Chapter 1: kujo jotaro's no good, very bad week
Chapter Text
Day five of jail: Jotaro wakes up to a freshly brewed cup of coffee, the daily newspaper, and a guitar by his bed. The sum total of his progress trying to get rid of the evil spirit is, apparently, still at a big fat zero.
Of course, being in jail is never conducive to achieving one’s goals, but Jotaro had at least hoped that having a whole lot of time to himself would help him figure out… whatever the hell the evil spirit issue is. He still can’t even catch a proper glimpse of it; he just gets the feeling, sometimes, that it’s hovering right over his shoulder. It feels awful, having someone standing behind him where they could do something and he wouldn’t be able to see or stop it. He spends most of his time lying down or with his back to the wall, now.
The evil spirit hasn’t really hurt him. But it’s acting on his desires. His wants, his impulses, his anger… it keeps twisting them around into something hateful. First, beating those fuckers who attacked him half to death, when all he meant to do was teach a little bit of a lesson. Then constantly hurting and scaring his cell mates whenever Jotaro got irritated. Now this: stealing all kinds of things that Jotaro wishes he had.
Jotaro is pretty certain now that the evil spirit is using his negative emotions as a conduit to act maliciously in this world. Better for him to be in this jail cell until he can get himself back under control, then. No dice though. Would be nice if the evil spirit would bring him some self help books instead of all the occult and superstition books it’s been mocking him with.
He has to hurry up and figure this out, otherwise the next time Mom comes to visit, he might end up accidentally hurting her. And she will come to visit; she cares too much about him to stay away, God knows why.
Would be easier if she didn’t care enough to come close. Then he wouldn’t have to worry at all.
At least the police have finally moved his cell mates out of the jail cell he’s in -- he was getting tired of being on high alert, trying to make sure he wouldn’t accidentally hospitalize someone again.
--
Day six. It’s still boring as hell in here. Jotaro still hasn’t figured anything out. He’s read through four and a half of the books the evil spirit is mocking him with, for lack of anything better to do. It’s all garbage.
He tries napping in the afternoon, but he feels something brushing his hair to the side and he snaps awake. A flash of purple disappears from the corner of his vision.
Well, he’s learned one thing about the evil spirit during his time in jail: it’s purple. Now if only that was actually fucking helpful. Jotaro just wishes it would go away.
--
Day seven: Jotaro is going to go stir crazy in here. He hates it.
A loud screech screams out behind him. He whirls around. The bars keeping him in this cage have been pulled apart, warped wide enough for him to just… step right through, and walk away.
Fuck. Fucking hell. Jotaro’s foot shifts backward before he catches himself and makes himself stride forward instead. He wraps his hands around the disfigured bars, focuses his will, and pulls.
A foreign strength supplements his, and he slowly bends the bars back into place.
… He knew the evil spirit was strong. Strong enough to catch bullets and beat grown men half to death. Still, this casual strength reminds him again how it could probably all too easily crush someone’s skull in its grip.
Shit. He needs to get ahold of himself, otherwise what will happen next? He has to stay in here.
It speaks volumes of the events of the past few days that the police don’t even ask him about the slightly disfigured bars of the jail when they bring him his next meal; they only give it an uncertain glance, give him an even longer look, and scurry away back out of sight.
Jotaro watches their receding backs and feels profoundly alone.
--
Day eight: one of the officers, visibly unhappy, passes a message from Mom. “She says there have been some delays, but she’s coming to visit again soon,” he grunts. “Yer mom’s way too good natured for a punk like you.”
Jotaro doesn’t bother lifting his head from where he’s lying on the bed. The officer curses at him. “Shit, you ain’t even gonna try and say anything back?”
He does have one thing he wants to say. “Go away.”
“Hah? That’s all? And after I delivered this message so nicely, too--”
Jotaro lifts his head and glares. “I said. Go away.”
The officer’s jaw snaps shut. He stands there for a moment, and then he beats a hasty retreat.
Jotaro lets out a breath and feels the malevolent aura behind him fade away. And today had been so good, too. Fucking hell.
If only Mom would stay away. Would be better for everyone involved. (If only she was here.)
--
Day nine: Jotaro drifts awake to the scent of a familiar and comforting perfume. For a moment, he feels content and safe, here at home -- and then he snaps awake, sitting bolt upright.
There’s a familiar blanket draped over him. A pink and yellow floral pattern blanket, the one Mom keeps in her closet, the one she used to always tuck him in with when he got sick. When did it… how…
His fingers tighten around the blanket. A violent emotion wells up in his chest, so intense he feels like he might burst with the effort of holding it in. This fucking evil spirit, just what the fuck does it think it’s doing? Who does it think it is?
Crash. Crunch.
Jotaro clenches his hands tighter to center himself, fighting past the overwhelming feeling bursting in him, and turns around. The guitar, the toy car, the various cups that have amassed over the past few days -- they’ve been smashed onto the ground.
Fuck. Can’t even feel angry in goddamn peace. What the hell is he supposed to do from here? Can he even stay here in this awful jail anymore? Is it even any use? He runs a hand through his hair, grabs his hat from the side table and tugs it down on his head. Calm down. Any more angry or frustrated and the evil spirit will come out again. Calm down. He takes a few deep breaths, clenches his fists again, and forces himself to sit calmly down on the bed and close his eyes. Breathe in, out, in, out…
Who knows how long he does that before he hears footsteps. Some nice dress shoes, judging by the way the heels click on the stone floor. It’s not a bad sound, but his mood steadily plummets as it draws closer, and darkens altogether when it stops in front of his cell.
“Go away,” he says without opening his eyes. “I’m not in the mood.”
“That’s not a very nice way to greet your visitor,” says an unfamiliar voice.
Jotaro twitches and looks up. Standing outside the door is a boy his age, dressed in an immaculate green school uniform, with red hair and long bangs curling around to frame the side of his face. There’s something about the cold way he studies Jotaro that rubs Jotaro the wrong way immediately.
And there’s one more thing. No one visits here without being accompanied by one of the officers, but this kid came here all alone. Something doesn’t feel right. “Who the hell are you?”
The red-haired boy’s expression doesn’t change. “Do you speak so bluntly to everyone you meet? No wonder all the cops outside cursed your name.”
Tch, of course they did. Jotaro hadn’t done anything to try and endear himself to them during his stay here. “If you’re here to try and make me leave, get lost.”
One eyebrow arches elegantly at him. Jotaro feels the immense need to punch his face in. “I see. You chose to stay in here… Well, no accounting for taste, I suppose.”
The need to punch face: increasing.
“But no, that’s not what I came here for.”
“Then what do you want?”
The boy ignores him. “Allow me to first introduce myself.”
Jotaro’s veins throb. He already asked this asshole for an introduction, and the bastard had ignored him; the fucker is doing this to piss him off, he’s sure of it. “Who fucking asked?”
“Kakyoin Noriaki,” the other boy says, bowing with a flourish and ignoring Jotaro once again. God he wants to knock his front teeth out. “Seventeen, blood type A, a Leo. I quite enjoy cherries, art philosophy, and taking long walks on the beach...”
This asshole is just asking for a fight. “And?”
“...and today, I shall kill you with my Stand!”
What.
Shimmering into existence like a mirage, a green and humanoid thing manifests at Asshole’s side.
What.
The green thing’s legs unravel into long, rope-like tentacles. The limbs coil for a second, then lurch towards Jotaro -- passing straight through the bars. Jotaro leaps to the side but it’s not enough. The tentacles catch him easily, coiling around his torso and arms before starting to choke him out.
What the everloving fuck is going on.
Whatever, figure that out later. Stop strangling first. Jotaro claws at the strands around his neck and tries to pry them away, but there’s so many of them -- where the fuck are they coming from? -- and he’s starting to grow lightheaded. He kicks for purchase, but without any point of contact with the ground, he has no leverage. Shit. At this rate, he’s gonna--
“Is this really it?” Asshole says, sounding disappointed. “For someone with such fearsome mythos surrounding the family, I thought it would be more… challenging… than this.”
--beat this guy to a goddamn pulp.
Hey, evil spirit. You there? It’s time to make yourself worth all the trouble you’ve put me through.
And, as if it had simply been waiting for his call the whole time, the evil spirit bursts out of him, ripping the tentacles holding him to shreds.
Asshole flinches back, fingers bleeding. So he felt that, did he? That’s what you get. Jotaro bares his teeth in what might be a snarl, or maybe a grin. Time to get a little payback. As if it hears his thoughts, the evil spirit surges forward -- but it stops, a scant two meters away from him, too far to reach the other boy. Jotaro can feel it, some strange strain between them, like a leash. The evil spirit can move further away, but if it does, it won’t be good.
“It looks like yours is a close-range type,” Asshole observes. “You misjudged your range quite badly, didn’t you…? The advantage is mine.”
The green thing twists its hands, and a jet of green crystals erupts and nails the evil spirit directly in the chest. Jotaro’s vision goes white. His feet lift off the ground, he cracks against the back wall and crumples to the ground, banging his knee in the process. Shit. Shouldn’t have been so careless.
“My Emerald Splash will keep you at bay. If you cannot get close to me, you cannot deal any meaningful damage. And if you cannot get close to me, you will die.” Asshole looks clinically down at him from his fucking high horse. “Scurrying around like a rat trapped in a cage… well. A fitting way for one of my master’s enemies to die, I suppose.”
Emerald Splash… is that the name of the attack? Yeah, Jotaro can’t say the guy’s wrong; between the weird tentacle things and that cannon-like attack, it’ll be a pretty hard combo for Jotaro to beat. But still…
“...Haha.”
“Hm?”
“Haha… hahahahaha--.”
The laugh bubbles up in his chest, wells up before he can suppress it. And he doesn’t want to suppress it this time; he doesn’t. This time, there’s no reason to. After all… the one standing before him has an evil spirit too.
“You know… Kakyoin. I’ve had a really bad week.”
He pulls himself to his feet. Smiling. His evil spirit hovering at his side.
“I’ve been stewing in this awful jail cell this whole time, trying to keep myself nice and well-behaved so nothing would go to pieces. Trying to figure out what to do.”
Kakyoin studies him. “And? Are you sharing some revelation which you are certain will save you? Don’t bother.”
Jotaro ignores him. His evil spirit stomps the ground, and the cement cracks into rubble under its feet. It picks up two fist-sized pieces, hefts it in its hands. “I’ve been trying to hold back so nothing bad would happen… but it’s happening. And I’ve been careful so no one could get hurt… but you aren’t quite hurt. So.”
His evil spirit hurls the two cement pieces towards Kakyoin. Kakyoin and his evil spirit dodge with ease, and the projectiles shatter against the opposite wall.
“You’re trying to kill me, and I have had a very bad week. So the way I see it…”
“You missed,” Kakyoin says.
“...this is the best form of stress relief I could’ve hoped for.”
Jotaro holds up his cigarette lighter and flicks it to life. Kakyoin looks at it uncomprehendingly, before understanding dawns in his eyes. He flings his arm out. “Hierophant Green--!”
The green thing moves towards Jotaro again, but it’s too late. Jotaro grins. His evil spirit flicks the lighter through the bars, right past Kakyoin’s face.
The gas hissing out of the broken gas main in the wall explodes.
--
Yeah. This is going to be good.
--
Jotaro’s evil spirit shields him from the majority of the explosion, but he’s still knocked to the ground and coughing up dust at the end of it. As he waits for the dust to clear, he takes a good look at the evil spirit for the first time.
Purple is his first impression. Then the mane of waving black hair, then the golden headband and shoulder pads and accents on its gloves and boots. Though its face is strangely angular, Jotaro feels a dizzying sense of familiarity when he looks at it, as if he’s staring at his own face. Its eyes are the same color as his own.
“I’d say it’s nice to finally meet you, but I’d be lying,” Jotaro says. “Still. You helped me out, so.”
The thank-you gets stuck on the way up. He clears his throat and says instead, “My name. It’s Kujo Jotaro.”
The evil spirit only watches, so Jotaro says, “You got a name too?”
It only looks at him expectantly, as if he should already know the answer. And he feels like he should know, too… Good grief. The weirdness of the last five minutes has already started rotting his brain. He snorts and shakes his head.
“Fine. Tell me later. For now we’ve got this asshole to deal with. I don’t know what your deal is, but I know you’re acting on what I want, and I’ve been doing my best to hold you back.” He’s silent for a moment. “Well, not this time. We’re going to town on this guy. Got it?”
Its lips split into a wide, eager grin, something hungry and wild that makes him want to pull away and at the same time is more familiar than his own name.
“Good. I look forward to working with you. Let’s go.”
And for the first time in nine days, Jotaro steps out of his cage.
--
Asshole isn’t there when he steps out. There is, however, a trail of blood leading out the hall.
Jotaro follows it out to the open lobby of the police station, where he is promptly confronted by a slightly bloody police officer asking him what the hell he’s doing.
“Thought it was time I got going,” Jotaro says glibly.
The police officer does not take this very well, which is unreasonable in Jotaro’s opinion since they were making such a big ruckus a few days ago about how he needed to get out of their hair already. Neither apparently, however, do his buddies, because they all try to beat him to death with their batons.
Cons of the experience: Jotaro has accidentally broken some people’s bones again.
Pros: He doesn’t feel too bad about it. He has learned a bit more about his evil spirit’s strength. Also, he has discovered that Kakyoin can possess and puppet around people’s meatsuits. Neat.
Frankly it is quite unfair that Kakyoin can not only turn people into his zombie minions, but he can use their wellbeing as hostages against Jotaro too. To rectify the playing field, Jotaro gets his evil spirit to tear off a bunch of the green thing’s tentacles before pulling them out of the police officers’ bodies. Once un-possessed, they usually faint, which lets Jotaro conveniently pile their bodies to the side and chase after Kakyoin. He’ll worry about calling an ambulance or whatever later.
There’s a scuffle. Jotaro chases Kakyoin to the next floor, and Kakyoin keeps trying to bait him into different traps. However, it turns out that Jotaro’s evil spirit is absurdly strong, and as long as Jotaro keeps a sharp eye out, it can deflect Emerald Splash, it can rip apart the green thing’s tentacles, and -- he’s pretty sure -- defeat the green thing with ease. The only problem is catching the little bastard.
They break through the locked door to the roof of the station. The fire alarm starts going off. “Perhaps I have underestimated you, Kujo Jotaro,” says Kakyoin.
How does he know his name. Jotaro shouldn’t be surprised, actually. Presumably Kakyoin has an actual reason for wanting to kill Jotaro in particular, although Jotaro can’t remember doing anything that warrants murdering lately. Whatever. Who is he to question the opportunity to take out his misplaced aggression when it appears in front of him. “You have been much more fun than I expected.” Fun to chase around, that is. It’s going to feel so good once Jotaro finally starts whaling on him.
Kakyoin’s eyes narrow. “This, however, is where our battle ends. You see… the moment you stepped onto the roof, you fell into my tr--”
Jotaro punches him.
Kakyoin tries to scramble away. “Wait, wh--”
Jotaro punches him again.
Kakyoin calls that weird name again -- Hierophant Green? -- and Jotaro feels his evil spirit wrestling with the green thing behind him. He feels the hits it takes, the way its movements are occasionally constricted by its many interweaving tentacles. But it doesn’t matter. It just does not matter, because it can’t stop his evil spirit, it can barely even slow it down, and Jotaro has gotten his hands onto Kakyoin’s coat and he has knocked Kakyoin down and now they are wrestling on the ground all fists and nails and teeth.
Kakyoin is stronger than he looks, and slippery like an eel. A fast and light striker, the kind that drives Jotaro crazy whenever he gets into schoolyard brawls. He fights dirty: tearing at Jotaro’s hair, aiming for his crotch, scratching at his eyes. He’s mean and vicious and he goes for the kill.
He’s exactly what Jotaro wants.
Jotaro’s lips have split into a grin. He can’t help it, not when it feels so good to get his blood pumping again, to finally stop worrying about all these awful problems and come back to something simple. There’s an asshole in front of him that needs some beating and that’s all he has to do. No more complexity, no more bullshit, just this: the impact of each hit to his body and the cracking of his knuckles against another's bones.
“What are you smiling about, you bastard?” Kakyoin snarls. He twists Jotaro’s arm around in an attempt to push him to the ground. Jotaro moves with it, rolling over onto Kakyoin in the end. Kakyoin curses and Jotaro laughs, even as Kakyoin jabs him sharply in the side and tries to strangle him with his coat.
Someone who can fight back. Someone who can take what he dishes out. Someone with whom he can finally cut loose.
“You’re not even taking me seriously!” Kakyoin is shouting, “You could end this any time by just taking out my Stand but you’re not -- don’t fuck with me!” He goes for the crotch again, and Jotaro is forced to block awkwardly with one of his thighs, unbalancing him just enough for Kakyoin to try and push him off again. They wrestle on the ground, Kakyoin still occasionally shouting, Jotaro occasionally coughing up from the force of the blows. And Jotaro thinks, he doesn’t know what Kakyoin is talking about really, but there’s one thing that’s gotten through to him. In between punches and kicks, he manages to pin Kakyoin down one more time. Kakyoin’s chest heaves under him. His eyes are filled with fire. His skin is slick with sweat.
“Just what about this,” says Jotaro, “isn’t taking you seriously?”
Kakyoin headbutts him in the face.
“I told you don’t fuck with me!” he says, but Jotaro can barely hear him over the buzzing in his brain. His nose hurts. There’s something wet dripping down his face. There’s the taste of copper in his mouth. And Jotaro has been so tired these past few days, strung up tight as a wire and so fucking paranoid that he might break something that can’t be fixed. Twenty four fucking seven walking a tightrope, ever vigilant and holding himself back, can’t have a single misstep, but this is -- this is perfect. This is everything. For the first time in days -- it’s okay. Everything is okay.
Kakyoin has stopped talking. He’s giving him a strange look, a dawning one of realization and understanding and just the tiniest hint of horror. Horrified of what, Jotaro doesn’t know, because there’s nothing to be horrified of. Nothing to be scared of. No reason to hold back, not anymore.
There’s nothing wrong with hitting something that can hit back.
Jotaro grins. He laughs. He hits Kakyoin. He hits him again. He hits him again. And again, and again, and again and again and again and--
--and Kakyoin’s polite and haughty demeanor is coming apart at the seams, tearing down with each blow to his face and gut, with each bloody scratch they leave on each others’ bodies, with every twist and grapple and every scrape against the ground. Kakyoin snarls. He howls. And Jotaro is smiling; he can feel it, that rictus of a thing, he can feel the wild laughter spilling out of him like loose change, he can feel the way something crucial has come tearing down and unhinged and just so slightly wrong inside him. It feels good. It feels so good to cut loose and stop worrying all the time. It feels so, so good to be free, and he wants to keep going, he wants more conflict, he wants more blood, he wants to fight and clash and tear it all apart, he wants more--
Kakyoin coughs and spits blood. His expression is ugly. His red hair is a mess. Jotaro’s heart is pounding, he feels euphoric, he feels so alive with the way Kakyoin is falling apart under his hands. “You’re just a wild beast,” Kakyoin sneers, voice buzzing beyond the roar in Jotaro’s ears. “Nothing but raw power. Do you think your victory against me means anything?”
Jotaro laughs wildly. He can’t help it. It’s so funny. “Victory?” Is this victory? The idea makes him want to howl with laughter, it makes him want to go even more insane. Jotaro is here now because he’s finally gone crazy. He’s finally given in to the evil spirit, fallen to the very dark impulses he was trying this whole time to suppress. He is so far down the deep end that there is no saving him. What about that is victory? Isn’t it the funniest fucking thing in the world?
Kakyoin’s expression twists hatefully. “I may have failed my mission for Dio-sama,” he spits, “but you won’t win against him! Dio-sama surely will not let an enemy like you escape alive!”
It bursts out of him before he’s even realized it. Jotaro laughs, and he laughs. His fist pulls back. “Who the fuck is Dio?”
Kakyoin’s eyes widen. His mouth parts; a question forms on his tongue--
Jotaro’s fist slams down.
--
It’s quiet.
...
Huh.
--
Kakyoin is bloody and unconscious. Jotaro is still on top of him, clutching his coat. The fire alarm is still sounding and the sound of sirens is approaching.
He should get up and go home. He should go back into the jail cell, lock himself in even better this time. He should turn Kakyoin over to the police. He should do literally anything other than what he is about to do.
Kakyoin’s last surprised expression flashes through his head again, and he clenches his hands.
Then he tosses Kakyoin over his shoulder and limps back down to the first floor. Time to get going.
He collects his blanket before he goes.
--
Jotaro goes to a McDonald’s and orders two large burgers and a cherry-flavored smoothie.
When the person working the cash register hesitantly tells him his total, Jotaro narrows his eyes and stares him down. The worker looks at Jotaro, looks at Kakyoin’s unconscious body, looks at the blood covering them both, and tells him that it will be on the house.
Satisfied, Jotaro props Kakyoin up in one of the booths at the window and sits across from him and waits for him to wake up.
He’s halfway through his burger when Kakyoin groans and opens his eyes. “Wha…”
Jotaro noisily slurps the smoothie through the straw. Kakyoin looks over and straightens up. “You--!”
It would be a huge pain if he made a big fuss here, so Jotaro takes the smoothie and sticks the straw in Kakyoin’s mouth.
“It’s cherry,” he says.
Kakyoin stares at him. Jotaro doesn’t change his expression. Kakyoin hesitantly slurps a bit from the straw.
“Don’t just stare at me all day. Take it,” Jotaro says, annoyed.
Kakyoin takes the smoothie.
Jotaro finishes his burger. Then he starts eating the second one.
Kakyoin looks at it hungrily. And maybe Kakyoin was trying to kill him like ten minutes ago, but he looks like a really beat up scarecrow right now and it’s sort of pathetic and makes Jotaro feel kinda sorry for him. Jotaro gives him half of the second burger.
Jotaro’s evil spirit sits next to him and methodically turns a paper cup and a few napkins into a work of paper silhouette art.
“...So,” says Kakyoin.
Jotaro takes another bite of his burger. He looks at Kakyoin.
“...Why didn’t you kill me?”
The expression you made at the end, Jotaro thinks. Also, what does Kakyoin think he is, some kind of teenage murder assassin? Jotaro’s an asshole but he’s not a killer. Not yet.
“Didn’t feel like it,” is all he says.
“Also, I wanted an explanation,” he adds.
A look of understanding appears on Kakyoin’s face.
“I thought something was strange,” he says thoughtfully. Yeah, no shit, like the fact that they both had evil spirits and they were trying to kill each other? “Was this your first Stand battle?”
“What’s a Stand,” says Jotaro.
Kakyoin stares at Jotaro. Jotaro stares back. “I see,” says Kakyoin. “The case is worse than I thought.”
--
Kakyoin insists that they’re not evil spirits, they’re Stands. Which is a stupid name in Jotaro’s opinion, but whatever, okay.
Kakyoin also insists that Jotaro is the sworn enemy of some guy named Dio which was why Kakyoin came to kill him, but since Jotaro is new to all this, then he’s quite sure that the misunderstanding can be resolved. Jotaro has no opinion on this because he has never met Dio in his life, although he personally thinks that resolving a misunderstanding with someone who solves his problems via sending 17-year-old assassins is not going to be very easy.
But what the hell, who is Jotaro to talk. He just “solved” his problems by beating the shit out of Kakyoin. And by “solved” he means he’s gone off the deep end and joined forces with his evil spirit, which is bad probably, and means that going home and being around Mom is an even worse idea than it was before. Jotaro went into that jail cell hoping to get rid of the evil spirit and now he’s in cahoots with the evil spirit. That’s like the opposite of progress.
The easy way to solve this would be to stop being in cahoots with the evil spirit, but first of all, beating Kakyoin to a bloody pulp felt really fucking good, and second of all, locking himself away felt really really fucking bad. Jotaro really does not want to go back into the jail cell. It was awful. It was boring. This is probably a sign that his pact with the evil spirit has already swayed him to being even more evil. Or maybe it’s just his latent evil being drawn to the surface or something. If an evil spirit attaches itself to you, you must be pretty evil, right? Granted, Jotaro’s sample size is very small, but Jotaro thinks he has gone a bit crazy if not outright evil, and Kakyoin is definitely super evil.
The point is, Jotaro has made the opposite of progress and he does not want the evil spirit around. As if sensing his thoughts, the evil spirit turns to look at him. Its expression doesn’t change, but its eyes sparkle sadly. Like a puppy.
Damn, it’s good. Jotaro feels bad. He looks away and back at Kakyoin.
“You know a lot about evil spirits?” he says.
“Stands. And yes, I know a good amount. I’ve had mine my whole life.”
Kakyoin must have been really evil to get his evil spirit so young. Jotaro is kind of impressed. “You know how to get rid of them?”
Jotaro’s evil spirit looks at him sadly. Jotaro ignores it.
Kakyoin looks shocked and a little bit offended. “Why would you want to get rid of your Stand? It’s a part of who you are!”
Should’ve expected that answer from someone who’s evil and clearly still has his evil spirit. Jotaro’s disappointed in himself. “Well, you know anyone who knows?”
Kakyoin studies him for a moment, then smiles.
“You know, Jojo, you’re not so bad.”
Who the fuck is he calling Jojo. Also what the hell brought that up?
“So I’m sure that Dio-sama would accept you, if we go visit him. I’m sure he can answer all your questions.”
“Dio?” Kakyoin nods and smiles. “As in the one who sent you to kill me?” Kakyoin nods and smiles again.
Is he fucking with him?
...Oh, what the hell. This is the best lead he’s had this whole time. If Dio has the answers, great. If Dio doesn’t want to help him, he’ll just beat the answers out of him. And if Dio doesn’t have answers, Jotaro will beat him up anyways because the guy sent an assassin after him and that’s obviously something that any sensible person wouldn’t leave as a loose end.
Jotaro is starting to think that perhaps he solves too many of his problems by beating things up. Maybe that’s why he has an evil spirit. Too much joy in going to town on assholes like the guy in front of him. That, however, is something to think about for another day. There is absolutely no need to reflect on that train of thought at all, nope, no need at all.
“Sure, Kakyoin.” At this point does it even matter? Does it really matter at all. “Take me to your leader.”
Kakyoin perks up. “I’d be delighted to, Jojo. I’m sure Dio-sama will be surprised and delighted as well.”
Oh he’ll be surprised all right when Jotaro clocks him across the jaw. Tactfully, Jotaro keeps that thought to himself. “Yeah, whatever. I’m going to finish eating first.”
They finish their burgers. Jotaro makes Kakyoin put all the recyclable items into the recycling bin and clean up their booth spic’n’span before they leave. Jotaro’s evil spirit presents him with the finished paper cup art piece: a silhouette cutout of Jotaro and the evil spirit smiling and holding hands, with what is presumably Kakyoin’s evil spirit being super dead in the background. The attention to detail is very nice. Jotaro feels a little bit touched. Maybe he should stop being so mean to the evil spirit while it’s here, even if it is evil.
He tucks Mom’s blanket under one arm and holds the cup in his hand and strolls out into the street. “So where to, Kakyoin? How much is the taxi fare?”
“Oh, we won’t be taking a taxi. We’ll carjack,” says Kakyoin casually.
Huh?
“Also, we’ll be taking an airplane at some point.”
No, wait.
“Because Dio-sama is in Egypt.”
What?
Chapter 2: kakyoin noriaki's no good, very bad date
Summary:
“After all, since we’ll be traveling together, wouldn’t it be nice to get to know each other?” Kakyoin smiles. “You’re familiar with the area, aren’t you? Which restaurant would you recommend?”
If Jotaro doesn’t leave now, he’s going to end up punching Kakyoin again. “I’ll be back at six. Don’t follow me.” Without waiting for a response, he walks out the door and slams it just loud enough to be aggressive.
“See you soon!” Kakyoin calls.
Jotaro can’t stand him.
Jotaro runs some errands, spends some time with Kakyoin, and has yet another fight. Meanwhile, Holly Kujo takes action on her own.
Notes:
you know how jotaro just made up the star finger technique on the fly. the idea that he can just make up techniques sometimes is unbelievably funny to me. anyways im extrapolating on that
personally also believe that the reason no one was woken up by that huge ruckus on the plane during the fight with tower of gray, is ‘cause the user just put everyone to sleep or something by like, putting knockout drugs in the peanut snacks or something. i dont really care. i am just here for the funnies. don't think too hard about this.
also here's some art for the first chapter
chapter warnings: canon typical amounts of thrashing, brief warning for emetophobia i guess
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Kakyoin, the asshole, doesn’t even book a flight to Egypt. He books a flight to China. Because he wants to sightsee.
“Am I a joke to you?” Jotaro says.
Kakyoin looks puzzled. “Have you never wanted to see the Forbidden Palace?”
It’s almost worse, Jotaro thinks, that Kakyoin actually means it. Kakyoin really literally actually wants to go on a roadtrip vacation to tour and sightsee with the guy he tried to assassinate and who then proceeded to beat him unconscious.
What the fuck is wrong with this guy.
“Ora,” says Jotaro’s evil spirit.
Right, he’s evil. Stupid question. Jotaro suppresses the urge to rub at his face. “How long are we staying.”
Kakyoin perks up and pulls out an entire tourist handbook of China -- where the fuck did he get that? Wait, was this asshole planning on sightseeing in China after murdering him? -- and gets his evil spirit to unroll a huge map with a flourish. “I’ve planned an itinerary for us already! Our flight tomorrow is at 10 a.m., so we’ll need to leave the hotel by 9; I’ve also booked us a hotel in Beijing for when we arrive. While we’re there, we’ll go to the Forbidden Palace and the Great Wall, and of course, the Summer Palace. Then we’ll sail down to Shanghai, visit the Suzhou gardens, and boat down the Yangtze River to…”
Jotaro hates him. “Great. With what money.”
Kakyoin blinks. “With Dio-sama’s, of course.”
“He gave you money to go on an entire fucking vacation?”
“Well…” Kakyoin’s eyes shift to the side.
Jotaro stares. “Did you steal his money to go on vacation?”
“It’s not all his,” Kakyoin says primly, “and in any case, I won’t kill someone for just anything. I deserve compensation.”
What is wrong with him. “You didn’t even manage to kill me.”
“Small details.”
“Good grief,” Jotaro mutters, touching his hand to his hat brim. He doesn’t get headaches, but if he did, this conversation would give him one. “I’m going out.”
“I haven’t finished telling you our itinerary yet,” says Kakyoin with a frown, crossing his arms and studying Jotaro. Kakyoin’s evil spirit tilts its head and waves the map enticingly with the tentacles, like that’s supposed to change anything.
“I don’t care. Surprise me.”
“...Well, if you’re sure,” says Kakyoin. “You are coming back for dinner though, aren’t you?”
What? Why the hell would he.
“After all, since we’ll be traveling together, wouldn’t it be nice to get to know each other?” Kakyoin smiles. “You’re familiar with the area, aren’t you? Which restaurant would you recommend?”
If Jotaro doesn’t leave now, he’s going to end up punching Kakyoin again. “I’ll be back at six. Don’t follow me.” Without waiting for a response, he walks out the door and slams it just loud enough to be aggressive.
“See you soon!” Kakyoin calls.
Jotaro can’t stand him.
His evil spirit emerges and shatters the lamp in the hallway.
“Don’t do that,” Jotaro says. The evil spirit turns its puppy eyes at him again, and he sighs. “At least aim at the right target next time.”
He walks away without saying thank-you and feels a bit bad, especially since the evil spirit seemed like it was only trying to help him punch things. Still, it’s an evil spirit. It destroys things. Jotaro shouldn’t be encouraging it to come out at all.
This day is really getting to him.
Jotaro walks out the hotel lobby, pretending the hotel clerk didn’t see him and Kakyoin check in an hour ago completely covered in blood, and also pretending the hotel clerk isn’t studiously avoiding his gaze. He’s already showered and washed off his coat, what else does she want? He can’t exactly cover up all the scratches and bruises he got while pounding Kakyoin into the ground. It’s damn annoying. He walks down the street, past the car that Kakyoin hotwired, and steals the nearest nice-looking motorcycle.
He’ll return it when it’s done. Whatever.
Jotaro’s not much for letter writing, so it takes a little bit of asking around to figure out where the post office is. For some reason pedestrians everywhere are avoiding him. Can’t imagine why. Takes a while to snag someone who’s willing to point him in the right direction, and it seems it’s more about wanting to get away from him as soon as possible than anything else.
Good senses on these people. Now if only they could give a bit of that sense to his mom.
He takes the motorcycle down to the post office. Takes a bit of asking around to get some free stationary and some stamps, too, but he manages in the end. He sits at one of the benches and tries to think of what to write.
…
Damn it. He wasn’t meant for reassuring others. Wasn’t meant for anything other than violence, really; no wonder he has an evil spirit now. There’s no use in thinking too deeply about what to say, is there. He’ll fail to help in the end anyways.
He has to try, though. If nothing else, he has to try. He puts the pen to paper and writes.
Mom,
I’m fine. Found a lead on the evil spirit. Be back soon.
Don’t look for me.
Jotaro
… He has nothing else he knows how to say.
He’d tell her not to worry, but she’ll worry anyways. There’s nothing he can do. Makes him feel like the most useless son in the world. Posting a letter before he goes is nothing more than a self-serving attempt at assuaging his guilt. He folds up the letter and seals it in an envelope with a stamp, and he hands it off to the postal worker and pays for next-day delivery before he goes.
If he was a better son, he’d at least call Mom from a payphone. No doubt she’s heard of whatever that whole clusterfuck at the station was already. She’s probably out of her mind with worry. But if he calls her, then she might…
…
He doesn’t know how to talk to her, not anymore. He’s a coward but this is the best he knows how to do.
Jotaro’s evil spirit manifests at his side, looking around as if scouting for enemies, and then it turns to look at Jotaro himself. Its expression hasn’t changed, but somehow, it still seems startled.
“What,” says Jotaro. “Never seen anyone send a letter before?”
It drifts closer, putting its face uncomfortably close to Jotaro’s. Christ, why is this thing so tall. He refuses to back down on principle, though, so he stands his ground and only lifts his chin and stares challengingly at the evil spirit’s eyes.
It tilts its head. Then it wraps its arms around Jotaro in a hug.
What the fuck? Jotaro thinks.
I should move away, he thinks.
It’s gentle, he thinks, and even though he knows he should draw away, his feet are paralyzed. He can’t bring himself to move.
And before Jotaro can make himself push it away, the evil spirit lets go and disappears, leaving Jotaro feeling strangely unsettled and strangely bereft. Just… what was that about? Why would it try and comfort him? What did Jotaro do?
Maybe it’s a -- a ploy of some sort, to try and make Jotaro let down his guard. Accept the evil spirit even more than he already has. What if Jotaro gets used to it, and becomes as comfortable with it as Kakyoin is with his. Will he become okay with the violence? The destruction?
No, there’s no way Jotaro can accept it. Right? He can’t. And there's no way he can accept the comfort it tried to give, either.
Once again, Jotaro feels completely alone, but it’s not a new feeling. He’s used to it. He pats for a cigarette and feels for a lighter before he remembers that his lighter is lying in the ruins of a half-exploded jail cell, and blows out a breath of air. Can’t even have this, huh.
Whatever. Mom’s always nagging him to stop smoking, anyways, he can take a break while he’s on his way to beat some answers out of Dio and some sense into him. She doesn’t have to know.
He kicks his stolen motorcycle into gear and drives off, and until it’s time to head back to the hotel, he sits by the sea and watches the waves crashing against the shore.
--
Jotaro pulls up to the hotel half an hour late just to piss Kakyoin off. He returns the motorcycle to its original parking spot, same condition as before if missing a bit of gas, and goes to the hotel room.
Kakyoin pulls open the door right before he touches the doorknob and beams. Asshole. “Jojo, there you are! I almost thought you’d decided to ditch our appointment together.”
“Still can,” Jotaro mutters. Is it just him, or does Kakyoin smell faintly floral? Was his skin always this shiny? Hm. Much to never think about again. He jerks his head towards the exit. “Let’s go.”
“Such a gentleman,” Kakyoin says with a faint but fox-like smile. Yeah, Jotaro remembers why his first feeling upon laying eyes on Kakyoin was wanting to knock out his teeth. He turns and strides down the hall; Kakyoin’s footsteps follow a moment later. “Where are we going?”
“Sasaki’s.”
“And you’ve even picked out the perfect date location! Oh, my delicate maiden heart.”
Jotaro’s veins throb. “Cut it out. You’re damn annoying.” He was the one who wanted to go and eat together in the first place. Jotaro is this close to turning around and going back to their hotel room. On second thought, it’s a shared room, so he wouldn’t even get any peace. Curse Kakyoin and his wily ways.
“Hah, alright. I didn’t know it was such a sensitive topic. Have you never been on a date before?”
Jotaro feels another surge of annoyance, and then resignation as his evil spirit manifests and crushes another of the hallway lights. Kakyoin turns to stare at him. Jotaro makes sure to keep his expression exactly the same. If he refuses to acknowledge anything happened with enough force, no one will say anything. He knows this from practice.
“What has that poor lamp ever done to you?” Kakyoin says with a tsk.
Jotaro feels another burst of annoyance.
Jotaro’s evil spirit puts a hole in the wall.
Jotaro, in his infinite wisdom, decides to walk away before Kakyoin says anything again.
This is gonna be a long night.
--
Kakyoin tries to take their hijacked car, but Jotaro ignores him and goes for the same motorcycle as before. He fiddles with it until it comes to life, climbs on, and looks over. “What are you waiting for? Get on.”
He waits for some kind of protest, but Kakyoin just blinks at him, and then he smiles that stupid foxy smile of his again. He saunters over and, after giving the motorcycle a onceover, slides onto the seat behind Jotaro. A moment later, he leans against Jotaro’s back and wraps his arms around him, his warm breath tickling against his ear. “Nice ride, Jojo.”
This was a mistake. Jotaro forgot that taking the motorcycle would involve touching. Horrible. He grunts a response and backs out of the parking space; gotta get this over with as soon as possible.
“Hey! What’re you doing?!”
Driving away, obviously. Jotaro glances over to see a young man running up to them, fury etched in his face. The fury promptly disintegrates into shock, fear, and just a hint of hatred upon seeing Jotaro’s face. “You--?!”
Ah. Jotaro remembers beating up this jackass. He glares. “You wanna fucking go again?”
Jackass grits his teeth. “I paid good money for that…!”
“Shut up. I’m just borrowing it for a bit. Come back tomorrow.” With that, he pulls away from the curb, cutting in front of oncoming traffic and swerving around the corner.
Great. Thinking about the local gangs is putting him in a bad mood. Maybe he won’t return the motorcycle after all; would serve Jackass right. The thought cheers him up and is almost enough to distract him from Kakyoin’s presence at his back.
“Someone you know?” Kakyoin says in his ear, sounding annoyingly amused. Jotaro shrugs. “You seem to have left quite an impression.”
“I don’t remember the name of every idiot who’s picked a fight with me.”
Kakyoin laughs. “Should I be flattered that you know mine, then?”
Jotaro has barely enough time to process his next burst of irritation before he hears Kakyoin yelp and feels a bunch of limbs grab onto his arms. “Hey!”
Jotaro glances back. His evil spirit has grabbed Kakyoin by the collar of his gakuran and is in the middle of trying to drop him off the motorcycle. Kakyoin’s evil spirit has taken exception and has grabbed onto Jotaro and various parts of the motorcycle with its tentacles.
Jotaro turns back towards the road and considers letting Kakyoin stay like that for the rest of the ride, but Mom would be really disappointed in him if she knew about it, or something. I must care about other people, he grudgingly reminds himself, and he wills his evil spirit to pull Kakyoin back onto the motorcycle seat.
Kakyoin immediately clings to him, like Jotaro’s evil spirit didn’t just metaphorically indicate a massive FUCK OFF in huge neon letters overhead.
“Well, that was fun,” says Kakyoin.
“Stop talking to me,” says Jotaro.
Caring about other people is such a pain.
--
“...This restaurant looks quite high-class,” says Kakyoin.
Jotaro grunts.
“And also remarkably empty.”
Okay? What is he getting at.
“Jojo, is this a front for the yakuza?”
Is that it? “Obviously.”
Kakyoin gives him a flat look. What, has he never eaten at a front before. They serve the best-tasting food; where else would Jotaro go. Kakyoin looks very dubious, though, so Jotaro solves the conundrum the way he does with most problems he can’t punch away: he ignores it. He walks through the door without waiting.
“Table for two,” he tells the server at the door. The server, who pales upon seeing his face, quickly ushers him to his favorite table in the restaurant: the rickety little one in the corner where he can sit with his back to the wall and see all the exits. Good. Jotaro sits down and leans back, crossing one leg over the other, and watches Kakyoin sit down and pass a judgmental look at his surroundings.
The server comes up and nervously hands them two menus before scuttling away. Kakyoin picks one up and starts flipping through it, but Jotaro doesn’t move to take his. He knows what he likes and he doesn’t have any plans to fix what isn’t broken.
“This is an interesting selection,” Kakyoin says. “A bit unusual… it seems to have adhered strictly to the cuisine of the original country?”
Be nice, Jotaro. Answer the question. “The owner lived in the Szechuan province for a bit. Got used to the food, didn’t want to go back.”
“Hmm.” Kakyoin turns his attention back to the menu; long, slender fingers parsing through the pages. “Any recommendations?”
Jotaro only eats the same dishes here, and Kakyoin just tried to kill him this morning, so. “No.”
Kakyoin cracks a smile. “I do like trying new experiences. Then, let’s see…”
When the server takes their orders, Kakyoin asks for a couple dishes that Jotaro has never heard of before. He looks way too excited to try new and unknown foods. Before the server can say anything to Jotaro himself, he says, “The usual.” Then he stares at the server until he apologizes and all but flees from the table.
“You seem to have quite a reputation,” says Kakyoin.
He wouldn’t have a reputation if these jackasses had had the decency to leave him alone in the first place. He doesn’t even remember why he got into a fight with them; probably the same reason he had trouble with all the gangs at his school. It doesn’t really matter though. People pick a fight with him, he thrashes them until they don’t have a problem with him anymore. Simple and easy, unlike some things in his life.
Perhaps Kakyoin reads Jotaro’s worsening mood, because he looks at Jotaro’s expression and smirks. “Quite the bad boy, aren’t you?”
Will he stop trying to make conversation already? “Stop asking about me.”
“But I told you so much about myself, and I know so little about you.”
What, that whole tirade about how he’s a Leo and likes long walks on the beach? Get real. “You knew enough to track me down and try to kill me.” He may have bought Kakyoin a smoothie but he’s still pissed about that.
“Oh, but that was just to get to know you as a target. I don’t know anything about you as a person,” Kakyoin says innocently, and Jotaro entertains a brief fantasy of the satisfaction of starting a fight with Kakyoin again, right here right now.
“There’s nothing to know.”
“That’s not true of anyone.”
“Then it’s none of your business.”
“Don’t be so difficult. We’re about to become traveling buddies.”
Their staring contest -- hostile on Jotaro’s end, and aggressively friendly on Kakyoin’s -- is interrupted by the server bringing them appetizers.
“At least tell me your star sign,” Kakyoin says. He takes a bite, makes a weird face, and continues eating.
Is he okay. “...Aquarius.”
“And you’re seventeen, right? Same as me?” Jotaro nods. Kakyoin sighs. “Aw, you’re older. And here I was hoping I could have some fun. Blood type?”
“B.”
“Hobbies?”
“What is this, 20 questions?”
“Humor me.”
Jotaro does his best to convey “there is literally no reason for me to and I hope you spontaneously transform into a pillar of salt” through the force of his glare. Kakyoin rebuffs it through sheer refusal to acknowledge it is happening. Tch. To think Jotaro’s own technique would be turned against him so easily. “...Listening to the radio. Baseball, sumo, whatever.” He hesitates, and then, for a reason he doesn’t know, admits, “Jazz.”
“Jazz? I never would’ve guessed.”
Did he not notice the trashed keyboard and guitar collected in Jotaro’s jail cell? Poor observation. Although granted, keyboards and guitars can be used for many music genres. He tilts his head down to obscure his eyes, clenches his fists under the table. He doesn’t want to say more, but at the same time… “My father is a jazz musician. I grew up with it.”
Kakyoin hums with interest. “I’ve always been a more classical and rock person myself,” vastly contradictory taste, but maybe Kakyoin’s just weird like that, “but I know a fair amount of jazz. Have you heard of…?”
The conversation turns towards jazz musicians. And oddly enough, it is an actual conversation. He can’t remember the last time he really had one with someone, since he’s always trying to end them before they can start.
His lack of conversational skill or desire for socialization shows itself in his stilted responses, how Kakyoin sometimes has to fumble around for a proper response to keep things going. And normally Jotaro would just let the awkward pauses drag on until conversation died a miserable death and the other person slunk away with their tail between their legs, but. For whatever reason, this time, he tries.
Maybe because it’s been such a long time since he’s connected with someone his age. Or no, not that exactly; it’s just that he doesn’t let himself try to connect. But he’s already thrashed Kakyoin to a bloody pulp, and Kakyoin’s still here. And yes it’s only been like half a day since that happened, but it’s half a day longer than anyone else has cared to stick around after realizing what Jotaro really is at his core.
And Kakyoin isn’t… afraid of him, really. Not yet. He’ll see how long that lasts, but until then… well. Talking with Kakyoin when he isn’t being completely insufferable isn’t all bad.
Also, Kakyoin is evil, so if he gets hurt at the end of this, Jotaro doesn’t have to feel bad. That makes talking to him okay.
