starmark | IC Inbox | prismatica

[ He goes.

It's easy, in the sense that he doesn't have to do anything. He's not supposed to do anything. He lets his body walk itself through the sunset and the early night, and he observes what it does.

A list of things that are difficult:

He was not expecting to have to contend with the need to interrupt everything by grabbing Polnareff's shoulder and spinning him around and hugging him. It's hard to know whether to blame half a year separated from him or the fact that he looks so tired and worn and desperate that he needs the help remaining upright.

Avdol is unconscious, which is probably for the best. He doesn't want him to be unconscious. He wants him to be awake, even if it means he does have to be awake and aware for his current injuries. He should be yelling and screaming and demonstrating that he's alive.

The doctor is there. The one who repaired his eyes. He wants to say something, but it's probably for the best that he can't. He shouldn't exactly distract him from the task of making sure Avdol doesn't bleed out.

He can't hold Jotaro's hand, because this Jotaro doesn't know yet that he loves him. Because this Kakyoin didn't do that, and he's here to observe and not to change.

He can't yell in Dio's face that he's dead. That he's dead, that he stops for good, doesn't start again after a few seconds, and Jotaro and Kakyoin don't. That he became what he is for nothing because he still fucking dies and he's not a god, he's just too chickenshit to deal with being a human.

The painful parts aren't difficult. They rob him of the ability to move about and change things and make this all inaccurate. He doesn't have to force himself not to move. He just has to wait and endure and let the world turn around him.

He returns. He returns smaller, quieter, folded in on himself slightly. Walks into Jotaro and flops against his chest. They have to go back, still. To do this together. But he can spare a moment to grasp at Jotaro's shirt and laugh so hard it hurts, gloating and ugly and cruel. ]

I knew he was dead. I knew he was dead but seeing him. Seeing that fucker actually squirm. Seeing him know he might die.

[ He doesn't say what it is about seeing it, but it's easy enough to intuit from the laughter. He usually keeps the ugliest parts of himself at least mostly under control, but he wouldn't have the energy to spare for that even if Dio was worth it. It's a nasty, maniacal kind of joy, but still joy. ]

[Someone else, maybe — someone who isn't Jotaro — might be concerned at a reaction like this from Kakyoin. His laughter sounds like hysteria, sounds like malice. People would worry that he went into the machine and came back out again wrong.

Only Jotaro doesn't, because he knows. Sometimes you need to see things before they're real, notions of trust be damned. Sometimes you need to get to the end of the movie so you can watch the monster die. Sometimes you need to go through all the hardship so that you can see yourself left standing at the end, and remember that you already did it once.

He understands. He understands.]

Not just "might". He knew he lost.

[And that's really the magic word when it comes to Kakyoin, isn't it? Not dead. That's not what's really important here. It's that by dying, Dio lost, and they won. They won, and no one died.]

I know. I've got you. You're okay.

I am. [ It's a long, long pause that follows. There's no real sense in waiting, in letting the adrenaline fade. But there's no sense in not doing it, either. His past self isn't going to give a shit that the adrenaline in the present has left him feeling cold and heavy. ] I am.

[ And it has left him cold and heavy. Cold and heavy and ready to curl up against Jotaro's chest and sleep for the next week. Just once more. Just once more, and then they never have to come back here again unless they choose to. Once more, and Dio doesn't get to touch either of them again. ]

I want to say that you don't have to do this. But you do.

Yeah. I knew that all along.

[I knew that before we came, is really what he means. I knew it wouldn't change. He knows all sorts of things now, courtesy of his ability to change the world with a thought and a punch, but he didn't need Star Platinum Over Heaven to know this.]

But we don't have to do it this instant. We don't have to do it the instant you feel up to it again, either. We can do it whenever we want. We don't have to face him on his schedule anymore.

[It's nice to have that sort of control, isn't it? Nice to bite back at Dio in just that slight passive-aggressive way, too. They're not chained to fifty days anymore. They're not bound to "before sunset". He's waiting for them in the simulation, it's true, but he's the one stuck waiting. He can't force them to come back, not until they choose to.]

We could make him wait while you tell me about frogs for hours. Wouldn't that piss him off?

