novelThe Shattering of the Four-Way Deception >> Tiber District Intervention to Defend the Faith Organization Home Country (2)
| ← Ch.173 | Ch.175 → |
But Quenser didn't have time to question it. He and Putana were thrown toward the asphalt which was rushing by like a belt grinder.
"Gahhh!?"
It was truly no more than coincidence they didn't end up dead. Just before they struck the pavement, they slammed into the soft wall of a tent-style food stall set up on the roadside.
They heard a sound like straining steel muscles.
There was at least one of the things on the same road as them.
When Quenser looked up with Putana in his arms, he saw a few more round shapes on the roofs of the cathedrals and apartments lining the road. Something like a long tail swished gently behind them and six sharp insect-like legs supported them. He could guess these were Object reactors with the bare minimum of a cockpit attached.
"There are more than one? Are they Septimontium!?"
They prioritized evasion over all else, so a single hit would mean instant death. The design was absurdly specialized.
All the energy produced by the reactor was focused on the triple electrodes sticking out from the front of the round body. That was pure electrical energy. That fearsome white light could probably instantly blow apart a bank vault door with only a light touch.
He thought those were electrodes like on a stun gun.
But he was mistaken.
"Those are the prongs for a power plug. That's the plug used to send power from the reactor to those colossal main cannons, but they're just using it as a weapon."
"Did they design more maneuverable Objects so they could operate them in the city?" Putana looked like she had wandered into a nightmare. She might have been more sensitive to this since she used to be an Object Pilot Elite."No, if they were only meant to protect their home country from external attack, they would have been designed to keep the enemy out of the city in the first place. That means their ability to attack within Rome wasn't designed to defeat an external foe. They were built to attack the Faith Organization's own people. That threat was used to scare the people into behaving, thus giving them peace of mind."
"This is the Object's other role. The world's strongest internal discipline weapon."
Instead of just providing physical attack power, it mentally bound the people with fear, ensuring they would submit.
In a way, it was exactly the kind of oddity you would find in the Faith Organization that focused so much on people's beliefs. And a system that accepted every form of belief into a single organization would require a system to avoid infighting. A monotheistic believer could not accept the existence of any other gods, after all.
So they ruled with an iron fist to ensure their organization didn't collapse.
So they prepared the insurance needed to fix things if it did collapse.
Those things would not hesitate to kill you even if you fled down a narrow alley, shut yourself up in a small building, or took a good person hostage.
They would blow away everything in the way even if you hid inside a historic cathedral or used one of the many world heritage sites as a shield.
Their insect legs inspired disgust in everyone who saw them, their tails moved in way that felt too emotional to be a machine, and their horrific weapons executed their targets with a direct touch of a high-voltage current so great it caused them to explode. Everything about these Objects, including their size and shape, had been designed using the science of fear.
Come to think of it hadn't lightning become a symbol of divine punishment in the east and the west because the bright light and loud noise inspired an instinctual fear in people?
There was no use in trying to reason your way out of it, so you might as well give up.
You could avoid any harmful misunderstandings if you just didn't think about it in the first place.
The accuracy of their killing was designed to eliminate the possibility of an insurrection before it even began, creating a dull and mentally dead world where everyone was at peace and no one physically died.
That was the Faith Organization's home country.
That was the true face of one of the world powers. The days were calm and peaceful, but that was all their leaders gave them. It was an empty quiet where the people forgot how to create anything inside themselves.
No.
The people at the top may have been of secondary importance. In their efforts to provide peace of mind, they had gradually stripped away all else until they stumbled upon a new experience that, unfortunately, made the people feel like their prayers really had reached their god.
There were ideologies that had people approach an empty mind through harsh training, but this was fundamentally different.
This was a dead spring that had gone dry and produced nothing. No moisture would ever form in this dried nothing. And if nothing was done about it, the empty dryness would only spread from there. The people exhausted by their physical bonds, who ended up wandering the world in search of an unseen god and arrived at the Faith Organization, would have their hearts remade into a buried spring that would never produce a single drop of water.
Because they did not understand it themselves, they did not hesitate to trample the things others held dear.
They were like a tin robot wearing a suit of flesh that's heart had rusted away until it forgot the simple fact that its own actions might bring others pain.
"No..."
Putana Highball trembled in Quenser's arms.
But her reaction was not from fear. She was radiating anger from her entire body as she glared back at those seven demons designed for nothing other than killing internal and external threats.
"Did you think I would just accept this horrific truth? You don't get to make a mockery of all those people who only want to pray to their different gods, purify their souls, and use their heartfelt beliefs to live good and righteous lives!"
Unsurprisingly, the seven Septimontium Objects did not respond.
They may not have understood why she was criticizing them or where her anger even came from. If so, Quenser almost felt bad for them. And he was a realist who only ever pursued whatever best advanced his own interests.
And because they didn't even have enough freedom to feel doubt, they didn't hesitate.
The seven detached reactors - in other words, the seven lightweight Objects - all moved at once.
Out of the corner of his eye, Quenser glimpsed Millia Newburg slipping down a side road while their attention was on him and Putana. That was definitely the right move.
"Putana!!" he shouted while nearly shoving Putana into a narrow alley and falling in after her.
"Teacher, don't interfere!!"
"Cool your anger, Putana. Once you're calm, tell me where exactly my gaze is directed while you lie on the ground next to me. Hint: it has to do with your naughty miniskirt."
"~ ~ ~!? You pervert!!!!!"
