novelThus Spoke the End >> *No Mission Name Set Due to Confusion in the Chain of Command (2)
| ← Ch.179 | Ch.181 → |
(Based on her gait and eye movements, she must be Faith Organization. But she isn't an ordinary soldier. Maybe an intelligence agent and maybe a commando. No, I know the answer. She isn't using a radio and has cut off all EM signals, so the countdown has already begun. Is she going to blow up crucial infrastructure, or just throw a case of gas into the crowd? Whatever it is, she's here to do something in Paris. If this is her final preparations before the attack, then the attack should be in less than half an hour. )
Catherine Barbotage was hesitant to swipe a gun from a passerby.
Instead, she pulled out her handkerchief, neatly wrapped that around the grip of a thick Phillips screwdriver lying on the ground, and stabbed it twice into the side of the undercover soldier as she passed by.
Catherine had made the attack, but she was the one to grimace.
She hadn't felt it pierce flesh.
"!?"
They both made and blocked a few quick arm and leg attacks before backing away from each other. Catherine had grabbed the collar of the woman's blouse to throw her, but the collar had instead torn away, revealing the glint of synthetic fibers below. She recognized that formfitting material.
It was green, the Faith Organization's color.
That was a Pilot Elite's special suit.
"The same as me!?" said Catherine, switching to a backhand grip on the screwdriver.
She heard several footsteps and found she was surrounded by several people. She could see four, but she assumed there had to be more in total. If all of their bodies were artificially boosted to Elite standards, then every part of them would be customized. Increased muscular strength and oxygen-carrying capacity of the blood was only the starting point. Their blood vessels, muscles, and nerves would of course be strengthened, but knowing the Faith Organization, they would have been given special traits and talents like perfect pitch, spatial cognizance, or atmospheric pressure sensing. Some of those abilities were practically occult, like sensing the weather and predicting death.
Catherine still saw the lazy Sunday afternoon out of the corners of her eyes. A small child ran around with a balloon, an old woman was taking her dog for a walk, and the Barbotage couple were watching her in ignorant confusion from a short distance away.
They were all in range of a stray bullet, so Catherine could not back down. She re-judged her distance from the enemy with screwdriver in hand.
"So you too have abandoned your humanity." The woman did not say anything out loud, but the movements of her lips passed a death sentence."If you had noticed before your attack, you could have fled without looking back. That might have saved your life."
In a populated area, an opponent like this could be more dangerous than a tank or attack helicopter.
Catherine Barbotage was the same, so she knew that all too well.
But these people differed from Catherine in one key way. They felt no qualms about using guns in a safe country.
Part 10
They couldn't find them.
They had gathered their 8-wheeled armored trucks and searched the shortest route from Charles de Gaulle Airport to Paris, but Quenser and Heivia hadn't found anyone suspicious. They were about to arrive at the entrance to Paris.
"What the hell are we supposed to do now!?"
The Legitimacy Kingdom military had surreptitiously set up a checkpoint they hoped wouldn't alert the city's people that anything was wrong and the soldiers there were shocked to see the potatoes arriving. It didn't look like they had found the commandos and prevented their entry.
The Faith Organization had the upper hand.
"I'll be borrowing this."
"Wait, Major!? Hey, you there! Put together a bodyguard team immediately!"
Frolaytia grabbed a large anti-materiel rifle and hopped out of the truck, so her secretary-like aide quickly called in some of the surrounding infantry.
But there was a good reason for even their commander to join the search.
The Faith Organization commandos had to have some kind of target in mind. If the Legitimacy Kingdom soldiers couldn't catch up to them and stop them before the attack began, an ultra-long-range plasma attack capable of turning 20km to scorched earth would fall into the center of Paris.
Their mobile devices must not have been working with all their satellites shot down because fluffy blonde Elise Montana spread out a paper map before explaining the situation.
"We can safely assume the Faith Organization commandos are inside Paris. We can start by getting inside and raising the security level. Then we will request a siren be sounded to inform the people."
"They would notice that!!"
"If they could attack right away, they would have done so already. They haven't, which means they have some reason for waiting. Our top priority is to flush out the shadows lurking in the city. And no matter how much these spies have trained with VR goggles or in a fake city built out in the middle of nowhere, they will make a mistake if caught up in an irregular accident their training didn't cover. So hurry."
That last sentence was directed at the checkpoint guards who blocked the main road into the city. One of them nervously spoke into their radio and a deep, low noise began to play from all the disaster speakers installed throughout the city.
Heivia drove into Paris behind the wheel of an 8-wheel armored truck and used the side mirror (forcibly attached to make it street legal) to glance back at Frolaytia who was waving with the hand not resting an anti-materiel rifle on her shoulder.
"Our supposedly peaceful home country has an air raid siren going off and all four world powers are gathering Objects here." Heivia impatiently clenched his teeth."It's exactly the same. We're on track to be a repeat of Rome."
"That's probably what the Faith Organization wants, " calmly noted Black Uniform Charlotte Zoom, making Heivia wonder whose side she was on.
Meanwhile, Quenser frowned.
"But what's keeping the Faith Organization from attacking now? We know they got into Paris ahead of us, so they should be free to act."
"The Round Table." Heivia sounded disgusted."Don't let the courageous name fool you. It's actually a set of 10 underground shelters distributed across Paris. Board the elevators behind barriers cleverly hidden around the city and you're in for a freefall straight down a 5000m shaft. I think it only takes 180 seconds to reach the bottom."
"I've never heard of that."
"Of course you haven't. A smalltime regional king wouldn't even know about it. Did you forget I'm heir to the great Winchell family? I know all sorts of dirty secrets about Paris. For example, the Legitimacy Kingdom only gives a crap about bloodline and history, so they never even tried to ensure the millions of commoners here would be safe. They just made sure a few dozen from noble bloodlines would be saved. God, just makes me want to punch them."