The food is good. The Szechuan boiled fish is as delicious as ever. Kakyoin seems to be enjoying his assortment of dishes, too. It’s good their money won’t be wasted.
“By the way, Jojo, are you going to eat any of that?” Kakyoin asks, pointing with his chopsticks at the untouched dish of honey walnut shrimp.
Jotaro hasn’t touched it because judging by the slight difference its smell, it seems the cooking staff have tried putting poison in his food again. “Not in the mood.”
“It’s bad to be wasteful,” Kakyoin tells him. “If you won’t eat it, I will.”
Jotaro watches in fascination as Kakyoin puts some on his plate and eats it. He chews. He swallows. He looks perfectly fine. “What a unique taste,” Kakyoin says, and takes another bite. Stay tuned next for the consequences. Jotaro is kind of looking forward to it.
You shouldn’t let your friends eat poison, Jotaro! he hears Mom scolding in his head.
Well first of all, he’s not his friend. And second of all, Jotaro has never died from the poison here, so it should be fine. Plus it serves Kakyoin right for trying to kill him and also for everything else.
Over the course of the dinner, Kakyoin seems to grow more unfocused and lightheaded, a couple times swaying and putting a hand to his forehead. “I think you gave me a concussion,” Kakyoin admits to Jotaro at one point.
“Not sorry,” says Jotaro.
Kakyoin, the weirdo, actually laughs at that. “I didn’t expect you to be.”
He passes out 5 minutes later on his noodle dish, which is pretty funny.
Less funny and more weird is that a number of other people in the restaurant are also swaying and passing out. Did the cooks fuck up with the poison or something? Or maybe it just happens that the yakuza have a grudge against every person eating in this restaurant right now.
Or maybe it’s another Dio assassin, but what are the chances? Either way, time to get out of here.
Of course that’s when he notices the extremely fucked up and out-of-place beetle flying through the door. Call him paranoid but that thing is not right.
His hunch is confirmed when the thing tries to attack his face and nearly tears out his tongue. He manages to stop it but only after it stabs through his evil spirit’s hand and cuts his lips also. Great. Is this another evil spirit? He’s had enough of them.
If only he had some kind of supernaturally strong net or something, he thinks as he dodges another series of attacks, knocks over another table, and tries to stop the beetle from killing the incapacitated bystanders in the room. Maybe he can just. Make something up. If Kakyoin can unspool his evil spirit like yarn why can’t Jotaro make up his own technique. He should get one too.
His spirit seems to sense his intention, and Jotaro gets a vague twinge of agreement from it. Good, they’re on the same page again. Let’s give this a try.
The next time the beetle comes back around, Jotaro lets it get a few hits on his evil spirit. “Hahaha!” the beetle cackles. “You’re no match for my speed! If you can’t catch me, then you’re dead! I’ll massacre everyone in this room!”
“Do it,” Jotaro says to his evil spirit.
His evil spirit grins. Its hair, which already had a tendency to wave around in an invisible current, comes to life and lunges for the beetle, spearing it from every which way.
“What?! Impossible…!” the beetle yells, before Jotaro’s evil spirit reaches out with its hand and crushes it in its palm.
One of the nearby customers, some old man who was lying face-down at the table, implodes rather suddenly in a gush of blood, and some of his limbs come off. That -- that's...
Gross. Well, that answers who the evil spirit’s user is, he supposes. Jotaro’s glad he’s dead. One less evil person in the world, which is good news for everyone and most importantly for him.
It sucks that he has a few new stab wounds, but whatever, he’s had practice bandaging himself up after a fight. The restaurant staff seems to have been knocked out too, so Jotaro rummages around behind the counter, retrieves some takeaway boxes and a bag, and packs away the unfinished dishes at his table.
Then, since he caused a mess here and he’s abandoning the restaurant staff to clean up some old man’s violently dismembered body, he digs out the wallet from the old man’s corpse and puts half the money on the table. He doesn’t usually pay here, but he doesn’t usually accidentally murder someone in here either. Hopefully they won’t complain about the bloodstains. They’d have no right to, anyways, ‘cause they’re yakuza. They have plenty of practice cleaning up bodies, probably. Jotaro shouldn’t give them too much credit. He keeps the rest of the money for himself.
“Oi, Kakyoin, wake up. We’re going back to the hotel.”
Kakyoin doesn’t stir. “Give me a break,” Jotaro mutters. He lifts Kakyoin up, and since he doesn’t want to get food sauce on his clothes, carefully wipes off Kakyoin’s face with a napkin. He carries Kakyoin under one arm and the leftover food with his other and walks out to the motorcycle.
The food gets dumped in the motorcycle trunk. Then since he can’t figure out what else to do with Kakyoin, he uses his green coat to tie him to his back. No one has to know. He makes a pit stop at the local convenience store, takes a first aid kit, and blatantly walks out without paying. The cashiers don’t do anything to stop him. Must be Kakyoin’s unconscious body and the stab wounds, again.
This is just a repeat of McDonald’s isn’t it. Jotaro decides not to contemplate this rapidly emerging pattern in his life. It’s got nothing to do with him.
When he walks into the hotel lobby, the clerk looks like she’s on the verge of calling the police. Jotaro chooses not to think about this once again and goes to his room. He tosses Kakyoin’s body on the bed and bandages himself up in the bathroom. The cut on his face has mostly stopped bleeding, which is nice, because bandages on the face are annoying as hell.
He goes to take a shower for the second time that day, but his eyes fall on the toilet, and he pauses.
Come to think of it, Kakyoin ate that poison, didn’t he? Maybe Jotaro should do something about that. He retrieves Kakyoin and brings him to the bathroom. Hm, this might be tricky.
With a mental call, Jotaro’s evil spirit appears by his side. Jotaro hands Kakyoin over. The evil spirit holds Kakyoin up at perfect punching height, over by the toilet.
Jotaro sizes Kakyoin up. Judging from past fights… yep, that spot should do the trick. He punches Kakyoin in the torso, very hard.
Kakyoin wakes up with a cough, and then he throws up. Between his efforts and those of Jotaro’s evil spirit, Kakyoin even manages to throw up mostly in the toilet and barely anywhere else.
Kakyoin coughs, wipes his mouth off with some toilet paper in reach, and glares. “What…?”
Nice throwing up technique. Beautiful arc. Jotaro gives him a thumbs up. His evil spirit does too.
For almost the first time since they first fought at that jail cell, Kakyoin’s expression darkens to a scowl. “You are explaining to me what just happened. Now.”
--
“You watched me eat poisoned shrimp and didn’t tell me?” Kakyoin yells.
Jotaro scowls. “I thought it would be fine.”
“Do you even know what kind of poison it is?!”
Will he stop nagging? “They try and poison me all the time and I’ve never died from it.” Would be bad for business if their front attracted attention ‘cause of a customer dying there, after all. And Kakyoin’s not the one who got into a fistfight with the yakuza while half-unconscious with poison. In fact, he got to skip this entire fight and Jotaro helped him throw up the poison afterwards. He doesn’t see why Kakyoin is complaining.
Kakyoin is staring at him.
“The poisoned stuff doesn’t even taste good,” Jotaro adds, because it’s Kakyoin’s own fault for eating something that is clearly disgusting.
Kakyoin stares at him some more. Jotaro waits. “You’re really not joking,” says Kakyoin.
Why would he be joking about this. He already joked around earlier by watching Kakyoin fuck himself over.
The other boy sighs. “I’m really starting to believe that you are a crazier bastard than me.”
That is not something Jotaro cares to hear from someone who’s super evil, but whatever. At least evil is intimidated by Jotaro too.
--
Since Kakyoin just threw up dinner, Jotaro lets him eat the rest of the leftovers.
Kakyoin looks into one of the boxes. “Isn’t this the poisoned dish?”
Jotaro checks. Looks like he packed it away without thinking. “Wanna give it another try?”
“No!”
Heh. One good thing came out of that whole thing after all.
--
At 9 the next morning, Jotaro and Kakyoin drive their stolen car to the airport. As they walk to their flight, Jotaro catches a glimpse of gray hair and a hat. He doesn’t stop, but he has an odd sense of familiarity, as if there’s something he should recognize. He doesn’t look back. An hour later, he and Kakyoin are well on their way to China, with Jotaro gazing out the window at the sea and Kakyoin dozing off on his shoulder.
At 9 that same morning, Joseph Joestar and his friend Avdol touch down in Japan. Holly Kujo picks them up at the airport. She greets her father with exuberance, but when Joseph asks about his grandson, all her worry comes back with a vengeance. Her son is no longer shutting himself in jail; he’s missing entirely after a mysterious attack on the police station just the day before.
Joseph explains Stands to Holly, and uses Hermit Purple to locate Jotaro. All he can see, though, is the dim interior of an airplane and a glimpse of a startled, angry glare on a young man’s face. It’s nowhere enough to identify where Jotaro is; they’ll have to wait until Jotaro lands.
(On the plane, Jotaro has the feeling that someone was watching him. He is tense and paranoid for the rest of flight, unable to sleep.)
Joseph, Holly, and Avdol investigate the incident at the Police Station. In all likely, this was a Stand attack, Avdol says. And Jotaro is the only one who went missing afterwards.
What is happening? Holly demands. Who is going after my son?
That day, Holly learns her family’s history.
That day, she also receives a letter in the mail. It’s crumpled and messy, but she would recognize that handwriting anywhere. She trembles reading it, weighed down by her worries and the revelations she’s received. ‘Don’t follow me’...? How can she not follow? Her Jotaro, her baby boy, all on his own, how can she leave him alone?
She lays in bed that night, assaulted again by the chills and fevers that have stalked her since Jotaro locked himself in jail. They have been worsening over the past few days, and she has the feeling she will fall completely ill soon.
But she can’t, not while Jotaro is still missing and gone, not while he still needs her. She has to find her son. She has to protect him. She has to make sure he knows he is not alone. And until then, she can’t fall ill, not while he needs her, she can’t, she can’t, she won’t--
When morning comes, Holly’s strength has returned. For the first time since it has appeared, the ghostly berry vines wrapped around her body respond to her will.
Jotaro is somewhere in China, Joseph informs her, showing her a spirit photograph. Most likely in the area of Beijing, Avdol says, from my limited knowledge of the language.
They depart the next day, determined to find Jotaro before it’s too late. However, they are accompanied by Joseph Joestar, and they forget to account for one thing: Joseph has an unfortunate destiny when it comes to airplanes.
One of Dio’s followers attacks. Avdol manages to defeat him and save their lives -- but it’s too late to save the airplane.
The plane crashes and burns.
Notes:
thank you to my good friends for reading over my fic and supporting me in this very silly endeavor <3
Chapter 3: jean-pierre polnareff's no good, very bad assassination attempt
Summary:
“I’m not letting you kill me.”
Kakyoin’s face screws up a little bit. “You’d rather it was him?”
Jotaro looks at the jackass and his weird hair and bald eyebrows and has to admit that Kakyoin has a point.
Jotaro learns a little about traveling with Kakyoin, meets another assassin, and senses something amiss.
Notes:
what? you didnt think it was that simple for kakyoin to subvert dios brainwashing did you?
chapter warnings: canon-typical assholery and some vaguely disturbing brainwashing-induced thought patterns
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Jotaro is in Beijing. Specifically he is sitting outside Chang Du Restaurant while Kakyoin chats with one of the waiters in passable Mandarin, and he is feeling very, very lost.
They’ve been here for a day and a half already. On the first day, they checked into their hotel, spent a day at the Forbidden Palace, walked around on the streets after dinner, and went back to the hotel. It was weird, walking around with someone just for the sake of walking around. Jotaro doesn’t really understand why Kakyoin insists he come along and see everything that he’s looking at; it’s not like Kakyoin needs Jotaro to be there in order to look at stuff. When he says so, though, Kakyoin purses his lips and gives him a pitying look that instantly gets his hackles up, enough to make Jotaro’s evil spirit show up, and although he manages not to break anything with his evil spirit this time it’s enough that he doesn’t ask again.
He still stands by his original sentiment. It is weird to be a tourist, just -- just drifting through the town without some kind of immediate purpose in mind. If it was up to him, he’d be on a flight directly to this Dio person’s place. Go in, beat him up, solve the whole assassins problem by beating him up some more, go home. Simple. Easy. Nothing like this--… well, it’s not aimless wandering, exactly, but it’s so unhurried that he finds himself constantly fighting the urge to pace like a caged animal.
That’s how he feels now, too. Waiting to order food with Kakyoin, like they’re friends or something. Which they’re not. They met like two days ago and Kakyoin has no reason to be this… Jotaro refuses to use the word “friendly” because nothing about Kakyoin inspires friendly feelings in him, but Kakyoin still acts like they should be buddy-buddy now and it’s really weirding him out. He just doesn’t understand what Kakyoin’s motive is. Beating people up makes problems go away but it also makes people go away; that’s common sense, right? But Kakyoin hasn’t gone away yet. That’s good because it lets Jotaro deal with the Dio problem, but it’s also bad because he can’t for the life of him decide whether or not Kakyoin is still a problem too.
“Relax, Jotaro,” Kakyoin says. “This is a vacation. You should be enjoying yourself.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“What? Jotaro? Your name?”
“I never said you could call me that.”
Kakyoin sighs, as if extremely put upon. “I thought you didn’t like me saying Jojo.”
He finally picked up on that, did he? Impressive given how much he’s been ignoring Jotaro’s opinions on things. “There’s other perfectly good options.”
“Like what? Kujo? That makes us sound so unfamiliar.”
“We are unfamiliar.”
“Don’t be like that. We’ve been through so much together.”
Jotaro glowers at him. Kakyoin smiles winsomely. Then he says, “Really though, Jojo, this trip won’t be fun at all if you insist on being so uptight all the time.”
Uptight -- he’s uptight? Jotaro can’t help but give him an incredulous look, because this is the first time that anyone has ever called him that before. “I’ve been responsible for three separate teachers leaving their jobs and I practically smoke a pack a day.” That sounds way too much like he’s trying to prove himself to Kakyoin, so he adds, “I have a reputation as a delinquent for a reason, what do you even mean?” Okay that didn’t help and now he also sounds confused. Great.
“I haven’t seen you smoke anything yet,” Kakyoin says. “And besides, you’re so scandalized when I pickpocket stupid tourists with my Stand.” He rolls his eyes. “You stole a motorcycle for our date, why is this so different?”
“It wasn’t a date,” says Jotaro. “And I returned the motorcycle anyways.”
“Sure.”
“It’s different,” Jotaro insists. “You can’t just -- just steal with your evil spirit. You have to do it yourself.”
“Why? Hierophant Green is a part of me.”
“It’s--” Jotaro has no idea how to explain why it bothers him so much. “It’s cheating. They can’t see your evil spirit. You don’t cheat unless the other person’s cheating too.”
“Aw, Jojo,” says Kakyoin. He leans forward a bit, eagerly, head resting on his hands. “You have an honor code! I had no idea you were such a gentleman. That’s so cute.”
“I am not--” Jotaro cuts himself off with a scowl. He’s not the best with his words and he’s definitely not going to win this conversation if he keeps going. “Shut up. If you steal something you should at least be up front about it.” It’s more respectful that way.
Kakyoin laughs at him and gives him this look, a little like he’s the heroine of one of those trashy romance novels Mom keeps on the back shelf and Kakyoin’s decided he’s got to have him, and a little like he’s the most fascinating specimen in a bug collection and Kakyoin just wants to watch him squirm helplessly on the pin and take him apart. Jotaro eyes him warily. He’s still trying to decide whether that look means that Kakyoin likes him or wants to kill him (maybe both, he wouldn’t be surprised if it was both) when Kakyoin says affectionately, “That’s such a you answer.”
“You’ve known me for two days.”
“It makes sense, though. Your Stand is very straightforward.”
Was that an insult. “What’s that got anything to do with me?”
Kakyoin starts arching an eyebrow at him, and then pauses. “Right, you don’t know anything about Stands. I forgot because you’re so good at controlling yours.” He’s what now? That doesn’t sound right. “Stands are a reflection of their user. You’re a very direct person, it makes sense that your Stand is too.”
Jotaro translates that in his head to “You are an overly violent brute with no sense of delicacy or subtlety.” He’s heard worse though, and also, that’s not exactly wrong. He drops the train of thought; no need to rehash something he already knows. What’s more important is what this implies about Kakyoin. That Kakyoin is some kind of control freak or master manipulator or something?
“Speaking of Stands,” Kakyoin says, “what’s the name of yours?”
Jotaro gives him a weird look. Why the hell would he name his evil spirit?
“You can’t call it your evil spirit forever,” Kakyoin says.
Yeah, well, he is willing to put that to the test.
“And I’d like to have a name to refer to it by,” Kakyoin objects, looking rather put out.
“Name it yourself then,” Jotaro says. “I don’t care.” He pauses, frowns. “Did you name your own evil spirit?”
“Stand. And I did! I named all his attacks too.”
He looks quite proud of this. Jotaro eyes him some more. “...Emerald splash?”
Kakyoin smiles. “It’s a good one, isn’t it? I have other ones too though. Like Marionette’s Jade and Titanite Snare.”
… Okay. “You didn’t use any of them during our fight.”
“You didn’t give me time to say their names,” Kakyoin sniffs.
Jotaro decides to stop spending his energy trying to question Kakyoin’s, well, everything. “Whatever. Do what you want.”
“Excellent! I promise you won’t regret it,” Kakyoin says, with a gleam in his eye that says yeah, he really will. “Hmm… Well, my Stand is named after a tarot card so I think yours should be too. What do you think of the Star?”
Jotaro remembers the star-shaped birthmark on the back of his neck. Weird coincidence. He shrugs.
“Perfect. Then, a color… How about Platinum? Star Platinum.” Kakyoin smiles his stupid foxy smile, eyes narrowing into the semblance of a cat’s satisfied gaze. “A tarot card and a color, just like Hierophant Green. Now we match.”
For some reason he seems disgustingly smug about this, and also. “Are you stupid? It’s not even platinum. It’s purple. ”
Kakyoin waves his hand nonchalantly. “Artistic liberty. Now--”
“The only metallic color on it is gold.”
“But Star Platinum sounds so much better than Star Gold.”
“Look,” Jotaro says, calling out his evil spirit and looking at Kakyoin emphatically as he points to all the gold embellishments on the evil spirit’s body.
“He doesn’t mind,” says Kakyoin. “Right, Star Platinum?”
“Ora,” the evil spirit says.
“You’re purple,” Jotaro tells it. “You don’t even have anything platinum colored on you, you can’t be called Star Platinum.”
“Ora,” the evil spirit says again.
Jotaro tries to stare it down, but it just gives him this -- this weirdly indulgent look, and then it pats Jotaro on the head as if trying to reassure him that it’s okay to be called by a totally nonsense name.
Before Jotaro can knock its arm away, it disappears off to -- to wherever evil spirits go whenever they’re not being here and evil and also not being called the right thing at all.
“Star Platinum it is,” Kakyoin says smugly, and Jotaro wants to smash him right in his perfectly stupid face. No, that’s way more energy than this asshole deserves. He’ll only dump a bowl of soup on him when it arrives.
Satisfied with that conclusion, he says, “I’m not letting you name any of my attacks.”
“But I thought you didn’t care if I named them,” says Kakyoin woefully, blinking large doe eyes at him, and Jotaro pushes down the desire to grab him by the neck and shake him around just a little.
“I changed my mind,” says Jotaro. “I’m naming them now. The first one is--” He blanks out a little, and scrambles around for something. “Star Punch. Which is when my evil spirit punches things a lot, very hard.”
“What? That sounds terrible!”
Jotaro allows the tiniest victorious smile flash across his lips. Yeah, that’s right, asshole, see how it feels. “It’s named Star Platinum and it punches things. Star Punch. It makes sense.”
“But it doesn’t sound cool or dramatic at all,” Kakyoin says, like it’s the worst sin he can think of. “At least call it Star Rush.”
“No,” says Jotaro. “And the new technique is going to be called -- Dark Spear. So there.”
Kakyoin blinks. “New technique?”
Oh. Right. Kakyoin was unconscious for that part. Jotaro takes a moment to consider how deeply inconveniencing it is for Kakyoin to get knocked out by poison, and then he considers refusing just to be petty and also because it’s his attack, and anyways if Kakyoin changes his mind and decides to kill him one day then it’ll serve him right to be caught off guard by a copy of his own technique.
Then he imagines the look on Kakyoin’s face if he shows him right now. No dice, really.
He calls out his evil spirit again and gives it a mental command; its waving mane of black hair splits into threads like snakes, or a thing alive, and it’s a simple flex of will to have one of the tendrils extend and spear the signpost above the restaurant door. There’s mild alarm from the people as a hole appears in the sign with a great resounding boom, but unable to see what caused it, they eventually quiet down to murmurs. Kakyoin’s expression shifts from raised eyebrows to sharp focus to recognition, and finally, a dawning outrage.
Jotaro can’t help but feel a bit smug. “I copied it off of you,” he informs him.
“You can’t just copy attacks, that’s -- that’s my thing!”
“Copying?”
“No, the tentacles!”
“You don’t have a monopoly on unwinding your Stand like string.” Jotaro crosses his arms. “I should get techniques too.”
“You can have your techniques if they’re your own. This is plagiarism!”
“Wouldn’t have needed to plagiarize if you hadn’t passed out in that restaurant.”
“That’s your fault! And this kind of attack doesn’t even fit your Stand.”
“What do you mean, it doesn’t fit me.”
“Stands are a reflection of their user, their abilities and powers are all different! And we’re nothing alike! You can’t have super strength and speed and tentacles, that’s just not fair.”
“Maybe you’d have super strength if you just punched harder,” says Jotaro unsympathetically.
“That’s not how it works!”
Jotaro really doesn’t see why not. He wanted to make up a technique and then he got it, so Kakyoin ought to be able to do the same. He gives Kakyoin a deeply judgmental look.
Kakyoin is incensed. “It’s not! Maybe you can pull out new techniques because you’re new to having a Stand and don’t know anything about yourself, but I’ve had a Stand for all my life and I know what I’m capable of by now.”
“Uh-huh,” says Jotaro doubtfully.
“Just try and make a new kind of attack. I bet you can’t.”
“Maybe you can’t.”
A waiter puts food on the table between them and gracefully but quickly retreats. Jotaro and Kakyoin make eye contact across the food for a single moment of suspended tension, and then Kakyoin is hauling him up by his shirt and Hierophant Green is wrapping itself around his limbs, and Jotaro has his fist all bunched up in the front of Kakyoin’s coat and the flicker of something hungry and eager unfurling in his chest. Finally, he thinks, like this was the thing he was waiting for all along. No more beating around the bush or pussy-footing around, no more farce of “friendship” or something soft and easy , they’ll have it out and then Kakyoin will either win and become an obstacle that he has to overcome or Kakyoin will lose and resent him and he’ll be an enemy that he can understand, and then it’ll make sense, finally, he’ll have a fight and something to do, finally --
But Kakyoin only punches him a couple times and smashes a chair over his head before he sends his evil spirit away and sits back down. Jotaro still has a teapot swinging down towards Kakyoin’s skull and he only barely manages to turn it aside at the last moment, sending the tin thing clattering across the sidewalk in a wash of hot tea. He stands there, hands empty, feeling strangely disappointed even as the restaurant staff and nearby customers shift restlessly and stare and whisper (but they don’t move to do anything, no one ever does, not when it matters anyways). What was that? Why did Kakyoin stop?
“That was refreshing,” says Kakyoin, taking a sip of his tea, like they’d just been discussing the weather instead of trying to tear each other to pieces. Jotaro waits for him to say something else, but nothing comes. He waits a little more.
“That’s it?” he says.
Kakyoin looks up at him through his eyelashes, eyes glinting. “You don’t feel better?”
… He does, now that he’s gotten the chance to smash Kakyoin into the ground a bit, but it wasn’t nearly enough and neither of them won or lost, really, and Kakyoin’s still here and he doesn’t look mad or hurried or smug or anything, there’s no conclusion, and now Jotaro feels more lost and confused than when they started.
Slowly, he sits back down in his seat across from Kakyoin, and -- more because he doesn’t know what else to do than anything -- picks up his chopsticks to eat.
After a moment, he asks, “Did you pick a fight just because you wanted me to relax?”
“Not just for that.” Kakyoin wrinkles his nose and picks at his green school uniform. “Did you have to pour the soup on me?”
Yes, Jotaro thinks. But he doesn’t say anything else. He just eats what they’ve been served, and watches Kakyoin, and tries to understand.
Kakyoin doesn’t try to bother him into conversation, for once, but he does complain about how his clothes are soaked. A few moments later Jotaro feels Hierophant Green’s tentacles creeping up his chair and grabbing at his coat. He doesn’t stop it. He’s tolerant to cold anyways.
He carries Kakyoin’s coat for him when they go visiting the Great Wall, afterwards. They stand near one of the towers, leaning on the stone parapets to look at the forest below, and Kakyoin tells him about how it’s not actually one long connected wall but a collection of walls that sometimes doubles or even triples in on itself, and perhaps it would be better considered as a grand tragedy given the thousands of lives lost in the construction of it. He lets Kakyoin’s voice wash over him, fade into a comforting background noise, like the radio stations he listened to in the dark of the jail cell when he wanted to pretend he wasn’t terribly alone.
Kakyoin wears Jotaro’s coat for the rest of the day and doesn’t return it until they decide to turn in for the night.
--
“Stands have latent abilities in them but they don’t just change without reason,” Kakyoin tells him in the hotel room later that night. “Since you’re new it makes sense that you’re discovering more about what you can do but that doesn’t mean that everyone can.”
That’s a stupid argument if Jotaro has ever heard one. “How do you know you’ve discovered everything about your Stand, since you’re such an expert, then.”
“Well--” Kakyoin starts, and frowns. “I just feel it.”
“People can change as they grow, can’t they? If your evil spirit is a ‘reflection of you’ then it should be able to change too.”
“Why don’t you do it then, since it’s so easy,” Kakyoin sniffs.
“Maybe I will,” Jotaro says, and magnanimously doesn’t retaliate when Kakyoin throws a towel at him, because he’s mature enough not to rub it in too much when he knows he’s won the argument.
--
They visit the Summer Palace the next day, and then they get onto a boat down to Shanghai. Jotaro’s not sure that Kakyoin actually arranged the ride with the sailors beforehand; they just walk up to one of the ships in the bay, Kakyoin starts talking to the sailors and waves around some money and what might be a cube of solid gold, and some shady-seeming transaction occurs, and then they’re on a boat at sea. Not that Jotaro is complaining. He spends hours leaning over the rails, watching the waves passing them by and feeling the salty spray on his face.
They disembark in Shanghai, and Jotaro feels a bit disappointed to be leaving the sea behind. Maybe Kakyoin notices the way Jotaro lingers by the docks, because he asks if Jotaro likes the ocean.
Probably it’s a question he should’ve asked while they were sailing, but Jotaro doesn’t mind that he asked. For once it’s a question he wants to answer, although at the same time he wants to cradle the answer close to his chest so that no one else can take it away. He struggles with the impulse for a moment before he goes somewhat sideways to the subject. “We’re in the distribution range for tiger sharks now. They prefer to follow the warmer currents though, so it would be unlikely to run into them at this time of year.” Not that it would be easy to find one even during their season.
It almost feels like he’s said too much, shown too much of his hand, and he shuts his mouth and studiously refuses to meet Kakyoin’s gaze -- it’s not difficult, given how much he avoids eye contact in the first place -- but he catches the way Kakyoin cocks his head to the side, birdlike and curiously watchful, anyways.
--
While they’re in Shanghai they go visiting the usual places -- Nanjing Road, Tian Zi Fang, and the Jade Buddha Temple. It’s a bit tiring if Jotaro is honest with himself; he’s not that interested in traveling around for the sake of traveling around, and the lack of a concrete goal while touring around wears on him.
Eventually he decides that it’s basically like a job being a guard or escort for Kakyoin, which mostly means shoving his way through crowds so Kakyoin doesn’t have to, and being a receptacle for all the trivia and thoughts and observations Kakyoin has at any given time. He doesn’t need to look out for Kakyoin though. Kakyoin does that fine on his own. It is honestly kind of funny watching Kakyoin smile beatifically at a scammer before proceeding to decimate them verbally.
Kakyoin has a lot of thoughts. He jumps from topic to topic easily, and doesn’t seem to expect too much of a response from Jotaro, which works because Jotaro doesn’t have a lot to say. Mostly Jotaro lets Kakyoin drag him around and point at exhibits excitedly. Sometimes when Kakyoin is haggling with a vendor he skulks behind Kakyoin threateningly. It’s an easy job and it gives him something to focus on, and Kakyoin stops pointing out how tense he is every other hour.
They’re in Yu Garden when the next big incident occurs, if it can be called that. They’re in a fairly secluded part of the garden when some idiotic white man -- almost Jotaro’s height without his ridiculous cylinder of silver hair and a few centimeters taller with it -- wanders up to them and asks them something in what even Jotaro can recognize as badly butchered Mandarin. Kakyoin winces.
Jotaro tunes the conversation out because he hasn’t picked up any Mandarin beyond the basics, and besides, better to leave the talking to someone who wants to do it, but he starts paying attention again when Kakyoin rolls his eyes and heaves a great sigh and switches to talking in English. “Please tell me your English is somewhat less atrocious.”
“It is!” the white guy says in faintly accented delight.
“And what were you saying about being lost?” Kakyoin says, crossing his arms and arching his eyebrows in a way that Jotaro is starting to recognize as the stupid-tourist-who-deserves-to-have-his-papers-stolen look.
“Ah, yes, I’d like to find my way to the entrance but I got turned around while admiring the place,” says the white guy, gesturing with his hands as if to say what can you do? His broken-heart earrings sway as he does. “I’m no good with maps, so I thought I’d ask you two. Help a guy out?”
He decided to ask… the unfriendly, 195-centimeter guy in the black coat and the fruity asshole with the smirk? Weird choice. Especially since they’re teenagers and clearly skipping out on school if they’re here right now. Well, whatever. If some hapless tourist is stupid enough to ask Kakyoin for help who is Jotaro to stop them from getting pick-pocketed. Plus it puts Kakyoin in a good mood after, too.
“How did you manage to get lost? Yu Garden is only two hectares large and there are signs everywhere,” Kakyoin says judgmentally. Jotaro raises his eyebrows. Only two hectares? The white guy just laughs, rubbing the back of his neck a bit bashfully. Kakyoin sighs. “Here, give me the map. -- This is where we are right now, so you just have to follow this path here, here, and here… try to fit that into your tiny pea brain if you can.”
“Ahaha, thank you. I’d be nowhere without your help,” the other man says with a bright smile that is made blinding by his over-the-top hairstyle and distinctly hairless eyebrows. He doesn’t walk away though, still smiling, oddly watchful and suspiciously still, and Jotaro narrows his eyes. He straightens up from his slouch and pulls his hands out of his pockets. He recognizes that kind of intent.
“Can I help you?” Kakyoin says rudely. There’s a flicker of green and silver next to him, like he’s barely suppressing Hierophant from coming out and shaking the guy down where he stands.
“Certainly, just one more thing,” says the man, “I don’t suppose the word ‘Stand’ has any significance to you?”
Kakyoin pauses, and Jotaro can practically see the way his expression suspends itself as his mind stirs, as a crocodile from slumber, calculating the best way to respond.
Might as well help him figure that out. “Spit it out or get lost already,” Jotaro says.
The man laughs, not very nicely. “Skipping ahead, huh? I can appreciate that. I’ve always been a straightforward person, myself.” And then with a distorted shimmer, like a mirage, a silver armor-like evil spirit manifests at his side, holding a rapier over by its heart. Kakyoin leaps back, but he’s still in range of the sword, and Jotaro bounds forward with a hissed snarl and a fist raised -- only to recoil in surprise when the silver spirit turns and aims for him, instead.
It’s fast with the rapier, incredibly so. Jotaro barely has the presence of mind to call his own evil spirit out; with a resounding cry, his evil spirit blocks the attacks with the metal plates on its gloves, but Jotaro still finds himself with a few cuts on his hands afterwards. The silver spirit ceases its attack and draws back to its owner’s side, and Jotaro looks down, annoyed. If he has to bandage his hands after this he’s gonna be pissed.
“My name is Jean-Pierre Polnareff,” the jackass says with a brash smile that makes Jotaro want to smash his nose, “and this is my Stand, Silver Chariot. It seems, Kujo Jotaro, that you would like to be the first to die today.”
Jotaro eyes him, then eyes the stone statue next to him as it shatters only to reveal a carved replica of Jotaro’s evil spirit underneath it. Silver Chariot brandishes its sword proudly, as if to say, see that? I did that. Showoff. But a capable showoff, it seems, if the speed of its strikes hadn’t tipped him off already.
“You here on that Dio fucker’s behalf, too?” he says.
“Oh yes,” Jackass nods, “to take your head for Dio, and all of your companions’ as well.”
Jotaro narrows his eyes and feels his evil spirit clench its fists next to him in readiness. “Fine. Bring it.”
“It’s not fine,” Kakyoin interjects hotly. “You can’t kill him. That’s my thing.”
Jotaro’s thought process grinds to a halt. With a synchrony that would be funny if it wasn’t so stupid, he and Jackass turn to stare at Kakyoin.
“...You’re here to kill him too?... You sure that’s what you’re doing?” Jackass recovers fairly quickly and gives him a ridiculing sort of grin. “You seemed to be having a pretty good time with him, yeah?”
Kakyoin's eyes darken. “Then you should know better than to play with other people's things.” His gaze flickers briefly to Jotaro's bleeding hands. By the time Jotaro's hidden them in his pockets, though, Kakyoin has already turned back towards Polnareff, his shadow crooked on the ground.
If Polnareff senses anything amiss, he doesn't show it. He scoffs, brazenly crossing his arms. “Can’t blame me if I steal the kill from under your nose.”
“Yes, I can,” Kakyoin says. “I claimed the kill. He’s mine. Dio asked me to kill him, and I said I would, so that means he’s mine to decide what to do with, not yours, and I decided I don’t want to kill him yet and you don’t get to take that away.”
He steps forward. And he’s shorter than the Frenchman, and skinnier too, it should look ridiculous the way he tries to loom, but it doesn’t. There’s something wild in the way he stalks towards the other man, something wild and fanatic shining so brightly in his eyes. The same way he had looked at Jotaro in that restaurant in Beijing, the same way he’d looked on the rooftop above Jotaro’s jail cell when his blood was on Jotaro’s hands. Like something vicious. Something howling. Something that would tear you apart, if you would just give it a reason to try.
Jotaro stares a little bit, but he can’t find it in himself to be too surprised, because -- well, because Kakyoin had tried to kill him, back at that jail cell. He’d meant it. Jotaro had felt the certainty of it. Kakyoin wasn’t nice; he had an evil spirit after all. It was just -- just easy to forget sometimes, the way they traveled together, the way they were learning to live in each others’ space.
“Don’t I get a say in this?” he says finally, breaking the silence, and to his surprise, his voice sounds more annoyed than anything else. Not scared, or defensive, just.
“You’re mine,” Kakyoin repeats. He’s looking at Jotaro now, eyes still shining with that mad gleam, and so terribly earnest too as if trying to make sure that Jotaro understands. “I’m the only one who gets to kill you. Not him or anyone else.”
“I’m not letting you kill me.”
Kakyoin’s face screws up a little bit. “You’d rather it was him?”
Jotaro looks at Jackass and his weird hair and bald eyebrows and has to admit that Kakyoin has a point, but. “I’m not letting anyone kill me,” he says, but he looks at Kakyoin’s expression, and for some reason he doesn’t know he tacks on at the end, “but you can try if you want.”
“You won’t let him kill you,” Kakyoin says.
“Of course not,” Jotaro says.
“Good,” says Kakyoin, and the mad gleam in his eyes subsides a bit until Jotaro can almost forget entirely the howling thing under his skin.
Jackass glances between the two of them with a rather lost expression, looking like he feels completely out of his depth. Jotaro almost sympathizes except for the fact that the guy is yet another assassin trying to kill him on behalf of Dio. It’s fucking annoying. Should’ve known better than to expect that the Dio guy would leave Kakyoin’s vacation alone. “You don’t seem like you’re about to kill him,” Polnareff says doubtfully.
“I’m not. I’m keeping him,” says Kakyoin.
“But Dio said…”
“Dio is missing some pertinent information, and I want to keep him, so that’s what I’m doing, and we’re going back to Egypt to tell Dio this now,” Kakyoin says. “And Dio doesn’t get to complain about it, because I could kill him if I wanted to. So there.”
“You could try,” Jotaro says, but they both ignore him.
“You don’t look like you could kill him either,” Polnareff says, crossing his arms and looking down on Kakyoin. “If you’re serving Dio too then I suppose I can spare you, but -- I don’t see why I shouldn’t challenge Kujo Jotaro anyhow.”
“I’m not serving Dio, I’m employed,” says Kakyoin. “And I’m good enough to beat you.”
“We’ll see about that,” says Polnareff, and with that, he and Kakyoin fight.
It’s an interesting fight. Silver Chariot is clever and obscenely fast with its sword, so sharp and precise it cuts voids that blades of wind rush to fulfill. Polnareff directs it with the ease of a swordmaster, and Jotaro is loathe to admit it but he’s actually pretty good.
On the other hand, his range is terrible, and it’s easy, so easy for Kakyoin to use the terrain to his advantage and stay outside of Polnareff’s reach. He maneuvers himself through space with Hierophant’s tentacles easy as anything, puppeting himself as easily as he puppeted all those cops when he was trying to kill Jotaro in jail. The beginning of the fight is all explosive attacks on Polnareff’s part, plants shaking and water rippling from the echo of the force of his blows -- but he never quite manages to hit Kakyoin, and he chases Kakyoin around the courtyard until he thinks he’s finally caught him. Of course, that’s when Kakyoin declares “Titanite Snare!” and the delicate green web laid hidden about the garden snaps up, snaring Polnareff and his Silver Chariot so thoroughly that Silver Chariot can’t move its arm so much as an inch, much less cut its way out.
“See, you can’t even defeat me,” Kakyoin says, eyes flashing as he dangles Polnareff and Silver Chariot above the pond. “What makes you think you can have the privilege of even trying to kill Jojo before me?”
“I get it, I get it,” Polnareff says nervously, eyeing the water underneath him. “He’s all yours! I won’t try again. There’s no need to--”
Kakyoin doesn’t wait for him to finish the sentence and dunks Polnareff into the pond. The water ripples a little bit.
“Kakyoin, I think you can let him up now,” says Jotaro, after half a minute has passed.
Kakyoin stares at the water, expression cold. There are bubbles rising up.
“Kakyoin.”
For a moment he thinks Kakyoin isn’t going to do it and they're gonna have to fight, but then Kakyoin heaves a very put-upon sigh and hoists Polnareff and his Stand back out of the water. Polnareff sputters and gasps for air. “I won’t attack again, I really won’t!” he wails, “I’m a man of my word, you know!” His hair is wilting a little bit, and Jotaro feels a little sorry for him now, strung up and dripping wet and looking rather pathetic in that net. Maybe this is the feeling that drives people to adopt puppies off the street. Ugh. He really hopes not.
“Say it then,” Kakyoin says meanly. “Jotaro’s mine to deal with.”
“I told you not to call me by my first name,” Jotaro says, annoyed.
“He’s yours, he’s all yours!” Polnareff says hastily.
“You don’t get to kill him. And no one else does either.”
“No killing Kujo Jotaro without your say-so,” Polnareff agrees, nodding his head so fast that his wilting hairdo bounces a bit. “A-and no asking either!” he adds quickly when Kakyoin narrows his eyes into a glare.
“Good,” says Kakyoin. Polnareff breathes a visible sigh of relief, sagging into Hierophant Green’s net of tentacles, which is naturally when Kakyoin dunks him underwater again.
--
It is a rather cowed and soaking wet Polnareff who follows Jotaro and Kakyoin back out of Yu Garden. Kakyoin seems smug now that he’s asserted his position at the top of the pecking order of Dio’s assassins. He allows Polnareff to accompany them on their tourism for the rest of the afternoon, and he even lets Polnareff eat dinner with them.
Polnareff, on his part, bounces back quickly from being lightly waterboarded, and freely voices his thoughts about anything and everything. He also shamelessly tries to flirt with the ladies, but he’s not very good at it, on account of his clumsy Mandarin, and also on account of, well, everything else. Jotaro watches him make a fool of himself to the restaurant waiters for a while before saying anything.
“Oi, Polnareff.”
“What is it, Jotaro?” Polnareff says with a friendly smile.
“What’s Dio like?”
Polnareff looks at him strangely. “Shouldn’t you know? Being one of his personal enemies?”
“I’ve never met him before in my life,” Jotaro says flatly.
“Oh,” says Polnareff. He seems rather bewildered. “Oh. Well. Dio is -- what should I say? He’s beyond description. His power and ability, and his charm, they’re all incredible. When you look at him…”
What follows is a rather jumbled description of how great and might Dio is, and how anyone who spoke to him for a bit would understand the impulse to swear their life to his service, or something. Apparently this happens on a fairly regular occurrence. “We’d all kill for Dio’s sake -- I’d be the best, of course,” Polnareff says, puffing out his chest.
Jotaro makes a little hm noise. That doesn’t seem like something to be proud of, but what would he know? He’s not the one who apparently got brainwashed into a cult of assassins. “Do you all have evil spirits too?”
“Evil spirits?”
“He means Stands,” says Kakyoin.
“Oh,” says Polnareff, face brightening. “Of course. Stand users draw Stand users, you know, and Dio’s Stand must be the most powerful one of them all.”
“Is it,” says Jotaro, without inflection.
“Yep! It belongs to Dio, after all. But I’ve never seen it myself. What about you, Kakyoin? You serve Dio too right? Have you seen it?”
“I don’t serve him,” says Kakyoin, echoing his earlier words. “I’m employed.”
Polnareff furrows his eyebrows. “You mean -- you’re not loyal to him?”
“Of course I am,” Kakyoin says, sounding extremely offended. “I just don’t ‘serve’ under anyone for just anything. Do you think I’d kill someone for free?”
“But it’s Dio,” says Polnareff, sounding even more confused. “Wait, you get paid?”
Kakyoin gives Polnareff the most judgmental, pitying look that Jotaro has ever seen. “You don’t? Did you even sign the contract?”
“There was a contract?!”
“With wages, and benefits, and vacation days, and everything,” Kakyoin says condescendingly. “Honestly, what were you thinking? Did you fly all the way to China on your own money? There’s a limit to stupidity, you know.”
Kakyoin spends the rest of dinner convincing Polnareff that there were contracts he should have asked for and signed, and that he should have asked for a salary or overtime pay, and that businesses should pay for the expense of business trips anyways. Polnareff looks almost dizzy by the end of it, nodding blankly along as Kakyoin tells him imperiously that he’ll never make it in the real world if he doesn’t learn how to value his own time and skills. Jotaro is pretty sure that there was no contract, and that Kakyoin wasn’t paid a salary so much as he generously helped himself to Dio’s money, but he doesn’t say anything. It’ll be pretty funny if Polnareff goes back to Dio and asks for a raise for real.
Polnareff thanks Kakyoin profusely at the end of dinner, having apparently forgotten that Kakyoin had lightly tortured him earlier that day. “It wouldn’t have occurred to me that I should’ve signed a contract if not for you,” he admits, scratching the back of his neck. “I’m really indebted to you, you know?”
“Think nothing of it,” Kakyoin says magnanimously. “Us employees have to look out for each other -- you can’t ever trust management to have your best interests at heart. When you’ve got a proper contract maybe you can even join our union.”
Polnareff’s eyes go round. “There’s a union?” he says incredulously, and Jotaro knows then that there’s no saving him.
Polnareff eventually sets off with a smile on his face and spring in his step, eager to put his new knowledge to use. “I had no idea you would become such a good friend, Kakyoin,” he says, heartfelt, and gives Kakyoin a great bracing hug before leaving with a grin and a wave. Kakyoin shakes off his expression of mild disgruntlement to put on a faux-smile, and the whole thing is funny enough that Jotaro even sends Polnareff off with a wave, himself.
“So, a union, huh?” he says as they make their way back to the hotel.
“How long do you think it’ll take him to figure it out?” Kakyoin says with a mischievous smile. Jotaro feels his lips twitch up in response and quickly turns away, but he sees Kakyoin’s reflection grinning back at him in the shop window next to him.
--
He wakes up with a start. Something is touching his arm, his side and torso and legs, in the dark of the hotel room, something is standing over him. He keeps his breathing slow, silent, and deep; keeps his eyes closed even as the thing touching him creeps up to his shoulder, and then gently -- ever so gently -- wraps around his neck.
When it starts to squeeze, Jotaro calls out Star Platinum and opens his eyes.
Kakyoin looks down at him from next to the bed. He doesn’t seem to be bothered by the warning constriction of Star Platinum’s hand around his throat, and Jotaro can see the howling thing in him again, in the terrible shine of his eyes and in the shadows in the hollows of his cheeks. He looks like a jagged shadow of a thing. Barely illuminated by the street lights outside the window. He doesn’t tighten Hierophant Green’s coils around Jotaro’s body or neck, but he doesn’t release Jotaro either, and Jotaro can see now a faint sheen of sweat on his forehead and the faintest tremor in his hands.
“What are you doing?” Jotaro says, when it becomes apparent that Kakyoin won’t speak first.
Kakyoin’s gaze barely flickers away from Jotaro’s neck. “Just making sure,” he says, softly. So softly.
Jotaro waits a moment, then prompts, “Of what?”