Male Darwin's frogs keep their tadpoles in their mouth to keep them safe. Then spit them out once they're old enough to fend for themselves.

[ It's soft. Quiet. Flat. Followed by a shakey sudden exhale that could just as easily be laughter or a sob and probably isn't really entirely either. It's just an exhale. Just pushing something poisonous out of his body before it causes any more trouble. ]

Glass frogs have transparent stomachs. You can see all their organs squishing around inside them. It's disgusting.

[ And Jotaro is warm and solid and maybe a little bit omniscient and he already knows that last one is going to piss him off for the rest of his life but right now it's comforting. More than comforting. Comforting would just tell him he doesn't have to do it. This is telling him he does, but only ever when he's ready. ]

He's good at waiting. He's waited for a century. I'm ready. I want him gone.

We get him in the end. Don't forget. Everything he does...we get him in the end, and no one dies.

[He gives Kakyoin a last, fond squeeze, and isn't altogether sure whose benefit he said that for — Kakyoin's, or his own.

Either way, it doesn't matter. What matters is that this is the last thing standing in their way, and Kakyoin is right. He's ready. They're ready. It's time for Dio Brando to be gone, once and for all, and them all to be able to feel safe again.

Without letting go, he walks the two of them back over to Kakyoin's pod, nudging at him with his hip.]

Here.

[He says, and then moves over to his own, and only hesitates a split-second before climbing inside. There's a warm, orange-yellow Cairo night awaiting for him, ahead. It's time to go meet it again, for the last time.]

[ It takes him a moment, to untangle himself from Jotaro. He doesn't hesitate so much as- okay, maybe he hesitates a little. But not because he's afraid. Not because he doesn't want to do this. Just because once he does back in, he'll be stepping into the body of a him who dosn't know that Jotaro loves him. A him who doesn't quite know whether he loves Jotaro or whether he just doesn't have words other than love for gratitude and desperation and adoration and isolation in those ratios.

It's as comforting to be certain that he loves Jotaro as it is to be certain that he's loved back.

He lets go and enters the pod and slides underneath his own skin, and then the air is dry and still too hot, but with the sun falling beneath a skyline of buildings that feel too new and living for a place with so much history and the air too dry to hold onto any heat at all they have maybe a half hour before the cold sets in. Polnareff is shouting something in french at a Speedwagon doctor, who seems almost amused by the idea of a frenchman yelling at him for not letting him fight a vampire. Advol and Iggy are inside the van behind them, under the supervision of the rest of his medical team.

(The doctor is as tall as Jotaro or Mr. Joestar. Blond, with his long hair pulled back tightly while he works. He would say something, but this has to go the way it went the first time. So he doesn't do anything, just lets his past self do as he did before. Like when he puts Hierophant inside Jotaro but just leaves him there, hidden and safe and taking measure of everything.) ]

You can sense him, can't you? Mr. Joestar says that he'll know where both of you are.

[There was never a doctor here, the first time. That makes it a little easier on Jotaro, because the second time he lived through this, he'd already known where the changes had occurred, where to look, what to focus on. It's a little like one of those puzzles for children, with the two identical pictures but for three things changed between. The sight of that doctor leaves him at ease in a way that doctors usually don't. That one is an old comfort and an older friend. He's turned up here and there in Jotaro's life since he was young.

Soon. Soon. But not yet.]

Yeah. He's probably going to go after Jiji; he's more Joestar than I am.

[It's a statement he knows is wrong, but he was wrong about this in reality, too. The Jotaro who entered the pod, like the Kakyoin who did the same thing just moments ago, isn't directing the flow of this. He's along for the ride, watching, his purpose solely to observe and be observed.]

If we split up, one pair of us can draw him in while the others get into position to take him out.

[ It's wrong, but it makes sense. As much as any of this makes sense. There's no denying that the Joestar bloodline connects them all, and the idea that the less of Jonathan someone becomes the less connected they are to Dio makes- it's a reasonable hypothesis, even knowing now that it won't hold up to testing. ]

Strategically, the best option would be to wait for dawn. But- [ -but they're in a city full of people. Giving Dio a chance to take hostages is out of the question, even for him. ] -of the options we realistically have, splitting up seems the best one. And soon, because if he figures out where Avdol and the foundation employees are-

[ He trails off at that. The him inside him understands that as the best possible scenario, that the chance to threaten Advol draws Dio into a trap where he realises that he is not the oldest vampire in Cairo tonight. The him on the outside is terrified by the idea. ]

We don't know his stand's effective range. If you and your grandfather are splitting up, I'm going with you.

