“I can’t cover for you two anymore. Go off for a bit to cool your heads.”

The blazing sun made it easy to forget it was January.

Quenser used the sleeve of his military uniform to wipe away the sweat on his face on a solitary island in the southern hemisphere of the Pacific Ocean.

“Why have we just been shooting and shooting for so long? Are we feeding the fish lead food?”

“We’re using brand new bullets for shooting practice. It’s about time for the accounts to be settled. If we don’t use up the excess bullets now, the defense budget will be cut down for the next fiscal year,” said Heivia sounding a bit bored as he fired a rifle next to Quenser in a decent-looking pose.

“Are you making things up with no proof again?”

“The fact that they gave an amateur like you a rifle is proof enough. That means this ‘homework’ is the only thing left for us to do. s.h.i.+t, how many tens of thousands was our quota today?”

The Cook Addition Islands.

It was a part of Legitimacy Kingdom territory. It fell into the category of a small safe country.

It was actually made up of a number of islands floating in the Pacific Ocean, but only the small island in the center was natural land. Or rather, the area around one of the small islands on the edge of the archipelago had been thoroughly developed. Artificial land similar to offsh.o.r.e oil platforms dotted the area around that island. The individual islands were connected by giant bridges like the Information Alliance’s Miami. Most of the islands were used as testing grounds for Objects and storage areas for supercomputers, so all of the soldiers lived on a single island.

Quenser, Heivia, and the others were on land made of steel. They were leaning over the handrail and firing rifles at targets attached to boats that moved around by radio control.

They had made small but repeated mistakes.

They had accomplished many great achievements that put bitter expressions on faces of the higher ups in the military.

It seemed that had all exceeded what their s.e.xy commander (as they called her) Froleytia could handle and so they had been “transferred” away from the 37th Mobile Maintenance Battalion.

This was conventionally called being demoted, being sent to sit by the window, or being kept out of the way.

“Welcome to the peace humanity has won,” said a blonde woman firing a carbine with zero motivation.

She had completed removed the top of her camouflage uniform, leaving only a tank top on her upper body. The top she did not need in that heat was tied around her waist. The two boys enjoyed watching her thanks to all the jiggling caused when she fired her weapon.

“So what did you two do to get yourselves sent out here?”

“We showed off our good looks and skills too much and made some people jealous.”

“That’s dangerous. That’s the fastest way to earn yourself an early grave.”

He received a serious reply to his joke.

Quenser gulped, but Heivia’s rifle had jammed, so he shouted out like someone tossing a video game controller to the side.

“Dammit!! Shooting each individual bullet like this is such a pain in the a.s.s! At this rate, the year will be over before we finish. Someone bring out the Crocodile!! We need to use a Gatling gun!!”

“But the Crocodile is 30 mm, right?” said the blonde tank-topped woman with a grin.

She must have been used to seeing soldiers have their spirit worn down like this.

With a puzzled look, Quenser asked, “So why are you here?”

“I’m Genelia, a marriage scam artist. Nice to meet you!”

“…Oh, wow.”

“I pretend to have n.o.ble blood to make money. I never thought that the money box I met in that bar would be the idiotic son of some high ranking member of the military. I got in a lot of trouble for that. As a result, I’ve been moved around among the harshest battlefields in the world.”

“Wait, wait, wait! This is one of the harshest battlefields in the world?” cut in Heivia as he tried to take apart the a.s.sault rifle to fix the jam and ended up burning his fingers on the hot barrel. “I thought they would gather a team of people they want to get rid of and send them out into the mountains on what is supposed to be an anti-terror mission. But the team would intentionally be given the wrong information so they would attack some villain’s hideout. That way the higher ups can eliminate any allies they want without worrying about how skilled they are.”

“When you do that, you have to pay a pension to the families. These days, the higher ups pay close attention to how much tax money they spend. Other than what they waste on themselves, of course.”

“This island is surrounded by the blue ocean and summer lasts year round. Genius Object designers live here. It is protected by 4 second generation Objects. This is heaven on earth and quite possibly the safest place in the world. What about it is harsh?”

“Because it is so peaceful, there is nothing to do.” Genelia fired repeatedly out towards the ocean to fill her quota. “When people earn the ire of the military, it is usually because they have a strong individual streak, right? Maybe they refuse to shoot children or they claim it is a subordinate’s job to stop a commander who is doing something wrong. Well, those kinds of ideals will rot away in no time on this island. After all, they don’t let you do anything.”

“…”

“During the first few months, you will be afraid that you are growing rusty and try to rehone your skills with independent training. But it’s no use. It’s too late. Both your mind and body will already be slowing. Here we have delicious food, air-conditioned private rooms, video games, a fully stocked bar, and lots of high quality cigars. …Once you get a taste of this, you’ll never want to go back to the jungle or the desert. They didn’t have online stores in Napoleon’s age, but if he was given a chance to use them for a while, he would never want to go back to the 18th century or the 19th century or whenever it was.”

That was how it was “harsh”.

Quenser and Heivia finally understood what kind of place they had been sent to.

“In other words, this island is a diplomatic way of urging us to retire?”

“That’s what it means to be sent to sit by the window. If the higher ups fire you directly, they have to spend more on severance pay. So instead they give you just enough work to justify minimum wage. There are only three patterns for the people sent here. Some continue the futile struggle against growing rusty, some begin thinking of retirement before the rust reaches the core of their bodies, and some decide to accept the rust and just enjoy themselves with the taxpayer’s money.”

“Is that really okay?” Heivia looked over towards the central island. “The most famous designers in the Legitimacy Kingdom are gathered here. Should they really use this as a place to let delinquent soldiers rot? It sounds more like the place for some ultimate special forces to me.”

“Oh, they do have a mysterious elite unit,” replied Genelia offhand. “The Night Edge Platoon. Sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it? It’s like they’re trying to sound cool. But they do protect everything well enough. And that just makes the rest of us feel all the more useless. Apparently the Night Edge Platoon swaps out its members every few months to prevent them from growing rusty. I guess this is like a vacation for them. But they’re dangerous. Really dangerous. If you tried to talk to one of them like this, you could easily get your throat slit.”