Kakyoin doesn’t respond for a long while. Just looks at Jotaro’s neck for a while longer until he starts to feel vulnerable, which is a stupid feeling because Star Platinum could rip off Hierophant’s tentacles like nothing if he really wanted. No real danger here, just the threat of it. But nonetheless, he shifts uncomfortably, chin jerking down as if to hide that soft and vulnerable line of the throat. Hierophant squeezes just a little bit at that, resisting the movement, and Jotaro is just thinking he’s going to rip its tentacles to bloody shreds and damn the recoil to Kakyoin when Kakyoin finally exhales out a long, relieved sigh and unwinds Hierophant from Jotaro’s body entirely.
Jotaro sits up cautiously and, when no further movement comes from Kakyoin, has Star Platinum let go of his throat and retreat. He eyes Kakyoin warily. The tension has gone out of Kakyoin’s shoulders and he looks steady in himself again, unbothered, as if nothing happened at all.
“He asked me to kill you,” Kakyoin says, casual as anything. “I decided not to. But I could.” He pauses, and then, like a confession, or some terrible childlike petulance, “It gets so loud sometimes.”
“What does?” Jotaro says, but Kakyoin doesn’t answer; he just climbs back into the bed on his side of the hotel room.
“Good night, Jojo,” he says, and a few minutes later, his breath evens out into the deep, steady rhythm of sleep.
Jotaro looks at the easy rise and fall of his chest for a few minutes before he lies back down himself. He thinks about Polnareff’s description of Dio, the sway Dio seems to hold over Polnareff and Kakyoin both; and he thinks about Kakyoin’s warped line of thinking around the order he’d received to kill. He’s pretty damn certain that Dio is the leader of a cult, what with the evil spirits and murderously devout fanaticism -- but he wonders, now, if there isn’t something more that he’s missing.
--
In the morning they depart from Shanghai and make for Suzhou Gardens. A couple days there, and then they set off on the Yangtze River, sailing west as far as it can take them.
Jotaro stands on the deck of the boat and watches the landscape go by for a while.
It occurs to Jotaro, then, that he could’ve left Kakyoin behind. Could’ve gone to Egypt with Polnareff, instead of carousing around on the continent free as anything.
But he didn’t. Hadn’t even thought of it. He doesn’t know what it means, but it makes him feel uneasy, and he can’t quite settle down until Kakyoin picks a fight with him again and he gets to throw Kakyoin overboard.
--
(Elsewhere in the world, Joseph, Holly, and Avdol manage to make it to Hong Kong, but future use of aircraft is banned. They decide to take a ship instead.
It doesn’t go as planned. The first ship is captained by an enemy with water-related abilities, who -- due to the terrain -- easily defeats Avdol; in the end, Holly is the one who steps up and defeats Dark Blue Moon. Unfortunately, it leaves them adrift at sea again; they come across another boat, but it is yet another Stand. After a brief struggle, Avdol triumphs over Strength.
Finally, they reach Singapore in their lifeboat. The girl, Anne, tries to tag along with them, but they turn her away as gently as they can.
Joseph, using Hermit Purple, catches Jotaro’s location on a map -- further north and west than they hoped. They’ve missed him, and they’ll have to chase after him again. The journey must go on.)
Notes:
ah yes, the curse begins (chapters growing longer in length as the fic goes on)
Chapter 4: joseph joestar's no good, very bad cult
Summary:
“Hm, what did he say about it… He wants to kill off all the Joestars, apparently? Something like that.”
Jotaro slams on the brakes. Kakyoin yells as Jotaro veers off the road. “What are you doing?!”
The car comes to a stop, kicking up a great cloud of dust. Jotaro turns to Kakyoin. “Just when,” he hisses, “were you going to mention that one of Dio’s targets is my mom?”
Jotaro learns about friendship with Evil Kakyoin, meets the family, and has the worst day ever. These things are not unrelated.
Notes:
What? You Didn't Think There Would Be No Consequences To Kakyoin's Brainwashing Did You?
this is a very long chapter. i thought about breaking it up but it was meant to be read altogether, so here it is. brace yourself.
chapter warnings: above canon-typical amounts of thrashing, disturbing brainwashing-induced thought patterns
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
After sailing on the Yangtze river, Kakyoin steals a car and they drive to the city of Lhasa. They visit Sera Monastery (large) and Norbulingka (nice place for a walk) and the Tibet Museum (uncomfortable). It’s not that the museum is bad, exactly, it’s just that it’s so carefully designed and full of precious things, and Jotaro spends the entire time paranoid that if he slips even a little bit he’s going to accidentally destroy some priceless historical artifact that can never be replaced. When Kakyoin taps him on the shoulder he’s so tense that he nearly punts Kakyoin through the wall. Shit.
Kakyoin ducks Star Platinum’s wild blow easily, and gives Jotaro this sort of calculating gaze that he does sometimes. “You’re stressed,” he says. It’s not a question.
No shit. Jotaro clenches his jaw a bit and turns his head away, willing Star Platinum out of sight. It lingers with a bit of a frown before it finally fades away. Kakyoin watches it happen, head tilted, and Jotaro doesn’t know what goes on in Kakyoin’s fucked up head pretty much ever but he does know that he doesn’t like him turning that calculating look towards -- this. This weird and out of control thing between Jotaro and his evil spirit, which still hasn’t gone away. He keeps silent, which he hopes against reason will actually succeed in warning Kakyoin off.
Predictably, it doesn’t. Instead of letting go of the topic and filling his head with facts about the monastery, which would at least be distracting, he says, “You don’t trust your Stand.”
Well, duh. Why the hell would he trust his evil spirit?
“You don’t seriously still think it’s evil, do you?” Kakyoin says disbelievingly. “It’s been fighting alongside you this whole time.”
That’s exactly the problem. It likes fighting. It likes fighting too much.
“It made you paper cutout art when we first met.”
Yeah, with Hierophant Green dead in the background.
“It’s been trying to help you.”
It’s been preying on Jotaro’s worst impulses and moments of weakness to wreak havoc in the world, and probably the only reason it listens to him in a fight is because it likes fighting and wants Jotaro to keep letting it fight. It’s not benevolent, he’s not gonna be so easily fleeced. Kakyoin can keep his pro-evil propaganda to himself.
Kakyoin crosses his arms. “You do know that I’m not trying to scam you, right? I’m trying to help.”
“You,” says Jotaro, “are trying to convince me that using my evil spirit’s evil powers is okay.”
“Stands aren’t bad by nature! They’re just a reflection of the user.” Yeah, and every user Jotaro has met so far has been off the deep end. Maybe Jotaro’s not as far gone as the rest of them but he doesn’t want to make his case worse. “You don’t really think that everyone who has a Stand must be a bad person, right? That would be ridiculous.”
Jotaro doesn’t respond.
“Oh my God. You do,” says Kakyoin. “You think you’re evil.”
If he’s not there yet, he’s certainly on his way. He murdered someone in a restaurant by crushing their evil bug spirit, and yeah, it was an accident, but he hadn’t -- he hadn’t been sorry about it. That’s not normal, there’s something gone terribly wrong in him, and if Kakyoin hasn’t realized it then he hasn’t been paying attention.
“Well, that’s stupid, and you’re wrong,” Kakyoin declares, and he hooks an arm about Jotaro’s and starts walking them back out of the monastery. “If you were really evil you would’ve killed me back then.”
That is just about the saddest and lowest bar Jotaro has ever heard. He debates not saying anything for a moment, but someone ought to tell him, so. “Kakyoin.”
“Yes?”
“You need higher standards than people not murdering you.”
“See, that’s why you’re not evil,” says Kakyoin triumphantly, “because you think murder is wrong.”
Jotaro can’t even make himself muster up an appropriately incredulous reaction to that. Is Kakyoin okay? Are people constantly trying to murder him? Is that why he thinks things like this? What happened to him. “You realize I killed someone, right.”
“What, the bug Stand user? He was trying to kill you, it doesn’t count.”
And there comes the usual Kakyoin-induced headache. “You tried to kill me too.”
“Not all of us can be a goody two-shoes like you.”
It’s only the knowledge of how undignified it would be, and how badly he’d lose the argument, that keeps Jotaro from immediately denying that he’s a “goody two-shoes.” And he’s not. Fuck’s sake, he has an entire reputation back at home for being an incorrigible delinquent that no one can beat into shape. “You’re the only one who thinks like that,” he says, and he can’t quite keep the accusatory note from his voice.
“Well, most people are too stupid to realize the true nature of the one standing in front of them, don’t you think?” Kakyoin replies archly, flicking his long curly bang out of his eyes with a little toss of his head. “You certainly aren’t evil. If you were then I’d be in big trouble.”
...
“...You think I’m evil too, don’t you.”
“You did try to kill me,” Jotaro feels the need to point out.
Kakyoin huffs. “I thought -- I thought you were over that! And you bought me a smoothie!”
“It’s called not being an asshole.”
“Weren’t you the one telling me you were some kind of bad boy? You know, with the cigarettes and returning motorcycles after you steal them and the,” he gestures at Jotaro’s face, “eyebrows.”
…He’s just mocking him, isn’t he. Jotaro sighs and tries to articulate the fact that there’s a difference between being an asshole, and being an asshole. He fails. He sighs again. “Just drop it. Didn’t you want to go looking at the wall deco or something?”
“Yes, but now I want to argue,” says Kakyoin. “Let’s go get something to eat.”
They go get something to eat. Kakyoin orders them some samosas and momos at a street stall, and they sit on a bench beneath a tree. Kakyoin continues arguing at him while he watches people pass by on the street.
“You can’t say that all Stand users are evil just because of me,” he insists. “What about Dio?”
“He sent you to kill me.”
“It was just a misunderstanding.”
“He has sent at least two more people to kill me after you.”
“But none of them succeeded.”
True, the bug guy and Polnareff hadn’t been the most competent, but they’d still tried to kill him. Which was whatever, Jotaro doesn’t really care about it that much beyond holding a bit of a personal grudge, but what if they’d targeted someone else. What then. Although, if he thinks of it that way, maybe it’s good that they got sent after him instead, because at least this way no one else is involved.
Still, though. “Why are you so dead-set on this.”
Kakyoin gives him an incredulous sort of look. “I can’t just sit here and let you think you’re right.”
Jotaro rolls his eyes. Whatever. “Shouldn’t you be spending less time trying to tell me I’m a good person” -- what a joke -- “and more time convincing me that you’re not evil? You know, so you can persuade me into using more evil powers or something.”
“Unlike you, I think being evil is not a bad thing. In fact, it’s very fun and cool. But Stand powers are morally neutral in nature. It’s how you choose to use them that’s important. And you should choose to use them, because they’re a part of you!” Kakyoin pokes Jotaro in the chest and Jotaro shoves his hand away. He doesn’t seem dissuaded. “You can’t just repress it for the rest of your life. It would be like repressing yourself.”
“Well,” says Jotaro, “I didn’t have evil psychic powers until three weeks ago, so if I try hard enough I should be able to stop having them too.”
“What kind of logic is that?!” Kakyoin huffs and sits back. “Honestly, Jojo, you’ll be much happier once you learn to trust yourself a little more.”
No way. Why is he complaining so much about this, anyways? “If I didn’t want to get rid of Star Platinum, there would be no reason for me to travel with you in the first place.”
“--Oh.”
What’s with that tone? Why’s Kakyoin gone all quiet? Jotaro looks over. Kakyoin’s thinned his lips, and he doesn’t look -- angry, but he doesn’t look happy, either. What’s with him?
No wait, Kakyoin wanted to clear up this whole misunderstanding with Dio, and he thinks very highly of Dio, right? Maybe he’s unhappy because he still wants Jotaro to go meet him. “...I guess I’d still have to beat up Dio, though,” Jotaro tries. See, there’s still reason to go see Dio after all.
But Kakyoin still doesn’t look very happy. “Hey,” he begins. His tone has lost the levity from earlier. Something entirely serious, now. “Are you enjoying this trip?”
The non-sequitur takes Jotaro by surprise, and he snorts a little before he can catch himself. “Since when has that entered into your consideration?”
Kakyoin doesn’t laugh. He just looks intently, the corners of his mouth tugging down. “I mean it.”
He didn’t seem to care about that before. Why is he so worried about it now? “It’s your vacation, not mine. Do what you want.” It’s not as if Jotaro loves traveling around, but he doesn’t hate it either, so anything is fine as long as Kakyoin is having fun.
“But do you like it?” Kakyoin presses. “What do you think of it so far? Do you not like Lhasa, or is there somewhere else you want to visit?” Kakyoin has leaned in a bit. Jotaro leans away. “You can’t have no preferences at all, there must be something. Everyone’s got somewhere they want to see.”
“I don’t care, Kakyoin,” Jotaro says, exasperated. What does it matter if he likes the trip or not? It’s not as if Kakyoin is his friend, there’s no obligation for Kakyoin to care about it either. “It’s got nothing to do with me. I’m just here to meet Dio.”
Kakyoin opens his mouth, closes it. Presses his lips together, and then he smooths the expression away entirely into a thin smile. “I understand. I’ll bear that in mind.”
It’s as if Kakyoin has shuttered something away, drawn all the curtains closed. He draws back into himself and returns to eating his momos, wielding the chopsticks impeccably precise. No sign that he wants to continue arguing, or that he intends to talk about anything vacation-related either. Something has gone amiss.
Jotaro struggles with it, but as the silence continues on, he finally opens his mouth. “...Kakyoin.”
“Yes, Jojo?” says Kakyoin, unfailingly polite.
But Jotaro remains silent, because he doesn’t know what to say after that -- or what the question is -- or even why he spoke in the first place. What did he think he would achieve? There’s no point to it, he’s never been able to understand or be understood by others, really, so just what did he think to try?
Kakyoin lowers his chopsticks and peers at Jotaro. His expression unshutters a little bit, and Jotaro looks away, so that he won’t have to see it, whatever it is underneath. “Nevermind,” he mutters. It comes out horribly awkward, but nothing else he says is gonna make it better, so he keeps his mouth shut.
“...Alright,” says Kakyoin, and if Jotaro was inclined to believe it he would’ve said that he sounded almost -- disappointed.
They finish the meal mostly in silence, and then Kakyoin hauls them off to Potala to admire the architecture before they go. But his mood is still strange. He’ll be talking about some tidbit about the different materials used in the roofing tiles before trailing off abruptly and walking around without saying anything for a while, almost as though it’s a conscious effort not to say anything, which is strange because he certainly never held back before.
The quietness has curdled by the end of it, all sour inside, but without knowing the cause of it Jotaro can’t do anything about it, and he doesn’t know how to ask. He just tries to help with the hotel checkout, and carries their lightly packed luggage to the car, and then when Kakyoin makes to get into the driver’s seat he puts a hand out and stops him.
“You look tired,” Jotaro tells him. “Go sleep in the back or something.”
“I’m not tired,” says Kakyoin. “What makes you think that?”
Jotaro looks at Kakyoin a bit flatly. Maybe tired isn’t quite the right word, but Kakyoin certainly isn’t feeling okay, either. “Just take a nap or something. You’ll feel better when you wake up.”
Kakyoin stares at him, and a slow smile spreads across his face. “Aw, Jojo,” he says, and there’s a note of glee that raises Jotaro’s hackles, “you’re worried about me!”
“Shut up,” says Jotaro. “I am not.”
“You are!” Kakyoin grins, bouncing up on his heels. “You wanted me to feel better.”
He almost coos the last word, and Jotaro has never felt so much regret before. “Just shut up and get in the car.”
“Sure, sure.” Jotaro desperately wants to wipe that smug smile off that asshole’s face, but he just knows that anything he tries is only gonna make it worse. He glowers and gets into the driver’s seat before he does something ill-advised. Star Platinum pulls the door closed for him with more force than necessary, leaving a hand-shaped dent in the paneling. Fuck. Whatever. He gets Star Platinum to spark the starter wires against the battery, and revs the engine. Looks good to go. Glancing in the rearview mirror, he sees Kakyoin slide into the backseat and sprawl across the length of it, looking for all the world like an extremely satisfied cat.
Jotaro scowls. He sets the stick thing in the middle to “Rear” and the car starts drifting back a bit. Is that supposed to happen? He slams his foot against the brakes only for the car to accelerate directly into a bush. Hm. Wrong pedal. After getting the correct pedal this time and changing the stick thing to “Drive,” he directs the car in a crooked line out of the parking lot and into the street.
“Jojo?” says Kakyoin. Jotaro grunts. “Do you know how to drive a car?”
“Do you have a driver’s license?” Jotaro counters.
“That’s not relevant.”
“Good, ‘cause I learned from watching you.”
A beat. “Is this your first time driving?”
Jotaro feels the corner of his mouth twitch. No, he can’t laugh here, it’s bad form. He keeps his eyes steadily on the road and bites the inside of his cheek.
“Jojo!”
“Relax, Kakyoin. I need my guide in one piece if I’m gonna meet Dio.”
“That’s not reassuring!” He’s even pulled Hierophant Green out, wow. The tentacles are unwinding and grabbing for the steering wheel. “Stop the car, I’m driving.”
Jotaro swings a bit too hard around the corner and Kakyoin crashes into the side of the car with a yelp. “Put a seatbelt on. Car safety first, you know.”
“I don’t want to hear that from you!”
“I’m very safe,” says Jotaro, barely swerving around the car in front of him in time to avoid a collision. “I have excellent reflexes.”
“That was not safe,” Kakyoin yells.
“Whatever, Mr. Driving Instructor. What do you want me to do then?”
Kakyoin really does end up yelling very detailed instructions at him until they exit the city, and only calms down once they’re on the road and there’s not so many intersections anymore. He really doesn’t have enough faith in Jotaro. For shame.
Driving is pretty easy once he gets the hang of it, and eventually Kakyoin stops feeling the need to cling onto everything with Hierophant. He must’ve actually been a bit tired because after he relaxes enough, he ends up falling asleep in the back seat anyway. Heh. Who’s a danger who should never be allowed on the road unsupervised now?
Kakyoin slumps down further in the seat when Jotaro changes lanes. He still hasn’t put on a seatbelt, huh? What a troublesome guy to look after.
He has Star Platinum buckle Kakyoin in, and then he turns on the radio and listens to the soft music drifting out the speakers as he drives them to Nepal.
---
They spend the night in a small town off the side of the highway before setting out again in the morning. Despite protests from Kakyoin, Jotaro manages to claim the driver’s seat once again. Kakyoin huffs and crosses his arms from where he’s been banished to the passenger’s seat. “You are a menace on the road,” he tells Jotaro.
“Thought you’d enjoy that sort of thing.”
Kakyoin pouts a bit. “Just because you think I’m evil doesn’t mean I don’t have a sense for public safety.”
Jotaro’s seen Kakyoin cackle maniacally while cutting off other drivers on the highway before. He just doesn’t like it when he’s not the one doing it. “Doesn’t that just mean you’re not properly evil?”
“Hey, don’t make such offensive accusations.”
Jotaro rolls his eyes. “You only want people to think you’re evil because you’re too short to scare them otherwise.”
Kakyoin gapes at him. Jotaro stoically keeps his expression unchanged and his eyes on the road. Wait for it. “Oh, you take that back, I am not short -- I’m almost 180 centimeters! We can’t all be 195-centimeter freaks--“
Heh. There it is. Jotaro smirks, and is promptly forced to duck a swipe from Hierophant Green.
The drive is a long one but it’s fairly nice, with all the mountainous scenery and the sun bright among the clouds. Kakyoin talks for a while about his opinion on the music playing on the radio, and then about the process of geographic formation of the Himalayan Mountains. It’s not bad. Nice background noise while he keeps an eye on the car behind them, and it’s also nice to… not… be alone…?
What the fuck kind of thought is that? He’s been perfectly fine on his own for years now. This trip is messing up something in his head.
“What’s wrong?” Kakyoin says.
Jotaro jolts. “What?”
“You’ve been looking at the rearview mirror for a while now.”
Geez, that scared him. For a moment he thought Kakyoin read his mind or something. “I think someone’s following us.”
Kakyoin peers out the back window at the blue car that’s been tailing them for some time. “You’re sure? For how long now?”
“Thirty minutes.” Give or take. “You got any enemies you wanna tell me about?”
“I can’t think of anyone.”
“What about Dio’s, then?”
“No, as far as I know, it’s just you.”
“I’ve never met him,” Jotaro mutters. “Come on, Kakyoin, he can’t have formed a weird cult of murder assassins just to kill one guy he’s never even seen. Who else is there?”
“It’s not a cult,” Kakyoin says, sounding offended.
“So you are a bunch of assassins.”
“Hey, don’t be so judgmental about my profession.”
… This guy. “Aren’t you younger than me?”
Kakyoin wrinkles his nose. “Only by a few months.”
“Why are you already an assassin? Shouldn’t you be in school?”
“Maybe if it was actually worth it,” Kakyoin sniffs. “It’s boring, though. No one can see past the surface to the truth of anything.” He made a similar comment back at the museum in Lhasa. Did something happen to him? “And they don’t have Stands.”
Jotaro’s eyebrows climb a couple millimeters. They’re not evil and Kakyoin is unhappy about that? … Why did he ask. Of course he is.
“It’s not about them being evil or not!” Kakyoin tells him indignantly. “It’s about the fact that they can’t see! They’re all so easily fooled, Hierophant Green could steal from their bags and get in their lockers and trip them every way between the gates and the classroom and they wouldn’t even know. I see them but they don’t see a single thing about me, because no one knows Hierophant, and no one knows me, and they wouldn’t be able to even if they tried. It’s like they’re not even real people.”
What the fuck. There’s so many fucked up things wrapped up in that one statement that Jotaro doesn’t even know where to start. “You stole from your classmates with invisible powers and were mad they couldn’t stop you… so you dropped out to become an assassin?”
“You don’t have to put it that way. And the assassin thing was an accident. I was just traveling in Egypt with my family when I met Dio. He was… I mean, his presence, it was incredible, he was so charming and powerful, and…” His voice is starting to sound strained. “… and he convinced me to s-stay, and use my abilities for him…s-so… that’s…”
He sounds really strained now. Is he… okay? Did something happen when Dio recruited him? Maybe they should switch topics. “What’s Dio’s stated goal anyhow?”
“Oh, I can answer that,” Kakyoin says cheerfully, completely normal now. “He wants to rule the world.”
… That has got to be a joke. And Kakyoin’s working for this guy? “Does your family know what you’re doing?”
Kakyoin laughs. “Of course not. They don’t know anything about Stands.”
That’s not what he meant. “Do they know you’re traveling? Or that you’ve got work?”
“No, I haven’t talked to them in a few months.”
What? Seriously? “...Do they know if you’re alive?”
There’s a worryingly long silence as Kakyoin ponders this. “I guess not?” he says finally. “I was always a problem child, though, and they never understood me. It shouldn’t be a surprise that I ran off.”
He laughs lightly, but Jotaro frowns. “You didn’t tell them before you left?” Everything he learns about Kakyoin’s situation just gets worse and worse.
“What would I tell them? Honestly.”
Jotaro doesn’t have any room to talk since he also left with barely a word, but at least he’d told Mom what he was doing. Even if it was in a letter. “Why not drop by and visit, then?”
“Please, they’ve probably forgotten about it by now… Although Kana might be a different case. She’ll be fine, though.”
“Kana?”
“My half-sister.”
Jotaro glances over. Kakyoin has turned his head to look out at the street, but he can see him smiling wryly. He looks -- almost lonely, framed by the window’s square of light, softening his sharp features into gentle shadows, into a distant thing -- like a mirage, ever the same distance, no matter how close you try to draw.
“Send a letter,” Jotaro says. “‘S what I did before I left with you.”
“She’d try and write back.”
“Just send postcards then.”
Kakyoin snickers. “Months of silence from me before getting evidence I’m vacationing in Nepal? She’d be so mad.”
He doesn’t elaborate, but Jotaro thinks he knows, anyways: a family member who doesn’t understand you, but they try anyway, and who knows why; wouldn’t it be better without you in their life? Jotaro thinks so. But then again, if he left, Mom would be alone. This Kana… it sounds like she has the rest of the family, at least. It’s probably different for Kakyoin to leave her behind.
Now that he thinks about it, he doesn’t really know that much about Kakyoin. Hadn’t even thought to ask about his family until it had come up, because it wasn’t any of Jotaro’s business, after all. …Why had he asked, anyways? It’s not like it matters to him if the guy who tried to kill him has problems. Maybe it’s too late for that sentiment, though, because now Kakyoin isn’t just the guy who tried to kill him, he’s the guy who tried to kill him after running away from home.
He doesn’t like it. It’s unsettling to think about Kakyoin with a family and a life that he left behind, an entire history leading up to the moment he’d shown up at Jotaro’s jail cell. It twists uncomfortably in his chest, and Jotaro quickly looks away from the shape of it, grasping for anything else to focus on. He glances in the rearview mirror again, and -- right. The car. Enemies.
“You sure Dio ain’t got anyone taking exception with him wanting to rule the world?”
“Well, no one knows about it yet except for the ones he’s hired, I think.”
How the hell is the guy with the assassins laying so low? “He must’ve made moves against someone.”
“Well, there’s you.”
Fine, might as well start there. “And why me?”
“Hm, what did he say about it… He wants to kill off all the Joestars, apparently? Something like that.”
Jotaro slams on the brakes. Kakyoin yells as Jotaro veers off the road. “What are you doing?!”
The car comes to a stop, kicking up a great cloud of dust. Jotaro turns to Kakyoin. “Just when,” he hisses, “were you going to mention that one of Dio’s targets is my mom?”
Kakyoin blinks. “Oh,” he says. “Oh,” he says again. Then, “Put your Stand away, Jojo, I’ll answer all your questions.”
Jotaro looks to the side and sees Star Platinum looming angry and full of malice, violent intent outlined in every sharp contour of its body. He lets his breath hiss out from between his teeth, and focuses on breathing calmly; Star Platinum lingers for a moment, but ever-so-slowly fades away.
“Explain,” he bites out.
Kakyoin nods. “I don’t know all the details, but your family has been Dio’s enemy for decades. He considers the bloodline itself to be a threat, and intends to wipe it out since your family stood in the way of his ambitions in the past.”
There’s so much else Jotaro could ask about, but-- “Decades?”
“Yes?”
“How fucking old is Dio?”
“Um, at least a century, I think?”
What the fuck. “He’s an old man?”
Kakyoin laughs, then looks surprised at himself for doing it. “No. I mean, yes, but he doesn’t look old. He looks like he’s in his twenties.”
What the hell. That’s almost even more fucked up. -- No, Dio has an evil spirit, it’s not out of the norm to think he might be able to extend his lifespan or something. “...Good grief. Is that the power of his evil spirit? Control over aging? Control over time?”
“Haha, that would be absurdly powerful if it was the case, huh? No, Dio’s just immortal because he’s a vampire.”
“He’s a what?”
Kakyoin takes one look at his face and bursts out laughing. Jotaro scowls. “You better not be having me on, Kakyoin.”
“No, he really is a vampire, just -- the look on your face!”
Fucking whatever. “He drinks blood and everything?”
“Yeah. Every time I go to his chambers there’s always somebody he’s drained lying on the ground.”
That’s messed up on so many levels. No wonder Kakyoin’s kinda fucked up. “And he wants my mom dead.”
“…If she’s of the Joestar bloodline, then… I suppose so.”
Shit. He’s been cavorting about the continent with Kakyoin for weeks now, and meanwhile Dio might’ve sent as many assassins after Mom as he has after him. What if she’s hurt? What if she’s dead?
“How many assassins does Dio have?” Jotaro demands. His fists are clenched around the steering wheel so hard it hurts.
“Um. At least twenty, I think.”
Stupid. He’s so stupid, he never should’ve left in the first place, why did he think that someone who wanted to kill him wouldn’t target Mom either, and now who knows what’s happened to her--
“Jojo? Calm down, we can figure something out.”
“Shut up, ” Jotaro snarls. “Like you care? If you hadn’t been sent after me, you might’ve been the one to murder my mom instead.”
Kakyoin flinches back. “I wouldn’t--”
Dumb son of a bitch! “You would, because Dio would’ve told you to and she can’t fight back, she doesn’t have an evil spirit, why would her death matter when she isn’t even a real person to you?”
He shoves the car back into driving mode and slams his foot on the pedal. The car jerks so violently forward it knocks Kakyoin’s head back into the seat. Jotaro veers back onto the highway without turning on his blinker, careening between the oncoming cars. Fuck it. Fuck everyone, he doesn’t care how much they’re honking angrily at him. He has places he needs to be.
“...You’re right,” Kakyoin says, voice strained. What’s he got to be upset about? It’s not as if this is his family on the line. “It wouldn’t have mattered to me. It didn’t occur to me to tell you earlier, either. I’m sorry.”
That -- that’s…
The apology almost makes it worse. It does make it worse, actually, because he’s so incandescently furious he wants to break Kakyoin’s face, grab him by the shoulders and shake all the insides out of him like loose change, but he can’t, because Kakyoin apologized, and if Jotaro tried to hit him he might even just stand there and take it, and that’s worse, so much worse than having someone he could easily blame.
For a second, he thinks about giving into the impulse and hating Kakyoin for apologizing at all, just because he can, just because Kakyoin is there, but -- no. “Save your breath,” he says through clenched teeth, and presses harder on the gas.
The only good thing he can say is that there’s no sign of the car from earlier anymore, but he almost wishes it was there anyway -- because at least if someone came to cause trouble, he’d have an excuse to tear someone apart.
---
They make it to the nearest town in a neck-breaking twenty minutes of swerving wildly through traffic. Jotaro screeches to a halt by the curb and leaves it idling there, swiping the proffered coins from Kakyoin’s hand before leaping out towards the nearby payphone. He shamelessly jostles someone aside to force himself into the booth.
“Hey!” the other person says. “I was here first!”
Jotaro snaps his head to the side, baring his teeth. “Fuck off! I’m busy!”
He doesn’t bother waiting for a reply, just shoves coins into the payphone and dialing as fast as he can. The phone rings… and rings… and rings.
Click.
“Mom?”
“Hello, you’ve reached the Kujo residence. Sorry, no one is home right now! Leave your name and number and we’ll call back as soon as we can!” Her cheery voice rings out from the speaker. Jotaro clenches his hand around the phone, slams it back into the hook, and dials again.
“Hello, you’ve reached the Kujo residence. Sorry, no one is h--”
“Hello, you’ve reached the Kujo residence--”
“Hello, you’ve reached--”
“Hello--”
Voicemail, again and again. Fuck. And he’s nearly out of coins too. This time when it tells him to leave a message, he does.
“Mom, it’s Jotaro. I’m in Dulikhel, Nepal. Listen. You’re in danger. Remember my evil spirit? There’s some guy named Dio who wants me dead, he’s been sending people with evil spirits after me, and he’s probably after you, too. You need to watch out for anything strange and stay safe. I--” He breaks off, takes a breath. Damn it. “I’m sorry. I can’t protect you from here. I’ll be back as soon as I can. Be careful, and don’t do anything stupid.”
He hangs up and grabs at the brim of his hat again. Shit. Fuck all of this. In any other scenario he’d rather be caught dead than tell Mom anything about his life that might worry her, but this is different. If anything’s happened to her, he’s not gonna stop until Dio is fucking dead.
“So? Any news?” Kakyoin says when he gets back into the driver’s seat.
Jotaro shakes his head. He pulls back onto the road, and even though his driving now is even worse than when he first tried it out, Kakyoin doesn’t complain. He just says, “Is there anyone else we should worry about?”
“Like who?”
“...Your father?”
“If that piece of shit wanted to be considered family he should’ve fucking acted like it!” He cuts in front of someone in the next lane, accompanied by a series of angry honks. Fuck, he doesn’t usually give this much of a shit about his pathetic absentee excuse of father, but right now just the thought of him is pissing him off.
“Alright. Siblings? Grandparents?”
“Wouldn’t know about my grandparents,” Jotaro mutters. “It’s just me and my mom.”
“She must be very important to you.”
“No shit?” Like he hasn’t been completely and horribly obvious about it for the past however-fucking-long, like he hasn’t practically bared his vulnerable spot open for the entire world to see. Like he wouldn’t murder anyone who tried to touch her. “I don’t care if Dio tries to kill me, but if he’s done anything to her I’ll fucking kill him.”
Kakyoin nods.
“I mean it,” Jotaro adds, in case Kakyoin didn’t just hear him threaten to prematurely end his boss’s life. Shouldn’t he have a bigger reaction than that?
“I know,” says Kakyoin. “It’s okay. Dio never contracted me to protect him. I just kill people.”
Seriously? Kakyoin is the worst employee ever. “You’re doing a shit job of it.”
“Hey,” says Kakyoin indignantly. “I could kill you if I wanted.”
“You could try.”
Kakyoin sniffs derisively but doesn’t argue, probably because he thinks he’s right. Well, he can do that if he wants. “So, where are we headed?”
“Kathmandu, same as you originally planned. I’m going to the airport though.” He lets out a breath. Even if it’s kind of Kakyoin’s fault that he’s half a continent away from his mom-- “Sorry. Guess I won’t be finishing this trip with you.”
“What do you mean?” Kakyoin says. “I’m going with you.”
What? “...Why?”
“Well, it’s my responsibility, after all. That you’re alive, and now your mother might not be.”
“And just what can you do to help?” Jotaro snaps, before he can think about it.
“I don’t know,” Kakyoin replies, “but at least, you don’t have to do everything on your own.”
Isn’t that the same as saying there’s no real reason for him to tag along? Jotaro seriously doesn’t understand him. He’s already halfway through his vacation; he might as well finish it, instead of rushing back to Japan with him. But.
“...Do what you want.”
Kakyoin smiles. There’s some strange meaning lining the edges of it, a meaning that Jotaro can’t read.
“Thank you,” he says. “I will.”
---
They spend the rest of the comparatively short drive to Kathmandu in silence, until they reach the city limits and Jotaro spots another car that seems like it’s following them. What a pain. “Kakyoin. Hold onto something.”
“Huh?”
Jotaro assesses the traffic, and makes an extremely inadvisable swerve into the next lane over. The car behind him honks loudly. Jotaro ignores it and swings hard into the next street, then cuts across a couple lanes to make a turn into another street after that.
“The hell are you doing?” Kakyoin yells at him, clinging onto the car door. Hierophant Green unfurls its tentacles and grabs onto all sorts of things in the car, holding Kakyoin down like the world’s most tangled seatbelt. “This isn’t the way to the airport!”
“There’s someone following us,” Jotaro says. “Shut up. I’m concentrating.”
It takes a few more unsafe traffic maneuvers for the car to disappear, at which point Jotaro goes back to driving more reasonably.
“Who do you think that was?” Kakyoin says thoughtfully.
Jotaro shrugs. “Someone Dio pissed off or another assassin out to get me. It doesn’t matter. I don’t have time for that.”
Kakyoin laughs. “Don’t worry, Jojo. If anyone tries to start anything, I’ll take care of it for you.”
The fuck? He doesn’t need to do that. Jotaro can take care of it himself, and honestly he’s good at inflicting bodily violence on other people, even if he doesn’t like it. A fight wouldn’t even take that long. “I can do it myself.”
“Sure, but I can save you some time.”
…
Jotaro can’t think of anything to say in reply. He’s not gonna say thank you for something he didn’t ask Kakyoin to do, but he doesn’t want to tell Kakyoin to piss off, either. “If you take too long I’m leaving you behind,” he settles on eventually, to which Kakyoin laughs again.
“Don’t worry, even if you did I’d find you after,” he says. “I can’t let anyone get their hands on you while I’m looking away. If I can’t kill you then no one can.”
This kind of sentiment again. Jotaro can’t figure out if it’s borne out of pride or affection, or maybe just some kind of really messed up territoriality, but whatever it is, it’s kinda fucked up. He should probably do something about it soon.
In a bit, though. First, he has to buy tickets back home.
---
The airport doesn’t fly directly to Japan; it makes a layover in Beijing, instead, and they missed the flight by only ten fucking minutes. Jotaro’s so furious about it that he accidentally dents the desk under his grip with Star Platinum’s strength. The flight attendant looks at it wide-eyed. Jotaro gives up and lets Kakyoin do the talking.
Apparently, there’s been an incident where someone has sabotaged the airplanes, and most flights are being delayed. The next flight for Beijing doesn’t leave until tomorrow morning. “We are working as fast as we can,” the attendant promises. “Thanks to the Speedwagon Foundation’s help, our operations will resume much faster than originally predicted.”
Jotaro wants to punch something so bad.
“That’s excellent,” Kakyoin says with a winsome smile, stepping on Jotaro’s foot where the attendant can’t see. Jotaro takes a deep breath and carefully loosens Star Platinum’s grip on the edge of the desk, leaving behind only a few dents instead of an entire handprint this time. “Two tickets then, please.”
They buy their tickets. Kakyoin accompanies Jotaro out to the parking lot in silence, and then, at the car, “Well. We might as well find a hotel for the night.”
Jotaro grunts a response. Kakyoin flips through his tour guide of Kathmandu for a while before picking a hotel, giving Jotaro driving instructions until they get to the right address. Kakyoin takes care of the booking, like he usually does, and they go up to their room. Jotaro doesn’t bother unpacking anything from their shared suitcase; he just paces the space between the beds and the window, like a caged animal, and Kakyoin perches on the desk and watches.
“We should get something to eat,” Kakyoin says, after a few minutes have passed like this.
“Not hungry.”
“I am.”
“Get it on your own then.”
“Come on, Jojo, you can’t just sit in here all day, you’ll go stir crazy. Eating will keep your strength up.”
It takes a great effort not to just tell Kakyoin to piss off. “Kakyoin. I’m not in the mood.”
“Maybe not, but you should still eat. You’ll regret it later.”
Jotaro doesn’t bother responding. Kakyoin doesn’t catch the hint and says, “Go on a walk, then? It’s such a nice day out today, it’d be a shame if it went to waste.”
“My mom could be dead right now,” Jotaro shouts, whirling around. “And you want me to go out and sightsee?”
“It’s better than marinating in your own thoughts for the next fifteen hours!” Kakyoin snaps back, crossing his arms. “You have to do something to keep your mind off of things.”
“I don’t want to keep my mind off of it!”
“So you’re just going to torture yourself over something you can’t do anything about until tomorrow’s flight?” Kakyoin says, arching a single fine eyebrow at him.
The wall lamps above the desk shatter, spraying glass all over the floor. “Just whose fault is it that I’m here in the first place!”
Kakyoin flinches a little at that, and Jotaro almost stops, then, because it’s not really Kakyoin’s fault, it’s his for being dumb enough to follow the murderous boy with the evil spirit in the first place -- but Kakyoin draws himself up and goes all cool and cold in the eyes, ready for a fight. “I already apologized for that. What else do you want me to do?”
He wants -- nothing that can be done, nothing that can be taken back. “Nothing,” Jotaro spits out. The hell can Kakyoin do? “I don’t want anything from you.”
“So -- so you just want to sit here miserably. And I’m supposed to let you?”
“Yes!”
“That’s -- I am not doing that.”
“Why not!”
“Why not? ” Kakyoin echoes disbelievingly. “This is the most upset I’ve ever seen you! I can’t just leave you like that.”
“Yes, you can!”
“Okay, yes, but just what kind of state would you be in by the time I got back?”
“Who fucking cares?! Just -- just go look at the museum or something! I don’t care.”
Kakyoin’s footsteps sound lightly on the floor, but distinctly not in the direction of the door. “I’m not leaving you on your own. You’re going to drive yourself to distraction.”
“It’s none of your business if I do!”
“Of course it is. If you’re going to be like this the whole time, traveling with you will be unbearable.”
“No one asked you to come along.”
“You don’t need to be so aggressive,” Kakyoin says, which just about makes Jotaro want to take his fucking head off. “Just -- will you just do something? Get something to eat or drink, go on a walk, literally anything besides pacing around in this room like an asshole.”
Jotaro’s temper, already frayed thin, snaps. “The fuck do you care, Kakyoin? It’s not like we’re friends!”
The air freezes. Jotaro has just enough time to think, Shit, does he think we are? before the suspended moment shatters and Kakyoin starts radiating rage.
“I told you about Dio,” he says furiously. “I was bringing you to him! I bought your plane tickets to go back home! Is that something I’d do for a stranger, then?”
“I didn’t ask you to do that!” Shit. Why did he say that? He needs Kakyoin to shut up, give him a moment to think -- friends? Are they friends? That doesn’t even make any sense--
“So that’s it?” Kakyoin snarls, stepping forward. “You don’t care and it’s all my fault for wanting it to mean something to you?! I did that all for you! ”
“You did that for yourself, ” Jotaro shouts back, and shit, there’s really no going back from here, is there.
“For myself? Myself?”
Fuck, whatever. Like this whole thing wasn’t destined to end in disaster, anyways, what does it matter if it gets burned down sooner rather than later? Just cut it off here and they can go back to beating each other to death. It’s better that way anyways. “You’re the one who wanted me to meet Dio, and the one who wanted to go on vacation, you’re the one who wanted to fly back with me -- like you give a fuck about how I feel, you never asked me until we got to Lhasa, and even then it was just -- just--” What the hell was it? Because he -- cared? No way, there’s no reason for him too, it has got to be something else -- wait. Everything he said that led up to it -- was it-- “It was because you wanted me to be going on this trip for you, wasn’t it?” he says, amazed. “You wanted it to be about you.”
Kakyoin’s face is flushing red. “That’s not--! I just wanted you to be enjoying the trip!”
“So it took almost six thousand kilometers for you to ask?!”
“I--! At least I tried! Why are you so angry about this now?! You didn’t care before!” Hierophant Green unfurls into a mass of tendrils behind Kakyoin, a great and seething thing that almost makes Jotaro want to step back. The expression on his face is dark; something glints in his eye, a hint of madness, like the howling thing in him has almost come to the surface again. “It doesn’t matter,” he says abruptly, his tone shifting into something distant and cold as a steel blade. “It doesn’t change the fact that I did all of that for you.”
Hierophant spasms at that, like it hurt to say that, and Jotaro laughs at him. “So -- what, does that mean I owe you or something? Is that it? I have to be your fucking friend?”
“You could start,” says Kakyoin, “by reciprocating a little!”
“It’s not a fucking transaction, Kakyoin!” Jotaro snarls, stepping forward. Hierophant’s tendrils lash out warningly, making deep gouges in the wall. He wants to play that way? Fine. Star Platinum surges into existence as well, fists raised, hungry fire in its eyes. “And even if I did want to make friends with someone, it certainly wouldn’t be with someone constantly keeping records on the book!”
“You bastard,” says Kakyoin. “You don’t get it at all. Any relationship if a give-and-take, and if you can’t see that, well, no wonder you’ve always been alone!”
That stings, more than Jotaro cares to admit, but. Fucking whatever. “You’re right. I’ve always been on my own, so what the hell am I doing here arguing with you?”
He turns sharply and stalks to the door, but Hierophant’s tentacles lash out and latch onto the door handle before he can turn it. “What are you doing?” Kakyoin demands, voice low.
“What does it look like?” He wrenches at the handle, but Hierophant’s grip doesn’t let it move. “Let go of the fucking door!”
“The hell are you leaving for!”
Jotaro laughs sharply. “You’re the one who wanted me to get out of the room.”
“That’s not what I--!” Kakyoin’s face twists. “You can’t just leave!”
“Fucking watch me,” Jotaro snarls, and with Star Platinum, wrenches the door straight off the hinges.
“No!” Kakyoin yells. Hierophant indiscriminately lashes out in a great convulsion before its nearest tentacles latch onto his limbs. Before he can have Star Platinum tear them off again, Hierophant grabs his head and wrenches him around to look at it straight in the eyes.
His vision distorts entirely. His consciousness dims. His thoughts fly out of his grasp, scattered every which way as he is smothered down into the corner of his own mind. He has to go… no, there’s no reason to do that, and he shouldn’t, not when it means leaving Kakyoin behind. He has to stay. Just leave everything else behind; it doesn’t matter, anyways, not as much as this, and Kakyoin will take care of it, anyways. All he has to do is turn back around…
“Ora!”
Star Platinum’s fist slams into Hierophant’s face, sending the evil spirit flying across the room. Jotaro stumbles and catches himself heavily on the wall. The world spins around him. Shit. What the fuck was that? It was like -- like--
“Did you just try and possess me?”
He straightens up through the vertigo, squinting back into the room. The wallpaper has been slashed even more, the curtains are torn from the rails, the afternoon sunlight is pouring through the windows in a great boom of light framing Kakyoin like a halo. His face is mostly hidden in shadow, but even against the light Jotaro can see his faintly trembling outstretched hand, and the whites of his eyes gleaming in the dark.
“You can’t leave,” Kakyoin repeats. His voice is strained again, like when he talked about Dio in the car; something painful crowding his previous anger out. He steps to the door unsteadily, like he doesn’t know where to put his feet. “You’re -- you’re my target. You can’t leave.”
“Don’t tell me what to do,” Jotaro says, and Star Platinum draws up beside him at the ready, but Jotaro doesn’t move to attack Kakyoin, either. He should; Kakyoin just tried to take over his mind, after all. But -- something’s different. Something’s gone strange again in Kakyoin’s head.
Kakyoin jerks his head oddly; a nod? A shake of the head? “If you leave,” he says. He steps forward again, blocking more of the sunlight, and Jotaro can make his face out better now, how it’s gone all pale, how sweat has started beading his forehead. “I -- I’ll kill you. I really will.”
“Jesus Christ, Kakyoin,” Jotaro says. “What the fuck is wrong with you? I don’t belong to you.”
