Editing City Series:Volume5b Chapter16 (section)

===Rose Francisca’s Journal===

Something odd is happening. Things are straying from the prophecy. And they are doing so rapidly and shockingly.

I realized that when Heinz Berge’s unit arrived in this village.

That never happened before. To be honest, I was probably the most flustered by the turn of events.

The previous records and facts never show him heading to Paris from the Autun region. He always appears in Nevers on July 30 and hurries to Paris from there.

Yet here he is in this village.

And oddly enough, it was only him and four of his men who arrived. I have repeated this war-torn year more than 20 times, so I know how his Lourd de Marionnette unit is structured. He is acting separately from the transport truck and the rest of his troops.

I can guess why he is here, though.

The day before yesterday, Beretta and Rosetta discovered his unit investigating the area and a meeting was held at the mayor’s house. For that and other reasons, the mayor must have decided they needed to hurry up and load a Lourd de Marionnette he had – I had no idea that was in this village – on a truck.

But a mistake had been made along the way. Yesterday morning after Beretta went to board the mayor’s Lourd de Marionnette, Rosetta rushed down from upstairs where she had been sleeping.

“I am sorry, but I dropped one of the cups we borrowed from you.”

They had taken the cup from the kitchen when they went mountain climbing. They had discovered Heinz Berge’s investigation after dropping it down the slope, but she had apparently dropped it again while they were running away.

She then left the house to see Beretta, but the result is what I mentioned earlier.

Heinz Berge must have found the cup Rosetta dropped and learned that someone had seen their investigation here.

So to prevent that information from getting out, they moved to seal off the Morvan area themselves.

“We are on our way from Nevers to Dijon,” one of his men told us. “But we cannot find a way back after the earthquake last night, so we had to take a detour that brought us to your village. If possible, we would like some food and a place to rest.”

Instead of panicking, they had taken control of the police department and the postal and telegraph office in Autun and then contacted their superiors to request a nearby unit be sent in to clear the mountain pass. It had apparently taken a lot of convincing, but the higher ups had eventually agreed to send a unit.

The mayor and Beretta are currently in a holding cell in Autun’s small police department.

Rosetta was briefly questioned, but she was released since she did not seem to know much.

Nothing too bad should happen since those two girls had gotten their story straight in advance. In fact, the entire village backed up their claim that they were working in my clinic that day and had not been mountain climbing. The mayor and Beretta are only being held because they were operating a Lourd de Marionnette not registered with the Germans. If this had been about Beretta’s investigation, things would have been much worse.

According to Rosetta, when Beretta had come across Heinz Berge’s Lourd de Marionnette with the lumber between them, she had immediately canceled the Recréa and surrendered.

It was lucky that the Germans do not know Jack’s name. They are investigating the Attesor Project, so if they had come across the name Jack McWild, they would likely have arrested Beretta and me both after checking our papers.

In that sense, you could say Jack and Monsieur Guilliaum saved us by erasing all records of our sins – of all those wills we drove to suicide – after the war.

But they seem to be having trouble confirming Beretta’s identity. Based on her papers, she lived in France, moved to America, and then moved back to France for school just before the war began, but they apparently need to contact someone in Paris to confirm that. The mayor will likely be released before her.

Fortunately, Heinz Berge’s men have the integrity you would expect of Lourd de Écrivains and the Autun police department has a gentle atmosphere. She is not being put through any physical pain and the investigation is being carried out by the book.

Also, when I view her as a Correcteur after her baths, I sometimes see another presence in the color of her Formules. She may be pregnant. That is worth looking into at some point.

Now, the Germans will apparently leave one of their men in Autun to manage the police department. The other three and Heinz Berge plan to leave tomorrow morning to reach the Dijon region using a mountain path that circumvents the collapsed mountain pass.

But how much will history change if Heinz Berge travels to Paris from Dijon? It is supposed to take him 10 days to leave Nevers because he must avoid the black dragon’s territory, but the collapse in the Autun region was light and about half of it can likely be moved.

Whether or not Monsieur Guilliaum is aware of their actions will likely have a great influence on the Resistance uprising in Paris.

If Heinz Berge does not arrive in time, Paris may be liberated.

No, that is still my optimism talking. What if the uprising occurs before Beretta and Rosetta return to Paris and the Resistance is defeated? It is Beretta seeing the Resistance’s defeat that leads her to the necessary spirit of liberation. If she does not see it happen, then the Resistance will die in vain. And I was the one that guided them to that defeat.

We have strayed from the prophecy, but I cannot make any corrections because the collapse prevents me from sending Monsieur Guilliaum a letter. There is nothing I can do.

What will change and by how much? When will Beretta be released? When will the black dragon attack?

I do not know. I can only say that I was naïve to assume it would be so easy to keep everything following the prophecy.