She used one hand to hide the answer to his question and the other to slap him.
He was glad this anger had overwritten her previous anger, taking her off that suicidal path.
They could not forget that their objective was not to defeat Septimontium. It was to protect Rome - although their definition of "protect" was depressingly different from that of the Objects who were willing to crush their own people underfoot. Rome would be submerged in a sea of magma if Bad Garage was not stopped before they could detonate their reactor underground.
As awful as this home country was, the people who lived there had done nothing wrong.
These may have been the world's smallest Objects, but they were still 10m spheres.
"Heh heh. Saving a cute girl, getting an eyeful, and even receiving a slap as a reward? Have I died and gone to heaven? I bet I'd get something unbelievable if I ate a fortune cookie right now."
"Why did I take more damage from that slap than you? Stop being such a creep!"
They heard a loud crash near the entrance to the alley. One of the Septimontium Objects was trying to approach, but it couldn't fit in a space that would be a challenge for a pizza delivery scooter. And the thing wasn't equipped with any projectile weapons. It could gather a blinding light between its electrodes, but that energy couldn't be launched.
However...
"We can't relax quite yet. If that's electricity, there are any number of ways to get it to us. We're dead the instant it finds some water or iron powder to spread around. So face the facts, Putana! We can't lose those monsters on foot, so we need a car or a motorcycle to-"
Quenser's thoughts were cut off by a whooshing sound.
It was the tail.
No, they had to still be safe. The spherical body did have a tail-like part on the back, but it was only two or three times the body's diameter. When swinging it around to attack to the front, its own body got in the way. Just like a scorpion's stinger or a carnivorous dinosaur's tail, it was only useful at close range, so it couldn't reach them back in this alley like an anteater's tongue.
They were safe.
Perfectly safe.
...So why had his fear frozen the passage of time?
"Teacher, get down!!"
Putana Highball's shout saved him. He finally realized what was really happening. While the spherical body struggled at the alley entrance, the tail had whipped around and thrown a vending machine it had snatched off the street. The tail had wrapped around the machine like a chameleon's tongue.
The improvised projectile weighed easily more than 300kg. If Quenser hadn't immediately kissed the filthy ground, everything above his hips might have been torn away, leaving just his lower body still standing.
After the heavy metal device passed by overhead, Putana quickly got back up, grabbed Quenser's arm, and pulled him to his feet. They supported each other as they made their way to another exit from the alley.
They heard something passing by overhead while the sun was briefly blotted out.
The Septimontiums were leaping between building rooftops.
"There are seven of them, so we're completely surrounded. The one at the obvious exit is like the hound that guides the animal in front of the hunter's rifle. It's a combo play."
"I get that, but I can sense their 'eyes' on us. That means I know when they are about to attack. This way, teacher."
When they arrived at another exit, Putana cautiously observed things outside and then swung her leg up high. Her kick caught a passing motorcyclist on the head and she stole his motorcycle.
"Um, Putana! That's a civilian!"
"Are you just ignoring the scrapes at the base of his thumb, his distinctive muscle balance and tan lines, and the marine tattoo on his arm? He belongs to a Capitalist Corporations PMC! Now hurry!!"
With the signs that obvious, it didn't sound like the man was undercover. Was he just a soldier here to see the carnival while on leave? That still made him a Capitalist Corporations soldier, though.
Putana hopped onto the seat and Quenser climbed on behind her. It took less than thirty seconds to steal the motorcycle and start driving. Still, that was a critical delay. Something blotted out the sun overhead again.
Septimontium had arrived. Worse, three of the 10m spheres leaped down from an abbey roof. Their six insect legs almost looked like a complex alien maw that wouldn't close properly.
"Ahh!!"
"Let's get out of here."
Putana pretended to be driving straight while actually sending the motorcycle through a rapid 180-degree turn and giving them a flying start in the opposite direction. The airborne predators had made their leap based on their prey's expected future position, so they fell for the feint and struck at an empty portion of road. If Putana had thoughtlessly taken the direct path away, they would have been crushed to death one second later.
Quenser buried his face in the brown girl's nape while melting like cheese. It looked ridiculous, but he was holding on for dear life.
"Ooh, you're nice and warm. Soft too. And you smell nice."
"Teacher, I get you're so terrified you might wet yourself, but please do not use me to distract yourself. My patience has its limits."
"I want to eat this ponytail. Woof, woof."
"I will throw you off the bike, you know?"
Putana sighed in exasperation and took a sharp turn at an intersection.
Quenser tightened his grip around her hips just a bit.
"Damn, I wonder what happened to Millia, " he said.
"Don't worry. She's an expert at hiding in the crowd, so I'm sure she escaped. If we searched for her with Septimontium after us, we might actually put her in greater danger. We need to leave her be and draw these things away from her."
Yes, the threat wasn't over yet.
If those were Objects, they could handle high-speed battles fought at 600km/h. The motorcycle was far better than being on foot, but it wasn't enough. It would be harder for those Objects to reach their top speed in this complex urban battlefield than out in an open desert or field, but a commercial motorcycle still couldn't lose them. If those two wanted to win the battle of speed, they would need a drag racer installed with a rocket engine.
Quenser looked back with his hands tight around Putana's hips and then he screamed.
"Here they come! Oh, god!! They're here, here, here!!"
"Teacher, details would be nice."
