…Eh?
Huh? That"s not right.
I didn"t learn anything about this mansion…
Wait, this isn"t the time to worry about that! What should I do? Circle around the hill and escape!?
Or…?
Tonight we had a strange guest named Beretta
Correction
She is Lady Beretta
I have determined I should refer to people politely even in writing
I cannot determine how to explain why she visited us tonight
At times like that I will do as the master once told me and simply write out what happened in order
I walked out into the hallway with a light in hand to close the shutters
My Ajouter told me it was noisy outside and that something like loud footsteps were approaching
Those footsteps stopped and then it was like the sky had fallen into the mansion courtyard
The courtyard is surrounded by the mansion so it can only be accessed through the mansion
But something fell from the sky just as I made an Ajouter
It was a large machine
It was a machine just like my own body but it was far larger
Its arms were much like the largest false arm I have
Its legs were much like the largest false legs I have
I used to have a similar waist back before my growth through the Coppelia effect
My body can no longer function to my satisfaction without being closer to that of a human
This clearly had a much larger body since my body is not large enough to crush the courtyard pond
I decided to call for the master because he decides what happens in the mansion and what I do
But a person left the back of the machine before I could call for him
It was Lady Beretta
Her white and red clothing seemed to glow in the rain
She headed for the north entrance so I went that way as well
Lady Beretta opened the door and entered the mansion just as I stepped the northern hallway
She held a large bag in her hand and she collapsed on the spot
I did not know what to do so I stopped making Ajouters and propped her up
Unlike the usual food delivery men she did not name herself and she asked me to shelter her
I did not know what that meant
I picked her up and carried her to the bottom of the stairs to call for the master
When the master descended the stairs he said the wooden box he held contained tools for repairing humans
On his instructions I carried Lady Beretta to the living room and laid her down on the sofa
I made an Ajouter and found my false arms had the red soup of a juice that comes out of meat while preparing it so I felt the need to wash up
The master pulled up her skirt and began repairing her
I will now write down all of his questions and her responses while he repaired her
Are you not you going to ask who I am or if I am with the Resistance
Why would I bother asking that of a Lourd de Écrivain who was piloting an Allied Lourd de Marionnette
But I am not part of the Resistance
Are you saying a civilian was piloting that
Well it is kind of a long story
From there Lady Beretta told the long story
While she was being repaired she explained how she ended up using that machine and the master nodded after hearing her out
I will now write down what they said
Why would you tell me all that
As selfish as it is I was hoping you could make a decision for me
A decision about what
Whether you are with the Resistance or not I want you to decide what you are going to do about that girl in the courtyard and me
Why must I make that decision
Her leg is damaged and she cannot move any more but leaving her here could drag you and your maid into this whole mess
What would you do if I decided the only way to stay out of this is to hand you over to the Germans
I would fight it like h.e.l.l and if I was still caught I would apologize to the others who died
I see
If you are going to hand me over to them then just open the window and shout down to them They are wandering around at the bottom of the hill so hurry up and decide if you are going to hand me over or not
Pipe down while I try to think little girl
If you are going to hand me over to them then stop healing me because I am not going to have you staring at my leg like this if you are only going to turn me in
If you do not quiet down I really will throw you to the Germans
Oh so you are not planning to do it for the time being
Hmm I do not like something about this
The master spent a long time thinking and eventually decided to shelter Lady Beretta
He repaired her relatively quickly and he said she would not even have a scar afterwards
She seemed to still have trouble using her leg so I attached my large false arm meant for carrying things and carried her to the bath
On the way she saw the large machine collapsed in the courtyard and asked me my name
I told her my name
She told me to put her down in front of the bath and I complied
She reached out her hand and grabbed my hand
She said thank you but I did not understand why she was thanking me since I had only done what my master instructed me to
But that question was immediately erased from my mind when I made an Ajouter and saw Lady Beretta smiling for the first time
It was unlike how the master smiles and it told me why she had thanked me
Even if I was only following my orders Lady Beretta was glad that I had worked for her sake
I think that is what her smile was expressing
This might trigger the Coppelia effect so that I can smile when someone does something for me
I do not know if that is a good thing but gaining more functions is a good thing
It is about time for Lady Beretta to leave the bath
It has been 40 minutes which is 4 times as long as the master takes
She may have a lot of places to wash
The master covered the machine in the courtyard using a sheet from the storehouse
I tried to help but he ordered me to write this journal entry and to look after Lady Beretta
Lady Beretta will apparently sleep here tonight and go home early tomorrow morning
I will now bring Lady Beretta a change of my clothes
Then I have to get to the kitchen
I only have to reheat something so I can finish before she dresses
That ends this journal entry
I wrote a lot today
I doubt as much will happen tomorrow so fewer lines should suffice
I will write another entry tomorrow because that is one of my jobs
Today I"m writing with the view from a 1st floor guest room instead of the usual elevated view from my appartement. I"m feeling pretty good after getting a bath and some dinner, but my mood is not exactly great.
