Evil

He ducked into another alleyway.
     He'd been avoiding cameras, open streets, and people throughout the whole day. Without a phone or anyway to contact someone with governmental connections, all he could do was fight. He was good at that; he had to be, since he was a Twisthunter, but fighting wasn't going to help him find a surgeon. 
     He shook his head and kept moving.
     There were police stationed pretty commonly around Tokyo. On more than one occasion he nearly walked through an intersection where one was posted by mistake. With his forced hunch the weight of the kid, and the exhaustion he was accumulating from a lack of sleep, he was starting to near his breaking point. 
     What was he supposed to do?
     His footsteps felt heavy, like lead, and after several hours, he slipped into yet another alleyway and slunk down onto the ground, setting the kid down next to him and covering him with his poncho. He looked down at the floor between his legs and sighed.
     He yawned, then yawned again. He wiped away the tears that came from his yawns and sighed. His head pulsed. His legs trembled. Faces crowded into his mind as he thought about what he was doing and how it was making everything fall apart around him. He could smell chloroform on his hands, and in that moment he considered it more disgusting than the putrid smell of blood, silver, and gunpowder.
     He knew that people were looking for him. People from the T.T.F.; the Tokyo police; some of the people involved in that 'FREE' organization he'd seen earlier were probably involved as well. He'd gotten lucky by finding that hotel. He wasn't going to get lucky again. Sweat poured down his forehead and his throat felt thick and gummed up.
     He picked up the kid and started walking again, but he still had no idea where he was going. It began to feel like no matter what choice he made, it would be the wrong one. He was prepared to go to jail and suffer the consequences for his actions, but he wanted to accomplish his goal of saving the kid from his curse.
     In his mind, when he'd made the plan to take the kid and get his Twist removed, it had been so simple. He'd simply grab the kid, find a surgeon, get the Twist removed, and take the kid back to his family.
     Ramon chuckled cynically.
     "I suck at planning, don't I?" 
     It wasn't like he couldn't fill out a day planner or a vacation schedule, but when it came to matters of specificity and precision, he trusted Percy. 
     He went down a cramped side street. 
     The longer his kidnapping went on, the more he was struck by how complicated the whole situation was. He needed to keep the kid healthy, compliant, and safe; he was basically cheating by using chloroform, and getting a surgeon who had been charged with malpractice to perform a delicate procedure like Twist removal was definitely not 'safe.'
     The whole thing made his head swim.
     "How did you do it, grandpa?" He muttered as he walked beneath a highway.
     His grandfather had saved his life.
     He'd kidnapped Ramon in the dead of night from his parents' house and, using a connection with a friend who was a surgeon, had gotten his Twist removed by the next morning. It had been a terrifying experience, and recalling the events still gave Ramon a twinge of fear. He'd never seen his grandfather appear so intense. It was like all his cries for mercy went in one ear and out the other. He remembered everything up to the moment he went under with perfect clarity, and the events of the next day were also permanently imprinted on his mind.
     He'd woken up in agonizing pain, and his head had felt cold.
     Ramon rubbed his bald spot.
     It was where the stitches for the surgery had been put, and due to some iffy needlework, it would remain bald for the rest of his life.
     He couldn't look away from the kid.
     He wanted to save the kid's life. He really, really wanted to find a surgeon and get him the treatment to remove his curse and let him deal with horrible pain for a few months, instead of letting him run free with his curse and then dying prematurely because of a silver bullet.
     He wanted to do the right thing.
     If he could just find someone, anyone, who would help him, he could save the kid's life. 
     The wind blew around Ramon as he slowed his pace and came to a stop.
     He blinked.
     His breathing slowed down.
     "I'm an idiot." He mumbled, feeling the kid's weight on himself again.
     He stood completely still next to another intersection.
     The thought that he could save anybody's life seemed completely foolish.
     He could get the kid's Twist removed, hand him back to his parents, and then the kid could fall down the hospital stairs and die.
     Or the kid might get caught in a housefire.
     Or the Twist removal surgery could go wrong.
     To think that what he was doing would guarantee a long and prosperous life for the kid was completely arrogant.
     He felt sweat run down his back, both from the heat of the kid and from his nerves. He knew that using his Twist would kill the kid; there was no doubt about that in his mind. The kid would definitely be safer if he got the Twist removal surgery.
     He tried to take another step forward, towards whatever surgeon he could stumble across, but he stopped himself.
     It didn't matter if he was arrogant; he needed to save the kid's life.
     His head throbbed.
     He gnashed his teeth and swayed in place.
     His breathing sped up and sweat started pouring.
     He needed to be tough; he needed to make the right decision; he needed to save the kid's life; but he didn't want to save his life if it meant having to do all these things that made him uncomfortable; but he had to tough it out, he was a man, it was his job to make the tough decisions; but it wasn't just that what he was doing made him uncomfortable, it was something else much more primal that was making him hate what he was doing to the kid.
     Ramon realized what that thing was.
     He looked up at the late afternoon sky over Tokyo.
     It was his hatred of evil.
     "Evil." He mumbled, and his head throbbed. "That's what it is, you idiot." He cursed himself.
     He wasn't much of a praying man, but from his limited knowledge, he knew that there was at least one verse in the Good Book about how humans should seek to do good.
     And he realized that what he had been doing with the kid was very much not good. 
     He took stock of his options.
     Ramon's grandfather had been a different man. He didn't want to say, or even think, that what his grandfather had done to him had been evil. 
     But Ramon knew, in that moment, that what he was doing to the kid was evil. 
     He started walking with renewed purpose. He didn't stop until he saw a police officer on patrol out of the corner of his eye. With complete confidence, he approached the officer, still disguised as a hunchback, and acquired the officer's attention.
     "Excuse me, sir." Ramon said in Japanese. "I have someone you may be looking for."