“I saw them. Even in this 40 degree heat, they had their heads completely covered in black masks. I doubt you could ever have a proper conversation with that kind of honor student.”

“But the military wants that kind of ‘honor student’ that never makes any complaints. After all, the exact same amount of the people’s tax money goes to those honor students as goes to the problem students.”

“Keh. They aren’t the legendary White Bears that disappeared in a South American desert. Y’know, that 115th Independent Royal Guard Company. Soldiers that follow their commander’s orders with no complaint like that are rare.”

“You mean those elites from the Volga District? The ones said to be knights working to protect a young princess from wicked politicians? From what I heard, they could have a movie made out of them.”

“Yeah, they like to make entertainment out of the tragedies of war. …Come to think of it, a movie would probably work out great since Princess Staivia is so popular. I hear they sell photographs of her in front of the palace in Moscow.”

“Are they all pedophiles or something?”

“If you said that in Volga plaza, you’d get shot.”

Quenser and Heivia had digressed into pointless chatter, so Genelia spoke up to bring them back on track.

“With delinquent soldiers like us, the tax money spent to pay us is considered wasted and they do not want to pay the pension to our families if we died. And so the higher ups want to find another way to get us out of the military.”

“If they want to save money, wouldn’t it be easier to tear out the fattened hearts of those higher ups?”

“You do realize that kind of comment is what led you to be a target for cutbacks, right?”

(How many months will we be stuck here? No, how many months will we last?)

With that offhand thought, Quenser continued to shoot his rifle out to sea. It was not as bad as the mythological j.a.panese children’s limbo, but being forced to do completely useless work with seemingly no end in sight was a way of hara.s.sing soldiers and wearing down their spirits. It was similar to the method used in prisons during the middle ages.

Of course, Quenser and Heivia both had their individual goals and they had joined the military to accomplish those goals.

And so this was no time for them to be sent out into the middle of nowhere just so the higher ups could hara.s.s them.

But…

“This place is filled with genius Object designers, right? Heivia, you may be out of luck, but this shouldn’t be too bad for me. In fact, I can probably learn a lot.”

“You idiot! That stuff is at the highest level of cla.s.sification. You’ll never get to see any of it! It isn’t something you can just sneak a peek at like the women’s bath!!”

“I can just ask them while in bed. If you like, I can give you a lecture on what I learn.”

Those two problem students would probably never shut their mouths even if they were sent to Mars, and they were as energetic as ever. As they focused more on chatting than firing their rifles, a bit of static ran through their radios, immediately followed by an announcement.

“Quenser Barbotage. Calling battlefield student Quenser Barbotage who recently transferred from the 37th Mobile Maintenance Battalion. As per the instructions of one of the researchers, you are to head to the Center as soon as possible.”

“…What? Am I being called to the princ.i.p.al’s office for a lecture?”

“The Center is a gathering of genius girls. It’s a lot like a girl’s school. In all seriousness, I hear it is 100% female! Dammit! Yet again I get left behind for this scrawny intellectual!! There’s something wrong with this world. Is G.o.d jealous of my good looks!?”

“It looks like your chance to take one of them to bed is already here,” said Genelia. “Well, I’m sure the Night Edge Platoon can’t believe this either. So be careful, okay?”

“Be careful about what? Those scaaaary trainers from Night Edge?”

“Do you know what this place is called? The nursery,” said Genelia with a grin. “And that isn’t because of us. It’s because of the genius designers in the Center. The top levels of the military can’t handle them either. They’re geniuses, so the military doesn’t want to lose them, but they’re too much trouble to keep nearby. This heaven in the Cook Addition Islands was created to gather all of them in a single place.”

“…So that building is filled with perverts?”

“And they have enough individual talent to force their way past the general wisdom of society. The very fact that a newcomer like you is being invited into that top secret facility should be proof enough. Normally, the Night Edge Platoon would remove your head in the name of preventing the leakage of cla.s.sified information if you so much as approached that facility without going through the proper procedures.”

“I hope I get to meet the kind of pervert that walks around wearing nothing but a lab coat. That hope is of course limited to girls.”

“Oh, come on now. You’d be too shocked to stand if you actually saw that.”

With the exception of the guards, the central island was supposedly populated solely by around 30 genius girls.

From the outside, it looked like a giant concrete military building, but it supposedly had very little sense of cohabitation. This was due to the residents being perverts. If they possessed personalities that allowed them to function within the normal gears of society, they would supposedly never have been sent to the “nursery”. For that reason, the genius girls supposedly primarily lived in personal rooms with only a few areas such as the labs with electron microscopes and other equipment shared between them. The various members would supposedly only meet each other while pa.s.sing each other in the long pa.s.sageways.

The repeated use of “supposedly” came from the fact that all this information came from Genelia who had never actually seen the inside of the Center. Quenser had no idea what connections she had used to get the information, but it was all things she had heard secondhand.

“Tch.”

When Quenser arrived in front of the thick door that looked strong enough to withstand an all-out war, the members of the Night Edge Platoon with black masks over their faces blatantly clicked their tongues.

“No guns, no blades, no explosives, no drugs, no germs, and nothing else either. I’d like to break your nose and that tiny thing in your pants for good measure, but I doubt you’ll get a chance to use it.”

“How about you remove that hairy hand and its hairy fingers from my neck? What the h.e.l.l? Are you a mutant created after being exposed to some kind of s.p.a.ce power or something? Isn’t that dirty sweat of yours the most dangerous thing that someone could bring in here?”

Quenser’s c.o.c.ky comment earned him a punch to the cheek.

“Don’t try to act so tough, tax thief. Get inside and cause some trouble. Then I don’t have to hold back and I can just shoot you.”

Quenser raised his middle finger and entered the building.

