Tokyo Bay was not as large a battlefield as you might think. There was a chance of being fired on from Tokyo, Chiba, or Kanagawa there, but that was all.

  The terrain worked in the Princess and Oh Ho Ho’s favor.

  With less available space to move in, the enemy would have trouble avoiding the simultaneous attacks from the Baby Magnum and the Rush.

  However…

  “Stubborn thing. We have to have hit it so many times, but it won’t sink!!”

  “Oh ho ho. The Object’s primary job appears to be holding us here, so their real weapon must be-”

  The two Objects took nimble evasive action the moment before a white beam split apart the dark night. The giant laser fortress gun installed at Mount Fuji’s peak was to blame. The large circle from Kantou to Chubu was within its firing range. If they took too long with the naval Object, the laser would target them out here in the open ocean.

  The Princess was using special goggles that placed a burden on her pupils and irises to read the movement of her eyes with lasers, but the Baby Magnum felt so slow it was like swimming through an invisible slime. This wasn’t about whether any immediate attack could hit or whether she could avoid the enemy’s shots – she was falling behind in a more fundamental way.

  Frolaytia sent a tense suggestion.

  “Princess, we can use our thermobarics to create a mirage if necessary.”

  “That would affect my targeting, so don’t. But if they target your ships, do it immediately.”

  “Oh ho ho. I will move out ahead to keep the Island Nation’s attention on me. I can’t have them targeting the slow fleet.”

  Even Oh Ho Ho was the Pilot Elite who fought as the central figure of a battalion.

  The two Objects approached even closer to the Asian Monster.

  They were not the only ones that could make simultaneous attacks.

  In fact, the Island Nation had the greater destructive power. The Mount Fuji laser fortress gun was powerful enough to destroy an Object in a single hit.

  “That thing has a lot of power, doesn’t it?”

  “Could it be adding volcanic energy on top of an ordinary reactor? Oh ho ho. It might be stable now, but Mount Fuji is technically a volcano.”

  “But how is it getting rid of all that heat?”

  “The summit is more than 3000m up, so maybe it’s covered with a thin layer of ice or something.”

  But the attack was nothing to fear when they knew what direction it would be coming from.

  The fortress gun was still a fortress gun. A stationary sniper was much less of a threat.

  “We sent out meteorological weapons to produce thick clouds around Mount Fuji’s summit, but it isn’t going well,” reported Lendy Farolito. “Missiles and shells are just a poor match for anti-air lasers.”

  “Oh ho ho. Try not to draw so much attention they focus their fire on you. It’s best if your attacks appear ineffectual.”

  The Princess sighed.

  (I really want to reach land so I can support Quenser and the others.)

  The Asian Monster slid gently to the right and then cut sharply back to the left.

  It was a classic feint.

  The Princess kept an eye on the laser fortress gun’s movements while sliding out of the way of the low-stability plasma cannon aimed her way. Then she repaid the enemy by firing a railgun counterattack a bit to its left to cut off its escape route. That stopped its movement long enough for the Rush to fire the killing blast.

  The unpleasant sizzling of vaporized metal burst into the air. The Rush’s rapid-fire beam Gatling cannon had punched right through the center of the Asian Monster’s spherical main body. Tens of thousands of deadly shots formed a single thick line that tore through more and more of the Object. The mechanical wound melted with an orange glow, giving the Object an actual donut shape.

  “Oh ho ho! Do you see now what I am capable of? Spectacular results like this are all the proof you need I am a true idol!!”

  “You never could have done it without my support.”

  “Kyah!!” shouted Lendy Farolito over the radio. “A global top idol just does things differently!!!!!”

  “Stop encouraging that idiot, you stupid commander,” replied the Princess in disgust. “Sigh. This is how popularity messes with people’s heads, isn’t it?”

  The Asian Monster produced a creaking sound as it tilted.

  The reactor would not last like this. To avoid getting caught in the blast before it sank into the ocean, the Baby Magnum slowly backed away.

  The Princess caught it at the last second.

  That was the only reason she managed to send her Object sharply to the side in time.

  A beam of light roared through.

  One of the Baby Magnum’s seven main cannons – the leftmost one – was sliced away by the intense energy.

  But that hadn’t come from the laser fortress gun atop Mount Fuji.

  It had clearly been a low-stability plasma cannon blast from the Asian Monster on the ocean directly in front of her.

  In fact…

  “Oh ho ho. It…isn’t sinking? But I destroyed its reactor!”

  “There must be more to this. It is an Island Nation model, after all!!”

  Part 7

  After passing Iidabashi, they finally arrived at Ichigaya, where the self-defense PMC had their base.

  “Ichigaya, huh?” muttered the old maintenance lady over the radio. She may have had some memories regarding the place.

  It was officially registered as a Capitalist Corporations garrison, but it was effectively a shared facility where all four world powers came and went freely.

  The location they wanted was obvious enough from the distinctive antenna towers sticking up past the building rooftops. One area’s were very different from the rest.

  Heivia let out a visible breath in the late February night.

  “So we’ve finally arrived at Azumaya’s home. Can we just blow up that building?”

