Editing City Series:Volume6d Chapter5 (section)

===Part 2===

Hazel climbed the 10yd pile of tires without toppling them and without losing her own balance. She relied on her initial speed. She relaxed her tension, she held her breath, and she did not hesitate.

She was just two stacks away from the top level. Then she had to jump up another yard to reach the edge of the storehouse roof.

But then her right foot slipped on her blood.

The itchy pain of the wound opening shot up her leg to her spine.

“Ah.”

The tension she had relaxed to climb the tires came back as the tension used to endure the pain.

…''That’s not good.

Just as she decided to relax her tension again, she recalled the year before when a dog had bitten her at AIF HQ, she had Altered, and she had climbed the outer wall of the barracks as a cat.

Comparing that to this was silly, but it still nearly made her laugh.

She worked to resist the pain, tension, and laughter while moving her arms and legs.

“…!”

She reached the top.

She took a breath, feeling the tire tower swaying beneath her feet, and then grabbed the storehouse roof at chest height and climbed up it.

The sheet iron roof provided much more solid footing.

She took another breath, stood up, and tried to walk. But the unwashed roof had sand-like filth and dried limescale on it, which got in her right foot’s wound.

She fell to her knee. She sat with her back to the main road to the south, took a breath, and looked around.

She viewed the base from a lower vantage point than the terrace. She could see two storehouses to the west, three to the east, and four to the north. A few long concrete buildings and the forest were visible past them.

Lastly, she saw more concrete buildings across the road behind her.

When she sent her gaze east along the road, she saw the waterway and its river about 100 yards away.

“I need to reach that point.”

She kept low so she wouldn’t be detected and turned the sole of her right foot skyward.

In the warning lights, she could see her toeprint highlighted by a dark wetness. The big toe was bleeding from an inch-long crescent moon gash. The blood dripped down the sole of the raised foot.

It tangled around her ankle and continued on toward her shin. The sensation sent a shudder down her back.

“It’s no use.”

She couldn’t escape outside by turning into a cat here.

She clenched her blood-wet hands a few times to refocus herself. She grabbed the bottom of her surgical gown and used her nails to tear through it.

With a ripping sound different from paper, she created herself a strip of cloth from the bottom two inches of the gown.

“If only I had a Device,” she grumbled, placing the center of the cloth on her right Achilles tendon, stretching it out, wrapping it around her big toe, and wrapping it back around her ankle. She wrapped it around her big toe again and then side to side around the center of her foot.

She used it to hold her ankle in place, not to stop the bleeding of her toe. That protected the toe and still let her walk with the rest of the foot.

With that done, she stood back up.

She looked around.

The night glowed red. The red warning lights were joined by the red Lives of impatience floating across the entire base. The red sound of the 1st alarm accelerated that impatience. The summer night breeze felt refreshingly chilly and she finally realized how heavy her breathing was.

“I need to hurry.”

She pressed her right foot’s toes against the wavy sheet of iron and climbed to the flat peak of the roof before crouching low and walking east like a cat. The bandage felt a bit ticklish on her foot, but it kept the roof’s filth out of her wound.

Once she arrived at the center of the roof, she heard a loud noise from the road to her right.

The roar of metal continued on without end.

She gasped and looked over to see a pair of towers there.

The green towers resembled smokestacks and rose past the edge of the roof.

The towers weren’t the only things rising past the roof. She saw a piece of metal resembling a 3yd-wide bowler hat and then the 15yd-wide metal chest and shoulders supporting the towers came into view.

“Is that Army Division Chief Karl Schmitt from before!?”

That enormous Heavy Barrel stood more than 20 yards tall, not including the “towers”, and it was being carried to the surface by one of the underground hangar elevators.

It was so big. Hazel stood atop a 10yd rooftop, but she only came up to his waist.

She froze for a moment when the pair of sight devices glowing on his facial structure turned her way.

Immediately afterwards, a pair of large shapes landed on opposite edges of the storehouse roof with her in the center.

8yd metal giants had alighted on the roof without even whipping up the wind.

The one to her left was blue and the one to her right was red.

“Wha-?”

She didn’t even get the full word out before swallowing it in acceptance of what had happened.

…''Am I surrounded?

She calmly thought through her situation.

Karl stood motionless in front of her, his arms ready at his hips.

The Heavy Barrels to her left and right had their Ober Emblems activated and wings spread, using that lift to stand atop the roof. Even Hazel made a lot of noise walking along the iron roof, but they stood only on their right toes.

Behind her, she could hear the soldiers gathering on the backroad she had climbed from.

“I am surrounded, aren’t I?”

The Heavy Barrels to her left and right asked a question without shaking or even wavering.

“Where do you think you are going?”