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Jotaro Kujo ⬤ JJBA: Stardust Crusaders
residential district ⬤ ???
moonblessing ⬤ Sanguis
residential district ⬤ ???
moonblessing ⬤ Sanguis
prismatica
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He knows what Jotaro's doing. Of course he knows what Jotaro's doing. It's likely even Dio himself knows what Jotaro's doing, if only because he's too proud to comprehend the idea that someone might try to fight him without having some ulterior motive. As long as Dio's attention is upon him, as long as the Joestar is imminently within reach, he has no reason to even look at the people gathered around the thing that used to be someone else's car.
There's nothing he can do down here. This isn't the kind of fight that Hierophant is made for. It's barely the fight that Star is made for. He pulls himself up onto the rooftops and prepares to pull Jotaro out of danger when he needs to and then Dio stops.
Just over six feet away, Hierophant measures for him, still coiled around Jotaro's wrist. About either of their heights in distance, and just out of Star's range. He speaks. Talks about the line of messy stitches by a woman with two right hands that circles his throat. Talks about blood. The blood of his original body. Joseph's blood. Jotaro's blood. And then he takes one more long stride forward, and he catches Star's fist. Not Jotaro's fist, smaller behind the gloves of the purple image. But Star's.
(Because he has a second stand. He can touch Star because he has a second stand that he's hiding inside his body. That's why he could touch Hierophant's projectiles to deflect them. Why is he not making the connection.)
He wants to pull Jotaro back. Whether it's time to or not. Hierophant goes taut, prepares to tug him up onto the roof. But he can't.
They've been knocking the vines away from Jotaro, not destroying them. That means they've gone past him, like parting a sea of thorns. Those vines coil back upon themselves now, forming a prison that he can't pull Jotaro free from without shredding him to nothing on the thorns in the process. Each fraction of a second the gaps grow smaller, until he can barely see through them at all.
He should withdraw Hierophant. Pull him back, try to shoot his way through the prison. Help him from the outside. But he doesn't. He can't. He can't leave Jotaro alone, with Dio, in a cage woven from the things that are killing his mother.
Hierophant was invisible once. He can be invisible again.
His stand vanishes, pulling itself too thin to be visible to even the enhanced sight of a vampire. Thin enough that it has no difficulty at all pulling itself through the tiny gaps in the cage. It doesn't reform itself there. No. Instead, it does what it's always done, what it did when this all began. It hides. ]
Oh? [ Inside the cage, Star's fist still caught in his own, Dio looks at Jotaro's wrist. At the place where Hierophant was until only a second ago. There's nothing there now. ] It seems you've been abandoned.
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It's distant, for one. Dreamlike, almost — a faraway thing that he doesn't altogether remember happening, but that doesn't seem like the sort of thing he would make up in wild imaginings. For the other, it's far more concrete: sharpie lines slithering down his limbs, starbursting out from his throat and his heart. Kakyoin. Hierophant disappears, and Dio thinks he's been withdrawn, and Dio is wrong.
Because Hierophant is there, still, and he can't feel it but Star can, because Star knows when something is inside him that shouldn't be. And that means that Kakyoin knows, even without speaking a word to him, that this isn't a situation he can flee from. It can't be. And that means the only thing that's left for them is to fight.]
I don't need any help to beat the shit out of you.
[He has to keep Dio's attention on himself. Not that it's hard to do, but he has to make sure that Dio sacrifices attention to his surroundings in favor of getting high on his own self-importance. If he starts to gloat, he'll miss things. He'll leave openings.
Hierophant is good at finding openings and taking advantage of them.]
Pretty stupid of you, trapping yourself in here with me.
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It's good. It's good. No matter how much the shame of it burns like bile in his throat. It means Dio won't question why he isn't trying to break Jotaro out from the outside. Dio thinks he's afraid. Dio thinks he'll run. Dio thinks that of all of them, he's the link that will break. Let him.
Hierophant doesn't make any effort to control Jotaro. It goes completely limp, letting itself spread through him. Its branches go cell-thin. Thinner. Dio's minions forced it to learn how to travel through blood, once. It can do that again. Move through every little capillary. It can wait. He doesn't say anything to Jotaro. He doesn't need to ask him to trust him.