Devastating losses would be answered with more devastating losses.
The Faith Organization no longer cared who was responsible. They just wanted to take someone else down with them.
If Rome could never be rebuilt, then they would do so much damage to Paris that it would never recover either. No, if they could pull it off, they would also want to cross the ocean and take out the Information Alliance's New York and the Capitalist Corporations' Los Angeles. So they had decided blowing away the surface of the city wasn't enough.
Quenser couldn't believe what he was hearing.
"So...what? Are they in Paris surveying the city?"
"I bet they're seeing where they can plant their explosives to do the most damage to their 10 targets and crush those VIP chickens under the collapsing bedrock. You love that kind of thing, don't you?"
"Then they might be using elastic wave exploration, " groaned Charlotte Zoom."You open a long, narrow hole in the ground with a metal spike, shove explosives inside, and create a powerful vibration underground. By picking up the reflected waves, you can figure out the quality, quantity, and deviation of underground materials....And with that kind of delicate work, you want a peaceful city more than a pile of rubble that could trigger a secondary explosion at any time."
The asphalt and stone pavement looked solid, but a hole several meters deep could be automatically created in just a few minutes using specialized electric-powered equipment. In a city, they would have to locate and account for any other vibration sources, such as sewers and boilers, but that wouldn't require all that much more time.
Also, it didn't particularly matter to Quenser's group if that work was done correctly or not.
If the Faith Organization commandos ended up with a completely mistaken idea of where the shelters were located, they would still be ordering an ultra-high-temperature plasma blast from the distance. The emperor trembling in his new clothes deep underground might survive, but the more than 3 million people living on the surface would all be engulfed in flames.
"The Faith Organization can go to whatever hell they believe in. If it hurt that bad to see Rome drowning on lava, why would they want to force that pain onto us?"
"Wouldn't you feel the same way if it was done to you? Not that sharing that experience is going to help us get along."
All of a sudden, Quenser ducked down on instinct.
A fighter with a distinctive silhouette had just flown by directly above their armored truck. Several of them had.
They had lost air superiority over their own home country.
The Black Uniform woman's eyes widened.
"Zig-27s!? Those were Capitalist Corporations fighters!!"
"Shut up! Quit explaining how screwed we are and do something to avoid it! Get outta the truck unless you're interested in having your bones roasted to a nice crispy brown. The bombs will hit in 3!!"
Quenser was hesitant to jump after seeing the asphalt rushing by below, so his awful friend roughly grabbed his collar.
Heivia and the others opened the still-moving armored truck's doors and hatch and forcibly rolled on out. They didn't have time to escape indoors, so they got down on the street and covered their heads with their hands.
Aerial bombs dropped from almost directly overhead.
Red hot shrapnel broke all the nearby building windows. The truck was flimsier than a full-on tank, but it was still a sturdy vehicle. Nevertheless, its eight wheels flew off in different directions.
"Gahhh!!"
"Kh...this is our home country. What are our Objects doing?"
Needless to say, those fighters couldn't have been flying overhead if any anti-air lasers were aiming their way, yet the Capitalist Corporations squadron of 4 Zig-27s made a sharp turn in the sky.
Elise waved something in her hand while down on the ground with her other hand over her head and her butt sticking up in the air.
It was a radio.
"N-no response."
"..."
"Communications are down. But not because we're being jammed. Th-the home country defense Objects were taken out at some point!! Something bad is happening out there!!"
Part 11
The Strait of Dover, located between Great Britain and the west end of Eurasia, was about 39km wide. That was downright cramped for a part of the ocean and it had even been used for events where people attempted to be the first to swim across, ride a balloon across, or whatever else.
In this case, it may have been praiseworthy that the Object didn't scrape up against the edges.
A dull roar reverberated across the ocean as history was made.
This extraordinary Object measured more than 20km long. It was also the central and most populous portion of the Information Alliance home country of New York in the Chesapeake District.
Its name was Manhattan 000.
A combination of factors was to blame for no one noticing something so large approaching. For example, the Legitimacy Kingdom's satellites had all been destroyed in advance. And let's not forget he nightmarish fact that the Manhattan 000's colossal cannon had a greater range than the Legitimacy Kingdom's ground radars.
Also, that cannon was an electromagnetically-launched reactor cannon that directly launched JPlevelMHD reactors.
Also also, it could detonate a reactor in midair in advance and then fire its laser beam cannons to accurately pierce an enemy Object with a laser bent using the same principle as a mirage.
Anyone in position to notice its approach would be eliminated before they could do the noticing.
It had not permitted any observers - not surface facilities, not airborne early-warning system aircraft, not submarines, and not even mobile bases.
By blinding any eye that might see it, even that colossal Object could approach while effectively invisible. It only aimed for radar facilities and wired or wireless communication infrastructure bases, but the phone company's server center was located inside the safe country. It was obvious what would happen if an Object's laser beam or coilgun fired on that.
It didn't care. This had already developed into a world war.
The other two world powers could have ignored it if the Legitimacy Kingdom and Faith Organization would simply duke it out between Paris and Rome, eliminating each other's Objects. But they could not let the flames of war in the musty Old World spread to the peaceful New World.
The Capitalist Corporations had their home country in Los Angeles and the Information Alliance had theirs in New York, so they were strongest in the New World located across the Atlantic.
This was not just the four world powers randomly attacking whoever was within reach. Clear lines were being drawn in this world war. And this wasn't just about the home countries. Battles with little chance at a quick resolution had started up all over the world with no distinction between safe country and battlefield country.