Kakyoin’s head wags from side to side in some meaningless animal gesture, mouth shaping indistinct words that never make it to the air. Then he goes taut as a wire. Jotaro barely has time to throw himself to the side before dozens of tentacles spear through the air where he stood just moments before. The wall and floor splinter with a catastrophic bang. Jotaro stares at the cratered wall and thinks, Shit, if that was my chest, I’d be dead, and then he has to dodge again before Hierophant can skewer him like a pig.
If that’s how he wants to play it, then fine, that’s how they’ll play. Jotaro surges forward. Hierophant’s tentacles move to intercept, but Star Platinum fends them off in a series of explosive punches that ring through the air with such concussive force it nearly drowns out its battle cry. Snarling, Kakyoin dodges to the side, but Jotaro manages to snag him by the sleeve and pull him close, and then it’s all just fists and hatred, the familiar territory that they never should’ve left. This is how they were meant to be.
Kakyoin screams at him. He reaches up, digs his fingers into Jotaro’s hair and tries to smash his face into the corner of the desk. Jotaro barely manages to catch himself with Star Platinum, but it gives Hierophant an opening to swarm over his arms and yank him partway off Kakyoin. Jotaro snarls; Star Platinum echoes his fury, grabbing Kakyoin by the collar and raining blows down on his head.
And Hierophant catches Star Platinum’s hands; Jotaro can feel it, the phantom feeling of constriction around his wrist, but he doesn’t care, it doesn’t matter, he smashes an elbow into Kakyoin’s solar plexus where he knows it will hurt and Kakyoin slams his face into the floor in retaliation. Blood flows into his mouth but he doesn’t fucking care. Just make Kakyoin hurt as much as he does, bruise the same, hurt the same, bleed the same--
Hierophant tangles around his legs, and then around his arms, and Jotaro strains at them, roars with frustration. Without anything else to move, he headbutts Kakyoin in the face. Kakyoin shoves him away, rolling to the side clutching at his bleeding nose. The perfect reversal of their first fight. That’s fucking right, you reap what you sow, it all comes back around. Star Platinum tosses Kakyoin into the air with an “Ora!” and slams its fist into Kakyoin’s stomach so hard that Kakyoin flies into the wall. “You asshole!” Kakyoin howls, and Hierophant’s tentacles spasm painfully tight around his limbs, “I’ll fucking kill you!”
“Just try!” Jotaro shouts back, like they aren’t in the middle of doing that, or -- maybe they aren’t, because Hierophant can shatter floors and crush metal, it should be the easiest thing in the world to break a few bones -- what the hell is he playing at? -- no time to think about that. Hierophant hits Jotaro’s head against the wall, leaving a bloody smear on the wallpaper.
Jotaro snarls and lashes out furiously. Star Platinum is back at his side instantly, tearing the tentacles off him, and he scrambles to his feet, leaping forward to knock a rising Kakyoin back to the ground. He brings his fists down. Kakyoin thrashes and throws him off with a wrench of the hip and manages to get on top instead, eyes shining madly and teeth bared. He’s still screaming. “I’ll kill you,” he’s saying, “You can’t leave, I’ll fucking kill you--”
“You tried to possess me!” Jotaro shouts, shoving Kakyoin away.
Kakyoin grabs him by the hair again and bangs his head against the floor. “I didn’t mean to!” he yells, and -- what the fuck does that mean, how do you accidentally try and possess someone, that is such bullshit -- “I didn’t want to!”
“Fuck off!” Jotaro bucks wildly and manages to roll them back over on the floor so he’s straddling Kakyoin instead. “You do exactly what you want to do!”
Hierophant tears him off, and Kakyoin goes scrambling back to his feet. “It’s not that easy!”
Jotaro laughs at him. He uses Star Platinum to drag Hierophant off himself as well, and then it’s them standing across from each other in the wreckage of the hotel room again, back where they started but with more blood and bruises to spare. “Don’t tell me you’re gonna give me some bullshit line about how you had no choice --”
Kakyoin twitches. Hierophant Green’s tentacles, previously seething around him like monstrous spider legs, spasm all at once. “I don’t have to do anything!” he shouts, which is -- what? Is he agreeing? Why does he sound so defensive about it -- “I could kill you any time I wanted, so it’s fine if I don’t. It’s fine.” He swings his head around to look at Jotaro in an awful disjointed movement, like a puppet that can’t move right. “But if you leave, I’ll -- I’ll kill you.”
So that’s how it is after all. “I get it, Kakyoin, you’re a possessive control freak who would rather me be dead than out of your clutches!”
“That’s not what I meant, you asshole!” Kakyoin howls, and Hierophant’s tentacles lash out, and the nearby desk and dresser are completely smashed to bits.
What does he mean, that’s not what he meant. This is like the most straightforward threat ever. “Explain it to me, then!”
Hierophant seethes by Kakyoin’s side, twitching like it’s constantly aborting its own attacks. “If you leave,” Kakyoin warns, “I’ll kill you.”
And now that Jotaro’s paying attention he can tell that it is a warning, not a threat, although why the hell Kakyoin would warn against himself is completely beyond Jotaro. It’s almost as if -- wait…
“Because you want to,” Jotaro says slowly, “or because you have to?”
“I don’t have to do anything,” Kakyoin repeats, but Jotaro can hear it now, how it sounds like a self-justification that’s been repeated so many times as to become reflex. “It’s just my responsibility.”
“The fact that I’m alive?”
“Yes,” says Kakyoin. “so that’s why -- if you go--”
Why the hell is Kakyoin so fucked in the head? Is this normal for people with evil spirits? Jotaro really, really hopes not. “Whatever, Kakyoin. Like I care. Try and kill me as many times as you want, you won’t win.”
“Either you die or I do!”
What the fuck? “I’m not killing you.”
Hierophant spasms once more, and something -- painful, almost -- flashes through Kakyoin’s eyes before being replaced by stubborn obstinance. “I won’t stop until you do.”
What the fuck? “What is wrong with you? Out of anything you could die for, why this? Because Dio paid you to?”
“I told you,” Kakyoin says, coolly, like he’s not declaring he’d put his life down for something as stupid as trying to kill someone who doesn’t even want him dead. “It’s a matter of responsibility.”
“What, so -- so it’s fine not to kill me if you can at any time, but if you can’t, then you gotta throw your life away?” Jotaro says incredulously. “That’s -- that’s so stupid! Why are you -- what kind of thinking is that?! Do you even hear yourself? You aren’t really gonna just go fucking die because Dio told you to, right?”
“He’s my employer.”
“That’s dumb as fuck! If you can’t win, then what’s the point of making you die trying!”
“He’s not making me do anything!” Kakyoin shouts. “And what do you care! What do you care, it’s not like we’re friends, right?” -- Shit, that’s true, the fuck does it matter if someone who wants him dead is having a shit time? -- “What do you even want?”
What does he want? “I want you to--”
He stops. The words that almost leaped out of his mouth: I want you to not go running straight towards your death. The hell? What’s wrong with him? Not that there’s anything bad about the sentiment, but why that, and at this time when Kakyoin literally just tried to murder him, why not any of the other annoying sentiments burning in him, like Stop trying to kill me, or stop trying to control me, or stop trying to prove that you--
“Would you even want to kill me?”
Shit.
Kakyoin stares at him, as if he’s just torn the rug out from underneath his feet, and then he shudders, this visceral and full-body thing. Jotaro steps forward to -- to what? to take back something he doesn’t even understand? to what? -- but Kakyoin’s expression contorts into something ugly and horrible and so murderous that he immediately falters, Star Platinum moving forward without even needing to be called--
“Get out!” Kakyoin shouts, flinging his hand towards the door, “Get out!”
He stalks toward him by a few steps, Hierophant Green’s tentacles blooming around him like a great spider’s legs, and then he shudders again, twists to the side and clutches at his head with a pained groan.
“...Kakyoin?”
He doesn’t respond, just stands there half-curled like he’s caught mid-flinch. Jotaro cautiously takes a step forward. “Kakyoin?”
Kakyoin looks up. And his expression is -- it’s different from anything Jotaro’s seen before. He hadn’t realized what a veneer of madness had been in Kakyoin’s everything just now until it’d been stripped away, leaving behind a pair of piercing amethyst eyes and a look of terror, or horror, or something else that Jotaro knows so close to heart--
He doubles over again with another moan. Jotaro decides fuck caution and closes the distance between them, catching Kakyoin about the shoulders, and then he just stands there stupidly because what does he do now? Kakyoin doesn’t look up or react to his touch; he just shakes violently under Jotaro’s hands.
“...Kakyoin--”
Kakyoin’s head snaps up. Jotaro has just enough time to glimpse his snarl before he’s forced to dodge backwards, narrowly avoiding where Hierophant just tried to spear him straight through the chest. The series of successive strikes drives him back towards the door without even giving him room to breathe.
“Get out!” Kakyoin howls at him. “Get the fuck out!”
Hierophant rises in a great unfurling of limbs until it blocks out the sun. And Jotaro looks at that expression, all hints of that previous clarity gone, completely swamped under a reasonless, murderous fury -- a mad gleam in his eyes, and the howling thing in him, roaring to the surface once again--
He gets out.
---
He wanders the street for a while after that, moving for the sake of moving, trying to figure out what the fuck that was all about.
The only thing he’s certain of is that Kakyoin is on so many levels of cognitive dissonance that college psychology majors would flock from miles all around just to see him. He is a psychiatric nightmare. And all of it centers around -- murder? Dio? Is Kakyoin cult brainwashed or something, is that why he’s so -- so weird? Even before joining Dio’s cult he must’ve been kind of evil, since he had his evil spirit since birth and all, but Jotaro is pretty certain that Dio has only made his case worse.
It’s not like Kakyoin being super murder-brainwashed has anything to do with Jotaro. He’s leaving in the morning, after all; good thing he still has the plane ticket in his pocket, huh? But it doesn’t sit right with him to just leave the whole thing alone, either. Kakyoin’s an asshole but he has a point. Jotaro does kinda owe him.
Not that he knows how to stop Kakyoin from having problems in the head, but fuck, maybe he should at least try and figure out what caused those problems in the first place? Maybe it’s something he can solve by beating up Dio? Yeah, that sounds fine. Once Jotaro’s sure Mom is fine he’ll go and beat up Dio to make sure he stops sending assassins and also so he’ll stop having a cult. Then Kakyoin won’t have any cognitive dissonance about killing people anymore because Dio won’t be asking him to kill people. That sounds like a plan.
Path of action decided, he pickpockets a tourist -- he’s spent long enough with Kakyoin that his bad habits have rubbed off on him, apparently -- and uses the money to buy some street food from the nearby vendors, ‘cause there’s nothing else to do and also Kakyoin was kinda right about how he should keep up his strength too. Not that Kakyoin has to know. Then he wanders around the streets some more because that’s basically all there is to do until his flight in the morning.
Mostly he looks at the architecture. It’s interesting to think about what steps went into the making of the more aesthetically appealing buildings. Too bad Kakyoin isn’t here; he’d probably have some factoids about the construction techniques of the 60s or something equally inane. He’d probably like talking to all the street vendors too.
Jotaro’s wandering brings him to the Pashupatinath Temple, a sprawling structure by the river that’s open enough he doesn’t feel like he might accidentally break something walking through it, and he sits on the temple steps eating momos and watching people play by on the river for a while, the sound of conversation and laughter drifting over on the late afternoon sun.
There’s plenty of sightseers, so he doesn’t think much of the white couple chatting with each other until he leaves the temple proper and he sees them exiting after him, and then he comes across them again a few street corners over. He stops in a nearby bookstore and pretends to browse the shelves, watching them through the window, and they coincidentally strike up conversation over a nearby vendor’s table full of handmade beadware.
He stays in the bookshop until the couple eventually drifts off, and even then he waits a few minutes just to be sure. When he’s ready to go he pays the shopkeeper for the book on historical boat-building technologies of Southern India, and then persuades her to let him go out through the back door. Maybe he’s just being paranoid but there’s no harm in taking extra measures.
He doesn’t see the couple again, but there is a group of friends that somehow goes the same route as him for nearly seven minutes despite him taking random detours throughout, and they disappear just as he’s starting to seriously consider employing his anti-tailing measures (walking up and beating the shit out of them). A few minutes after that, there’s another small group of tourists, and after he shakes them, two men. Jotaro would bet his hat that these are the same group of people who were following the car earlier. Time to do something about it.
Jotaro feigns like he doesn’t notice them. He meanders through the streets, pretending to admire the architecture but in reality keeping an eye out for an ideal location to set up an ambush of sorts for them. There -- a small side street, nothing shady but small enough that most people simply pass by its entrance.
Jotaro saunters into the side street at a brisk pace, a good distance between him and the two men, and with Star Platinum’s help climbs a few meters off the ground, clinging to the brick wall like a spider. Most people don’t look up, and there’s even some convenient sheets hanging from a clothesline that’ll hide him from immediate sight. He positions himself behind it, by the corner of the wall, and listens carefully for the approaching footsteps on the cement. Three meters… two… one--
The footsteps pause as they enter the alley.
“Where did he go?” one of them says lowly in English.
“Don’t break cover so easily, idiot,” the other says. His voice is deeper than the other’s. In a tourist-y sort of manner, “Hm, I don’t see what we’re looking for here. Did we take a wrong turn?”
“R-right. Um, let’s check the map?”
Jotaro peeks out from behind the sheets. The two men have huddled in the front of the alleyway, hidden away behind a large and complicated looking map. They’re murmuring something, but he can’t tell what. Damn, if only he was closer.
Star Platinum moves to the edge of his vision. It places a finger against the wall within his line of sight and begins making precise strokes against the brick. It takes a moment for Jotaro to realize it’s writing characters.
subject-disappeared-no-visual-confirmation
Is it… writing down what they’re saying?
no-other-teams-have-sighted-subject-withdraw-regroup-provide-support-to-ally
So they’re communicating with others right now. Possibly radio or walkie talkie. If they’re this prepared to tail him, it’s gotta be something big. Certainly much more organized than anything Dio has done so far.
what-happened
Star Platinum pauses. It traces out letters in English: A-V-D-O-L . Then it continues in Japanese.
has-confronted-secondary-target-Kakyoin-Noriaki
They’ve what? Jotaro tenses, watching Star Platinum’s hand move at a speed that suddenly seems so agonizingly slow.
status
currently-interrogating-but-unexpected-resistance--
Star Platinum breaks off writing mid-sentence, perfectly in time with the burst of violent emotion in his chest. What the fuck did they just say they were doing to Kakyoin?
“Hey,” says the one with the higher voice, “did you hear something just now?”
The two men look up, make eye contact with him, and freeze. Jotaro realizes, belatedly, that part of the brick wall has crumbled under his hand’s grip, supplemented by Star Platinum’s foreign strength.
Game’s up. He uses Star Platinum to kick off from the wall, catches himself on the ground with a somersault, and attacks.
The one with the deeper voice curses. He raises his arms to fend off any oncoming punches, so Jotaro kicks his head around from the side instead. His companion rushes forward and blocks Jotaro from continuing his assault. “Wait!” he says, “we’re not enemies, we don’t have to fight--!”
Like hell Jotaro believes that. He hauls the companion closer with Star Platinum and knees him in the stomach, then tosses him to the side. The first man comes forward with fists up and a determined expression; at least this guy recognizes intent to fight when he sees it. Jotaro respects that. He dismisses Star Platinum and comes at the man with nothing but his fists.
A short but violent grapple later, Jotaro finally manages to grab him and slam him face first against the wall, twisting his arm up behind him so hard that he cries out. Oops. This guy’s got some balls on him though, he fought well. The guy’s companion, on the other hand, fails miserably at trying to pull Jotaro off. Jotaro has Star Platinum hoist him up in the air by the collar until his feet come off the ground entirely. He yelps and flails in the air. Hearing that, the man tries to twist out of Jotaro’s grip, but Jotaro slams his face harder against the wall.
“Try any funny business, and I’ll snap your neck,” Jotaro warns. He won’t, but they don’t know that. “Who the fuck are you, why are you following me, and what have you done to Kakyoin?”
“We’re not your enemies,” the man says quickly. Jotaro curls his lips, not that the man will be able to see. “We’re just--”
He hesitates. Jotaro twists his arm up some more. “Spit it out,” he growls. “If you’re another set of assassins from Dio, I swear to fucking God--”
“No! We’re not with Dio!” the companion says quickly. “We’re part of the organization that opposes him! We were just keeping an eye on you.”
Jotaro narrows his eyes. Are they lying to him? It would be easier if they were; then he could just beat them up and go. “What organization?”
The man pinned under him sighs. “The Speedwagon Foundation,” he says, sounding resigned.
Wait. “The ones from the airport?” Hang on. The coincidental timing. Jotaro’s fingers dig into the man’s flesh. “Did you motherfuckers sabotage my flight back home so you could keep me in Kathmandu?”
“It’s faster this way!” the companion says nervously. “I mean, everyone’s already on their way here, or, I guess they’ve arrived, so--”
They delayed him here so more members of their little organization could arrive? He’s gonna fucking kill them. “Shut the hell up. Why were you following me?”
“That would tie in to our mission,” says the man, who seems to be keeping his cool better than his companion. “Our objective is to support the Joestar family in all their endeavors, hence our opposition to Dio. Your grandfather asked us to keep an eye on you.”
“Grandfather?”
“Joseph Joestar.”
Mom’s dad, huh. Jotaro might’ve met him once or twice as a kid, but he can’t put a face to the name, even though they’ve exchanged a few words on the phone. By which Jotaro means that Mom would tell him to say hello, Jotaro would be silent, and then the guy would blather on and on through the phone speaker until Jotaro left the room. What the hell is his grandfather doing here? Why now? And most importantly, why the hell does he have an entire organization willing to spy on people and sabotage airports and generally obey his every shady whim in very illegal ways?
Wait a fucking minute. This is starting to sound familiar. Dio’s got his cult, and Dio has a grudge against Jotaro’s family, and Jotaro’s grandfather has got an entire oppositional organization under his thumb, which means--
“My grandfather is running a cult?”
The two men stare at him, frozen. Fuck, he’s right on the money, isn’t he. His grandfather is running a rival cult and that’s why Dio wants him dead. “It’s not a cult!” the companion finally protests. “We’re a completely legal organization with plenty of investments in innovations in business and technology--”
Jotaro’s not stupid, he knows what that means and it’s even worse. “Let me guess, my grandfather isn’t officially in charge, either?”
“Well -- I suppose so,” the companion says. “But it was created to serve the Joestar family in the first place, so it doesn’t matter so much.”
Great. His grandfather is the head of a yakuza family, and it’s in a death match with an evil vampire and his cult.
Fuck, it doesn’t matter, he’ll tear them all to bits if they try and induct him into the family. “Whatever. I don’t want anything to do with you and if you approach me again I’ll fucking kill you,” he warns.
“Your grandfather--”
“I. Will. Kill. You,” Jotaro enunciates. He is not getting wrapped up in any yakuza shit. Getting poison in his food on the regular at his favorite restaurant is already bad enough. “And if you don’t tell me where Kakyoin is right now, I’ll only make you wish you were dead.”
The man hesitates. “Will you interfere?”
“That’s my business, not yours. Location. Now.”
“I’ll have to radio in,” the companion says. Jotaro considers, then nods tersely. “Okay. Can you, um. Let me down, maybe?”
“No,” says Jotaro. “Where is your radio?”
The companion reluctantly discloses its location. Star Platinum fishes the radio out from under his collar -- it’s a pendant-looking thing hanging on a necklace, the fuck is this secret agent shit? -- and looms over him menacingly as he contacts the others.
After reassuring the other end that he wasn’t compromised, nothing had happened, they were simply distracted checking their surroundings, the companion is told the name of a street to get to. “A van is coming to your location. Stand by for pickup,” says the woman on the other end.
“Understood.” The companion shuts off the radio. “Did you get that? Please let me down now?”
Star Platinum drops him the two feet to the ground, and he yelps. Jotaro steps back and shoves the man towards his companion, but not before taking the radio-necklace-thing around his neck too. Can’t afford to have them contact base after he’s left the location.
Jotaro picks up the map they dropped in the earlier shuffle; Star Platinum places a finger in the upper left. Huh, it found the location so fast. Now Jotaro just has to figure out where he is right now. He glances at the street sign; moments later, Star Platinum finds their location, too.
It’s probably like half an hour to walk there, but about a seven- to ten-minute drive. Looks like Jotaro will have to hitch a ride. He walks over to the entrance of the side street and plots a route while he waits.
A few minutes later, a nice-looking van with “S.P.W.” printed on the side and a wheel insignia rolls up. That must be it. Jotaro walks up and uses Star Platinum to ghost through the glass and open the door from the inside.
The driver jumps in her seat as the door swings wide. “You’re not--?”
Star Platinum rips the seatbelt apart, and Jotaro hauls her out by her nice S.P.W. uniform and tosses her onto the sidewalk. “They’re that way,” he says, pointing at the side street. She scrambles to her feet. He gets into the driver’s seat, slams the door in her face, and puts his foot to the pedal.
Jotaro speeds unwisely through the streets. He liberally uses the horn to make sure pedestrians and vehicles get out of his way, and makes it to Tridevi Sadak in only five minutes. Where there should be an entrance into the Garden of Dreams, though, there’s just a giant brick wall. Did he drive past the entryway on accident? Shit, that’s what he gets for being in a hurry. He swings the van around in a wide U-turn that scrapes the sidewalk, only to slam on the brakes when some shitty old geezer in a hiker’s sun hat and a polo shirt jumps straight in front of him and starts waving his gloved hands around.
Jotaro slams his hand on the horn before sticking his head out the window. “Get out of the way, old man!”
“Jotaro, it’s me, your grandfather!” the geezer says.
Jotaro stares. That voice… Could it really be…?
He sits back in the car and slams his foot on the gas.
“Wait, wait, wait!” The old man dodges the van’s lurch forward, jumping to the side and waving his hands around some more. “That’s not the kind of reaction you should have to meeting family! Shouldn’t you be more excited? Happy? Want to get to know me better? Don’t you have any questions or delightfully incredulous greetings?”
“You blocked my flight back home. If Mom’s dead I’m going to fucking kill you.” Jotaro reverses the gear on the van to back up so he can try and run over the old man again. He really shouldn’t, ‘cause Kakyoin’s probably still fighting that Avdol guy on his own, but Kakyoin’s strong. He can hold out a few more minutes while Jotaro commits vehicular assault on the elderly.
“Wait, I did what? And why would Holly be dead?”
Jotaro glares. “Because your cult rival has been sending assassins after her for the past three weeks?! Your information network is shit!”
“Wait, cult rival? What cult rival?”
“Fucking Dio, asshole!”
Jotaro tries to hit the old man with the car again, and once again fails. Damn him and his surprisingly nimble body. “Calm down, Jotaro! Your mother is fine! There have been a few assassins, but we defeated them all!”
“...Don’t call me by my first name,” Jotaro says. “When did you last hear from her? Are you sure it was her?”
“Why, just half an hour ago, and I’m certain it was her.”
Jotaro searches his expression. The old man looks back seriously, earnestly. It seems…
…
Jotaro parks the van and gets out. He walks up to the old man, trying to loom, but disappointingly enough, they’re the same height. “Hey, shitty old man. How much does family mean to you?”
The old man blinks, and his expression turns more serious. “The world.”
Good. “You got Mom with you? You’re protecting Mom properly?”
“As best as I can, although, to tell the truth, she doesn’t need much protecting--”
“If it came down to it, you’d protect her with your life. Right?”
“What kind of question is that?!”
“Well would you?” Jotaro snarls, stepping forward.
The old man steps back with him and raises his hands placatingly. “Of course. She’s my daughter after all. But why would it come to that?”
Jotaro studies him for a moment. He’s old. He gets major points off for that. But he’s Jotaro’s height and judging by his body shape he’s muscled too. Pretty strong, and at the very least, he’s got the balls to jump in front of a car. Only one question left. “You got an evil spirit?”
The old man blinks. Right. “A Stand,” Jotaro clarifies.
The old man nods slowly. He holds out his hand and thorny purple vines shimmer into existence over his arms, sinuous and shifting. “Hermit Purple.”
Hmm. It doesn’t look like much. But Kakyoin’s plenty evidence that you can fight just fine with something whip-like like that. Plus, the old man’s got the manpower and technology of a whole yakuza group, and this Avdol guy who apparently is good enough to go toe to toe with Kakyoin. That should be enough to protect against Dio; Jotaro will accept it, even if his grandfather does have an evil spirit. “Fine. Look after Mom. If anything happens to her I’ll kill you dead.”
The old man frowns. “Look after her? Won’t you be there to look after her too?”
Jotaro snorts. “If you were smart, you’d keep her as far away from me as you’d keep her from Dio.” It’s good that his grandfather has stepped up to watch out for her. She’s too nice to people. “I have things to do. Don’t contact me again.”
“Where are you going?”
Jotaro tunes him out. He runs up to the brick wall and then, kicking off with Star Platinum, jumps the full six meters and manages to grab onto the top. “Jotaro, wait! Your mother wants to see you!” the old man hollers after him. Jotaro stills, halfway over the wall. Damn, of course she wants to see him, she’s probably worried to death. But it’d be better for her not to see him; the old man can tell her that he’s still alive and kicking. That should be enough. He jumps over the wall, cutting off whatever the old man wanted to say next.
There’s no sign of Kakyoin in the neat, sprawling courtyards of the Garden of Dreams, no sign of him beyond the trees either. Shit, he took too long to get here. Kakyoin can move lightning fast with Hierophant Green if he wants to, like that fight against Polnareff -- he could be anywhere by now. Damn it. Jotaro scales a tree and sends Star Platinum up, and up -- past the two meter limit where it seems to be most powerful. Its presence becomes much weaker, a mere ghost to what it was before. “Look for any sign of Kakyoin, come down when you do,” Jotaro orders, and then he just has to wait there stupidly in the tree while Star Platinum does its thing.
A minute later, it returns to his side. Jotaro half-climbs, half-falls to the ground; Star Platinum says “Ora,” and points south -- the direction he just came from. He runs back across the garden and vaults over the wall same as earlier. No sign of his grandfather. Or the Speedwagon van, for that matter. Hopefully the shitty geezer did something smart and left.
“Is it much farther from here?” Jotaro says to Star Platinum.
It tilts its head, then wiggles a hand around in a so-so gesture. “Ora.”
Alright then. “Let’s try something different,” he says. Star Platinum nods. Then they kick off in unison off the wall, which lets Jotaro clear the street and land on the roof of the opposite building.
“What the hell?” he hears someone beneath him yell. No time for that. Jotaro sprints forward on the rooftops, running as fast as he can in the direction Star Platinum points.
Nearly seven streets down and out of breath, Jotaro jumps from one side of the street to another again and scrambles down a tall, ceramic wall into a circular stone courtyard lined with patterns of shrubs and trees. If he looks carefully, under the setting sun, there’s the faintest strands of emerald catching the gold light, like a delicate spider’s web. Jotaro follows them forward, out of the courtyard to a more open, grassier area beyond the trees.
He feels the temperature difference before he sees them. Rounding the hedges, he sees a great gout of flame rise up in the air, and in it, the silhouette of a few waving tendrils recoiling. Beneath the flare, Kakyoin stands opposite of a handsome man whose hair is half twisted up into bantu knots, half braided into a ponytail at the base of his neck. A red bird-headed evil spirit stands by his side. It slashes with its hands, and two lines of fire snake out and around to pincer Kakyoin from the sides.
Kakyoin looks paler than he should be. Using two thick tendrils like springs, he leaps over the attack, twisting midair to lash out at the other man with a whip-like attack. The man parries with another rope of fire; then the fire spirit inhales deeply and exhales a carpet of flames under Kakyoin.
Kakyoin’s eyes widen. Hierophant splits into three unsteady tentacles that prop him up before he can fall down into the flames. Hierophant half-tilts, half-flings Kakyoin beyond the fire even as its tentacles begin to burn at the edges. For a second Jotaro thinks he’s gonna make it -- but the fire spirit breathes out another beautiful arc of fire, so hot that Jotaro can feel it from all the way across the field, forming a perfect wall right in Kakyoin’s trajectory.
“Kakyoin!”
The name escapes his mouth before he can think about it, his body bursting into motion and leaping across the field. Kakyoin’s head whips up, the whites of his eyes catching the light of the fire in some kind of primal terror. And the carpet of fire lies directly between them, and there’s burn marks littered all over Kakyoin’s hands, and Jotaro isn’t going to make it in time, he needs time, he just needs a little -- more -- time --
It’s like the world slows down. The fire, previously fierce and leaping, seems to twist suspended in a frozen dance; Kakyoin, just inches from the fiery wall; and Jotaro has never felt faster, leaping forward through the flames on the ground, snagging Kakyoin by the collar and using Star Platinum to kick them out of range of both attacks--
Time snaps back to its normal pace. Jotaro and Kakyoin go tumbling to the ground. Jotaro rolls over a few times to smother himself where his pant legs have caught on fire before getting back onto his feet.
He’s immediately forced to dodge as Hierophant tries to spear him to death. “What are you doing here?” Kakyoin snarls.
“...Give me a break.” You’d think he’d pause more before trying to kill the guy who saved him from painful immolation. “Look, you were right about at least one thing--”
A stream of fire forces Kakyoin to dart away. “Jotaro Kujo?” the man with the fire spirit calls in English. This must be that Avdol guy. “Get away from him, he’s dangerous.”
“Stay out of it!” Jotaro and Kakyoin snap at the same time. Jotaro blinks and looks at Kakyoin. Kakyoin glares.
“If you haven’t noticed, I’m a bit busy here,” he sneers, “so if you don’t have any business here, why don’t you fuck off, since it has nothing to do with you.”
He’s still steaming mad, huh. “As I was gonna say, you were right, okay? I owe you.”
Kakyoin scowls. In a perfect echo of their earlier fight, “I don’t want anything from you!”
A lash from Hierophant forces Jotaro to leap back, and Kakyoin whips around and promptly attacks Avdol again. God damn it.
Avdol forces Kakyoin to dodge backwards with a gout of searing flame. Kakyoin catches himself on a sort of tripod of Hierophant’s limbs. Two other dripping tentacles come forward and twist together, shooting out a series of emerald crystals.
Avdol dodges, but Kakyoin adjusts the aim easily, like he’s swinging around a gun on a turret. Avdol curses. The fire spirit sweeps a wall of flames into existence, so hot that all the crystals sublimate on contact. As Jotaro circles around Avdol, Kakyoin ends his Emerald Splash technique there, flinging himself to the side on Hierophant’s limbs.
As Avdol gestures with great concentration, the wall of flames transforms into a great twisting phoenix and dives at Kakyoin; Kakyoin narrowly dodges, and the phoenix plows a great furrow through the ground before whirling back on him again.
Shit, what’s with that firepower? No wonder Kakyoin’s been having a hard time. There’s one good thing about it, though: Avdol is distracted enough that Jotaro’s able to burst forward and land a not-insignificant blow to his side with Star Platinum.
Avdol yelps as he tumbles to the ground. Jotaro’s on him in an instant, grabbing him by his robes and slamming him bodily against the ground again. Jotaro doesn’t have anything against Avdol personally, but the guy’s been trying to set Kakyoin on fire for like the past twenty minutes and that shit just does not fly.
“Jotaro! I’m not your enemy!” says Avdol, raising his arms in defense. He doesn’t try and punch back, so Jotaro lets go and backs off. It ain’t polite to beat a guy while he’s on the ground if he ain’t trying to get you too. “I’m a friend of your grandfather’s. Your family is worried about you--”
“If you try and make me join up with the family, I’ll break your arms,” Jotaro says flatly. He is not letting himself be inducted into some crazy yakuza shit.
Avdol, to his credit, doesn’t waste time trying to persuade Jotaro otherwise. He gets to his feet and puts some distance between them, getting back to his feet. “Very well, I won’t force you. Then we don’t need to fight, correct?”
“You’re trying to kill Kakyoin.”
Avdol gives him a piercing look. “You are aware of who he is, yes?” Jotaro raises an eyebrow. “He’s a dangerous, unstable agent under Dio’s control. He just attacked you. In all likelihood, he’s been sent to kill you.”
It’s not like Kakyoin does anything to hide it. “That’s my business, not yours.”
As if on cue, Hierophant Green tries to spear them both through the head.
Star Platinum catches the tentacle aimed towards Jotaro’s head easily, but it takes a frantic jump forward to catch the ones trying to burst Avdol’s skull like an overripe melon. “Ora!” Star Platinum yells, swinging Hierophant around by the limbs and tossing it -- and hence, Kakyoin -- halfway across the field.
“You fucker!” Kakyoin yells as he rolls across the grass.
“I’m trying to help you, asshole, quit it with the murder for a second!” Jotaro shouts back. Give him a fucking break. Jotaro understands why Kakyoin would try and kill him, but just because Avdol was trying to kill Kakyoin doesn’t mean Kakyoin should try and kill him back while they’re both out of the fight.
“He just tried to kill you,” Avdol points out.
As if Jotaro wasn’t there for it. “He can try if he wants,” Jotaro answers automatically, the same retort he’s given Kakyoin multiple times, but. It sounds kind of weird now that he’s saying it to someone else. He glances at Avdol’s face, and looks back away when he sees his considering look.
“And remind me how old are you again?” Avdol says.
… “Eighteen,” Jotaro lies.
Avdol nods slowly. “I don’t think you are.” Jotaro scowls. “Certainly you’re entitled to make your own choices, but as a responsible adult I simply can’t allow you to continue associating with him.”
Before Jotaro can process what that means, Avdol flings his hands out and shouts, “Red Bind!”
A rope of fire wraps around him and binds him tightly, and the fire spirit yanks the end of the rope and throws him to the ground. Jotaro catches himself with Star Platinum, but in the time it takes to do that, a ring of fire springs up around him, so hot the air itself shimmers and it’s uncomfortable to breathe. Motherfucker.
“I apologize for the discomfort.” Squinting, Jotaro sees Avdol turning his back to him from beyond the flames. “I will finish this quickly, so wait there quietly.”
Motherfucker. Jotaro strains at the bindings, then tries to pull them apart entirely with Star Platinum, but it’s getting hard to breathe. Star Platinum’s strength seems to have drained with his lack of breath; Jotaro can’t muster up the force he knows it’s capable of. Shit. Would’ve been nice to know about this kind of thing sooner.
Fine, so he can’t get out of this “Red Bind.” It’s not burning him, so it’s fine to leave it for now. Then what about the ring of fire? Jotaro shifts his shoes towards them carefully, and the leather starts warping visibly within a few centimeters of it. Some more undignified shuffling on the ground and Jotaro manages to get the tip of his coat into the fire.
The coat ignites immediately. Damn, so it’s not the weird solid-but-not-spreading fire that “Red Bind” is made of. But that does mean that Jotaro’s terrible plan will work.
Jotaro takes a deep breath -- ouch, that hurts -- and then he rolls himself straight through the flames and out of the circle.
Being on fire is not that fun. He rolls around on the ground to try and smother it, but that shit is burning something fierce. Whatever. If Avdol is so concerned with his wellbeing then Avdol will come over running to put the fire out, and either he’ll stop the fire or Kakyoin will nail him in the back and it’ll be all fine.
Sure enough -- “Jotaro!” Avdol yells from some distance away, and then, “You stupid asshole, what the hell do you think you’re doing?!” Wait, that was in Japanese, that’s not Avdol, that’s--
Jotaro looks up just in time to get hit by Emerald Splash straight in the chest. Shit, that hurts just as bad as the first time. But the crystals explode back into liquid on contact, drenching him from head to toe.
Oh.
One more roll across the grass, and all the fire on him goes out. He clambers back to his feet and calls out Star Platinum. It emerges, eyes bright and fists ready; it seems to be back at full power now that Jotaro can finally fucking breathe.
Kakyoin lands next to him, eyes furious and blazing. “Just where did you get the bright idea to set yourself on fire?!”
Jotaro can’t help it. He snorts. Heh. “Bright idea.”
Hierophant’s tentacles lash out so hard they carve furrows into the ground. “Now is not the time for jokes!”
“Sure,” Jotaro agrees. Then, “Thanks, Kakyoin.”
Kakyoin stutters over whatever angry diatribe he was about to say, Hierophant’s faltering mid-movement as well. “I -- you--!”
“Look alive. Avdol’s coming our way.”
Avdol is visibly sweating as he rushes over. “What kind of person willingly sets himself on fire?” he cries. “Nothing would’ve happened if you’d just stayed there--!”
“Ora!”
Avdol goes flying back from the force of Star Platinum’s punch. That’s what you fucking get.
Kakyoin stares. “I thought you weren’t fighting him.”
“He set me on fire.”
“That was your own fault!”
“Small details.” The real problem is that Avdol is trying to kill Kakyoin, and also that he’s not gonna just let Jotaro walk out of here with Kakyoin either. “Keep a lid on your murder attempts until we fuck him up, will you?”
Kakyoin looks at him for a moment, and Jotaro’s just thinking he’s gonna have a battle on two fronts when the murderous intent settles into something flatter and cold. A sharp nod. “No promises about what comes after.”
That’s fine, that’s just about what he expected. Kakyoin’s not the type to leave a fight unfinished, after all.
Kakyoin furrows his brows at him, and Jotaro realizes, abruptly, that the corner of his mouth has turned up slightly. He quickly turns away. There’s a fight to finish.
It’s easier than it should be, tag-teaming with Kakyoin. Jotaro handles all the short-range; Star Platinum is fast enough to land a few hits before Avdol can finish preparing his fire attacks. Kakyoin snipes while Jotaro’s in close, and when Avdol tries to put some distance between them, he’ll pull all of his traps and whip attacks to herd Avdol back into place for Jotaro to attack again.
That’s not to say Avdol doesn’t put up a good fight. He’s obviously practiced with his evil spirit, controlling his fire attacks with a versatility and precision that makes Jotaro burn with envy. It’s just that he’s held back by the fact that he’s been worn down fighting Kakyoin, it’s two-on-one now, and -- now that Jotaro has entered the fight -- he’s pulling his punches.
Sure, his attacks hurt, but they’re not lethally hot. Whenever he aims a superheated attack at Kakyoin, all Jotaro has to do is stand in its way and he’s forced to tone it down. And when something catches on fire or Avdol tries to control their movements by cutting off pathways with his flames, Kakyoin’s Hierophant lets him maneuver around them and put out what’s necessary with Emerald Splash.
It’s almost too easy, the way Jotaro and Kakyoin cover for each other, like they’ve done it dozens of times already. Maybe it’s because they’ve fought each other before; he knows what Kakyoin is capable of, and where he can prop him up. Their abilities aren’t a bad match either.
Eventually, Avdol slips up. Kakyoin baits him with an attack from above that he struggles to use his evil spirit to counter; by the time he’s realized something’s wrong, Jotaro has already closed in and landed a series of punishing blows to his stomach.
Avdol stumbles back, wheezing, and his evil spirit’s flames flicker and die down. So it is tied to breathing, in some way. Jotaro straightens up and calls Star Platinum back; Hierophant Green nails Avdol with a vicious Emerald Splash that leaves him gasping and sopping wet.
Of course, that’s when Hierophant trusses Avdol and wraps a tendril around his neck. This again? It’s with a faint annoyance that Jotaro steps forward and yanks the tentacle off with Star Platinum before it can snap the poor guy’s neck. “Kakyoin. No killing.”
“He tried to kill me!” Kakyoin protests.
“He won’t anymore,” Jotaro replies. “Right?”
He stares Avdol down. If he disagrees, Jotaro is going to give him a mean knock to the head and leave him unconscious in this park. Perhaps sensing that cooperation is the sensible thing to do, Avdol nods miserably from within Hierophant’s grip. “If you do not fight with lethal force, then -- I suppose I won’t either.”
Kakyoin doesn’t look happy. “He’s still an enemy! See, he didn’t even promise not to fight again. We should just kill him and save the trouble.”
Kakyoin is impossible. Jotaro didn’t want to say this, but-- “I could say the same of you.”
Kakyoin blinks, then glares at him.
Jotaro, unimpressed, crosses his arms. “No killing.”
The tentacles not holding Avdol undulate ominously. Kakyoin tilts his head. The sun’s rays fall sharply away on the plane of his face, leaving his eyes dyed under deep shadow. His long shadow yawns across the field.
It feels like he’s on the verge of ignoring him and killing Avdol anyways. It was probably a stupid idea to let go of Hierophant, huh? But if Jotaro shows any uneasiness, he’s pretty certain that Kakyoin will tilt right over the edge, a wolf that can’t help but go for its prey. So he only waits, meeting Kakyoin’s eyes steadily.
The moment passes. “Fine,” Kakyoin snaps, crossing his arms as well. “You and your honor code.”
“It’s not an honor code,” Jotaro says, miffed. It’s just basic decency not to kill someone when out of the fight.
Kakyoin rolls his eyes. “Can I at least take his wallet? You won’t object to that too, will you?”
Jotaro thinks about it. He looks at Avdol, considering.
Avdol’s eyes widen. He shakes his head.
Jotaro considers him some more.
Avdol shakes his head harder.
“Sure,” says Jotaro. Gotta give Kakyoin something. “Could use the money anyways.”
“Thank God.” Kakyoin turns to Avdol and smiles maliciously, hoisting him upside down in the air. “This is a shakedown,” he declares, and quite literally starts shaking him from side to side.
Jotaro puts a hand on his face. “Just take the money and go.”
Kakyoin clicks his tongue. “You’re no fun.” But he stops, fishing out the contents of Avdol’s pockets with his tentacles. He doesn’t have much in his coat; a fake wallet with nothing in it, a couple receipts, a dagger for some reason, and--
“Finally,” Kakyoin says, pulling out a much thicker wallet. He plucks out all the cash and coins and stuffs it into his own jacket pocket, tossing the rest carelessly onto the ground. “We hit jackpot. Let’s go.”
“Wait,” says Jotaro.
Kakyoin’s hand stills ever so slightly before he resumes depositing coins into his pocket. “You’re not coming?” he says, voice noticeably cooling into something vicious and mean.
Jotaro elects to deal with the question like he does with most problems he finds too annoying to address: he ignores it. He turns and looks back at Avdol, who is looking back and forth between him and Kakyoin with raised eyebrows.
It irritates Jotaro for some reason. Jotaro’s gonna enjoy this. “Hey. The name’s Avdol, right?”
Avdol nods. “How did you know?”
“Avdol.” Jotaro makes eye contact seriously with him. Avdol looks seriously back. “Looks like your attacks weren’t so hot after all.”
Avdol’s expression morphs like Jotaro just kicked his dog. Kakyoin, on the other hand, stares for a second before he starts cackling madly. Jotaro feels a surge of annoyance. “Shut up, Kakyoin. You say something to him too.”
“Shut up or say something, which is it?” Kakyoin laughs, but he acquiesces, turning to Avdol with a grin. “You don’t look so hot. I think it would be good for you to go and cool your head.”
With that, Hierophant hoists Avdol up, tentacles coiling under him like a spring. Wait, he isn’t going to -- is he--?
Hierophant catapults Avdol across the field. He disappears somewhere beyond the tree line with a yell.
Well, it’ll give them a head start at least. “I’d give that a seventy out of a hundred,” he tells Kakyoin.
Kakyoin gives him a razor sharp smile. “Not good enough for you?”
Jotaro shrugs. Kakyoin can definitely do better. “Let’s get out of here before anyone else comes.”
Jotaro takes off at an easy run; Kakyoin catches up a moment later, propelling himself forward with Hierophant’s limbs. “What are you in such a hurry for?”
“Avdol’s with my grandfather’s shitty yakuza group and I ain’t getting involved in that shit. They got people crawling all over the city, best to leave quickly.”
Kakyoin raises an eyebrow, but he nods and follows Jotaro out to where Jotaro jacks a nearby car. “We’re going to the next city,” he tells Kakyoin as he pulls out into the street. “I’m not risking going back for our luggage, so if you want to collect it, do it on your own.”
“That suitcase had all my souvenirs. And what do you mean, ‘we’?”
Jotaro resists the impulse to sigh. “Fine. I’ll drop you off.”
“Don’t you dare.” Alright then. “Why are you so keen to leave, anyhow? What about your flight?”
“Not taking it.”
“Why? Your mother?”
“She’ll be fine. ‘S more important to leave now.” He fishes around the pocket on the inside of his coat, pulls out a booklet and tosses it to Kakyoin. “Here, tell me where to go.”
Kakyoin catches the book. “A Treatise on the Development of Water Worthy Vessels in the Indian Subcontinent throughout the 1600s?”
Jotaro immediately snatches the book away and tosses it into the back. He pulls out the other booklet and hands it over.
“Tourist’s guide to Kathmandu and surrounding areas,” Kakyoin reads. “Did you go out on a walk, Jojo?”
Jotaro doesn’t answer that.
“Che, so you listened to me after all.” Kakyoin shuffles through the booklet for a minute. “Let’s go to Tinthana first. It’s a half-hour drive. Don’t complain afterwards if you don’t like it.”
Half an hour, huh? See if he can cut it down to fifteen.
Kakyoin doesn’t say anything about his driving beyond an initial remark that he’s a hazard to anyone who populates the road. He turns the radio on and leans on the car door, watching the window, turned away. Hierophant alternates between a murderous seething that makes Jotaro feel like Kakyoin will really crash the car trying to kill him, and a stillness that makes him feel more uneasy still.
“Why was Avdol attacking you?” Jotaro eventually asks, during one of Hierophant’s still moments.