Dio grins. ]
You're stalling me, Jojo. [ The way he says the name is sweet and barbed and affectionate and venomous all at the same time. He swings his free arm as he speaks, swinging for Jotaro's ribs and striking him hard enough to throw him back into the wall of woven thorns. ] You think he's gone to find help, don't you? That he's going to be coming back with the old man and Polnareff.
[ The thorns begin to coil around Jotaro's limbs. ]
You should be happy for them, Jojo. With your blood, they'll be the first to witness Lord Dio rising, whole and new.
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It's vital, because if he looks like he's setting up a surprise attack, Dio will notice. That means he can't help. He just has to act on his own, and hope that Kakyoin will take whatever opportunity arises, and that it will be enough.
So he struggles slightly, even as the vines begin to crucify him, opening his body up to make it easy for Dio to come after him. But if he's going to take his blood, then he's going to have to get close, and that's when Star Platinum will be waiting.]
The only thing they'll see when they get here is your useless corpse.
[Let Dio think he's right. Let him think he's slipped, and the plan is now out in the open.]
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[ Fuck. There are disadvantages to Hierophant's hiding place, and all of them are happening at once. Something breaks in Jotaro, breaks in Hierophant, breaks in him, and then thorns are tearing into all of them. He swallows back whatever noise he was going to make, curling his hands into fists and gritting his teeth. Any sound he makes, Dio might pick up. Jotaro's enduring. He can, too.
They're going to have a chance. One chance. When Dio's fingers break skin, he'll give Hierophant a chance to move from Jotaro into him. He'll get close enough for Star Platinum to strike him. Hurt him. Occupy him for the few seconds it'll take for Hierophant to get into place.
The vines tighten as Jotaro struggles. Kakyoin can feel his own fingers going cold from lack of circulation. His own heart beating faster to try to compensate. More blood moving more quickly through the body. All the better for something to pull it free of the skin.
Dio moves closer, into Star Platinum's range, either thinking himself safe or thinking that whatever trap he's going to spring he can endure it. And Kakyoin recognises the borrowed sensation of an almost-loving tap-tap-tap-tap of four fingernails against the side of Jotaro's neck. Like someone drumming their fingers against a table. It's familiar. Almost pleasant. Being dirt, knowing that something beautiful might grow from you.
And then Dio's fingers break skin. ]
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He's got to hit him. He's got to hit Dio, that much is for certain, but he has to trust that Kakyoin is up to something. Has to time it to leave enough of a window for Kakyoin to act, but then he's got to take his turn himself.
One. Two. Three. Four. Four nails against his neck, above the place where his star birthmark sits.
He has to wait. Has to wait. Has to give Kakyoin a chance.]
...!
[The fingers gouge into him, sucking awful things in search of his blood, hungry to draw the life out of him and claim it for his own. One Jotaro is consumed by the hurt of it, the terrible anguish racing up and down his neck like wildfire. The other is furious, disgusted, enraged, because his neck and his blood belong to a different vampire, and this is a transgression he refuses to abide.
But he has to hold on. A few more seconds. A few more seconds.
Until at last, he can only hope that it's enough, and Star Platinum swings, piercing a hole straight through Dio Brando's abdomen.]
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Eventually, maybe, it'll occur to him that this isn't what it's meant to be like.
It focuses him.
Hierophant moves through the blood. Out of Jotaro. Into Dio. He spreads like an infection, branching into each finger and up the arm. And something takes notice. Something almost reacts. Even through the blinding certainty that he's won, something in Dio can sense an invader when it encounters one. He tenses. His fingers start to withdraw and then Star forces a fist through his body.
Dio flies back, and Hierophant takes those few seconds to pull the rest of its body into him. For a fraction of a second the vines flicker in and out as Dio focuses only on the fact that someone got a hit in, a good one, that someone has damaged his almost-perfect body. (And because he almost healed that line of stitches on his neck. That stand isn't his. Once that body is his own, he loses it.) They don't quite drop Jotaro. Instead a new one snakes around his neck, squeezing.
