Culture Shock

Chapter 54: Point Blank

RECAP: 

A bit uncertain if this was the right thing to do, Relle pressed her left fist against her sternum and stretched her right hand out; BD responded in kind by bringing her close enough to touch the end of her scaly snout.

"... Dora?" Camry tried and received another affectionate croon. 

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"Dora?" Camry exclaimed, and her mouth hung open in utter, blindsided shock. Dora-- the real Dora-- rumbled with what almost sounded like a chuckle and bobbed her head up and down once. Tears of horror welled up in Relle's sphalerite eyes, and she pulled her hand back to cover the lower half of her face with all ten fingers. "Oh, god, I-- Dora, I don't-- I can't believe--" 

Dora made to reach her hand up and perhaps try to soothe her student with some kind of gentle touch, but she remembered a second too late that her right arm ended in a stump that still bled continuously. Seeing the injury up close and personal all too quickly reminded Relle that something very, very bad had happened in her absence, and it brought on a fresh wave of shame. Relle lurched forward and threw herself onto the end of Dora's snout, where the dragon's gentle breathing filled her with the same kind of warmth that a deep, long hug would. "I'm so sorry, Dora! It's all my fault this happened to you!"

This time, she felt Dora's worried warble reverberate through her bones. It sounded like she was trying to assure her that this wasn't the case, but how could she possibly think otherwise? Camry's closest and dearest ghostly connection was missing a hand, and she hadn't been around to prevent it. 

There wasn't time to stew in such negativity for long, though. Despite how high up they coasted, the city and its ensuing chaos were still very much visible and audible. Without an opponent to deter the other dragon, it had turned toward the Sky Trio Towers and was beginning to claw at the imposing skyscrapers. It looked as if it was carving out footholds to climb up the side of the building. Was it trying to jump off a high point and finally succeed in flying?

Relle didn't want to think about how tricky it would be to face off against an enemy that could fly with the kind of finesse and strength a dragon possessed. Hell, it had been hard enough to do anything actually effective to the real Dora, and she had initially been disoriented and reeling from the shock of her fresh wound. On top of that, this dragon was fueled by nothing short of pure rage, and that gave it the kind of strength that could level mountains when used properly. 

Suddenly, Relle was all too grateful that whoever was wearing that amulet had no idea how to use it. 

Dora huffed a short, annoyed breath and gingerly raised Relle up to tip her into place between her two sets of horns. Then, she wasted no time in flexing her wings again and diving straight toward the towers. As Relle held on for dear life, she couldn't help how her sorrow temporarily made room for elation. She crowed at the top of her lungs and exhaled a jet of red-orange fire, which Dora matched with a mighty roar and some blue-white fire of her own.

Just like before, Dora swooped in and used her strong back legs to kick the blue dragon in the space between its wings, causing it to stumble and fall to its side. The ground shuddered under the impact of its huge weight hitting the grassy space centered within the Sky Trio Towers. Dora pulled up to latch onto the side of the same mangled building, where her three sets of claws dug into the walls of glass and metal to remain in place. Her purple wings spread wide as a threat, and she roared with enough ear-splitting volume to shatter even more of the windows. The glistening shards twinkled as they fell to the earth like a sharp Niagara Falls.

While the blue dragon tried to pick itself up and recover from the blow, Relle took the initiative to take three ginger strides down the length of Dora's snout and leap off her nose. A spiraling slide of white tiles appeared gradually, always forming a few spaces ahead of her toes while the used ones disappeared behind her. Gravity's constant pull brought her closer and closer to terminal velocity, and all too suddenly she was putting her plan into action.