Chapter Fifteen: The Visionary Man — Part 5

How ChoCho has dodged the strike Jynx can’t imagine. The boy is slow in almost all of his motions, careful in his words to the point of sounding challenged. Except when dodging riot batons, apparently, at which point he’s got the speed and reflexes of a cheetah. What happens in the space of the next second absolutely stuns her. The young man with the baton has been carried along by his own momentum, has gone high over ChoCho’s shoulder, and is now laying on his back, the wind knocked completely from his lungs. The pop of his head against the concrete is followed by two cracks that mark the dislocation of his wrist and elbow. ChoCho arms himself with the baton, and their opposition is down to nine. His focus has returned to the Major. The Major can’t take his eyes off ChoCho. Whatever is being spoken between them, words are not involved.

There is a distinct discomfort in the crowd, a sort of brutal hushed awe that turns to fear and execration. There are noises in the shuffling of people, urgings for violence, sharp cries of startlement or outright surprise. The silence between ChoCho and Major Dominic spreads, feeling like a plague working across the audience, killing their voices and minds with powerful, singular intention. The Major, apparently, has raised a hand, and The People have only the will to obey. Most of the people actually physically step back from ChoCho and the Youth Guard, the sight of the broken man cowing those closest to the scene.

The source of their emotion is both visual and audible. The young man is on the ground, screaming and trying to pull his arm to his chest, but the limb is twisted and bent at odd angles, and won’t come of its own will. Looking at its odd shape only makes him scream more. He drags himself backward toward the crowd, who moves uncomfortably away from him. He’s just a desperate child again, bested by somebody half his size, and needing to be held. ChoCho’s eyes dig deeply into the Major’s, but the mask of the man remains unbroken.

There is no time to talk, because emotions are now in play, and the rest of the Major’s muscle have decided to avenge their friend. None of them consider squaring off against the others when the Major drops his fingers and all of them move in on ChoCho, swinging their batons down on the one boy pinned in the center of them. The sound of wood on wood seems to reset the course of time, and Jynx is the first to move in, Daria right behind her. In seconds blood is flowing from dozens of well-intentioned wounds, and people are screaming both because they are being cut, and also because of a sick sense of empathy spreading into the crowd.

It takes Jynx, Daria, and Kevin seconds to slash and poke their way to the center of the Guard, to the place where ChoCho should be laying under the force of the blows. The men with the batons are all bleeding from cuts and gashes, falling back toward a crowd that is itself falling away from them, as if by separation alone, they can absolve themselves of their part in causing the clash. Of those injured, nobody is hurt bad enough to die, but only a couple of the Youth Guard have been spared injury, and only because they were shielded by their compatriots. Over half the batons are lying on the ground, their owners no longer able to hold them.

Jynx is the first to notice that ChoCho’s not at the center of the thrall. All are expecting to see ChoCho in a pile of pain on the ground, but ChoCho’s moved again, with that same blur of speed that seems a complete betrayal of his normal personality. It takes all onlookers a moment to realize that, despite being hampered by a bad foot, ChoCho has dodged the mess entirely, having slipped, somehow, through the members of the Guard. Jynx realizes, in that moment, that she and hers have only kept the Guard from having the ability to change their point of attack. Currently, he’s stopped in a position directly in front of Major Dominic, baton properly placed so that it can snap out with the greatest possible speed. The Major knows now he has misread ChoCho entirely.

ChoCho makes no violent moves toward Major Dominic, and the Major stands tall, unable to look away. The crowd has moved in around the Major, and also around ChoCho, but are careful to keep clear of the space between ChoCho and his friends, and out of range of ChoCho’s baton. Jynx leads the move to fall in behind ChoCho, Kevin and Daria flanking her, Jon and Teri guarding the rear, with George and Jude standing together and to the left. The crowd doesn’t dare get within swinging or cutting range of the lot of them. ChoCho doesn’t wait for the crowd to quiet down, and he doesn’t raise his voice, either. Major Dominic can hear him, regardless of whether anybody else can.

“All this blood, all this pain, is yours, Sir.” ChoCho says. “It will only get worse from here, if you let it.”

The Major weighs ChoCho’s words carefully. “Stand down, everybody!” Major Dominic is furious, but something in the nature of ChoCho’s stance has frozen his behavior. “What . . . Are . . . You?”

“I already told you my name.” ChoCho says.

ChoCho falls back toward the center of his friends, and then begins walking toward Arpie and Opus, breaking eye contact with Major Dominic only when he feels safely protected on all sides. Daria, Kevin, and Jynx have their backs to ChoCho, and in spreading out, their daggers point outward, they in turn create a situation where the crowd, some jeering, most silent, falls back out of arm’s reach from the eight. It can be safely argued that nobody expected ChoCho to have such power over the Major, and nobody, not his friends, not the crowd, can anticipate what will happen next. Those who see that power in play are reticent to believe that it can hold itself for too much longer.

George and Jude are absolutely flabbergasted. ChoCho moves as if he is a ghost, as if the ground is nothing but a point of reference, his need for a cane an illusion, his recently acquired baton an extension of his soul, positioned so it will crack down fast, or snap forward to repel whatever comes at him. Jynx moves alongside him, her motions like a snake slithering sidewise, her eyes on any sudden movements, daggers shifting ever so slightly toward one person or another, just in case. ChoCho is nearly to Arpie, and one of the men guarding takes a few steps forward, hands George the keys, and then retreats quickly from their path. ChoCho’s limp, which had vanished during the fight, is starting to show again. Despite this, the Major is careful to urge a space around the party of outsiders. If anything, ChoCho’s exhibition of weakness makes Dominic more nervous.

Arpie and Opus have four keyed bindings holding them to the chairs, hand and ankle cuffs that are locked so that they’d have to break the chairs they are sitting in to get free. While it seems that Opus is capable of breaking the chair, there is no hope that Arpie could get free of his. This is probably the only reason that Opus has chosen to stay bound, rather than fight his way free of the situation. As soon as Jynx starts unlocking Arpie’s binds, Opus forces himself to stand up, his chair literally falling apart under the strain of his muscles and the force of his motions, accompanied by the sound of wood and metal screws moaning and then popping. There is some kind of deep worry in his face, and though he waits patiently to have the parts of the chair released from his bonds, it is apparent by his stance that he’s expecting something. Whatever has Opus concerned, it isn’t the crowd, or the Major, but something else, something more distant. He’s listening, looking toward the Center Park circle, toward the west side, specifically. The sound of the UPS truck driving into the crowd, and the sight of twenty young teens leading it, changes the energy of the moment to chaos.