What am I supposed to do tomorrow?
The old man who healed me will apparently repair the Heavy Barrel. (He claims to be a Knight Striker himself.) He hasn"t asked all that much about my ident.i.ty either, so who even knows.
I was only involved in the Resistance for 3 days, but it looks like I"m back to my usual life. Maybe I should think of it as a valuable experience as an exchange student. At least the changes to history will end here.
Maybe I just haven"t calmed down yet. I took part in combat back in America when I helped out the city"s vigilante group a few times and I"ve fought a triple digit number of mock battles.
I think it"s really hitting me hard that people died because of me. I shouldn"t have agreed to that just because I was itching to Write Bring into a Heavy Barrel again. After a.s.sembling it and doing a test run, I was supposed to officially join the Resistance, but I don"t feel like doing that anymore.
My motive there wasn"t exactly pure, was it? They all took it seriously enough to face death.
I bet this is all from the stress of fighting with that idiot Phillip a week ago. That idiot said he"s quitting college and joining the German Army just because they"ve prepared an "honorary officer" position for him.
History proves he can"t afford to go there. Phillip Missel uses his position as an honorary officer to act as a Resistance spy. And during the Resistance uprising on August 1, he takes part as a Knight Striker and dies. With that, the Missel family, a former Chevalier de Paris family, is destroyed. Everyone in Paris recognizes that family"s Signe de Épée, but it will die out once that happens.
But there was no way he would believe me if I told him that and he was sure to ask how exactly I knew. And so we"ve ended up fighting every time we see each other recently.
I can"t believe it. As if today wasn"t bad enough, the more people I get to know, the more stressed out I get.
I almost wish I hadn"t done any research into this era. Instead, I made sure to learn about the people who died as part of the Resistance, the activity of famous people, and the conflicts that crop up here and there.
The railroad in Champagne is bombed tomorrow afternoon and the Normandy landings begin on June 6. Plus, Mallette gets caught in the Format and Phillip dies on August 1. On August 3, the German Army invades Bourgogne, angers a black dragon, and gets trampled along with an entire village.
From outside the closed-off city, France was swallowed by the Rondeau in August of "44, so the European battlefront had to avoid France. The Allies were forced to invade Germany from the south and north to finally drive Germany to surrender.
That was all in the past.
As long as my involvement today wasn"t found out and everything around me is fine, I can return to my normal life tomorrow. I need to seriously focus on why I came to France.
I have two reasons for being here.
The first is pretty much the same reason I became a Knight Striker: The Attesor Project. That mysterious French Heavy Barrel development project was written of in a Death Techno compilation book sold before the war. I wanted to see if it actually existed. After all, some doc.u.ments concerning it turned up in my great-grandfather"s things back home.
My great-grandfather, Jack McWild, was originally an American technical officer and he had visited France as an adviser. That was when the Attesor Project began.
My grandma had always been proud of him and I think it must have spread to me. The next thing I knew, I was a weird girl who was interested almost exclusively in Sein Fraus and Heavy Barrels. As my curiosity grew, I found myself dying to investigate the Attesor Project and to find out what my ancestor had done.
The other reason was my grandma.
Her parents, Jack McWild and Rose Francisca, had broken up for a few reasons. Jack McWild had taken my grandma with him when he moved to San Francisco where he built the Sein Frau maintenance factory where the family still lives, but in "39, his corpse was found floating in the Seine here in Paris.
And in "43, the Allies recruited my grandma for her skill as a Knight Striker and she infiltrated Paris as an exchange student. But while she was sent in to support the Resistance as a Knight Striker, I think she really went to investigate my great-grandfather"s death.
In the end, she escaped to America just a few days before the Wort Bombe detonated. I"m sure a lot happened, but from what I"ve heard, the failure of the Paris Resistance"s uprising on August 1 hit her pretty hard. Some people consider her a traitor and a deserter, but I don"t mind.
I mean, it"s thanks to that that she happened to miss the Format and became one of the First Erased. If not for that, my father and I would never have been born.
But my grandma did have one regret. She knew that Jack McWild and Rose Francisca broke up due to a misunderstanding between them and he apparently went back to Paris to make up with her.
After Jack McWild went to Paris, my grandma found a letter in the study of our home. It was addressed to Rose Francisca, but only with a name; there was no actual address given. He had likely thought she would understand once they found each other, decided not to mail it, and forgot about it without ever writing in the address.
I came to Paris with that letter.
The exchange students like me are supposed to investigate France and help create a backup before France fully closes itself off. In other words, the world is going to abandon France without liberating it.
However, it can"t be liberated.
The world has reached the year 1998, but France is still connected to the years of 1943 and 1944. If France is liberated, it will be restored within 1944. My world of "98 has been a world without France ever since "44, so that restoration would create a 54 year paradox that would destroy the world of "98.
I don"t have the guts to remake my "world without France" into a new "world with France".
