Editing City Series:Volume6a Chapter5 (section)

===Part 1===

The airport grounds covered a large space.

The winter wind blew unobstructed down the western apron where Berger began running after hopping down from the truck that had lost its tires and come to a stop.

Bullets flew after him and tore into the ground.

He repeatedly hopped to the side while facing forward. The final enemy formation was about 50 yards ahead. The blockade in front of the 5-story officer barracks and general barracks extended far to the left and right to half surround him. The collection of armored trucks and uniformed soldiers were colored in deep greens and blacks while they gave off a wordless air of intimidation and fired their weapons.

But Berger did not seem to care. He spoke to no one while running toward them.

“Someone who abducts a girl is pretty obviously a villain, right?”

With a flash of motion, he pulled something from his black coat’s pocket.

He raised his left hand to reveal a total of four “potato masher” grenades held between the fingers.

He swung his left arm.

A moment later, the four explosives were airborne. They flew high over everyone’s heads.

“So let’s go villain hunting!!”

The four grenades detonated in midair.

The vibration that raced through the air was more shockwave than noise.

Smoke spread out and Berger ran for the center of it. He had plenty of speed and his black coat flapped behind him instead of dragging on the ground.

He arrived in front of the enemy in less than an instant. This close to the barricade, the enemy could not use their heavy firearms if they wanted to avoid friendly fire.

Berger, of course, did not care about their concerns.

A single soldier stood directly in front of him. The man wore a bulletproof jacket and held a shotgun, but he had been blinded by the grenade smoke. He held his empty hand to his face and shouted something, but he could not move.

Berger showed no mercy whatsoever.

He threw a horizontal kick from low to the ground within the smoke.

He leaned his body forward to throw the kick, so it looked more like a gymnastics maneuver than an attack.

His boot swept the soldier’s feet out from under him.

The soldier was now airborne, but Berger had already moved on and calmly stood back up.

He moved his legs in two different ways: he moved his right leg forward while standing back up and he threw another kick with his left leg.

His eyes were directed dead ahead. Past the airborne soldier, another similarly-equipped soldier was trying to aim a submachinegun at him.

Berger did not hesitate to kick the airborne soldier.

“!”

With a powerful impact, the kicked soldier crashed into the one trying to ready the submachinegun behind him.

The soldiers tangle together and staggered back, but the submachinegun one managed to throw the collapsed one aside and raise his weapon.

However…

“Too slow. Is that insignia on your shoulder just for show?”

Berger slipped his left shoulder underneath the right arm holding out the submachinegun.

He only had to raise his shoulder a bit to bend the soldier’s right arm in an odd direction from the center.

It sounded like a dry branch breaking and the soldier’s face twisted in front of Berger.

Berger yanked the arm up with his left hand while looking completely disinterested.

Bending the arm further produced a scream from the man and the submachinegun slipped from his hand. The shiny black gun flew through the air.

Berger ignored that while he grabbed the screaming soldier’s face with his left hand.

He casually tossed the man to the left.

The man tripped and fell over the soldier Berger had kicked away earlier. He grabbed at and crashed into another soldier who was trying to attack Berger with a shotgun from the left. That stopped the shotgun blast from happening.

Berger glanced to the right where a knife-wielding soldier was raising a battle cry and charging at him.

He ignored the knife and moved just his eyes to look left again. The soldier he had thrown was collapsing down while still holding onto the shotgun soldier. The shotgun soldier was trying and failing to support his collapsing comrade.

The man’s eyes were wide and mouth hanging agape. He was apparently trying to shout something and his trembling right hand was aiming his shotgun at Berger’s face.

Berger instantly grabbed the short barrel with his left hand and pointed it elsewhere.

The gun fired, but it was now aimed outside of the half-circle blockade and did not harm anyone at all.

“I don’t know why I bother helping you guys out,” spat Berger as he pushed forward with the hand holding the gun barrel.

The shotgun soldier was forced back by the gunstock pushing at his chest.

Then Berger yanked the gun back.

It slipped from the soldier’s hands while the back-and-forth motion also loaded the next round.

Then he twisted his body to the left, swinging the shotgun around wide, as if enjoying the tug of centrifugal force.

“Gah!!”

The knife soldier roaring and rushing in from the right was knocked away by a shotgun stock to the face.

Berger paid him no further heed as he walked forward with his black cloak continuing to flip around behind him.

An armored truck sat in front of him and a middle-aged soldier with a combat knife stood in front of it. The black military coat he wore suggested he was a Geheimnis Agency soldier, so he was probably an officer.

The officer silently stepped forward and began to draw his knife.

He did so with practiced hand. That was a movement informed by battlefield experience, not mere training, and it was the movement of someone who knew exactly what weapon he was best with.

“Sorry, but you claim to have the world’s best bulletproof tech, right?”

Berger pressed the shotgun’s muzzle against the man’s chest.

He had flipped the gun around and taken aim even faster than that veteran soldier had drawn his knife.

The officer looked Berger in the eye, paused for a brief moment, and gave a smile that did not reach his eyes.

“Don’t die,” was all Berger said before pulling the trigger.

With a dull boom, the officer was blasted backwards and slammed into the armored truck.

The metallic crash was soon replaced by the sound of a flesh body falling to the ground. The officer was not seated in front of the armored truck and he had stopped moving. Berger looked up into the sky in an exasperated way.

He heard repeated metallic sounds from his left.

Five soldiers had lined up and aimed their submachineguns from beyond his reach.

He kept his eyes in the sky instead of looking their way as he asked a question.

“Are you all confident in your bulletproof tech too? You still haven’t decided to run away?”

“Si-!”

The soldier never got the “lence” out.

Berger cast aside the shotgun with such a natural movement that no one thought to stop him.

No, he did not actually cast it aside. He simply let go of it, as if placing it in midair.

With that weight gone, he raised his left hand toward the sky where his eyes were pointed. He spread out his fingers and stretched his hand up as if trying to reach something.

And reach something he did.

A submachinegun fell from the sky. It was the one that had flown up into the air after he knocked it from a soldier’s hand earlier. That mass of metal designed to launch bullets fell precisely and silently into his hand as if to say he was its rightful wielder.

He swung his hand down while pulling the trigger.

The spray of bullets blew away three of the five to his left.

He swung his arm down diagonally and ducked as if letting his hand pull the rest of him down.

The bullets fired by the two surviving soldiers whizzed by over his head.

The deadly force flew along straight lines that all pierced his shadow.

Once he was down on the ground, he reached for the shotgun he had abandoned in the air earlier. His left hand snagged it just before it hit the ground and he swung it around. That action cocked it for him.

And he fired.

One of the soldiers spraying machinegun fire was blasted back while leaning backwards like he had taken an uppercut.

But Berger did not even bother seeing what happened to the man as he rolled to the right along the ground. The final remaining soldier’s bullets slammed into the spot he had just vacated.

The din of gunfire seemed to pursue him as he stood up and ran.

He poured in his full strength from the very first step. He tossed the shotgun behind him in that speed.

The tumbling shotgun knocked aside the last soldier like a strike from a club while Berger ran toward the armored truck and readied Gelegenheit in his right hand.

“So what about you, armored truck? Are you gonna fight or not?”

The machinegun attached to the top of the truck aimed at him before he was even done asking.

He simply smiled in response. He ran in with Gelegenheit in hand.