[ He thought he might gloat. He thought he might hold it over Dio’s head, that he’s not what Dio thought he was. Not a coward. Not weak. He doesn’t. In the end, he doesn’t really want to pay any more attention to Dio than he has to. He just wants to keep his eyes on Jotaro. On the bleeding. To make sure that he’s still moving and talking and breathing. Soon, Mr. Joestar will be here. That sunshine-lightning he likes to do tricks with will pass harmlessly through Hierophant and do to Dio the same thing that it did to the parts of him that he put into himself and Polnareff and Mr. Joestar.
He smiles. His shoulders sink. It’s a weirdly relaxed posture for Kakyoin. It looks fucking ridiculous on Dio. ]
Bet I’m better bait than you are a dri-
[ He can feel it, now. It’s hard to put into words what he’s feeling, but he can tell when Dio’s about to try to call his stand again. Hierophant activates the nerves again
The thing about nerve signals is that they aren’t instant. They travel. They take time, even if that time is fractions of percentages of a second. And so in stopped time, they can’t reach the brain. They can’t overwhelm it. They can’t force the new stand away.
This part is new. He never saw this. He doesn’t belong here. But Jotaro does. Jotaro was here for this.
The new stand is humanoid. It appears in front of Dio, reaching out its hand to touch the hole in his shirt where Star punched through it. And then it forces its hand through the same still-healing hole. Through Hierophant.
Through him.
It doesn’t hurt. Not yet. The nerve signals can’t travel. It doesn’t feel anything at all as the new stand reaches into Dio and wraps its fingers around a handful of strands. Hierophant is ugly as the stand pulls him out of its master. A clump of thin strands, bleeding a trail of bright green that hangs in the air. From Kakyoin’s high vantage point, it looks like the new stand is pulling clumps of hair from a shower drain.
Dio wasn’t paying him much mind before. He was a strategic concern, not something worthy of his wrath. That’s changed. The new stand throws the ugly clump of Hierophant onto the road. ]
Useless. [ He snarls, his stand driving its heel into the mass of tendrils. It’s hard to say what part of Hierophant maps to what part of him like this. He can hear bone cracking. Joints popping out of place. He doesn’t feel it yet. He won’t until time starts again. ] As worthless to them as you ever were to me.
[ Dio is talking at him, of course, not to him. He can’t hear any of this. He doesn’t remember any of this. He’s just borrowing from Jotaro’s memories.
Time restarts.
It hurts.
He falls forward as Hierophant writhes under the World’s heel, plummeting down toward the streets of Cairo. ]
no subject
He smiles. His shoulders sink. It’s a weirdly relaxed posture for Kakyoin. It looks fucking ridiculous on Dio. ]
Bet I’m better bait than you are a dri-
[ He can feel it, now. It’s hard to put into words what he’s feeling, but he can tell when Dio’s about to try to call his stand again. Hierophant activates the nerves again
The thing about nerve signals is that they aren’t instant. They travel. They take time, even if that time is fractions of percentages of a second. And so in stopped time, they can’t reach the brain. They can’t overwhelm it. They can’t force the new stand away.
This part is new. He never saw this. He doesn’t belong here. But Jotaro does. Jotaro was here for this.
The new stand is humanoid. It appears in front of Dio, reaching out its hand to touch the hole in his shirt where Star punched through it. And then it forces its hand through the same still-healing hole. Through Hierophant.
Through him.
It doesn’t hurt. Not yet. The nerve signals can’t travel. It doesn’t feel anything at all as the new stand reaches into Dio and wraps its fingers around a handful of strands. Hierophant is ugly as the stand pulls him out of its master. A clump of thin strands, bleeding a trail of bright green that hangs in the air. From Kakyoin’s high vantage point, it looks like the new stand is pulling clumps of hair from a shower drain.
Dio wasn’t paying him much mind before. He was a strategic concern, not something worthy of his wrath. That’s changed. The new stand throws the ugly clump of Hierophant onto the road. ]
Useless. [ He snarls, his stand driving its heel into the mass of tendrils. It’s hard to say what part of Hierophant maps to what part of him like this. He can hear bone cracking. Joints popping out of place. He doesn’t feel it yet. He won’t until time starts again. ] As worthless to them as you ever were to me.
[ Dio is talking at him, of course, not to him. He can’t hear any of this. He doesn’t remember any of this. He’s just borrowing from Jotaro’s memories.
Time restarts.
It hurts.
He falls forward as Hierophant writhes under the World’s heel, plummeting down toward the streets of Cairo. ]