Unlike a department store or a shopping mall, there was no guide map posted. The long pa.s.sageways with rooms lining either side reminded him of a library’s bookshelves or a school’s shoe lockers.

The shorthair carpet and faint indirect lighting were just like a hotel’s. Without a guide map, Quenser had no way of knowing what was a private room and what was a laboratory. The system made it clear that was something only those living there needed to know.

“…There’s stuff piled up everywhere.”

The pa.s.sageways were much too cluttered to be those of a high-cla.s.s hotel. Or perhaps a hotel would look like this during cleaning time when the carts and cleaning supplies were brought out.

Some places simply had trash piled up, but some places had things like a dartboard hanging down from the ceiling by a string. Quenser even spotted some small dragonfly and rhinoceros beetle shaped robots clinging to the wall. It looked like a case where those in charge of cleaning up could not tell what was needed and what was not and so were too afraid to carelessly clean up any of it.

“Quenser. Quenser Barbotage.”

A female voice came his way from somewhere along the “library shelf”. Quenser turned toward the voice and saw a woman in her twenties stepping out into the pa.s.sageway from an open door.

She had an odd appearance.

She wore a lab coat long enough to reach her ankles and a brightly-colored bikini. Her hair was long, brown, and simply left spread out without tying it in any way. Quenser was pretty sure lab coats were meant to show stains and chemicals easily and to protect one’s body, but he could not imagine what purpose there was behind her outfit’s coordination. It reminded him of the legendary bikini armor.

Quenser shouted out, “I thought this was a collection of genius ‘girls’!!”

“Huh? That’s the first thing you latch onto? …Um, c’mon now. Don’t cry, don’t cry. Look: t.i.ts.”

“I’m fine with that part!! Now, I know we could never get married or be lovers, but let’s at least f.u.c.k!!”

“Hah hah hah. I see your morals have been nicely thrown out of order. There, there.”

With a generous smile, the woman accurately pulled a stun gun out of an inner pocket of her lab coat and threatened Quenser with it. That finally brought him back to his senses.

“Who are you?”

“Claire. I’m the Object designer Claire Whist. I heard you aspire to be one too.”

“…”

“Well, I guess it won’t feel real so suddenly. Unlike the pilot Elites, the designer’s ident.i.ties are kept a secret. That makes it easier to prevent terrorist attacks on us.”

Quenser was unsure what to say, but Claire used her thumb to point toward the open door.

“Come with me. I called you here because I have something to discuss with you. I think it will be a beneficial discussion for you.”

The room was about 10 meters square.

It did not have much in it. It had a bed and a desk. Something like a complexly folded plastic board sat in one corner of the room. It resembled a giant controller for a robot game modeled after a c.o.c.kpit. There were also a few shelves. The shelves were lined with several Object miniatures.

“They don’t move,” said Claire. “But their construction is almost identical to the real ones. It’s just that the reactors don’t function at that size. If you pursue perfection too far, a fundamental part tends to fail.”

“You make them here?”

“Why do you ask?”

“But…this is where you work? I thought it would be filled with all sorts of strange tools.”

“The people researching the materials would have a bunch of those. These days, all the action is in strengthening the materials for room-temperature superconductors. They’re busy mixing alloys and boiling wine.” Claire Whist opened a small refrigerator and pulled out a small juice box. “Designers can get by with a single computer. That’s why we’re wanted for our brains. And that laptop is connected to a supercomputer in another room, so I can handle everything quite easily.”

However, she had two laptops sitting on her desk.

When Quenser pointed that out, Claire smiled and said, “The other one is for my hobbies. How else would I get this swimsuit? The military’s fas.h.i.+on sense is just hopeless. …But I use it for stock and futures trading more than I do for online shopping.”

“…I thought designers made tons of money.”

“People will always aim for more. And so all that money doesn’t seem like enough.”

The numbers for some kind of trading were lined up on the screen. Even if it was not on her work computer, Quenser wondered if it was okay for someone with as much highly cla.s.sified information as an Object designer to have free access to the internet.

“We’re allowed a restricted access to the internet. The line first pa.s.ses through a military checkpoint. It’s a small lag, but it does work to my disadvantage in these trades.”

“…What are you trading here? Stocks?”

“Clouds.”

“So it’s a weather forecast?”

“No, no. Clouds are a wonderful resource. They’re a type of water resource. They take in the seawater and carry it as freshwater. Normally, the clouds created over the sea are carried by the wind and begin dropping rain when they hit the mountains. But these days, we can artificially control the amount of rain. Just as civilization developed around rivers, the age is coming where civilization will develop along the paths of the clouds. And once that happens,” said Claire, “compet.i.tion will naturally begin. Look. This is the market for southern Africa. The amount of clouds flowing through the sky is set, but the rain could come down anywhere. If it rains on Area A, Area B beyond it will dry up. Clouds disappear after they rain, after all.”

“…I see. So just like the world-famous rivers, the flow of the clouds crosses national borders?”

“Would Area A naturally give up on the rain and let the clouds move on to Area B? If they don’t get any water, they will dry up too. They will have no drinking water or food. Its people will wither away to nothing. And they have the technology to make it rain at their fingertips. So would it be right to sit idly by and do nothing? Human life or the laws of nature? Which one should they protect?”

“…”

“It’s a difficult question, isn’t it? And our response is to find the right answer for the right spot. There is no cut and dried answer. Some are trying to create a system to efficiently distribute water through underground channels at the same time, some are trying to focus the rain on the areas with rare plants, and some are trying to make it rain on the areas with high water retention. Some are even working with corporations to create giant tanks and pools. The complex movements of all these people has created a flow of money we call the water resources market. But you don’t need to worry about any of that.”

Object designs and investments.

In both cases, her weapon was nothing more than a computer.

“So you only do the pure designs? You don’t create new materials when you fail?”

“If I need something, I make a request to an expert in that field. That’s much faster. And if I just need something that works on paper, I can let the supercomputer calculate it out. I use the computer to calculate out an ideal new material that would fill the hole in a design and attach that to an email I send to one of the specialists in the other rooms. They’re the ones who make it by hand. That’s more or less how it works.”

