STEEL BALL RUN - Chapter 30
Summary
A flashback details the past of Diego Brando.
In England, Diego began a particularly harsh life, being buried alive as a baby by his parents. Luckily "saved" from asphyxiation when a storm hit, the baby was brought to a flooding river where his repentant mother dove into to save him from drowning. However, his biological father Dario abandoned both to die. After the rain stopped, a proprietor found the mother and child unconscious down the river.
Washed far away from their native country, Diego and his mother had to work as servants in a farm. One day, his mother refused the sexual advances of the proprietor who retaliated by punching holes in the only cups they used to put food into, ultimately leading Diego's mother to spend a month holding the boiling soup in her hands to feed Diego. She died of tetanus soon after, and Diego believed that this was caused by his mother's burn wounds. Her death changed the originally kind kid into a resentful man, hating everyone around him for treating him and his mother like trash and letting her suffer. Diego soon set for himself the goal to reach the top of the social ladder and destroy everyone in his path to get back at society. By joining the Steel Ball Run, he would reap enough glory to influence even the Royal Family of Great Britain.
In the now, Gyro and Johnny crawls in the sewer leading directly into the rocky hill where the Corpse Parts are presumably located. Diego sends his dinosaur minions down the sewers and urinates on the duo, prompting more minions to come after them. Gyro uses his Steel Ball to eliminate the small dinosaurs and they return to their original state as sewer mice. As they escape the gutter, they are surrounded by the villagers which were turned into dinosaurs, both at the bottom and at the top of the cliff. Gyro deduces that this was caused by Diego's ability: to turn everything, humans and animals, into dinosaurs, and control them under his will.
They soon realize that they too are being transformed into dinosaurs due to Diego managing to wound them both earlier. Only Johnny's transformation is slower, particularly on Johnny's left arm, because of the power of the Corpse Part to fight the infection. This urges them to immediately find the next Corpse Part to save Gyro. Because the smaller dinosaurs marked them earlier, the raptors have no trouble finding them and are already closing in on them, prompting the duo to leap across the ravine. Using the Spin, Gyro uses the bark of a tree as a rope and they reach their destination, knowing that the raptor will lose time crossing the ravine.
Noticing the sand below them moving, the duo see that they are in the Devil's Palm and the guardian of the the Eyes reveals itself from the sand. As Gyro's transformation continues, Diego commands two raptors to jump into the ravine and uses them as springboards to cross it and get to the Eyes first.
Appearances
Gallery
Ultra Jump October 2005