His attention is all on Jotaro now. On the man he thinks Jotaro used to be a century ago. The invader is forgotten, even as the stolen blood knits the hole left by Star's fist back together layer by layer. ]
That was a mistake, Jojo. [ He spits. It's wrathful, not like an angry god but like a child who plucked the legs from every fly they could catch before encountering a wasp. And maybe Dio can feel his muscles seizing up as Hierophant fights them, searching for a way to force him to dismiss the stand, but the rage distracts him. ] I don't need you alive to take your blood.
[ The vine tightens around Jotaro's throat. Tightens. And then Hierophant lances up through Dio's spinal cord and into his brain, activating every nerve at once. And Dio screams.
He doesn't stop screaming as the vines disappear, dropping Jotaro to the ground. He doesn't stop until it sounds like something in his throat is torn, because this noise is going to have to suffice as their signal to Joseph and Polnareff. When he does stop, when Hierophant relaxes and focuses only on maintaining control of Dio's body and not on assaulting his mind with too many nerve signals to maintain a stand, Dio's arms fall limp at his sides. He looks like an oversized suit of skin worn by something much smaller. ]
I win. [ He says, and the voice is Dio's and it comes out of Dio's mouth, but it's softer. Quieter. A little more detached. ]
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...
Wait. What?
Why would he think — why would he ever think — that he and Dio had anything in common?]
K...Kakyoin...
[His throat hurts. It hurts, it hurts, Dio was going to cut his head off, he's surprised his heart didn't stop from it.]
H...Have you...got him...?
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The vines reappear, aiming themselves for Dio himself now, ready to rip him apart if that's what it takes to pull Hierophant out of him. But he's figured out how to dismiss them now. Set off every nerve. Force his brain to process every possible sensation at once, until there isn't anything left to manifest a stand. It's probably torture. He thought he'd want it to be torture, but right now he doesn't care. It's just what works, the mechanics of the flesh bud evolved and turned on Dio himself.
(It's funny. He knows what he is. He knows he's cruel. And yet he doesn't have the stomach to suppress Dio with agony for more than a few seconds at a time. He's the worst kind of cruel - enough to be willing to hurt, not enough to be effective. If he were a monster, if he kept this up constantly, Dio wouldn't be able to maintain a stand for even the fraction of a second it takes to stop time. If he were a monster, it would end here.) ]
I've- I've got him. I can hold him until Mr. Joestar gets here. [ He should reach out for Jotaro. Do something to try to slow the bleeding. But he isn't going to reach out with Dio's hands and his own hands are a good sixty feet above all of this. So he just stars still. Offers the sort of sympathetic grimace that looks most out of place on Dio's face. ] Sorry. You can use me as bait next time.
[ He means it as a joke. Because he thinks that they're done. That there isn't going to be a next time for any of this. ]
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[Right. Jiji. Jiji and Polnareff were on the radio, they'll be tracking them. They'll be coming to catch up. But it'll be fine when they get here, right? Because Hierophant is inside of Dio, so they've got him trapped. They did it. They're safe, for the moment.
If Jotaro were a monster, he wouldn't just stop there, with Dio beaten. He would follow through right here, would tell Kakyoin to get Hierophant out of Dio's skull and then grab hold of him by the head and pull until it ripped off along that ugly scarred seam. He would deprive him of everything and crush him underfoot and keep crushing him and crushing him until there was nothing left, and then they would all be safe.
But Jotaro isn't a monster. Jotaro doesn't step on the weak for his own gain.
Jotaro takes his eyes off of Dio Brando for one second, and glances in the direction he thinks the cavalry is coming from, instead.]
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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
That's the reason Kakyoin, the Kakyoin sitting safely in a VR pod in a room in the alien city of Lunatia, safe and alive and far, far away from this awful night, is able to hear what Dio said at all. Once upon a time, Dio said something to Noriaki Kakyoin when he killed him, but there was no one there to hear it, and so those words are lost to the sands of time.
These ones aren't. These ones exist because the half-turned Jotaro has just discovered that he can't move his body, but his eyes froze in place just close enough to still see Dio in his peripheral vision. He still sees him. He still hears him.
Both Jotaros know, in the same moment, that Dio Brando has a second stand, and right now it's killing Noriaki Kakyoin.