Claire Whist pa.s.sed a grape juice box to Quenser, stabbed a straw into her own, and sat in a chair next to the desk.

“Hold it against your cheek. Is it swollen because of the Night Edge Platoon?”

“It scares me that hysteric b.a.s.t.a.r.ds like that are allowed to carry weapons.”

“A weapon is only as effective as the person who wields it,” said Claire offhandedly. “Well, they’re a lot like you, just of a different type. They’re good at what they do, but they throw punches as much as a health nut drinks mineral water. It was decided they aren’t needed in the modern smart and clean military. Since the military hates both of you, how about you try to get along?”

(This place really is a nursery through and through.)

Quenser had that thought, but he decided not to say it out loud.

Incidentally, pressing the juice box against his cheek did little to help. He decided to just stab the straw in instead.

“To be honest, it is no coincidence that you are here.”

“Eh? Well, yes. I was called here by you, right?”

“That’s not what I mean. It wasn’t my decision to have you sent off somewhere out of the way thanks to your troublesome actions, but I did influence the decision for this to be where you were sent. I wanted to be able to speak with you like this.”

“…”

It was simple enough to say.

But Quenser had no idea if that was actually possible.

“Anyway, I want to get down to business. So what do you think?”

“About what?”

“About Objects. You’ve dealt with first generation and second generation ones now, right?”

“There was also that 0.5 generation one.”

“That one doesn’t even count as an Object in our minds.”

Claire gave a scornful laugh.

She pulled a laser pointer out of a penholder on the table. Its red light pointed at one of the models lined up on the shelves.

“I most want to hear about this one. You should know this model very well.”

“…The Tri-Core?”

Quenser and Heivia had once sunk that Object in the Strait of Gibraltar. Its primary feature was its 3 giant reactors and its ability to drill for and transport oil.

Claire Whist spun the point of light around in a circle.

“I didn’t design that one, but this model was constructed based on the information received by a probe sent deep into the ocean. It’s only just barely 70% complete. Frankly, that isn’t enough. And that area of sea is packed with deep sea probes from the Legitimacy Kingdom, the Information Alliance, the Capitalist Corporations, and the Faith Organization. Everyone is trying to search further and stop the others, so they are all very busy.”

“What’s so special about it?”

“You can’t tell?” Claire sipped on some grape juice through her straw. “Modern wars are decided by the number of Objects. Individual ability can create a gap, but the difference made by numbers is overwhelming. Once it reaches one against three, it is hopeless. In that case, it is better to retreat without fighting. And yet…”

“Oh.”

“The Tri-Core has three reactors on a single Object. Normally, it would be much more effective to create three different Objects out of them. And it is now nothing but sc.r.a.p at the bottom of the sea. …Ideas for oddities like this will often surface, but they are never actually constructed. The will of the many moves the military. And it is the people’s tax money that moves these projects. Any oddity that was suggested in the past has been stopped at some point or another.”

“And yet the Tri-Core was created as a single Object with three reactors on it…”

“That’s the key.” Claire smiled. “You could call it the path to the third generation. The Tri-Core made it no further than what I suppose we could call generation 2.5, but its uniqueness holds the possibility to change the battlefield. Every military tries to a.n.a.lyze any defeated Object, but the focus on the Tri-Core is unusually high. The top designers from each world power are probably focused on it. …In other words, the shape of the Objects that support these wars could change soon. It won’t make it to the next designs, but it is possible the ones after that will show a clear influence from it.”

The third generation.

Quenser had experienced firsthand just how demonic the current second generation could be, so it was not something he could simply celebrate. It was like a test of courage. He very much wanted to hurry up and become a designer so he could be on the side of those frightening everyone else.

But at the same time…

“But the probes are still investigating the Tri-Core, right? What do you need me for? I doubt anything I know will help you complete that model.”

“No, no. That’s not it at all. I just wanted to hear your impressions of it.”

“My impressions?”

“Your impressions after fighting it.” Claire Whist held her juice box against her head and enjoyed its coolness. “The third generation we antic.i.p.ate will truly be ground-breaking. But it will be useless if it we focus too much on our design ideals and it ends up being useless on the battlefield. And so I wanted to ask you. What did you think of the Tri-Core? Did it do a job worthy of having three reactors?”

“I see…” Quenser glanced up at the ceiling and thought back. “Every Object I’ve seen has been like a demon, but for this one, I think the weight was the real problem.”

“Hm, hm.”

“In fact, I don’t think it would have been able to function if it hadn’t been on the ocean. It couldn’t completely evade the Baby Magnum’s bombardment and instead defended itself by moving areas with exceptionally thick armor into the blasts.”

“So it would be difficult to use in strategies requiring speed?”

“Yes. I’m sure it could get up to a nice top speed, but it couldn’t get any bursts of speed. For that reason, it would probably be best for it to use the output of its reactors for one-shot kills.”

“But the reports say that the Baby Magnum’s damage spread slowly.”

“It may have not specialized enough in one direction to be functional in battle.”

“I see.” Claire leaned back in her chair. “I’d say it was too much to try to put an entire oil facility on it. We need to be careful not to make a similar mistake.”

“Um…So will the third generation be made of Objects that have multiple reactors like the Tri-Core?”

“No. In fact, it is because that did not solve the problem that I said the Tri-Core was only generation 2.5.”

“…?”

Quenser was confused.

He opened his mouth to speak.

“Then what is the third generation?”

“You have already seen it,” said Claire Whist joyfully. “And it might become the mainstream form for Objects in the new wars to come.”

Meanwhile, Heivia was quite angry.

“I don’t like it. I don’t like it, I don’t like it, I! Don’t! Like! It!!”

Genelia the marriage scam artist smiled while watching Heivia turn the target on the ocean into Swiss cheese using his a.s.sault rifle.