I want to investigate the Heavy Barrel development project known as the Attesor Project and I want to get Jack McWild"s letter to Rose Francisca to accomplish what my grandma failed to do.
My grandma has thought about this for a long time and that"s why she named me Beretta.
Beretta is her name too and according to her:
"That way your great-grandmother will recognize you right away."
There"s a lot I want to say about that, but she hasn"t used her real name since leaving Paris and instead goes by Sword Lady, her Urban Name as a Knight Striker. She must have her reasons.
I need to give all of this more thought.
I"ve Signed what I need to do, so I guess I"ll read my grandma"s letter when I get back to my room.
There"s so much I have to do.
But I am little worried about that Heavy Barrel and…yes, about those two in this mansion. They live in a mansion here, but there is no information at all about them in "98.
I wonder why. Well, I"ll leave all the thinking for tomorrow.
Today"s Incidents:
1: Old Blue Eyes"s Negotiations
Old Blue Eyes had his son and daughter-in-law taken to Germany as hostages and his grandson has been taken into the German Army as an honorary officer. To clear up any fears that he was colluding with the Germans, he escaped Paris on his own, negotiated with the national a.s.sembly members outside, and returned today.
He was negotiating for the sovereignty of the Free France faction of the Paris Resistance group I lead, to rid us of our obligation to work with the communist faction, and to give us the discretionary power to act freely.
It was a major negotiation, but he somehow managed it. We can now act at our own discretion when necessary while also awaiting instructions from the national a.s.sembly. That old man did well. It certainly helps to have the former Chevalier de Paris family as your second-in-command.
I think I will give him some time off starting tomorrow, but I"m worried that stubborn old man won"t accept it.
2: Slaughter of Bluebeard"s Team
Blue seems to be a popular color today.
Bluebeard"s material acquisition and management team was slaughtered. The Allies must have messed something up because they certainly bungled smuggling in the female Lourd de Marionnette being sent in for support. According to Bluebeard:
"I found a Lourd de Écrivain girl with a nice anti-German spirit, so I"ll have her check over the Lourd de Marionnette and try to bring her on as a Lourd de Écrivain when I see a chance."
But ironically, it was that Lourd de Écrivain girl who reported Bluebeard"s death to me.
That said, the Lourd de Écrivain that Bluebeard found is definitely a good one.
But I will not recruit her. She"s just that type of girl. She doesn"t have the most important aspect of being a Lourd de Écrivain. She clearly enjoys performing the Recréa with a Lourd de Marionnette.
Yes, she"s just like I was 25 years ago. And we can"t have that.
Plus, that Lourd de Écrivain girl has far too many strange symbols to her.
3: The Prophecy
Everything that happened today was written of in a letter that Rose Francisca sent yesterday under a pseudonym for some reason. I thought it was all nonsense at first, but I was gradually forced to believe it. I ended up explaining my thoughts to Rosetta at dinner, but she did not seem to understand. That would be the normal response, though.
Who would believe that Paris is actually stuck in a loop?
Tomorrow, I will write letters for the families of Bluebeard and his team members. Only I can do this since Resistance members rarely if ever meet each other. I really shouldn"t have let them make me their leader. All I end up doing is manage addresses, approve strategies, give orders, and look after the dead.
Today at 10:00, my 72nd mechanization surgery was completed at Berlin"s general hospital. Now the German Army"s Panzer Ritter Project has advanced to the next stage.
At 12:44, I began healing from the surgery. I was freed from my restraints and allowed to wake up. At 17:07, my body"s senses recovered.
At 19:21, my Grösse Panzer unit, the 1st Grösse Panzer Platoon of the 352nd Infantry Division, sent their 1st aide to inquire about the progress of my surgeries. After some quick questioning, he left.
At 20:00, I went for a quick walk inside the hospital. With the strengthened optical nerves provided by this surgery, I can now see through the darkness out the window. My body is now nearly 70% mechanical, so it is predicted I will have a reaction speed approximately 117 times faster than a normal person when combined with a Grösse Panzer. The mechanization of my body that began shortly after the previous Great War has successfully increased my reaction speed. I should probably celebrate that this surgery has allowed an old soldier of 58 to continue fighting, but the surgeries have erased my emotions and memories, so I have no memories of anyone to celebrate with.
Currently, something the 1st aide mentioned is sticking with me.
While our German Army has spent many long years experimenting on my body to create a true Panzer Ritter, France has long had its own project to create the strongest Panzer.
Theirs is named the Attesor Project. The Attesor Project"s existence has long been rumored and, if I recall correctly, the German-born traitor and current adventurer named M. Schrier wrote about it in the 7th volume of his children"s book series known as the Ober Geheimnis Compilation.
There are no known witnesses and very little material evidence, so it was thought to be no more than childish rumors and guesses born in Bourgogne. But it seems that they have discovered there is more to it.
Our army is investigating the existence of that strongest Panzer development project. I feel no surprise our doubt about this. As a Panzer Kavalier, I simply leave it in the back of my mind as I go to sleep.