Editing City Series:Volume4a Chapter 6 (section)

===Part 1===

'''7:01 PM

“Nagoya’s Chancellor’s Officers were?”

Taeko spoke to Souichirou with sirens blaring in the background.

Souichirou moved his thick head vertically while backlit by the lights of the Osaka Hilton hotel.

“I see,” muttered Taeko. “If the 1st Special Duty Officer was taken out, it makes sense that our special line wouldn’t get through.”

“Can you contact your family?”

“The Student Council must be restrictin’ the information. They didn’t know anything.”

“If both the current Chancellor and the Yamashita family that has held the Chancellor position generation after generation are unaware…this is a problem.”

Taeko did not even nod.

“Nagoya’s Student Council ain’t too fond of the Chancellor’s Officers. As the Turbulent City, our ability to fight gives us more influence.”

“So it seems. Is this an internal issue?”

“They’ll probably make some kind of decision by the time I get back from seein’ Ixolde. They’ll say they couldn’t contact me.”

Taeko gave a bitter smile of self-deprecation and slowly looked around.

They stood in front of the Osaka Hilton hotel as sirens blared. The sports car she had destroyed lay upside down in the road running by in front of Osaka Station.

“Anyway… To get back on topic, ya chased down the motorcycle that attacked ya, cut it down over there, and found it had no driver?”

“Yes. Just as I fired Kusanagi’s sword pressure, the driverless motorcycle tried to turn a corner. And after I destroyed it, I heard another commotion.”

“And ya showed up just in time to see the car I’d crushed, huh? …And they were both radio controlled?”

“I am having our Special Duty Officers check on that. They are asking a general aviation institute to go over all of the wireless signals for the area at that time. That will tell us if they were radio controlled or not.”

Souichirou crossed his false arms.

In front of their eyes, youths in school uniforms were frantically running around inspecting the scene and guiding traffic. They all wore armbands with the mark of Osaka’s Chancellor’s Officers.

Taeko commented on them.

“Osaka sure does follow the academy rules strictly. We just have all the adults and kids work together without much structure.”

Hearing that, Souichirou’s one eye turned to a single police car stopped on the road.

A single supervising officer was there.

“The academy rules guarantee a separation between the adults and children.”

“That started when a bunch of people died in a student conflict and the adults wanted to wash their hands of any responsibility for what the students did, right?”

“And now it has spread to the entire world…giving us this.”

Sirens filled the air and people ran about to direct traffic, inspect the scene, or question witnesses, but it was all being done by students from Souichirou and Taeko’s generation.

“This has the same unpleasant atmosphere as the ogre two years ago.”

“But from what I’d heard, ya beat that ogre in the end. And since ya’d cut off the ogre’s arm, it didn’t break down into its component Lives like the rest of it, so it’s stored in the Nandaimon Shrine.”

“But the price of victory was my arms, legs, and an eye.”

“Nothin’ wrong with that. Now ya’ve got nothin’ more to lose.”

Souichirou looked to Taeko’s left arm aka the Dragon Emperor.

“Was your false arm a choice?”

“A choice?”

“Did you choose it of your own free will? That is, did you chop off your original arm for it?”

She smiled bitterly back at him.

“I had my reasons.”

“…”

“I am who I am now because of this arm. …Before getting it, there was one person I thought I could never forgive, but, well, now I feel like I could forgive them.”

“One person?”

“Have ya ever thought about killin’ someone?” Taeko’s bitter smile deepened. “If so, I’ll tell you.”

Souichirou said nothing.

He simply shrugged and looked up into the night sky as he listened as Taeko’s smile grew to a bitter laugh.

The moon floated there.

It was a bluish-white crescent moon.