“Oh, oh. Amazing, amazing. That should help clear out the stockpile of ammunition. Everyone, do your best to p.i.s.s off Heivia here!”

“While I’m out here dripping with sweat and wasting bullets, that b.a.s.t.a.r.d is getting a lecture directly related to his dream in an air-conditioned room! That isn’t right! And that place is a collection of genius girls. That really, really isn’t right!!”

“Y’know, it isn’t like every single one of them falls under the category of ‘genius girl’. And even if they do, there’s no rule saying they have to be good looking.”

“But when there are girls involved, it’s supposed to be my time to s.h.i.+ne! Why doesn’t anyone understand that!?”

“Um, I am a girl, you know.”

“f.u.c.k, fuuuccckkkk!!”

Once he saw the target fall to pieces and come clean off the pillar attaching it to the boat, he stopped firing. Instead, he switched on his radio.

“Can you hear me, Mr. Knight!? Can we finally get the man most suited for the job in there where he belongs!?”

“That building is completely cut off to prevent any cla.s.sified information from being leaked out.”

“Oh, right,” said Claire Whist as she crushed the juice box in her hand after finis.h.i.+ng off the grape juice. “I wanted to ask you about one other Object as well.”

“Which one?”

“The Baby Magnum.”

Claire’s voice had a nostalgic ring when she spoke that name.

But when she continued, a dangerous tone joined it.

“I have heard about the successes of the 37th Mobile Maintenance Battalion. But not all of those successes were successes of the Baby Magnum. Is that correct?”

“Well…”

“If so, that’s a bit of a problem.” Claire gave a small sigh. “That first generation’s design was a bit removed from the mainstream design, but I was still involved in designing it. To be honest, I use it as a prime example of my work. I don’t like constantly hearing about the Baby Magnum losing. At this rate, I’m going to have to change what example I use.”

“The princess is doing a great job! If the Baby Magnum hadn’t been there, I wouldn’t be alive today. Not to mention that a few conspiracies might have been carried out and the world would be a complete mess now!”

“But it is the higher ups of the military that make those decisions. The victory or loss of an Object can bring a war to an end, and they want to construct and maintain that system. I may not agree with them, but even a moronic customer is a customer. I need to take measures against any damage to my reputation.”

“Does a designer have enough power to directly influence a battalion made up of thousands of people?”

“Isn’t that why you aspire to be one? For the money and power? I helped design the Baby Magnum. If I reported there was a defect in it, it would at least be pulled off the front lines for inspection. That would probably last six months to a year. And that would buy me enough time to make my next move. For example, it is an outdated first generation Object. Several high officials want to get rid of it and spend the money on a second generation Object.”

“…”

“If you don’t want that, you need to get them working harder,” said Claire casually while tossing the crushed juice box into the trash can. “A lot more people than you think have their names on the line in these large projects. And that’s all I have to say.”

With that, the conversation was brought to an end.

Claire had either lost interest or was simply never very sociable because she showed no sign that she intended to show him out. Quenser left the room on his own and let out a slight sigh.

An Object designer.

That was a one-way ticket to being one of the few winners in life. Even a commoner could make more money than a lower level n.o.ble.

And yet he could not deny that she had seemed somehow constrained to him. It was true Claire Whist had been sent to this island because she was troublesome even for a designer, but even so…

(That also means that even a designer has to constantly make sure not to anger the top levels of the military.)

A restricted freedom.

Authority as just one portion of the gears.

When he thought about it rationally, that was the standard way the world of adults worked and those designers sat in the very center of the military with its strict hierarchical relations.h.i.+ps and all that cla.s.sified information. There was simply no way someone in the middle of all that could just live a carefree life.

“But at the same time…”

That was not to say he had been disillusioned in his dream of being a designer. Or rather, he ran into the fundamental question of what other path there was for him if he gave up on becoming a designer. In the end, he still wanted that money whether he would be free or not. There were not that many opportunities for a commoner to stand in the spotlight.

But…

There was an even greater reason Quenser felt like his time had been wasted.

He had spoken face to face with Claire, a leading designer. He had seen where she worked. He had even been able to touch her miniature Objects.

And yet he had not gotten anything out of it.

There had been plenty there. It had been a veritable mountain of treasure. Someone who worked on the front lines of design would have found tons of data. But Quenser had been unable to take in any of it even with it right before his eyes. It was like not being able to tell the difference in flavor between two dishes but pretending to be able to. …When it came down to it, he was nothing more than an amateur student. He had not reached the level of an expert designer.

That difference in ability made him falter.

He felt like a mountain climber who discovered what he thought was the peak was nothing more than a small outcropping halfway up.

“I guess I should head back,” whispered Quenser as he walked down the pa.s.sageway.

While he headed for the exit through that building that reminded him of a library’s shelves or a school’s shoe lockers, his mouth started to feel sticky. It was likely due to the grape juice Claire had given him.

The long, straight pa.s.sageway allowed him to see a good distance away. At what was probably a corner of the building, he spotted a coffee vending machine.

Once he left the building, he would probably be right back to wasting the stockpiled bullets with an a.s.sault rifle. From the sparkle he had seen in that Night Edge Platoon’s eyes, he doubted he would get any water anytime soon out there.

Deciding to drink some iced coffee or something to clear out his mouth before leaving, Quenser walked toward the vending machine in the corner of the building. It was the old style that used paper cups, but it must have been popular with the genius girls (or women) because it had the stains characteristic of a well-used machine.

He put a few coins into the machine and waited for the iced coffee to fill the paper cup. As he waited, he heard some static come from his small radio.

It quickly turned into a voice.

“Dammit, Quenser! How long are you going to slack off inside that air-conditioned building!? Don’t tell me you really are trying to negotiate with them in bed! That isn’t like you! You should be ma.s.s producing wasted ammunition with your right hand instead!!”

“…I’m gonna punch that idiot once I get back out there,” vowed Quenser quietly, but then he frowned.

