Editing City Series:Volume6a Chapter5 (section)

===Part 6===

Berger quickly closed in Schweitzer.

The roar of the engine had risen to the high whine of a wind instrument. The acoustics of the hallway allowed it to sound loud, long, and powerfully.

The distance between them shrank as the engine’s music sounded.

Schweitzer took a sudden action while running.

He raised his prosthetic right arm and threw Hazel forward.

Berger could see her face over Schweitzer’s shoulder. Her eyes and mouth were opened wide as she tried to shout something.

At the same time, Schweitzer calmly adjusted his running position.

He crouched down and swung his arms while running forward.

His boots thundered unusually loud over the engine’s roar.

He seemed to be pounding footprints into the floor and those steps increased his forward momentum.

He pulled a bit away from Berger.

“Damn you dragoon descendants!!” shouted Berger as Schweitzer slipped below airborne Hazel and actually overtook her.

Then he jumped a bit and twisted his body to the right.

His black coat flapped as it followed his rightward rotation and he ended up facing Berger.

At the same time, he ducked down and landed facing back while holding his prosthetic right arm out toward Berger. The staff launcher was aimed at the ceiling above Berger’s head.

Once it was aimed, the staff was launched.

With a loud noise, ether light shot from the staff and the striking portion at the end of the staff slammed into the air.

A square pattern of bluish-white light appeared on the ceiling over Berger’s head.

<Heaven aids the Hero.>

That portion of the ceiling was cut free and it dropped down.

<Heaven’s wrath knows no mercy.>

[[Image:City_v06a_177.jpg|thumb]]

He fired the launcher again and again. Over and over and over again, empty cartridges were expelled from his prosthetic arm and it stopped at 11 times in quick succession.

He finished just before Hazel’s parabolic arc dropped her right on top of his outstretched right arm.

Just as he pulled her in to carry her again, the 11 empty cartridges clattered against the floor and the ceiling collapsed. The final Text of his Erklärung was stated.

<Heaven will save the Hero as many times as necessary.>

Space was torn apart with the slight time lag of his rapid-fire attack, so the ceiling fell down with a wave-like movement. More and more of the ceiling fell near Berger.

The 3rd floor hallway was visible through the first bit of ceiling that fell.

But Berger ignored the great pressure of the falling ceiling. He kept his eyes dead ahead.

Schweitzer had landed while facing toward Berger.

His inertia remained, so he was sliding forcefully backwards while crouched low. Frictional smoke rose from the soles of his boots, but his stance remained intact. He was still facing backwards – in other words, facing Berger in defiance.

The only change to his expression was a slight wrinkling of his brow. He did not have a drop of sweat on him.

“Nice try, Schweitzer!!” shouted Berger.

He let go of the handlebars with both hands, grabbed Gelegenheit, and raised it vertically.

He pulled Phlogiston Tanks from his black coat and attached them to the back of the weapon.

The first caused a 2-yard dark blade to burst out.

The second extended the dark blade to 4 yards where it severed the ceiling’s “destiny to fall”.

The shadowy blade sliced right through the ether fields decorating the falling ceiling, returning the ceiling to its original form.

He was about 20 yards from Schweitzer now.

He raised Gelegenheit and swung it down.

<Not even heaven can escape the threads of Destiny!!>

A lightning-like slash tore through the ceiling in a straight line, repairing it.

The mesh of bluish-white squares covering the ceiling were sliced through by the darkness and the falling ceiling instantly returned to its original position.

It had severed the thread of “destiny” created by Der Held to tell that area of space to collapse.

The attack ran along a straight line. That all-severing blade never changed course as it repaired the ceiling. The black line ended at Schweitzer’s biological left arm.

Schweitzer took new action within the roar of the engine and the slicing of the dark blade.

He looked up at the hole in the ceiling, shifted Hazel to his left arm, and thrust his prosthetic right arm forward. A moment later, he opened his mouth to speak.

“Der Held, Erklärung, Ober Beweisen.”

“What!? You’re using your Ober Beweisen here!?”

Berger’s voice was drowned out by Der Held emitting far more ether than before. An intonated cry and the shining light rewrote the meaning of that space.

Instead of the changeable and adaptable Beweisen, this Text was the fixed but powerful Ober Beweisen.