"Hm, hm, hm, hm☆"
A girl's oddly cheerful humming could be heard in a strange city where all the residents were enclosed in what looked like rectangular pieces of hardened jelly.
"This won't work if they shoot down the electromagnetically-launched reactor in midair. 205. Good, good. That won't be a problem if I take out all the Objects waiting around Paris with my bending lasers☆"
She was Martini Series #29.
A young girl with blonde hair and brown skin didn't seem embarrassed about wearing only a two-piece surgical gown made of crimson oil paper while out on a Manhattan street.
In fact, a thrilled tremor ran up her spine.
That little monster had her butt seated inside a giant swim ring filled with a special liquid that slid along like a curling stone. She wore a pair of VR goggles backwards on her head and held a notebook-sized game console in her hands. That genius girl in charge of Manhattan security was named Melly Martini Extradry. And she giggled.
As the head of New York security, the Manhattan 000 belonged to her.
She got help from the Capulet, a massive AI network with its core's location shrouded in mystery, and the two of them would shoot down each other's ideas while piloting the Object, but Melly was ultimately the one in control.
"Lisbon, Madrid, and London have all been disconnected and silenced. Now I can focus on Paris. 824. Are you ready, Legitimacy Kingdom? I'm about to put you in checkmate."
Part 12
"I see you're crazy as ever, Information Alliance."
Mariydi Whitewitch spat out the words while gripping her Zig-27's stick in the sky above Paris. She couldn't have pulled off this pleasure flight if the defense Objects equipped with anti-air lasers hadn't been destroyed, but she wasn't about to feel thankful.
At more than 20km across, the Manhattan was absurdly large. They weren't holding anything back. They had sent their secret weapon to the front line where it continued to blow up ground military facilities from the sea. Even though some of those contained both military and civilian facilities.
"Ice Sword 2 to Ice Girl 1. You're the one who said we could end this global chaos if we did enough damage to Paris fast enough. So harden your heart."
"I'm aware of that!"
This world war was Paris and Rome's business.
The Legitimacy Kingdom had held an operation within Rome without the Faith Organization's permission and the failure of that mission had destroyed their home country. Or so the story went.
At this point, that was only an excuse. The Faith Organization didn't want to fall into last place, so they were probably just attacking the closest enemy.
They had left the truth behind and no one seemed to care.
To repeat, the Faith Organization was just mad that Paris was sitting there so pristine and untouched while Rome had been utterly destroyed. So they were desperate to change that.
That meant the solution was to even out the damage done to both sides. And why bother waiting for the Faith Organization to begin their attack? If Mariydi's squadron flew in and bombed the hell out of Paris first, they would lose their justification for a world war. The Faith Organization was only interested in the total amount of damage done to Paris as a whole. They didn't have any specific people or buildings in mind.
(So if we go in first and attack only military targets and unmanned but critical infrastructure, we can give them the damage they want while keeping civilians casualties to a minimum. That isn't a job for an Object. You need us and our ability to precisely choose and attack specific targets. We haven't done anything wrong here. Not a thing!)
"Ice Burn 4. Wow, Moss Green's paratroopers are jumping!"
The Manhattan's ultra-long-range attack had destroyed the defense Objects, so Mariydi's squadron had gained air superiority without needing to lift a finger. A large, slow Capitalist Corporations transport craft flew across Paris and opened its rear cargo door. That would be carrying 380 elite PMC soldiers equipped with parachutes.
That first wave would secure the surface.
Or it would have if a blinding white beam hadn't sliced the transport craft in two. That was an anti-air laser. Mariydi quickly adjusted her grip on the stick.
"Ice Girl 1 to you assholes in the Information Alliance!! One of the Objects was only pretending to be dead!! I have visual confirmation of the Legitimacy Kingdom Excalibur's survival. Enough shoddy work!! Take them all out this time!!!!!"
"Ice Sword 2 to Ice Girl 1. At least the Legitimacy Kingdom had the good taste to name it after a legendary sword. Anyway, we need to reduce altitude. Okay, everyone, try not to get tangled up in a clothesline covered in lingerie!!"
Part 13
A transport craft exploded in midair, becoming a fireball trailing black smoke.
The smaller dots scattering from it may have been human torches with their parachutes burning.
Heivia threw up his hands and gave a meaningless roar.
"That's what you get, you sh*ts! That fall's gonna last at least 30 seconds, I'll bet. Plenty of time to suffer and regret your actions before you die! No one's gonna pretty you up for a funeral, you greedy assholes!!"
"Uh, Heivia? Their uniforms and parachutes are still on fire. Th-the city is going to burn!!"
The wind carried the charred remains of a Capitalist Corporations soldier so it fell right next to Quenser's group. It made a wet splat and made a puddle of filth, but the fire was still burning. It probably used fuel or something like that. When Quenser looked into the distance again, he could see several pillars of dark smoke rising into the evening sky.
He was at a loss now.
"Where do we even start with cleaning this up? There's the Faith Organization commandos, whatever silenced the defense Objects, and the Capitalist Corporations fighters and transport ship full of paratroopers. Am I forgetting any other problems we have to deal with!?"
"This does not change our initial plans, " said Charlotte Zoom."Our top priority is the Faith Organization. If we do not stop their commandos from acquiring targeting information, Paris will be burned to the ground with a plasma blast. A single shot covers a diameter of 20km!"
With fire truck sirens blaring all over the city, the Black Uniform urged the rest of them to resume their mission. Hadn't Elise Montana said sounding an alarm from the city's disaster speakers would cause those professional spies to panic and give away their position?
They heard a gasping shriek.