  “Azumaya is only four people out of the self-defense PMC personnel packing the place like a beehive,” said Quenser. “Do we know their names or what they look like? The end of the world war is counting on us doing this right, so we want to make sure they’re actually dead.”

  “I feel bad for all those PMC soldiers who are only following their orders here.”

  “If you feel that bad, then throw down your weapon and go try to convince them with a rousing and courageous argument. Me? I’m afraid of the Island Nation tech. Let’s silence all of them and then check through the computers in the building. There’s bound to be something left inside-”

  Quenser came to a sudden stop.

  They hadn’t done anything yet, but an explosion had already erupted from the Ichigaya garrison building. But the location of the smoke was unusual. Instead of the windows, toxic-looking smoke billowed from something like vents leading underground.

  Heivia stared blankly for a while. It took an exasperated tap on his shoulder from Karen to snap him out of it. The noble boy realized what the enemy was up to a few seconds later.

  “Th-the bastards set fire to their server room, didn’t they!? Those four are more interested in eliminating any information on them than in stopping us!!”

  The mission was falling apart.

  To protect their classified information, the self-defense PMC apparently did not call in the fire fighters all their neighbors in the city used. When some soldiers rushed out, attached a thick hose to the fire hydrant, and started toward their own fire fighting equipment inside the building, Heivia, Myonri, and some others aimed at them from behind and mercilessly fired into their backs.

  It wouldn’t have gone that well under normal circumstances, but unexpected accidents were one of the greatest threats during a battle.

  The four villains hiding behind their anonymity as random soldiers could not run away without getting shot as deserters.

  But that changed here.

  Soldiers and prisoners were allowed to evacuate their posts or cells during a fire. And it would take time to count and ID the bodies, so even if those four went into hiding for a while, it wouldn’t stand out too much if they later insisted whoever was taking roll had marked it down wrong.

  Meanwhile, Quenser’s group could not stay in the Island Nation for long since they were reliant on the element of surprise. The shitty quartet knew perfectly well it was Quenser’s group that would be surrounded if they stayed too long.

  (Carat.)

  If the villains could escape for just a moment here, they could get away forever.

  So Quenser’s group had to capture them here.

  (I will create an age where you can blame me for what I did. So let me fight just a bit longer.)

  It was like they had stirred up a hornet’s nest.

  The unlucky self-defense PMC soldiers were caught between a fire and gunfire, but there was no way to know who was part of Azumaya. The four villains had likely expected a lot of lives to be lost here. Meanwhile, the fire was spreading and enveloping the distinctive building.

  “Find something we can use! I don’t care what!!” shouted Heivia, his assault rifle at the ready.

  “I guess we’ll have to run into the burning building, huh? And this was a base, so there will be an ammo dump inside, won’t there!?”

  They only knew Azumaya had four members, but they had no information on the names or appearances of those four. It wasn’t a problem if the Azumaya members were among those they had shot here, but they doubted it. No matter how good those four were at blending in with the other random soldiers, surely they would have done something more once a gun was pointed their way. Surely they would have played some kind of trump card that an actual random soldier wouldn’t have. But Quenser’s group hadn’t seen anything like that.

  That meant they needed to check through the burning building.

  Azumaya setting fire to their own hideout proved there was something there they needed to erase lest their identities get out. Assuming they hadn’t just been paranoid, there was some evidence in there. But that evidence would be erased if they didn’t act fast.

  On the other hand, this was extremely dangerous. No matter what people thought, you couldn’t guarantee your survival in a burning building by dumping a bucket of water over your head.

  “I think you should stay here, big brother,” said Catherine Barbotage when she saw the main entrance spewing dark smoke and embers.

  “No!! I’d rather go in there myself than sit back and watch my 12-year-old sister do it!!”

  In the end, war was all about vanity.

  He charged inside with the Little Girl Army of Catherine and Wraithy accompanying him. His vision immediately narrowed due to the smoke. It was also as hot as a sauna. He was worried about his plastic explosives. Soft plastic could melt in high heats, so he feared the explosives in his backpack were being transformed.

  “Hey,” called Wraith Martini Vermouthspray while cautiously aiming her submachinegun this way and that. The taciturn young man wasn’t with her, so he was likely doing some other job. “Time is of the essence, so where should we start the search, my panicky but slow pawn.”

  “We need to read Azumaya’s mentality. Whatever they most wanted to hide will be at the source of the blaze!!”

  When you wanted to erase evidence as quickly as possible, no one would set the fire far away from said evidence. Thus, Quenser and the others couldn’t avoid the fire as they searched. They would never find what they wanted that way.

  Quenser started to open the door leading further in, but Wraith and Catherine both tackled him aside. As soon as the door opened a crack, it exploded out from within. That was a backdraft. They couldn’t do that every single time.

  “Eek!!”

  “Hee hee hee. I love the way you let your guard down and let your weak side show only for me, big brother.”

  “You are delusional. He wasn’t trying to open up to you there.”

  They needed equipment allowing them to walk freely through the fire.

  Quenser made a trembling suggestion while collapsed on the floor covered by little girls.

