bomb to the surface of the door would not be enough. The blast would take the path of least resistance and hit Quenser’s group instead.

The fastest method would be to drill holes in the door and fill the inside with explosives.

However…

“Hey,” said one of the large soldiers who had tackled down the watertight door. “You set a bomb on the door and we’ll pile our backpacks in front of the door in place of sandbags. If we use our full weight to push the backpacks forward, the blast won’t reach us.”

“That’s true, but you understand what you’re suggesting, don’t you? The impact is sure to break both your arms!”

“We’re well aware of that.”

The two large soldiers laughed while cracking their shoulders and rotating their arms around.

“Hey, noble boy, you’re gonna be facing an Object to save your family’s maids, right? Then you can’t be wasting any time here. Focus on your own job.”

“Sorry.”

“Introduce us to a few of them afterwards. A group date with nothing but maids sounds like heaven on earth from a Legitimacy Kingdom perspective.”

“On second thought, you sons of bitches can go straight to hell.”

They swiftly implemented the plan.

With a muffled explosion, the rusty fire door was blown inwards.

Quenser spoke as he walked past the soldiers clenching their teeth and writhing in pain.

“Someone treat their injuries. If you remove a carbine stock, it can work in place of a cast.”

“Kh… Shut up and get going! Our saviors are waiting!! If you let a single maid die, we’re not going to forgive you!!”

Urged on by that voice, Quenser and Heivia ran on.

They climbed a nearby staircase on their way upwards.

“What exactly are we going to do, Quenser!?”

“You have a shoulder-fired missile, right? We’ll use that!!”

As soon as Quenser shouted that, his foot broke through the metal staircase. Heivia grabbed his arm and helped him regain his balance.

“Karen and the other maids used the Summer Vacation’s ridiculously huge guns to target empty ocean. There was a tuning fork torpedo there. Do you remember those, Heivia? We saw one while approaching the Megalodiver in those hard diving suits.”

“Those are the robots that look like a fish with a U-shaped tuning fork attached, right? They essentially increase the Meglaodiver’s eyes and ears since it detects enemies by sound.”

“Right. They fired fifteen kilometers away from the Megalodiver. I don’t know if it’s three or four, but the Object always keeps a few tuning fork torpedoes around itself. It might read a single sound from multiple directions and determine the enemy’s accurate location and movements from the subtle differences in the wavelengths. It must predict when the enemy will fire based on the tiny noises of the barrel or lenses moving before firing.”

“And Karen destroyed one of those…”

“A bug without fangs got in its eye. That’s why it turned around.”

They continued up and up.

With a harsh sound, the last watertight door opened.

The night was already coming to an end and the ocean appeared to be burning with the orange of dawn.

“Hurry! Going outside raises the risk of it detecting our heartbeats. Use the shoulder-fired missile before it fries us with its lasers. We need to crush another one of its eyes and ears!!”

“Roger that!!”

Heivia removed the giant tube hanging from a shoulder strap just as the sound of something tearing through the wind passed by overhead.

A moment later, the island’s coast exploded with tremendous force. The landscape was torn into and a new bay was formed.

“A ship’s gun!? Dammit, Karen. Are you still supporting us!?”

“We can complain later. Check north-northwest at just within five kilometers away. There should be a metal reading swimming along with the Megalodiver’s movements. Use your sensors!!”

Quenser leaned out over the deck’s railing and checked the ocean with the sensors on his binoculars.

Heivia rested the missile launcher on his shoulder and peered inside the targeting lens.

“Where is it? I don’t see it. Where is it!?”

“It has to be there! …I found it. North-northwest at 4.5 kilometers! Target it!!”

The narrow vision of the binoculars showed a large U-shaped piece of metal sticking up from the orange ocean surface. Unlike when swimming in the deep ocean, they seemed to act like buoys while fighting on the surface.

“I found it too. I just have to shoot that, right!?”

“No, that isn’t enough.”

Hearing that, Heivia removed his eye from the lens in confusion.

“What?”

“Karen and the maids blew away one of them, but the Megalodiver is back to normal. If we simply blow it up, the Object just has to fire the next one out there. It can make up for any that are lost.”

“Then what are we supposed to do!?”

“I have an idea. Turn off the targeting sensors and fire a missile to detonate somewhere between three and five meters in front of the tuning fork torpedo.”

“That won’t destroy it.”

“We’re not trying to. Hurry!!”

With that urging, Heivia held up the missile launcher once more.

After checking the tuning fork torpedo’s location with the sensors, he intentionally switched them off. Now the missile would not be guided and it would simply fire straight.

“Don’t blame me if this doesn’t go well!!” shouted Heivia as he pulled the trigger.

A trail of smoke followed the explosive and it slammed into the ocean at the exact point they wanted.

The explosion shot a pillar of water forcefully into the air.

“It worked. Let’s go!”

“Go where!?”

“Down to the rubber boats!!”

Quenser ran across the deck and found the rubber boat they had ridden in on. He did not hesitate to jump over the railing and Heivia followed.

“Heivia, you handle the boat’s engine. Take us to the tuning fork torpedo!!”

“Okay, but explain this to me!!”

The military rubber boat shot along the glowing orange ocean.

No laser beams shot from the Megalodiver despite it supposedly being able to accurately detect one’s location from the heartbeat.