[ If Dio is able to attack them from far away, Jotaro and Polnareff will be easy targets. If he's restricted to a close range then he'll be aiming to deal with him and Joseph first, making them both effective bait. ]

Avdol's been through enough.

[There's a fantasy he doesn't remember now, that he could if this weren't all part of a shared dream: of all three of them together, himself and Kakyoin and the blond, with one of Dio's fists trapped by the blond's abdomen and the other bound up in Hierophant Green, and nothing to stop Star Platinum's attack rush when it hit him so hard he broke apart.

It's a nice fantasy. It's not for right now.]

Jiji — find a TV. If he comes after us, maybe you can see him use "it".

[They have minutes, now. Seconds, maybe. Right now Dio is still pinned by the last rays of the setting sun, and that's all the time they have.

But the phantom him feels better knowing that Kakyoin is near. Because when they're together, they're invincible. There's nothing they can't surmount, when it's the two of them together; that's how it was in Pakistan, and it hasn't changed, even now.]

[ He thought he'd be afraid. He isn't. Not anymore, even with so many unknowns. He thought he'd be angry, and he isn't angry either. He's just excited. Soon, the sun will have set. And then, hours ahead in Japan, Miss Holly will wake up.

Maybe it's overconfidence, but he can't bring himself to care. ]

There's a park a little under a mile away. The foundation's car passed it on the way here. If he follows us, we can lead him there.

[ There'll be people there. But there'll be people everywhere. Less people will be in a park this time of year than on the streets coming home from work.

And he pulls a butter knife out from his sleeve (yes, he's been stealing Dio's silverware. why would anyone expect anything less of him) after looking back and forth to make sure they're not being watched, investigating a few parked cars until he finds a model he knows is old enough to lack extra locking mechanisms. ]

Ready to learn how to steal a car?

...Hah. And people say I'm a delinquent.

[In other words: yes, yes he is entirely ready to be taught how to steal a car by this crazy reckless gremlin of a boy who's never altogether left his thoughts in the full sum of fifty-odd days. Kakyoin is always at his best when he's showing off, and this really isn't the time to get distracted by things like that when they're all literally teetering on a knife-edge of death, but you know.

He heads over briskly, hunkering down a little at the shoulders to watch more closely. If it were up to him, he'd probably just find a motorcycle and kick it into action, but there are advantages to a car, probably, so this is worth it.]

Show me.

[ Getting into the car is as easy as using Hierophant to unlock it from the inside. Nothing that would look suspicious from the outside, he just opens the food and climbs into the passenger seat. There are strategic reasons for it - he's better equipped to keep anyone following them at bay - but it also means that it's going to be Jotaro turning the not-a-key in the ignition. And even now, even now, there's nobody he'd rather peer-pressure into doing crimes.

Speaking of, he takes the butter knife and pushes it into the keyhole as far as it will go. ]

Usually you'd need power tools for this. It takes a little more than your average person's arm strength, but since we have Star- have him stab the knife in for me? We want to break the lock pins.

[In he climbs, cramming himself into the driver's seat — and the very first thing he does, even before focusing on Kakyoin, is to hit the seat latch and move it back a good foot at least. Evidently whoever really owns this car isn't a 6'5" behemoth like some people are.

But then, once he's a little more settled, he focuses in on what he's being asked to do, and nods.]

Just straight in?

[Even as he says it, a ghostly purple arm is emerging from his shoulder, commandeering the butter knife and readying it before giving it a firm jab inward.]

Yeah. Now you want to twist it to one side until you feel something fall and hit the knife, then to the other side. Then repeat that and take the knife out to let the broken pins fall down all the way.

