Culture Shock

Chapter 53: Disarming

Dozens of thoughts raced through Relle's mind at a thousand miles an hour as she struggled to figure out what to do. If this was just Dora, then she'd have no problem just running up to her teacher and getting her attention. She was a patient and level-headed ghost, so Relle was sure she could be talked down from an angry rampage easily enough-- except for now, with the second dragon working her further into a frenzy with each attack.  Who the hell was the black dragon, anyway? Since when was there a second amulet that could do what Dora's could? 

Relle Phantom leaped gracefully from tile to tile, liberally using her speed-ups to cover lost ground and time. She winced when she saw Dora's tail send the top of a brick building flying over several blocks to land in the center of a thankfully empty street. She really was worked up, and no part of Relle could blame her if her suspicions about what had happened were correct. 

It wasn't until she came within a football field's length of both reptiles that she was able to see something... odd about the black dragon. As it clawed at the space between Dora's wings and tail, only half of its swipes seemed to do anything. The reason for that? Its right arm, though thick with defined muscle, ended abruptly in a stump that continuously leaked fresh green ectoplasm. Dora reared her claws back to sweep them over the windowed wall of a mid-sized skyscraper, and the black dragon suddenly catapulted itself into her back and sent her crashing into the pavement. Her swing missed its mark and punched a deep crater into the sidewalk instead. 

With her heart racing in her chest, Relle came to a stop in the space between the two sturdy horns on Dora's head. The black dragon struggled with only one paw to pick itself up off of Dora's crumpled wings and back, and it let out a low groan of pain. Its groaning morphed into a shriek when a burst of orange fire exploded against its chest and caused it to crash onto its side. 

"Hey!" Relle barked down to the attacking reptile. "You'd better not-- Whoa!"

That "Whoa!" was due to Dora lifting her spinning head, shaking it rapidly from side to side to relieve her dizziness, and then rising to crouch on all fours. The shaking tossed Relle back and forth between her horns like a pinball bouncing between two spring-loaded obstacles before she was sent flying through a window, which shattered under her small but dense form. She sat up, gasping, amidst a sea of abandoned office chairs and cluttered desks. "Ohh, fuck," she moaned, hunched over to hold her just barely healed ribs. Yeah, that was a solid reminder that she wasn't functioning at 100% so soon after her fight with La Llorona. She would have to be careful how she pushed herself if she wanted to walk away from this ordeal after it was over.

A shadow passed over what little grey light she got through the broken windows, and when she looked up she saw a wall of black and purple undulating in front of her. Before she had time to think twice, she lurched to her feet and jumped through the vaguely Relle-shaped hole in the glass. She landed on the black dragon's left flank and, for all of five seconds, desperately clung to whatever holds her hands and toes could find amidst the overlapping scales. Then she began to climb up until she reached the nearest spinal spike and transferred her hold to it instead. It was a good thing she had something sturdier to cling to, too, because she barely had time to catch her breath before the black dragon launched straight up and unfurled its sectioned wings to snag whatever updraft it could find. She was all too grateful for how the great rush of air whisked away her startled squeak before anyone could hear it. 

When they leveled off and began circling Dora from above, they flew only a few stories higher than the tallest buildings in Bailey Lake. Relle found her opportunity to shake off her fear and start making her way from spike to spike, heading toward the dragon's neck and, ultimately, the latch holding the amulet closed around its neck. If her memories of her time spent in the Ghost Zone were correct, then taking the amulet off would be enough to rob the dragon of its powers. Two dragons were proving themselves to be a nightmare of a situation, but one dragon? She could handle one.