A few members of a TV crew were collapsed on a major Paris street. The smell of blood hung in the air. The shriek appeared to have come from a young female reporter who had fallen onto her butt.
Someone whose skin had fused with a melted parachute and military uniform was aiming a carbine her way.
"Oh, no you don't!" shouted Heivia, raising his assault rifle.
"Monica!!" shouted Quenser from the other side to draw the badly burned soldier's attention. That eliminated the possibility of him taking Monica hostage.
The soldier didn't do anything fancy. He didn't acrobatically kick off the walls.
It looked like he only walked diagonally forward.
But he managed to accurately avoid the short burst of bullets fired from Heivia's assault rifle.
"The hell was that!?"
"He must have learned that in the Northern Restricted Zone, " said Elise."They train you way better there!!"
People assumed an object's movement was a continuous thing and they would correct their aim for an extrapolated future position of their target without even noticing it, so by keeping your movement one step to the side of that extrapolation, you could avoid the enemy's aim.
As soon as Elise shouted her conclusion, the soldier rushed in toward them. It was a perfectly reasonable speed for a human, but he had intentionally slowed his earlier movements to mimic an immobilizing injury. After assuming the man was injured, it took Heivia a second too long to switch gears.
By the time he did, the soldier was within knife range.
Elise's rifle moved in to block the flash of silver. She caught the blade on the stock, stomped on the soldier's foot with her boot's heel, spun her rifle around, and pressed the muzzle against him.
With a sharp gunshot, her bullet punched through the burned soldier's chest.
Heivia felt the need to praise someone else's skill for once.
"Damn. They knew what they were doing when they made you an instructor for the 7th Special Training Unit, didn't they?"
"We were lucky he was so badly burned. He would have won if he was in top form." Elise Montana urged them to keep their guard up."Anyway, they're coming!! We need to hide now!!"
Quenser picked up Monica and hid below a nearby overpass. A Capitalist Corporations Zig-27 flew by overhead and a straight line of machinegun bullet holes were blasted in the asphalt ground. If they had been out in the open, they would have essentially exploded and been splattered across the wall.
Meanwhile, Monica had entered dreaming maiden mode in her childhood friend's arms.
"Sigh..."
(He was wearing the remains of a parachute, so he must have been a Capitalist Corporations paratrooper, not a Faith Organization commando. )
"Damn, then this was just a waste of time!!"
"What? Servant!! How can you rescue such a beautiful lady and then call it a waste of time!?"
A dry gunshot reverberated through the air.
It came from quite close by. Monica cowered down in fear, so Quenser left her in the relative safety below the overpass and checked outside. He saw someone fighting on the opposite bank of a river that had been made into something like a park. One was a small girl with a blonde braid and the other was...a woman with a highly detailed prosthetic eye?
The woman wielded a very small handgun. The barrel had a built in suppressor, so the loud volume of the gunshot suggested she hadn't covered the ejection port with her hand. However, this was not a model issued to ordinary soldiers. Nor was it the kind a normal person could purchase. Did that mean she was one of the Faith Organization commandos on a secret mission?
They were supposed to kill the commandos once they found them, but Quenser raised his voice instead.
"Catherine!? What is she doing!?"
"Damn, I can't get a shot with the metal railings and trees in the way!!" complained Heivia.
"Then get close enough that you do have a shot. Hurry!!"
If this was the result of panicking the commandos to flush them out, then it had been a bad plan. Quenser would have to spank Elise later. That 12-year-old girl had been enjoying her second life this Sunday afternoon, so he doubted she would have been wearing a heavy bulletproof jacket below her clothing. And if the commando really was panicking from the alarm or the scared crowds, no one knew what she might do.
Fortunately, the river between them was shallow and there were some stepping stones sticking up from the surface.
But Quenser took a panicked step forward, a terrifying new development played out before his eyes.
Two people leaped across the river toward him by kicking off of the flower beds and benches in what looked like a triple jump. They weren't wearing any extra equipment like a powered suit, so this feat made him question if they really were carbon-based humans like him.
Catherine forgot all about her own fight to shout over at him.
"Don't, big brother!! The commandos are freaks like me!! They've been customized to the point they could lift a light truck!!"
(Shut up!! The next time you call yourself a freak, I'm giving you such a talking to!!)
With a short burst of gunfire, Heivia shot down one of the two leaping commandos, but it was hard to know if that had been a lethal blow or not. And the other one was untouched.
She crashed right into Quenser.
His forward momentum was forcibly twisted so he and the Faith Organization assassin crashed into the river to the side of their paths.
"Gwah!?"
A student like him had no chance in a close quarters combat. He grimaced from the pain of getting water up his nose, but got to work with his hands. He pulled out a pen-like electric fuse and jabbed it into the commando's chest like a stake.
The woman easily grabbed his other hand.
Her other hand held a glinting combat knife.
(Dammit. If I could just reach my radio, I could blow a hole in her chest with the fuse, but she isn't going to give me the chance!!)
That was when he heard a sound like a popping water balloon.
The assassin had a hole the size of his fist in her chest.
"Hit 1 - confirmed down. Get up, Quenser, " said a familiar voice over his radio.
(Did Frolaytia do that!? She was carrying an anti-materiel rifle!)
Did it not matter if they were in the water as long as she had a line of fire? That demonstrated considerable skill even with the support of various sensors.
The color red had splattered in front of his face, but he only felt relief.
There were good people in the Faith Organization?
Quenser's own words filled him with bitterness, but Catherine came first. He couldn't be wasting time here.
"Pwah!"
He pulled his head above water and glared across the river. The situation had changed. The prosthetic eye woman had knocked Catherine Barbotage to the ground and aimed her small handgun down at the girl.