There’s a long pause, enough that Jotaro doubts he’ll get any answer at all, before Kakyoin shrugs. “He wanted to know where Dio’s mansion was.”
What. “Dio’s mansion?”
“It’s his base of operations,” Kakyoin explains. A mansion? For a base of operations? “Avdol also thinks I’m an irreversibly and incorrigibly terrible threat to society at large, and should be put down for the public good,” Kakyoin adds, as an afterthought.
Well. Avdol kind of has a point.
Kakyoin scowls. “I know what you’re thinking.”
“You are a public menace,” Jotaro points out.
“Name one time.”
“No tourist’s pockets are safe while you are around.”
“You just have no sense of finesse. You’d beat them up and take what you want.”
Yeah, so people have a chance to fight for their own stuff. And Jotaro doesn’t take stuff unless he needs it. Kakyoin, on the other hand, robs people as a hobby.
Kakyoin curls his lips. “Fine, think what you want. How’d you find me?”
“I beat some people up and took what I wanted.”
The answer is, apparently, unexpected enough to startle a laugh out of Kakyoin. “You -- of course you did. Who?”
Jotaro gives Kakyoin the run-down about how his grandfather is running a yakuza and has been using his front company to track them through Nepal and even sabotaged the flight back home. Kakyoin’s eyebrows climb an inch. “And you left your mother with them?”
“As long as they’re keeping her safe it’s fine.”
“And you believed your grandfather when he said he would.”
His grandfather has always taken care of Mom -- the money, the phone calls, whatever. His word’s worth something. “He’s family.”
“But you won’t stay for them.”
Jotaro grunts. “‘S better not to have me around.”
“Is this about the whole having an ‘evil spirit’ thing again? You think they need protecting from you?”
“I don’t care what happens to my grandfather.”
“Still. You left to protect your mother from you.” Kakyoin smiles sharply, Hierophant’s tentacles twisting sharply about. “I suppose I should ask what it means if you’re fine staying around me, then.”
Jotaro scowls. “It’s different with you. You don’t need protecting.” Kakyoin would probably take his head off if he tried. Kakyoin’s expression darkens a little, but Jotaro continues, “And you don’t care.”
“Don’t care about what?”
“When we first fought,” Jotaro says. When I hurt you. Kakyoin wasn’t scared away then, and he isn’t scared away now. He’s just as fucked up and abrasive and violent as Jotaro is, and also kind of evil, and that makes it -- okay, for Jotaro to be himself around him. He can take it, he won’t break.
Kakyoin frowns, like he doesn’t quite get it, but he doesn’t ask and Jotaro doesn’t try to explain any further either. He won’t get it right if he does. Kakyoin will either understand him, or he won’t. No use worrying about it more than that.
They arrive in Tinthana soon after that. Kakyoin’s already picked out a hotel, gives the address and everything, and Jotaro drives them there. When Kakyoin gets out, though, Jotaro doesn’t. “You go book a room. I got other stuff to do.”
Kakyoin looks at him sharply. “You’re leaving again?”
Jotaro rolls his eyes. “Calm the fuck down. I’ll be back soon.” He pulls away from the curb before Kakyoin can say anything else.
Twenty minutes later and the sun has well and truly set. Jotaro returns to the hotel and gets Kakyoin’s room number from the clerk, then goes up to the second floor and bangs louder than necessary on the door to room 232.
“I’m coming, I’m coming!” Kakyoin says, opening the door. Jotaro shoves his way in as soon as it cracks open. A quick glance around and he sets the two bags he’s carrying down by the sink.
Kakyoin follows him over and looks suspiciously at the bags. “What did you get?”
Jotaro reaches over and grabs Kakyoin’s hand, lifting it to inspect. Those are some nasty burns, as he expected, but thankfully not to the second degree yet. Kakyoin’s pretty good to have kept himself in one shape fighting Avdol for so long.
Kakyoin yanks his hand away with a hiss. “What do you think you’re doing?”
Jotaro shakes the contents of one bag out in response. A first aid kit, some tubes of ointment and disinfectant, and gauze clatter out onto the bathroom counter. “I got stuff for your burns.”
Kakyoin stares at it all. He doesn’t move. Jotaro turns the shower on and sets it to cold. The water pressure’s kinda shit but it’ll have to do. “Go wash them off first.”
A pause. “...I don’t have a change of clo--”
Jotaro pulls out a sealed package of freshly bought underpants and throws it at his head. Kakyoin catches it and inspects the package, arching an eyebrow. “How forward, Jojo. Do you know my three sizes or something?”
Jotaro’s face heats up. “It’s a fucking one-size-fits-all, asshole! Go shower already!”
Kakyoin smirks at him, then shuts the door and showers.
Jotaro tosses his hat and coat aside as he waits. He doesn’t really have that many burns, just a few reddened patches along his arms and hands and ankles. After running cold water on them in the sink for a minute, he dries them off, disinfects them and applies ointment, and wraps up the ones that look the worst.
Kakyoin emerges just as Jotaro is finishing up, hovering to the side watchfully as Jotaro tapes the last of the bandages down and pulls his coat back on. “Everything’s over by the first aid kit,” Jotaro says, jerking his head to indicate it. “That’s the antibacterial ointment there, and there’s more gauze in the bag. Got some disinfecting wipes if you want those too.”
Kakyoin looks at everything like they’re foreign objects, so Jotaro snags the ointment and shoves it into his chest. “Hurry up and put it on. You don’t want an infection.”
He takes the ointment but doesn’t move to uncap it, just looks at it strangely some more. What, is this his first time treating burns or something? … Good grief. It can’t be helped. “Fine, give it here. I’ll do it.”
Kakyoin jerks back when Jotaro reaches out. Jotaro drops his hand and raises an eyebrow. “You know how to take care of it, then?”
There is a stubborn silence. Jotaro sighs heavily. “Give me a break. Take off your coat and sit down.”
It feels like an eternity before Kakyoin acquiesces. He folds his coat neatly and sets it to the side before hopping up to sit on the sink. His eyes are dark, following Jotaro around as he moves, like a wild animal trying to decide whether or not to attack.
Well, Hierophant Green isn’t out, so whatever. Jotaro picks up the wipes and then, telegraphing his movements, takes Kakyoin’s arm and carefully rolls up the sleeve. There are rope-like marks where the skin is red and starting to blister.
Jotaro pulls a small towel from the rack and wets it under the sink. “Looks like it’s second-degree,” he mutters. “Getting to the second layer of skin. After running it under cold water, you should clean and dry it, before putting on the ointment.”
The moment he touches the towel to the burns, Hierophant snaps out its limbs like a great spider’s limbs, ready to spear him at a moment’s notice.
“Do you want me to do this or not?” Jotaro says, exasperated.
The tentacles twitch before being withdrawn back to a more humanoid shape. Kakyoin jerks his head in a nod. Jotaro lets out a breath and continues talking. “The purpose is to prevent infection…”
He explains each step he takes for the first burn, finishes it off, and says, “That’s the process. You can do it yourself now,” but when he moves to step away, Hierophant grabs onto his sleeves and pulls him back. “Seriously?”
“Just -- you do it,” Kakyoin says. “I’m not gonna get it right if I do it right now.”
He’s leaning back against the mirror, his head lolling listlessly to the side. How long was he fighting Avdol on his own again? No wonder he’s tired. Jotaro nods. “Don’t freak out on me, then,” he says, and takes Kakyoin’s hand again.
It’s simple work: wipe off and dry the burns properly, apply ointment, bandage it but not too tightly, tell Kakyoin what he’s doing before he does it. Still, it feels like balancing on a knife’s edge. For some reason -- maybe a combination of the fact that Jotaro has to get up in his space, and that they fought each other only hours before -- Kakyoin is strung tight as a wire. Hierophant has unfurled all over the bathroom counter, occasionally seizing up and jerking towards him like Kakyoin is just barely holding them back from attack.
Kakyoin himself starts intermittently leaking murderous intent, like broken-up static, a leaky tap, a hissing cobra on the verge of striking. He keeps relaxing slowly and then twisting his head around like he wants to take Jotaro’s head off. Shit’s tiring. “Anywhere else that needs taking care of?” Jotaro says when he’s done with all the burns on the arms. “If not, I’m going out.”
Hierophant latches onto Jotaro’s arms before he can withdraw. “Don’t.”
“Jesus Christ, Kakyoin, I’m trying to give you space.”
“I don’t want it,” Kakyoin says. He twitches, and Hierophant’s tentacles snake their way further up Jotaro’s arm. “My head hurts.”
Jotaro suddenly and vividly recalls hitting Kakyoin in the head during their fight earlier today, and feels horribly guilty. “Isn’t that more reason to want some peace and quiet?”
Kakyoin jerks his head. “No. Yes. I. I don’t know.” Hierophant pulls Jotaro insistently closer, and since Jotaro is kind of at fault here, he lets it. “It’s getting so loud,” Kakyoin complains, nose scrunching up a bit, and he closes his eyes.
That phrase again, like the night Kakyoin tried to prove he could kill him. “...Alright. So? Anywhere else?”
Kakyoin peels one eye back open and surveys him, and it feels like that wild howling thing is peering back at him through the dark of his eye.
“I redirected most of the burns Hierophant got to my arms,” he says. He can do that? “There’s one attack I wasn’t fast enough for though.”
He reaches up and clumsily undoes the top button of his shirt, but there’s a steadily worsening tremor to his hands that keeps him from undoing the second. Seeing the frustration flashing in his eye, Jotaro reaches forward. “Here, I’ll do it.”
Their hands touch. Kakyoin’s head snaps up. Hierophant seizes Jotaro’s arms and neck at the same moment Star Platinum grabs Kakyoin by the throat. Their eyes meet like an electric shock, and for a long moment they stare challengingly at each other in perfect stillness and perfect threat.
It’s almost a relief that Kakyoin has finally made a move, because violence, at least, Jotaro understands. “Back off, Kakyoin,” he says lowly. “If you try anything I’ll snap your neck.”
Hierophant constricts ever so slightly around his throat. “My target,” Kakyoin mutters to himself. “My target.” Hierophant constricts once again. He doesn’t even seem to notice Star Platinum’s hand tightening on his own neck. His intent to kill floats high on the air.
“Do you want to die here?” Jotaro demands. Star Platinum tightens its grip once more, shoving Kakyoin back against the mirror. Come on, back off already! If he doesn’t, then -- then…
It doesn’t work. Kakyoin’s lips keep moving soundlessly. He looks at Jotaro like he’s seeing something else there, eyes shining, the howling thing taking over again, and Hierophant tightens once more.
Damn it. Either you die or I do, Kakyoin told him, but he hadn’t expected it to become relevant so quickly. Jotaro could try knocking him out but he feels faintly responsible for hitting Kakyoin in the head earlier; he shouldn’t do it again. And anyways, Kakyoin’s so on the edge that any surprise attack really might end with one of their necks snapped. No, for once this is a problem of violence that he can’t solve with more violence. He needs something else.
What did the incident earlier today and the one on the night of the fight with Polnareff have in common? Kakyoin was trying to prove that he could kill, and when it spiraled out of control, he really did try. Control. Is that the key…?
Jotaro gets an inkling of an idea. A horrible, no good, terrible idea that makes his stunt in the fight with Avdol look like daisies in comparison. And Jotaro’s not a gambling sort of person, and certainly not with stakes as high as his life, but -- if he gets it right--
It takes a tremendous amount of effort to make Star Platinum loosen its grip. Agonizingly slow, Star Platinum peels away one finger, then another, until it has let go entirely. It drifts backwards at a snail’s pace. Kakyoin’s eyes follows it as it goes, and they narrow when it moves out of arm’s reach.
“What do you think you’re doing?” he says, almost accusing.
“What about you?” Jotaro meets Kakyoin’s eyes challengingly, tilts his head down to look him straight on. “‘Cause I’ll tell you what, I’m not in the mood to play around.”
He’s still holding onto Kakyoin’s shirt at the second button, and he feels Kakyoin begin to tremble faintly under his hands. “Stop it. Or I’ll -- I’ll--”
“Or what? You’ll kill me?” He leans forward until the tentacles around his neck begin to squeeze, until he can’t anymore. “Then do it. ”
Kakyoin shakes harder. Hierophant tightens like a noose, and it takes Jotaro’s entire force of will to stand still, to keep Star Platinum from trying to punt Kakyoin into next Wednesday, to keep staring Kakyoin down even as dark spots crowd his vision. Until he starts blacking out entirely. If this doesn’t work, it’s gonna be a fucking stupid way to go, but all the same -- it’s only strangulation. Not snapping the neck, not harpooning through the torso or crushing the skull with all the force he knows Kakyoin is capable of, and that means… that means--
Hierophant releases, and Kakyoin shoves him away with a gasp. Jotaro stumbles to the side and blindly catches himself on the wall, half-coughing and half-gasping for breath as his vision slowly returns. “You dumbass,” Kakyoin says, “what the hell were you thinking? Why would you do that?”
“Just for fun,” Jotaro croaks out. What does he think?
There’s a crack as Hierophant’s limbs whip against the tile floor. “I tried to kill you today! Twice!”
“More than that.”
“That makes it worse!”
Jotaro snorts. “Well gee, Kakyoin, I dunno why you’re so worried. You’re the one who keeps coming after my head.” He has to cough again before he can rasp out the next words. “I’m just the dumb motherfucker who decided to trust you anyways.”
He straightens up and looks at Kakyoin, but the expression there is so awful that he immediately turns away. “I thought--! You think I’m crazy, and evil, and -- and--”
“Don’t fucking remind me.”
“See!” Kakyoin gestures sharply. “Then why in the world would you do that?!”
Damn it, is he really gonna make him spell it out? “‘Cause I wanted to, idiot.”
“But there wasn’t any reason to!”
Give him a break. “Has it occurred to you that that’s the whole fucking point?”
Kakyoin stares at him like he’s speaking an alien language.
“You’re right,” Jotaro says. “There’s no reason I have to travel with you, if I wanted to find Dio I could’ve gone with Polnareff or beaten the answers out of some other assassin. There’s no reason I had to fight Avdol with you or do your bandages or -- or any of that; I could’ve walked away at any time. There’s no reason except that I wanted to, alright? You consider me a friend, and I also.” He grits his teeth. “I also. Care. About what happens to you.” Articulating this is the most horrific thing that’s happened to him all day. He crosses his arms and glares to the side; he can’t even look in Kakyoin’s direction.
“That’s how you know it means something, okay?” he continues. “If there’s no reason to come back but they do anyways. But it doesn’t mean shit if you had to fucking make them stay. So you better not fucking pull that possession stunt on me again, Kakyoin, because I swear to God if you do I won’t ever come back. No one gets to decide for me what I do.”
He stares at the bathroom tiles in the silence that follows. Who knew that they could be so fascinating.
“Then -- earlier today, when you said--” Kakyoin cuts off abruptly before starting again. “You said I had no reason to care about you.”
“Well, you don’t,” says Jotaro. “I don’t fucking get you.”
“You don’t get me?”
“I don’t!” Jotaro snaps. “I don’t know why you want to travel with me, or why you want me to stick around so badly, or -- or even why you offered to bring me to Dio in the first place. We fought so badly you still have some bruises from it. Who the hell would want someone like that around?”
“Who buys a cherry smoothie for the person who just tried to kill them?” Kakyoin shoots back.
“You treated Polnareff to dinner.”
“That was different. He didn’t want me dead, and I was also parading around my superiority to him. You didn’t have that kind of motive.”
This guy. “What else was I supposed to do. Just leave you there?”
“You were supposed to kill me!”
-- Oh.
“And you didn’t,” Kakyoin says. “You could’ve but you didn’t, and -- and what kind of person does that?”
Good grief. Is this why Kakyoin was so friendly to him from the beginning? “You need higher standards.”
“I do have high standards,” says Kakyoin. “I chose you.”
That -- that’s -- what the fuck? Who just says shit like that? Jotaro looks up sharply, only to meet Kakyoin’s gaze. “So that’s why,” Kakyoin says, “I care about what you think, and I want us to be friends, and -- I want you to enjoy this trip too. So. You have to tell me what you think of it, okay?”
Where the fuck did that come from? “It’s your vacation. You shouldn’t pay attention to that kind of shit.”
“It’s my vacation so I want to know,” Kakyoin retorts. “Every place we go to, you have to tell me two things you don’t like!” -- fuck, whatever, it’s not something he particularly cares for, but it’s doable -- “And two things that you liked.” Nevermind. He doesn’t like that.
“Do you seriously care that much?” Jotaro says, because he really doesn’t want to have to talk about things he enjoys.
“You owe me, right?”
… “Fine.” And then, since he does owe Kakyoin, he adds, “I’m -- sorry. About this afternoon. I was… worried. So I got angry.” He looks away. “When I get angry I fight.”
“Apology accepted,” says Kakyoin. And, “I promise won’t use possession on you again, either.”
Huh. Who knew he’d come out with that on his own? Jotaro nods.
“At least, without your permission,” Kakyoin adds, and Jotaro looks at him incredulously.
“Why would I give you permission?”
“You never know.”
Well, whatever. Not like the caveat means anything, he’ll just say no. He acquiesces with a shrug.
“Great. I’m glad that’s all settled.” Kakyoin claps his hands together with a smile, and then he says, “By the way, Jojo, I still need help putting on that last bandage. Care to help out?”
He tugs at the collar of his shirt and wiggles his eyebrows meaningfully, completely breaking the mood, and it hadn’t seemed like such a big deal when Jotaro had been about to do it, but now the idea of helping Kakyoin unbutton his shirt and put bandages on his chest makes the skin on his face heat up. There’s no way. “Do it yourself!”
Kakyoin laughs at him. Good grief. He moves to touch the brim of his hat, but he took it off earlier, so the gesture is aborted in favor of running a hand through his hair. Kakyoin laughs at him some more. He sighs and goes back out to the main area of the hotel room to lie down because this has been way too fucking long of a day.
He stops.
There is a problem. A big problem. A very big problem he hadn’t noticed until now because he was dealing with the insanity of everything else.
“...Kakyoin. Why is there only one bed?”
Kakyoin follows his gaze to the singular twin-sized bed. They stand in silence for a moment.
“In my defense,” says Kakyoin, “I was mad at you and didn’t know if you’d really come back, and I thought it’d be funny to make you sleep on the floor.”
---
In a tidy hospital room in Kathmandu, where Holly was recovering from the injuries she’d received while defeating the Midler and the High Priestess a few days before…
“So, to summarize,” Holly says, “Papa asked the Speedwagon Foundation to keep an eye on Jotaro, and they blocked his flight out without telling us so that Jotaro would be in the city to meet us, and Jotaro found out. While I was resting here, Papa went to explore the area where we knew Jotaro was last, and happened to see him, but Jotaro ran away. So Papa came to find me because he thought I’d be able to persuade him better, but he got tricked by Yellow Temperance and ended up fighting instead.”
“Ahhh, Holly, it was such a harrowing fight,” Joseph laments. “The manipulations -- the tricks -- the shenanigans! He was truly a fearsome foe.”
Holly purses her lips. “And Avdol came across Mister Kakyoin at the park by chance, and decided to confront him for information about Dio.”
“I believed I would be able to handle it easily,” says Avdol.
“Mister Kakyoin is my son’s age,” Holly says sternly.
Avdol sighs. “He nearly killed me at least three times, and drew the fight out for twenty minutes.” Under his breath, he adds, “Fighting him in an urban space is a nightmare.” It had taken him way too long to force Kakyoin to fight in the open.
“You are a responsible adult, Mister Avdol. You shouldn’t solve all your problems by force.” Holly sighs and looks out at the night sky. “My poor baby boy. Now he thinks Papa runs a cult.”
“But -- at least he entrusted you to me!” Joseph says with the desperation of a man looking for a last ray of hope.
He wilts quickly under Holly’s disappointed look. “Papa, you and Mister Avdol both somehow failed to tell him I was here, and now he he has a grudge against you for keeping him away from me.” Her mood shifts, putting her hands on her cheeks and smiling gently. “But it’s so sweet that he’s so worried about me. Jotaro truly is a gentle child.”
“He attacked two Speedwagon Foundation employees, stole a van, and tried to run Mr. Joestar over with it,” Avdol says disbelievingly. Not to mention his own bruises from the fight with Jotaro. He packed quite a punch for someone who’d only had their Stand for a few weeks.
“He’s troubled and easily misunderstood,” Holly demurs. “Oh, I’m so glad he’s still doing alright. I hope we’ll see him again soon. Papa, do you know where he is now?”
As if waiting for the question, Joseph smashes a 30,000 yen camera with Hermit Purple. He and Holly crowd around the emerging photo while Avdol sighs, sits back, and quietly drinks his tea.
The photo is fairly dark, with only one dim light source coming from outside the frame. Jotaro is half sitting up in a bed, looking down with intense concentration at the sleeping face of the red-haired boy next to him. His hand is outstretched, sweeping the hair out of Kakyoin’s face.
“Ohoh,” says Joseph.
“Oh, my,” says Holly.
“What is it?” Avdol asks, unable to bear the curiosity and leaning forward to peer at the photo as well.
Holly puts a hand to her mouth coquettishly. “Well… perhaps…”
Joseph grins. “Avdol, have I ever told you about myself and Caesar, back when I was a young man?”
---
In the dark of the hotel, with only a dim lamp lit on the other side of the room, Jotaro looks down at Kakyoin’s peacefully sleeping face, brushing the bangs aside for a better look. There, in the center of his forehead and nearly hidden in his hair, is some fleshy, squirming, spider-shaped thing.
What the fuck is that?
Notes:
if youve made it to the end: thank you for reading!!!!!!!!!! it was a long haul and this chapter more than doubled the length of the fic.
if you enjoyed the chapter please leave a comment and let me know what you liked! readership and knowing people are interested/engaged with what i'm writing is huge motivation for me to keep writing!
thank you to succubused for beta reading!
Chapter 5: steely dan's no good, very bad stand
Summary:
“I don’t see anything,” says Kakyoin.
Is he for real? “I’m talking about the worm thing in the middle of your fucking head, Kakyoin.”
Kakyoin, for a lack of a better term, blanks out. All his movements come to a complete stop, his face goes void, and for a second, his eyes go empty, like the dull, flat rocks of a riverbed.
Kakyoin deals with the fact that his friend has problems. Jotaro deals with the fact that his friend has a worm in his brain.
Notes:
bit of an in-between chapter, also known as “deworming is a go” or “jotaro has trauma: the chapter (the first).” polnareff gets bullied.
okay writing this fic has basically given me free reign to do WHATEVER i want with jotaro's backstory and ive finally built things up that i can start going crazy. here's some notes if you want to know what i've been drawing on to craft a backstory for him:
- from the first page of the part 3 manga, jotaro seemed to be a fairly nice and well-adjusted person until middle school; would still openly respond to his mother's affections, etc.
- in the manga kakyoin vs jotaro fight, the delinquents in the hospital room make a remark that's like "come on, have you ever seen jotaro get hurt in a fight before?" implying he fights on the regular and that either hes very good at keeping his injuries hidden OR he got good enough to defend himself before high school began.
- in the kakyoin vs jotaro fight, jotaro also says (in the manga) that he's been responsible for causing teachers to quit the staff before.
- conclusion: I WONDER WHAT HAPPENED IN MIDDLE SCHOOL!!!!! and also high school. Marinate On This.
also FYI in japan, middle school/junior high goes from the american equivalent 7th grade to 9th grade, so in his last year of junior high jotaro would've been 14.
chapter warnings: canon-typical violence, discussion and implications of past trauma/assault, extremely self-destructive behaviors, possession, canon-typical assholery
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
In all of the insanity of yesterday, Jotaro didn’t really have time to process all of -- whatever was going on with Kakyoin’s head. But looking at the squirming thing throbbing in the middle of Kakyoin’s forehead, it all comes rushing back.
Fuck, he knew that Kakyoin was super cult brainwashed or something, but what the hell is this? Should he take it out? Jotaro pinches it with his fingers only for some weird fleshy tendril to come whipping out and try to burrow through his skin.
Jotaro flinches back and barely holds in a shout. Star Platinum tears the tendril out in a flash and throws it back towards the source. The fleshy spider thing absorbs the tendril back and, apparently satisfied now that it’s not being touched, goes back to its original, mostly-inert-but-still-wiggling state.
What the fuck.
Is this -- is this why Kakyoin has been so weird about killing him this whole time? Fuck, that thing has been in Kakyoin’s head this entire trip, huh? Shit. Okay no, get it together, calm the fuck down. What does he know? He mentally compiles a list.
- Kakyoin seems to have built up an intricate set of mental hoops to get around a compulsion to kill Jotaro, which mostly involves saying that since he can kill Jotaro at any time he doesn’t actually have to go through with it right now.
- When someone challenges his logic he freaks out. Evidence: the incident of the night they met Polnareff.
- When he thinks that he’s not in control or that Jotaro is going to leave for real, he freaks out. Evidence: yesterday’s fight.
- When he freaks out he is pants at fighting the compulsion to kill.
- There is a freaky flesh spider implanted in his fucking head.
Okay, yeah. Jotaro doesn’t have any other evidence besides his own instincts screaming at him, but he is pretty damn certain that this is all the flesh spider’s fault. That thing has got to go.
Jotaro moves carefully closer to Kakyoin. It would be better not to wake him up; with how much his head has been fucked with, who knows what Kakyoin will try and do if he realizes what Jotaro’s doing. Jotaro eyes the flesh spider, and then he grabs it and tries withdrawing it once more.
One again it sprouts tendrils and burrows under Jotaro’s skin. They make it halfway up his arm before he chickens out and lets go of the flesh spider, letting Star Platinum tear its tendrils out. Shit. He needs pull it out faster, not to mention there’s this weird resistance it has and it moves around like a bitch. Jotaro lightly braces his hands on either side of Kakyoin’s face and has Star Platinum take the flesh spider more firmly in its grasp.
It slides out one nerve-wracking centimeter, then another. Jesus, how deep does this thing go? All Jotaro has to do is hold Kakyoin in place until Star Platinum finishes, and he’s already getting the sweats. The flesh spider’s tendrils are already burrowing up his arm like the world’s most horrible veins, what is this, some freaky D-list horror movie--
Kakyoin mumbles and twitches. He starts to turn over in his sleep. Shit. Star Platinum lets go at the same time Jotaro does. It pulls the flesh spider’s tendrils out of Jotaro’s arms once again, and the flesh spider re-burrows its way into Kakyoin’s forehead.
That was a close one. If Kakyoin had moved while Star Platinum was pulling that thing out, that could’ve been bad.
Actually, no. Now that he thinks about it -- what the fuck is wrong with him, did he really plan on trying to perform impromptu brain surgery at one in the morning? In bed? Without getting any kind of confirmation about what was going on? What if he was completely wrong and accidentally turned Kakyoin’s brain into a pile of slush by removing the flesh spider wrong or something? He is an idiot.
Star Platinum pats his head gently. Jotaro shoves its arm away in irritation and lays back down. He needs to investigate further. What to do?
Current hypothesis: the flesh spider is Dio’s fault. It seems convenient to blame Dio since he’s Kakyoin’s employer, an evil vampire, and the reason for this roadtrip anyways. Jotaro should check if the next assassin from Dio also has a flesh spider. If they do, he can test brain surgery on them first, and if they don’t, he’ll just have to keep looking. Yeah, that seems fine. It’s not a very solid plan but it’s all he’s got for now.
With that decided, he turns over so his back is to Kakyoin and hogs all the covers, just because he can. Seriously, Kakyoin is such a pain. He ought to suffer a bit in return.
Even though the bad dreams were enough to wake him up earlier, he’s still exhausted. Closing his eyes is enough to send him back into a deep slumber.
---
…
“--jo.”
…
“Jojo. Wake up.”
Who’s fucking talking to him this early.
“Come on, Jojo.”
Kakyoin, huh. The guy never knows when to leave well enough alone. Jotaro peels open his eyes and turns his head to tell him to fuck off, only to flinch when he comes face-to-face with him. Why the hell is he so close? And what’s with that amused look -- wait.
He shoves himself up, and that’s when he realizes that sometime during his sleep he managed to half-entangle himself around Kakyoin, and now he’s practically hugging him.
Kakyoin raises an eyebrow and smirks.
Jotaro immediately shoves Kakyoin off the bed.
Kakyoin falls with a thump and a yelp, and Jotaro pulls all the covers over himself and turns over so he doesn’t have to see Kakyoin when he manages to pick himself up from the floor. And it has never not once happened on this trip, but Jotaro hopes to God that for once Kakyoin won’t say anything.
“I didn’t know you were a cuddler,” Kakyoin tells him in an exorbitantly gleeful voice.
Jotaro feels his cheeks heat up. “Fuck off!” If he weren’t so embarrassed he’d punt Kakyoin through the wall.
Kakyoin cackles at him, and Jotaro refuses to look at him or get up from the bed until he hears him get into the shower.
It doesn’t take long to get ready for the day: pull on his binder, brush his teeth with the low-quality toiletries he picked up while getting first-aid stuff yesterday, splash some water on his face. Would be nice to have a spare shirt, but their suitcase got left behind in Kathmandu. Kakyoin complains about it when he gets out of the shower, lamenting the loss of all his hair- and skincare products while Jotaro lounges on the chair by the desk.
“It was expensive lotion!” Kakyoin tells Jotaro as he carefully hairdries his weird curly bangs. “I spent good money on that!”
Jotaro resists the urge to roll his eyes and tell him to stop complaining. “‘S not like I didn’t have stuff there too.”
“Yes, but you barely used the suitcase for anything besides toiletries. And also…” Kakyoin pauses. He swings around, hairdryer still blasting on high. “That one blanket? But you never unpacked it. Why did you bring it along then?”
Jotaro scowls. “Star Platinum grabbed it while I was in jail. Didn’t have time to put it back before we left Japan.”
Kakyoin’s eyebrows climb higher on his forehead. “You had a whole half day to yourself, though. You sent a letter.”
Is he really gonna have to explain it? “...’s a blanket from home. Wasn’t gonna put it back while my mom was there.”
He doesn’t watch Kakyoin’s expression in the mirror and looks at the painting on the wall instead. He doesn’t want to see whatever Kakyoin manages to understand from that.
After a moment, Kakyoin switches off the hairdryer. “Star Platinum brought you something from home while you were in jail.”
Jotaro doesn’t respond. Kakyoin shifts, shoes tapping on the tiles by the sink. “Was it because you wanted to go home? I thought staying in jail was your choice. Why were you in jail anyways?”
The good thing about Kakyoin asking about everything at once is that Jotaro can answer one thing and ignore all the rest. “Some assholes picked a fight with me. Star Platinum got to them before I could stop it.”
“You and Star Platinum seem to cooperate well, though.”
Jotaro snorts. Is that what he thinks?
“Really. I mean, you fight together so well.”
It’s the only thing they do well together. Makes sense; fighting and violence is just about the only thing he’s good for, of course he’d attract an evil spirit who craves it too. “Can’t control it for shit besides that, though.”
“Is that what happened in the jail cell?”
Kakyoin is annoyingly observant at the worst of times. “Kept bringing me stuff. Couldn’t get it to stop.”
“What kinds of things?”
Why is he so curious about this now? “Books. A radio. Some instruments. Whatever.”
“Hmm,” says Kakyoin, and nothing else. He turns the hairdryer back on and goes back to styling his hair. Is that seriously it? Usually Kakyoin has more to say than this. Well, not that Jotaro is going to complain. He doesn’t want to tell Kakyoin all the shit that happened with his evil spirit when it first started causing trouble.
“Are you sure you don’t want to go back for the suitcase?”
Jotaro blinks and looks over. “Why?”
“The blanket. It’s something that reminds you of home, after all.”
Seriously? “I’m not a kid.”
“So you’d be fine if something happened to it?”
Not really, but. “The shitty old man’s people will probably find it.” So it’s fine, unless Kakyoin’s got something in there he doesn’t want those fuckers to see.
“You want to avoid contact with your family that badly, huh.”
The hell is with that look? Not exactly pitying, not exactly sad, but. “It’s just a blanket.”
“If you’re sure.”
Kakyoin doesn’t sound like he believes him, which is annoying, but it’s not like Jotaro has to prove anything to him. Not sure what needs proving, anyways.
He watches Kakyoin dry off his hair for a while longer. Kakyoin’s hands are constantly brushing against his forehead, touching his bangs, right around where the flesh spider should be, and Kakyoin always takes ages in the morning to do his hair, too. There’s no way he’d miss that thing, right?
“Is there something on my face, Jojo?”
Their eyes meet in the mirror. Jotaro frowns. He almost turns away on reflex, as if to deny he was looking, but that flesh spider thing is so fucked up that he can’t quite bring himself to actively leave it alone.
“Doesn’t it bother you?” he says.
“What does?”
He isn’t sure what to call it, so he just swipes his hair aside with one hand and taps the middle of his forehead with the other.
Kakyoin furrows his eyebrows at him. He turns back to the mirror and brushes his bangs to the side, peering intently at himself. The fleshy lump’s reflection squirms in the glass.
“I don’t see anything,” says Kakyoin.
Is he for real? “I’m talking about the worm thing in the middle of your fucking head, Kakyoin.”
Kakyoin, for a lack of a better term, blanks out. All his movements come to a complete stop, his face goes void, and for a second, his eyes go empty, like the dull, flat rocks of a riverbed.
Then he starts back up again without a sign that he noticed any interruption at all. “Sorry, can you say that again? I didn’t quite catch that.”
Well, that answered some questions and opened up all kinds of new ones. It’s probably best not to bring up the flesh spider, then; wouldn’t want to activate some kind of death trap in Kakyoin’s skull. “Nevermind.”
“Are you sure?” Kakyoin frowns at his reflection. “Is there something off about my hair?” Besides the usual fact that Kakyoin’s hairstyle is fucking nuts, not really. “You’re not just being nice about my feelings, are you?”
Since when has Jotaro ever done that. “If I thought you looked like shit I’d say so.”
“But would you tell me if you think I look nice?”
Jotaro twitches. What kind of question is that?
Kakyoin grins at him in the mirror. “So? How do I look today?”
He looks fine. Not much different from any other day, except now Jotaro knows that there’s a freaky flesh bulb drilling its way into his head. “You don’t look like shit if that’s what you’re asking.”
“No, I’m asking if I look good.”
Jotaro glowers. If Kakyoin thinks that Jotaro is just gonna start handing out compliments he’s got another thing coming.
“Come on, Jojo, be nice to me. I almost got burned to death by your grandfather’s yakuza enforcer yesterday.”
Jotaro tries to convey through the force of his glare alone that he hopes Avdol appears and lights him on fire for real, but Kakyoin, unfortunately, is unfazed. He smiles brilliantly at Jotaro in the mirror. “Or could it be that a cat’s got your tongue? I am quite attractive, I know, it can be overwhelming.”
Overwhelming with the desire to put Kakyoin’s face through the wall, maybe. Jotaro swivels the chair around in a distinct refusal to answer.
“You’re no fun,” Kakyoin sighs, faux-sadly, and finishes up with his hair. He shrugs on his green gakuran. The white of the bandages on his arms disappear under the sleeves.
And just like that, it’s like none of yesterday happened. No sign of the burns that Kakyoin got. No sign of the flesh spider drilling into his head. If Jotaro hadn’t seen it all he wouldn’t have a clue that anything was wrong at all. It’s unsettling, that so much can be hidden away so easily. What else is there about Kakyoin that he doesn’t know?
“I know I’m pretty to look at, but don’t just sit there watching me,” Kakyoin says. “Help me put away our stuff.”
“Who’s pretty,” Jotaro shoots back on reflex, but he helps toss the supplies he bought yesterday into their bags.
They check out of the hotel and grab breakfast at the cafe, Kakyoin ordering for them as usual. He easily picks out the sort of light flavors that Jotaro favors as well as something sweeter for himself. They sit by the window while they eat, and then Kakyoin uses the tourist’s guide to Kathmandu to plan out the next parts of their roadtrip while Jotaro reads his booklet on ships and surreptitiously watches Kakyoin from the corner of his eye.
And the sunlight catches on the glimmer of Kakyoin’s hair, on his long and dextrous fingers, on the slow curve of his smile. Just another boy in the backdrop of the cafe, laughing about who-knows-what, a little bit striking in a very odd way, but no one passing by would have any clue what Kakyoin’s life is really like. But Jotaro can still see it. The burns, the killing intent, the howling thing just waiting to emerge from the folds. And if Jotaro can see it -- then. Then what does Kakyoin see, when he looks at him? What does Jotaro have hidden away that Kakyoin has seen anyways?
Three weeks traveling together, it’s inevitable they begin to understand each other, but Jotaro doesn’t want Kakyoin to see anything he didn’t decide to show. He doesn’t like it. He doesn’t want to think about it. He drops his gaze back to the booklet, but he only manages to read the same page over and over again without once absorbing a single word.
The book gets plucked out of his hand. Jotaro blinks and looks up. Kakyoin twirls the book around, raises an eyebrow as he flips through it briefly, then shoves it in his bag.
“You’re thinking too much,” he says. “Let’s go shopping.”
Jotaro glares. How the hell did he know? He holds a hand out in a silent demand for Kakyoin to give the book back, but Kakyoin just puts his hand in his and smirks. “Such a gentleman. Thanks for escorting me, Jojo.”
Jotaro just about yanks his hand back, but Kakyoin doesn’t let go. “The fuck are you playing at?”
“Your clothes are all burned and we need to get a new suitcase for our stuff anyways. Come on, let’s go.”
Jotaro gives Kakyoin a hard look, but Kakyoin just smiles innocently in the most infuriating refusal to understand ever. Jotaro kicks him in the shin and he winces slightly but still doesn’t let go. Another attempt at kicking him, and he just shifts his legs out of the way while pretending he didn’t notice a thing.
Fine. Is that how he wants to play? Jotaro squeezes Kakyoin’s hand back until he sees the first twitch of discomfort on Kakyoin’s face, and then he smiles, the kind he usually reserves for people right before he beats their ass.
“Sure, Kakyoin,” he says, “Let’s go shopping.”
Kakyoin stares at him. He flushes a bit, bites his lip, and tries to pull his hand back, but this time it’s Jotaro who tightens his grip and refuses to let go. That’s right, asshole. Reap what you sow. Feeling rather smug, Jotaro hoists him out of the seat, scoops up the bags, and herds them out the door.
Oddly enough Kakyoin doesn’t bite back with something else while Jotaro does this. He is actually quite pliant, and doesn’t quite manage to say anything until Jotaro kicks him in the shin again and asks him where they’re going.
---
They get themselves a new suitcase, and then Kakyoin drags him off to look at the skin and hair care products and the makeup too. He makes Jotaro give his opinion on all the scented products, because Jotaro’s sense of smell is sharp enough to differentiate between “Aqua mint” and “Aqua blue mint” shampoo without any problem. Jotaro doesn’t really get why Kakyoin cares so much about his opinion on the difference between shit like that if Kakyoin can’t smell it himself, especially because the net effect of making someone smell mintier is basically the same. Kakyoin insists. Eventually he settles on a cherry-citrus combo before grabbing some lotion and such as well.
He also grabs a hair curler -- “For my bangs, you know” -- and a straightener -- “For the hair in the back, you know” -- and Jotaro’s kind of given up on figuring out if his hair is naturally wavy or straight at this point, but it’s still annoying that even after shopping with Kakyoin he still can’t figure it out.
Then Kakyoin pulls him over to look at the clothes too. It’s kind of dumb because Jotaro knows exactly what he likes to wear and he doesn’t plan on changing it any time soon, and Kakyoin has shown no intention of wearing anything besides his green coat either, but nonetheless Kakyoin insists that trying out new outfits will be fun. Jotaro doesn’t really get it but he lets Kakyoin stack a bunch of hats on top of his cap until the slightest move threatens to send it all toppling down. Then they put pair after pair of sunglasses on Kakyoin’s head until they can’t fit anymore on there, and then they look around at the scarves and the shoes. Kakyoin only ends up buying a single pair of sunglasses, and nothing else; the rest was all a waste of time, apparently. Still, Jotaro can’t find it in himself to be too irritated about it.
After lunch they walk around the city some more, looking at local knick-knacks and art galleries and window shopping downtown. Jotaro puts their excursion on hold for an hour when he spots a fabrics store, selling a good set of needles and thread and a decent mix of fabrics too. Kakyoin follows him in, looking around curiously as Jotaro picks out some supplies and then goes to look at the great bundles of cloth lined up on the racks.
“What’s all this for?” he asks.
“Clothes,” says Jotaro.
“You want to make clothes?”
Jotaro gestures wordlessly at his half-burnt coat. No time to wait for a tailor to repair it, so he’ll just have to do it himself.
“I didn’t know you sew,” says Kakyoin. “What got you into it?”
Jotaro’s always liked having nice clothes, but he didn’t pick up sewing until around middle school. “Sometimes my clothes would get torn up during a fight. Mom used to help fix it up but I started doing it myself.” He didn’t like Mom having to see the evidence of his fights. Still doesn’t. Better to keep that shit to himself.
“Hmm. You’ve had a lot of practice?”
“Enough.”
Kakyoin nods and doesn’t ask much more, just watches with bright eyes as Jotaro inspects the fabrics before finally settling on one that almost perfectly matches his black coat. It’s nearly indistinguishable at first glance, but it’d be better to get something to cover up the seams. What to do…
“Are you going to do anything to cover up the seams?” Kakyoin asks, as if on cue.
Jotaro shrugs. “Don’t know yet.” He doesn’t really decorate his uniforms, prefers to leave them blank.
“Do you know how to embroider?”
“A little.”
“How about patches?”
Jotaro snorts. Sewing a patch on is easy shit.
Kakyoin smiles the foxy smile at him. “Then maybe you could use this to make patches.”
He pulls out a bundle of fabric with tigers twisting and roaring, black and orange and white and eyes so blue.
“You can cut out a few of the tigers to cover the seams. See, the orange goes well with that oversized chain you have attached to your collar. And the eyes match yours too!”
Hm. It could work. Doesn’t seem too hard, either. Jotaro takes the fabric and inspects the details. It’s really not bad.
“Why tigers?” Jotaro says.
“Well, they remind me of you.”
Jotaro raises an eyebrow. A violent, solitary creature… he can’t really say it’s wrong. And the design really does look quite good. It’ll hold over until he gets back home and can order a replacement coat again.
Still, though, if he does that then the color balance isn’t quite right. “Needs something more.”
Kakyoin beams. “Use this!”
He thrusts a bolt of snake-patterned fabric into Jotaro’s arms, emerald-teal on black. It would be a pretty good counterpoint to all the orange. “Why snakes?”
Kakyoin smirks. “They remind me of me.”
Jotaro can see it. Slippery, clever, and with quite a bite. It wouldn’t have been his first pick for Kakyoin though. If he was any animal… “You’re more like a fox.”
“What, no!” Kakyoin says indignantly. “I mean, foxes are very pretty, but they’re too small and cute. I’m mean.”
“You could be small and cute,” Jotaro says.
Kakyoin sputters at him before apparently realizing something else and looking at him like he thinks he’s just found the best blackmail material in the world. “You think I’m cute?”
“I think you’re small.”
“Hey!”
Jotaro smirks. Insult successfully achieved, he tucks the two bolts of fabric under his arm and saunters over to the shopkeeper before Kakyoin can say anything else.
They spend the rest of the afternoon like that, carelessly wandering between shops and grabbing whatever comes to mind. Between their purchases and paying for last night’s hotel they’ve spent almost all the money they stole from Avdol. They spend the last of Avdol’s money on dinner before driving to the next city over.
Kakyoin has enough of Dio’s money in his wallet to pay for the hotel for the night, but a good majority of the money was lost with the suitcase in Kathmandu. Either they’re gonna have to cut vacation short and fly straight to Egypt or they’re gonna have to figure out some way to make some cash.
“Kakyoin,” Jotaro says as they walk to their room. “We need money.”
“Yeah.”
“You know what that means.”
They make eye contact gravely. They nod. “Scamming old people,” Kakyoin says, at the same moment Jotaro says, “Mugging tourists.”
There’s a pause.
“You can’t scam old people,” Jotaro says, just as Kakyoin says, “You can’t just mug tourists.”
Another pause.
“What about scamming tourists?” Kakyoin suggests.
Well… if they’re stupid enough to get caught in a scam then they probably deserve it. He shrugs.
“I’m so glad that’s settled,” Kakyoin says cheerfully. He unlocks their room and strolls in cheerfully while Jotaro dumps their newly-bought and freshly filled suitcase by the desk. “It’d be easier to just pickpocket people with my Stand, though, don’t you think?”
That’s cheating. Not that Jotaro really stops Kakyoin from using Hierophant to pickpocket people, but still. Kakyoin can do what he wants, but Jotaro will not partake in any such activity. “Kakyoin.”
“Yes?”
“Did you really have to get a room with only one bed again.”
“It was cheaper,” Kakyoin says innocently.
Like hell Jotaro believes that, but at least it’s queen-sized this time. He shoots a withering look in Kakyoin’s direction, to which Kakyoin only laughs, and then he goes to take a shower.
When he’s done with that he goes to the mirror to change the bandages on some of his burns. As he finishes, he looks up from that to find Kakyoin watching him with a strangely piercing look that he frankly does not care for. He throws the first aid kit and gauze at Kakyoin’s face. “Go shower and redo your bandages too.”
Hierophant Green catches them easily and deposits them to the side. Kakyoin hasn’t moved. He says, “Hey, Jojo. Do you do this after every fight?”
Do what?
“First aid. Taking care of injuries. That kind of thing.”
Jotaro quirks an eyebrow. Well, yeah. You can’t just leave shit untreated.
