Shadows

Ramon ran onto the rooftop and ducked behind an air conditioning unit. As he did, the phone stopped ringing. He held it close to his head as the clamor of the policemen became slightly more distant. 
     "You have reached the Twisthunter Task Force headquarters. To talk to our next available representative, press one. To reach our emergency-" 
     "Stupid machine." Ramon muttered as he typed his Twisthunter badge number into the phone and pressed the pound key.
     "Please wait while your call is transferred." The phone started ringing again.
     He glanced out from behind the air conditioner unit and saw that the policemen were gone from the window. He stood up and started running again, planning to jump to the next rooftop. Halfway through the jump, the phone stopped ringing. As he landed and rolled, he heard a familiar voice in his ears.
     "Ramon?!"
     "How'd you know it was me?" Ramon said teasingly as he scanned the rooftops for another place to jump. He decided to jump atop a building that had a large neon sign. 
     "You have to type in your badge number to reach me."
     "It could've been the boss." 
     "I have Mr. Gauss on caller ID. If it's--wait, this doesn't matter! How did you call me? What were you thinking, killing a child? Are you mad? Have you lost your mind?" 
     Ramon jumped onto another building and avoided stepping into an open paint can that was filled with disgusting old water. He ducked behind another air conditioning unit and took a moment to breath. 
     "Look, I already turned myself in to the police; I'm gonna go through due process and everything. There's just one thing that I don't understand," Ramon said playfully, as he tried to choose which building to jump to next, "are police officers allowed to... Wait, did you say kill a child?!" He stopped and crouched down to make sure he heard Percy's next words clearly.
     "Yes! You killed the Arai kid!" Percy sounded exasperated. "It was on the news! The police apprehended you last night after a violent struggle, and they found Junnosuke Arai's body nearby." His voice was strained. 
     "Who's Junnosuke?!" Ramon asked, running a hand through his hair. "Oh! The kid? Percy, I didn't kill that kid! He's alive, inside the police station! I saw him in one of the holding cells! He's still alive and stuff! Besides, do you really think I could kill..." He stopped talking. 
     The wind blew over the tops of Tokyo's buildings in near silence.
     "Honestly Ramon, with how you were talking the other day, I thought you were going to kill Junnosuke's parents. Or yourself. I was betting on yourself, honestly, so the news that you'd kidnapped Junnosuke was actually somewhat refreshing."
     "You don't think much of my mental health, do you?"
     "I know you too well. Frankly, hearing that you'd killed Junnosuke was something of a system shock, as did hearing that you put up a fight against the police." Percy sighed in relief. "Hearing that you turned yourself in is much more in-character. What were you planning on doing with the Arai kid after you'd captured him, exactly? Wait, how do you have this phone? How are you calling me?!" Percy sounded concerned.
     Ramon stood up and started running towards the edge of the rooftop. Once he reached it, he leapt across a wide alleyway and clambered onto a fire escape. He climbed up it until he was on top of a pretty tall hotel. He bit his lip as he realized that he'd inadvertently cornered himself up there. Sparing a glance around the Tokyo sky, he didn't see any helicopters, so he could afford to wait up there for a few moments before he had to throw his new cellphone away.
     "See, I was in an interrogation, but after I already confessed to the whole kidnapping thing, the guy punched me and tried to knock me unconscious-" 
     "He tried to what?!" 
     "Knock me unconscious, keep up Percy. Anyway, so after he calls in the goon squad and beans me with his baton, I did the old boneless trick and they started dragging me out-"
     "Goon squad?!" 
     "You know; the thugs; the muscle; the brutes. So they drag me out into the hallway, but I quit faking and burst out of their hands, tackled the guy who punched me, and stole his phone. Since the T.T.F. is an emergency number, I was able to call you." Ramon yawned and stretched out on the building's roof, soaking in the sun's rays during his brief respite.
     "Are you still inside the police station?!" Ramon had only heard Percy sound so excited when he was in the middle of a fight with a powerful Twister. 
     Ramon took an exaggerated look around himself. 
     "Hmm... Let's see; blue sky, pretty city all around me, no cops breathing down my neck... no, currently I'm standing on a hotel roof."
     "Of course you are. I take it you escaped custody?"
     "What was I supposed to do? They were trying to beat the snot out of me and I needed clarification."
     "Clarification about what?" Percy asked, calming down slightly. "And again, why did you kidnap Junnosuke Arai?!" 
     "I'm getting to that! Anyway, I needed to know if being beaten by police officers was part of the civil punishment for kidnapping. I mean, kidnapping is pretty awful; I have firsthand experience as both the victim and the perpetrator, and I gotta tell you, no matter which one you are, the whole thing feels wrong. I wouldn't be surprised if that kid hates me for the rest of his life, and I don't blame him." Ramon said with a slow, sad sigh. "I wanted to help the kid out. I thought I could find somebody to perform the Twist removal surgery on him, and then I would've returned him to his parents." He looked out over the open sky. "But I couldn't do it; the farther I got with the kid, the more I remembered that it's not about the ending; it's about what you did to get there." 
     The sun shone down on the Twisthunter's bony knuckles. 
     "And I couldn't do what it took for that ending."
     He shook his head and started running back towards the fire escape. Once he reached the edge of the building, he realized that there was already a police car on the ground next to the building, and he could hear the sirens of several more approaching. He raced down the fire escape as quickly as he could, nearly falling off it several times in the process, but he managed to get low enough that his jump the next closest building was only ten feet away horizontally and eight feet away vertically. He grit his teeth and made the jump. 
     "Thank goodness for that." Percy said placidly. "And no, Ramon, being beaten by the police isn't in Japan's penal code for kidnapping. You would potentially be facing life imprisonment, and considering how rough Japan's prisons are, I wouldn't want that for you, but you did already confess to the kidnapping, and so the only way to get out of that would be for us to pull some serious strings about your 'international service provider' status, but considering how ruthless Japanese prosecutors can get, i don't think even that would be enough."
     "Oh no, I'm fine with life imprisonment if that's what I earned. It's the whole, you know, police brutality thing that had me questioning what I was doing wrong."
     "Of course you're alright with life in prison." Percy sounded annoyed. "But that's not what you'd be facing. A kidnapping that ends in death grants the death penalty Ramon, and that's what all the news outlets are crying for, considering that everyone believes you killed Junnosuke." 
     "But I didn't kill Junnosuke!"
     The two men tried to think about what was going on. Ramon jumped onto another building while Percy typed away on his computer. 
     "Wait. Percy, do you remember how when we started this mission, you told me some companies were talking about dissolving the T.T.F.?" Ramon asked sharply.
     "I've reached the same conclusion my dear Watson. Japan was one of those countries."
     "So they try to get me framed for killing the kid-"
     "And take Junnosuke off to be experimented upon beneath the pretense that nobody would bother searching for a deceased child." 
     "But what would they bury?" Ramon countered.
     "Ramon, the news said that they couldn't show the body because of, and I quote, 'how mangled the foreigner's gun left the innocent child's corpse;' they could hand in any poor child's dead body and claim it as Junnosuke's."
     Ramon looked over his shoulder back in the direction of the distant police station. 
     "Well, that makes things easy."
     "How so?"
     "Now I know what to do." Ramon stretched. "Let's save the kid. I'll get him... somewhere. I know you'll find me. I gotta ditch this phone. Bye."
     "Understood." 
     Ramon tossed the phone away as he sprinted.