Editing City Series:Volume5a Chapter3 (section)

===Beretta’s Journal: Today’s Entry #1===

Now, then. I’ve come to the library like always, but things are a little different this time.

Professor Hermes was purged a week earlier than he was the other years. This world really is solidly made, so it all flows. Knowing too much about how things go can be a problem in its own way.

I Pointed two men who were fighting on the road on the way here, but what they were fighting over scared me.

One of them was an old baker and the other was an elderly man even older than the baker. But that elderly man was telling the baker to stay away from his bakery tomorrow. Here’s what he said as to why:

“I know you’ll be killed by a robber tomorrow!!”

According to someone who lives in the area, that baker’s only son was taken in by an relative’s family who lives out of the country in June of last year.

That son must have spent 53 years outside of France looking into what happened to his parents. And now he was here as an exchange student and trying to stop his parents from being killed.

At the time, entering Paris had been impossible, so as a child, he must not have been able to do anything even when he had heard about his parents’ deaths.

To him, this was truly a once-in-a-lifetime chance.

There are people like this. But I doubt he’ll get through to his father. That baker would never believe him if this man older than him claims to be his son who should be in another country. Plus, that baker will be brought back to life and killed every year. It’s all meaningless.

But there is something weighing on my mind.

The Resistance members who died because I piloted that Heavy Barrel and Phillip who will die before long are both weighing on my mind. Just as my grandma said, this is real to me even if it will be redone.

So I want to treat this all with care.

I was reminded of that fact when I saw Rosetta today. The people around me will be lost, but I can give some things to Rosetta. Because I was born into a Sein Frau technician family.

Is that only an excuse for what will be lost? Am I a hypocrite? I don’t really care. I know I’m worried about Rosetta and that’s what matters.

Does she want to become human?

Even in this age, the discrimination against Sein Fraus is really bad in America. It isn’t much different from the age I lived in. My grandma must have known that. The American Sein Fraus simply shed tears, cannot become human, and commit suicide. The European Sein Fraus aren’t that bad. But Rosetta’s treatment is awful in a different way. If possible, I want her to think more about a great many things and to become someone I can discuss my ideas with. But if she doesn’t want to become human, then it’s meaningless.

Especially because becoming human means a lot of worry and pain.

I think that is what a Sein Frau should be, but I can’t force it onto her. Because Rosetta doesn’t belong to me. I need to keep that in mind so I don’t get carried away.

Now for a Point.

<The current time is 11:02 AM. A scattering of people are inside the large library.

It is the ideal environment for reading a book.>

I see. Then I’ll stop by the old man’s mansion at 2. It’s the Balleroy Mansion, right? I promised Rosetta I would discuss some things with her this afternoon, so I have to stop by. But when I start reading, I can get lost in my own world and forget to Point the time, so I need to be careful. I’ll jot down a note.

*'''Make sure to check the time frequently.

Now, time to greet the usual librarian.

<According to the librarian, there is a way to send letters out of the country while avoiding the usual inspection. She told me that was just between the two of us, but it seems she has a route to smuggle letters out of the country.>

My guess is it’s a Resistance route. I have some questions for M. Schrier who wrote the Death Techno Compilation, so it might be worth sending them to the publisher. M. Schrier was in America at this time, but my grandma’s letter had said this:

<So if you were to send a letter to that M. Schrier you look up to (He was in the US at the time, wasn’t he?), since he briefly visited France in ’39, France will use the memories of that time to build up his character and provide a response. And if you ask a question related to France, you should receive a response of considerable accuracy.>

If I sent him a letter about the Attesor Project, France would send me back as accurate a letter as it could. If that works, I might get quite a bit of information that way. France doesn’t know how important the information is. It only wants to prove that there are no holes in the world it created so that it can truly close itself up. Could I take advantage of that and trick France into giving me the information?

But I guess I’ll do everything I can on my own before doing that.

When I compared the previous data with the results of my previous investigations, a lot clicked into place.