They heard what sounded like a thick sheet of metal being torn apart. These things did not use wheels or an air cushion. They only used those insect legs, which were equipped with some kind of spring. They would make short hops to zigzag back and forth in pursuit of the fleeing motorcycle.
"We're going right, teacher. Lean that way, " said Putana before leaning her body to tilt the motorcycle.
That let a leaping Septimontium fly by overhead while their sharp right turn slid them below a hurdle-like barrier and they drove across a railway crossing that was sounding its alarm.
The Septimontiums didn't care.
They kicked off the wall of a nearby church or hopped across the roof of a mobile home next to the railway crossing to leap over the freight train and continue their pursuit of the motorcycle.
They even used their tails to throw each other onto tall rooftops. The tails were not just balancing weights or made to look threatening. They could grab things, support the rest of the Object, and otherwise behave like a hand.
But the brown girl at the motorcycle's handlebars was focused on something else.
"They can jump on rooftops and walls and that mobile home wasn't crushed."
"P-Putana?"
"They must not be very heavy. That means their armor is thin. Teacher, do you have any bombs? These Objects lack the usual nuke resistance. Ordinary weapons can defeat them."
"How dumb are you!? Those are active Object reactors!! There's plasma of up to 100 million degrees Celsius trapped inside there with magnetism. Blow up even one of those in this populated city and millions will die! We need a better plan!!"
"Argh, curse those things. You could say these Objects use the city to their advantage, couldn't you? What a pain."
They heard a grinding sound as something joined them from another street.
Heivia and Myonri were each riding a toy similar to a snowmobile. Except these hadn't been designed for use on the snow.
Quenser's eyes widened.
"What're those!? Some Faith Organization secret weapon!?"
"They're one-person vehicles. Think of them like sporty convertibles. Perfect for Rome's complex layout, right? I see you've hitched a ride on a girl's ass, like usual. You get all the luck!!"
"You won't find a nicer smelling ride anywhere. And did you know a girl's body is smooth no matter where you touch it? I can even feel Putana's pulse when I hold her from behind like this."
"...Teacher, have you ever heard the phrase 'even the Buddha gets mad if you touch his face three times'?"
"I'm not from the Faith Organization, so I can't say I have. Does that mean you're in trouble after doing it three times, or do you have to go for a fourth time before there are consequences?"
Myonri wanted no part of this conversation, so she did her best to pretend she didn't exist.
It bothered Quenser that Millia Newburg, their de facto leader, wasn't with those two, but all the Septimontiums were after them. He had to trust this was making her safer.
At any rate, their objective was Bad Garage in the subway tunnels.
But the threat presented by Septimontium was very real. Ignore them for even a moment and they were dead.
Quenser pressed his forehead against the top of Putana's head and clenched his teeth.
"We'll have to take a gamble somewhere."
"Teacher?"
"Heivia, Myonri! Keep driving, but get ready to attack. On my mark, target the Septimontiums behind us. You don't have to twist around and aim a gun at them - pulling the pin from a grenade and tossing it behind you is enough to hit them. Get ready!!"
"Wait, are you serious, Quenser?" said Heivia.
"Quenser, are you planning to blow up those reactors in the city!?" said Myonri.
"This isn't about the reactors! And use smoke grenades!!"
Just as they took a sharp turn, Heivia and Myonri both dropped a metal can to the pavement. Colored smoke rapidly spread out behind them.
This was in the middle of a curve and the Septimontiums used thin legs to hop around instead of using continuous tracks or wheels. Needless to say, they had no way of course correcting if they left the ground after misjudging their route.
Flailing their tail around wasn't enough to regain their balance. With nothing to grab onto, they were helpless.
"Eek!!"
Myonri's shoulders shrank down. They heard a deafening crash as one of the Objects failed to make the turn and broke through the wall of a belltower, embedding itself in the building.
"S-something's coming. Ahh!?"
Furious, another Object jumped up to a building rooftop, passed by Quenser's group, and then hopped back down onto the road ahead of them. It was blocking their way ahead while its friends pursued them from behind.
Heivia's chicken spirit kicked in and he started to step on the brake, so Quenser slammed the sole of his boot against the streamlined chassis of his friend's snowmobile-like one-person vehicle.
"Don't chicken out!! Stop and they'll catch up and kill you for sure. Putana, keep us going straight!!"
"You can't be serious..." protested Heivia.
"Oh, and you'll have to figure out how to survive on your own. I don't really have a plan for that part."
"You can't be seriousssssssssssssss!!!"
Heivia and Myonri's one-person vehicles parted to the left and right to pass by near the building walls. The Object wasn't sure which one to block on the wide road. Meanwhile, Putana's motorcycle drove straight down the center.
The whip-like tail swept by right next to Quenser's ear.
Putana tilted the motorcycle to skillfully slip between the insect legs like a baseball player sliding into base.
Quenser threw something while passing below the Object.
The clay-like item was a bomb with an electric fuse attached.
After seeing the clay stick, he hit the switch on his radio, detonating it. He was after one of the long, skinny legs, not the reactor. Since those legs were filled with machinery and heavy-duty springs, there couldn't be room left for thick armor.
He didn't even need to look back. One of the legs bent at an unnatural angle, the joint was crushed, and the Septimontium tilted like a table with a broken leg.
Another two Objects tackled the disabled one out of the way and continued pursuit.
There wasn't even time to cheer. Myonri raised her voice nearly to a scream.
"A-aren't those Objects operated by Pilot Elites!? How can they just shove one aside like that!?"
