Editing City Series:Volume6d Chapter1 (section)

===Part 3===

Hazel awoke in darkness.

She was lying on her side and her right shoulder, back, and thigh felt some leather warmed by her own body heat.

She was lying naked on a sofa. The darkness remained when she opened her eyes. A blanket covered her eyes.

She sensed the warmth of someone sleeping in their clothes next to her.

After shivering from waking up, she pulled the blanket down from her face. She could see who was lying next to her face up with mouth slightly open.

“Oh, Berger. You haven’t been shaving, have you?”

She sighed and laughed quietly.

She relaxed and twisted around to nestle up against him. She felt the warmth of his body through his shirt. She pressed her cheek against his shoulder and caught the scent of cheap soap.

After a moment’s hesitation, she rubbed her neck against his shoulder.

She rubbed her scent onto him.

His shirt’s fabric was rough, so it felt nice against her neck.

After enjoying that for a bit, she breathed a satisfied sigh and turned her somewhat sleepy eyes upwards.

They were in a small but tall room. It was surrounded by bookcases on all four sides and the only light came through a small hole in the ceiling. The light was the lamplight of Germania she had seen earlier.

…''I must have dropped through that hole, landed on the sofa, and fallen asleep as a cat.

Berger had arrived before her and failed to notice when she dropped onto the sofa.

So she had crawled under the blanket next to him.

“And then I went to sleep.”

She smiled bitterly and lowered her gaze to find the room’s exit down by their feet. There was something odd about the area above the closed wooden door. That part of the wall was discolored.

A square about a foot across was paler than the rest, so a frame may have hung there at some point.

She didn’t know what that could be, so she only tilted her head and moved her gaze to the side.

She found Berger’s sleepy blue eyes looking at her from only a few inches away. His eyes gradually focused in on her in the dim lighting.

“…What?”

He sprang up from the sofa. Or tried to. His prosthetic hand failed to grab the soft sofa behind him and slipped, causing him to collapsed backwards.

She panicked a bit, but…

…''There’s nothing I can do.

She heard a dull thud from below the sofa.

She took a look down with the blanket gathered around her hips.

“Are you okay?”

“That hurt like hell. Which means I’m not dreaming. They sent ''you'', Hazel?”

He spoke in the same voice as always in the same irritated tone as always.

His legs were still up on the sofa, so he pulled them down and sat up on the floor.

Their eyes met with a slight height difference.

“You Altered again, didn’t you?” he muttered from the floor. “What time is it? Oh, I guess you can’t wear a watch in that form.”

He pulled out his own pocket watch, opened it, stared at it for a bit, and then showed it to Hazel.

The watch said it was 4:12 AM.

“We still have nearly an hour until the arranged time.”

“Now’s fine. You brought my orders, I hope?”

“I did.”

Hazel searched through the blanket near where she had fallen.

She found nothing. She only found the Wheel of Destiny card.

“Huh?”

“Looking for this?”

Berger pointed at a white envelope caught in his shirt’s collar.

“Y-yes, that’s it.”

She watched as he grabbed the envelope and noticed a small bitemark on the edge.

“This reeks of cat. You drooled on it while running around with it in your mouth, didn’t you? Gross.”

“Now you’re just being mean. It isn’t gross.”

“What makes you so sure?”

“Because last year you made me swallow yours and licked all over my body. You wouldn’t have done that if it was gross.”

Silence fell.

Berger said nothing and let nothing show on his face as he tucked the envelope into his breast pocket.

“I know this is sudden, but I think we need to talk,” he said.

“About what?”

“Early this year, I met this AIF contact who happened to be a woman. She said some nasty things about me and then mentioned some bullshit about how devoted to me you are.”

Hazel thought for a moment, directing her eyes upwards.

“Um,” she said. “I didn’t tell them anything weird. I told them we discussed our futures at Borderson and that you asked me if I trusted you before you pinned me down in bed.”

She reflexively brought her hands to her cheeks as the memory came back to her. Her cheeks felt somewhat warm to the touch.

“And I said you kissed me, touched me, licked me, and bit me. …Oh, but I didn’t even tell Corelle that you spread my legs, so don’t worry about that.”

She gave a bashful smile and viewed him through the fingers covering her cheeks. For some reason, he looked ill. In fact, he looked deathly pale. And the color didn’t return to his face as he asked a question.

“Hazel. You know exactly what you’re doing with that, don’t you?”

Something fell from Berger’s shoulder to the floor: a small hard box.

That was the ampule case Hazel had brought with the envelope. Unlike the envelope, it must have been caught inside his collar. She lowered her hand to point toward the white box.

“Your serum is in there. The one to heal your Lives disease.”

“It’s done already?”

“Yes, but they said they can’t make any again. Shortly before I came here, the Live research facility in Detroit started working with a lab in Los Alamos to develop some new weapon.”

“So the Allies don’t have time to spare for the AIF, huh?”

He opened the ampule case while she watched.

“Whoa.”

A dark liquid flowed out and wet his hand. He dropped the case on reflex and it spewed shards of glass when it hit the floor.

Pieces of the syringe were scattered among the spilled liquid.

“Hazel.”

Hazel held a hand to her mouth and gasped, her heart skipping a beat.

“I did end up in a battle on the way here…”

She wasn’t sure what more to say, so she started by working to calm herself.

…''Um.

“R-right, there is a spare, so don’t worry. There is another ampule in a locker at Potsdam Station along with my luggage. You can use that.”

She showed him the locker key hanging from her choker.

He dropped his eyes to the key.

“And you expect me to go get it myself? Me, the second busiest guy in the world?”

“But we have more than an hour of extra time now, don’t we?”

“Yeah, what about it?”

“How about we visit Potsdam together? I can turn into a cat, so you can carry me on your shoulder. After all, I need to get my clothes out of my luggage there.”

“Why not go on your own? While naked.”

“Maybe I should let everyone know that you’re into exhibitionism.”

He froze.

“Let’s visit Potsdam together,” she said with a smile.

He didn’t respond, so she tried something else.

“Aren’t you going to answer?”

“Shut up.”

His eyes were on the syringe shards littering the floor, not on her. When she noticed, her shoulders tensed and she wondered what to do.

“Um,” she said.

He turned toward her and met her eyes, so she kept her voice low but serious.

“I do have one piece of unadulterated good news for you.”

“What, you mean that the Allies are developing an auto-ramming ship they call the ACBS?”

Hazel beckoned him over instead of answering.

He tilted his head, stood up, and took a step toward her.

She scooted to the side to create space on the sofa, so he sat there.

Before he could say anything, she took his right hand.

She wiped away the serum fluid remaining on his hand.

“Um, I really am sorry about the ampule.”

She softly placed his hand on her left breast.

She gained a somewhat troubled look at how his damp hand felt on her chest.

“Can you tell? Um, uh…”

“…”

“They’ve gotten a lot bigger. Twice as big in just the last year.”

Berger stared off into the distance.

“And what is the unadulterated good news you have for me, teacher?”

She put a smile back on her face to answer him.

“You like big boobs, don’t you? …Wait, what are you doing!?”

He rolled her up in the blanket and threw her out of the room.