Editing City Series:Volume3b Chapter 2 (section)

===Part 2===

Hong Kong Cave was dead.

After the Sixth Divine Punishment War in which most of Hong Kong had been destroyed, a five-day investigation by the Yard and investigators from various nations had not found a single Nein Engel there.

All they had found were the newly-abandoned ruins.

However, the air began to move in that pit that now lacked even those investigators.

The surface was sunny and the air was warm.

That warm air flowed down into Hong Kong Cave and gained a damp, green smell as it came into contact with the darkness.

It sank into the pit and slowly gathered at the bottom as if piling up, but instead of becoming air, it rotated and whirled around the spring at the lowest level.

It created a slight wind.

That wind contained gentle warmth.

Two people let that wind wash over them on the edge of the spring.

One was a large man wearing a combat jacket the same color as the shadows accumulated on the lowest level.

In contrast, the other was a six-winged Nein Engel wearing a white coat that reflected light even in those same shadows.

They were Fei the Galgallin and Double Lee the Seraph.

These were the Nein Engels who had caused the Sixth Divine Punishment War.

Neither of them moved.

Fei remained standing and Double Lee remained sitting on the edge of the spring. They simply stared silently up into the shadows of Hong Kong Cave.

They could not see the light of the surface from three kilometers deep.

Since the creation of the hole, a number of structures had been created to cover everything up and hide the residents from the outside.

Still, they stared intently upwards.

Double Lee was the first to move.

He opened his mouth and said something.

That something was a question.

“Is Genius still not done?”

“There were a lot of rooms on that floor. It will take some time on her own.”

“She only has to place charms for the final ceremony in the four cardinal directions, but I guess that isn’t easy with such a large space.”

“It is necessary, so she has to do it.”

Double Lee looked down and laughed bitterly at Fei’s clear tone, void of all cruelty or concern.

“Ha ha. It’s been a week since most of Hong Kong was sent to heaven, so it’s sad that what you consider ‘necessary’ still isn’t complete.”

“Should we hasten our preparations?”

“I would really hate to rush this and make a mistake. But anyway, it looks like we can turn Hong Kong Cave into the site of the final ceremony by the end of the day. As for the remaining week…”

“We must stop anyone who would get in our way before the night Hong Kong is returned to China and we must acquire J-Gun Maldrick’s most powerful Device.”

Double Lee gave a small shrug.

“Sorry for making you wait this long. It took me an entire week to make the charms to use here which slowed down the setup for J-Gun’s Device.”

“That was unavoidable. Just like President Huang’s death, everything is a race against time. And, Double Lee, you have not slept much for the past few days, have you?”

“Because I’m still too inexperienced. If I had more power, I could have cut out the need for these extra preparations.”

“You do have power.”

“Not as much as you think I do. Just to start up the dragons, I needed the Tune Emblem and a powerful Device.”

“…”

“Yin and Yang lie at the foundation of Tuning and Busting. Ancient Tuners and Busters could easily draw those out from light and darkness. Not only that, but they could even play the Lives of time and space. But look at the modern Tuners and Busters.”

He fell silent and thought for a moment.

“Even I need Master Huang’s blood to obtain the power of Yang.”

“That is because of the Death Techno. Approximately seventy percent of the information related to Tuning and Busting was destroyed during the World Wars and the Divine Punishment Wars, so sending out dragons is worthy of praise in the present time.”

“That’s a nice consolation.”

“It is not a consolation; it is a relative evaluation,” readily corrected Fei. “You are growing faint of heart. Do you feel bad about destroying most of Hong Kong?”

“Of course not. My parents did something far worse.”

“Unfortunately, I have no detailed information on your parents.”

“Are you sure about that? …Fei, do you know the Flight Song?”

Fei nodded.

“That city connects heaven and earth. …It is the most well-known song in this city.”

“Yes, and it was created right here. Whenever a book introduces the Flight Song, it always has a picture of humans standing by this spring and looking up. Just like we were doing earlier.”

With that said, Double Lee once more looked up toward the heavens. Fei looked in the same direction.

“Can you see down here, Fei?”

Double Lee’s question was a simple one.

Fei’s answer was also a simple one.

“It would be a problem if I could not.”

The Galgallin had customized the majority of his body, so he stated that as if it were obvious.

On the other hand, Double Lee smiled bitterly and lowered his gaze.

His eyes turned from heaven and stopped on the monument next to the spring.

That mossy stone monument was engraved with the Flight Song.

Double Lee confirmed via Lives that Fei had turned in the same direction.

“Don’t you find it interesting?”

“The Flight Song?”

“Yes.” He nodded. “Fei, I have long thought about this song’s meaning. I thought and thought and thought.”

“I am aware. When President Huang first met you, that was the first thing you asked about.”

“I see you’re remembering old times again.”

“President Huang smiled and did not answer, but did he tell you in the end?”

“Yes, he did.”

“And you will not tell us?”