"Knowing the Faith Organization, the spirit of martyrdom is part of their training. Anyway, turn left next, Putana. We can get underground there!! Heivia, Myonri, you two find your own entry routes!!"
Some plywood formed a ramp up to the short curb of a flowerbed. Some local kids may have placed it there for their skateboards, but Putana used it to send the motorcycle into a jump that exceeded anything the vehicle had been designed for.
They cleared a metal fence and landed on the subway track situated a level below the road. Putana shouted back some useful advice during their moment of airtime.
"Teacher, keep your mouth shut and try not to bite your tongue."
"Wahhh, Putana!"
"You don't get to be a spoiled child just because you're scared!!"
After clinging to the girl's hips and sniffing her hair in fear, a sharp impact hit him from below. They had landed on the tracks, but they couldn't afford to slow down. Putana sent the motorcycle full speed into the tunnel entrance.
"I-I can't believe you, teacher! Do you have no shame at all? How can you act so weak and childish around a younger girl!? Really, I just can't believe you!!"
"Huh? Am I imagining it or is your pulse speeding up?"
"Bffff!! You are most definitely imagining it! Wh-why would you ever think otherwise!?"
The underground area had a different aesthetic from the cross-flooded surface. The tunnel had concrete walls and evenly-spaced support pillars, but those pillars had white goddess statues alongside them. They were probably designed after Roman mythology. Some might have even been from an older minor religion that Quenser wasn't even familiar with.
"Welcome to the underground ruins dungeon."
"Ahem. Rome was famous for its public baths, right? Where do we find one of those?"
"Oh? I sense a bath with Putana in my future☆"
"Say something that repulsive again and I really will push you off without slowing down, teacher!!"
Then a maintenance door burst open on the wall nearby. Heivia and Myonri's one-person vehicles emerged after taking a bumpy ride down the stairs.
"Hey, Quenser! Where're the Septimontiums!? How many are after you!?"
"Odd... None of them are. But the tunnel entrance should have been big enough for them."
Just then, they heard a warning whistle and a sharp light shined straight out at them.
"Kyah!!"
"Watch out!"
Putana, Heivia, and Myonri all swerved over toward the walls, somehow avoiding the train that caught them by surprise. Even the blast of wind it caused felt like it was going to knock them off balance and make them crash into the wall. And this close, the arms and legs of the goddess statues were frightening indeed.
Then Quenser realized the truth.
"The tunnel itself is big enough, but they can't avoid the trains."
"Yeah, those things are 10m spheres, so that's their width too. They can't move over to the wall like we can."
They heard screaming metal behind them.
The Septimontiums were horrific things that used their extraordinary weapons to bind the people's hearts with fear, but they were still an official Faith Organization fighting force. That meant the government was on their side. They must have put in a call and had the trains stopped.
But this still gave Quenser's group some time.
They had to use that time to put as much distance between them as possible.
"Heivia, let's focus back on our original job here. Bad Garage is trying to detonate a reactor deep underground to trigger an artificial earthquake so they can plunge Rome into a sea of lava. They need to reach a depth of at least 60m for that, so what parts of these subway tunnels meet that condition?"
"Just one. But if the Septimontiums aren't watching right now, we can lose them. These tunnels are spread out like an ant colony down here. The odds are slim they'll find us if they have to search this labyrinth without any clues."
That was good news.
Luring the Septimontiums toward Bad Garage to let the Objects do the job for them was always an option, but there were too many uncertainties to risk it. They couldn't have the dumb defense unit blowing up the reactor along with Bad Garage, triggering the artificial earthquake themselves. And if the bottom-level terrorists did somehow manage to defeat a Septimontium or two, that would only give them more reactors to detonate. Those Objects had thrown out their nuke resistance, which was supposed to be their biggest selling point, to cram themselves into these narrow tunnels, so who could say what would happen now.
The baggage boy seated on the back of the motorcycle continued talking like he was actually important.
"Then let's start on our real job and treat those terrorists to a pummeling. We owe Bad Garage for what they did to us at the start of this whole mess, so let's go repay them with interest."
Part 11
They needed to reach a depth of at least 60m.
Heivia guided them through subway tunnels decorated with the ruins of a religion predating the cross. They stopped their motorcycle and snowmobile-like one-person vehicles a short distance away from their destination. They of course kept them near the wall so they wouldn't be in the way if the trains started back up.
"Th-this place feels different from before. These goddess statues aren't Roman mythology, are they?"
"These are from before Greek mythology was mixed in. We might be seeing older ruins the deeper we go."
Myonri and Putana held an intellectual conversation, but the two sweaty idiots didn't have rich enough minds to observe the ruins and ponder ancient religions.
They were focused on the more immediate problem.
"How did Bad Garage get the reactor down this far? Their truck couldn't have been small."
"They probably held a lighter to the ceiling to activate the fire alarm. The tunnels down here are like an ant colony, remember? So there are plenty of ways to keep the trains from passing through a specific section. The trains get stopped all the time, so no one will even question trouble that causes a 5 or 10 minute delay."
Quenser pulled some Hand Axe from his backpack and molded a ball a little larger than a chicken egg. The Faith Organization had been pursuing them before, but they had no data on what kind of weaponry Bad Garage used. And based on Bad Garage's actions, it was unlikely they were going to like the answer.
"This is an enclosed tunnel, so I so hope it isn't gas or a bioweapon."