[ He does know that Dio is there. Honestly. It's just that he's been separated from everyone else for so long. It's just that he has an opportunity to show off, and Avdol may not be whole but the high of going into that mansion and coming out again alive, all of them-

-they faced down the thing from his nightmares and it hasn't killed them yet. It won't kill them. And he's lost already once today and this is his chance to prove himself. And the him inside him might be cringing at the overconfidence, might be aware in hindsight how much of it is forced, but the him on the outside is settling his hand over Jotaro's and Star's to guide it.

He hasn't forgotten that they're in danger. It's just good to be back. ]

It's quicker than hotwiring, but it means that anyone with a knife or a screwdriver will be able to start the car. So people don't do it if they want to sell the car on.

Good thing we're not going to do that.

[He does as he's told, twisting the knife until he feels the vibration of something meeting the flat edge, and then back again, jimmying it back and forth as directed. It's crazy how it's all just playing out exactly as Kakyoin describes it. It's such a casual, astonishing, compelling display of competence.

Kakyoin has such a knack for doing things like that, he can almost forget that within a minute or two they're all going to be running for their lives again.]

Yare yare, you're something else.

[Something else indeed, as their machinations take hold, and the engine starts to sputter and turn over.]

It's important to know these kinds of things. Just in case.

[ Okay, so maybe he learned this just in case he needed to impress a classmate rather than in case he needed to escape from a vampire or drag a friend away from a stand in a mirror. But still. Just in case.

And he is kind of doing this to impress a classmate.

(That's only now starting to sink in. Soon, this will be over. He transferred schools while he was under Dio's control and maybe that's going to be an impossible commute from his parents' home but he can figure out how to make it work. Get a part-time job to rent a room somewhere in the city so he can finish the school year with Jotaro. It sounds like it would be worth the effort. It sounds nice.)

The engine doesn't roar to life so much as it complains itself to life, but life is life. Kakyoin fiddles with the radio, trying to find the wavelength that Mr. Joestar said he'd be using Hermit to speak over. ]

I forgot to ask if you know how to drive.

[ He half laughs as he says it, until Joseph's voice crackles into the car's radio. He's left the building. He's following you.

He stops laughing. It's not a matter of 'if you know how' anymore. It's a matter of 'start fucking driving'. ]

I don't.

[He says, deadpan, as he slams down on the gas, and the poor abused car squeals off onto the road. Whether or not he's lying is anyone's guess, but all things considered, it's not like driving in and of itself is that complicated. The wheel steers, the pedals make it go and stop. It's only if you care about things like traffic laws or other motorists that you have to know the rest of it, and right now, he doesn't.

He remembers, vaguely, how to get to the park. Again, not according to traffic laws. Just general directions, but that's all he's about to care about for the moment; Star Platinum can take care of making sure they don't have a collision along the way.]

It's better.

[He says it under his breath, but there's no doubt it's meant for Kakyoin.]

Better that it's us. We'll get him.

We will.

[ He clambers out of his seat, swinging his feet over the gear stick and into the back of the car she he's sitting backwards to see out of the rear window. Hierophant manifests in front of him, arms outstretched, ready to drive off anyone trying to follow them. So far, though, it's just angry road users who disagree with Jotaro's awesome driving philosophy.

There's no way that Dio is fast enough to keep up even with a shitty car like this on foot. If he were, they wouldn't have escaped into sunlight so easily. So far, nothing. ]

Nothing yet. Anything on your side?

Driving.

[He doesn't have time to check his mirrors at a moment like this!!! What do you think he is, a responsible driver???

While he's focused on the road, however, he does send Star up to take a look behind them on the driver's side, letting the information filter unobtrusively down into the back of his mind rather than actually trying to see what Star is seeing, and risk getting disoriented while he's behind the wheel.]

Rooftop. My side. He just dropped down below — he's gonna try to cut us off. This road must circle around and connect with the one he's on.

I meant the front window! The one you're looking out of!

[ Not that it matters. The misunderstanding's got them information, Star's eyes being better than his own and Hierophant's combined.

And if the road does circle around in that way, then Dio will be in the front window before long. He turns back around, cursing himself for seeing the buildings around them as barriers rather than just minor obstacles to be hopped over. He's still seeing the world like a human does. Dio's still seeing it as a god. ]

Keep as much distance as you can. Hierophant and I will try to keep him back.

