Editing City Series:Volume6c Chapter5 (section)

===Part 1===

At 5:32 PM, while the 3rd Aerial Fleet off the coast of Norway was engaging the German troops, the Big Signal, a British aerial warship equipped with a Babel Gun, finally completed the 11-hour process of connecting and turning the barrel, so it began to ascend.

The ship’s large silhouette was visible on the North Sea’s moonlit clouds where the German aerial ships could not reach it. The shell loading zone at the rear of the barrel was temporarily sitting open.

While its escort ships arranged themselves in a concentrated defensive formation, the 10-yard container sector at the rear of the Big Signal began to move. Three of the walls opened up, leaving only the front wall that connected to the bullet accelerator.

The opened walls revealed a soft weblike steel frame and cords with airtight coverings. The cords were tangled and twisted around the frame, making the place look like a jungle.

An enormous musical instrument sat in in the center of the frame.

It was a harp.

But this harp extended sharply forward and the keel-like piece supporting the strings was nearly 6 yards long.

Sounding boards meant to help spread its sound stuck out from the spine of the harp like a stegosaurus’s back plates and two giant amplification shells resembling spiral shells were installed on the harp’s rear.

The harp was known as an ultraheavy harp.

It was played by a girl. She had a slender body and long brown hair, but the right half of her body had been removed and she was linked to the connectors on the harp and amplification shells.

Her arms and legs were ceramic and the joints were covered, but her face, throat, and stomach were the same as a human’s. She was a Sein Frau designed to play this harp and sing.

Her name was stitched into her clothing: Bendaughter-East.

She was one of the three sisters who performed the music when London’s big clock reached the top of the hour.

The ultraheavy harp’s name was written on it: BBH-02 Sunshine.

The Sein Frau was not moving. Her head was lowered in sleep.

The left arm designed to play the large harp was long enough to reach the floor.

The special prosthetic right arm sticking out from the other side of the harp was also motionless.

However…

“––––––”

Time slowly passed, the moon slowly moved, and the moonlight finally reached her face.

The chilly wind of the high altitude gently washed through her hair and stroked her cheek.

The first thing to move was the cords crawling around the frame like a jungle. A few of the cords went taut, shook, and then emitted steam in the cold air.

Next to the two large shells on the rear of the harp, the autonomous clasps rotated and released their brakes.

The special prosthetic arm on the starboard side rotated each finger six times and began to clench and unclench.

Then the Sunshine’s exterior panels lifted up just a bit and a powerful breath blew from within.

The frame shook, the cords swayed, and the wind whipped at Bendaughter’s clothing and hair.

As the ultraheavy harp awoke itself with an autocleaning cycle that resembled a yawn, something else began to move as well.

Bendaughter’s eyelids slowly opened.

Her lowered head faced forward and then up into the sky.

Her expression remained blank. She was only designed to play the harp and sing, so she had no thoughts beyond that.

But she still opened her eyes wide while viewing the light of the moon hanging high in the sky.

She opened her mouth and the pressure gathered in her lungs pushed her voice from deep within her throat and gut.

“Ah.”

It was a single loud tone.

New movements gradually joined in. The idling Babel Gun fully activated. It had reached its completed form atop the Big Signal and the shafts installed inside and outside it began a rapid phase transition. This was meant to eliminate any vibration in the gun’s core.

The miniature transition-style word accelerator at the base of the cannon began to operate. The cylindrical accelerator was large enough to stick out from the edge of the ship and a transition space was bound to each end of the cylinder to provide the same effect as a large circular accelerator in as little space as possible. That device took up more power than any other part of the ship.

The emblem panels producing the transition space were installed complexly along the outside of the cylinder as well to fight the internal pressure.

[[Image:City_v06c_189.jpg|thumb]]

Everything had activated now.

And it was all tied together by a voice.

“Ah.”

The single tone continued. It had not stopped for a moment.

Bendaughter’s body was linked to the ultraheavy harp, but her intake and output of nutrients and an external supply of oxygen were handled by pipes connected to her linking surface. So as long as the vibration of her voice did not numb her brainstem, she could sing indefinitely without needing to take a breath.

But that stopped without warning.

After viewing the moonlight for only a few seconds, Bendaughter lowered her gaze to face forward again.

She kept her eyes there as she moved her left hand around behind her head.

That arm was 2 yards long and it produced a mechanical whirring as it moved.

Fingers with built-in picks arrived at the base of the frame between the two shells.

There was a large square hole at the top of the frame and she pulled a book and a small bag from there.

Her left arm returned. First, she placed the book on her lap and skillfully opened the bag with just the one hand.

She pulled out what looked like a single thumb-sized red gem. It was a piece of hard candy.

She casually tossed it in her mouth, placed the bag at her feet, and picked up the book. Her expressionless gaze viewed the title.

“Unreif Germane – Six Sections in Song.”

She used the one hand to flip through the pages. Sheet music was written there, but she read through it at a rate of less than a second per 10 pages.

“Understood. If anything becomes unclear, I can check again.”

She set the book aside.

Sunshine’s exterior panels opened a bit and it inhaled this time.

The shell loading zone’s outer walls surrounded her as if in response.

She spoke aloud while the giant soundproof box closed around her.

“Additional Order: New #78. Categories: Song, German, Special. Objective: Perform the high pressure song for approximately nine hours to create a Babel Gun bullet.”

She said it all without taking a breath.

“Begin.”

With that final word, two final sounds escaped the closing loading zone.

The strum of a harp’s strings and the singing of a voice carried far through the sky before vanishing inside the soundproof box.