"Heivia - or Frolaytia!! Someone give me sniper support!"
"That would be difficult, " said Frolaytia."The water helped shield you, but if I shoot her that close to the girl, the shards of her equipment and bones will hit the girl."
Heivia had also said he couldn't get a shot right away.
Quenser's only option was to shout in despair while dripping with river water.
"Catherine!?"
Part 14
An Information Alliance officer named Wraith Martini Vermouthspray crossed her skinny legs and spun the pen-shaped device in her hand.
"Attack immediately."
"Are you sure, ma'am? Getting inside Paris unnoticed wasn't easy, you know?"
"This is worth it."
Part 15
With a dull crash, a garbage truck drove in from the side and ran into the prosthetic eye woman standing in front of Catherine.
The company logo painted on the side said Battlefield Cleanup Service.
Quenser gasped.
(What are they doing in Paris? Aren't they officially a Capitalist Corporations PMC!? And I thought the report said no one could find any sign of the company ever having existed!!)
But now wasn't the time to worry about that.
Several suppressed gunshots followed. Catherine had immediately leaped behind the garbage truck, but the prosthetic eye woman fired Quenser's way to pin him in place while she tried to escape onto the street. And she also grabbed something the size of a backpack from a fallen commando.
"There's more to this!!" shouted the student boy.
"Then quit talking and do something about it, Quenser!" shouted Heivia."Charlotte and Elise, you two circle in from behind. And you stay where you are, Catherine!! We don't want you getting hurt!!"
The stench of flames and smoke hung in the air.
The Paris cityscape was gradually falling apart. They had to end this before it fully collapsed.
They heard a muffled explosion.
This wasn't just a gunshot. It was bigger than a grenade.
There was nowhere to hide on the narrow street. Quenser ducked down in fear, but he felt no pain. This explosion had sounded different from the previous ones.
Heivia was the first to realize why.
"Was that their elastic wave exploration thing? She just drove the stake into the ground to scope things out underground!! And in this position, she'll find Shelter 9!"
Once the computer completed its analysis of the reflected waves, she would know where they had to attack to crush the royals hidden in the shelter 5000m below the surface.
Once those preparations were complete, she only had to point out the location to their Object and the plasma blast would be coming.
But that blast wouldn't just kill the chosen members of the privileged class. The damage would cover a diameter of 20km, so all the ordinary people in the city would be engulfed by the fireball and vaporized.
"Damn you."
Heivia took a step further but was knocked back by a dry gunshot.
She was very close.
The impact had gotten to him even through his bulletproof jacket. Heivia had been distracted by his impatience and now he was collapsed on his back forced to give instructions by gesturing. He couldn't speak, but he was telling Quenser to continue on.
The student hid behind a metal dumpster, molded his plastic explosive into an egg shape, and stabbed a fuse in. He tossed it out ahead and filled the narrow space with an explosive blast and shockwave before rushing in himself.
The prosthetic eye woman wasn't there.
However, some rust had fallen from the emergency stairs on a building wall. He could tell that wasn't just the explosion. There were signs of the chain link gate's hinges having moved and a footprint in the rust powder on the steps. Someone had forced their way onto some stairs no one had used in a long time. Quenser radioed Charlotte and the others in case he was taken out and then ran up the stairs.
He arrived on the small building's rooftop.
The prosthetic eye woman had her back to him and had just reached into the backpack to pull out a pair of binoculars larger than a next generation game console. They were large enough to fill the entire backpack. That wasn't normal, so he guessed it was designed to instruct the Object to attack whatever she viewed through them. She wasn't just going to destroy a piece of Paris; she was going to blow herself up along with it.
If she hit the switch on the side of the binoculars, Paris would be reduced to rubble.
Unfortunately, Quenser had audibly gasped when he noticed.
She turned around and fired her small handgun at him, so he was forced to jump to the side and throw a round plastic explosive that didn't even come close to reaching her.
It did, however, reach the industrial air conditioning unit on the roof.
When he detonated it, the unit's exterior and hoses were shredded and thrown through the air, a chemical coolant sprayed out as a white smoke of well below 0 degrees, and everything it touched froze solid, including the concrete and the metal pipes. White frost like inside a store's ice cream freezer covered the prosthetic eye woman's clothing and fingers.
She didn't bat an eye.
She kept her gun aimed directly at him and spoke.
"You chose your target poorly."
"Did I?"
The first bullet hadn't hit the boy, but he was down on his knee and she was confident the next one would kill. She tried to do just that, but then she noticed something. She looked down at her binoculars instead of her enemy.
Those binoculars were clearly equipped with a delicate computer and a large battery and now it was coated with white frost.
Needless to say, precision equipment was vulnerable to extremely low temperatures.
"It can't be..."
Quenser rushed in before she looked up again.
It didn't matter if the device was really broken or not. He had successfully gotten her eyes off of him for a moment while directly in front of her. Her immediate gunshot missed him and he tackled her with his full weight behind his shoulder.
Their feet left the ground.
A moment later, they slammed into the hard concrete and rolled along the roof together.
The large binoculars slipped from the woman's hands and bounced along.
But Quenser couldn't relax yet.
He couldn't defeat a commando in an honest fight. And if his adorable stepsister was correct, this special soldier had been modified just like Catherine and Putana. She managed to get on top of him and then aimed her poorly-silenced handgun at his face.
He shoved a pen-like electric fuse directly down the barrel. It was too late for her to panic now. The fuse was a delicate explosive itself, so if she pulled the trigger the gun would blow up. And he would detonate it for her if she didn't pull it.
He used his other hand to hit his radio's switch and blow up the gun.
The countless metal shards hit both of them equally.
She held her mutilated hand with her other hand and screamed.