The Attesor Project was something that really did exist during the previous World War and it was meant to develop the strongest Barrel. The project was said to have been carried out in the Morvan Mountains. The German army went missing when they invaded there and there are records of the local people hearing sounds of sword fighting in the mountains late at night.

But after the war, the military denied all of the rumors and no evidence remained. And most of the German army’s damage reports were discarded in the Treaty of Versailles, so they can’t be used to prove anything.

And on August 1, 1944, a black dragon attack destroys the nearby village of Herlde and a portion of that mountainous region, so entering the Morvan area was deemed dangerous and a detailed investigation became impossible. Now is the only time to investigate the Attesor Project.

Ironically enough, the Attesor Project is considered no more than a silly rumor due to the influence of M. Schrier’s book. People view it just like Atlantis and the Lost World, so it’s only used in some fun children’s books. That’s the usual pattern, isn’t it? People go missing, civilians find traces of something going on but never see the actual thing, and then the military denies it all.

The Attesor Project follows that pattern, but it isn’t a lie.

Today I learned that the French army has a few hidden units. The most famous is the 0th Heavy Barrel Brigade that moves from battlefield to battlefield as a commando unit, but that isn’t all.

I learned there was also a private unit led by an officer who was former nobility. I have the details in my notes, but the odds are good that something weird like the Attesor Project would be led by an eccentric officer.

If so, I need to visit the city hall and ask if I can view the tax ledgers from that time. I doubt I’ll get permission with the German army in control, though.

Then again, I’m probably the only one investigating this old military project right now.

Even if it existed and had had successful experiments, that project was from 25 years ago even counting from Paris’s current time period. Plus, it was a project that was discarded and abandoned by the military.

In this age, the Germans are working on what they called the Panzer Ritter Project. Lieutenant Colonel Heinz Berge, a hero from the First World War, had his entire body swapped out for prosthetics adapted for a Heavy Barrel to give him reactions speeds 117 times greater than the average Knight Striker.

To be honest, not even an optimistic like me thinks some old tech is going to outdo that German tech. They probably had some decent tech with some decent results, but their research has probably been blown way out of proportion by the rumors and the project was probably never all that credible to begin with.

But if that’s all true, why was Jack McWild so intent on keeping anyone else from getting involved that he said nothing when his wife left him, said nothing to my grandma, and went to France where he was killed?

The story is that he got drunk and fell into the Seine, but everyone in our family is a pretty heavy drinker.

My grandma’s research found there was apparently a knife wound in the tibia of his remains. 1939 was when the war began and France was terrified, so it wouldn’t surprise me if what actually happened was covered up.

I think I’ll look into some things and visit Bourgogne eventually. Before August 1.

At the moment, I have to wonder: Why was Jack McWild trying to build the strongest Heavy Barrel?

It has long been said that Knight Strikers exist to protect people, but I lost my companions as a Knight Striker.

Was that what I got for being a Knight Striker just for fun, or was it because I’m not strong enough as a Knight Striker? That’s a bit of a question for me.

I have a lot of questions. I don’t know where Rose Francisca is right now. She isn’t in Paris. I know she and Jack McWild had their wedding in Paris, but where did they meet?

I bet she’s returned to her hometown, but where is that? I want to check through the city hall’s records.

And there is another mystery: Why does my knowledge from the 90s include nothing about the Balleroy family? I looked it up here and found they were the former Royal Guard Chevalier family that led the regional Chevaliers and their mansion is in a noticeable spot, but that information was entirely missing from what I was taught before arriving.

Was someone trying to hide the mansion’s existence? Or was there nothing there in this age? I just don’t know.

But that’s fine. That at least means I wasn’t taught that Rosetta or the old man die, so I don’t have to worry about them. Oh, Point.

<The current time is 2:01 PM.>

I guess I’ll get going. None of this has been very journal-like and I need to talk with Rosetta this afternoon. Maybe I’ve been worrying about too much recently. I’ll put my notes in my bag and leave.