“It uses multiple high-quality microphones, an analysis supercomputer, and the resonance with the surrounding tuning fork torpedoes to swiftly and accurately search out the enemy’s acoustic signature from amid the din of explosions. However, that means it can’t stay in top form if a problem occurs in any one of those things. The easiest one to cause problems would be the tuning fork torpedoes. One of those was flipped over by the nearby explosion and the tuning fork isn’t functioning as normal.”

“And that’s why we’re safe? But why are we moving toward it? Not to mention that it was our fault it wasn’t completely destroyed.”

“As I said, a new one can be supplied if it’s simply destroyed. That won’t destroy its golden ratio. That’s where Karen and the maids failed and that’s why we had to think up a different method.”

The rubber boat seemed to be jumping across the ocean surface rather than travelling through the water. It looked a lot like a skipping stone and it was difficult to not be thrown out.

“What are we going to do about that? Are we going to keep destroying them until the Megalodiver’s stock runs out?”

“That could work, but we don’t have time. That’s why we’ll use the opposite method.”

“What?”

“All we have to do is destroy its golden ratio. If we can’t reduce the number, we just have to ''increase'' the number.”

The sound of bubbles passed by directly below them.

It came from a fish-like robot swimming just below the surface.

“What was that!?”

“The Megalodiver sensed a problem with the system and sent out a new tuning fork torpedo. Exactly what I wanted!”

Soon, the rubber boat reached the target area of sea.

“Heivia, find the flipped-over tuning fork torpedo. It may be starting to sink after the Megalodiver sent out a shutdown signal. We need to pull it up!!”

As he spoke, Quenser dove into the ocean.

A fair bit of skill was needed for free diving, but he had little trouble thanks to all his heavy equipment. In fact, resurfacing was the hard part.

As expected, the old tuning fork torpedo had begun to sink.

If it had been obviously destroyed, the Megalodiver would likely have immediately hit the switch and abandoned it.

But in the half-functioning state, the Pilot Elite had hesitated in order to see if it could right itself.

The Object had a limited number of the things.

Quenser did not know how many it had in stock, but it was unlikely enough to abandon them without thinking about it first.

He embraced the giant fish robot.

It was large, but it was made from light materials such as reinforced plastic. While still holding onto it, he removed his unnecessary equipment.

Humans had natural buoyancy and he hurried to the surface with Heivia’s help.

“Bhah!?”

“Hey, Quenser. What are we supposed to do with this!?”

“Attach it to the boat,” he quickly answered. “The Megalodiver has already sent out a new one and we’ve brought the old one back. It now has the golden ratio plus one. The balance has been thrown off, so it should lose its accurate acoustic searching system!!”

“Is it really that simple!?”

“It’s not an issue of numbers. Systems have trouble with unpredicted situations. It could probably handle ten thousand imitation tuning forks scattered around, but I doubt they expected a situation where it itself sent out a completely identical one. Unless the Elite was trying to commit suicide, she would never make that decision. In fact, that Elite probably has no idea what is causing the trouble right now.”

Heivia removed the sling belts for his missile and assault rifle. He used them to attach the tuning fork torpedo to the cords on the outside of the rubber boat while Quenser gave his conclusion.

“The real fight begins now. Let’s attack its weakness at the Bamboo Pipe, Heivia.”

Frolaytia held her head on the bridge of the Scarlet Princess which she was using as her flagship.

Quenser, Heivia, and the others had yet to bring back anything useful from their reconnaissance mission.

On top of that, the civilian Summer Vacation had left to rescue them.

According to some unconfirmed information from the old maintenance woman, an organization named Ichirei Shikon was using the Megalodiver and twelve reactors to control the world’s ocean currents and temperatures and thus manipulate the weather on a planetary scale. That global weather control weapon was apparently named Amaterasu.

Everyone was falling apart and they had had no choice but to send out the Baby Magnum.

She could not calculate their odds of victory and she began to truly wonder what would happen if they lost here.

They no longer had even the very basic concepts of a top-down command structure and the mission headquarters having a constant understanding of the battle situation. The colonel and brigadier general who acted like sister-in-laws would almost certainly be sending complaints her way before long.

But then a radio transmission arrived from Quenser and Heivia.

“Can you hear me, Frolaytia!? Can you hear me!?”

“I’m going to kill the lot of you!!”

“Thank goodness. Hey, Heivia. Everything’s normal!”

She did not appreciate that evaluation, but this was not the time to argue.

“What happened?” she asked. “The lack of reports has gotten so severe that the higher ups are in a frenzy!!”

“The Megalodiver uses a set number of tuning fork torpedoes for accurate acoustic searches and we’ve destroyed that golden ratio! It’s lost its eyes and ears right now. The Baby Magnum should be able to easily hit it with its main cannons! Please end this before it gets over the confusion and attacks us and the extra tuning fork torpedo we have!!”

“What do you mean it has lost its eyes and ears, you idiot?”

She sounded exasperated and she glanced at one of many screens displaying multiple dancing dots of light.

“The Megalodiver is doing just fine fighting the princess! It has stopped using the Tatami Shield for some reason, but everything else is working. It doesn’t look blindfolded to me!!”

“Eh? But that shouldn’t be. What do you mean?”

“When did you get in a position to ask me for everything!? Check with your own eyes!!”

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.