<Stars spread across the light-scattered sky

Excellence is determined in the sky above

:Do not compare your height to others

:All power is lost before them

:The heights are for the soaring dragon

:The depths are the foundation of the earth>

That was the true and unchangeable Text of Schweitzer’s Tons.

That limited and honed Text was launched along with the staff, striking the space around Berger.

The darkness emerging from Berger’s Gelegenheit was immediately returned to light before it scattered and vanished.

The roar of the motorcycle’s engine also vanished.

“!?”

The Phlogiston – a fuel made from ether – suddenly cut out.

With all the machines stopped, Schweitzer threw Hazel forward and up with his left arm.

The thrown girl let out an incomprehensible scream as she soared above the falling ceiling.

She passed through the hole in the ceiling and onto the 3rd floor.

“Dammit!!” cursed Berger, but it was too late.

He squeezed the clutch to keep the motorcycle from toppling, but he had passed below the hole by then.

Hazel was on the 3rd floor.

Schweitzer took off running a moment later.

The young man in black asked a question as the motorcycle and soldier passed each other by.

“Do you really want Hazel this badly!?”

“Her Messiah implant’s power must not be allowed to fall into another country’s hands.”

“That’s not what this is about and you know it! You just don’t want to lose the same will we lost 2 years ago!!”

Berger held the handlebars tight, stepped on the rear wheel brake, and locked that wheel.

The motorcycle’s rear end swung around wildly and it slid about 40 yards before stopping.

He kick-started the motorcycle, changed gear, and performed an accelerating turn.

The engine roared as it turned around 180 degrees.

He could see Schweitzer running toward the stairway landing at the end of the hallway.

He also heard the man’s voice.

“Are you going to pursue me to the top, Dog Berger!?”

Berger was already moving before the question was complete.

He removed the Phlogiston Tanks from the back of Gelegenheit now that it had lost its darkness and he inserted some new ones.

These ones were twice as long as the ones he had used before.

“AA size? No, I’ll go straight to C!!”

He instantly attached 10 of them with perfect precision.

He raised Gelegenheit overhead with his right hand and simply placed his left hand on the hilt.

He let out a breath and followed that slowly-falling breath with the activation of the dark blade that seemed to burst from Gelegenheit.

Its darkness did not even try to stop the extension of its destructive power.

The blade grew to more than 30 yards long. It pierced through the ceiling diagonally back from him and continued to grow.

Through his sunglasses, he saw the base of the darkness grow a bit thicker.

“Pursue you to the top? Is that any way to treat a guest?”

His expression was hard and his eyes were focused on the darkness extending overhead.

But that did not last long. First, his mouth moved.

<Destiny comes to you itself!>

He swung Gelegenheit around while still straddling the idling motorcycle. He had raised the weapon as if to swing it diagonally down, but he reversed his wrist to swing it around behind him instead.

“Come to me, Hazel!!”

The darkness left an afterimage as it wrapped around and produced the sound of blowing wind.

Gelegenheit accurately rotated all the way around and stopped on the ceiling diagonally behind him.

He had severed the barracks’ destiny along a straight diagonal line.

The darkness vanished.

A moment later, a diagonal crack appeared from the hallway’s ceiling to its floor.

The crack connected back to itself in a circle and it did not stop there.

With a low, dull rumbling, the scene before him bent. No, it shifted.

The part of the hallway beyond the crack fell forward and down.

The collapse picked up speed.

The 2nd story’s ceiling fell away in front of him and the 3rd story’s floor dropped down.

The windows of the fallen 2nd story hallway were shattered by the pressure from above.

The sound of dozens of windows shattering at once sounded a lot like the roar of a waterfall.

The 3rd story hallway dropped down toward the same height as Berger’s 2nd story hallway.

Berger saw Hazel at the center of the dropping 3rd story hallway. Nothing looked out of the ordinary except for the red glow of her right eye.

She was fine.

He sighed and narrowed his eyes.

She was about 50 yards away.

Beyond her, Schweitzer had just arrived on the 3rd floor, putting him at about the same distance from her.

With the loud sound of shattering stone from below, the falling 3rd story hallway shook and then came to a stop at only about 2 inches off from the height of Berger’s hallway. Theirs was the higher one and his the lower.

Hazel stood in place and looked to him with her hands lightly clasped in front of her chest.

He accepted her gaze and spoke to her.

“Come to me, Hazel.”