Editing City Series:Volume6a Chapter5 (section)

===Part 9===

Just as Hazel saw the sky, she was hit by an impact.

Something hard as a wall slammed into her shoulders, back, and hips.

It hurt. It hurt worse than anything she had experienced in her everyday life. Unlike when she had been hit, this pain crashed into her with no warning whatsoever.

The impact seemed to circle around her body to hit every last part of her.

…''Am I rolling along something?

Once she realized what this was, she could react appropriately.

She used her feline balance to twist her body faster than she was rolling and to swing her hips around. She moved her spread legs to horizontally distribute her sideways kinetic vector.

She tensed her arms and legs to finally stop her roll. She saw a gray sheet iron roof in front of her.

She suppressed the nausea brought on by the rolling and worked to remember what had happened.

…''We drove through the emergency exit, right?

A certain object in her vision answered that question for her.

She looked up to see something falling right in front of her.

A giant slab of metal crashed down like a guillotine blade. It was the emergency exit door and it easily stabbed down into the roof mere inches away from her.

Her pulse quickened at the deafening sound and the shaking of the metal door filling her vision. She was a Werecat, so she would Flektieren into a cat when her pulse raced and her body sensed danger.

…''I need to avoid a Flektieren here.

With that rational thought, she tried to calm herself. To do so, she opened her mouth and gathered her thoughts.

“Th-this is the roof of the hangar next to the barracks, isn’t it? The one surrounded by soldiers.”

She caught her breath and stood up. After stepping out from behind the door, she found herself only a few steps away from the edge of the roof.

She looked up.

The barracks they had just left were about 40 yards away.

About half of the building had been sliced through diagonally and the upper half had slid and crumbled toward this side of things. That was the result of Berger’s attack.

And just as she sighed…

“Hi, you doing okay, Hazel?”

That question came from behind and a bit below her.

She looked back on reflex and saw about 30 yards until the other end of the roof. Down below, she could see a road wide enough for something as large as an aircraft to navigate.

A storage building about the same size as this one existed across that road.

Berger was looking up at her from in front of its wall. He was about 8 yards lower than her.

He looked unharmed except for the blood that was still flowing from his right hand.

The motorcycle was partially embedded in the wall behind him about 5 yards above his head.

“I’m glad no one was hurt in the crash. I wouldn’t want to get my license revoked.”

“Um…so I take it you’re doing fine then.”

Relieved, she walked forward while keeping her eyes on him.

The sheet iron roof felt surprisingly pleasant below her bare feet.

More of the wide road below came into view with each step.

Soldiers were gathered on it.

“…!”

The soldiers were so numerous they hid the pavement and they were surrounding Berger from a distance.

He literally had his back to the wall.

The windows on that wall showed heavily-armed soldiers waiting inside the storage building as well.

They were not going to let him escape no matter what.

All of the soldiers had their weapons drawn and aimed at him.

None of them said a word, so the rustling of her clothing and her own footsteps rang loud in Hazel’s ears.

Even her hair tangling together as it fluttered in the wind behind her sounded like waves to her.

It was quiet. She was the only one moving here.

Even Berger remained motionless as he simply looked up at her.

But one person spoke in a deep voice instead of moving.

“This ends here.”

The words came from Schweitzer who had taken a step forward from the surrounding soldiers to stand in front of Berger. His black coat and giant prosthetic arm were impossible to miss once he moved to the front of the crowd.

Hazel gulped while viewing the enormous man from above and behind.

He held a handgun in his left hand and it was aimed at Berger.

“Um, p-please wait!”

He was not going to wait. He asked a question with the gun still aimed at Berger.

“So we finally have some closure after two years.”

“You’re wrong there, Schweitzer. You didn’t do anything two years ago. No, you ''couldn’t'' do anything. You couldn’t stop me and Alfred, you couldn’t stop her, and…”

And…

“You couldn’t stop Marsch now. So are you going to imprison Hazel just because you never want to lose anything again? Hazel, who carries the same will as Eryngium.”

“…”

Hazel realized Berger was looking her way.

She looked to him and he asked a question to no one in particular.

“The Marsch we knew is dead, isn’t he?”

He was answered with silence.

After a few seconds that felt both too long and too short, Schweitzer answered.

“That is correct.”

Berger did not nod as he continued speaking.

“Marsch and I did a lot of research with that upperclassman in university, but once that upperclassman joined the military, our research hit a dead end and then the Armored Hammer of God Incident happened two years ago. But Marsch completed it since then, didn’t he? He completed the new kind of engine that runs on the same principle as the Kaiserburg,” said Berger. “Marsch made plenty of other inventions too. Such as the Eingeweide Ausbildung and how to use a Panzer’s Schreiben system in other machines.”

Schweitzer adjusted his handgun’s aim in response.

The gun made a metallic sound, but Berger shouted at him all the same.

“It’s coming, Schweitzer! When Marsch’s eye turned red last night, that blue craft showed up. And the same is happening now. The eye and the craft call to each other!”

His shout was followed by a certain sound.

It was a loud, low, and muffled sound. The long and vast rumble came from the sky above.

“…?”

Hazel looked up while placing a hand on her red right eye in response to what Berger said.

She saw clouds there. At some point, the clouds had spread out to thickly cover up around half the blue sky. The sharp rifts in the clouds signified valleys of atmospheric pressure.

When the rumbling came from the sky again, she realized what it was: an explosion.

“It can’t be!”

Her question was first answered by the wind gusting down on her like a physical blow.

