Chapter 23:

Spreading Depolarization

Twist


She ran towards him again, and he ducked. 
     There were cars passing them on the bridge, and she was jumping on top of them while she ran in order to throw him off. He didn't waste any bullets trying to hit her while she blitzed towards him. Her swirling blue eyes were locked on him as she leapt off the top of a small truck and stretched her arms out.
     Ramon saw her coming and fell to the ground again, watching as she flew over him. 
     She grabbed the railing of the bridge and twirled around on it, then launched herself back at him. 
     Her hands collided with the sidewalk's pavement as Ramon rolled out of the way. Her palms were covered in blood. 
     Junnosuke had taken several steps back, and was watching the exchange with wide eyes.
     She shrieked and slammed her fists down onto where Ramon was lying. 
     He had kept rolling on the ground and barely managed to evade her strike. He jumped to his feet and looked down at her as her head snapped up towards him and her legs uncoiled like springs as she flew towards him.
     He tilted to the side.
     She managed to snag the edge of his clothing and took him with her. When she tumbled onto the ground again, Ramon tumbled with her, and he felt his shoulder pulse with pain.
     She looked down at the man in her grasp and smiled wickedly. 
     She started pummeling him with her fists in the stomach as rapidly as she could. 
     Ramon felt like a drum being pounded over and over. His skin felt thin as she slammed her fists into him over and over. It was getting hard to breathe. 
     He swung at her face with his right hand. 
     She effortlessly swiveled her head out of the way of his right hand, and was rewarded with a blow to the head by the butt of his revolver in his left hand. She stumbled back slightly. 
     Ramon clutched at his chest and staggered to his feet. 
     She put a bloody hand to her head and felt the warmth of blood. Her eyes focused once more on Ramon and she jumped off the bridge. 
     Ramon looked around for where she might have gone, but it seemed like she'd jumped off the bridge and into the river. He kept his guard up as he looked over the railing of the bridge.
     "Look out!" Shouted Junnosuke.
     Ramon dashed to the left just in time to avoid her as she lunged for his head again, having apparently climbed the underside of the bridge and gone to the other side of it to try and ambush him. He watched her as she stood on the railing, panting. 
     She looked at Junnosuke and sprinted towards him.
     She hadn't been told what to do about the kid. In the moment, the kid had already made things difficult for her, and so she reasoned that there was only one appropriate thing to do about him if she wanted to kill the man and make Kanto spare her. 
     She grabbed the kid's head and pulled as hard as she could. 
     It came off.
     She tossed it aside and refocused her attention on the man. 
     The man wasn't moving. She smiled. That made things easy for her.
~~~
     Junnosuke was, momentarily, in excruciating pain.
     A thousand moments flashed in his mind as he flew through the air. He was vaguely aware of stopping and hitting something.
     He tried to breathe, but he couldn't feel his lungs.
     He could feel himself dying.
     He didn't want to die.
     His eyes swirled.
~~~
     Ramon felt nothing.
     As the girl ran towards him with her arms outstretched, he couldn't bring himself to move.
     An earth-shattering roar resounded from behind the girl.
     The two of them froze and looked at the corpse.
     There was a dragon, black-scaled and bloody, being born as the two parts of Junnosuke's body writhed and stretched towards each other.
     She knew what she needed to do. If she wanted to stop the kid from coming back, she just needed to kill him again. She raced towards the body, intent on tearing it apart before it could do something like what Kanto had done.
     A searing pain shot through her leg as she collapsed.
     Ramon was on top of her, pinning both her limbs under his body.
     It took every ounce of self-control for him not to put his revolver to her head and squeeze the trigger five times in a row. 
     She struggled against the weight of the Mexican on top of her for a few moments, before she felt something slam against her head again and she fell unconscious.
     Ramon watched with desperate anticipation as the black-scaled dragon appeared from between Junnosuke's body as the pieces stuck together once more and created the entire imposing beast. 
     When it roared again, Ramon felt fear and a flash of hope.
     The dragon seemingly began to choke, and Ramon took several steps back as it vomited out a squishy, flesh-colored egg. 
     Inside the egg, he could see the form of Junnosuke. Ramon looked at the egg carefully. 
     He could see that, though both his head and body were in the egg, his head was only connected by a few thin strands. Hopefully, with time, the kid would heal and his head would reattach while he was in the egg.
     Ramon looked up at the dragon as it stared down at him and the egg with wild, swirling eyes. 
     The dragon snapped at him with its powerful jaws. 
     He barely managed to step out of its way, and nearly tripped over the girl's unconscious form in the process. 
     The dragon continued snapping, and Ramon realized that it would also try to eat the girl. He immediately slung the girl's body over his shoulder and ran away from the dragon's mouth onto the street of the bridge. He realized that he was on the street and looked for cars.
     There weren't any.
     He looked at both sides of the bridge and realized something unhelpful.
     There were policemen blocking the bridge off. 
     The dragon snapped at him again, and he slipped out of its way again.
     He took a moment to assess the situation he found himself in.
     Policemen surrounded him; a giant, black-scaled, bloody dragon was trying to eat him; he had to protect the boy's egg long enough for his deadly wound to heal; and he had to protect the girl on his shoulders from dying.
      "Sure," he mumbled, "and while I'm at it, why don't I fly to the moon?" 
     He looked back and forth between the dragon and the policemen. He was relieved to see that the policemen hadn't drawn their revolvers yet. The dragon lunged at him again, and he ran beneath its jaws in order to force it to twist around before it could attack him again. 
     After the dragon missed its attack, it seemed to realize that there were people other than Ramon around. With a fearsome roar, it began charging towards the police on the western end of the bridge. That didn't please Ramon, but it wasn't like he was going to be able to change the dragon's mind without putting himself and the girl at risk. 
     The policemen jumped out of the way of the dragon as it charged towards them, and when Junnosuke flew past them and rose into the sky, they quickly began barking orders at each other. Ramon looked at the Eastern end of the bridge to see what those policemen were doing. 
     They hadn't drawn their weapons either, but one man with a bloodstained white suit, sunglasses, and blue gloves was walking towards Ramon with a calm expression and a raised hand. The policemen behind him were shouting at the man in the white suit, but he obviously didn't care about what they were saying. 
     The man in the white suit kept approaching until he was twenty feet away from Ramon.
     Ramon gripped his revolver.
     "You have some things that belong to me." The man in the white suit stated. "Give me the girl and the egg, and I will make your death painless."
     The dragon roared overhead and crashed back down on the ground on the Western end of the bridge. It picked up a car in its jaws and crushed it, before charging at more policemen, who avoided being killed by jumping into the river.
     Ramon narrowed his eyes at the man in the white suit. He adjusted the unconscious girl on his back and kept his revolver firmly gripped.
     He smirked at the man in the white suit.
     "I'm a descendant of Gregorio; I'll fight for my rights. I'm a Mexican; I'm stubborn as hell. I'm a Twisthunter; I'm here to help people. I'm Ramon Cortez, and if you think I'm going to help your crazy government, you're completely insane."
     Kanto smiled and removed his sunglasses.
     "I was hoping you'd say something like that."