Editing City Series:Volume5a Chapter3 (section)

===Guilliaum’s Letter: To a Far Distant Friend===

My friend,

There has been little to report recently, so I had thought I would not have a chance to speak with you.

But, well, now two or three things connected to you have happened in a row, so I felt the need to make a report.

That girl showed up today. At the moment, she has taken Rosetta out into the yard where they are eating snacks.

I put so many restrictions on her concerning Rose Francisca: do not ask about our identities, do not speak about us, and do not write any letters using our real names. And yet she readily asked about my Royal Guard Chevalier family and about Rosetta. I managed to avoid answering, but I’m really not sure what to do. I especially panicked when she asked about the Attesor Project. I hesitated a moment before laughing it off. I just hope she didn’t suspect anything.

But this makes it even harder to invite her to the Resistance. If what Rose Francisca has said is accurate, it does not seem there is anything I can do about this girl for the time being.

And when I look at it like that, well, she seems like nothing more than a troublemaker girl with too much energy, which is kind of funny. I’m probably just projecting our past onto her, but I really don’t think we were ever that much of a nuisance.

She bluntly told me it was my fault that Rosetta isn’t evolving. That kid really needs to learn some manners. Still, I do understand why she is so fixated on Rosetta’s evolution. Belle de Marionnettes are discriminated against in America, so they’re treated as the lowest class.

The mass-produced Belle de Marionnettes in America are mostly treated like toys or slaves, so it is a miracle when they manage to evolve into a human even a little bit. That might have something to do with it, but this is what she said to me:

“If Rosetta wants to remain a machine, that’s fine, but you can’t just let her stay like this without telling her she can become human. You have to let her know that is a possibility.”

It shows how young she is.

But when I look out there, I see Rosetta following that girl around without knowing what any of it means.

What that girl is trying to do to Rosetta is certainly different from me. Taking her outside will expand her possibilities in many more directions than staying inside the mansion.

If I didn’t have this prosthetic right leg…if my leg wound’s Formule had not settled in place while I was in the POW camp, I might have made Rosetta my secretary while I commanded the Resistance.

But the past is the past. I’m really not sure what to do. I’m being tossed around by that girl a fair bit too. Does she really intend to have Rosetta evolve? If so, what do I do? Personally, I kind of feel like leaving this up to destiny. I have lived for so long with a policy of not letting Rosetta evolve, but she started smiling just from meeting that girl.

Rosetta might like that girl more than us.

If so, that girl might be able to correct the many mistakes behind Rosetta’s birth. I’m really, really not sure what to do. Maybe I’m too old for all this.

Maybe this is due to the fear I felt when I saw the changes in tech in this cutting-edge Lourd de Marionnette. I was especially shocked by the high-quality ultra-high-speed conversion Cabinet that is entered through the secondary seat. That would probably let you Recréa in less than 2 minutes after boarding it. The world really is changing. In our day, you would follow all the proper etiquette in battle unless it was an unexpected engagement, but now that tanks and airplanes are becoming the main fighting force, Lourd de Marionnettes are apparently being used more as high-speed strike forces.

If this age has been repeating itself as Rose Francisca claims, then the real outside world is filled with tech 55 years more advanced than this. It makes me want to cry.

Rumor has it that Old Man Heinz who took my right leg is now a lieutenant colonel in the German army, but he’s apparently taking part in the Panzer Ritter Project. I met him during an unexpected engagement, but his family was known as the Kaiser’s right arm and he preferred proper one-on-one battles to an unexpected engagement.

I still sometimes dream about fighting him in accordance with all the etiquette. It always ends with me winning, though. Although in reality I lost and was taken prisoner until the end of the war. I thought I would retire after that, but then I ended up as the Resistance leader just as this war was beginning. I shoved a little too much of the work off onto Old “Blue-Eyes” Jan, though. Maybe that’s because the Balleroy family led the Missel family as the Royal Guard Chevalier.

But that position went away in the people’s revolution and the remaining Chevalier de Paris lost its role during the previous war.

The old traditions are lost, but the people who were around back then don’t want to forget how we used to fight.

Then again, Old Man Heinz is seeing how close man can come to machine in the Panzer Ritter Project. He has apparently increased his reaction speed inside a Lourd de Marionnette more than 100-fold, but he might not be human any longer.

I’m betting he’s Germany’s strongest weapon at this point. I mean, he was already quite the ''chevalier de chevalier''.

Once again, I’m really not sure what to do. This basically means the German army is doing the same thing as a certain project I could mention. A toast to human folly and to Heinz’s health.

And I’ll end this on a more depressing topic. Becarre, who I used to go drinking with to discuss this country, was arrested. I bet it had something to do with being Calamity’s brother, but Old Blue-Eyes said he turned himself in. There were apparently some dangerous rumors and his entire family was being investigated, so he turned himself in. Old Blue-Eyes’s grandson apparently wrote up the records and directly reported it to his higher ups.

I’d really like to meet that grandson at some point. I’m betting he didn’t become an honorary officer in the German army for self-preservation. I’m betting his grandfather set it up so they could handle things like this.

I think I’ll ask his grandfather about it at tomorrow’s gathering. That old man is quite the actor, after all.

Until we speak again.