"Teacher, couldn't they have sowed chaos through Rome much more easily if they had toys like that? They need to use an Object component to bring down the home country, but they could have still made things easier for themselves before reaching that point."
"Good point."
Quenser recalled how Bad Garage had in fact used cruise missiles and FAE bombs. He doubted they would have kept anything in reserve at that point.
"What's your guess, Putana?"
"In an enclosed tunnel? A flamethrower scares me the most."
"Dammit, can't I at least get a painless death!?"
Quenser and Putana continued their conversation while Heivia and Myonri opened up black plastic items resembling bento boxes. No, after spinning them around like butterfly knives, they transformed into T-shaped submachineguns. Hiding guns below casual clothing wasn't easy.
Meanwhile, Putana's weapon of choice was a combat knife with a blade length of more than 40cm. Just as Quenser wondered if she was a close-quarters combat specialist, he noticed two small holes in the grip. It included a gimmick that fired a bullet in the direction the blade was pointing.
After walking a bit further down the underground tunnel full of ancient goddess statues, the brown girl came to a stop.
"I sense some eyes."
"Kh."
"But not human ones. They might have mechanical sensors set up."
This didn't appear to be a standard security camera. It stood on a tripod near the wall to avoid being hit by a train. It was probably a Bad Garage toy. Putana led them along the opposite wall so they could get past without entering its "field of view" and then they circled behind the tripod and yanked out the cable to silence the sensor so they didn't have to worry about it if they needed to make a quick getaway. All the goddess statues provided plenty of hiding spots as they advanced.
They were entering Bad Garage territory now.
The tension grew while Heivia and Myonri moved out ahead with their full-auto guns at the ready.
Quenser looked back at the sensor he had disabled himself.
"They must not have all that many people. Sadly, a living guard is a lot cheaper than a high-quality sensor. They're using money to replace old-fashioned manpower."
"Convenient fantasies can grow without you realizing it. And then they cloud your vision. 'Probably' is fine, but avoid assuming something 'must be true'. Your own delusion could get you killed."
They took out a few more sensors on tripods or duct taped to the ceiling as they continued down the dimly-lit tunnel. Without advice from Putana based on her scopophobia, they would have been caught at some point.
And...
"There they are, " said Heivia, coming to a stop and hiding behind a goddess statue by the wall.
About 50m ahead, they could see something else moving across the tunnel: human silhouettes. They doubted this was just some tourists who had gotten lost down here. These silhouettes moved in groups of two, wore night-vision goggles over their eyes, and held weapons equipped with suppressers larger than a 2-liter drink bottle. Their PDWs were more compact than an A4 sheet of paper and they had forcibly attached suppressors larger than the weapons themselves. The PDWs were highly functional and looked somehow futuristic, but at that small size, a large man had to hunch his back when holding it against his shoulder. You couldn't actually hold one of those in each hand and fire them with arms extended like the star of an action movie.
"(Their 'eyes' are missing us. They're passing right over us. )"
But that didn't mean they could raise a war cry and charge in guns blazing. They didn't know how many of them there were, how far along they were on prepping the reactor for detonation, or anything for that matter. Did Bad Garage even value their own lives? In the worst case, they could trigger the explosion as soon as they spotted intruders.
After following Putana's instructions and waiting for the group of two to leave, Quenser's group approached a maintenance door on the wall. The subway tunnels were spread out like an ant colony, but there were also connecting corridors and small rooms for workers not found on the subway maps. Finding another way around was easy.
After circling around in a large fan shape, they spotted a few more guards. By observing the distribution of guards, they could find the central point Bad Garage hoped to hide.
The reactor would be there.
"(Based on the distribution we've seen, there are probably 20 or 30 of them. And no periodic radio-ins. Those tripods had communication cables laid out on the ground, right? Their radios can't reach in these thick tunnels. )"
"Meaning?"
"We can kill them and the rest won't notice. Now's our chance."
It was time for a war of courage and kindness.
Heivia and Myonri aimed their T-shaped submachineguns from a distance, but they were only there for support if things went wrong. They weren't equipped with suppressors like Bad Garage was, so a single shot would be loud enough to raise the alarm. Instead, Putana made sure there were no eyes on her, snuck up behind the pair of guards, and used her knife to stab them in the back and slit their throat in the blink of an eye.
That Elite fought in a different way from the Princess and Oh Ho Ho.
"All done, teacher."
"I'll help."
They wrapped the bodies up in a blue tarp found nearby and dragged them over into a transformer work room. They couldn't fully get the pool of blood off the floor, so they instead covered it up with a new construction tarp. Heivia and Myonri removed the thick suppressors from the enemy weapons and used duct tape to affix them to their own weapons.
"Those aren't the right size connector. Are you sure that will work?"
"It's better than nothing. This should help more than holding a pillow over the muzzle."
They had a lot more options with the guns available to them
This was the enemy's territory, so the enemy would have the advantage in a direct firefight. But if they used Putana's ability to sense people's gazes and only made surprise attacks from the enemy's blind spots, they could take out Bad Garage before the enemy could even counterattack. Putana's ability to sense gazes was extremely valuable since it gave a surprise attack a nearly 100% success rate.
"Nope, doesn't work."
Quenser had bent over and checked through the corpses' equipment. The enemy did have radios on them, but as Heivia had predicted, they only produced static. The enemy's inability to communicate in these deep tunnels was a good thing, but that also made it harder to get a read on Bad Garage's overall movements.
