Editing City Series:Volume6a Chapter5 (section)

===Part 2===

Hazel and Bermark walked down a hallway in the airbase’s officer barracks.

The König Pseudo-Drach aircraft was ready to take her from the airbase, so they had to hurry through the adjacent general barracks to reach the hangar beyond.

The only thing visible outside the 1st floor hallway windows was the group of storage buildings to the north. Transport trucks were coming and going in a hurry to carry materiel from them.

Hazel tensed her shoulders at the explosions and gunfire she heard coming from the airport in the distance.

Meanwhile, they passed by two heavily-equipped soldiers with bandoliers over their shoulders.

They exchanged information on their posts and unit names in an abbreviated and jargony way that she could not make heads or tails of.

She suddenly looked to the right, but Bermark remained silent with a somewhat indignant look as he walked alongside her.

She started to say something and then paused to choose her words.

“Um…uh.”

She wanted to find something to fill the silence while an explosion sounded in the distance.

“That sounds…exciting.”

“They are not up against your average opponent.”

Bermark responded calmly while some soldiers wielding spears that were probably Werkzeugs approached from up ahead. The armbands on their right arms bore red crosses, marking them as medics that instantly healed people with Tuning.

Hazel watched them as they rushed past.

Their six pairs of military boots produced heavy footsteps. They were all wordlessly focused on the path ahead of them.

Another explosion sounded from the distance and one of the six clicked their tongue. The man in the lead turned back toward the other five and confirmed that each of them knew their respective destinations.

After coming to a stop and watching them leave, Hazel frowned and asked Bermark a question.

“For what and for who does your Geheimnis Agency exist?”

“We were created to save this country.”

With that, Bermark removed the glove covering his right hand to reveal a ceramic hand that used wire cylinders to move.

“!?”

He moved fingers that appeared to be made from no more than a framework and asked a question with a smile.

“Fräulein, what if I told you my entire body was made like this?”

She was unsure how to respond.

But she hesitantly reached out and touched his body.

It was hard.

She felt nothing like flesh, only solid curves reminiscent of armor.

“Is that what the Titel that Berger mentioned meant?”

“My name is Bermark Vier. The Vier means I am the fourth in my model line.” He put his glove back on. “I am a male Airam-style Sein Frau created in the Flanders region as a model and example for all Germans. That makes me the one and only type of Heidengeist allowed to exist in Germany at the moment.”

Hazel removed her hand from the old man and waited for him to say more.

He soon gave her what she wanted.

“It is said all Sein Fraus are destined to seek out a heart, but right now Germany needs the power to survive in this City World more than it needs a heart. We need the power to have our voice heard by the world. …You failed to become our Messiah, but the knowledge of our colleague that resides in your prosthetic eye is sure to aid our cause.”

Hazel said nothing, so Bermark pushed on her back to get them walking again.

But just then…

“?”

She felt a pain in her right eye.

It was faint, like something small was pricking at the surface of the eye.

…''This is a lot like last night, but…weaker?

Feeling uneasy, she placed a hand on her right cheek, which caused Bermark to look back.

“Is something wrong?”

“I think it’s just an ingrown eyelash. It’s kind of…”

''Weird,'' she finished in her mind, but she forced a smile for him to see.

Her cheek remained a bit stiff due to the eye pain. And…

“Oh?”

Something was wrong with her vision. For some reason, she saw something blue instead of Bermark. It was like she had a thin layer of blue cellophane over her eyes because she could see Bermark through it.

“What is this?”

The blue in her vision was growing stronger. At the same time, she could see something white floating within the blue. The flocculant whiteness spread out flatly into the distance.

…''I swear I’ve seen this somewhere before.

But her memory of it was unclear. The blue space and the whiteness spreading through it felt off, like she was remembering something wrong, so she could not find a clear answer.

She held a hand out in front of her face, but even that was obscured by the blue shape.

The two colors extending infinitely in front of her gained a more distinct color and shape and she seemed to be accelerating forward within it. She seemed to be moving so quickly she could not keep any specific point in view, even though it only existed in her vision.

She saw a blue expanse spread out overhead and a fluffy white land beneath her. Her vision seemed to move as if sliding forward above that.

“Fräulein?”

She could hear Bermark’s questioning voice, but it did not register in her mind.

She was hearing something else instead.

…''The wind?

The sound was of course only in her imagination. Her ears were creating this imagined sound based on the visual information she was receiving and that phantom noise made the visual seem more real.

But the flowing white and endless blue expanse fit that imagined wind perfectly.

…''I’m pretty sure my dad said the clouds look different when viewed from above than when viewed from the ground. Is that what I’m seeing below me now?

Her vision rotated as if to show her what that whiteness was.

Her vision made a roll to the right.

“!?”

While her vision flipped around in that roll, it changed angle somewhat.

In response to her rightward roll, the white waves below her rose up from the bottom right and filled her vision. Then it was the blueness that rose up from the bottom right.

The sound of the wind was joined by the loud roar of impacting air.

Her vision suddenly filled with the blue.

But the blue was not absolute. There was a single white circle at its center.

That was the sun. Hazel muttered to herself after seeing that light.

“I’m above the clouds…but why?”

She received an answer immediately thereafter.

Her vision showed her everything.

The roar of the wind enveloped her. Or it seemed to.

Just as the sun appeared in the center of her vision, it dropped down.

The sun at the peak of the heavens seemed to flow further and further down because her vision was flying…

“A loop-the-loop.”

She stretched up without thinking. The upside-down cloudy horizon entered her vision from the top.

The white horizon gradually moved down her vision and she could only see clouds a few seconds later.

She was oriented straight down as if doing a handstand.

She could see the cloudy sea with a hint of blue where the sunlight shined on it.

Above that, she saw a series of small antlike dots.

…''Are those aerial warships?

Judging distances was hard with nothing to compare them to.

She dug up all the air force knowledge she had picked up from her father. The shapes below that looked less than an inch long had to be the newly commissioned warships that made up the main force of the 7th Aerial Division.

Her vision suddenly moved straight ahead, in other words down and toward the ships below.

There was no hesitation in that movement.

“!?”

She was charging toward them to attack, but attacking an entire air force division with a single craft was insanity.

With no answers and not even time to ask the questions, Hazel could only raise her voice.

“S-stop!!”

However, her shout was tinged with hesitation.

At the same time, she felt a horizontal impact disconnected from what she was seeing. She felt it on her cheek, which did not exist in that world of pure vision.

Then the white clouds and the warships all vanished from view.