Double Lee lightly answered through body language.

He narrowed his eyes, twisted his lips a little, and simply smiled.

He finally opened that smile and produced some calm words that he seemed to have prepared in advance.

“Some things are best left unknown.”

“…”

The two fell silent.

Double Lee stood up and walked over to the monument carved with the Flight Song.

He arrived after one, two, three steps and reached out a hand.

He could be heard peeling moss away and he lowered his head.

His next words were directed toward the stones paving the ground.

“If you think about it carefully, it is a simple matter. …Why doesn’t Hong Kong truly connect heaven and earth like the song says?”

“Because the Divine Punishment Wars created a gap between the humans and the Glossolalians.”

“Between the humans and the Glossolalians?”

“The humans created Hong Kong Cave because they feared the Glossolalians. If not for that fearful avoidance, this place would not exist and neither would we as we are…or I as I am.”

“I see. An excellent guess.”

“That is the general opinion of all historians for the past century.”

“Even that last part? …I can’t imagine you without your customized body.”

“I only know this version of myself.”

“Archs RDC Security Division’s Active Duty Section 1 Commander and Division Commander…Fei Garland. When customizing your body, you received a Psyche Outer surgery and lost all of your memories. But…”

“My past remained.”

“Could you not kill her? I looked into it. Her Urban Name is Rin, but her Wild Name is Feng Ling. She’s a detective who made a name for herself as one of the Yard’s searchers, but she’s also a Tuner. Comparing her history to yours, your old self would have met her well before five years ago. And…when you parted ways, she was not even twenty.”

“How strange. You know more about me than I do.”

“She would know even more. …So could you not get rid of her…no, of your past?”

“Could you?”

“I’m the same as you. In more ways than one,” said Double Lee. “And so is Hong Kong.”

“?”

“No one can erase the past. And in its prediction of the coming future – to return to our previous topic – the Flight Song does not match up with Hong Kong’s past.”

“We already discussed this.”

“What the historians think does not matter. I don’t care that they believe the song was created and sung as some faint hope for the people being sealed below the earth.”

He laughed quietly, and…

“Such ridiculous sympathy.”

He looked up and his expression changed slightly.

[[Image:City_v03b_061.jpg|thumb]]

“Genius is here.”

A quiet flapping reached them like the spilling of sand.

A four-winged female Nein Engel descended down the center of the pit.

It was Genius.

“Were you waiting long?”

She landed on the spring. The tips of her toes sank into the pure water and she vibrated the wings extended both up and down in order to remain afloat.

She looked down but could not see the bottom of the spring. The bottomless hole looked like a gaping maw below her.

“Double Lee… You’ll perform the final ceremony here, won’t you?”

“Yes. I will drive the Baton into the water right where you are standing.”

“So the metal element dragon lives in the depths of the earth. …This is going to be destructive.”

“If I only had more power, I could have used a more peaceful method.”

“Peaceful destruction?”

“That’s not a very nice way of putting it. …But regardless, I had to send the four elements in advance to start up the metal dragon. I have no choice but to follow those fundamental rules.”

Double Lee laughed bitterly with no harshness in his expression.

Fei asked Genius something without looking away from Double Lee.

“How are your preparations going? …The preparations other than the charms.”

“J-Gun is working in the workshop below the Archs RDC building and the building is entirely empty. The contract is working perfectly.”

“Master Huang did a good job of setting everything up. We informed them in advance this land would be blown away, but in exchange for letting us go through with it, we gave them a portion of what we own in the foreign markets, not Hong Kong’s market.”

“A good decision,” said Fei without turning away from Double Lee. “Double Lee, you said that, when the Flight Song predicted the coming future, it did not match up with Hong Kong.”

“Eh? What are you talking about?”

Genius tilted her head and Double Lee smiled a little.

“That is what we were discussing. …So what about it, Fei?”

“How do you view President Huang’s instructions that continue to match up with Hong Kong even after his death?”

“They are the formula to reach the answer.”

“The answer? Is your answer the restoration of heaven?”

“Do we have anything else?”

“I am not talking about us. I am talking about you personally.”

“What about for you personally? Or for Genius personally? …No, not just that. That is what it was for Master Huang as well. And in the end, that objective is the one thing bringing us together.”

“I see. And you are fine with that?”

Double Lee’s answer made it sound like it was a stupid question.

“What else could there be?”

He also looked Fei in the eye.

For an instant, a metallic tone sounded in reality. The Lives of their gazes had collided.

Fei seemed to have lost to that sound because he looked away. His gaze wandered a bit before stopping on the Flight Song monument next to the spring.

“Double Lee,” he said. “You know everything, you have great power, and you desire something that we don’t more powerfully than we do anything. But you never try to fit in with us and people would likely call you…”

He thought for a moment.

“Pitiable.”

Fei went on to add that he did not understand that kind of emotion.

No one said anything after that.

Double Lee and Genius did not agree with or deny it.

The wind simply blew.