Editing City Series:Volume6a Chapter1 (section)

===Part 1===

Berlin’s mornings were chilly.

A German cathedral at the center of the city rang its bell to indicate 9 o’clock, but the sun was still low in the sky and fog still hung over much of the city.

Kantstrasse got a fair amount of sun as it cut through the center of the city from east to west, but it was still plenty cold. A fire truck’s siren sounded somewhere in the distance and the few people walking along the street had their collars pulled tight and held their shoulders to stay warm. The lights were on in the shops lining the street, but none of them kept their door open.

However, there was one unusual place.

An old two-story building stood on a corner lot that might as well have been the very end of the road and the diagonally hanging sign out front read “Used Books”. A motorcycle was parked out front and someone sat on the stone steps up to the frosted glass door.

The young man was dressed all in black. His large coat and even his hair were black.

The only other colors were the white of his skin, the blue of his eyes past his sunglasses, the red of the woman’s pendant hanging at his chest, and the white of the breaths leaving his mouth as he spoke.

“I can’t believe I lost my key. Did I drop it in the Grösse Panzer I abandoned on the way here?”

He sounded less troubled than you might expect. If anything, he sounded relaxed.

“And the landlord never gets up until past noon. I swear I’m the second most unlucky person in the world.”

Another siren began to sound in the distance.

He looked around curiously, clearly wondering what had happened.

His unspoken question did earn him response, though.

It just came in the form of a cat’s meow.

“…”

The sweet voice’s owner walked over from his right along the used bookstore’s outer wall.

It was a kitten with yellowish fur.

It walked across the withered grass below the eaves, hopped up the stone steps one at a time, and came to a stop next to him.

The cat sat down and raised its head to look up at the silent young man who carried such a dark atmosphere with him.

When his eyes met those of the cat’s, he noticed its right eye was brown and feline, but its left eye was blue and had a round pupil.

“Heterochromia? Do you come with pedigree document?”

The cat responded by yawning, stretching, and shutting its eyes. It lay down and lazily curled up in a relieved sort of way. It must have been happy to find a spot in the sun.

The man sighed at this unexpected visitor.

“I don’t have any food for you. But if you want to make yourself useful, you could open this front door for me.”

Just as he made that ridiculous request, he heard the quiet screech of brakes in front of the used bookstore.

A black post office bicycle had stopped on the wide sidewalk. After a pause, he heard some footsteps and a young postal worker in ordinary clothes and a postal hat arrived in front of him.

He bowed and then pulled two envelopes from his bag.

“Um, are you Dog Berger? I, um, have two deliveries for you.”

“You sound awfully hesitant to tell me this. Which can only mean trouble in my experience.”

His comment was accompanied by a bitter smile and the postal worker smiled a little in response.

“One of the two is two months late due to a delivery error. The thing is, Mr. Berger, it is addressed to this building but not to you.”

“I’m the only one who lives here, though. But whatever. Just let me see it.”

“I do apologize for the delay. But even that’s better than a Verlsten Brief from the Central Post Office’s archive, right?”

“Yeah, it definitely beats one of those unopened letters from a thousand years ago.”

The young man in black, Dog Berger, accepted the proffered letters without getting up.

When he flipped the envelopes over to check the senders, his eyes narrowed. After a pause, he nodded.

“This is for some friends of mine. I’ll make sure they get it.”

The postal worker sighed with visible relief, said goodbye, and started to turn around, but…

“Why are you sitting there?”

“It’s the latest health fad. You see, I want to be the second healthiest person in the world.”

“Not the actual healthiest?”

“Me? The best in something? I don’t have that kind of confidence in myself.”

“I see. Well, take care.”

The postal worker looked puzzled, but he got back on his bicycle and rode off.

After confirming the sidewalk up ahead was deserted once more, Berger looked down at the two envelopes in his hands. He frowned in a displeased way as he opened one of them.

“My old upperclassman, huh?”

He smiled bitterly before holding the letter overhead and quietly reading it aloud.

“ ‘Hazel Mirildorf, age 15, female, broken out of Berlin’s general hospital, transport her to the Swiss border via Singen at 12/25 04:30. M. Schrier.’ …Hm, sounds easy enough.”

Then he opened the letter that had its delivery delayed.

“Dammit, Marsch. Her and the director’s house is gone, you know? …But this is from two months ago, huh?”

His movements stopped along with the crinkling of the unfolding paper.

With that sound gone, he was met with almost complete silence.

Only the distant sirens ruled this place as the air seemed to rapidly freeze.

