Editing City Series:Volume5b Chapter14 (section)

===Beretta’s Journal: Today’s Entry #1===

I’m writing this in my room today.

This was a fairly forceful day. After all, I surprised Rosetta with an invitation to visit Bourgogne with me. I’m like a step away from kidnapping her here.

But the old man gave the okay when he saw my grades and Rosetta seemed happy buying clothes for her first trip. She might be too excited to sleep right now.

But when we visited that café during the day, I realized just how much the city’s atmosphere had changed during the exam period. Before, the city had been colored by the red of brick, the white of quartz, and the dark blue of the asphalt, but now the most prominent colors were the dark green and black of the German uniforms.

The café’s menu had less tea and more beer. The city was being locked down as the Germans prepared for battle. The library was closed and you had to be patted down before entering the city hall. It was all pretty awful. That environment had affected my diet and given me a bit of a belly, so I had to buy some new clothes. I still can’t believe it.

A lot of other things happened today too. It was all normal enough as I saw Rosetta back home and discussed the trip with the old man, but I screwed up when I decided to help her with the cleaning she started all of a sudden.

I lost the too-big ring that Phillip had bought me.

I realized that during the evening while taking a break in the second-story study. It was just as she told me about the mansion’s torture room. I was pretty sure I had lost it while wiping things down with a cloth. It was a pretty big shock.

What was I supposed to tell Phillip next time I saw him? I wanted to ask Mallette for some advice, but she said she was heading back to visit her parents. If history continued as normal, she would be Formatted without anything happening to her. And Phillip would die before that.

I hadn’t met him since the school festival.

Not that it mattered. Once the Format happened, I and the things I had arrived with would be booted out into the world of 1999. Only the knowledge and memories I had gained would remain. Holding onto the ring would accomplish nothing.

Unless I liberated this world, that is.

If the Format could be done away with, this world would reconnect to 1944. I wouldn’t be able to return to 1999, but I would keep everything I had here.

But I couldn’t do that. I had a family and returning this to the proper 1944 would rewrite the entire 55-year period between this world and the present time.

It was that fear that kept the world from trying to liberate France. We had instead created the transfer student system to back up France. Because the world had advanced 55 years beyond France.

Besides, there were three conditions necessary to liberate France and accomplishing them would not be easy.

1: '''Stop the detonation of the Wort Bombe.

2: '''Spread a spirit of liberation through the majority of France’s people.

3: '''Prove that fully closing oneself off is not possible.

The most difficult of those was the third one:

*'''Prove that fully closing oneself off is not possible.

I was told the way to do that would be to create a paradox by sending in something that had already been Formatted to show that it had not in fact been Formatted.

But no one had found a way to break through the city’s immune system. According to the scientists:

“We just have to send in something that has not been Formatted and convert it into something that was Formatted.”

But that was just an unproven theory.

And writing about this is pointless. What matters is tomorrow.

Tomorrow night, we would arrive in the Bourgogne village of Herlde and meet Rose Francisca, but how would that go? I was not her daughter, Beretta McWild. That Beretta was in San Francisco back in ’99. Besides, my hair color was different. Could I really fool her?

It would probably be best to give her the letter, warn her about the dragon attack on August 3, and get out of there. Herlde was supposed to have an inn, so we could get a room there to investigate the Attesor Project.

And Rosetta was sure to ask me all sorts of things about the outside world and myself during the trip. She had trusted me this whole time while I kept the most important things from her. I didn’t care if she ended up laughing, I wanted to tell her everything: the things I doubt she’ll believe and how much she’s saved me.

Wow, this doesn’t sound like me at all. I must be really worried like I was in March.

I’m headed to a new place where I’ll prepare for the end here. I might find something and I hope I do. Because what I find will probably help me figure out what I’ve been thinking about ever since the Heavy Barrel battle at the school festival.

Can I protect people?

Knight Strikers are supposed to protect people and I Write Bring into Heavy Barrels because I want to protect the people I care for. But that requires strength. My strength is a little above a normal person’s, but I still can’t defeat anyone with a lot of strength and I end up having someone else protect me.

Then what does it mean to be strong? Jack McWild had started the Attesor Project in his pursuit of that question. Would I find some of the answer if I went to Morvan and viewed the same scenery they had?

I never expected to be thinking about all this while in France.

I’m worried. There’s too much I can’t tell anyone about. Not just the things I was worried about, but the very fact that I had come from the outside world. And that everyone would be Formatted.

On August 1, the Paris Resistance would start a fight for liberation and Phillip would die. Will I make it back to Paris before then? Paris is sure to be even more locked down by then, so I might not even be able to get in.

I have some regrets. Why didn’t I tell everyone about so many different things? Yes, I’m saying goodbye to a lot of people right now. In just a month and a half, the situation will change and everyone will leave Paris. I said goodbye to Mallette at the bistro last night and I guess I said goodbye to Phillip on that night of the school festival. I still have that dress he lent me. I thought he would come to get it, but he hasn’t. He’s probably busy.

When was the last time we were all together? At the festival? No, Rosetta wasn’t there. Then it had to be that party on March 26. That was the night when I beat him up and argued with him.

Why can’t I do anything right? With myself or with others? There’s so much more I wish I’d told them, asked them about, thanked them for, and apologized for. I wish I could have spent more time with them, but it just didn’t work out. My pride and vanity get in the way and I end up alone.

Maybe France is the same. In its insistence that it’s all alone, it has shut out the rest of the world for 55 years.

<nowiki><I</nowiki> look down and see a piece of paper fallen on the floor.

It is a letter left by Mallette.>