"Gahhh!!"
Quenser's face felt hot.
He couldn't even imagine how much damage he had just taken.
(I need to protect Paris. )
Half his vision was blocked by a sticky dark red, but he still saw the woman roll off of him while holding her bloody hand and unsteadily crawl toward the fallen binoculars.
(I need to protect all the people living here. )
He had only blacked out for a few seconds due to the metal shards he took to the forehead, but his lack of reaction seemed to have convinced her he was dead. Or maybe she had lost too much blood to think straight.
He couldn't let her reach those binoculars. He had to protect all the people living in Paris.
No matter what.
"!!"
He had to do whatever it took.
He clenched his teeth, got up, and grabbed a TV antenna lying on the roof thanks to the explosion. The metal pole was thicker than his index finger and he grabbed it like a stake and rushed toward the woman's curled up back as she tried to collect the binoculars.
He stabbed her with it.
The special suit she wore under her clothes apparently had a lot of gaps, giving it poor bulletproofing.
She roared with anger and spun around to face him, but he shoved her away with both hands. The antenna rod must have done more damage than he had thought because she failed to prepare for her landing and hit the roof hard, her own weight driving the rod deeper into her back. The tip burst out from her chest.
But.
But even then, she didn't die.
She was lying on her back and coughing up blood, but she still clawed at the concrete roof. Her fingers found the large binoculars and a definite smile formed on her bloody lips.
The flip of a single switch would blast a scorching hole in Paris.
"Ohhhhh!!!!!" yelled Quenser.
He grabbed the metal antenna rod piercing her body and used the full strength of both his arms to stir it around, widening the dark red hole and finally pulling the entire rod out from her gut even though it had originally entered through her back.
"Die! Just die alreadyyyyyy!!"
Her body convulsed on the roof.
Quenser clenched his teeth but failed to suppress the scream that erupted from his throat as he stabbed the tip of the slick antenna back down into her. This time, into the face. And not just once - over and over. He kept doing it until she had stopped moving altogether.
"Please! Don't destroy our cityyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!!!!!!"
Her face was no longer recognizable.
The hemispherical prosthetic eye was now lying on the roof next to her.
He realized her convulsing had stopped.
Biological death may have occurred well before this.
"Pant, pant."
He threw aside the dark red antenna rod and fell back on his butt. There was no human dignity left in that mutilated corpse. It looked like a wild animal had feasted on it. He couldn't believe he had done that. But he had a feeling a mirror would reveal he was covered in her blood. He couldn't have looked more like a deranged murderer.
"Ha...ha ha."
His psyche had been pushed to the breaking point.
But he had still managed to preserve their usual city.
It hadn't been destroyed.
He had managed to protect the few million residents of Paris. Heivia, Frolaytia, Monica, Catherine, and everyone else were still alive. As long as those binoculars didn't send out their signal, the long-distance Object strike would not occur.
The hero had prevailed.
If he didn't cling to that fact, his psyche really would shatter.
Or so he thought.
But then he noticed something on the roof. It had apparently fallen from the woman's clothing. Those were her dog tags. Apparently even a commando on an unofficial mission didn't use a fake name on those. Maybe because this was only a short-term mission and not a long-term espionage job. Or maybe the Faith Organization had been in such disarray after the destruction of Rome they hadn't bene able to prepare the best equipment and fake IDs.
He stopped breathing when he saw what was written there.
Faith Organization Marine Commandos - Gnostic Witches Unit.
Cheddar Affi-
"!!!???"
He found himself straining his neck to avoid looking at a truth he didn't want to accept.
His fingers felt something else on the filthy roof.
"It's an Asian amulet. You aren't supposed to open it."
"Thanks. I hope it brings me good luck."
That conversation replayed in his mind, but the amulet Carat had given him was still in his pocket.
Then what was this?
Why was an identical amulet sitting on the bloody rooftop? Where had it come from?
"So what's your name?"
"...Carat Affinity."
He slowly looked both at the unusual amulet and the mutilated corpse.
"That...can't be true."
Come to think of it, he had never asked that boy which world power he was from. He had rescued the boy without thinking, so he knew very little about him.
Feeling the amulet between his fingers was enough to know it had a flat piece of wood or thick paper inside. He used his trembling fingers to untie the string keeping the small pouch closed. First, the one he had. A strange but simple pattern had been drawn on it crayon. A tall cross had been drawn with a line connecting the top to the right and another line connecting the left to the bottom.
Were those four lines supposed to form a compass needle?
The words "together by chance" were written directly below that. It was a popular phrase that different people found different meanings in. The pattern was not a square or a diamond, but the four lines gathered together to point in a specific direction like a compass. It may have been dedicated to the idea of people from different countries and factions coming together by chance to work together and help each other out.
Or maybe there was no deep meaning behind it at all.
Maybe it was just a neat pattern someone had come across while playing a matchstick quiz. Even the phrase might have been something someone saw while searching an online thesaurus or messing around with a machine translator. But Quenser still sensed the unique sensibilities of a small child. It carried a magic he lacked now that his hands were soaked with blood.
"No, it can't be...it can't!!"
He was breathing heavily now.
He untied the other amulet lying on the roof. He wanted so badly for the exterior to be the only similarity. He prayed for a difference, even if it was just a single line.
His prayers were answered.
The scrap of paper inside was different from the one he had.
Something else was written below the "together by chance" phrase: Good luck, mom.
"Gh, ah...gah!!"
He couldn't breathe. His stomach acid was pushing up into his throat.
Looking away and refusing to accept the truth earlier had been a mistake. The dog tags rushed into the center of his vision now.
Faith Organization Marine Commandos - Gnostic Witches Unit.
Cheddar Affinity.