The last time the universe bent just a fraction to the left, it was to make Avdol turn around just a little bit faster. That's all it took to keep him out of harm's way, and the cascade of events that had followed it had saved Iggy's life in its turn. He didn't even have to do anything more than that little twitch, that slightest push. One small thing gone just a hair's breadth different, and everything turned out differently because of it.
Now, now, it happens again. The faintest touch. The slightest course correction.
This won't kill him.
That's all the change he makes, the Jotaro who wields the unfathomable powers of the god Dio wanted to be. He doesn't wipe Dio off the face of the earth. He doesn't punish him with an eternity of perpetual torment. He could end it right here, right now, in the blink of an eye, but he doesn't.
One touch to the water's surface. One ripple in the pond. One beat of a butterfly's wing.
Kakyoin isn't going to die like this.
Kakyoin plummets, but Jotaro isn't there to catch him, because Jotaro is already rounding on Dio and throwing his Star Platinum at him with everything he is. But someone will get there in time, one-half of Jotaro knows. Someone will reach Kakyoin and hold his broken body together with his bare hands until help can arrive, because this isn't the way his story ends anymore.]
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Even in the middle of Cairo, even before the heat of the sun has risen up out of the roads and buildings, Chariot moves so quickly that frost forms on his metal bones from the chill of the air moving past him. In the distance, he can still hear the discarded armour rolling to a stop.
We havn't lost anyone yet. Polnareff says, and he's trying to sound cool but his voice is already choked with emotion because he's a fucking baby. You don't get to be special. They come to a stop hidden behind the wreckage of the ruined car, and Polnareff's voice doesn't raise above a very profane french whisper.
(Polnareff's made himself so vulnerable. He'd have stood a chance, maybe, with Chariot armoured. But his speed means nothing in stopped time. Polnareff's made himself too vulnerable to win this fight. Given up on glory so that someone else's victory can be a little less bittersweet. He learned that from someone, didn't he?)
Hierophant has pissed Dio off, but Jotaro is the bigger danger. Dio's pragmatic enough to realise that. The World kicks Hierophant away and it vanishes once it's free. Hides inside Kakyoin. Forms tubes between ruined blood vessels. Pushes air in and out of him.
Dio knows what it sounds like when a body strikes the ground. He knows that the absence of that sound means something. But his attention is on Jotaro and Chariot is too fast even for his eyes. He doesn't know what it means. ]
I was hoping to avoid staining The World's hands with filth. You aren't worthy of my stand. [ Dio sighs dramatically, like having to use his stand to fight Jotaro is the worst thing to happen to anyone today. ] But it's appropriate, isn't it? Your family always were given everything, whether not not they were worthy.
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Hierophant was inside Dio. Hierophant was controlling him at the speed of thought. But somehow Dio managed to be faster than that, and the only way to be faster than as fast as nerve signals could move would be to move when they weren't moving to begin with.
He couldn't move, either. He tried. He started trying the instant the World's hand reached for Hierophant where he was webbed inside the hole in Dio's body, and nothing happened.
How could he have moved faster than Hierophant? Hierophant was a thousand separate threads inside Dio, then. How did the World manage to be faster than all of them at once?
One Jotaro already knows the conclusion. The other is just on the brink of it.
But both of them, now, can see The World clearly, and when Star erupts to challenge him, to draw his attention away like bait again lest he even think about trying to move toward Kakyoin and Polnareff, a conclusion occurs to him.]
I'm not worthy? They're the same type of Stand.
[The Jotaro who hasn't done this before half says it just to drive Dio crazy, to play on his words, to enact a stalling tactic. In a minute, he'll start to realize that his snap intuition was more right than he thinks.]
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Which means that Polnareff will have succeeded and it will have worked, but that's immaterial. ]
You think that they're the same.
[ The hole is healing for a second time, only a little slower. Joestar blood really does suit him. Cautious, not incredulous, at least at first. Like he's testing how the idea tastes on his tongue in order to verify it.
It tastes foul. No. Impossible. ] Presumptuous, aren't we? If they were anything alike, you wouldn't have things I threw away long ago leaping to your defense.
Mm.
I didn't hear him hit the ground. Did you? Pity for him. That would have been instant. I wonder how long it'll take.
