Heavy Object-Volume 20, Prologue

“I happened to detect a Longshot CM flying at low altitude toward a large safe country city. That’s the type of cruise missile that snakes along in an S-shape to slip past the ground-based radars. If I hadn’t shot it down, Warsaw would’ve been wiped off the map. It had an FAE warhead.”

“Protect the safe country. Save Warsaw. Ksh, so do whatever you need to do. I grant you authorization for it all. This is the final command Royal Air Force’s Jotunheim Air Base has for you in our joint operation. I’m glad we had this chance to work together.”

“Does that mean the Chain Cutters’ cruise missile bombing of Warsaw and attack on Jotunheim Air Base were all so they could target this Information Alliance transport plane? They wanted to alter their targets route to lure it into their ‘lair’.”

“I wonder what’s in that thing. So many people died on both sides, but that turkey wasn’t even scratched. Even though it’s nearly defenseless and at the center of it all.”

“The accuracy of their statements is not being officially recognized, but we do know the Information Alliance higher ups were getting frustrated with their inability to end that war and lent their Object an add-on we have called the Ghost Changer. We don’t know what it does.”

“They swapped out containers several times along the way while zigzagging it between the east and the west to disguise where it was going, but fortunately we were able to figure out where it was being sent next.”

“Would the world powers really just give up after that? Like with the Chain Cutters and Electric Drills, Bad Garage had infiltrated the militaries to set up their own people in enemy territory, so they were clearly planning something bigger than that.”

“But that isn’t the end of it. The Electric Drills - or really, Bad Garage who leads all those online terrorists - wants to prove their environmental destruction by Objects theory. They want a disaster so bad not even the joint efforts of the four world powers can cover it up.”

“And luck would have it Mount Vesuvius is located on the Italian Peninsula. It’s one of the world’s most famous active volcanoes, right alongside Mount Etna, and it’s only about 200km from the center of Rome. Mineral springs are fairly common around here, so there is a chance the same magma reservoir exists below the city. It’s currently dormant, but the kind of massive energy that destroyed Pompeii in a single night still lurks below the surface.”

“That’s where you’re wrong. An Object disaster is coming to Rome.”

“The Princess and Oh Ho Ho were the real trigger!?”

“It’s begun…”

“It’s finally started. This isn’t the usual clean wars. No one’s even trying to pretend anymore. The four world powers aren’t going to stop until they have truly burned each other to the ground, bringing down the rest of the world with them. This is a true world war.”