His numb mind finally remembered how nauseous he was. He managed to turn away from the mutilated corpse, but that was all. The contents of his stomach traveled back up his esophagus and spewed out onto the roof.
"Oh, gh!? Gweh, abh!!!!!"
What had he done? Who had he killed?
Could he really call this - this! - the work of a hero?
There had to have been a chance to stop himself. What had he seen in Rome? Sarasa Gleamshifter had been perfectly reasonable. She had already proven for him that there were good people in the Faith Organization.
Yet he hadn't questioned his actions here.
He could have avoided this tragedy, so what was it he had failed to do here?
"Agh, ahh, ahh, ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!???"
His screaming did nothing to change reality, so he finally collapsed onto his side. He curled up in the fetal position and trembled.
The corpse remained a corpse.
Try as he might to deny it, his bloody crime would never go away.
Of course, he had needed to protect Paris no matter what it took. He had wanted to protect his parents, Monica, Catherine, and so many other people. There wasn't any way he could have persuaded the commando to stop, so he hadn't done anything wrong. Yes, just looking at that, his actions had been justified. But that's why he found himself unable to believe in anything anymore. He reviewed his actions over and over and failed to find a single flaw each and every time, but he refused to accept this bloody and horrifying result. If these were the actions of a hero, then he wasn't sure he could trust in the idea of heroes anymore.
This was the result of doing the heroic thing.
What would become of a world supported by heroes like that?
"Ah, ahh, ahhhhhh..."
How long would this last? Would it ever end? Had this become the norm in a world where the clean wars had been replaced by a true world war? Was this sh*tty new normal with them forever? Would it become as ordinary as going to sleep at night and waking up to the rising sun?
He didn't care about the Legitimacy Kingdom or Faith Organization anymore.
He didn't want to see any interference from the Capitalist Corporations or the Information Alliance.
He was through with this world war.
Everything about it was too painful to bear.
Intermission
...
...
In a dark, enclosed world, Quenser Barbotage finally realized he was being dragged somewhere.
By who?
Where to?
"He has what we're looking for."
"Ugh, are you sure? He's covered in blood."
"Cast out your doubts, thoughtless maid. He was lying next to that corpse. I'm sure he has at least begun to question this world war. Why else would the hero who saved Paris have collapsed in guilt next to the very enemy he killed?"
His world gradually opened up.
No, that question had directed his mind outwards once more. He still had enough defiance and rebellion to not want to let that stand.
A small girl spoke coldly next to a silent young man named Frank.
"Back with us now?"
"..."
She wore a black uniform, but she was not one of the Legitimacy Kingdom's Black Uniforms. She was from the Information Alliance. She was Wraith Martini Vermouthspray, a product of their genius girl project. She must have needed something to habitually fiddle with because she was twirling a pen-like device in one hand. He recalled that she was a special commander known as the Stopgap Grim Reaper who swiftly regathered a unit that was left hanging after its commander made a mistake (while actually using the surviving soldiers to buy time).
She was not alone.
Several mercenaries in maid uniforms stood around her. They belonged to the unidentified PMC they called the Battlefield Cleanup Service. Their blonde-haired brown-skinned leader was named Wydine Uptown.
Wraith peered down at Quenser's face which had to be a mess of exhaustion and confusion.
"This world war will never end if we simply follow the orders of each world power's higher ups. Things are currently splitting between the Legitimacy Kingdom and Faith Organization in the Old World and the Capitalist Corporations and Information Alliance in the New World, but who knows how long that will last. The world war is growing more confused by the moment. This stained glass world is going to shatter even further. We hope to take action and end this before the flames of war continue to spread. Are you interested in joining us?"
"Are you serious, Information Alliance? You're one of the people who attacked Paris once we were defenseless."
"We are, " admitted Wraith. And then, "I don't trust the Information Alliance any more than you do and that efficient but worthless world power isn't in command here. Feeling more interested in trusting us now?"
He noticed a strange decoration added to the unit insignia on Wraith's shoulder. It was a compass needle formed from a tall cross with the top and right points and the left and bottom points connected by lines. It had been hastily added with spray paint. The compass was positioned above and left of the insignia, so it wasn't overwriting that. The insignia was positioned perfectly in the right angle there.
"Everyone who has gathered in opposition of the world war is doing this, " bluntly explained the girl.
The Stopgap Grim Reaper was a special commander who regathered units that had fallen due to a military scandal. Was Wraith doing that on a global level now that she had left the Information Alliance?
"We're calling ourselves Together By Chance. We have gathered together by chance to cast off our ties to the world powers and join forces to end the world war."
Quenser felt the contents of his stomach rising.
This could not be mere coincidence. Had Wraith and the others named their group after seeing the amulet that had so devastated Quenser?
But at this point, a more fundamental question occurred to him.
Where were they?
It looked like a dirt and mud airfield forcibly built in a vineyard. Some Capitalist Corporations Zig-27 fighters were stopped alongside the runway with low pressure tires installed. There were also a few Legitimacy Kingdom S/G-31 delta wing fighters. The Ice Squadron and Burning Squadron insignia on their wings had the same compass needle pattern painted next to them.
The place appeared to be mostly made from the 37th Mobile Maintenance Battalion's infrastructure, but it may have been more than that. The Legitimacy Kingdom's Frolaytia Capistrano and the Information Alliance's Lendy Farolito were viewing the same tablet and analyzing some intel. Staccato Raylong, better known by the codename of Burning Alpha, was teasing a 12-year-old pilot girl who responded with open anger. Heivia and Myonri were trading rations with the soldiers from other world powers for a taste test. Black Uniform Charlotte Zoom, the 7th Special Training Unit's Elise Montana, and some others were discussing new rules and working out a schedule for the day to come. There were even some volunteers from the Faith Organization. Quenser caught sight of Millia Newburg, the intelligence agent who could go undercover anywhere, Sarasa Gleamshifter and more of the Valkyries who handled public morals and executions for the Faith Organization police, and Putana Highball who had once been a Faith Organization Pilot Elite.