How close were they to detonating the reactor? How did they intend to detonate it without functioning radios?
"U-um, there's something...up ahead."
Jack-of-all-trades Myonri had pulled the short straw yet again.
More than 30m ahead was a junction where several tunnels intersected. This was the only place this deep, so did the tracks converge in a bowl shape? The space was a lot wider open than one would expect for that. It wasn't a bad spot to leave a 10m ball. None of the trains would hit it while it was there.
The goddess statues and decorative marble columns may have been moved to clear out that wide a space.
Putana pushed her binoculars into Quenser's hands.
"Teacher."
"Looks like there's a digital timer on it. so is it timed? But that might not be the only trigger. They might be able to flip a switch to detonate it right away in an emergency. Either way, the countdown has already begun. That means it's ready to detonate at any time."
However.
That was not what Myonri had been talking about.
An oblong piece of metal had come to an emergency stop in that wide-open space. It was a train. It must have been stopped to allow the Septimontiums into the tunnel, but this was not a cargo train. It was an ordinary subway train. That meant it had lots of windows along the side, revealing an array of worried faces.
A quick estimate suggested 100 to 200 passengers.
Armed men slowly circled that large cage full of hostages.
From this side, they could see five teams of two. They could get more accurate if they had Putana check the number of eyes, but there were probably more than just those ten. Myonri tearfully looked down at her submachinegun. That was too many to take out with just two submachineguns. And if a single one of them escaped, they could start slaughtering the hostages or just detonate the reactor.
Quenser found it curious that the guards were only around the train and none were inside the train itself. Was there some reason they didn't want to be in there? Had they maybe installed bombs on each car's ceiling to prevent a revolt?
Whatever the case, Heivia summed up the situation nicely.
"Well, this sucks."
Just then, Quenser grimaced. Then he took a closer look through the binoculars.
"Teacher?"
Putana was unique even among Elites for her ability to sense the number and direction of people's gazes. That sense was limited to any eyes on her, but she may have been able to tell Quenser wasn't observing the reactor or the guards.
He was observing the train. There was a small boy among all the hostages looking worriedly out the window. His artificial vision analyzed the lip movements and displayed the words as text.
"They do exist."
The boy was clutching something tight.
Had he bought it at a festival stall, or was it part of a costume? Regardless, it was a cheap hero mask. He would be here for the carnival, after all. The child clutched it tight and stared out the window.
The binoculars converted his lips movements into words.
Those words were displayed at the bottom of Quenser's vision like a movie's subtitles.
The train had come to a sudden stop. Their lives were at the mercy of an armed group. The Faith Organization military and police showed no sign of coming to rescue them. Work was underway to detonate a bomb large enough to submerge Rome in a sea of lava. No one could have blamed the boy for losing all faith in the world.
Quenser's group was only here to stop the destruction of Rome.
If they were forced to choose between the reactor and the train, they would have to choose the reactor. That might seem sensible, but this was not their city and they were still the kind of bastards who deserved to be spat on.
And yet.
Even so.
"Heroes do exist."
Quenser Barbotage sighed and lowered the binoculars.
He stared straight ahead and spoke to the others.
"You heard the boy. Raise your hand if you wanna be a hero."
"Of course we're all going, dammit."
Part 12
The situation was as follows:
First, the JPlevelMHD reactor was extremely delicate when not contained in an Object. A careless firefight or explosion could trigger it, covering Rome in a sea of lava.
Second, between 100 and 200 passengers and crew had been taken hostage inside the stopped train. At least 5 pairs of guards surrounded the train and there were likely more. If even one of those was missed, they would almost certainly start firing in through the train's windows. And the lack of guards inside the train suggested there might be a booby trap inside.
So Quenser's group needed a plan.
The needed to come up with a way to take out the entire Bad Garage unit without giving them a chance to counterattack.
Maybe they felt out of place and maybe this didn't feel like their job, but it was time to play the hero, at least for now.
"Will this really work?" asked Heivia.
"They're all pointed in the same direction, but this is still an enclosed tunnel, " explained Quenser."It will affect us to an extent, so find us somewhere to hide."
The student unreeled a long cable. With their radios not working, they needed a wired detonation method.
Yes, detonation.
But they weren't approaching the enemy, setting up bombs, and then slaughtering the Bad Garage bad guys with explosive flames and sharp shrapnel. That could easily detonate the reactor and any guards on the other side of the train could survive.
Quenser himself had hinted at what they were really doing.
They were inside an enclosed tunnel.
"Teacher."
"The pressure calculations check out, so we're all ready. What, our shelter is a supply closet?"
It was a storeroom about half the size of a school classroom.
Quenser finished laying out the long cable and stepped through the metal door's threshold to approach Putana. He had to close the door on the cable, but that was fine as long as it could still carry a current. He closed the door gently to make sure he didn't break the actual wire inside the thick cable. Fortunately, this wasn't a macaroni-like fiber optic cable.
They couldn't see anything now.
But the enemy's location was irrelevant. If their attack covered the entire space, Bad Garage had no way to escape.
Their plan was to use a long-distance detonation.
They sent a shockwave down the enclosed tunnel like cleaning a bath pipe.
They heard a loud boom and the closed metal door bent inwards. The world seemed to shake around Quenser. The shockwave would always travel down the path of least resistance, but it still affected them somewhat.
Quenser couldn't support his own weight and leaned against the wall while shaking his head to try and stop the ringing in his ears.
