Alan, the Champion — Chapter 12 — Back to Back
"One person split into two bodies." Alan had heard the phrase. He’d never seen it.
Before he was King, he was cannon fodder, a convict, a killer. At thirteen, he ran grown men.
I'd heard the expression "one person split into two bodies." Never seen it.
I saw it there.
The two of them fought without planning a thing. The Kid covered everything the green hair left open. The green hair covered everything the Kid left open. One kicked low while the other spun; the other shoved a kid right into a strike the first one had already started. Their instincts fit together like it was the same head running four arms.
I've seen trained pairs work like that. Security guys who've been together for years, who rehearse, who have hand signals for everything. Those two had none of that. They didn't know each other at all. They'd been fighting each other five minutes earlier.
And still they moved better than my best pair.
The crew was small at first. But street kids are like that: when the first ones came back crying, a bigger crew came after them, older boys, taller, to "handle it."
The two of them didn't back up an inch.
They kept fighting. Same way. No rush, no fear, each one always watching the other one's blind spot.
In the end the park was full of beat-up kids. Some crying. Some limping away. Some sitting on the ground, who'd already given up before it was over.
The two of them in the middle of it all, with hardly a scratch more than the ones they'd already given each other before any of it started.