“Ha-ha! You crazy bastard, you actually pulled it off!”
“…Sorry, what?”
The moment I returned to the hangar, I was swarmed by an unusually enthusiastic Mogami along with the rest of his engineers.
Frankly, it felt like the whole hangar was throwing a party or something.
Then again, I couldn’t say I didn’t understand why they were so pleased.
Their mech—the one they had poured their sweat and blood into—had just performed flawlessly in live combat.
The very same mech everyone had written off as being impractical and defective. To them, this must have felt like the ultimate comeback. I’d have been thrilled in their position, too.
That part, I understood. But understanding why they felt that way and actually being okay with what was happening were two very different things.
Especially when everyone was ruffling my hair like crazy. Someone was going to have to snap these guys back to reality before this got out of hand.
“Anyway, first things first,” I told them, “let’s prioritize reloading the cannon and checking the gun barrels.”
The legs obviously needed examining; after all that jumping around, there was bound to be some wear and tear. And with the repeated aerial cannon fire, I was sure the upper body had taken a good beating from recoil. But even more urgent was the cannon barrel itself.
It looked fine at first glance, but after firing that many rapid shots, there could be internal warping and even slag forming inside.
“If the barrel’s okay, I can still fight. Please check that before you look at the joints.”
“…”
Mogami and the rest of his team suddenly gave me strange, blank stares.
I was pretty sure I hadn’t said anything odd just now, but all at once, the celebratory mood in the hangar shifted to awkward silence.
Had I said something stupid from a technical perspective?
“…Why the weird looks?”
“Well, it’s just… You know…”
“Know what?”
“Know what? he says! You crushed it out there! Took out ten large-class monsters and a whole bunch of mediums and smalls to boot!”
“Well, yeah, I guess.”
I wasn’t sure I would say I crushed it, but I did do my part.
“Then shouldn’t you be, I don’t know, happy about it?”
“Ah…”
Now I got it.
To them, the battle was already over.
That was why they were celebrating like it was all behind us.
And sure, that was fair. Victory should be celebrated. Those who had contributed deserved recognition.
They were engineers, so they weren’t handing out military rewards. But they could give praise.
I was fully aware that it was their maintenance work that allowed me to perform out there. I would never have denied that. If someone had told me to thank them, I was already planning to do just that.
But, well, you did that after the battle was over.
Right now, it was too early.
“Mogami?”
“Y-yeah?”
This atmosphere wouldn’t do.
I had a feeling that if I didn’t nip this in the bud, we were going to regret it later. I had to put this bluntly.
“It’s not over yet. They’re still fighting the monsters.”
“…!”
“The Second Division is closing in, but the only thing that means is that the enemy is cornered. Who knows what they’ll do? They might go full berserk mode and try to break through the encirclement. Maybe they’ll even try a suicide rush. And if one of them does break through and reaches us, what are we going to say? ‘Oh, we didn’t think there’d be any more fighting, so we didn’t restock shells’? ‘Oops, sorry it blew up, didn’t realize the barrel was warped’? Or do we just blame the Second Division for letting the enemy break through? I suppose it doesn’t matter, because we’d all be dead.”
“That’s…”
“Sorry, I know I sound like I’m getting on my high horse, but this is still a battlefield. As long as the fighting continues, none of us can let our guards down. I don’t know how you feel about it, but I personally have no intention of dying in a place like this.”
Complacency when you thought you had won was how people got killed. Every ancient Chinese tome on military strategy said so.
“…Sorry,” Mogami replied sheepishly. “You’re right, we got carried away.”
“It’s not your fault. Really, I should be the one apologizing to you all for acting like I’m in charge.”
“No, you’re a hundred percent right. The fight’s not over… Hey! You all heard him! Get on the cannon check and reload now!”
“Yes, sir!”
Good. The rest of the engineers had snapped out of it, too.
Now even if something went wrong, at least we wouldn’t just be waiting here to get killed.
“Sorry again,” Mogami apologized. “Honestly, I should’ve been the one telling you to stay sharp.”
“You guys haven’t been in full combat before, right? It’s understandable.”
“True, but still… Anyway, don’t feel like you have to walk on eggshells around me, okay? Not that I’m one to talk.”
“I wasn’t doing that. Just didn’t want to drag it out, is all.”
I would rather we move on. Though if they wanted to feel grateful, I wouldn’t stop them.
“Okay, then. Let’s get back to the maintenance.”
“Thanks.”
This mood was so weird; I really hoped it would change soon.
“Reloading more shells and swapping the barrel won’t take long. If needed, we can just stick a spare one on.”
“…True.”
Now that I thought about it, that seemed obvious. They could simply swap it out, then do maintenance on it later.
In that case, maybe that awkward silence earlier was them being baffled by how overly dramatic I was?
“Of course, it’s always ideal if we don’t need to use spare parts. So if we’ve got time, we’ll do the maintenance work.”
“…Thanks. I appreciate it.”
Now that was what I called being considerate.
“But you know what’s been bugging me? Your legs—or more specifically, your back…”
“Huh? Come again?”
What was he getting at? I wish he’d spit it out already.
“Well, you were flying, right? Moving around midair, up, down, side to side? Changing speeds?”
“…Now that you mention it…”
Yeah, I had been moving around a lot. Boosting my speed, even.
“Wait… You mean you weren’t even aware of it?!”
“…Not really, no.”
Seriously, I’d barely noticed.
“So you also didn’t see that weird light coming out from your legs and back when you changed direction or speed?”
“A weird light?”
“Yeah. Like a greenish-blue, bluish-green glow of some kind.”
“…Oh.”
That wasn’t supposed to happen?