Kakyoin frowns at him. “I didn’t see you do anything after that incident back in Japan, though.”
What, with the evil bug spirit? Shows what he knows. Jotaro pulls up his pant leg to show the stitches a few inches below the knee, before letting it drop. That stab wound had bled like a motherfucker, but luckily hadn’t gone too deep.
“Oh,” says Kakyoin, a bit quiet. “I didn’t -- I didn’t know.”
Jotaro shrugs, and then, since Kakyoin seems to be waiting for a response, says, “Didn’t expect you to.” After all, he usually keeps this shit to himself if he can -- after showering, behind locked doors. It’s just that he needs the mirror to see the burns he got on his back; that’s the only reason he’s doing this where Kakyoin can see.
Kakyoin’s mouth pinches a bit as he picks up the first aid kit by his side. He opens it and pulls out a few objects at random -- the triangular bandages, the sterile eye dressings, antiseptic cream -- before dropping them back in and looking unhappily at the contents.
Jotaro is just wondering what’s bothering him so much about what’s in there -- it’s all standard stuff, the quality seems fine -- when Kakyoin says, “Jojo, how come you know so much about treating burns?”
The tone of voice rankles him. Makes it sound like there’s something wrong with the fact that he knows. “Shouldn’t you be happy about it?” he says defensively. “Now we don’t have to go to the hospital.”
“Oh, no, there’s nothing wrong with being able to do it,” Kakyoin says. “I’m just -- curious, I guess. About why you know. It’s not a skill most people keep in their repertoire.”
It’s not really simple curiosity, is it? Kakyoin’s actually bothered by it. Jotaro can see it in the careful neutrality of his expression and the tilt of his head, Hierophant’s uneasy uncoiling, the way he taps his finger by his side. It’s not anger, though, not exactly. It would be easier if it was. Jotaro studies him for a moment more, but no insight is forthcoming, so. He might as well answer. Maybe it’ll help.
“There was this guy who locked me in the school shed and set it on fire while I was in there.”
Kakyoin stares. The disbelief makes him prickle with self-consciousness, and he finds himself crossing his arms and looking away. “I wasn’t as good at fighting back then, so he got the drop on me.”
“He -- what?” Kakyoin says. He doesn’t have to sound so incredulous, Jotaro’s already fully aware of how fuckin’ humiliating that whole thing was. “How old were you?”
“Last year of junior high.” Not a good time. Just the thought of it makes him scowl and want to go smoke a cigarette.
“Someone tried to kill you. In middle school.”
Jesus. “You make it sound so bad.”
“That’s because it is!”
Well, it does suck, but Jotaro survived. “I sent him to the hospital afterwards. ‘S fine.” Jotaro can’t find it in himself to hold the whole incident against the guy that much, what with the whole situation with that one bastard teacher at the time. Spending a few months in a cast is payback enough.
“That’s it? I would’ve turned all his organs inside out.”
Sounds like Kakyoin. “Had other things to worry about.”
“Don’t tell me there were other people trying to kill you too.”
“They weren’t trying to kill me.”
“I -- that’s not filling me with confidence, you know!” Kakyoin sounds so outraged. He ought to calm down. It’s not like Jotaro’s giving them credit for not being outright murderous, alright? He just appreciates what he has. “What happened? What were they doing to you?”
The fuck does that mean? “They weren’t doing anything to me,” Jotaro bites out. Like he’d let them?
“One of them tried to kill you! What do you call that, then?!”
Jotaro snaps. “So fucking what? I got out fine, didn’t I? It ain’t any of your fucking business!”
It’s only after he processes Kakyoin’s odd look that he realizes he’s straightened up and raised his voice, fists clenched at his side, Star Platinum slowly shimmering into view. He slowly exhales and closes his eyes; when he opens them again, Star Platinum has gone away, and his hands are carefully, deliberately relaxed. Give him a fucking break. It’s been over for ages already. It doesn’t matter anymore.
“You’re right. Sorry about that,” Kakyoin says, carefully casual in a way that suggests he’s trying not to set Jotaro off again. It makes Jotaro want to put him through a wall. “It just -- seemed a bit unusual to me, so--”
“Just go shower already,” Jotaro snaps, and he goes to the suitcase to retrieve the sewing supplies he bought today and steadfastly ignores Kakyoin until he hears him get into the bath.
He patches up part of the sleeve of his coat where it got burnt while Kakyoin does his night routine. He also takes the time to rebandage his burns, like Jotaro told him to; he seems to have figured out how to do it, so that’s one thing of Jotaro’s mind. He busies himself with the coat and doesn’t stop until he notices Kakyoin looking at the couple faint scars on his arm, which never did entirely fade away. He glares at Kakyoin, and Kakyoin twitches a bit like he almost wants to look away, but instead he just smiles apologetically and lowers his eyes.
Jotaro really wishes they could just go back to picking fights with each other.
Mood successfully ruined, he puts away the sewing coat and announces he’s going to sleep. Kakyoin bids him a good night, sitting by the desk and browsing through his tourist guides to Nepal.
It’s only as Jotaro’s falling asleep that he realizes -- this whole day, he forgot the flesh spider was in Kakyoin’s head. That kind of realization ought to come with some sort of external change, he thinks. Something to show that it happened. But there wasn’t; almost as soon as it was out of sight, it was out of mind, and Kakyoin had been so himself that Jotaro had barely thought about it at all.
---
Will removing that flesh spider thing affect the way Kakyoin is?
He hopes not.
---
The next few days are… shockingly mundane.
It’s like they never fought each other or Avdol, like Jotaro never saw the flesh spider at all. Kakyoin is the same as ever. They drive to new towns, check out the local sights, help themselves to the cuisines, and occasionally get a souvenir. It’s exactly the same as their old routine. The only real difference is that Kakyoin pickpockets more liberally and that when they spot a scam going on in the street, Kakyoin will tug him over to reverse-scam them.
Jotaro doesn’t actually have to do much. He just watches Kakyoin pretend to lose badly while betting on shell games, then use Hierophant to cheat the final round. Then Kakyoin collects the money, and if anyone has any problems with it Jotaro kicks some sense into them. Simple. It’s almost all too simple, because it’s stupidly easy to cheat with a Stand -- no one can see it, it’s possible to get away with almost anything, Kakyoin waves Hierophant in front of people’s eyes and they don’t even blink -- and Jotaro thinks he understands a bit, now, the loneliness Kakyoin felt at the fact that no one could see Hierophant Green.
At the very least, scamming people always cheers Kakyoin up. Jotaro suspects that he just enjoys spending other people’s money for entirely selfish, petty pursuits, a hypothesis that is only supported by the fact that every time they haul in some cash like this, Kakyoin always picks out an especially lavish-looking restaurant to eat in.
He tries to convince Jotaro to ditch his burned coat and pants, but Jotaro categorically refuses because they’re his clothes and anyways he likes wearing them. He’s not gonna let being set on fire stop him from dressing how he wants. He spends the nights in hotels slowly fixing up his coat. By the time they make it to the city of Kushma, it’s mostly fixed up, and Jotaro has started adding tiger patches over the seams.
They visit Kushma’s famous suspension bridges, these rope-and-wood constructs that stretch high and above the river between verdant hills. It’s a dizzying fall to the water snaking below. Kakyoin loves it. He leans precariously over the edge, dangling so far that bystanders nearby look at him nervously and start forward hesitantly, as if wondering if they should pull him back down. Only Jotaro can see Hierophant winding about like a glittering harness. But even so, Hierophant’s touch is light -- almost like Kakyoin wants to fall, if only just to see what it would be like. Jotaro wouldn’t be surprised. Kakyoin is weird like that.
They’re walking through Kushma’s bazaar when they come across a familiar face. Jotaro sees the cylinder of silver hair gleaming from half a street away and lets out a long breath. This guy again? Why is he here.
“What is it?” Kakyoin says, but Jotaro doesn’t bother answering, because Polnareff has caught sight of him too and is now waving his hand enthusiastically.
“Yo, Jotaro! There you are! Is Kakyoin around?” he hollers, hurrying over. A bored-looking blonde woman trails in his wake. Jotaro really wishes they weren’t in public. He steps to the side so that Kakyoin is between him and the Frenchman.
Kakyoin sputters at him. “Hey, you get back here!” He tries to step behind Jotaro but Jotaro sticks his foot out to block him, and then Polnareff is there in front of them, grinning good-naturedly as if he’s just spotted his best friend.
“Kakyoin!” he says eagerly. “You were right! I went and asked Dio about it and he finally gave me a contract to sign!”
Jotaro stares. Dio what?
Kakyoin takes it in stride much better than him. “Congratulations, Polnareff,” he says with a winsome smile. “What kind of rate did he give you?”
Polnareff laughs, scratching the back of his head sheepishly. “Actually, that was what I was hoping you could help me out with. Can you give me your opinion on the contract?” He thrusts a paper into Kakyoin’s hands. “He said he would provide food and housing and travel expenses, but there’s no flat salary. It’s five ounces of solid gold per person killed. I don’t know if that’s very good. What was your contract? What do you think?”
The blonde woman following Polnareff chooses this moment to cross her arms and interrupt. “Hold up. We came all this way to get advice from a snot-nosed little brat?”
“Don’t be disrespectful!” Polnareff says indignantly. “He’s the one who helped us land contracts in the first place!”
Kakyoin eyes the woman. “You got a contract too? How are the terms, compared to his?”
“It’s the same so far. And how do our contracts compare to yours?” she returns, lifting her chin in a disdainful challenge.
“A hundred seventy-five thousand yen a month to be on retainer, and five million per successful bounty,” Kakyoin immediately lies. “That’s about two thousand and fifty thousand U.S. dollars respectively. Your contracts suck.”
“There’s no way a kid like you is getting paid more than me. Where’s your contract?”
Kakyoin gives her a deeply derogatory look. “You think I carry all my important business documents while I’m on vacation? You should be thankful I’m taking the time to discuss this with you at all.”
She doesn’t look impressed. “Polnareff, who is this guy again?”
“He’s Kakyoin, he’s one of Dio’s other employees! He’s part of the union.”
“I’ve never heard of any union.”
“Please,” says Kakyoin. “Like you know every person Dio hires, much less their union status.”
She blows out a breath and rolls her eyes, and looks a lot like she’d like to be chewing bubblegum right now so she can loudly and disrespectfully pop a bubble. “Whatever, pretty boy. What do you know, huh?”
Kakyoin bristles at ‘pretty boy’ and bristles even more after that. It is honestly kind of funny. “Polnareff,” he says sweetly, “why don’t you introduce me to your friend?”
“Oh! Of course!” Polnareff says, smacking his head. “I totally forgot, I was so excited to see you! This is Mariah. She’s a new coworker! I brought her with me to negotiations, she was a huge help like you wouldn’t believe. Let me tell you…”
Polnareff, in his never-ending enthusiasm, somehow steers them all to a restaurant, and before Jotaro knows it they’re ordering dinner together and Kakyoin and Mariah are having a heated argument over whether it’s pushing too far to demand hazard pay from Dio too. Polnareff looks rather lost every time he tries to join the conversation, and eventually gives up in favor of enjoying every new dish that arrives. Jotaro just watches the trainwreck in motion. It’s pretty entertaining, because Kakyoin carries himself with such confidence that Jotaro could almost believe that he’s the union organizer he claims to be. Then again, Jotaro has also watched him scam the living hell out of a dozen people in the past three days. Looks really are deceiving.
“So it’s settled then,” Kakyoin says at the end of dinner. “Dio ought to give you two months’ more vacation time or better hazard pay, and he should co-pay medical expenses or guarantee some sort of life insurance. The pay per bounty should be doubled at the very least. Are we all satisfied with that?”
Polnareff looks at Mariah. Mariah nods, picking at her fingernails. Polnareff looks at Kakyoin and nods.
“Excellent,” says Kakyoin. “I’m glad to help. Then that means we can move onto the next order of business.”
“Huh? Didn’t you say it was all done?” Polnareff says.
“Our revisions to the contract are done,” Kakyoin corrects. “Your payment for my services rendered, however, is not.”
Yep. There it is. No way was Kakyoin gonna just help Polnareff out of the goodness of his heart.
Polnareff, the poor bastard, looks taken aback. Guy has no idea what kind of person he’s dealing with. “Payment?”
“You didn’t think I was doing this for free , did you? Honestly, Polnareff.”
“I mean -- but -- aren’t we friends?”
“Absolutely not.”
Polnareff looks crestfallen. “But -- but we got together for dinner. Twice.”
“You’re footing the bill.”
“Shut up, Polnareff,” says Mariah, before he can respond. “Let the grown-ups do the talking. How much is the fee?”
“Eight hundred dollars,” Kakyoin says shamelessly.
“Are you crazy?”
Jotaro can’t help but snort a bit. It’s a bit late to ask that question. Kakyoin, on his part, is unfazed. “If the changes to your contract go through, you’ll be making that much more money thanks to me. Eight hundred is cheap compared to that, don’t you think?”
Mariah eyes him disdainfully. Kakyoin returns the look. “Of course,” he continues, “if you joined the union, it would be a different story, because consulting for members is free of charge. Naturally, though, there’s a membership fee.”
“Oh,” Polnareff says with relief. “I did want to join the union. How much is that?”
“Twelve percent of your monthly pay.”
“Oh, that is just bullshit.” Mariah pushes away from the table and stands up. “This is a straight up scam. Twelve percent is unreasonable and you know it.”
“No one asked you to join,” Kakyoin says archly. “If you don’t like it then just pay for the consultation.”
Mariah scoffs at him. “As if. Now that I’ve gotten your suggestions, I’m going to take the perfectly good bounty that’s been sitting there all night. ”
Kakyoin’s eyes sharpen. “Excuse me?”
Jotaro clicks his tongue. Shoulda expected something like this. A fight’s not totally unwelcome, though; he can always release some pent-up energy like this. He pushes away from the table to stand up as well, only to feel a shock on his palm. He looks down. There is a very incongruous electrical outlet on the table, under his hand.
Mariah smirks at him. She snatches her contract and runs; Hierophant is just milliseconds too late to catch her before she’s out the door. A moment later, the outlet vanishes from the table.
… What kind of evil spirit takes the shape of an outlet?
Kakyoin rounds on Polnareff, murderous intent outlined in every sharp angle of his face. “What did I tell you,” he hisses, “about killing Jotaro?”
“I’m sorry!” Polnareff cries, raising his hands defensively. “I didn’t know she would try anything, honest!”
“It’s fine,” Jotaro cuts in. “Let’s go already. Polnareff, you foot the bill.”
Without waiting for a response, he strides out of the restaurant.
The fight with Mariah isn’t really that hard. Mostly it’s annoying. It takes a few coins sticking to him and trash cans slowly rattling his way to realize that he’s somehow been magnetized by her evil spirit, and the effect just grows stronger as time goes on. Kakyoin catches up with him quickly and tries to join in the fight, but Jotaro tells him to piss off because she’d challenged him, not Kakyoin, and he doesn’t want any help.
“It’s about staking a claim!” Kakyoin protests. “I already told Polnareff no killing you. This is just blatant disrespect.”
“She came to kill me, ” Jotaro returns. “I ain’t sitting back and letting you fight like I’m some territory you gotta defend.” A nearby car’s tires come flying off and hurtling towards his head at concussion-inducing speeds. Star Platinum catches and crumples them like paper. “You can do whatever you want after, but right now, this is my fight. Back off.”
Kakyoin scowls, but he backs off.
After that comes a little bit of running around and figuring out her range, climbing on rooftops to spot where Mariah is skulking, and then leaping across buildings to catch her before she can hide away. It seems she has to stay within a certain range to make sure her evil spirit’s effects grow, and between Star Platinum’s excellent eyesight and strength and speed, it’s pretty easy to catch her. She manifests her evil spirit on the palm of her hand and slaps Jotaro with it, minorly electrocuting him, but it’s pretty easy to push through it, so he just breaks her nose.
She stumbles back with a scream. “You motherfucker!” she yells. “You’ve ruined my face!”
Jotaro might feel bad about it if he hadn’t had worse before, and if she wasn’t trying to kill him. As it is, she really has no right to complain. “Call off your evil spirit. Stand.” Whatever.
She shows him both middle fingers. Jotaro rolls his eyes and knees her in the stomach. “Call it off.”
“What, too pussy to kill me?” she wheezes out with a smirk. “Just die, then!”
At that point, the magnetism is apparently strong enough to drag a whole car flying Jotaro’s way. She squirms out of his grip when he looks up at it, dancing to the side and jeering, “Whatcha gonna do now, huh? Beat that!”
Jotaro looks at her. Star Platinum grabs the car mid-air. It lets out a wild, screaming cry that echoes somewhere familiar in Jotaro’s chest, and punches the car with such force that by the time it’s done, the car has been crushed down into something barely bigger than a guitar. It throws the ball of crumpled metal in front of Mariah with such force it embeds itself in the asphalt.
Mariah takes a step back. Star Platinum uproots a nearby lamppost, snaps it into parts like twigs, and throws them like javelins, barely missing her as they impale the ground beside her. She freezes.
“Your arms are next,” Jotaro says boredly. “After that, the legs. After that…”
Mariah looks at Star Platinum. Star Platinum looks back. Star Platinum grins, and it’s all teeth.
Mariah calls off her evil spirit.
Star Platinum turns to Jotaro eagerly, a bright smile on its lips, eyes shining like a trained dog awaiting praise for a job well-done.
“...You did good,” Jotaro says reluctantly, because dealing with all of that would’ve been so much more of a pain without it to help.
“Ora!” Star Platinum says happily, and wraps him in a hug. Before Jotaro can process that, it disappears.
The fuck.
Oh, whatever. Mariah has an evil spirit that looks like an electric outlet and magnetizes people. He might as well have a punch ghost that likes hugging things. He shakes his head and turns to look at the roof of a nearby building, where Kakyoin is dangling from Hierophant and watching the whole thing with sharp hunter’s eyes. “She’s all yours,” he says, jerking a thumb over his shoulder at her, and Kakyoin’s off like a shot.
Jotaro watches Kakyoin descend upon Mariah in a massive throe of wickedly gleaming tentacles, hears Mariah scream, “What’s wrong with you?!”, and turns and walks away. It’s none of his business.
“He’s my target,” Kakyoin says viciously, somewhere behind him. “Mine, not yours. Say it.”
“How is it my fault if you haven’t killed him yet?! You little--”
Yeah. None of his business.
Jotaro goes back to the restaurant where Polnareff is anxiously loitering outside the door. He perks up as soon as he sees Jotaro. “There you are! Are you okay? What about Kakyoin?”
The fact that Polnareff is asking him if he’s okay after trying to kill him in Suzhou Garden is so ridiculous that Jotaro can only ignore it. “Kakyoin and Mariah are having a chat. They’ll be back soon.”
Polnareff only looks more anxious. “Will Mariah be okay?”
Jotaro raises an eyebrow. Polnareff has somehow correctly divined Kakyoin’s malicious role here, huh? Well, not that it’s hard, after being on the receiving end of it. He shouldn’t give Polnareff so much credit. “He won’t kill her.” No, wait, Kakyoin nearly murdered Polnareff for trying to start shit. “Probably,” he amends. Hopefully Jotaro’s no-killing policy has rubbed off on Kakyoin even if only a little bit.
Polnareff looks off in the direction Jotaro came from, eyebrows creasing. He looks like he’ll take off at any moment, now, but Jotaro really doesn’t feel like dealing with Mariah again and he’s not in the mood to go back. He’ll just have to put his trust in Kakyoin. “So Polnareff. How did you get the contract from Dio anyways?”
“Oh, I just went to his throne room and asked.”
His throne room?
“He was annoyed I didn’t kill you,” Polnareff continues, apparently having been completely successfully distracted, “but then I told him what Kakyoin said about killing you and the union and everything, and then he laughed and said he’d think about it. And then he gave me the contract a few days later.”
Jotaro translates that in his head to “Dio thought it was so funny he actually wrote out a contract.” Impressive. And here he was thinking that Polnareff might receive severe bodily harm. “And Dio just paid for your trip to come see Kakyoin.”
Polnareff laughs sheepishly. “Actually, this is just a pit stop. Me ‘n Mariah are actually on our way to kill someone else.”
Jotaro narrows his eyes. If it’s Mom… “Who?”
“Someone named Muhammad Avdol!” Alright. That’s fine. “Apparently he has fire powers,” Polnareff says with a broad grin, and Silver Chariot shimmers into view, flicking its rapier elegantly. “I’m fast enough to cut fire itself. I wonder who will win?”
Avdol, definitely. No question. “And you’re fine with just killing him.”
“Well, sure.” Polnareff blinks guilelessly. “Dio asked, after all.”
Jotaro glances down the street. No sign of Kakyoin or Mariah; hopefully they’ll stay away for just a bit longer. “Polnareff, hold still a moment.”
“Huh?”
Polnareff is just a second too late to block the blow to his temple. Jotaro catches him as he falls -- Jesus, why is this guy so bulky -- and drags his unconscious body into a narrow alley between buildings. He props the guy up against the wall and feels around Polnareff’s head, by the hairline.
It takes a moment to find it, but sure enough, there’s an ugly lump of flesh squirming in the center of his forehead. Just what the hell is that.
Jotaro holds Polnareff’s head in place and has Star Platinum tug at it. Once again, the flesh spider sprouts tendrils and tries to drill its way into Jotaro’s head. Jotaro pushes Polnareff away and tears the tendrils out from under his skin. Well, Polnareff having the flesh spider thing confirms that it’s probably related to Dio. What to do.
Polnareff solves that question for him by waking up, probably since Jotaro didn’t give him too hard a knock on the head. “What -- huh?” He blearily focuses on Jotaro. “Why did you--”
“Polnareff.” Jotaro interrupts because he doesn’t want to have to answer the question. “Why do you have a flesh spider embedded in your brain?”
“I -- what? I have a what?”
“This,” Jotaro says, and flicks the fleshy thing.
Polnareff pushes him away. “Don’t touch that! That’s -- thats…”
“Did Dio put it there?”
Polnareff twitches. Hm. Let’s push the envelope a bit. “Is he mind controlling you with it or something?”
“I’m not -- he’s not--”
Polnareff’s face contorts with -- pain? Frustration? He shoves Jotaro again with great violence and curls to the side. Silver Chariot flickers in and out of sight, as if he can’t quite decide if there’s a threat around or not.
Seems like the same weird cognitive dissonance Kakyoin gets sometimes. Jotaro moves closer with a frown. Should he knock him out again? Polnareff snaps around to face him, and Silver Chariot swings its sword. Yeah, knocking him out seems good. Star Platinum catches the rapier between its hands with a resounding clap, then roundhouse kicks Silver Chariot in the head and sends it flying to the side. Polnareff collapses back on the ground.
Okay. So that’s another point of evidence for Kakyoin -- and Polnareff -- being mind controlled by Dio. He should’ve checked Mariah earlier… well, whatever, he’ll check later if he has the chance.
Obviously getting rid of the flesh spider thing would be good, it seems to go pretty deep into the head. Who knows how terribly embedded it is in there -- it’d be pretty risky to take it out, blind. What if doing that turns their brains to mush?
Better to risk trying it on Polnareff than Kakyoin, but as much as Jotaro’s indifferent to Polnareff he doesn’t really want to run the risk of accidentally murdering him either. He’ll see if he can’t find a more acceptable test subject among Dio’s other assassins before trying it on Polnareff. If Mariah has one, he can test on her first, but Polnareff seems to be friends of sorts with her. He’ll try looking elsewhere first.
By the time Kakyoin comes back, looking for all the world like a smug cat, Jotaro has propped Polnareff up against a nearby trashcan and read half a chapter further into his treatise about ships. Mariah follows after Kakyoin with a distinctly haunted sort of look, although she doesn’t look any worse for wear. Jotaro shuts the booklet and tucks it away. “Ready to go?” he says.
“Mariah was quite cooperative in the matter of our remuneration,” Kakyoin says with great satisfaction. Mariah mutters something uncomplimentary under her breath. “What happened to Polnareff?”
“He fell.”
“From where?” Mariah curls her lip at him. “This is a level street!”
“You shouldn’t underestimate your coworker’s talents,” Jotaro tells her blandly. He reaches over and shakes Polnareff until Polnareff groans and opens his eyes. “Oi. Kakyoin wants to talk to you.”
Kakyoin shoots him a surprised look, like, I do?
“What happened?” Polnareff says, sitting up and rubbing his head. “I feel like I got hit with a brick.”
“Don’t worry about it. I took care of it,” Jotaro says. “Didn’t you want to join the union?”
Kakyoin blinks, and then a slow, shit-eating grin spreads across his face. “Oh, yes. You wanted to join the union.”
“Oh -- hey, Kakyoin! You’re back!” Polnareff jumps up. “And Mariah! You’re okay! Is everything fine? Did you join the union too?”
Mariah makes a face like she bit into a sour lemon. “I was. Persuaded.”
Kakyoin smiles foxily. “There are a great many benefits to joining the union, Polnareff. Let me tell you all about them.”
It only takes Kakyoin ten minutes to talk Polnareff into forking over nearly a fifth of the assets Dio had given him for traveling. Mariah spends the entire time with her arms crossed and head turned away. Jotaro feels a bit sorry for her. It can’t be easy having Polnareff for a traveling partner.
Having successfully liberated a good portion of Polnareff and Mariah’s money, Kakyoin sends the two of them off cheerfully. “Happy hunting,” he says with a jaunty wave. “The union awaits news of your success!”
“Come by after you try and kill your targets,” Jotaro tells Polnareff. If he hasn’t found someone else to do experimental brain surgery on by then, Polnareff and Mariah will have to do.
“Sure! Anything for a friend,” Polnareff agrees easily, clapping him on the shoulder. Who does he think he’s calling a friend. “Any advice before we go?”
Jotaro thinks for a moment.
“Avdol can make fire hot enough to instantly sublimate some of Kakyoin’s attacks,” he settles on. “Probably could immolate you in a heartbeat if he wanted to. You should be careful.” It’ll be funny if Polnareff gets set on fire, but he’s also probably brainwashed, so Jotaro would feel bad if he died for real. “He also works for my gramps. Tell him I said hi.”
Polnareff looks taken aback. “He’s your friend? Are you sure you’re okay with me…?” He makes vague sword-swing motions.
Jotaro snorts. Avdol will probably flatten him. “Do what you want.”
Kakyoin grins. “Don’t worry about a thing, Polnareff, it’ll be great. We’ll definitely look forward to news from you.” He meets Jotaro’s eyes and smirks. Looks like Jotaro’s not the only one who thinks it’ll be funny.
Polnareff seems quite energized by their words and puffs up his chest. “Ah, you have so much faith in me. I definitely won’t let you down!”
“You won’t,” Kakyoin says, smile widening. “Be sure to drop by soon.”
They wave goodbye. Mariah drags Polnareff off with an irritated expression, and Jotaro and Kakyoin depart from Kushma and make their way to Waling.
---
Over the course of the next week, they slowly make their way to Bardia, at which point they stop by Bardia National Park. Kakyoin loves the Tharu Cultural Museum, but Jotaro personally enjoys the crocodile breeding centre, at which he spends nearly three hours just listening to the wind rustle through the greenery and the birds calling, watching the crocodiles and turtles sunning by the riverside. Kakyoin smiles at him knowingly when they finally depart, but Jotaro is in good enough of a mood that he ignores it instead of stepping on his foot.
After a couple days at the national park, they stop in Chisapani for the night, a small and dusty town that nonetheless brims with life: street stalls and restaurants open on the ground floors of houses, people bustling about here and there, the sound of conversation and laughter ringing out into the setting sun. It’s a warm atmosphere. Makes him think of home. Enough that he doesn’t snap at Kakyoin for booking a room with only one bed, again.
They go for a walk by the river the next morning. Kakyoin tells him about the local birds for a while, and then bothers him enough about it that he tells Kakyoin about Nepal’s aquatic wildlife and the seasonal shifts of the watershed. They sit on the bank and watch the sun come up over the trees, and then they go get something to eat.
Most of their stuff is already packed, so Jotaro just sits at a table on the hotel patio and reads through more of his book while Kakyoin goes in to get their stuff and take care of hotel checkout.
Someone slides into the chair opposite him. Jotaro looks up and lowers his book. A man with slicked-back, shoulder-length hair, fine features, and a smarmy smile that instantly puts him on edge. This kind of guy ain’t gonna approach him with any good intentions.
“Interesting book you’ve got there, Kujo Jotaro,” the man says, casually propping his head up on one hand. “You must quite like ships.”
Jotaro narrows his eyes. He knows his name. Another assassin from Dio? “Who are you?”
“The name’s Steely Dan. A pleasure to make your acquaintance.”
Yeah, it’ll be a pleasure alright. Jotaro puts the booklet down on the table, stands up, and calls out Star Platinum.
Steely Dan raises his eyebrows. “You resort to violence quite quickly, don’t you think?”
He can see Star Platinum, then? That’s confirmation enough. “Get up.”
“No, I’m quite comfortable where I am.”
He hates these smug asshole types. He’s tempted to go directly to breaking his nose, but this jerk approached him directly fair and square. He’ll at least give a warning. “I said get up. Else you wanna be sitting when I beat the living daylights outta you?”
“You can try,” Steely Dan says, lips curving up in a smirk, “but you won’t be able to lay a single finger on me.”
Yeah okay, fuck it.
“Ora!” Star Platinum shouts, landing three thunderous blows to Steely Dan’s ribs.
Pain explodes through Jotaro’s torso, and his vision goes white. When it clears up again, he finds himself blown back across the patio, lying among a few shattered flowerpots. Steely Dan groans on the other side of the patio, coughing as he picks himself up.
“You fool!” he sneers, drawing upright. “I wasn’t done explaining! Do you know how close you were to killing yourself?”
Jotaro gets to his feet. Son of a bitch, his ribs hurt. In the same place where Star Platinum punched Steely Dan, too. Wait. Does that mean…?
“My Stand, the Lovers,” Steely Dan says in a silky tone. “Do you understand what it does, yet?”
Jotaro glares. He moves towards Steely Dan, Star Platinum bringing its fists up as he goes.
A flash of unease in Steely Dan’s eyes. “If you don’t understand, then wait!” he says.
Jotaro has no intention of waiting. Maybe Steely Dan sees it, because he immediately turns and kicks the wall as fast as he can. Jotaro has to bite down on the noise that almost makes it out his throat as pain lances up his leg.
“Do you see?” Steely Dan says hastily. “My Stand has already entered through your ear and burrowed into your brain! If I feel any pain, the Lovers will go berserk, so anything you inflict on me, you’ll receive the effects too, several times over!”
It sounds so stupid. The fuck kind of evil spirit is that small? But this power is nasty enough to fight that Jotaro can believe an evil spirit has it. He clenches his fist and glares. “So what? All that means is that I gotta leave you alone.”
“Oh, not quite.” Steely Dan watches him with a calculating gaze, straightens up and smiles. “You see -- I’ve brought some of Dio’s cells into your brain.”
He’s done what? … Well that’s weird, but having a couple extra dead cells in his head is hardly a death sentence.
Maybe Steely Dan sees how unimpressed with the threat he is, because he continues, “Perhaps you would recognize it in a different form.” He tilts his head to the side with a smirk, tapping the center of his forehead. “You’ve seen it, right? The fleshbud that has burrowed its way into your dear friend Kakyoin Noriaki’s head.”
A burst of white-hot rage. Jotaro hasn’t even processed it when Star Platinum grabs Steely Dan by the shirt and slams him up against the wall, sending ripples of pain down Jotaro’s back. He stalks forward, furious. “What the hell,” he hisses, “did Dio do to him?”
Steely Dan has the fucking gall to laugh. “Just a little something to make sure Kakyoin does as he wishes,” he says with a sneer, “but of course, your friend has been misbehaving quite badly lately, don’t you think? Luckily for him, Dio isn’t so serious about killing you anymore; he’s taken an interest in you. But dogs that can’t obey their owners have to be put down.”
Star Platinum’s hand is around Steely Dan’s throat. Jotaro doesn’t know when it got there. He feels the pressure around his own neck too, but he doesn’t care. Steely Dan smiles at him.
“So,” he says sweetly, “you best hope that Kakyoin obeys.”
Coward. A coward, that’s what he is, with his spineless little worm of a Stand, trying to take Jotaro hostage -- or maybe Kakyoin’s the hostage, he’s not too sure at this point. Jotaro throws Steely Dan to the ground without a care for the pain that jolts up his arms. “Just what fucking reason has he got to listen to you?”
“You’ll regret that,” Steely Dan mutters, getting back to his feet. “Because I’m carrying out Dio’s wishes to bring him back, of course. And also because…” He tilts his head. “If he doesn’t, then I’ll activate Dio’s cells in your head, you know? They’ll grow and grow and grow, more than that little fleshbud in your friend’s head, until they’ve consumed you from the inside out entirely.”
He smiles at Jotaro.
“It’s all his fault, of course. If he’d simply obeyed and killed you, he wouldn’t be in this position. But it’s also yours, you know? Yours, for making him care. You’ve become his weakness. You’ve dragged him down.”
Jotaro sees red.
He doesn’t even realize he’s swung his fist until Steely Dan stumbles back, clutching at his face, and the shock is radiating through his own jaw. “You maniac,” Steely Dan hisses, “didn’t you hear me? Anything you do to me, you’ll feel it too!”
“I don’t fucking care,” Jotaro spits, and he kicks Steely Dan in the ribs for good measure. Steely Dan cries out and curls up like a pillbug, and Jotaro takes the opportunity to have Star Platinum pick him up and toss him over its shoulder, and then he takes off down the street at a run.
“Where are you going?” Steely Dan hisses out. “Putting distance between us and Kakyoin won’t help you -- if you don’t do as I say, then you’re dead!”
“Just try it!” Jotaro snarls. Star Platinum slaps a hand over Steely Dan’s mouth, muffling whatever his response is. Jotaro doesn’t stop running until he’s at the edge of town a good ten minutes away, and then he drags Steely Dan into the forest treeline and tosses him down.
Steely Dan sits up with a glare. “What do you think you’ll achieve?”
Jotaro isn’t sure, but at the least, he’s not letting Kakyoin find out a fucking word of anything Steely Dan said, otherwise the asshole might actually listen to Steely Dan and go back to Dio and his vampire mansion and his evil brainwashing powers. Jotaro is not letting that happen. Jotaro refuses to be the reason that happens. He is not going to be the reason someone gets dragged down, not fucking again.
“Leave Kakyoin alone,” he demands. “And get your evil -- your Stand out of me. Otherwise I’ll kill you.”
Steely Dan laughs at him. “Kill me? You can’t lay a finger on me.”
Jotaro takes Steely Dan’s hand and pushes the pinky back.
Steely Dan’s smile wavers. “You wouldn’t--”
Snap.
Steely Dan screams. Jotaro grits his teeth and breathes carefully through the pain screaming through his hand.
“You broke it!” Steely Dan yells. “Are you crazy ? That’s your own finger! You -- you just--! Just like that--!”
“Leave Kakyoin alone,” Jotaro repeats. “Get your Stand out of me. Or I’ll kill you.”
“Like I’ll believe that!” Steely Dan clutches his hand to his chest and glares, eyes glimmering with unshed tears of pain. “I saw how much that hurt you. I know how much it hurt me. You won’t go any further! It’s just a bluff!”
Jotaro lunges, but Steely Dan scrambles back. He looks afraid, now. It doesn’t bring Jotaro any satisfaction. It takes a few swings and a grapple to bring Steely Dan back down, and to grab the hand again, and -- snap.
Steely Dan howls and thrashes under him. Jotaro sways a bit, and he has to catch himself on the ground. It hurts like a bitch. It hurts way too much to just be a broken finger, it feels like it’s been broken five times over and stomped on for good measure. Steely Dan really wasn’t kidding.
Too bad for him. Jotaro’s pain tolerance is stupidly high.
Steely Dan is almost crying. His face is all twisted up. He doesn’t look handsome anymore at all. “I’ll take my Stand out, alright,” he says viciously. “I’ll take it out and send the Lovers straight to Kakyoin. Let’s see if you care more about him than you do about yourself!”
Jotaro sneers. He knows how threats like this work. “Yeah? Fucking prove it.”
“What?”
“Kakyoin’s not here. If you release your Stand from me, you can’t prove that you got Kakyoin, either. And if I don’t have any proof, I don’t got any reason to stop. So what’s to stop me from going to town on you?”
Steely Dan snarls. “You’d risk your friend’s life like that? His life is on the line!”
Jotaro laughs. He hauls Steely Dan up by the collar so they’re face to face. “You don’t fucking get it, do you? You wanna get Kakyoin, you gotta let me go. But I won’t believe you got Kakyoin ‘til I see it with my own eyes, and you ain’t there to explain it to Kakyoin and bring him over, and I ain’t letting you leave. And I’ve never seen your Stand. Maybe you’re lying about how it works. Maybe you’re lying about your range too. And you’d lie about getting Kakyoin, too, just ‘cause you’re a fucking pussy who can’t stand a little bit of pain.” Steely Dan leans his head back, trying to get away, but Jotaro only leans closer, rage sparking through his veins. “I know your type, Steely Dan. You’d lie about anything if it meant you’d get the upper hand. So I ain’t got a single fucking reason to believe you if you say you can get Kakyoin from here.”
“You’re crazy,” Steely Dan yells, trying to push him away. “You’re insane!”
Jotaro bares his teeth in what might be a snarl, might be a grin. That’s right. Hostages don’t work against someone who doesn’t believe, so all Jotaro has to do is make Steely Dan think that he’ll never believe. “Just try it,” he says. “Just try releasing your Stand from me. Just try and tell me you got Kakyoin. I’ll be waiting, ‘cause the moment you do, I’ll break every fuckin’ bone in you.”
Steely Dan punches his face. Jotaro rolls with it and punches him right back. He falls back with a howl but Jotaro only tightens his grip against Steely Dan’s collar, ignoring the feeling of a black eye starting to form. “You fucking psycho, I should’ve gone for Kakyoin instead!” Steely Dan snarls, this ugly rictus of a thing, “I should’ve shredded his brain from the inside out and made you watch!”
Jotaro laughs at him. Does he think that’s the better option? “If you killed Kakyoin,” he says, every word cleanly and perfectly enunciated, “I would’ve ripped you apart.”
“I’ll kill you!” Steely Dan twists frantically. “I’ll kill you if you don’t let me go, right now!”
Jotaro curls his lip. Star Platinum shimmers to the side, slowly pressing back the middle finger on Steely Dan’s hand.
“I’ll kill you,” Steely Dan gasps, and then switching tracks, “Just let me go. If you let me go I won’t ever bother you again -- you or him, I’ll go and I’ll never come back--”
“I don’t believe you.”
“I swear! I really swear I will!”
“Then call your Stand off.”
“What will you do if I do?”
“Who fucking knows? Maybe I’ll take your Stand hostage, to make sure you don’t ever try any shit against me or Kakyoin ever again. Maybe I’ll leave it well enough alone. But I also told you earlier, didn’t I? I’m gonna break every bone in you.”
Fear sparks in Steely Dan’s eyes, quickly subsumed by hatred. He snarls venomously. “You’re sick in the head! I -- I’ve had enough of this, no more trying to take you in alive.” A sharp jolt at the base of Jotaro’s skull makes him hiss out through the teeth before he can catch it. Steely Dan smiles viciously. “I’ve planted Dio’s cells in your brain -- you’ve only got minutes to live.”
Sure enough, there’s a steadily growing ache emanating from the source of the jolt. Jotaro sits back, blankly. His arm spasms without his input, and sparks of pain light up along the nerves.
Steely Dan laughs at him. “That’s right! Your brain will be devoured from the inside out. Only I can do something to halt the growth of Dio’s cells, now! If you want to live, then beg me for help! Go on and beg for your life!”
His head hurts. He can’t… If he lets Steely Dan grab ahold of his weakness here, maybe his own life will be saved temporarily, but what about Kakyoin, there’s no guarantee. “If I do. Then you leave Kakyoin alone,” he says, and immediately hates himself for it, because now he’s really exposed the fact that he cares, and there’s no reason to trust Steely Dan’s word even if he agreed.
Steely Dan slaps him across the face. “Who do you think is in charge right now, Kujo Jotaro?! You can’t ask shit of me!”
So that’s how it is. Jotaro laughs. It echoes painfully in his head. He thinks he feels -- relief, that Steely Dan isn’t giving quarter, that he isn’t compromising at all. That makes things simple. That makes it easy. “And I’m dying. Am I?”
“You don’t believe it?” He sneers. “Just wait. You’ll go blind in your left eye soon.”
Perfectly on time, the vision in Jotaro’s left eye flickers, and then it goes completely dark. He closes his right eye and waves his hand in front of himself… Nothing. The pain in his head is steadily growing.
Dying. He’s really dying, huh.
“If you understand your position,” Steely Dan is saying, “then get on your knees and beg!” -- but it doesn’t matter. Jotaro doesn’t care. He opens his right eye again. The vision there is starting to dim too, clouding over at the edges. He must not have a lot of time.
“Star Platinum,” he calls.
His evil spirit senses his intent perfectly, and in an instant has knocked Steely Dan to the ground. Jotaro feels the impact, feels the breath rushing out of him in one great scream of pain, but it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t fucking matter. He carefully walks over -- gets down next to Steely Dan, on his knees, just like Steely Dan wanted. Then he wraps his hands around Steely Dan’s neck and squeezes.
“What are you doing?!”
If Jotaro’s gonna die here, he’s taking this fucker with him.
“L-let go! I’m the only one who can help you! I--!”
He cuts off as Jotaro slowly crushes the trachea under his finger. Good. He talks too much, and not a word out of him can be believed. Jotaro can’t breathe anymore either, and it hurts like a bitch, but it doesn’t matter. One snap of the neck and they’ll both be gone. Quick and easy. Just like that.
Steely Dan thrashes, clawing at Jotaro’s arms, at his face. Jotaro can’t see what kind of expression he’s making. His head hurts, pain radiating down his neck and spine. His vision is completely gone. He hopes Steely Dan is looking at him. He hopes Steely Dan is afraid.
Sorry, Mom, he thinks to himself. Guess I won’t be making it home after all.
He clenches his jaw, gathers up all his resolve, and smiles down at Steely Dan. He squeezes.
Something rips his hands off Steely Dan’s throat.
Jotaro snarls, whirling around and lashing out even as Steely Dan coughs under him. “Who the hell is there? Fuck off!”
“Ora,” comes the voice softly.
“Star Platinum?”
“Ora.” A pair of gloved hands, taking his own, gently.
It really was Star Platinum. His own evil spirit, the one who should want to fight and kill, the one who should want this most -- it stopped him. Jotaro snarls, he hears himself make a terrible animal noise as he shoves the evil spirit away. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he demands. “You should want this! You, of all things!”
Steely Dan laughs at him. “And here I was, wondering,” he rasps out, terribly smug. “You don’t have a death wish after all.”
“Shut up!”
“You do want to live.”
“Shut the fuck up!”
Jotaro reaches forward blindly and manages to grab Steely Dan’s neck again, but Star Platinum pries his hands away yet again. Jotaro pushes it away again with an angry shout and tries one more time, but still it won’t let him. Steely Dan is laughing again. “You want to live,” he jeers, “you want to live and you can’t even admit it! I wasn’t wrong--”
Jotaro howls. He slams his fist into Steely Dan’s face and feels the pain blooming on his own in response. Steely Dan just laughs again. “You’re just attacking because you don’t know what else to do! But Jotaro, don’t you know, I can help you, I can save you, if you just ask -- if you beg -- if you lick my shoes and beg--”
Jotaro punches. He misses, because he can’t see anything. He punches again. He hates Steely Dan. He hates Steely Dan more than anyone before, more than that shithead baseball maniac, more than that bastard teacher, more than them all. He hates Steely Dan with everything he has in him, and if he’s gonna die he’s gonna fucking take this bastard with him if it’s the last thing he ever does.
Steely Dan struggles against him. It’s fucking annoying. Easy enough to pin down the legs, harder to feel for and catch one of Steely Dan’s arm. Then just put it in a hold, put pressure on it until it snaps--
Star Platinum breaks his grip.
Jotaro snarls. He presses his hand against Steely Dan’s ribcage. One smash, just one good smash here and the broken bones will puncture the lung, they’ll both drown here on dry land--
Star Platinum pulls him away.
“What is your fucking problem?!” Jotaro yells. He punches Steely Dan again. Star Platinum doesn’t stop him; he feels bruises blossom under his ribs. He hits again; nothing stopping him this time, either. He feels around to break Steely Dan’s collarbone and Star Platinum pulls him back; he tries smashing Steely Dan’s skull into the ground, and Star Platinum pries his hands out of his hair; he hits Steely Dan again in the soft meat of his torso, and nothing. Steely Dan is speaking again. Steely Dan is kicking about, trying to push him off. Steely Dan is screaming. Jotaro doesn’t care. If Star Platinum won’t let him kill Steely Dan the easy way, he’ll beat him to death instead.
It’s a miserable equation of pain. It’s all he knows, in his blindness, in the white-hot pain filling his head and spilling out to the rest of him. Fist against flesh, the cracking of his knucklebones, the bruises blooming on his own skin like flowers. More. He needs more, if he’s gonna make sure Steely Dan dies with him, it’s not enough, it’s not nearly enough. Steely Dan isn’t screaming anymore. He’s gone quiet. Good. Jotaro wasn’t listening to him anyways. He hits him. He hits him again. A crunch as Steely Dan’s nose breaks, along with his. Blood dripping salt into his mouth. He hits him again, and again, and again--
Something rope-like wraps around him and pulls him away, half-hoisting him into the air. He snarls and thrashes, but it doesn’t give. “Let go!” he snarls, “Fucking let go of me, I’m gonna kill him, I’ll kill him--”
“Calm down, Jojo, it’s okay, I got him too.”
