Editing City Series:Volume8a Chapter8 (section)

===Yuo’s Continued Sight Mode: Inside DT Castle===

'''<Yuo’s Over Reload>

Yuo finished dressing in her Yard uniform at about the same time as a window opened in front of her.

The system message window silently bloomed in the center of the room.

'''<The Yard force within the castle has been eliminated>

'''<Yard reinforcements cannot be called from outside the castle>

'''<As the only spare Yard force within the castle, Ensign Yuo Natas Wav can receive the authority of Castle Yard Representative>

A new window opened.

'''<Do you accept? Y/N – If you choose N, surrender is recommended>

Yuo reflexively reached for the Y.

But she stopped just before pressing it.

She pulled her hand back, shut her mouth, and flattened her eyebrows as she stared at the Y.

That letter meant accepting all responsibility.

So she kept that digital letter in the center of her vision and focused on her ears.

She could hear a cacophony of alarms and destruction from outside the window. But none of that destruction came from inside the castle. Earlier, she had heard some automatic gunfire she assumed came from Yard submachineguns, but that had since stopped.

“They really were wiped out, weren’t they?”

She shut her eyes and frowned.

She reached for the hair falling on her shoulder but stopped herself.

Then she spoke more forcefully with her eyes squeezed shut. Her tone said she was trying to convince herself of the words.

“Yuo Natas Wav served for three years as PR Chief of Japan’s North Kantou Chancellor’s Officers and has been trained as the machine force’s ace.”

A breath.

“Think back to 600 years ago when you first got into a fight in Japan. Remember those days when you worked under that stupid, ridiculous, laissez-faire, and harmfully perverted upperclassman – when you had such unique connections with your comrades, came up with plans, and went around both defending and attacking.”

She opened her eyes, faced forward, and opened her mouth wide.

The words that came out were from a song she had learned long ago.

“I shall move ever forward.”

After speaking the line, she restarted it as her Text.

'''“I shall move ever forward.”

Green light briefly surrounding her hands, followed by a shattering glass sound.

She raised her hands as they shook from the impact.

Then she slapped her cheeks with them.

The slapping sound in her ears and the sharp pain in her cheeks made her flinch.

But she soon straightened back up and viewed the window in front of her with tension in her eyebrows.

“I accept.”

She pressed the Y.

'''<Understood. Ensign Yuo Natas Wav will now be granted authority of the Castle Yard Representative>

She read that display, waited a few seconds, and took a deep breath.

“That will tell my dad and the others…”

She shook her head, forced the air out of her lungs, and restated that thought.

“This will tell the enemy I am here. The management and authority transfer windows will have appeared all across the affected area. They would never miss that window.”

She nodded and snapped her finger.

“Puppy! Connect me to the Yard station’s memory space. Enter my password and gather as much data as you can get while making sure it can’t be traced to us! With the enemy here, this is going to be a battle over privileges!”

She opened a transparent keyboard by her hands and opened a window that displayed her own abilities.

“I need to set my voice to window only mode.”

<There.>

She looked up to see a window opened there.

<Now I can make all the noise I want without anyone hearing.>

<Puppy, hey, Puppy! Can you hear me? You can’t, right?>

Puppy the ferret looked her way while rolling up a trigon.

The Mouse knew how to optimize data, so he could tell what Yuo wanted.

Bluish-white lines appeared along the movable range of the chair on the floor and atop the desk.

Yuo opened a settings window for that space and set all the voice settings to “off”.

All sound vanished from around her.

''Good, good,'' she thought, opening a transparent keyboard on the desk and fixing its coordinate there.

She also opened a transparent display in front of her. The icons of various types of data floated inside the 20-inch flatscreen display.

Then she pressed the button on the top right of her transparent keyboard.

The icons in the screen emerged and floated above the desk.

She flicked the 3D spinning icons to spread them further apart.

She nodded once.

<Puppy, keep sending me everything you get. The station’s data shouldn’t have been hacked yet, so bring me all of the castle data the Yard has authority over.>

Puppy barked.

He let the data trigon float over his head, opened his mouth, and swallowed it.

An icon immediately appeared atop Yuo’s desk.

More icons appeared each time Puppy created and ate another trigon.

Yuo pushed the new trigons around with her fingers to silently sort them. She said nothing, but her thoughts appeared on her window.

<That Yard person said they had control of the castle’s map data, right?>

She glanced over toward where the door would normally be. There was only a wall there now.

<Since most everyone here is an NPC Body using shared memory, sealing away the memory related to the castle layout should prevent anyone but mom from knowing where my room is.>

That meant she could fight without anyone noticing her.

She suddenly found what she wanted among the icons.

The icon that appeared on the desk was a simple one depicting square rooms and hallways drawn on white paper.

<CasMap.dlb>

That was a collection of the castle’s map data.

She smiled at the icon and her hands raced across the keyboard.

Then she began to sing. A window opened to display her words, allowing her to sing in silence. First, she erased the castle map from DT in order to erase her own location, to obstruct the enemy’s movements, and…

<To find some way to fight.>

'''<Yuo’s Sight Mode has updated>