The cat curled up on the step looked up at him.

At the same time, he held up the letter to the sunlight.

''The one-armed youth holds the Messiah

''The moonlit pair returns to the earth

''The dragons gather and dance tonight

''Every last thing returns home

After reading those words, he smiled a little.

“The 9th Section of the Ruling King from the Unreif Germane, huh? The Heidengeist Messiah, the dragon she commands, and someone with a divine name descend to the earth together. What in the world are you thinking, Marsch?”

He soon heard a new sound.

It was a vehicle, and a large one at that. It shook loudly from all the weight loaded onboard and its brakes sounded for an awfully long time before it came to a stop.

“?”

He looked up to see 6 men in green military uniforms leave the back of the military truck parked on the road. He blatantly frowned at this.

“Hey, hey, hey, hey. What’s the meaning of this, huh?”

They surrounded him while he protested.

The six soldiers were middle-aged and muscular and the man in the center spoke with a deep voice.

“We are from the army’s immigration department. You are Dog Berger, correct?”

“Sorry, but you’ve got the wrong guy. I’m just your standard mystery Asian from the far-off land of Japan, so-”

“You are under arrest as a possessor of inferior Tons – in other words, for being a nonhuman Heidengeist.”

“Hey, don’t just ignore my masterful bullshitting!”

“Silence. Again, you are under arrest.”

“Do I really have to say it? Okay, fine. Do you honestly think you can do that? What proof do you have I’m a Heidengeist, anyway?”

Despite the tense situation, Berger’s tone was extremely calm and he remained seated on the steps.

The soldiers suddenly crouched down in preparation to fight.

The surrounding air grew even tenser and the man in the center continued.

“You failed to participate in the Berlin-wide blood test performed this April, but this October in Munich-”

“Yeah, I had to get some blood drawn at the hospital. It’s a long story.”

“You tested positive as a Heidengeist and any Heidengeist in the country is our business.”

“So you’re gonna throw me in one of those Heidenheim concentration camps, brand me with a number, and place a seal on me, right? Then I would be made into a Phlogiston Platte since those are more efficient than direct Phlogiston, of course. And all to build up the foundation of your holy German Reich.” He laughed bitterly. “German land used to be surrounded by the Black Forest and protected by gods and Heidengeist, but ever since Bismarck established the Second Reich, it’s been nothing but human supremacy.”

“Silence. Do not speak ill of our nation, ‘Wild Hund’ Dog Berger.”

Berger whistled at the mention of his Urban Name – or Titel as they were known in Germany.

“Your reactions here had me suspicious, but that Titel clinches it. You know more about me than you’re letting on.”

“You have made yourself something of an infamous figure. The plan was to arrest you under the peace preservation laws to be established when the Greater Germanic Reich is declared next April, but it seems the law has caught up to you today instead.”

“Hey, hey, hey. Let’s not count our chickens before they hatch on the whole ‘me being arrested today’ thing.”

With that, Berger stood up. It was a slow movement, but no one could stop him. He simply stood up and took a step forward.

He looked the soldier in the eye and lightly poked at his chest.

“Y’know, if my finger was a knife, you’d be dead right now. Dead and gone. Are you sure you’re serious about arresting me? And are you sure the methods that worked on other Heidengeists will work on me?”

“S-silence!”

All of a sudden, a giant form appeared from behind the used bookstore as if it had simply grown up from the ground on the right.

“…!?”

Everyone turned that way.

A giant man in a black combat coat stood more than 7 feet tall and was equipped with an enormous prosthetic right arm.

Below his short-cropped blond hair, his lips were clamped shut in a horizontal line until they moved to speak in a deep voice.

“I apologize, but can this arrest wait? I must speak with this man. Immediately.”

The six soldiers took a step back, overwhelmed either by his voice or his imposing height. The man in the center shrank down considerably as he asked a question.

“Who are- wait, that uniform. It can’t be.”

Berger provided the answer.

[[Image:City_v06a_043.jpg|thumb]]

“ ‘Schallmauer Zerstörer’ Hellard Schweitzer of the Geheimnis Luftwaffe? It’s been two years since I last saw you. You worked your way up to Second Lieutenant yet?”

The response to that contained a hint of pride.

“I am a First Lieutenant.”

“Well, I can see why they say you’ll be one of the next members of the Five Great Peaks or Fünf Leithammel or whatever they’re calling it. But anyway…”

Berger pressed his back against the glass and slowly sat down.

“Can you open this door for me?”