Kakyoin.
“Get out of here!” Jotaro shouts. “You fucking idiot! Go away!”
“Idiot? I think that’s my line.” Footsteps crunching on the dirt, coming closer. “What happened?”
“Go away,” Jotaro snarls again. He pulls against what must be Hierophant’s tentacles holding him. They don’t give. “You stay here any longer and his evil spirit might get you too and then I’ll never be able to kill him then -- get the fuck out!”
“You beat him unconscious. I think we’re fine for now.”
Unconscious… so that’s why Steely Dan went quiet. “Then you got time to leave.”
“Why do I need to leave? What’s gonna happen?”
It feels like too long to figure out how to speak again, beyond the taste of blood in his mouth, the blinding pain in his head. “His evil spirit, it -- it goes into your head, and then anything you do to him, it happens to you too. But he also had it carry in some kind of” -- Kakyoin’s brainwashed, telling him it’s Dio’s cells won’t work -- “some kind of poison, and you’ll die if you don’t do anything to him and you’ll die if you do so hurry up and fucking leave already before he wakes up--”
“Jojo.”
Jotaro jerks his head around towards Kakyoin’s voice. He sounds like he’s come closer.
“Let me get this straight. His Stand got you. Anything you do to him, will happen to you. And you’re trying to beat him to death.”
An exhale, almost too quiet for Jotaro to hear.
“Do you want to die?”
“What else am I supposed to do?!” He tugs again at Hierophant, but Kakyoin still won’t let him go. “At least this way I’ll fucking take him with me!”
There’s a long pause, long enough that Jotaro stops struggling against Hierophant’s hold and turns his head towards where he last heard Kakyoin speaking.
“You could’ve asked me for help,” Kakyoin says.
It’s such an absurd suggestion, it startles a bark of laughter out of him. The whole reason Jotaro came all the way out here in the first place was so that Steely Dan wouldn’t be able to get him, or take anyone hostage, or force Kakyoin to do anything he didn’t want to do. And he should’ve gone back?
“I could’ve helped,” Kakyoin insists. “I can possess him -- make him remove his Stand. I can get the antidote to the poison from him, too.”
-- Oh.
Kakyoin laughs incredulously. “You didn’t think of that,” he says. “You -- you didn’t think I could do anything. It didn’t even occur to you to ask for help. Am I that useless?”
“That’s not… You’re not useless,” Jotaro says helplessly. “I just.”
“You just what?”
“I don’t…” Shit. This is so stupid. “I’m not. Used to that. Being an option.”
“Asking for help?”
It feels like pulling teeth to make himself do it, but Jotaro nods.
There’s rustling as Kakyoin shifts his stance. “You -- you’re just that used to doing things on your own? Even if it means you dying?”
Especially if it means him dying, Jotaro thinks. If you’re gonna die, at least make sure no one else will get dragged down with you.
There’s a long silence, in which Jotaro can only hear the wind through the trees. Kakyoin slowly exhales again. Jotaro wishes he could see his expression again, if only to catch a hint of what he’s thinking.
“Will you let me help you?” Kakyoin says.
Out of all the things Jotaro was expecting, it wasn’t that. Why is he asking permission?
“Do what you want.”
“I can’t. You have to ask.”
He doesn’t understand. “Why?”
“Anything I do to him happens to you, right? If I possess him, then you might be affected too. And I promised I wouldn’t possess you without your permission.”
That’s right. The day in Kathmandu…
“That’s why you have to ask. Okay?”
Jotaro doesn’t nod. He doesn’t shake his head either. He just remains there, silent, thinking. He could just say no; that’d be easier, and really, then only he and Steely Dan would be affected, and Kakyoin would be alright in the end. Or, he could try and persuade Kakyoin to just kill Steely Dan now. He’s pretty sensible, he should definitely be able to see the pragmatism in it, right? And once Steely Dan is dead, then he won’t be able to force Kakyoin back into -- whatever that whole thing with Dio is.
“Please let me help you,” Kakyoin says.
Of course, then Jotaro will be dead too, and he won’t be able to intercept anyone else coming along and trying to fuck with Kakyoin’s head. But it’s hard to believe Kakyoin wouldn’t find a way to escape the brainwashing eventually; he’s already subverted orders to kill Jotaro probably a dozen times over. So it doesn’t really matter if Jotaro’s around.
“Come on, Jojo.”
On the other hand, asking Kakyoin to help is a gamble. Dio’s been messing with his head for who knows how long, and if Kakyoin runs up against the knowledge about Dio’s cells or the fleshbud or any of that bullshit, who knows what will happen. Worst case, Kakyoin reverts to the old brainwashing and Steely Dan gets away with everything, and Jotaro will be too dead to do anything about it.
“Jojo.”
It’s a huge risk. No guarantee. And Jotaro might end up with Kakyoin in his head again for the duration of it, too. The only upside he can see to it is the possibility that they both come out of it alive, but Steely Dan might be lying about there being a way to keep Jotaro from dying, anyways; and even if there is a way, it would require Kakyoin to go directly against Dio, wouldn’t it? There’s just no way it would work. Jotaro’s not a gambling sort of person; this isn’t the kind of option he’d take.
“Jotaro.”
He imagines what kind of expression Kakyoin is wearing. He imagines -- Mom, sitting at home, wondering why he never came back home.
“Please.”
Jotaro slowly exhales. He closes his eyes.
“Okay, Kakyoin. Help me.”
“Thank you,” Kakyoin says, and it’s filled with such relief that it almost feels like it has to be faked. “Yes. I will. I promise.”
Footsteps crunching on the ground. A resounding smack, a groaned out, “Wha--”
“Hierophant Green,” says Kakyoin.
Jotaro’s mind goes blissfully, completely dark.
---
He wakes up aching all over. Hissing out through his teeth, he slowly pushes himself up into a sitting position, and opens his eyes to the same clearing among the trees.
He can see again.
Kakyoin is sitting just a few paces away. Hierophant Green is sitting next to him, unwound and sprawled out like a monstrous, heaving plant. Its tendrils lash about, carefully and precisely shredding the leaves littered on the forest floor.
Kakyoin must’ve heard him move, because he starts speaking without turning around to look at him.
“There wasn’t any poison. He was lying. He came here intending to take you -- and me, I suppose -- alive. So he set off your pain receptors to make you think your body was failing, and pinched your optical nerves so you’d go blind. It was just a trick to try and gain back control.”
Hierophant’s tentacles open up to reveal Steely Dan’s unconscious body in the center. His face is contorted in pain, and when Hierophant carelessly dumps him on the ground, he twitches and moans. Kakyoin watches, and he doesn’t smile, but there’s a savage, vicious satisfaction in his eyes. “I made him fix it with his Stand.”
The howling thing is starting to come out of the edges. Jotaro clenches his jaw. “What did you do?”
Kakyoin smiles thinly. “I put his Stand in his head and broke his legs.”
“…You turned his evil spirit back on him.”
“It was an infinite feedback loop of pain.” Kakyoin kicks Steely Dan’s ribs contemptuously. “He didn’t last three minutes before he passed out, you know. So I had to wake him up and start it again.”
Jotaro can’t look at him. He looks at Steely Dan instead, at the spittle dribbling out the corner of his mouth, the blood leaking out his nose. Then he can’t look at him either, and has to turn away to the forest floor. “Is it. Still in there?”
A pause, and then a long sigh. A green tendril unfurls in his line of sight to reveal a tiny, near-imperceptible speck of yellow held in its delicate tip. “Here.”
Jotaro doesn’t realize he’s clenched his fists until they relax again. So it’s out. Kakyoin got it. And… Steely Dan isn’t being tortured anymore. That’s -- that’s good. As much as Jotaro hates him, he doesn’t -- he doesn’t want…
Kakyoin sighs again. The leaves rustle as he moves closer. “I stopped because I knew you… well…” Hierophant’s tendril tightens, nearly imperceptibly, around Steely Dan’s evil spirit. “Jojo, you’re too nice sometimes.”
It’s such a laughable statement Jotaro almost looks back at Kakyoin again. Nice? Him? Kakyoin should try telling that one to the comedy club. Or to every person who’s ever ended up in the hospital because of him. The only reason Kakyoin can say that is because -- well. He’s not actually sure Kakyoin is that evil anymore. But that doesn’t mean Kakyoin’s right.
“You are,” Kakyoin insists. “You don’t even -- not even for the guy who wanted to take you hostage and did all that shit to you at the end.”
The way he says it makes Jotaro rankle, like he’s a victim in this or something, like he didn’t have any power to stop it. It’s enough to make him lift his head and glare. “He didn’t do anything to m--”
“Don’t you dare finish that sentence,” Kakyoin hisses. His eyes flash, like the shine of light on scales right before a snake strikes.
Jotaro doesn’t care. “Don’t say it like I’m the fucking victim, then!”
“You literally are!”
“I’m not helpless! ” His voice comes out raised, too loud, too much like he cares. “I could fight back. I did.”
“So what?” Kakyoin sounds so angry, sharp as a blade. The pearl of his teeth glinting under the sun. “That doesn’t change the fact that he hurt you!”
Jotaro recoils like he’s been slapped. That’s -- that’s not the fucking point. It sucked, that whole fight sucked, but Jotaro got through it, he survived. He’s not weak, he didn’t let Steely Dan do anything, he’s not a, a--
“He hurt you,” Kakyoin repeats, moving closer, this terrible shine in his eyes. “He shouldn’t have done that. You didn’t deserve it, not one bit of it, and he should burn in hell for it. But you don’t care. You can’t stand it. You don’t want to see him in pain. You’re too nice, you care too much, about all the wrong things and not enough about yourself, so what’s it gonna take to get it through your dumb skull that you matter way more than some piece of shit like him?!”
There’s this terrible ache building up in his chest and behind the eyes, and it has nothing to do with all the bruises he’s gained. He doesn’t -- he doesn’t want-- “Shut up.”
Kakyoin doesn’t shut up. “I heard the whole thing from Steely Dan. You trying to keep him away from me. You trying to keep the Stand in your own head, to make sure he wouldn’t go after me. You were scared. You were alone. And it’s all his fault --”
“I said shut up!”
He shoves Kakyoin away violently, surging back and up to his feet like he’s about to get into a fight. His fists are clenched again. Star Platinum is ghosting out next to him. Kakyoin is standing now, too, with Hierophant coiling by him like a cobra about to strike. “It’s like you don’t even care!” he shouts. “The fact that he hurt you, or that you’re in pain, any of it! Is it important to you at all?!”
He stalks forward, and there’s something terrible in his expression -- that howling thing come out to play again, just begging to tear open the soft meat of you, but the soft animal meat of it has been bared, too. Jotaro doesn’t want to see it. He takes a step back. Kakyoin steps with him. “You want to live, I know you do!” he says. “You tried to kill him and yourself with him and Star Platinum stopped you every single time, because it knew you wanted to live! You do want to live! So why can’t you admit it matters and fucking act like it?!”
Jotaro sucks in a breath. When he lets it out, it drags out in a great big shudder, like something slipping behind the eyes. “It’s not--“ like we’re friends, but they are, because Kakyoin cares for some dumbfuck reason he doesn’t know. “It’s--“ none of your business, but it is, because they’re friends and this fight had to do with Kakyoin too. “It--“ doesn’t matter, except -- except--
He doesn’t know. He doesn’t fucking know, he doesn’t know what to do, so he does what he does best. He swings his fist.
Kakyoin catches the punch with Hierophant. He doesn’t even flinch. “It wasn’t necessary!” he shouts. “None of that pain was necessary!”
What does he know, he’s brainwashed as fuck and Jotaro’d rather die than let him go back there. “I didn’t have any other choice!”
He tries to yank his fist back, but Hierophant doesn’t let go, so he tries to hit Kakyoin with his other hand instead. Hierophant catches that too. Kakyoin steps up to him, all up in his personal space, fury sparking in every sharp edge of him. “You did,” he says. “You could’ve shared that pain with me.”
Like hell. “Let go of me!”
Kakyoin doesn’t listen. “You didn’t have to do it by yourself, it wasn’t necessary,” he insists, like he thinks it’s important. “You should’ve -- you should’ve shared it with me.”
“He was gonna--!” Jotaro barely cuts himself off in time. “So I’m just supposed to let you--“
“No one lets me do anything,” Kakyoin says sharply.
“He was gonna try and use me against you!” Jotaro shouts. “And you’re such a stupid asshole you might’ve actually listened --“
“But at least it would’ve been my choice!”
They glare at each other. This time when Jotaro yanks his hands away, Hierophant lets go.
“It’s my choice,” Kakyoin repeats. “Mine to make, not yours.” And then, the exact same words Jotaro told him in Kathmandu -- “No one gets to decide for me what I do.”
There’s something savage in the way he says it, a strange weight, that makes Jotaro wonder if he isn’t also talking about someone else.
“He was trying to get you,” Jotaro says, calmer this time. “If you didn’t know anything, it wouldn’t work.”
“I don’t care,” Kakyoin says. “If me coming out untouched means you dying I don’t want it.”
“I didn’t go into it thinking I was gonna die.”
“You just thought you’d take care of it yourself.” Kakyoin’s mouth tilts downwards at the edges. “But it was -- it was my fight too. My choice. You don’t get to take that away.”
And…Jotaro can understand that, he thinks. If someone comes challenging you, you ought to get your chance to fight. If he’d been calm he would’ve remembered that. It was just -- it was just.
You’ve become his weakness. You’ve dragged him down.
It was just trash talking, he can see it now, but in retrospect -- hearing that, he’d totally lost his cool, huh? And he’d done what he’d done best, turned it into a fight, and then it escalated to a point where it couldn’t be taken back anymore. He’d completely panicked, hadn’t he. Stupid. If he’d thought it through, then he could’ve just waited in front of the hotel until Kakyoin arrived and Kakyoin could’ve possessed Steely Dan right then and there.
The thought rankles a little bit: waiting for someone to help him, like he’s not capable enough to deal with it on his own. But Kakyoin’s…right. If he’d been there…
“…Sorry.”
“For what?” Kakyoin demands.
Jotaro looks away. “I didn’t think of just leaving it to you.”
Kakyoin lets out a breath, and after a short moment, nods. “What else?”
It’s like a fucking quiz or something. “…Should’ve been your choice too.”
“Yes. It should’ve.” He crosses his arms. “And what else.”
Jesus Christ. What else is there. “Wouldn’t fuckin’ know.”
“How about the part about taking care of yourself, asshole.”
Jotaro curls his lip. “Fucking sorry for not thinking about myself the way you want me to. Do I gotta apologize for that?”
“At least can you stop putting yourself in the line of fire as your first choice?”
They glare at each other a moment more.
“It’s my choice,” Jotaro says.
“Well, it’s a stupid one.”
Jotaro blows out a breath of air. It’s not like he likes getting hurt. It’s just usually simpler to keep it to himself. Apparently not with Kakyoin, though, because from the way he’s set his jaw and planted his feet on the ground, he’s gonna make himself a huge pain in the ass if Jotaro tries.
And it turned out fine, Kakyoin being here. He got out of it fine. Maybe it’ll be different, with him.
“Fine. I’ll try throwing you to the wolves first next time. Happy?”
Kakyoin relaxes minutely. “Say that your pain isn’t necessary, too.”
Is he for serious?
“ Say it.”
Geez. So fucking demanding. Feels corny as hell, but… “My pain isn’t necessary,” Jotaro mutters, and looks away.
“Good,” Kakyoin says with vicious satisfaction. Then, a strange hesitance, and then--
He hugs him. Jotaro stiffens up -- the hell is he supposed to do here? -- but Kakyoin steps back before he can decide whether to push him away or not.
“I was worried , you asshole,” Kakyoin says. “I don’t want anyone else killing you.”
Jotaro runs that through his Kakyoin Brainwashing Translator as “I don’t want anyone to kill you.” Almost downright sweet, that. “...Yeah. Sorry.” After a moment he adds, “Still not letting you kill me either, though.”
“With the way you almost got yourself killed, I don’t even have to try,” Kakyoin shoots back, and he’s still mad about all of this, huh. Jotaro sighs and touches the brim of his hat. What a pain.
He’s almost too late to catch the thing Kakyoin sends flying his way, and fumbles the catch. He looks down. It’s his booklet -- the treatise on ships. It’s a bit dusty, but otherwise in good shape. He blinks at Kakyoin. How did he -- when--?
“You dropped it,” Kakyoin says. “Back at the hotel.” He crosses his arms, and Hierophant shifts behind him. “That’s how I knew something was wrong.”
Just from that…?
Jotaro drops his gaze back to the booklet. His hand tightens around it as something uncomfortable wells up in his chest, a sort of awfulness that no amount of fighting will make go away. He can almost see it, now, the shape of everything Kakyoin has seen about him that he’s tried so hard to keep hidden. He can’t look at it. He can’t think about it.
This is just Kakyoin returning his book. That’s all.
“...Thanks.”
“You’re welcome,” says Kakyoin. “Asshole,” he adds after a moment’s thought. Nice to know that some things don’t change. Jotaro tucks the booklet back into the inside pocket of his coat.
“Well, now that that’s taken care of,” says Kakyoin, “What do you want to do with Steely Dan?”
Jotaro looks at Steely Dan. He thinks for a moment.
“Can you go buy superglue and a waterproof box? Something that can be closed, and that will last long underwater.”
Kakyoin looks at him curiously. “What are you planning?”
“You’ll see. Take his evil spirit with you too, will you?”
“You’re not coming with?”
Jotaro shakes his head. “Want to have a private word with him.”
Kakyoin studies him for a moment, then nods. “Okay. I’ll meet you back here. Don’t get in trouble while I’m gone.”
He unwinds Hierophant from Steely Dan, the Lovers still held firmly in its grasp, and disappears off to town. Jotaro watches him leave for a few minutes before turning back to Steely Dan. A brief search reveals a small fleshbud twitching in his head, as well. Seems like Dio doesn’t trust his subordinates all that much, huh? Well, it’s convenient for Jotaro this time, so he won’t complain.
“I’m going to enjoy this,” he tells Steely Dan, who remains unconscious. He takes Steely Dan’s face in his hands and calls Star Platinum out. Time to give this a try.
---
Steely Dan without the fleshbud isn’t any different from Steely Dan with the fleshbud. He’s still an asshole. Looks like the impromptu brain surgery didn’t do anything to change his personality.
Jotaro knocks him out again and waits for Kakyoin to come back.
---
When Kakyoin arrives with the requested supplies, Jotaro puts the Lovers inside a wooden box and thoroughly glues the lid shut. Then they take the car out to the riverbank.
Steely Dan wakes up with a few slaps. He blinks, pushes himself up in a hurry. “What--”
Jotaro rattles the box around a bit. Steely Dan sways, like he’s experiencing vertigo. “I put your Stand in this box.”
Steely Dan stares at it. Stares at Kakyoin. “What are you doing?”
Jotaro hands the box to Star Platinum. Star Platinum swings. The box goes flying down the river, and lands somewhere in the middle of the great thing, quickly disappearing in the current.
“The rains are pretty impressive at this time of year,” Kakyoin says smugly. “Good luck finding that box ever again.”
Steely Dan tries to run away. Then he curses them out, and then he begs and cries a bit.
Beating someone up has never felt so good.
When he's done, Star Platinum tosses Steely Dan with a huge splash. They watch him flail around in the water for a while.
It’s only been a few hours since daybreak, but somehow Jotaro doubts he’ll do anything more satisfying than this today.
---
The day is a quiet one. Kakyoin suggests making it a travel day, where they don’t do anything but drive and stop at a hotel early to get more rest. Jotaro doesn’t have any complaints. He’s tired, he has quasi-self inflicted bruises all over, and he has two broken fingers and a broken nose. A rest day sounds good to him. He sets his nose in the car mirror, splints his fingers with the help of the first aid kit and some sticks on the ground, and then lies back in the car seat to sleep.
His dreams are restless, but it’s a good day. They make good progress to New Delhi, crossing the border into India somewhere in the afternoon.
At the next hotel, Jotaro requests a room with a window facing the rising sun. Kakyoin gives him a curious look but Jotaro manages to deflect his questions easily enough, by which he means he ignores them. Kakyoin doesn’t dig too much, for once, which is nice. After they get dinner, Jotaro spends the rest of the night patching up his coat while Kakyoin watches nature documentaries on the TV. Progress is slow, thanks to his broken fingers, until Kakyoin suggests he use Star Platinum in place of his hand.
Star Platinum, it turns out, is very dexterous and very precise. With its help, Jotaro finishes putting tiger patches over the biggest seams and starts adding some snakes as well before calling it a night.
At 6:30 a.m. the next morning, the hotel alarm Jotaro stuffed under his pillow goes off. He turns it off quickly, to avoid waking Kakyoin up, and carefully eases out of bed. He pads silently over to the window and draws the curtains back a crack, until a sliver of light falls down on the floor. Jotaro sits by the window and watches the sky lighten until the sun finally crests the hills, painting the sky with brilliant pinks and oranges and blues.
Then he goes over to Kakyoin’s side of the bed, slowly sitting down next to him before leaning over and taking his face in his hands. Kakyoin looks peaceful while sleeping. No sign that anything’s wrong at all. Jotaro lightly brushes his bangs out of the way until the fleshbud is exposed, and calls out Star Platinum.
Having done it once, the second time is easy. All he has to do is hold still and wait for Star Platinum to finish, and ignore the tendrils lashing out and digging under his skin up towards his face; and then the fleshbud is out, and Star Platinum wrenches its tendrils out of Jotaro too, and it throws the fleshbud into the strip of light falling into the hotel room and watches it disintegrate under the sun.
Jotaro lets out a breath. He turns to look back down at Kakyoin.
And as he watches, Kakyoin slowly opens his eyes.
---
Joseph, Holly, and Avdol look at the picture Joseph is holding, in which Jotaro has his hand on Kakyoin’s cheek and is leaning in close.
“Ohoho,” Joseph says. “Look at my cute little grandson. He’s got some moves!”
Holly clasps her hands together with a smile. “Oh, I’m so glad that they’re getting along well,” she says cheerily. “I’m so excited to meet Kakyoin. I wonder what kind of young man he is?”
“He’s an unstable, mind-controlled assassin from Dio who has tried to kill your son at least twice,” Avdol says tiredly, in a way that suggests he has brought up this very same fact many times before to absolutely no avail.
“We all have our flaws,” Holly says magnanimously, with an airy wave of her hand. “Look, they have such a good relationship despite all the difficulties they’ve faced. They must be learning to communicate with each other well! I’m so proud of him. My baby boy is growing up so fast.”
Avdol rubs at his face. “Mrs. Kujo… You shouldn’t get your hopes up.”
“Aw, Avdol, don’t be so cynical about young love.” Joseph pats Avdol on the back. “You’ll find your special someone one day, too. Perhaps that Frenchman that came challenging us the other day?” He winks exaggeratedly.
Avdol groans. “For the last time, he was just an honorable opponent.”
Holly giggles at him. Joseph wiggles his eyebrows. Avdol sighs. “Do we have any idea where he is now? The last time we were able to get a clue on his location was back in Bardia.”
“He’s in a very quaint hotel,” Holly says helpfully.
“It has striped sheets,” Joseph says, equally helpfully.
Avdol, the lone voice of sense in the Joestar pursuit party, puts his head in his hands.
Notes:
to everyone who read and commented on the last chapter: THANK YOU!!!!!!!! i dont think i've ever written and published a new chapter SO FAST before. i read every single comment and they were so very encouraging. i hope you enjoyed this new chapter as much as you enjoyed the last one!!!
as always, if you liked this chapter, please leave a comment and tell me what you liked! knowing that people like & are engaged with what i'm writing is a huge motivator for me to keep writing!
thank you to succubused for beta reading this chapter -- the conversation jotaro and kakyoin have after kakyoin gets steely dan out wouldn't have happened without her feedback. we also together wrote a series called nothing like the sun -- check it out if you like stories about trauma recovery and if you have the time!
and, as always, thank you so much for reading!!!! <3
Chapter 6: i won't dare leave this alone; i know about you
Summary:
“Explain what?” Jotaro demands. “Who are you? Why do you know who I am?”
“My name is Kakyoin Noriaki. I’m your friend. Or at least, I will be, in three years.” What? The boy in green crosses his arms and tilts his head. He taps his finger on his arm. “There’s a great variety of powers in this world. Mine allows me to do what you might understand as ‘telekinesis.’ And it seems, in the fifteen minutes we’ve been separated, you’ve been hit by a power that has turned you back into your younger self.”
What the fuck is going on.
Kakyoin discovers he has a friend who has seen more of him than he’d like, and Jotaro soon finds the same; or, Kujo Jotaro and Kakyoin Noriaki versus the no good, very bad ordeal of being known.
Notes:
this chapter is dedicate to my friend johnny's brother. thank you for being number 1 fan
you know how in canon, after being dewormed, kakyoin and polnareff seemed to hang onto their memories of big important emotional things but didn’t know where dios mansion was and didnt know or recognize any of dios other underlings? yeah
this chapter is 23k words. i thought about splitting it up but it all goes together, so. brace yourselves
CHAPTER WARNINGS: canon-typical violence. attempted bad touch (not explicit, gets stopped pretty quickly). JOTARO’S TRAUMA: THE CHAPTER (THE SECOND). <-- theres so much happening here. we are in for it now. spoilers warnings are in the end notes! please take care
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Kakyoin opens his eyes. He looks up at Jotaro and freezes.
“Kakyoin?”
Shit, Jotaro didn’t mess up pulling the fleshbud out, did he? He leans closer. Kakyoin doesn’t look like there’s anything wrong with him, but he hadn’t looked like anything was wrong while there was a fleshbud in his brain, either. “You feeling okay?”
Kakyoin’s eyes flick across Jotaro’s face, then down at his chest, then over to where Jotaro abruptly realizes he’s still holding his face. Kakyoin flushes and violently shoves him off the bed.
Okay he probably deserved that. But by the time he gets up, Hierophant has snapped out, tentacles weaving across the floor in a room-wide snare. Kakyoin himself has rolled out of bed with a half-wild look in his eye — not the howling thing, not exactly, but something still startled and ready to bite. Star Platinum catches the tentacles that come lashing his way. “Is this what we’re doing again? We’re fighting?” Jotaro demands. Fuck, are they? Did Jotaro mess up pulling the fleshbud out? Shit, he hopes not—
Kakyoin isn’t attacking again. He’s staring wide-eyed at Star Platinum. “You—you—”
He doesn’t finish the sentence. Jotaro eyes him warily. “Are you trying to kill me again?”
“What? No!” Kakyoin looks a bit horrified at the accusation, which he really shouldn’t. It’s not like Jotaro holds the assassination attempts against him that much. “Did I—? Are you—no, nevermind, I’m just. I’m.”
He takes a deep breath. He buries his face in his hands, takes yet another deep breath, and puts his hands back down. “Sorry,” he says. His voice is a bit higher than usual. “I’m just. Disoriented. I feel like I just woke up from a—a really long, really bad dream.”
Having a worm in your brain for weeks will probably do that to you. Makes sense. Jotaro nods and has Star Platinum let go of Hierophant’s tentacles, and Hierophant slowly retracts back into its normal humanoid shape. “Okay. How are you…” Jotaro struggles to find the words to ask. “How are you. You know. Feeling. Besides that.”
“Um. I’m fine.” Kakyoin nods, less of a conscious response and more of a blank reflex than anything. “Why do you ask?”
… Because he just attacked Jotaro and just woke up from having a worm pulled out of his brain? Obviously. Jotaro looks at him flatly. Unfortunately, Kakyoin doesn’t seem to receive his message properly, because he says, “No really, I’m fine. Totally.” He smiles charmingly, the way he does when he’s trying to win over someone he’s trying to scam. “Nothing wrong with me. Not that there’s any reason there would be—”
Jotaro frowns. Kakyoin sure is off his game. “You sure nothing got knocked out of place in there?” He gestures vaguely at his head. Maybe Jotaro should give him some space to get it together?
Kakyoin’s smile becomes decidedly fixed and Hierophant begins to uncoil slightly behind him, the way it does whenever Kakyoin’s preparing for a fight on his hands. “Oh, no, I’m completely fine.”
Jotaro can’t tell if that’s sarcasm or if Kakyoin just wants him to stop asking about it. Either way, Kakyoin seems so wound up it’s probably better to give him space. “If you want me to fuck off you can just say so,” he tells him, sticking his hands in his pockets and dismissing Star Platinum in a deliberate display of disinterest.
“What? No.” Kakyoin quickly re-coils Hierophant back into place, as if trying to hide the fact he’d done that in the first place. “What? No. ” But he watches Jotaro move to the door with a mix of wariness and relief, a display of emotion that Kakyoin usually hides better, but hey, extenuating circumstances.
“I’ll get us breakfast. I’ll be back in an hour,” Jotaro tells him. “Don’t forget to do your bandages.”
“...Bandages?”
Jotaro raises an eyebrow. “First aid kit’s in the suitcase.” He must be really rattled to have forgotten about that. “Don’t freak out again while I’m gone.”
He shuts the door behind him without looking back. They can have a proper conversation when he returns and Kakyoin’s calmed down.
——
He strolls around the city of Khatima for a while, listening to the bustle of conversation and street vendors in the morning and watching birds stealing crumbs off the street. Star Platinum emerges and watches curiously when Jotaro gets himself some pav bhaji, toasted white rolls of bread that are dipped in a freshly-cooked blend of butter and vegetables. It accepts enthusiastically when Jotaro offers it some, but Jotaro isn’t sure that it actually tastes it. Or that it chewed, for that matter. Where did the pav bhaji go? Did it get converted to spirit energy or something? Wait, Star Platinum could eat the whole time? Was Jotaro supposed to feed it?
Jotaro briefly imagines Star Platinum wandering out at night while he’s sleeping to methodically sift through trash cans for food, and immediately feels terrible. “You haven’t had to—I mean. You’ve been fine. Right?” he says to Star Platinum.
Star Platinum turns its wide, guileless eyes on Jotaro and blinks owlishly. It takes another bite of pav bhaji.
Jotaro feels even worse. He buys Star Platinum another three buns, before picking something out for Kakyoin and heading back to the hotel.
The first thing he sees when he opens the door is the contents of their suitcase and the first aid kit strewn all over the floor. Kakyoin jumps guiltily in the middle of it all. Jotaro pinches the bridge of his nose. “Seriously?”
Kakyoin opens his mouth, probably to give some bullshit excuse about looking for his fucking lotions or wanting to rearrange his spare socks to be color coded or something, but Jotaro cuts him off by shoving two takeout boxes into his chest. “It’s gajar ka halwa. The one you like. And some fruity yogurt shit too, I dunno. ‘S called makhan malai. Thought you might like trying it.”
Kakyoin blinks. “...Um. Thank you?”
Jotaro stares. “Thank you?” What’s wrong with him?
“Yes?” says Kakyoin uncertainly. Then, more archly, “You know, the kind of polite pleasantry that civilized people exchange to express gratitude?”
At least his sarcasm function is still working properly, but since when has Kakyoin ever been polite to anyone except service workers and strangers he’s trying to scam? “Are you mad at me?”
Kakyoin’s mouth flaps soundlessly a few times. “Why would I be mad at you?”
Like Jotaro understands anything that goes on in his weird brain ever. “Your freak out this morning?”
“I didn’t freak out. And besides, I’m over that.”
“About yesterday then.”
“Why would I be mad about yesterday?”
Jotaro gives him exactly what kind of look that deserves. “I thought you were gonna bite my damn head off.”
Kakyoin starts to say something in his usual argumentative way, and then he stops, his eyes flicking across Jotaro’s face to—his black eye? He wears a strange expression for a second, almost guilty , which is so absurd and hilariously beyond what Jotaro is prepared to deal with that he immediately shuts the train of thought down. “I—yeah, maybe,” Kakyoin says, a bit quietly, and then, more self assured, “but really, I just feel—a bit off today. That’s all. Really.”
“Obviously,” says Jotaro, because it’s not like he expected Kakyoin to be totally okay after pulling a worm out of his head. He sighs and tugs at the brim of his hat. What to do. “You still feel up for traveling?”
“Uh…” Kakyoin bites his lip.
Damn, Jotaro really is out of his depth. How do you support someone after they maybe just got unbrainwashed. Maybe he can just. Parrot Kakyoin’s advice back at him. “You’ll feel better after doing something. You’ve been looking forward to New Delhi for ages anyways.”
“New Delhi?” Kakyoin perks up, and then blinks. “Isn’t that…”
“Like ten hours away, yeah, but there’s plenty of towns in between.”
Kakyoin just stands there holding his food and looking kind of lost. The contents of their suitcase are still all over the floor. It’s emblematic, Jotaro thinks. This whole day is already a mess.
“Come on,” Jotaro says, “eat your breakfast and we’ll drive to the next town.”
“But,” says Kakyoin. “Dio…?”
“Dio can wait ‘til you’ve gotten yourself back together,” Jotaro tells him, and shoves him towards the chair. “Hurry up and eat.”
Kakyoin blankly sits down and eats.
——
Jotaro bullies Kakyoin into packing the suitcase (“Clean up your own damn mess.”) but repacks the first aid kit himself (“First time you saw me use it you didn’t even know what a triangle bandage was.”). Kakyoin trails after him as he checks them out of the hotel and leads them over to the car, and only creases his forehead a little bit when Jotaro slides into the driver’s seat. Fortunately he isn’t too jacked in the head to give Jotaro driving instructions to the next city, reading from the map and the itinerary Jotaro tosses his way.
It takes less than an hour to drive from Rampur to Moradabad. They first visit Sai Temple, a quiet place with plenty of the kind of history and architectural weirdness that Kakyoin likes. Kakyoin isn’t giving out a lot of commentary about the usual inane shit, though; it honestly has Jotaro kind of worried. Still, you don’t get over being brainwashed by an evil vampire in the course of one morning, right? So it’s totally fine. Better to just give him some space.
But it only gets worse when they go to lunch and Kakyoin doesn’t even order a new dish to try, and Jotaro ends up ordering the dishes he knows Kakyoin was eyeing ‘cause he’s gonna mope forever if he doesn’t get the chance to try. Kakyoin looks surprised, but he doesn’t say anything about it. He doesn’t even ask if he can sample the dishes Jotaro ordered. Doesn’t do anything at all until Jotaro gives up on being subtle and directly dumps stuff on his plate. “Just eat it already, asshole, I know you want to,” he tells Kakyoin. “You’ll feel better.”
Kakyoin doesn’t seem to know what to do with that. He gives an uneasy sort of smile and almost says thank you again, which really would’ve had Jotaro bringing him to a hospital, but he manages to behave halfway normal until the end of the meal and they go tour Gautam Budh Park. It’s a nice, grassy expanse with plenty of trees and bushes, local families standing around and chatting while watching their children playing under the sun. There’s some religious significance, too, with some marble statues that are probably carved in honor of the Buddha the park is named after.
Jotaro keeps waiting for Kakyoin to start telling him about trivia about the park’s history or its namesake, or something, but Kakyoin just walks around quietly. Even worse, when he does speak, it’s small talk. It’s all, nice weather, or, that tree looks pretty nice, huh? Jotaro is aghast. Every time Kakyoin does it Jotaro stares blankly at him in a way he should probably reserve for things like Kakyoin suggesting they kill people, but at this point he would feel more relieved than anything if Kakyoin suggested unwarranted murder because at least that’s familiar territory. What the hell is this? Jotaro wanted him to start talking again but not like polite business people.
Kakyoin looks at his expression, smiles politely in a way that doesn’t touch his eyes, and stops attempting to make small talk. No, wait, he’s not supposed to stop talking. He’s supposed to do his usual horrible running commentary. Jotaro’s resolve to give him space breaks. He starts asking Kakyoin what he knows about the history of the area, or the construction process of the buildings, or the plants, or whatever, even though he doesn’t actually give a shit about any one of those things.
“How would I know?” Kakyoin says with irritation, after the first couple times Jotaro tries to kickstart him into running his motor mouth again.
“You always know something,” Jotaro says, almost a complaint. Come on, Kakyoin, do something normal already!
Kakyoin gives him a strange look. “And you want me to talk about it?”
Jotaro almost wants to reach over and shake him. “Since when did you care about that? ‘S fucking weird with you being so quiet.” So hurry up and start talking already!
Kakyoin presses his lips together in a thin line, briefly, before he notices Jotaro watching and smooths it back away into something neutral. Like he’s trying to hide something, or — no, maybe it’s just that he’s bothered by Jotaro trying to bother him into acting normal again? Yeah, he needs space to process everything that happened. Right? Should’ve thought it out better before bugging him to talk again, huh? Jotaro coughs and backtracks with a muttered, “Doesn’t really matter that much though, I guess. Do what you want.”
Kakyoin studies him for a moment before nodding slowly. But after that, he begins giving trivia again — haltingly at first, with Jotaro having to give his input way more than he’s used to, until Kakyoin hits his stride. Then it’s almost back to normal. Jotaro’s satisfied with that.
After that they drive a couple hours and a few cities over. Kakyoin quiets down again, staring out the window at the passing scenery like he’s never seen it before. Jotaro’s never seen him do that before, but it’s not like he doesn’t understand. He could spend hours out in nature, too. ‘Sides, he might’ve imposed on Kakyoin too much making him talk about stuff in Gautam Budh; better to leave him alone for now.
Other than giving directions, Kakyoin only starts one conversation with him. He says, “Hey, what do you think of Dio…sama?”
What’s with that tacked-on honorific? Kakyoin hasn’t spoken about Dio this respectfully since the first time he tried to kill him. Jotaro side-eyes him but Kakyoin just flashes an innocent look, like, what do you mean I said something weird?
Fine, whatever. Jotaro’s pretty sure he’s made his opinion of Dio clear, though, so why’s he asking? He does know, right? His memory is totally fine, right? Maybe Kakyoin’s looking for something new, now that the fleshbud has been pulled out? Yeah. That has got to be it. He thinks for a moment. “I’m glad you stole his money,” he eventually decides, because it’s the least that Dio deserves for brainwashing Kakyoin into being an assassin.
That startles a bark of laughter out of Kakyoin, and he turns to Jotaro with a curled half-smile and bright eyes, an energy he’s been lacking for almost the whole day. But he tamps it back down quickly. Jotaro feels a pang of disappointment. “I — really?”
Jotaro shrugs. “How else would we pay for our vacation.”
Kakyoin laughs. He stops when he realizes Jotaro is serious. “Vacation, huh?”
Jotaro raises an eyebrow. “What would you call this roadtrip, then?”
Kakyoin frowns and doesn’t answer, which only makes Jotaro feel more uneasy.
They arrive in the district of Hapur in time for dinner. It’s the usual drill; walk around the streets, look at the food stalls, pick something to eat. Jotaro gets himself momos and pav bhaji since they’ve proven good before, but then — terrifyingly enough — Kakyoin actually gets himself the same thing too.
“What?” Kakyoin says defensively, catching Jotaro staring at him. “You like it too, right? So it must be good.”
“Are you sick?” Jotaro says.
“No? What brought that question on?”
Jotaro presses the back of his hand to Kakyoin’s forehead to check for fever just in case. Kakyoin slaps his hand away. Nope, the temperature seemed fine. So Kakyoin really isn’t sick? Then what the hell. “Why didn’t you go to the other stall?”
“What stall?”
Jotaro points at the stall across the street they’d walked past so they could get their momos.
Kakyoin looks. “What’s so good about it?”
“It’s got cooked bugs.”
Kakyoin stares at him. “So?”
“So you want to try it.”
“That’s for me to decide, not you.”
“You always want to try new food. I saw you looking at it earlier, you wanted to get it. You love the freaky stuff.”
Kakyoin’s expression goes all carefully arranged, a bit of confusion and derision like he's trying to be polite but secretly thinks the whole suggestion is frankly ridiculous. The artifice of it is so obvious he might as well be waving a neon flag telling Jotaro to fuck off. “You were just imagining things.”
“You love eating bugs,” Jotaro says accusingly. He’s certain it’s only partly because Kakyoin likes eating bugs, the rest of it is just because he delights in being a total fucking weirdo. Because Kakyoin is weird. But not like this.
“Come on, Jojo,” says Kakyoin. “Do I look like that kind of person?”
“You look like a mannequin rejected by the avant-garde art museum.”
“Hey!”
Idiot left himself wide open for that verbal riposte there. Jotaro really is getting worried. “Just get the damn bugs.”
“I told you I don’t want them!”
Why is he always so fucking contrary? He had no problem buying this kind of stuff in China and Nepal, even tried getting Jotaro in on it too. But Jotaro points out he likes it and all of a sudden he clamps down on it worse than a bear trap. “I’ve literally seen you eat a giant beetle off the side of a fucking tree.”
Kakyoin sucks in a breath. “I — well — that’s—!”
“You do remember that, right?” Jotaro says suddenly, and regrets it immediately because he really didn’t want to ask that question. He doesn’t want to know the answer.
“Who would remember everything that’s happened on this trip so far?” Kakyoin retorts. Jotaro feels briefly relieved — it’s a reasonable enough answer, but —
I would, he thinks. He doesn’t say it out loud.
He lets the conversation drop there, afraid to push any further, but Kakyoin still ends up mulishly buying the fried bugs. He snacks on it like finger food while Jotaro drives them to a hotel, and judging by the way his container is empty by the time they get there, he definitely liked it. Jotaro wasn’t wrong.
Jotaro reads his treatise on ships in the lobby while waiting for Kakyoin to get them a room for the night. It feels like a shorter time period than usual for Kakyoin to return with room keys. Did he not try and haggle the prices? Come to think of it, Kakyoin hasn’t been tempted to scam or pickpocket anyone at all today, didn’t even make any overtures towards it. That’s… well, it should be a good thing, but it’s just — it’s just not a Kakyoin thing to do. It’s so unnatural. It doesn’t feel right at all.
Then he gets to the hotel room and sees that Kakyoin’s booked them two beds, and that’s when he really knows that something is wrong.
“Are you sure you’re not mad at me?” Jotaro asks, without much hope.
“The way you ask that question, it’s almost as if you want me to be,” Kakyoin retorts archly, which is the most solid confirmation he could’ve gotten.
Jotaro sits down heavily on the edge of the bed and puts his face in his hands.
“Oh. Um,” says Kakyoin. Jotaro doesn’t look up. “Um. Jojo? I’m really not mad. I promise.”
“That’s what you said in Jinan,” Jotaro says, which is a complete lie, because nothing like this has ever happened before and they’ve never been to Jinan.
“I — well — I mean it this time,” Kakyoin says, footsteps shuffling closer on the carpet. “I’m really not mad. Just feeling off all day.”
The last bit of hope Jotaro was holding onto snuffs out and dies. No, well… Kakyoin did call him by name earlier, so he must remember something , right? But it’s barely a comfort at all.
“Hey…” Kakyoin shuffles a bit closer when Jotaro doesn’t move and tentatively reaches out a hand, hovers around his shoulder for a moment before patting him stiffly. “I’ll — I’ll go get you something nice to drink, okay? I’ll be right back.”
Jotaro doesn’t respond. Kakyoin practically flees out the door, and Jotaro’s so miserable that he just lets him.
By the time Kakyoin returns with some coffee and cream, Jotaro has mostly composed himself and gone to stare out the window. He accepts the cup of coffee numbly — too much cream and sugar, he distantly notes — and says, “Kakyoin, we need to talk.”
Kakyoin stiffens slightly, then relaxes, so quickly that no one who wasn’t watching carefully would notice. “Of course,” he says with a winsome smile, the kind he uses for winning over people who don’t know him. “What about?”
Jotaro looks at him a little flatly, because he can read how Kakyoin has readied himself for a fight in the way he’s straightened up and loosened his shoulders, how he’s gone all sharp in the eyes again. Just what the hell does he think they’re going to talk about? “There’s something I have to tell you.”
The tension goes out of him slightly. “...Should I be worried?”
“No,” Jotaro says, because it’s probably not something they need to fight about, but actually, this is kind of Jotaro’s fault, so — “Maybe. Yes. I don’t know.” The tension is starting to creep back into Kakyoin’s stance. Jotaro grits his teeth. “I just.”
“You just what?” Kakyoin says warily.
Jotaro opens his mouth to say it, and fails, because he really doesn’t want it to be true, but damn it, this is his fault so he’s gotta fess up. Rip it off like a bandaid and deal with the fallout, just like anything else. He makes himself take a deep breath, holds it for a second, and then, in one great rush — “I think I gave you brain damage.”
Kakyoin gapes at him. Jotaro feels so bad. He barrels on. “You know the. The worm thing. In your head. I thought it was making you crazy or brainwashed or something, and no one should have that kind of thing in their head anyways so I was pretty damn certain it wasn’t supposed to be there, and I tested pulling it out on Steely Dan and he didn’t seem any different afterwards, so I thought it would be fine to take yours out too, and I pulled yours out last night but now you’re acting all weird and not like yourself at all, and I don’t think you even remember anything, you’ve just been pretending all day and I don’t even know why, and I think you have brain damage now.”
The silence that follows is deafening.
“You… you what?” Kakyoin finally says, faintly.
“I pulled the fleshbud out of your head and now you have brain damage.”
“No, I heard that part. But what do you mean, I’ve been acting weird all day? How’d you figure it out?”
That’s what he wants to ask about? “You kept acting polite.”