[ They turn a corner and sure enough there he is, dropping from the top of a building. They're approaching him from the front. He'll have seen their faces through the windshield, even at this distance. That's information that he wishes Dio didn't have, but here they are. ]

Fuck —

[The speed at which he has to swerve in order to keep to Kakyoin's direction for distance is...pretty high, all things considered, which means they both have to bear the brunt of inertia throwing them against one side of the car as he cranks the wheel and weaves them away. They're going to have to take another route if he's blocking them from the front, and there isn't enough room for a full about-face on the narrow street.]

Hang on.

[No room to turn, so he slams on the brakes instead, grinding the transmission as he heaves the car into reverse the instant it's able and slams on the gas again, sending them hurtling back from whence they came.]

[ Hierophant fires off a volley of fluid. It hardens into glass as it flies toward. It's hard to tell if it's slowing him at all. Dio pauses to deflect each round of fire, but he does it casually. As if it's nothing.

(The world freezes for a fraction of a second at a time. Stops and starts each time Kakyoin fires like a record skipping.)

Dio grows smaller. Smaller. He's following them, yes, but only at a walking pace. Something else follows them along the road, growing after them. ]

Why is Hermit-? Mr. Joestar shouldn't be-

[ It isn't Hermit. Inside himself, Kakyoin screams to a him that isn't going to listen that Dio is two people combined. That he has a second stand. But it isn't time. He doesn't figure that out yet. And so it's a sickening, stomach-dropping shock when the thorny vines overtake them, slicing into the car's tires. ]

Shit!

[And now they're being thrown around for an entirely different, and infinitely more malicious, reason. Sparks fly as the tires shred and metal begins to grind into the asphalt underneath them; in moments, Jotaro realizes, the vines will grow up further and dig into the body of the car itself, and they'll be trapped like birds in a cage, their escape route morphed into their prison.]

Hold on! Star Platinum!

[With a roar, Star appears in front of their car, momentarily obscuring the distant figure of Dio as his bulk overwhelms the front window; in a flash, he rears back and swings mightily at the front bumper of the car, hitting it with enough power to utterly crush the engine and hood, and sufficient force to send the car flying backwards, breaking it free of the snare of the vines.

Of course, now they're in a flying deathtrap of a metal prison, but it's better than waiting around for Dio to catch up.]

[ So maybe their driving wasn't as great as he thought it was.

They've attracted attention, is probably not the first thing he should take note of but the world slows in that way it does when everything is going wrong and there's nothing you can do to stop it. From the outside, people see a car that moved desperately to avoid hitting an intensely muscular pedestrian, only to have its tyres burst so hard that it caved in the front and sent the vehicle flying. Hierophant webs tightly through the front of the car to keep either of them from being flung around inside the car.

Joseph's voice comes in and out on the radio but he can't quite get his mind to focus on it. And then the back of the car strikes the road and everything speeds up.

The car bounces. Rolls. It's lucky they were going backward, because it's the back seats that cave in when the thing that was a car skids to a stop. Upside-down, a mess of tangled metal gouging long wounds into the asphalt. The sparks it tore out of the road bounce a few times, fainter each time before dying out. He wasn't wearing a seatbelt and so he's caught in Hierophant instead, suspended like a fly in a spiderweb, battered and knocked around but spared anything worse than scrapes and what's going to be some ugly bruising by the fact that he did fall out of his seat and into Hierophant when the car flipped.

Everything feels oddly serene for a few seconds, hanging upside-down, watching through the broken windshield as the little road-stars burn out. Mr. Joestar's shouts are still coming through the radio. He wants to know what the fuck that noise was. They can't answer, Mr. Joestar, he wants to answer. This is a one-way communication system.

Dio is a good distance away, now. But he's moving closer. He's not the only one. A few daring people are moving toward the car to check on them. People are moving between them and Dio. Fuck.

That's what snaps his mind back to the present. He crawls free of Hierophant, out through the broken front window. ]

Fuck off! Get the fuck away from the car, we don't need help!

[ It isn't perfect. It isn't how he talks to people. It's desperate and furious and unpracticed and in mixture of Japanese and English and the couple of Arabic curse words they convinced Avdol to teach them. ]

IC Inbox | prismatica

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