She could hear the metallic clattering of guns and the uncertain muttering of soldiers from the road below.

But all that was drowned out by another rumble from the sky.

The loudspeakers installed around the airbase began to play an alarm as if to fight back against that sound.

It was the fourth alarm.

“Evacuate the premises immediately!?”

The sound of the alarm was distorted by the blowing wind that slammed into her back as she stood there. Her footing felt unsteady, so she leaned against the metal door stabbed into the roof nearby.

Then she saw Berger still staring up at her amid the chaos of wind and noise.

He had a smile on his lips and he raised both hands and waved like a symphony conductor.

Then the sky gave a roar.

The clouds bent and swelled out.

“–––––!?”

They spread wide like a blossoming flower too large to reach her arms around.

The blue sky and the sun were visible through that giant hole in the clouds.

And at the center of the hole, a giant boxy shape was silhouetted by the sun behind it.

“An aerial warship.”

When she had hallucinated the blue sky in the barracks earlier, she had seen just such a warship looking antlike as it flew above the clouds. The warship built for high-altitude maneuvering dropped down with its distinctive protruding sides that allowed for the air intake needed for the fuel.

It was spewing flames. The warship could only really be called a 300-yard hunk of metal as it dropped upside-down from the sky.

Multiple explosions erupted from its side, it shuddered, and fires erupted from the top and bottom halfway along its length.

While pulled down by gravity, that impressive mass pushed down the air, creating a complex series of deep sounds.

The only thing capable of rivalling those rumbling noises were the high-pitched emotional wails of the alarms.

Hazel could only sense the wind and the sounds crashing into her.

The warship was dropping straight down from above.

“!”

Its shadow fell on the airport, robbing everything of light. Hazel cowered down in its shadow, but she did not shut her eyes. Which is why she saw what happened next.

With an especially loud roar, the long aerial warship was split down the middle.

“You’re kidding!”

Flames and smoke erupted from the break, staining the sky black and red.

But that attack altered the trajectory of its fall. The two pieces of the warship continued to explode while falling to the north end of the airport where Berger had arrived.

It all happened in an instant.

The noise of metal and explosions reached its peak and you could hardly even call it noise anymore.

It could only be described as destruction.

First, the front half of the warship crashed as if stabbing itself into the ground. Before the giant wreckage could break and fall apart, the other half crashed into it. Two 150-yard hunks of metal shattered like a squashed cake and scattered shrapnel everywhere.

At the same time, both halves ruptured together, like they could no longer stand up to even the small explosions.

The fire looked small, with only something like an orb of flame appearing, but a white shockwave spread out horizontally from there.

The whirlwind of destruction spread out like a ripple, destroying the pavement, pushing the wind out of the way, and tearing away even the concrete of the buildings as it went.

…''!?

The dancing shockwave drowned out all sound while the wind and heat it carried produced a frenzy of destruction.

Hazel hid behind the metal door stabbed into the roof and curled up.

But it was not enough. A piece of the warship wreckage was thrown her way by the explosion.

The yard-long piece of lightweight composite armor had a float emblem engraved into its surface and it penetrated both barracks like they were made of paper before it grazed the metal door.

“No!?”

She started to scream, but stopped.

The wreckage was moving at the speed of sound as it slammed into the metal door like a blast of wind.

The door was torn from the roof and Hazel was blown away with it.

She was launched into the air.

There was nothing below her feet and she could only see the clouds. She felt terribly uneasy.

She could not see the blue sky. Or she shouldn’t have been able to.

But as her heart raced and her mind grew abnormally focused, she saw a faint color in the center of the white clouds.

She saw blue and that color grew larger and larger.

…''Were the clouds split apart again?

''No,'' her mind told her.

She recognized this. She had seen this same craft in front of the moon just before she Flektierened the night before.

Bermark had told her the name of that blade-like blue craft.

“The Sylphide!?”

It rushed straight toward her like the wind.

It soared, dropped, and accelerated all at once to circle below her in mere moments.

Something like a wall reached her back before she could even feel surprised.

…''A floor!?

She could see a blue surface below her. It was as hard as metal and painted blue.

It was the Sylphide’s back.

The Sylphide tilted against the wind as if to protect her from the shockwave.

“Um, wh-what is happening here?”

She looked around to see hangar walls on either side of her. The Sylphide had definitely circled below her and caught her as she fell.

She was surprised to realize it had acted with clear intent like that.

She realized her heart was racing.

…''O-oh, no. It’s happening.

The Flektieren had already begun.

She ducked down just as a wind whipped up around her and steam burst from her.

The sound of her transformation was drowned out by the rumbling around her and by the alarms.

All that remained was a gold-furred kitten and her clothing which was nearly blown away by the wind.

The Sylphide slowly moved forward with that tiny passenger onboard.

A change came over it. A portion of the craft had begun to transform.

Bluish-white ether light ran through the blue armor forming the roof of the cockpit. The light created lines and planes that pulsated while forming the emblem drawn on the armor.

The Tons determining the armor’s shape were rewritten by the power of the emblem.

The craft would discover its weaknesses through combat and seek evolution when it understood what was necessary to achieve strength.

The inorganic machine’s transformation evolution took only a moment.

The armor rose up around cat Hazel like growing plants and partially came apart to form a mesh. The pieces of the mesh tangled together to form a thin dome over her head.

That dome spread out to cover the entire roof.

Before she could even react, the flat and angular roof armor had become curved and sloped. She had been taken in below the armor.