Editing City Series:Volume7 Layer 2 (section)

===Record 60: We Need to Hurry===

'''04/21/1998

'''2:32

I was racing east along National Route 20 on the Boss’s motorcycle late at night.

The bike had been so thoroughly customized I’m not even sure what it originally was, but it could carry three. Lady sat on the Phlogiston Tank, the Boss sat at the front, and I sat in the tandem seat.

The package we were delivering was Lady herself. Kanda’s House of Time needed her Mobilized Writing.

I pulled out my pocket watch in the wind to find it was just past 2:30 AM.

“Boss! Can’t you speed it up!? At this rate, the rooster’s gonna crow before we get there!”

“Let the birds cock-a-doodle-doo all they want! There’s not much I can do with this package weighing us down!”

“How could you! I am not that heavy! I have a low Rohrer’s index too, so I protest!”

The upset Lady’s Mobilized Writing let her make sounds that resonated with specific objects.

And it turned out Kanda’s House of Time had run into a problem tonight.

“The House of Time’s time-telling Sein Frau’s song is out of tune, right? I hope I can play the correct tune for her.”

“This is because she’s aging, so she’ll just slip out of tune again even if you fix her today. But the House of Time’s clocktower resonates with the world’s time, so a mistake there would have disastrous consequences.”

“So will the grownups call me in again each time it happens? That sounds awful.”

“You can worry about that later,” said the Boss. “Senpai was right: the enemy’s here.”

I looked back, but I didn’t see anything on the road behind us.

I wondered if the Boss had just gotten scared, but then a great emptiness filled my vision.

That was the Great Tokyo Fault.

The massive fault split Tokyo west to east from near Kunitachi to Mitaka. National Route 20 had been made into an elevated highway, you could see a cloudy night sky below the road, and the lights of Surface Tokyo and Underground Tokyo formed a double horizon far to the east.

The enemy the Boss had mentioned had arrived within the wind.

They were in the sky.

Four shooting stars curved toward us with white trails slicing across the night sky.

“Wh-what are those!? Are they after us!?” shouted Lady.

''So that’s our enemy, huh?'' I sighed and the Boss explained in a bitter voice.

“There are people who want time to be out of whack. They want Tokyo to take the fall for failing to manage it properly! And they must have hired this meteor shower force.”

I wasn’t going to say it in front of the Boss since he’s from Kansai, but they were likely hired by a Kansai corporation.

I silently stood up on the tandem seat and readied my fists with the wind roaring around me. The Boss activated his Mobilized Writing at the same time.

'''Acceleration stacks infinitely.

He began kicking his motorcycle up to higher gears. After speeding up all the way to 6th gear, he suddenly dropped down to 1st gear. Our current speed became our 1st gear speed, so he could then reaccelerate on up from there. He called it his 6-Stage Infinite Acceleration.

“Don’t underestimate Tokyo’s student defenders.”

When the motorcycle’s speed produced tire smoke on the road, the meteor shower force hesitated. The four shooting stars had slowed down enough that our speeds were about equal as we raced down the elevated Route 20 side by side. The battle had begun.

'''Author Comment:

It turns out no one uses the Rohrer’s index anymore. You will be hearing more about the House of Time’s Sein Frau later.