[ It's obvious taunting. It's very obvious taunting. He wants Jotaro to come into his Stand's range. But he's also giving away more than he thinks - that comment comparing Star to The World has clearly shaken him at least a little, or he'd be using the vines again. At least for the moment, he's caught on demonstrating his own stand's superiority. ]
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But Kakyoin is alive, and Polnareff is with him, and they're counting on him not to fuck this up. If he fucks this up, Dio will attack them and then they'll be dead. He can't let that happen. It's got to stay on him, got to stay with him, and that means he can't be careless.
Something about that remark bothered Dio more than it should've. That means there's an advantage there, if he can only use it.]
You'll wish you had someone to defend you. But that's not going to happen.
[If he occupies The World, it won't be able to use its ability. That's the theory he's playing on right now, and so at once he hurls Star forward in a brutal attack rush, throwing a whirlwind of punches designed less to hit and more just to force The World to keep up with him, or suffer the consequences.]
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And it's clear that it irritates Dio to be matched like this. His face twists in contempt. He stops talking, drops the taunting, ignores everything other than proving himself superior.
Then, those few seconds end. He can feel himself bruising from each punch he blocks. Healing again. Bruising again. Healing again. Their stands themselves might be equally matched in a contest of strength, and that in itself is infuriating. But one stand has a human behind it and one has a god. He keeps up the offense, matches Star blow for blow, because he knows that Jotaro will wear down first. ]
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He holds out as long as he can. It isn't forever.
A punch gets through, just barely, and it makes him grunt. The next comes harder, and it knocks him back a step. The third leaves him choking on a sudden upwelling of blood, and the fourth takes him out of the attack rush entirely.
But it wasn't all for nothing. He's pressured Dio now, and that means he knows with almost absolute certainty what's coming next. That punching match may have resulted in a slim victory for Dio, but Dio won't be satisfied with a narrow win. He'll go big, he'll be obsessed with proving his superiority. He'll use his Stand's ability.
But he'll use it on Jotaro, and not on Kakyoin and Polnareff, and right now that's what matters most. Keeping the fight and focus on himself matters more than anything. He can't even explain why; it's just as if the universe bent just a little, a tiny fraction, until he knew that that's what he had to do.]
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Losing people fucks people up.
He hopes that he isn't going to fuck anyone up so badly that they turn french.
And he squeezes Polnareff's hand harder. ]
Pathetic.
[ He has the advantage. He could press it. A few more punches and he can ensure that the youngest Joestar never gets up. He could win. Not off the back of his Stand's strength, but on his own.
But Jotaro said that their Stands were the same.
Soon, he will be free of Jonathan. Truly free of him. This body will be his own. Jonathan's descendants, the endless nagging feeling of his brother's presence in the world, will be gone. Those words - the same type of stand - will be the only remaining connection. And if he doesn't prove them wrong now, he never will.
Time stops.
He rolls his head about slowly, languorously. Straightens his clothes. It's almost indulgent, contrasted with the fury of a fraction of a second ago. When he's good and ready, he moves slowly toward Jotaro. ]
They were never the same.
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Maybe that's for Kakyoin's benefit, the Kakyoin who's watching this play out with him right now. It's one thing to say it aloud, to insist on an appreciation of the grief that the recognition of it brings him. It's another thing to bear witness to a moment like this and understand what it means to lay eyes on this monster, the things he does, the horror he elicits, and accept that some part of them is fundamentally identical.
But watching this again with Kakyoin present has its effect on Jotaro, too. Because now all of a sudden, he can see for the first time what this confrontation looks like through Kakyoin's eyes, one step removed instead of buried in the middle of it. He can see the specter that Dio makes, his awful shadow cast all over this Cairo night — and finally, for once, he can appreciate the inherent relief that comes with realizing that no, it's not just him, there is someone to stand against him and there will always be someone to stand against him and they are all going to live tonight because there he is, always the same, drawing his ability to emerge victorious from that sameness, because when the playing field of their Stands is made equal, victory comes down to the better man.
And that, as it turns out, is Jotaro.
It's Jotaro, who is biding his time. Jotaro, who is coiled and ready and pretending that he can't move, because for the most part he can't — but he's still more capable than Dio thinks he is.