  “L-let’s find some powered suits. The self-defense PMC has been using a lot of them, after all.”

  Fortunately, the search didn’t last long.

  But instead of finding the cutting-edge Island Nation tech lined up on standby in the maintenance bay, they found them abandoned in a burning hallway. Those enormous suits couldn’t always fit through smaller doors. There would be a labyrinthine path that allowed them this deep in the building, but the pilots hadn’t been willing or able to exit the same way during the panic of the fire. Quenser, Wraith, and Catherine each procured and boarded a powered suit.

  Wraith’s emotionless voice arrived over the radio.

  “This is better than nothing, but if an ammo dump detonates, we’re dead along with anyone else in the building. Make sure you complete your mission before that happens, my cowardly attackers.”

  The suits did more to stop the smoke-induced pain in their eyes and noses than it did protect them from the oven-like heat, but they still appreciated it. Image correction let them see despite all the smoke, so they clanked their way through the orange heat zone with ornamental plants burning like torches and an anime-style poster for some kind of public awareness campaign blackening and peeling off the wall.

  “Will that poster of a smiling and saluting anime girl really get anyone to join the self-defense PMC?” wondered Quenser. “I mean, she’s a short magical girl with inexplicably big tits. You aren’t finding anything like that in the macho world of the military.”

  “Don’t ask me. But we do have a lot of people who enlist because of that G-cups idol. It probably works better than a wild plant sommelier or a yoga instructor,” said Wraith, giving her big powered suit her usual cool but cute mannerisms.

  Apparently Quenser wasn’t the only greedy person out there. But he did wish for a word of warning before he was confronted with a girl’s cold and calculating greed. It was bad for his heart.

  Their objective was the source of the fire. That naturally brought them down the stairs into the basement. There were secret areas not found on the official diagrams and the place was full of smoke, so it was a nerve-wracking ordeal. Would a diver feel this kind of anxiety if they were trapped below a rusty ceiling while exploring a sunken ship and they discovered their oxygen tank had less left than they had thought?

  They descended a metal stairway heated as hot as a grill and unintuitively found the intensity of the flames decreased as they approached the source of the fire.

  “That means the oxygen is decreasing.”

  Quenser had started to breathe a sigh of relief, but his 12-year-old stepsister’s comment forced him to rethink that. If not for the powered suits, they either would have had their eyeballs and lungs roasted by the heat or they would have passed out from asphyxiation.

  They found a blackened metal door at the bottom of the stairs. Catherine and Wraith checked the door’s seam and knob, perhaps to prevent a backdraft, but Quenser couldn’t tell what they were looking for. In the end the two little girls in big armor exchanged a cute nod and gently opened the door.

  They found a large space within.

  That was the large server room supporting the self-defense PMC’s datalink. It felt like a locker room larger than a soccer field lined with vending machines instead of lockers. The place had to have more than double the processing power of a communication data center covering all the phones and tablets in Kantou.

  The stairs leading down by the wall suggested this was just one floor, so how many computers did they have set up in all?

  “The flames must have spread out through the ducts in search of air,” said Quenser. “Okay, where should we start the search?”

  “The emergency data transfer route. There’s no way a facility this size doesn’t do backups.”

  “Wouldn’t the people wanting to hide their data know about the backups?”

  “What if these backups were done secretly outside the usual official military regulations? In the military, it isn’t unusual for a commanding officer to install keyloggers on all the computers in their unit to monitor everyone under their command. Although sometimes it backfires when the poor bald-headed fool discovers one of his subordinates is sleeping with his wife and his daughter and essentially taken over his family. You don’t want others to know you’re gathering their data. If they don’t know, they have no way of defending against it.”

  Wraith really was a former(?) Information Alliance commander.

  All of the cases had melted from the heat, but not all of the computers were broken. Wraith pointed at a functioning one (using her powered suit’s thick fingers) while explaining that to the others. And Azumaya’s fire gave them a hint here. The computer that had been directly set on fire was the most suspicious one.

  “Big brother, the fuel was only poured on this one. It’s labeled N-88.”

  “There’s your answer, Wraith.”

  “N-88 itself was physically burned, but these are parallel computers. The shared cache should remain in the surrounding servers. Yep, there it is. N-88 contained a personnel condition visualization and quantification service providing their skills, physical condition, motivation, etc. Basically, it’s the data used to determine their pay. The place is officially Capitalist Corporations, but it was actually a mix of the world powers.”

  Quenser frowned, but he made sure to speak aloud since she couldn’t see the frown through his powered suit.

  “Um, but won’t that database have tens of thousands of people in it?”

  “The four we want were sent to the Island Nation from the Legitimacy Kingdom, Capitalist Corporations, Information Alliance, and Faith Organization at around the same time. Coordinators like them would have no past offences on their record and know at least three languages. We know they have to be experts in psychology and negotiation technique and they definitely have to know a thing or two about economics and geopolitics. …And unless you’re putting together a hacker team, you wouldn’t care too much about the academic history of your general personnel, so the unusually educated ones will stand out. And voila: here are exactly four with a ton of qualifications unrelated to killing.”

 

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