[He remembers how to fight in stopped time — the kind of fighting that isn't really fighting so much as it is just surviving — and this time, he's at least more evenly matched with his foe than he was when he first fought Dio. It's a different experience altogether when both of them are capable of stopping time; suddenly it becomes a strategy of making those periods of immobility overlap, pressing the advantage in the few seconds they have it and trying to defend as thoroughly as possible when the hourglass shifts and it's the other's turn to attack with impunity.
The doppelganger attacks more freely when time is stopped; that's a difference between them. He still, even now, prefers to use it defensively, to escape instead of to seize advantage. It doesn't take long before his double works that out, either.
He's lost track of how long they've been fighting, and not just because of the time discrepancies. They're too evenly matched, with his doppelganger claiming momentary flashes of the upper hand only because he's more willing to play dirty to take it. Before long, they're both breathless and battered and laid out on the roof of the academy, splashing blood onto the roofing, struggling to get up and set to one more time.
They're almost on their feet when another portal opens up near them, pink-green and twisting sickly with unnatural energy — a window into a small, contained room where two identical blondes are pitting themselves against each other, the very same way that they are, themselves.
And for a second, their own fight goes forgotten.]
Adrian? Adrian?
[They recognize what they're seeing in the same moment. The same name escapes from both their lips.
Jotaro and his doppelganger have everything in common, and it turns out, they have this too.]
The fuck is all that? The circles. Look. Wait — Could he have —
[...]
He knew it wasn't Geistnacht.
[Green eyes meet green eyes, their previous animosity — not forgotten, never forgotten, but suspended for a time in favor of this one singular thing they agree upon.]
no subject
The doppelganger attacks more freely when time is stopped; that's a difference between them. He still, even now, prefers to use it defensively, to escape instead of to seize advantage. It doesn't take long before his double works that out, either.
He's lost track of how long they've been fighting, and not just because of the time discrepancies. They're too evenly matched, with his doppelganger claiming momentary flashes of the upper hand only because he's more willing to play dirty to take it. Before long, they're both breathless and battered and laid out on the roof of the academy, splashing blood onto the roofing, struggling to get up and set to one more time.
They're almost on their feet when another portal opens up near them, pink-green and twisting sickly with unnatural energy — a window into a small, contained room where two identical blondes are pitting themselves against each other, the very same way that they are, themselves.
And for a second, their own fight goes forgotten.]
Adrian? Adrian?
[They recognize what they're seeing in the same moment. The same name escapes from both their lips.
Jotaro and his doppelganger have everything in common, and it turns out, they have this too.]
The fuck is all that?
The circles. Look.
Wait —
Could he have —
[...]
He knew it wasn't Geistnacht.
[Green eyes meet green eyes, their previous animosity — not forgotten, never forgotten, but suspended for a time in favor of this one singular thing they agree upon.]
Shit.