The building was filled with cla.s.sified information related to Object design. Naturally, they would make sure data could not get in or out. Claire Whist had told him her internet line went through military surveillance before it got out.

Quenser’s radio and cell phone had not been confiscated at the entrance, so he had a.s.sumed the building was covered with materials that cut off any electromagnetic signals.

No, it definitely was.

He slowly reached out to touch the wall. It felt the same. But he clearly felt something different when he reached a hand behind the coffee vending machine.

“The material meant to block the signal was taken out, so it was repainted here recently.”

A blank spot.

A hole.

After thinking about what that mean, Quenser muttered, “Has someone set things up so they can leak cla.s.sified information?”

The wind grew stronger.

As Heivia and the others continued to dispose of the stockpile of bullets, a man wearing a black mask shouted angrily at them from behind.

“Hurry it up, you tax thieves! You’re nothing but trash. You have to keep working until you finish your quota even if a storm blows in or you have to continue into tomorrow!!”

Heivia clicked his tongue and the marriage scam artist muttered quietly to him.

“How about you ‘accidentally’ shoot him?”

“If I knew some technique to fire a gun 180 degrees behind me, I could probably sell it to an action movie director.”

The Night Edge Platoon had not been charged with watching over them. It seemed the man was simply shouting at everyone he came across. He had already headed off somewhere else.

Heivia made sure to raise his middle finger to the man’s parting back, but then he realized something.

“Hey, you said they’re the Night Edge Platoon, right?”

“They’re famous for going overboard while acting as bodyguards for VIPs. The councilors they guarded didn’t like how the excessive violence caused their approval ratings to drop. But that’s no reason to send them out to inspect the battlefields. They just get in the way.”

“…Well, they don’t look like it.”

“?”

Genelia frowned and Heivia ran his thumb across his throat as if slitting it.

“That guy must have given in to the heat because he lifted his black mask up a little. That’s when I saw it. He had scars from stiches circling around his neck. He’s from the 202nd Mobile Support Company. They go by the name Unicorn and that’s their distinguis.h.i.+ng sign. Apparently it symbolizes their decision to ‘kill’ their former self and be reborn upon entering the unit.”

“You’re saying that’s not the Night Edge Platoon but some other unit?” Genelia sounded skeptical. “Maybe someone left Unicorn and joined Night Edge. I hear people often regret it when they try to unite their unit with tattoos.”

“Sure, if it was just him.” Heivia removed the scope from his a.s.sault rifle and handed it to Genelia. “Look at the one over there and the one jogging on the bridge. Check around their necks. They have the same scars.”

“…You’re right.”

“You could be right and they officially changed units. But the percentage is just too high. For all intents and purposes, they’ve only changed their name and are still Unicorn.”

“So who is this Unicorn?”

“They have a lot of dark rumors. Their official mission is to destroy enemy lifelines. They’ll blow up trucks carrying supplies whether they’re military or civilian, they’ll destroy public facilities such as bridges or phone towers, and they’ll cut off communications with jamming. They make tons of money behind the scenes of the clean wars.” Heivia took the scope back from Genelia and reattached it to his a.s.sault rifle. “They’re an independent unit that ignores their allies’ opinions and carries out whatever destruction they deem necessary for their allies to win in these clean wars between Objects. They do a lot of things that can’t be made public, so they usually remain undercover. There is even suspicion that they have set up a side business with spies from the Capitalist Corporations in the process. Supposedly, they were involved in some attacks on gold mines and black market weapons sales in battlefield countries.”

“They certainly sound dangerous. …But this a top secret facility filled with top Object designers. What are they doing here disguised as the Night Edge Platoon?”

“Who knows. But if they didn’t have to hide their presence here, they wouldn’t go to the effort. This might be related to their side business with the Capitalist Corporations. Simple honor students are annoying enough to deal with, but Unicorn is an entirely different kind of dangerous. This goes beyond wondering if they’ll betray us. They might not even be on the side of the Legitimacy Kingdom in the first place. Who knows when they’ll shoot us in the back.”

Heivia decided it was best to a.s.sume the platoon going by the name Night Edge had been absorbed into the company known as Unicorn.

Naturally, all the Unicorn members spread out across the world would be sharing information between themselves.

Having the Night Edge Platoon hiding their ident.i.ty inside the collection of cla.s.sified information that was the Cook Addition Islands was a very, very bad situation.

That was when a tone came from Heivia’s radio.

Not long before, it had become nothing but a karaoke microphone toy he shouted abuse over to relieve his stress, but now some unwelcome information came from it.

“Hey, Heivia. I’m inside that building filled with top secret information right now. What do you think about the fact that the signal is reaching you?”

“Not good…” Heivia brought a hand to his forehead. “I found something bad on my end of things too. That impertinent Night Edge Platoon has been swapped out for a different unit called Unicorn. That’s the unit suspected to have a secret side business with the Capitalist Corporations!”

“Wait, wait, wait! You don’t mean…!!”

“That’s right, you idiot. If data is being sent back and forth under the military’s radar doing exactly what you’re doing, then it’s possible one of the designers in there is working with the Capitalist Corporations!!”

“By the way, it was a coincidence we ended up getting sent off somewhere, but it seems one of those designers influenced where we were sent. So could the same have happened with the Night Edge Platoon?”

“Probably. A designer could have influenced things to gather the p.a.w.ns she needed.”

“Dammit. Why do we always stumble onto things like this?”

“It’s the curse of those who are just too skilled and good looking. It can’t be long before they make a movie about us.”

The situation had grown troublesome.

A designer inside the thick walls of the building was sending signals out via radio and Unicorn was receiving them outside. If the information was then sent off the island with some larger equipment, a hotline between the designer and the Capitalist Corporations could be constructed.

And on top of that, the “justice” of that small island was completely controlled by Unicorn disguised as Night Edge and the designers in the Center. If the two were working together, the proper law and military regulations would not necessarily come into play if Heivia and the others made a fuss about it.

