Editing City Series:Volume3b Chapter 8 (section)

===Part 1===

There was a half hour gap between the first gun blast and the second.

When Kouga heard the second blast on his motorcycle, he was passing through an abandoned shelter in the mountains of the New Territories.

He was in the process of escaping to the mainland.

“…”

The motorcycle came to a stop as its headlight cut through the darkness of the night.

He placed his feet on the road near the peak of the Hong Kong side of the mountain.

The ocean and Hong Kong were to his left and he looked that way through his sunglasses.

There was no light there.

“So I’ve abandoned my comrades and my family while I escape all on my own, huh?”

His tone was extremely light and he smiled bitterly.

“Still, I have a duty to escape.”

He looked to the rucksack on his back.

It contained some documents the General had given him.

Those documents were two old notebooks.

The old man had not said who had written them, but he had said they contained the whole truth of Hong Kong.

Oddly enough, both notebooks had the same title: “1971 – Notes of Certain Tuner”. The appearance and contents of the notebooks both seemed different, but the handwriting was the same.

“I don’t really get it, but I guess there’s some history to these things.”

Kouga nodded and recalled when he and the General had parted ways at the wharf two hours before.

The General and the others had managed to get a boat from the little assistance being supplied by the mainland and they had started for Hong Kong Island while fully equipped.

The General had told Kouga the following:

…''Take these and go to London.

And he had not stopped there.

…''It’s that city that created a link between Hong Kong and heaven. However this might end, they need to know everythin’. If you do that now and they react, it’ll save us the trouble of cleanin’ up afterwards.

“So it’s to make sure this isn’t all for nothing? The boss said the same thing.”

Rin had arrived at the Yard before the General and almost her entire body had been customized for combat.

Kouga had been surprised, but Rin had casually checked over her equipment like normal and urged him to escape Hong Kong. She had given a different reason from the General, but it had been reasonable enough.

…''If you survive, we at least won’t suffer a total defeat.

He had nodded in agreement, ridden with her to the wharf, and said goodbye to everyone.

The Tank Force, Customs, Ninja, and Hounds remaining in Hong Kong had only numbered at twenty-one, but he had seen them off and waved goodbye.

The rain that had been falling then had since let up.

But it had taken him longer than normal to come this far.

And he had just heard the gun blast signaling the beginning of the fighting.

“…”

He kicked off the ground and twisted the accelerator without saying a word.

The wet road gave a smoothness to his speed and he soon caught a pleasant wind.

The great expanse of the sky appeared up ahead as he drove up the slope.

It was a cloudy sky, robbed of all light.

Below it, he saw the mountain’s peak.

Once he crossed it, he would never see Hong Kong again, but he did not slow down.

The motorcycle’s headlight extended toward the heavens for just a moment, but then the red tail light seemed to crawl along the earth before vanishing over the peak.