Dio will try to kill him like this. He's not going to fuck around with toying with him, that much is for certain. He'll go for the kill now and call that his superiority. That means he's going to use The World to strike out at Jotaro directly; it's the answer that makes the most sense, after all.
That's why Star Platinum is waiting, and ready — because in this universe, this Jotaro isn't so overcome with grief and horror and terror that he's going to spend the lion's share of this fight on the defensive. He's not fighting for himself. He has people to protect.
That's why Star Platinum is going to strike first, the instant Dio is in range and preoccupied with pontificating, strike hard and fast and direct from his hiding place inside Jotaro, with Star Finger shot straight for Dio's brain.]
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Dio reaches for Jotaro's neck, already ripped open by thorns and fingers. It's hard to tell whether he means to break it or crush his windpipe or simply and artlessly rip his head from his body along the bloody, bruised seams he made earlier, not when he never makes it. In the silence of the frozen night, Dio's skull makes two satisfying cracking sounds, one on entry and one on exit, the second more wet than the first.
Time doesn't immediately restart. Kakyoin's broken body can't make the connection, couldn't even if he were standing and watching from his place outside Dio's realm. But the other him can. He observes, for all the use his observations are going to be. Time doesn't restart, and so Dio hasn't lost his ability to use his stand. One arm goes limp. He slowly topples to one side, sliding from Star's fingers - either he's lost his sense of balance of the leg on that same side has gone limp, too. Maybe both. He hits the ground and he's looking right through the broken windows of the destroyed car. Right at him and Polnareff, and his eyes don't change with recognition. Blinded - that one he knows from seeing what happens next. ]
Where-
[ His voice is desperate as time restarts. Rasping. Pained. the ingertips of his good arm scrabble against the asphalt as he tries to pull himself up. He feels at the empty air around him for Jotaro, then extends his tongue. Tastes the air. Begins to crawl.
It's horrifying to actually see. Before, he'd just known that Dio came crawling through the car toward Polnareff and him. He didn't realise that he was tasting the air, was flailing forward with his tongue flopping about. He catches his good hand on a peice of jagged metal on the ruined car. He slices off two fingers when he pulls it back and barely seems to notice. A limited sense of pain, then. He should be horrifying like this, all the pride stripped away to reveal something too pathetic to really even call a monster. He's just disgusting.
Blood. He's looking for blood, and Kakyoin and Jotaro both reek of the stuff, but Kakyoin's the one with a pool of it beneath him. It's not any kind of grand scheme. It's just an attempt to survive.
Polnareff stands, lifts him, moves away. Puts Chariot between both of them and the pathetic mess that is Dio now. He doesn't move closer. Just remains, half in the car and half out, tongue slapping at the pool of blood where the two of them had been, licking it up off the road. ]
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He stumbles back when time resumes, shaken from his wounds and his success both, and sort of watches a little stupidly as Dio starts to scrabble away. He realizes late what the significance of his enemy's fumbling is; whatever he'd pierced in the brain must've disrupted his motor control, maybe his vision. In one strike he's gone from an insurmountable terror to a pest crawling along the ground.
He should just end it, right now. He could even justify it as putting Dio out of his misery.
But there's something that rebels in him at the thought of attacking Dio while he's in a state like this — blinded, desperate, fumbling. It's too close to watching The World rip Hierophant apart in stopped time. The oppressor who attacks while the victim is helpless, defenseless. And this is one way where he and Dio will always be different.
It rebels, at least, until he sees what Dio is really scrambling for. It's not just anyone's blood he's chasing after; if it were, maybe Jotaro would've been able to stay calm, and perhaps even feel bad for him.
But that's Kakyoin's blood he's drinking. Kakyoin's strength he's drawing on to make himself strong again. And Kakyoin is better than dirt to be sucked up for nutrients, and Kakyoin is never going to be forced to help Dio Brando in any capacity again.
Before he quite realizes it, he's wobbled to the car himself; Star punches open the gas tank and causes what remains of it to spill out into a crumpled piece of wreckage that will serve as a makeshift bucket. At first he thinks maybe he'll just taint the blood with the gasoline, poison him or at the very least render it ineffective. But with Dio lying half in the pool as it is, there's no way to do that without dousing Dio himself in it — and so he does.