They had to search out a communications device or line out of the island that was not controlled by the enemy and use that to report the situation elsewhere. And if the enemy tried to stop them, they would of course ignore the usual methods and attack.

Genelia then started tugging on Heivia’s sleeve.

“But there are around 30 genius girls living inside that building, right? Do we know who to suspect?”

“We just have to follow Unicorn’s actions. Not all of them are here on the island. Even the entirety of the Night Edge Platoon would only make up a third of Unicorn. The main body of the unit is elsewhere.”

“How can you know that?”

“Because of all the dark rumors. There are journalists that figure they don’t have to worry about putting food on the table if they just follow Unicorn around. Then again, some have gotten killed for getting too close. Their area of activity can be found on normal news sites.”

“It may not be as bad as where Quenser is, but this place isn’t so lax that we can just play FPSs over the wireless LAN.”

“True. And so I can’t get the latest information. But I do have what I saw while on the transport plane taking me here.” Heivia paused for a second. “Southern Africa. They were doing some dirty work related to water resources using clouds. Any ideas, Quenser?”

The only response from the radio was the sound of a head slamming against the wall.

It was time to check what needed to be done.

Quenser leaned against the wall, sipped on his iced coffee, and spoke into the radio.

“We suspect the designer Claire Whist and Unicorn are working together. And it is possible they are linked to the Capitalist Corporations. What do we need to do?”

“Forget all this and head back to our boring duties with a smile?”

“We don’t have time to joke around. We need to move forward.”

“…I was actually being serious.”

“Heivia, you do whatever you can to look into what the Night Edge Platoon…or rather, Unicorn is doing. Both the ones on this island and the ones in southern Africa. I want to know what the entire unit is after.”

“Then you deal with Claire. Climb into bed if you need to, but get as much information as you can. She’s a top designer, so you won’t get many chances to interview her. If we waste this opportunity, we’ll lose any chance of approaching her or getting any information out of her.”

“Of course, Unicorn holds the peace and justice of this island in their hands. They could easily claim we were trying to leak cla.s.sified information and shoot us. Don’t let them notice you’re looking into this.”

“The same goes for you. Don’t forget that your location makes that technique easiest to use against you.”

After agreeing to contact each other again in an hour, Quenser switched off the radio. He gulped down the rest of the vending machine iced coffee, threw the paper cup in the trash can, and looked over at the wall across from the vending machine.

A whiteboard was hanging on it.

Escalibor, a.s.sault Signal, Slide Lance, Active s.h.i.+eld… The names of several Objects and the battlefields they were in were written in marker. They were likely ones the researchers in the facility had helped design. Quenser recognized one of them.

Baby Magnum.

Southern Africa.

“Dammit.”

Claire Whist had said she had helped design the Baby Magnum. If she was involved with the Capitalist Corporations via the Unicorn force active in southern Africa, the Baby Magnum’s weaknesses could be leaked to the Capitalist Corporations.

And…

Claire had said she was displeased with the Baby Magnum’s results in battles. She had said she would need to use a different design example if it had any further negative effect on her reputation.

“Every new piece of information just makes this seem more and more ominous…”

If he was going to obtain information from Claire, he would first have to return to her room. He could also speak with the residents of the other rooms, but it was obvious what those people would do if some unfamiliar person came knocking at their door inside that top secret facility. They would report him to the Night Edge Platoon and he would be quickly neutralized.

(My best bet is to say I left something in her room.)

With that idea, Quenser knocked on Claire’s door and was invited in with no suspicion. Or at least no visible suspicion.

“What did you forget? Can’t it wait?”

“My cell phone.”

“Oh…that would be bad.”

That was the reaction he had expected.

“The building is made to prevent any signal from getting in or out, but your phone does have a camera and a record function. If it was found in my room afterwards, you could be arrested as a possible spy.”

“It’s red and it’s the type that slides open. It should stand out, so it shouldn’t take long to find.”

“Hm, hm.”

Quenser peered under the bed. As he did, he thought about how to start the conversation. She might put up her guard if he brought up southern Africa right away.

“Come to think of it, don’t you lose your chance to spend all the money you make by living in a place like this?”

“I can order things from the internet, so no. I grow tired of things and throw them out pretty quickly though, so my room doesn’t get too cluttered. Even video games are downloaded these days.”

“Video games?”

Quenser glanced over at the corner of the room. Something that looked like a complexly folded plastic sheet sat there. The device looked like a giant controller modeled after a c.o.c.kpit for robot games.

“Is that what that’s for?”

“Hm? No, that’s a failed part of an old project. It was supposed to go on a model called the a.s.sault Signal.”

“Is it an Object simulator or something?”

“It’s nothing that amazing. The device allows balance of the Object to be restored via remote control if the Elite pa.s.ses out inside and it is about to sink into the ocean or anything like that. Even that requires several dozen to over 100 people. And even then it can’t keep up with a high speed battle. It was rejected as it left an opening for hacking, though,” explained Claire. “Having some leeway is good. You can be more adventurous when you know there will be a next time even if you fail. And this kind of failed technology that you gain from that leads the way to a stable Object design. It’s important to create a cycle. Once the cycle is set up, the returns increase without end, but setting it up can be incredibly difficult. It’s the same as how it is more efficient to keep an Object’s reactor constantly on rather than switching it on and off.”

“I want to begin doing that as soon as possible,” replied Quenser honestly.

While looking through the shelves, Claire said, “Also, my goal may actually be gaining the money itself rather than what I can do with it.”

“Oh?”

“Even though I live here, my official residence is in Paris. It’s pretty big, but I only head back there about twice a year. It feels more like a distant relative’s villa. My money and house are the same. Obtaining them is what matters. The amount of money I have and the size of my house add to my social status which increases my power. That especially helps when I have a job that gives me an eccentric image.”

Quenser moved aside some magazines on the floor, knocked out the bookmark inside, put the bookmark back in, and otherwise tried to buy as much time as he could while he fully utilized the part of his brain in charge of adlibbing.