"Go, Heivia, Myonri!! The stun effect of the shockwave rattling their inner ear won't last long. You have less than 30 seconds, so shoot them all now!!"
They had trouble getting the bent door open, but the pair armed with submachineguns still charged out into the tunnel. Quenser followed after them with Putana lending him her shoulder.
Whichever side of the train the guards were on, the shockwave and rapid pressure change would have stunned them. When an extreme pressure change filled an entire space, you couldn't escape just by hiding behind an obstacle. And none of the Bad Garage unit had been inside the train. The hostages wouldn't be affected since they were safely enclosed in that sealed space and a simple pressure change wouldn't cause the reactor to explode.
The dull sounds of suppressed gunfire signaled the beginning of the slaughter. Heivia and Myonri unilaterally fired into the heads and chests of the soldiers lying unmoving on the ground, so the civilians on the train might have viewed them as the villains here. But it was game over if even one of those terrorists got up like a not-quite-dead worm. So many lives would be lost if they started firing on either the train full of hostages or the reactor.
Quenser chose to accept the people's screams and disgust.
Putana continued to lend him her shoulder while raising her combat knife and firing one of the bullets hidden in its grip into the head of a soldier the other two had missed.
"Someone is pretending to be dead. I still sense someone's living eyes on me!!"
The student's inner ear had finally recovered.
He could walk without Putana's support now, but the same applied to Bad Garage. If he could walk, they would have recovered as well.
A soldier tried to press some kind of switch with trembling fingers.
(They aren't trying to show off their technological prowess to the military or the police and they weren't trying to drive terror into the people by making something that can't be disarmed. This shouldn't be a complex puzzle of a bomb!!)
Quenser tore the digital timer from the round reactor. He threw it away just as Heivia's submachinegun shot through the last remaining survivor's head.
Blinding white sparks scattered across the floor. The thick metal rail had been melted by a great heat. A moment later and the reactor's exterior would have been melted through and the plasma within would have burst out.
"Are we clear now!?"
"I think so. But the hostages are still trapped! The guards were staying off the train for some reason and we haven't checked it for booby traps yet. It might blow up the instant we manually open the door!!"
Quenser cautiously checked through the window and then climbed below the train. There it was. Some colorful cords were tangled around the metal tank for the air compressor used to open and close the automatic door. It would indeed blow up the instant the door opened.
(Bad Garage wouldn't have expected these hostages. The one on the reactor was simple, so they wouldn't have had a bomb covered in a mess of cords like you see in the movies. )
He gulped and got to work. Bad Garage must have only cared that the hostages inside the train couldn't deactivate it. He used a tester to check the current in the cords and then removed a clothespin-like clip to release the dangerous cord.
And he didn't need to open all of the train's doors. As long as one of them was safe, all the hostages could move between cars and escape from here.
Quenser operated the emergency release lever to force the door open from outside, gestured, and spoke in the Legitimacy Kingdom language.
"Take it slow and one at a time!! There's a drop to the ground, so watch your step!!"
The people inside seemed nervous. They were afraid to approach the door, but they had no reason to stay inside now that it was open. They all hesitated while the small boy nearest the door nervously approached Quenser.
Quenser smiled and tried to be reassuring.
"Let's get you all back home. So did we pull off the hero thing here?"
From the corner of his eye, he noticed Putana wrinkle her brow in doubt.
The square panel of a maintenance hatch rose up on the train's floor near the boy.
"Teacher!! There's more of them!!"
Something was thrown out of the open door.
The metal can was a stun grenade with the pin removed.
Any Bad Garage survivors would try to detonate the reactor.
They hadn't seen any guards entering or leaving the train and they had found bombs on the doors, so they had assumed no one from Bad Garage was on the train.
Hadn't Heivia said "probably" is fine, but avoid assuming something "must be true"?
"Oh, shi-"
If only they hadn't all been focused on the one open door. A magnesium flash filled the tunnel and the entire Legitimacy Kingdom's group had their vision and hearing knocked out.
Part 13
How much time was actually taken from him?
30 seconds? More than a minute? Quenser's senses were blown away and his panicked mind lost track of time. In an ordinary life back in a safe country, that might have been an insignificant amount of time, but it was a very long time indeed during a battle with guns aimed at each other. That kind of time was enough to turn things around when outnumbered. The last remaining member of Bad Garage would be able to shoot each member of Quenser's group one at a time.
Quenser focused on his backpack while trying to grab the boy and turn around to protect the boy with his back, but he wasn't even sure of that. His eyes and ears weren't working and his mind was so confused he couldn't even feel the boy he knew had to be in his arms.
A flat white afterimage sat before his eyes for quite a while.
And eventually...
"Gh..."
He heard a muffled bloody groan.
But it didn't come from his own mouth.
At close range - truly less than a meter - the man who had thrown the stun grenade from the maintenance hatch was doubled over and unmoving.
Quenser had never seen the young man before.
Putana had immediately readied her combat knife at her hip and then stabbed him in the side.
That special Elite could sense people's gazes, so had she approached the source of that young man's gaze even with her traditional senses knocked out?
He could have aimed directly at Quenser, but he must have also glanced over at the others, including Putana.
At first, he stared down at his own wound in disbelief.
Then he silently looked up and smiled at Quenser directly in front of him. He held a switch in his hand. Radios generally didn't work in the tunnel, but they worked just fine when only a few meters away from the target.
"Happy...new world, " said the smiling young man.