The Legitimacy Kingdom, Capitalist Corporations, Information Alliance, and Faith Organization were all present.
Except those categories no longer existed here. These were the people who were sick of the world war after seeing all the bloodshed and chaos in Rome and Paris.
Together By Chance.
They had only happened to be in the same place at the same time, but that was enough. People who never should have had anything in common had gathered together and agreed to work toward a single goal.
Some of them were more than just soldiers. There were the triplet Martini Series genius girls and several Pilot Elites like Catherine and Putana. Prisoners with a criminal past like Azureyfear and Louisiana were also present. Those geniuses were a step away from being entirely mad, but their opinions were being gathered by Claire Whist, an Object designer wearing a lab coat over a bikini.
The eyepatched maid was Karen who usually served the Winchell family. Sogia, Sanya, and the rest of the infamous Unicorns were protecting the daughter of the Vanderbilt family and Princess Staivia. Those two would be more useful when it came to international law and political power than in actual combat.
And to top it all off, Quenser heard the sound of a cloth being pulled away. The old maintenance lady had removed a hard painter's mask from her mouth. The Baby Magnum and the Rush now had the same compass needle pattern painted large alongside their unit insignia.
"We barely have more than two mobile maintenance battalions' worth of personnel and equipment and just the two Objects. That means we have a unit of around 2000, " calmly stated Wraith."But that isn't near enough to seriously challenge the Information Alliance's Manhattan 000 and the rest of those intent on continuing this world war. We need as many people as we can possibly get - every last one counts. So help us, Quenser. We need your daring and cunning here."
The boy looked down at his hands.
They were weak and still covered in a rusty-smelling liquid. He had almost certainly sent that boy's mother to the depths of hell and the boy would feel like the same had happened to him. It had been one-on-one, so Quenser couldn't blame anyone else. If he simply trusted in being a hero and continued on as before, that would happen again. So what could he trust in now? He would fight to stop this sh*tty world war. Tear-jerking stories of heroism were fine, but how was he supposed to find something that let him really believe in them again!?
"Quenser, what did you see in that war? What did you do in it?"
"..."
"Can't bring yourself to answer, huh? ...Neither can any of us. We all made serious mistakes in this world war and then didn't even have the decency to die for it. It's the pure and the good who die first in this hopeless world, so if we want to save anyone, we have to do the wrong thing. And if we don't do anything to change that, it will only get worse. We've seen too much of it already. We don't have room for even a drop more."
So they would wipe everything clean.
They would stop hanging their heads and taking it. They would fight in order to atone for their sins and look to the future once more.
They would start over from where they were.
None of them could say when it would be, but one day they would reclaim a world where everyone could trust in heroism and live happy lives.
So they couldn't let this world war manipulate them any longer.
No matter what.
"Wraith."
"Yes?"
"Hand me that spray paint."
They had to end this colossal mistake as soon as possible.
With the sound of spraying gas, Quenser added on to the unit insignia on his shoulder. He drew a long cross, a diagonal line connecting to the top to the right, and another diagonal line connecting the left to the bottom. He was not rejecting the Legitimacy Kingdom. The cross was situated on the insignia's upper left, showing that he would respect his and everyone else's birthplaces while they looked to a shared vision of the future.
Together By Chance. Maybe he didn't have the right to bear that signal while covered in so much blood.
(But...)
Everything seemed to come into focus for Quenser Barbotage.
He could see something clearly now.
(But if I can stop this, I have to do it. )
"Where are we starting?"
Wraith Martini Vermouthspray smiled at his question.
The fact that she had invited him here meant she had given him more trust than he felt he deserved. She had trusted he could grit his teeth and get back on his feet no matter how badly he had been beaten.
"This world war began with the destruction of the Faith Organization home country of Rome, " began Wraith."In a true display of 'courage', those chickens in the Faith Organization proved they were more afraid of being the only losers than they were interested in pursuing the truth, so they lashed out, blamed the Legitimacy Kingdom, and launched a misguided reprisal. But we'll never reach the people who are truly responsible if we waste our time on them."
"But Bad Garage are already gone. We defeated them."
"Are you suggesting resentful Bad Garage arrived at their environmental destruction by Objects theory all on their own?"
"..."
Quenser had a feeling they hadn't.
They had pursued the research paper written by 9-year-old Elina Silverbullet in the Tunguska District in order to lend more credence to their theory. That meant they had not been confident enough in their own research.
"Someone fed them that knowledge in the first place." Wraith slapped a stack of papers against Quenser's chest."We discovered this in Bad Garage's hideout. Or more accurately, we acquired it by having a computer reconstruct the fragmentary text on the burnt remains left in their fireplace. They abandoned that place well before meeting Elina. The real villain sent them a few research papers while also fanning the flames of their emotions. The terrorists of every era are always sadly reliant on their backers. The information being fed to Bad Garage was cherrypicked to manipulate them. A clever move by the villain, I must say."
"Who was it?" cautiously asked Quenser.
If they screwed this up and attacked the wrong person, they would never get a second chance at it.
"Who was smirking in the shadows while masterminding an attack on Rome, starting a world war, and sending the world straight to hell?"
"We already have that answer. It was right there in the documents their fireplace failed to burn properly." Wraith's answer was a short one.
"The Island Nation."
| ← Ch. 179 | Ch. 181 → |