“…So what else do you have?”

“Some normal things like nice cars and villas. Oh, and I donate money too. Here’s a surprise: 5% of the NGOs in the Legitimacy Kingdom run on the money I make developing weapons!”

Quenser was sure he could more easily find any link to Unicorn or the Capitalist Corporations if he looked through the laptop on the table, but he could hardly manage that in the current situation.

“Isn’t this sort of like your villa?”

“You could call my villas a social venture. I have villas that I have never even set foot in. I have one in the Amazon jungle, one on the coast of the Mediterranean, one near an Arctic ski resort, and lately I even bought one in the Oceania District. And one in southern Africa, too.”

Quenser could feel his heart leap inside him.

This was his way in.

“Have you ever been to Africa? Do you know what kind of food they have there?”

“Hm? Well, a few times. But I only ate things like hamburgers and tempura. That kind of thing is popular there. The proper home cooking is apparently something like a curry soup filled with spices, but I have yet to run across it. I always let my food cool down before I eat it.”

“I can imagine how that would taste, and I don’t have any desire to track it down.”

“I know. I was hoping for something a little more exciting. Something wild like an entire roast mammoth.”

“There are no mammoths anymore.”

“You’ll understand if you go there. Seeing it on TV just isn’t the same. You’ll feel like you could find something like that there.”

“But isn’t that a battlefield country? Wouldn’t the higher ups in the military get mad if a designer went there for fun? You could be abducted for all the cla.s.sified information you know.”

“Don’t worry about that. We have some excellent bodyguards for trips like that. If I have the Night Edge Platoon with me, they let me go.”

A gap appeared in the conversation.

Quenser made sure to continue speaking in order to prevent any silence.

“I hear they have penguins in southern Africa.”

“Yes, the African penguins. They’re cute. Even the cities look out for them. They make tunnels especially for the penguins. They’re sometimes used as UGVs for intelligence purposes, though. But,” added Claire Whist, “those tunnels are made only with the roads in mind. When it rains a lot, the tunnels fill with water. Penguins are meant to swim in the ocean, but they do not have gills. They sometimes get lost in the tunnels and drown. It’s most unfortunate.”

The mention of rain caught at Quenser’s mind, but he decided it was too soon to push further.

He continued the conversation while only skimming his topic of interest. He cautiously kept some distance but not too much distance.

“They get lost in the tunnels?”

“Even though the tunnels are just straight paths, it seems they are just so dark and narrow that they can’t tell forward from backward or up from down. They would actually leave the tunnels faster if they merely let the water wash them away.”

“That sounds like a frustrating situation for an animal welfare group.”

“It is. And so the water resource market is viewed as quite the villain.”

Quenser continued to keep some distance but not too much.

He continued on his quest for information while forcing down his worried suspicions that she might actually be inviting him in.

Heivia also took action. The actions of the Unicorn group disguised as the Night Edge Platoon on the Cook Addition Islands was one thing, but he had no way of investigating the actions of the main force in Southern Africa just by observing. He had to find a net terminal that could access the military database.

“What a pain in the a.s.s. Why can’t Quenser just look into it using a researcher’s computer?”

“I doubt he’ll have a chance to even touch one of those top secret computers. And the higher ups in the military can tell when a computer inside accesses something outside.”

“Hey, marriage scam artist. Why did you come with me?”

“I’ve awakened to a sense of love and justice.”

“…You’re not part of Unicorn too, are you?”

Heivia and the others had originally been ordered to dispose of the large amount of excess ammunition stored up. None of the soldiers given that task had any motivation and plenty of them had snuck off somewhere else. The fact that they were all beginning to “rot” like that allowed the higher ups to inwardly smile while rebuking them. No one would place any serious blame on Heivia and Genelia for disappearing.

“Hey, where do you think the external lines are? Somewhere in the experiment building?”

“We’d be caught by sensors if we even tried to approach that place. The only facility removed from the cla.s.sified information on Object design is in the living quarters for the soldiers like us. And that place is basically Night Edge’s fortress.”

“So we have to get the information out of Unicorn’s computers?”

“That would be the fastest way to approach the truth. If they do have a hotline connected to someone else, they have to have a net terminal hidden from the higher ups.”

Heivia wondered what it would look like he and Genelia were doing to someone else. It may have looked like they had grown bored of the never-ending inventory reduction so they were sneaking off to the living quarters to take a nap.

“Hey, I know a quick way to make us look less suspicious. Wrap your arms around my arm.”

“…You don’t look like you have any money, so no thanks.”

“I am one of the Legitimacy Kingdom’s foremost n.o.bles, you know!! Even if it is true that every single member of my family is opposed to me being the successor!!”

“Presideeeent, what is the total sum of your a.s.seeeets?”

“Hey, don’t cling to me like that! It gives me goose b.u.mps!!”

They walked across a large road-like bridge and arrived at the soldiers’ living quarters. It was a large steel piece of land that resembled an offsh.o.r.e drilling platform. And instead of having buildings built on top, the barracks were built hanging down below.

“Night Edge’s area is completely cut off from everything else. And the quality of the facilities on their side is better. I guess that’s what you get when you’re acting as bodyguards for those rich designers. I hear they get to eat dinner in the dining hall rather than just getting ready-made lunchboxes like us.”

“I had thought they were just your stereotypical discrimination lovers, but it may have been a way to restrict information. A lot of data gets pa.s.sed around during mealtimes in the form of chitchat.”

“So they wanted to cut off any careless information leaks?”

“I’d say so.”

“But then won’t it be difficult to get into their area? They probably have tons of cameras set up.”

“No, they won’t.”

“?”

“They’re up to no good. Why would they leave any evidence of it?”

The two of them walked by the most obvious entrance to Night Edge’s area and spotted an obvious human guard out of the corner of their eye. It was a masked member of the Night Edge Platoon. They used the human eye so their surveillance would leave behind no records.

“I want to just punch him and head on in.”

“Do you want to fail?”

“Then I guess