Hunting

The base of the Tokyo Skytree had several shops built into it, so that it was like a shopping mall. Everything within one block of the Skytree was closed. Ramon adjusted his poncho again as he stepped past the police tape and barriers that had been set up. 
     He stepped into the small courtyard below the Tokyo Skytree and looked up towards it in the darkness. The metalwork of it looked like lattice. The observation deck fanned out in an inverted cone, with the true spire above it still visible because of its sheer height.
     The damage the Twister had caused was what his eyes lingered on.
     He heard someone approaching him and turned to see a police officer walking towards him. Ramon shook his head and waited for the officer to get closer, and then when the officer was nearly on top of him he pulled out his Twisthunter badge. The officer looked at it for a few moments, then glanced back at Ramon. There was a brief silence during which Ramon stared directly at the officer, trying to get him to go away.
     To the officer's credit, he didn't budge until Ramon specifically told him to leave and let him begin his hunt. Even then, the officer lingered on the other side of the street for several minutes while Ramon examined the damage to the Skytree from the ground level. 
     Once the officer was really gone, Ramon sighed and thought about how the officer had been wasting his time.
     "Just about the only thing they're good for." He mumbled as he started walking around the block that contained the Skytree within its bounds. There were several other buildings that shimmered in the darkness of the night and the block was rather large. He crossed under a short bridge that had a few cars passing under it. He expected to keep walking for another while at least to reach the end of the block that contained the Skytree, but to his surprise, as soon as he went below the bridge, he found an alley that passed between the back of the Skytree's block and several apartments. The apartments were all shut down.
     "That's inconvenient." He mumbled.
     He started walking down the alleyway. It was small and a little cramped, and there wasn't anyone else there. He walked around the back of the Skytree for a minute before stopping in a slightly wider part of the alley and looking up at it. 
     The section the dragon had coiled around seemed crumpled, the way a beer can would look after a party. He squinted at it in the night, before coming to a conclusion that he should've seen coming when he left the hotel four and a half hours prior.
     "I can't see crap."
     With the entire block around the Skytree out of commission, there wasn't enough radiant illumination to make the Skytree significantly visible from the ground level. The only reason he could even see the damage was because the vague silhouette of the Skytree had jagged edges where he knew there shouldn't be anything like that.
     He sighed and walked back towards the courtyard below the Skytree. Once he was there, he took a seat on the sidewalk and opened his satchel. He was pretty far from where the dragon had actually been, but he had to hope he was close enough.
     From his satchel, he pulled out a small silver compass that, instead of having a needle, was filled with liquid mercury. He set it on the ground in front of him and retrieved a silver flask full of salt from the satchel as well. Once that had been placed next to the compass, he pulled out a silver box that had been locked shut. He set the box in front of him and pulled out a key from the satchel as well. 
     Inside the box was treated leather, and a solid metal rod rested in a divot in the leather next to a silk cloth. Ramon set the open box on the ground next to the mercury compass, then put on a pair of leather gloves. He unscrewed the top of the flask full of salt and opened it to reveal that it was topped like a normal salt shaker. He held that in his right hand, and with his left hand he picked up the metal rod. Salt poured from silver shaker onto the metal rod. Once it was covered in salt, he put the shaker down and began rubbing the salt over the metal rod. 
     After it was completely dusted in salt, he sighed and looked at it in silence. 
     In the dusty reflection, he could see himself.
     He desperately hoped the woman would willfully submit to the surgery. 
     His gloved left hand brushed most of the salt off the rod, and he polished it clean with the silk cloth. He took the salt-free metal rod and began walking around the courtyard, waving it in the air slowly as he took his steps around the base of the Tokyo Skytree. 
     Buildings glittered in the distance, and he could hear the rumble of vehicles around him. He smiled at the apparent absurdity of what he was doing.
     Anyone who walked by would see only a grown man, wearing gear normally reserved for the desert, holding a metal rod, prancing about at the base of a potentially dangerous area. 
     It was enough to make him smile a little bit. 
     He walked around for several minutes, making circles in the shopping mall area at the base of the Skytree, but nothing changed. He shook his head, before quickly setting the metal rod down and returning everything else to his satchel. The satchel sat on his shoulder as he held the metal rod in his right hand. He began walking around the block once more, this time with the rod in front of him.
     The whisper of the wind was his companion as he walked. He crossed beneath the same bridge again and entered the back alley once more. 
     The metal rod started to tarnish. 
     He sighed when it did; he walked more, tracing the entire outline of the city block containing the Skytree. After he made it out of the back alley, the metal rod had stopped tarnishing. He continued tracing the block anyway, in case it started up again. He was surprised when it didn't.
     After finishing his outline of the building, he walked back to the alley behind the Skytree and observed the vanadium rod. 
     It began tarnishing once more. It was slow, yet noticeable. While he observed the metal tarnish, he could see what Twist really was. It ate at the metal, slowly corroding it. He wished people understood that was all Twist ever did; break things down. 
     Ramon reached into his satchel after setting the vanadium rod aside, and retrieved the mercury compass. It laid flat on his left palm, and he rubbed the tarnishing vanadium rod all over the silver coating of the compass. He watched as the mercury bubbled slightly as it appeared to approach the vanadium. He set the silvered mercury compass down, then went through the process of rubbing the vanadium rod with salt again. As he did, the salt consumed all the strange black rust the Twist had caused when it reacted with the vanadium, and soon enough the rod was clean again. He rubbed it down with the silk cloth before quickly returning it to the box he'd pulled it from. 
     The rod sat in his satchel once more, and Ramon picked up the silvered mercury compass. Mercury was attracted to Twist, and he looked down as the compass pointed him towards the nearest active source of it. All he'd needed to do was get some residual Twist from his latest target near it, and the mercury would be attracted towards the largest source of that same Twist it could find. 
     The mercury compass pointed west. He checked his satchel once more, then began following the compass.