Quenser used a hand to cover the eyes of the boy in his arms.
A dry gunshot rang out.
With the blade still stabbed deep in his side, Putana had pulled the small clasp-like trigger on the knife's grip to fire a bullet directly into him. The impact knocked him away, forcibly pulling the knife from him. Its serrated back widened the wound further.
The young man collapsed on his side and Quenser kicked some kind of switch away from him.
He did not get back up.
But he did speak through a bloody smile.
"If you...pursued us this far...you must understand this world is built on lies."
"Who are you?"
"Just a nobody from Deyeria Village. A village destroyed by the earthquake and lava of an Object disaster."
Quenser had never heard of that.
It had never been mentioned before.
Not the disaster and not the village.
The young man had smiled thinly. Maybe this was why. He had already lost everything he had hoped to protect, so he had nothing left to lose. So he had hoped to cause a disaster in a home country to force everyone to look at the thing they were all trying so hard to ignore.
"It's your turn to suffer now."
"This is already over. This wasn't even a war. The higher ups are starting to realize what the Objects are doing to our planet, so sooner or later they will start to work to prevent it. This won't turn into a global disaster like you think it will."
"That's where you're wrong. An Object disaster is coming to Rome."
Quenser glanced over at the reactor. He had removed the detonator, but he was not a bomb squad expert. There was always a chance there was a second or third detonator.
But the young man rejected that idea.
"That was just insurance. Detonating that was our Plan B if things didn't go as planned. We'd have a hard time claiming one of those 200 thousand ton behemoths did it if we just detonated a reactor, right? So that wasn't Plan A."
"What? You've still got something else up your sleeve!?"
"Wait, Heivia. He's already dying. You can't treat him too roughly."
Myonri quickly stopped the pissed noble. But she wasn't particularly worried about this villain's rights - she just didn't want him to die before they got more information out of him.
"You can find plenty of mineral springs around Rome. That means there's a lot of magma spread out across a wide area underground. Rome is an unstable area since it shares the same magma reservoir as Mount Vesuvius."
But the young man made no attempt to hide it.
Did that mean it was too late to stop it?
"We only needed to gather enough Objects here. Septimontium wasn't enough since they only follow their rails or separate their reactor for greater mobility. So we needed to create a reason for the other world powers to send in their own Objects."
"You don't mean..." Quenser understood now."The Princess and Oh Ho Ho were the real trigger!?"
Once they arrived on land, the water filling the cup to the brim would overflow. A single extra drop would exceed the surface tension's limits and ruin everything.
Quenser grabbed his radio and shouted into it.
"This is Quenser! Princess, can you hear me!? Princess, Baby Magnum!! Dammit!?"
The young man smiled thinly from the ground.
He knew radio signals were useless in these thick tunnels. Especially if you hoped to contact the surface.
"Checkmate."
Something shook. The ground disconcertingly pushed up below their feet.
"Happy...new world. Now we've rid the world of its lies. Welcome to a new, more transparent world. No one will ever believe the great scam of the clean wars again."
"..."
"Drown in the true face of war - an endless world war."
Part 14
"?"
The Baby Magnum's naval floats had been removed, so it began traveling inland from the mouth of the Tiber. The Rush didn't need to swap out floats since it used an air cushion, so it had started toward Rome earlier.
(She went on ahead, so I hope she at least took out one enemy Object for me. No, better not get my hopes up. Counting on her shoddy skills is just asking for disappointment. )
"Oh ho ho. You weren't thinking something rude just now, were you?"
"Why do you keep talking to me? Are you lonely?"
The Princess and Oh Ho Ho were not alone. They could also see a few Capitalist Corporations Second Generations like the Under Gate and the Bullet Lens. The Faith Organization had also sent in the Zombie Powder and the Blast Samurai as ace Objects meant to defend against "unauthorized peace-keeping activities"....Although calling in such impressive reinforcements showed just how little the Faith Organization actually trusted Septimontium.
At any rate, all four world powers had gathered here.
Rome had become as much of a tinderbox as that Oceanian military nation. Altogether, there had to be more than 20 Objects present.
Just then, the Princess noted a few small oddities.
She initially thought her sensors were acting up. Her static electricity propulsion device moved her 200 thousand ton Object by having it float. She assumed the maintenance soldiers had been in such a rush to remove the naval float that they had bumped some of the laser sensors that measured the contours of the terrain.
But she was wrong.
The distortion was growing. It was no longer just an "oddity". The ground was shaking. And not just below the Baby Magnum. It was shaking as far as the eye could see.
"Oh ho ho. Wh-wh-wh-what is happening here!?"
"Is it shaking there too?"
It reached what she assumed had to be the peak and then continued to grow. She felt instinctual fear clutching her heart even as she sat in the cockpit of a nuke-resistant Object. She pictured this as a fatal blow. It was a lot like the unimaginable pain that kept growing when you were stabbed with a knife or shot with a gun.
"Is this the Objects' great weight causing a-"
"Stop, you stupid Information Alliance commander! Letting them know about that won't improve their situation!!"
Frolaytia's panicked response was all the confirmation the Princess needed.
She hadn't been wrong at all.
This was a fatal blow to the planet itself.
The limit had finally been reached. The planet's thick crust couldn't bear the shaking and shattered.
In other words, the ground itself split open and orange lava spewed from the depths.
On that day, the Faith Organization's home country was wiped from the world map.
| ← Ch. 173 | Ch. 175 → |