He has a lighter in his pocket. Dio is dangerous. And maybe if it were just him, if he were the only one left, he would stay his hand. But every second he wastes on Dio is another second that he's not helping get Kakyoin to safety, and he genuinely doesn't know how many seconds Kakyoin has left to begin with.
So he doesn't think. He just acts. Star hurls the gasoline to soak Dio through, and without giving Dio even a second to process what the implications of that might be, he sparks his lighter and tosses it, catching the accelerant in its flame and setting him ablaze.]
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Time stops. Dio tries to move away from the flames, inch by bloody inch. Dio is the flames, he can't leave them behind. Time starts again.
It isn't a vampiric hiss. It isn't the roar of a slighted god. It's human.
Time stops. He tries to pull himself free of the car. Tears himself open on the broken window. Pulls his hips free before flopping onto the ground again. Time starts.
Polnareff alters the way that he's holding him. Shifts so that he can offer an arm to Jotaro without moving him more than necessary. Joseph's bringing the doctors, he says. It's hard to hear it over Dio's screams. Chariot keeps his blade trained on Dio the whole time, not moving closer but always between Kakyoin and Dio.
Time stops. Dio rolls onto his back. Onto his front. Onto his back again. Layers of skin tear off on the road below him. He tries to put himself out. He can't. He's drawn the gasoline-tainted blood into himself. The fire is inside him bone-deep. Time starts.
The parts of his throat that can scream burn away.
He curls in upon himself.
The vines return. They coil around him. A cocoon. Protective. Loving. Completely immobilising. And once again he dies in flames, in the arms of Jonathan Joestar. ]
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Once upon a time in a timeline that isn't anymore, Kakyoin died alone and disoriented and helpless, and then wound up on an alien planet somewhere halfway across the galaxy and tried to pretend that he was normal and okay but he wasn't and then when he'd had to face up to the reality that the boy he loved had a life and a future that he wasn't going to be a part of, he threw up. That Kakyoin isn't going to exist for long, anymore. Eventually he'll fade away into the one cradled in Polnareff's arms, watching this like Jotaro is right now.
This is for the Kakyoin who died. The Kakyoin who wanted to come here and see this for certain. This is his parting gift to that Kakyoin, the love confession he was never given the opportunity to profess.
Dio Brando is dying. Miserably. Pathetically. He is a thing, now — a chunk of meat burning from the inside out. The sight of it makes Jotaro sick, makes his skin crawl, but he doesn't look away.
After this, help will come. Kakyoin will be rushed to the hospital. So will he, as a matter of fact, as a consequence of the wounds from the car accident and the chokevines around his throat and the internal injuries he took while Star was dueling with the World. Fewer injuries than he'd had before, in the last timeline. Still significant enough to matter. More than significant enough to matter.
The fire is still burning when Joseph Joestar runs onto the scene, holding his hat and bellowing Jotaro, I'm here!, and it's exactly the kind of comedic moment that altogether doesn't belong in a memory like this.
But it's good punctuation for the end of the simulation, and slowly the vision begins to gray out as the machinery brings their experience tapering off to a quiet end.]
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He'll get them home safely.
(He doesn't go home. He comes here. But he'll get there eventually. He knows, even if he doesn't remember.)
He takes a while to leave the pod, even after everything has faded away into the dark, boring interior of a piece of machinery. When he does leave it's with Hierophant, human-shaped, leading him by the hand. ]
He's gone. [ He says slowly, as Hierophant leads him to Jotaro. Pulls his hand into his. His voice is soft and flat. The palms of his hands are warm but the fingers are cold. ] He can be gone. We-
[ Before, in a time that's swiftly ceasing to be, time stopped for him in a world that still had Dio in it. And it kept him from ever being able to believe that he was truly in a place without him. He's seen a world without Dio, now. He knows that he'll spend the rest of his life in one.
He loved Dio, once. Even long after he should have ceased to. It's hard not to love someone a little when you live in a world where they define all things.
He doesn't have to love him anymore. ]
-we don't have to let him exist.
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