“I’m always polite!”
“You’re polite to strangers and people you’re putting on a persona for,” Jotaro corrects. “And you weren’t showering me with shitty trivia while we were traveling, and you kept ordering normal people food instead of the crazy shit you love to try, and you were even pretending like you didn’t want to eat the fucking bugs, and you didn’t scam anyone, you didn’t even try to pickpocket anyone today, and you got us a room with two beds.”
Kakyoin’s mouth opens and closes a few times. “What’s wrong with two beds?”
“You haven’t let me sleep separately since Kathmandu!” Jotaro glares until he remembers that Kakyoin probably doesn’t even know about it, but he can’t just back down and look away here, so they just stand like that and look at each other for a little bit. It’s horrendously awkward.
“Well,” says Kakyoin, and nothing else.
“I can put the worm back if you want,” Jotaro says helplessly.
“No,” says Kakyoin, “I’d really rather you didn’t.”
“Okay, good,” says Jotaro. “Because it actually disintegrated under the sunlight and I don’t know where I’d get another one.”
Kakyoin’s eyebrow tics. “Then why the hell did you offer?!”
“I don’t know.” It comes out more honest than he cares for, but at this point, who cares? Kakyoin’s clean forgotten everything and is just as confused and lost as he is, so what the hell, what’s it gonna hurt if he says it. “I don’t know what to do.”
Kakyoin takes a long look at his face, long enough that Jotaro turns his head away uncomfortably, and nods slowly. “Hey. Sit down on the bed with me?”
Jotaro sits down on the bed with him and stares forlornly at the carpet.
“I’m glad you took the fleshbud out,” Kakyoin begins.
“You have brain damage,” Jotaro says, immediately rejecting the implied thank-you. He has brain damage. What would he know.
“I’ve been behaving perfectly normal all day! It’s me under the fleshbud who was weird.”
That… is a good point. Maybe the Kakyoin that Jotaro got to know wasn’t the real Kakyoin at all. Maybe this weird quiet polite distant version of Kakyoin is completely normal and asking him to act like he did before is like asking water to start flowing uphill. The thought is so depressing that Jotaro almost wants to just take a flight home and call it quits.
“And I don’t think it’s complete memory loss,” Kakyoin says hurriedly, looking at his face. “I still have impressions of some things. It’s all a jumbled up blur, though. So that’s why…” He bites his lip. “Um. This morning when I woke up. I thought — I thought you might’ve been another one of Dio’s people. Or maybe a hostage. I wasn’t sure. I was trying to figure out all day.”
Jotaro stares. “A hostage?”
“Well — you asked if I was trying to kill you again and you looked all beat up!”
“Like you could do anything to me. When we first fought you came out of it even worse than I did.” Kakyoin looks outraged, so Jotaro adds, “You gave me a bloody nose though.”
He seems somewhat mollified by that. “Good. You deserved it.”
“The fuck does that mean? You were trying to kill me.”
Kakyoin holds up a hand as if to say, hold on. “Wait. Just to clarify. You took out the fleshbud. You’re not — you’re not with Dio?”
“Fuck no. The asshole wants me dead.”
“Then doesn’t that mean I was sent to assassinate you?”
Kakyoin sounds so outraged. “You even forgot I was your target,” Jotaro mutters, and puts his head in his hands again.
“I didn’t forget! I thought — I thought that I had to be wrong! We’re on a roadtrip right now! Why would I be on a roadtrip with the person Dio wanted me to kill?!”
“The hell would I know? You’re the one who invited me.”
“Don’t act like you have nothing to do with this! Who’d accept that kind of invitation from the person who tried to assassinate them?”
“It’s not like you succeeded.”
“That’s not the point!”
Kakyoin looks so mad about this that he’s actually leaned in closer, eyes sparking with rage, and normally it’d be fun to rile him up some more, but Jotaro can’t find it in himself this time. “So you don’t remember the first time you tried to kill me?”
“What’s with that forlorn tone!” Kakyoin shouts, and his hands twitch in a way that suggests he’s only barely holding himself back from trying to push Jotaro off the bed.
That makes Jotaro feel a little better. “Is that a no?”
“That’s—” Kakyoin hesitates. “I remember… a jail cell? I don’t know.”
Jotaro sits up a little straighter at that. The memory is still there. Jumbled or fuzzy, maybe, but doesn’t that mean there’s the possibility of Kakyoin going back to normal?
“Don’t get your hopes up,” Kakyoin says sharply. “I looked inside my mindscape in the car earlier, it’s a mess. It looks like a kicked over house of cards.”
Shit, it does? “Sorry.” Wait. “Mindscape?”
Kakyoin blinks. “You don’t know? That’s how my possession works. I get in their head and make it go all…” he waves his hand vaguely. Hierophant Green appears and helpfully waves its hand too. Kakyoin looks at it like it’s grown a second head.
Jotaro nods at Hierophant, since it seems like the thing to do, and the expression that it puts on Kakyoin’s face is hilarious enough that his mood lifts a bit more. “Does that mean you can possess yourself?”
“Yes, but it doesn’t really change anything,” Kakyoin says. “I just get more willful, that’s all. So I don’t do it too much.”
“You’re always willful.”
“I’m perfectly well-behaved!”
Jotaro snorts. “You told me you thought being evil was actually ‘very fun and cool.’”
“No,” Kakyoin says, horrified. “I didn’t really, did I?”
“Mad ‘cause your secret’s out?”
“If I finish the job it won’t be,” Kakyoin retorts.
Then he looks shocked at himself for saying it, which is frankly hilarious, like he didn’t expect himself to be that vicious out loud. As if Jotaro hasn’t already seen the worst of him? He has to duck his head before Kakyoin can see his lips twitching into a smile. “I’m not letting you kill me,” he says. “But you can try if you want.”
There’s a beat of silence. Jotaro looks back when it drags back too long, only to find that Kakyoin has gone kind of red. “You — what kind of — what is wrong with you?”
What kind of what. “Why, not up for it?” he taunts.
“I could totally kill you if I wanted to!” Kakyoin shoots back. He stops talking as a strange expression comes over his face, as if he doesn’t know what to do with the fact he just said that. It’s kind of hilarious.
Then Hierophant reaches over and pats its owner on the shoulder.
Jotaro stares. He feels his mouth stretching into a shit-eating grin.
“Don’t say a word,” Kakyoin hisses.
Jotaro complies, merely looking at Kakyoin with a smirk, because he doesn’t have to say anything for Kakyoin to get completely worked up about it on his own.
Sure enough, “I could kill you nine different ways from here!” Kakyoin insists. “Just because I didn’t manage to kill you while I was brainwashed and muddled in the head—“
“Sure,” Jotaro says smugly. “You’d totally want to.”
“I’m strongly considering it!”
“Careful. You could charm a lady with fighting words like that.”
Kakyoin sputters. “Are you flirting with me right now?”
Who the hell is flirting. It’s just funny winding Kakyoin up. “Why, you want me to be?”
“I tried to kill you!”
Jotaro scoffs. “You tried.”
“Do you know why I thought we might be enemies, when I first woke up this morning?” Kakyoin says, jabbing a furious finger at him. “It’s because I had the feeling that you were a huge pain in my ass. And I was right!”
“Feeling’s mutual, pal.”
“Being in my company pales in comparison to being in yours.”
Heh. You feelin’ alright, Kakyoin? That almost sounded like a compliment. “You wanna bet?”
“I don’t need to. I know I’m right.”
“Oh yeah? What’d I do that’s so annoying.”
“You decided to make nice with someone who tried to kill you! There’s something wrong in your brain.”
“You did that too,” Jotaro points out, conveniently leaving out the part where he never fought to kill Kakyoin, only ever to beat him to a pulp.
But it’s not like Kakyoin knows that, does he? Which means that Jotaro gets to watch him sputter angrily before finally saying, “You are impossible.”
He looks a lot like he’d like to storm off except there’s nowhere in the room to really storm off to. Jotaro should help. “Why don’t you take a shower, Kakyoin?” he suggests. “Could teach you a thing or two about going with the flow.”
It takes a moment to process. “Augh,” Kakyoin says. “That was terrible. ”
But he accepts it when Star Platinum tosses the suitcase his way anyways, and haughtily flounces to the bathroom before slamming the door shut.
It’s pretty funny. Jotaro feels a bit better, too; Kakyoin is still an insufferable asshole who hates losing face. Maybe it’ll all be fine after all.
——
Jotaro is sitting on the balcony and finishing up his book on ships when Kakyoin walks up, wrapping his hair in a towel before reclining in the chair opposite him. He waits until Jotaro looks up at him, and then he says, “So, I was thinking.”
“Bit dangerous.”
“I don’t want to hear that from the person who went on a roadtrip with me.” He frowns. “Does your family even know what you’re doing?”
“I left a note.”
“You ran away from home?”
“I didn’t run,” Jotaro says. “Plus my grandfather and his shitty yakuza family found us anyway, but we ditched them in Kathmandu, so it’s fine.”
“Your grandfather’s—” Kakyoin cuts himself off with a sharp slash of the hand. “No no no. Start from the beginning. How did we even meet?”
“I was in jail and you showed up and tried to kill me. Then you invited me to meet Dio.”
“Hang on, you’re skipping way too many things here. Why did I invite you?”
“Like I know what goes on in your fucked up head ever.”
“I’m perfectly normal!”
Jotaro gives him the look that that deserves. Kakyoin scowls. “I have a reason for everything I do; I wouldn’t invite you out of nowhere. Give me some more details.”
Jotaro thinks about it for a moment and tries again. “You tried to kill me. I beat the crap out of you. I took you to McDonalds. You invited me to Dio’s.”
“That didn’t explain anything!”
That explained plenty. It was a nice, succinct description, without wasting any time on unnecessary things. Kakyoin’s standards really are too unreasonable. “Maybe McDonalds just put you in a good mood.”
“Do you think I’m going to let you get away with such a half-assed explanation? Why did you take me to McDonalds?!”
“You’re always so hung up on this. What else was I gonna do? ‘S not like I wanted to kill you.”
“I don’t know how to explain to you that you had infinitely many other options in between killing me and taking me to McDonalds.”
“Like what.”
“Turning me over to the pol…” Kakyoin trails off and frowns, seeming to realize exactly how little that would do to stop him. He thinks. He thinks some more.
“See, you can’t think of anything either.”
“That doesn’t mean you’re right.”
Jotaro magnanimously doesn’t say anything more on the subject, because he is right and they both know it.
Kakyoin glowers at him, but perhaps sensing that he won’t be winning the argument, moves on. “Fine, so what happened after that?”
“You told me Dio was in Egypt but you didn’t even book a flight to Egypt, you booked one for China, because you were planning on sightseeing with the money you stole from Dio after you killed me.” That was such an infuriating asshole thing to do. Jotaro really doesn’t understand how Kakyoin can think he’s normal.
“So we went to China?”
“We got dinner first.” Kakyoin’s eyebrows inch up, so Jotaro elaborates, “‘Cause you wanted to get to know me or some shit.”
“We went on a dinner date?”
Figures he would keep that annoying way of thinking. “It wasn’t a date.”
“It was a date,” Kakyoin says decisively. Jotaro glowers. “What did we talk about?”
“I dunno. Some bullshit about jazz.”
“You like jazz?”
Jotaro crosses his arms. Kakyoin snickers at him. “Oh, you hate sharing about yourself,” he says, delighted. “What did you tell me? Come on, spill.”
“Figure it out yourself.”
“Come on, Jojo, don’t be like that. I have brain damage.”
Jotaro is unmoved. Maybe Kakyoin sees that, because he switches tracks and says, “I mean, you know how much about me, again?”
“Not nearly enough to figure out what’s wrong with you.”
“Haha, oh, you,” Kakyoin says, faux-coquettishly. Then, just a bit too flat, “How much?”
Jotaro looks at Kakyoin’s finger tapping to the side. The disparity in knowledge actually really bothers him, it seems. This one needs a proper answer, huh?
“You like scamming people,” Jotaro says, which he realizes, as soon as Kakyoin’s face twitches, is not a promising start. “You think it’s funny to trick people and you especially like throwing people’s expectations in their faces. The easy mark wasn’t so easy after all, that kind of thing. You’re petty and vengeful and can hold a grudge forever, and you wouldn’t hesitate to kill someone you think deserves it, and you’re a control freak. You’re picky and exacting with your standards, especially your appearance.”
Kakyoin’s expression grows more and more incredulous as the list goes on. “I don’t like scamming people,” he denies, like a liar. “And you still wanted to travel with me?”
Jotaro shrugs. Maybe Kakyoin is a little bit evil but that’s not all he is. How to explain? “You’re lonely and disconnected from the people around you because they never seem to truly understand you, so you look down on them a little. ‘S easier that way.” Maybe he’ll get it with that. “You don’t feel understood by your family. You feel neglected by your parents to the point you think they wouldn’t notice you gone from their life. But your half-sister would notice. She tries, with you. You don’t know why, or maybe you do know, but you can’t understand. It makes you happy to have someone who cares about you, but also sad, and worried.”
“Stop,” Kakyoin says. “That’s enough.”
Jotaro lets the words you don’t want to be alone die on his tongue. If Kakyoin doesn’t want to hear it said aloud, who is he to contest that? Everyone has pretenses they need to hide behind.
“You know me,” Kakyoin says quietly. “A lot more than I care for.” He takes a breath. “Right now I have… impressions about you. Observations. But I don’t understand what they mean or where they came from. So isn’t it only fair to tell me about you?”
The question triggers a memory. Sasaki’s restaurant, Kakyoin leaning forward with a foxy smile to say, But I told you so much about myself, and I know so little about you. What kinds of questions had he asked there, again?
“...I’m an Aquarius.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
It was worth a shot. “I’m not psychoanalyzing myself for you.”
“You don’t have to,” Kakyoin says, winsomely, which means Jotaro needs to watch out for whatever he’s saying next. “Just tell me what I know about you.”
Jotaro has a brief, dizzying vision of Kakyoin holding the book on ships out to him after the Steely Dan fight, the lines by the eyes, the wry twist of his mouth, the shape of everything Kakyoin’s seen towering over them like a shadow about to drop. “No,” he hears himself say, too abrupt to be casual. Kakyoin’s gaze sharpens. Jotaro makes himself inhale calmly, and exhale. He says, with deliberate indifference, “Fuck no.”
Kakyoin cocks his head to the side, eyes bright and watchful. “That’s hardly fair, is it?”
“I don’t know what you know about me,” Jotaro says, heat leaking back into his voice. “I don’t wanna fuckin’ know either, and I ain’t guessin’.”
Kakyoin is looking at him now like a puzzle, and Jotaro can almost see the wheels of his mind spinning as he starts putting — something — together. Makes Jotaro want to punch him through a wall and leave. See, this is why Jotaro doesn’t have to explain anything; Kakyoin will end up seeing it anyways, with just a little bit of time.
“You must have some idea,” Kakyoin tells him. “Unless you’ve been purposefully ignoring it this whole time?”
The way Kakyoin is considering him makes him bristle on end. “So what.”
“Can’t you unrepress a little and give me a little more to work with?”
Who’s repressed. “Why the hell should I? You’ll figure it out soon enough.” He tries not to sound too sour about it. Kakyoin being back to normal would be nice, after all. It just fucking bothers him, to just let someone pry out all these little secrets from the cracks when it’d be so much easier to push them away.
“But I’m operating on a limited set of data, aren’t I? I want to know more about you.”
“Then work for it, asshole.”
“I’ve already put in the work, though? I just don’t remember it. Help me out a little.”
He meets Jotaro’s glare with an unrepentant smile. In this respect, he’s still the same: refusing to be scared away, even when just about everyone else Jotaro knows would’ve backed off by now. And it’s — it’s not like Jotaro hates that part of him. It’s just that sometimes, like right now, it’s really fucking annoying. If Jotaro wants him to back off, he’s going to have to get serious, huh? He blows out a breath and speaks.
“Kakyoin. I don’t just… tell people about myself. When someone wants to know, they either back off or I make them back off.”
He doesn’t want to see Kakyoin’s expression here; doesn’t want to catch that brief reflection of what Kakyoin manages to understand from that. He fixes his gaze beyond the town’s skyline on the stars just beginning to emerge overhead. “If anyone else was asking, I’d be outta here already. If anyone else was tryin’ to figure me out I’d send them flyin’ into next week. Only reason I’m still talkin’ about it is ‘cause it’s you.”
The sound of rustling as Kakyoin shifts in his seat. Jotaro doesn’t look his way.
“I’m not gonna help you figure me out. Got it? But if you wanna keep lookin’ I ain’t gonna stop you either. So don’t fucking ask me for anything else.”
In the long silence that follows, neither of them move. He feels his pulse thumping underneath his skin.
“...I understand,” Kakyoin says quietly. “Thank you.”
Jotaro’s hands curl into fists. “The fuck’re you saying thank you for? Piss off.”
Kakyoin laughs at him, short and soft, and then he falls silent.
Jotaro carefully looks out the corner of his eye. Kakyoin’s expression has gone quiet, too, all his performances of emotion and charm falling away to reveal that thoughtful thing underneath. Jotaro has the feeling that he’s exposed too much of his hand, here, just by telling Kakyoin to back off. His jaw clenches a bit at the thought before he makes himself stop.
“Can I ask one more question?” Kakyoin asks, because he’s a pushy bastard who doesn’t know when to call it quits.
“You just did.”
“You can’t tell me what I know about you, and that’s fine. But can you at least tell me what I’ve said about you?”
…Of course he’d think of a workaround like that.
Kakyoin waits silent and steady as Jotaro’s thoughts churn. Jotaro doesn’t want to help Kakyoin figure him out, but this is a little different. It’s just a recounting of things that have happened, right? It just so happens that the recollections are a little reflection of the way Kakyoin thinks about him, or whatever. So it’s not… really telling Kakyoin about himself, it’s just a picture of Kakyoin’s thoughts.
That’s the justification if he’s in the mood for bullshitting himself, at least. But to be honest, Jotaro just wants back the Kakyoin who shared the same experiences as him, remembers the same words, even if he hates contemplating what Kakyoin has managed to figure out about him in their weeks together. He tugs at the brim of his hat, sighs, and speaks.
“...In Beijing. You said. That I have an honor code.”
“Really,” says Kakyoin, with polite interest.
Yeah, fucking incredible accusation right there. “At that point we’d known each other for two days.”
Kakyoin’s eyebrows climb on his forehead. “Only two days?”
“That’s what I thought,” Jotaro mutters. “In Lhasa, you said.” He pauses.
It almost feels like fabrication to try and summarize it, like he’ll be giving Kakyoin a false picture of himself if he does. Not that Kakyoin’s words are much better, but…
“I said?” Kakyoin prompts, and Jotaro makes his decision.
“You said. ‘You think you’re evil.’ And you said. ‘If you were really evil, you would have killed me back then.’” Jotaro takes a breath, and affects Kakyoin’s intonations and manner of speaking. “‘Not all of us can be goody two-shoes like you.’ ‘ You certainly aren’t evil. If you were, I’d be in big trouble.’ ‘You’ll be much happier once you learn to trust yourself a little more.’”
“You — is that word for word? You remember it that clearly?”
“I remember everything clearly.”
“Wow, that’s…”
Jotaro glares at him for the first time in a while. “Don’t say a word about it.”
“Why? It’s an amazing talent.”
Feels fuckin’ uncomfortable, the way Kakyoin’s looking at him like that. “You wanna hear the rest or not?”
Kakyoin holds his hands up placatingly. “Okay, I got it. Carry on.”
Jotaro rolls his eyes and looks back away. The other things Kakyoin has said… he almost doesn’t want to repeat them, but. He’s already started. Better to see it through to the end.
“In Kathmandu. You said, ‘Any relationship if a give-and-take, and if you can’t see that, well, no wonder you’ve always been alone.’” Kakyoin breathes in sharply at that. Jotaro continues on so he won’t have to know what Kakyoin thinks of that. “You said, ‘You left to protect your mother from you. I suppose I should ask what it means if you’re fine staying around me, then.’ You said, ‘Who buys a cherry smoothie for the person who just tried to kill them?’ And you said.” Jotaro grits his teeth. “‘I do have high standards. I chose you.’”
The more he talks, the worse it feels. It’s all descriptions he hates, either for being too correct or being wildly wrong, and in any case the idea of Kakyoin incorrectly understanding him is almost worse than Kakyoin not knowing him at all. He almost stops talking, then, but there’s one last thing, and if Jotaro understands anything it’s that you have to finish what you start.
“In Chisapani,” he says falteringly. “You said.”
He fixes his gaze on distant stars, again. Just repeat it and it’ll be over, it has nothing to do with him.
“‘You’re too nice,’” he recites woodenly. “‘You care too much, about all the wrong things and not enough about yourself, so what’s it gonna take to get it through your dumb skull that you matter way more than some piece of shit like him?’” He hears his own voice flattening, his efforts at emulating Kakyoin’s mannerisms dying away entirely. Kakyoin will read something in it, that’s for sure. Annoying. It’s fuckin’ annoying. “‘It’s like you don’t even care. The fact that he hurt you, or that you’re in pain, any of it. Is it important to you at all?’ ‘You do want to live. So’...”
He trails off. A beat passes. “So…?” Kakyoin asks.
Jotaro clenches his jaw. “‘So why can’t you admit it matters and fucking act like it.’”
It’s quiet for a few moments, with only the distant sound of conversation drifting up from the street below.
“If I said that,” Kakyoin says quietly, “I must have meant it. I don’t say anything I don’t mean.”
“Yes you do.”
“What’s with that instant rebuttal?” Kakyoin retorts, like he isn’t the kind of person who loves reverse-scamming others, but he thinks for a second and amends, “I don’t say anything I don’t want to. So if I said it, I must have wanted to.”
Who the hell would want to have a conversation like that? It was awful. “You’re so fucking weird.”
“No, I’m pretty sure the weird one is you.” Kakyoin sits back, crosses his legs, and folds his hands on his knees. “We’ve been through quite a bit together, huh? I guess that explains some things.” Explains what? “Hey, by any chance… In Chisapani. Did we fight someone with a fire-controlling Stand?”
Avdol? “That was Kathmandu. What do you remember?”
“I remember you jumping between me and a deadly hot fire attack like an idiot.”
Great to see that Kakyoin’s high estimation of him hasn’t changed. “He wanted to kill you but he wanted to avoid killing me. He’d cool down his attacks if I got in the way.”
“Did you know that the first time you tried?”
Jotaro scowled. “I had an educated guess.” Kakyoin arches a single doubtful eyebrow. Shit’s just like normal. “Fuck off, Kakyoin. I can gamble my life on whatever I want.”
“Somehow you don’t strike me as a gambling sort of person.”
Jotaro doesn’t dignify that with a response, even though it’s right.
Kakyoin gives him a knowing look. “I suppose it was a full-time job looking after you.”
The hell does that mean? “More like looking after you,” he says, because Kakyoin is a fucking pain.
“This is exactly what I mean. You don’t even think there’s a problem.”
Jotaro glares. How is that evidence? If Kakyoin thinks it’s such a hassle then he can just quit it. “No one asked you to.”
“No, I suppose not.”
The agreement defangs the argument Jotaro wants to have before it can begin. Kakyoin sits forward and folds his hands in front of his mouth, and he starts brooding pensively over who-knows-what. Jotaro waits for him to say something, but a minute drags on, and nothing.
Is he judging the conversation they just had? Thinking about leaving? There’s no obligation for him to stay, but the thought makes something sink in his stomach anyways. Jotaro wants… well, it doesn’t really matter what he wants, but he finds himself dragging a hand uneasily through his hair as he thinks about it anyways. He could really use a cigarette right about now.
“…Oi. Kakyoin.”
Kakyoin looks up.
“Do you…” He clears his throat. “Do you still want to go to Egypt? With me?”
Kakyoin blinks and straightens up. “You want…?”
“Well, yeah,” says Jotaro. “Still gotta beat up Dio so he’ll stop sending people to kill my family.” He shifts and averts his eyes. “The way I figure, you deserve a go at him too.”
He looks back with a glare when Kakyoin starts snickering.
“Sorry, sorry,” Kakyoin gasps between giggles. “It’s just, even when I was — you know. I was right. You are nice. But you’re terrible at showing it.”
How the fuck did he come to a conclusion so incorrect in less than twenty four hours after having his brain scrambled? You’d think a hard reset would help him objectively reassess things, but no. “Shows what you know,” he says. “Well? You wanna come or not?”
“I can get revenge on my own, you know.”
He doesn’t seem totally against the idea, though, more contrary for the sake of being contrary than anything, so Jotaro risks pushing it further. “Who’s the one who told me that I don’t have to do everything alone? If we’re both gonna go beat Dio’s ass we might as well go together.”
Kakyoin laughs softly under the balcony lights. “I said that? I must really like you.” Plain evidence that he’s got more than a few missing pieces in his head, but Jotaro feels a warm sensation in his chest anyways. It’s so terrible he immediately stops thinking about it. “Yes. I want to go to Egypt with you. I think I’d like that.”
Tension that Jotaro didn’t know he was holding drains out his shoulders. He tries hard not to smile, but he doesn’t know if he succeeds. “Good,” he says. Good.
Kakyoin smiles back. His eyes narrow into slits, like a satisfied cat. “I’m looking forward to getting to know you again.” He pauses. “Although, there’s one thing I can’t figure out, and it’s kind of bothering me.”
“Yeah?”
Kakyoin looks at him very seriously. Jotaro looks very seriously back. “Are we dating?”
Jotaro throws his book at Kakyoin’s face.
Kakyoin is laughing now, even as he ducks and catches the book with Hierophant’s arms. “It’s a serious question!” he says, “I just wanted to ask, since you seem so attached to me and all—“
“You are a pain in my ass,” Jotaro tells him, and he takes his cold half-empty cup of coffee and throws that at Kakyoin too. Wait, his book. — Hierophant snatches the cup midair before it can spill over the book, and it gives Jotaro a thumbs up. Nice catch. Jotaro nods solemnly back.
“Hey, what was that?” Kakyoin asks. “Are you getting along with my Stand better than me?”
Jotaro gets up and walks back through the open balcony door into the hotel room.
“Hey, Jojo, don’t just walk away! You didn’t answer my questions?”
“Figure it out yourself.”
“At least tell me if we’re dating!”
“Why. You want us to be?”
“Do you?”
Jotaro looks back at Kakyoin. “‘S this why you wanted to share a bed this whole time? Shoulda said something sooner. I don’t mind playing nice with you.”
“This!” Kakyoin says, pointing an accusing finger at him. “This is exactly why I can’t figure it out.”
“That sounds like a you problem.”
“I’m about to make it yours.”
“Since when have you ever done otherwise?” Jotaro rolls his eyes. “I’m going to sleep. Come in before you catch a cold or something.”
“Aw, are you worried about my health? That was almost downright sweet.”
“If you say anything like that to me again I’m gonna throw out all your color coded lanyards.”
“Don’t you dare. — Wait, those lanyards were mine?”
Jotaro ends up spending the evening talking Kakyoin through all the souvenirs in their suitcase and explaining where they got each one. Some of them, Kakyoin even remembers on his own. Shit’s downright hopeful yet.
——
Jotaro sleeps restlessly that night. Maybe it’s because he’s gotten used to sleeping with Kakyoin next to him, but the single bed somehow feels uncomfortable, and the bad dreams make a resurgence. He wakes up a few times during the night, and when he shifts too much, he hears Kakyoin stir too. Jotaro tries to keep still after that. Wouldn’t want to be a disturbance after all.
If Kakyoin noticed anything during the night, he doesn’t say anything about it in the morning, and if no one’s talking about it then there’s no problem. They check out the hotel and go get breakfast, and this time Kakyoin doesn’t hold back from trying out new foods.
“Hey, Kakyoin,” Jotaro says as they eat on the bench. “Got a question.”
“What is it?”
“Do evil spirits need to eat?”
“Evil spirits? — Stands. You’re still calling them that.” Kakyoin gives him a long-suffering look before continuing, “Hierophant doesn’t need to eat. If Star Platinum hasn’t bothered you for food, then I wouldn’t worry about it.”
Jotaro frowns. “Can Hierophant eat?”
Kakyoin thinks about it for a second. “Well,” he says, and nothing else.
“Is its mask removable?”
They both look at Hierophant, who is sitting next to Kakyoin on the bench. Hierophant waves its tentacles around like an octopus saying hello.
Kakyoin slowly reaches out and pokes at the mask over where Hierophant’s mouth should be. He feels around the seams. He unhooks it.
They look at Hierophant.
“Somehow this feels like an invasion of privacy,” Jotaro says. “Put it back on, will you?”
“No, not yet, we haven’t finished,” says Kakyoin. “Hierophant, here.”
He picks up one of his momos with a chopstick and hands it over to Hierophant. Hierophant picks it up with a few tentacles and cocks its head curiously, as if considering a new toy. Then it shreds the momo into little pieces. Bits of meat fall to the ground.
Hierophant looks proudly at them. It looks like it’s smiling.
“I don’t think we’re going to get any answers like this,” Kakyoin says, and puts the mask back on its face. It waves its tentacles around happily while Kakyoin turns to him. “What brought up the question anyhow?”
Jotaro wordlessly calls Star Platinum and hands it his mostly-finished plate of momos. Star Platinum, with great precision and delight, starts eating what’s left.
“Do you have a secret love for momos?” Kakyoin asks after a moment of silence.
“They’re okay,” says Jotaro. They’re like dumplings, which means they remind him of home.
Star Platinum finishes eating and politely puts the paper plate and chopsticks into a nearby recycling bin, and then it gives Jotaro a hug and disappears.
“See,” says Jotaro. “What the hell was that. And where do evil spirits go when they’re not here?”
“How would I know?”
“You’re the evil spirit expert.”
“I never met another Stand user until Dio, though.”
Jotaro swivels and narrows his eyes at Kakyoin. “Have you been bullshitting me this entire time? Evil spirits are a reflection of the user and don’t change so easily?”
“If I said something,” says Kakyoin authoritatively, “I must have believed it was right.”
“Your source is an evil vampire’s death cult.”
“It’s not a death cult!”
“Cult of assassins, then.”
“It’s not a cult, period. It’s just an organization.”
Jotaro raises an eyebrow and starts ticking items off on his fingers. “Excessive zealousness and loyalty to leader, leader is venerated as some kind of infallible awe-inspiring figure, mind-altering practices and literal brainwashing, leader is not held accountable by outside authorities, leader isolates members from family and friends, leader incites members to do things they’d normally never do—”
“I mean, you’re technically correct, but you’re not right.”
“Cult victim,” Jotaro says, unimpressed.
Kakyoin puts a palm to his face. “Fine, call it whatever you want. The point is, there were plenty of knowledgeable Stand users there. I must’ve learned from them.”
“They signed onto an evil vampire’s assassination cult, what would they know?”
Kakyoin sighs deeply, as if Jotaro is being the unreasonable one here.
Having finished breakfast, they drive the remaining distance to New Delhi, where they promptly visit the Sanskriti Kendra Terracotta & Metal Museum. Kakyoin immediately lights up upon seeing the artisanal work depicting daily life. He starts babbling about the color and composition of the mosaics right off the bat, only to cut himself off a few minutes later, saying, “Sorry, I guess you’re not that interested, huh?”
Kakyoin probably noticed again, then. Jotaro’s never really been interested in the museums, that’s more of Kakyoin’s thing. He’s not much of a traveler either. But this vacation is all for Kakyoin’s benefit anyways, Jotaro’s just here for company. “Doesn’t matter. You can keep talking.”
“Are you sure?” Kakyoin says uncertainly, like him being quiet hadn’t driven Jotaro up the wall yesterday. “I thought you’d find it annoying.”
“It is annoying.”
Kakyoin’s eyebrow tics. “And you want me to do it?”
“Yes,” says Jotaro emphatically.
Kakyoin gives him a look that says, There is something seriously wrong in your head. Wow, haven’t gotten any of those since last night’s conversation. Shit’s downright nostalgic. “How do I explain to you that you should avoid the things you don’t like?”
Jotaro tries not to roll his eyes. It’s like Kakyoin thinks he’s stupid or something. “It’s worse when you don’t talk.”
There’s a long pause. Jotaro looks over at Kakyoin.
“Care to clarify?” Kakyoin says, lightly arching one eyebrow. Something weird about the way he does it, though. Jotaro’s not sure what it means.
“Means it’s freaky when you’re not your usual annoying self, so quit it,” he says. Spewing trivia makes Kakyoin happy and it’s fucking weird when he’s not acting like himself. When’s he gonna get the memo already.
“You could just get used to a new status quo.”
“The fuck I’d do that for? You wouldn’t even like it.”
“So you’d be fine with me shutting up if it was something I wanted?” Kakyoin says, in that savvy too-sharp way of his.
Shit. Walked right into admitting something he wasn’t even trying to admit. Well, knowing Kakyoin, there’s no salvaging it now. “...Guess so. As long as it’s still you.”
Another long silence while Kakyoin processes that and gleans whatever terrible bits of information from it Jotaro didn’t even mean to give.
“You know,” says Kakyoin, “in some ways you are stupidly easy to read, and in other ways, I don’t get you at all.”
“Wow, Kakyoin. Didn’t know you felt the same.”
“Yeah, I think you’re annoying too,” Kakyoin says, but he doesn’t sound that annoyed. And then he hooks an arm through Jotaro’s and says, “Okay, let me tell you about the founder of the museum, Shri Mulkraj Anand.”
It’s nice after that. Kakyoin has basically gone back to his usual self, which makes going through a museum a lot more bearable. After lunch, they visit the Tibet House Museum, and then they rush to the Craft Museum to look at all the local pottery before it closes for the day. Kakyoin has a field day here. He chats enthusiastically with the craftspeople there about anything from paper dyeing to shoe carving, and then he buys an elaborate hand-made paper kite in the shape of an eagle before they go. It looks nice, but it’s gonna have to be carried separately from the suitcase.
Whatever, Kakyoin seems happy about it, so it’s fine. They find a proper restaurant to eat at, and once that’s done, Kakyoin drags him around to look at the stuff that street vendors are selling. Lots of food being sold. Some shirts and fabrics. Some handmade jewelry. All pretty standard stuff. The only thing that’s different is when Kakyoin buys a pair of snake earrings, presses it into his hand, and says, “Here, for you.”
Jotaro looks at the carved bluish stone. It’s not too flashy, which is nice. Got a good shape, too. “Why?”
“Just because,” says Kakyoin. “And look, it’ll match your coat now, too.”
Jotaro touches one of the snake patches on his coat. “...You picked out the snake patches for me. You remember that?”
“Really? I have good taste.” Kakyoin looks pleased. “It looks good on you.”
“Can you not just say shit like that?”
“Why not? It’s true.”
Jotaro blows out a breath of air. Kakyoin is so irritating sometimes. It’s not worth arguing about, though, especially since he wouldn’t win, so he just tucks the earrings into his inside jacket pocket, alongside the booklet on ships.
At the hotel, Kakyoin books double beds again. When Jotaro shucks off his day clothes in favor of a t-shirt and sweatpants for the night, Kakyoin sidles up and says, “Hey, so what’s the story behind the bruises? It’s quite an impressive collection you got there.”
“Beat up this shithead in Chisapani.”
“It looks more like you got beat up.”
“You should see the other guy.”
Kakyoin tilts his head to the side, eyes bright. He doesn’t push any further, but Jotaro has the feeling he’s figured something out anyways. “And the burns are from Kathmandu?” Jotaro nods. “What about the scars?”
“Those,” says Jotaro, “are none of your business.”
Kakyoin gives him a knowing look, and though he doesn’t say anything further Jotaro throws a pillow at him anyways.
Jotaro sleeps a little better that night, dreams going mostly back to their normal patterns. Still not the best but not terrible either; just had to get used to being alone again. He feels mostly okay the next morning when they visit the Garden of Five Senses at the village of Said-Ul-Azaib.
The garden is fucking awesome. Twenty acres of sculpted landscape, all kinds of plants and carved stone statues shaped in nature-based architecture, like the best parts of art and the outdoors combined. Jotaro has a feeling that Kakyoin finds walking around the paths aimlessly a little boring, but Jotaro doesn’t care, because if he can go through days of museums and shit for Kakyoin then this is the least that he can demand in return. He’s not much for saying what he likes most of the time, but he can’t resist pointing out some of the cooler plants, a couple of birds, a few spiders spinning webs along the path.
Kakyoin listens. He watches Jotaro, and normally Jotaro would shut it down if he saw it, but honestly he likes this place, with its bushes and its stone walkways and serene ponds and water lilies. So what if Kakyoin knows he likes it? It’s fine.
Apparently it opens some kind of door for Kakyoin, though, because he starts probing. Not asking for deep secrets or anything like that, though Kakyoin’d doubtless be delighted if he offered it up. Instead, he just asks for shitty trivia, like they’re playing twenty questions or something. Just like the first day they met. Favorite plants, favorite animals, even shit like his favorite type of cloud. The answer is nacreous polar stratospheric clouds, but who asks that kind of thing? So fucking weird. (Kakyoin likes noctilucent clouds, because of course he does.)
And then, while they’re eating at the Dilli Haat Janakpuri, Kakyoin props his chin on one hand, smiles foxily at him, and says, “Do you like girls?”
“What? No,” says Jotaro. Where did that even come from.
Kakyoin doesn’t blink. “Okay. Does that mean you like boys?”
He feels the heat rush to his face. “What? No!” But it comes out with none of the usual brusque indifference he tries for. Kakyoin smiles all smug, and Jotaro holds back the urge to knock out a few teeth. “I don’t!”
“It’s okay if you do,” Kakyoin says patronizingly. “I like boys too, after all.”
“I don’t fucking like — I’m not—” Jotaro glares. “I don’t like. People. In general.”
Kakyoin snickers at him. Jotaro glares harder, but unfortunately, like every time Jotaro has attempted this before, he isn’t fazed. “Me neither. People are usually so boring.”
He’s so messed up in the head. “Yeah, like they’re not even real people, I know.”
Kakyoin jerks around to look at him. “Wha — I told you that?”
He looks kinda freaked out. “That you have serious issues with relating to others ‘cause of your evil spirit? Yeah.” Jotaro pokes at his food with his chopsticks. “Dunno how no one saw straight through you. ‘S damn obvious when you’re putting on a show.”
“I’ll have you know I’ve fooled many better people than you,” Kakyoin says archly.
“Yeah? You manage to pull one over your sister too?” Kakyoin scowls. “That’s what I thought. Bet you can’t fool anyone who bothers to get to know you.”
“So that means you bothered, then?”
“What?”
“If I can’t fool you.”
“We ain’t talkin’ about me.”
“Alright,” says Kakyoin, but he’s smiling all warm and stupidly affectionate like Jotaro’s done something to put that look there, and on one hand it’s nice to see him happy but on the other hand it makes Jotaro want to ditch New Delhi and not come back. “Well — thanks for sticking around. I’m glad that out of anyone it could’ve been, it was you I chose to kill.”
“You realize how fucked up that sounds?”
“You’re still here, aren’t you?”
“Good grief,” Jotaro mutters. He can’t even say anything in protest, Kakyoin’s completely right. “Whatever. And what do you mean you chose me.”
Kakyoin shrugs and hunches forward, half-hiding his face behind his cup as he takes a sip of tea.
“There were other tasks I was sent on, before you,” he says. His eyes are distant. “I didn’t… Dio let me choose a target, the last time, because he said that I was doing so well.” He’s quiet for a long moment. “You’re the only one who survived.”
Jotaro has no idea how to respond. It sucks, and Dio ought to get tossed in a bonfire for that, but that’s nothing Kakyoin doesn’t know already. And saying that he wants to beat Dio up more than ever now feels too trivial, or too insulting, like he thinks Kakyoin’s too weak to do it himself. “You’ll fuck him up next time you see him,” he settles on, but it still feels too weak to encompass everything he really wants to say.
“Yeah.” Kakyoin puts his cup back down and smiles. It doesn’t reach his eyes. “I will.”
Jotaro’s pretty sure he’s not the only one sleeping restlessly that night, but he doesn’t say anything about it in the morning, because if he was in Kakyoin’s shoes he wouldn’t want anyone saying anything either.
The next couple days are business as usual. They look at museums, check out heritage sights, and browse the local marketplaces. There’s so much to see it’s overwhelming, and Jotaro finds himself grateful for the few hours between dinner and bedtime when they do their own thing in the hotel room, reading or listening to the radio or watching shitty T.V., downtime where they aren’t actively talking to each other, but they’re not alone either. A couple times Kakyoin comes and sits on Jotaro’s bed to talk, sometimes just to read, but it’s not terrible, so he doesn’t chase him away.
Day three is the same routine. They go look at a couple more museums Kakyoin’s all excited about, and when it gets to late afternoon, they head over to Dilli Haat Pitampura to check out the food and also all the stores. Jotaro wanders off to look at a man’s handmade wooden carvings while Kakyoin haggles over braided lanyards. When Kakyoin finishes haggling, he races off to a stall across the street to look at their leatherwork. The usual.
What’s not so usual is the short man who strolls down the street. By all appearances, it looks like he’s just going to walk on by, but some instinct raises Jotaro’s hackles and has him watching the other man warily until he’s passed by. Better paranoid than sorry. He doesn’t relax until he sees the man disappear between two stalls up ahead.
Then he’s faced with another problem: Kakyoin has wandered off again. Jotaro walks around all the nearby stalls, but no sign of that green coat; he’s probably gone ahead around the corner, then. Jotaro puts his hands in his pockets and makes his way over.
Out of the corner of his eye, a movement. A dark shadow rushing across the ground. The short man standing on the other end of it, watching with a smirk.
It feels like time slows to a crawl, like an adrenaline rush, like the eternity between attack and impact. The shadow has only barely brushed against the tip of his foot before Jotaro has somersaulted back. He comes to a stop nearly half a street away, and the world snaps back to its normal pace. The sound of conversation, chimes in the wind, the short man looking around wildly before his gaze lands on Jotaro again. There’s no sign of the shadow, but it must be lurking somewhere; Jotaro calls Star Platinum out—
Nothing happens. Star Platinum doesn’t answer; the place inside him where it should’ve resided is empty and gone, like it never existed at all.
Shit.
The short man is gone when he looks up, but it doesn’t put him at ease. Crowd like this around, the man could be anywhere near him and he might not even know, not without getting a lucky glimpse. He needs to get somewhere defensible. Find Kakyoin if he can, too — hopefully this guy didn’t get Kakyoin and his Stand yet. He slips quickly to a wide, fairly empty alleyway between buildings, but his shoes — they’re too large all of a sudden, they catch against the sidewalk as he goes and he trips and tumbles onto the ground.
He catches himself in a roll. His hat slips off. The sleeves of his coat pool around his wrists, no longer well-tailored but entirely too long. His binder hangs too loose around his ribs. His body. There’s something wrong with his body.
Footsteps coming to a stop behind him. Jotaro scrambles to his feet, whirling around. The short man watches him over the lens of his sunglasses. “Not so great and mighty, are you, Kujo Jotaro?” he says, lips turning up in a nasty smile.
The aches are in all the wrong places, Jotaro realizes. His torso doesn’t hurt so much from the fight with Steely Dan. Instead, it’s his arms and back that hurt, like he’s been in too many fights recently and spent more time blocking attacks than initiating them. A familiar state, not one he’s been in for a long time, but the memories burst behind his eyes in a flinch of bright technicolor detail—
“What did you do?” he demands. His voice comes out high, too high, like the way it was when the hormones only just started to kick in — and he has a feeling that he knows the answer to the question, but he hopes to high heaven that he’s wrong.
“Haven’t figured it out yet?” the man leers. “You’ve been de-aged.” Fucking damn it. Jotaro hates it when he’s right. And judging by the state of his body— “You must be around fourteen now, eh? I prefer them younger, but you moved away from my shadow too quickly,” the man muses. “No matter. I can try again soon.”
A de-aging attack that can only be used once in a certain time period, huh? This fucking sucks. Still, better than him being able to use it without limits. Gives Jotaro some time to beat the crap out of him too.
“I hear you didn’t get a Stand until just a few weeks ago,” the man is saying. He walks forward, pulling out a knife, and a nasty, lecherous smile worms across his face. “How will you win a Stand fight if you no longer have a Stand yourself?”
Jotaro kicks off his shoes so they won’t get in the way. He draws back into a fighter’s ready stance, a proper one this time, and roundhouse kicks this asshole in the side of the head.
His aim is off because the reach of his body is different, but it works well enough to send the man stumbling to the side. “Ahhh!” the man screams, clutching his head like a little bitch, “it hurts! You little shit…!”
Jotaro doesn’t let the chance slide. He steps inside the man’s reach and pins the knife-holding arm under his own, using his other hand to punch the man in the gut. The man doubles over, and Jotaro makes to grab his hair and knee him in the face, but—
A burst of searing-hot pain down his back. He chokes on it, falls to one knee without meaning to as the man scrambles out of his reach. A familiar warm sensation trickling on his skin. He twists around, raising his arms, but there’s no one behind him. Then what — what just—
“Hah!” the man wheezes. “You’ve lost the ability to see Stands — how do you plan on defending now?” Stands … the shadow, from earlier… “De-aging you isn’t the only trick I have, but it’s just so convenient. Your mind and your body are both reverting — you won’t even remember what Stands are, soon.”
This guy loves the sound of his own voice, huh? Works in Jotaro’s favor, though, figuring out what’s going on. He grits his teeth and pulls himself back up, despite the protests from his bleeding back. Can’t see attacks coming, can’t attack from outside this guy’s range — gotta find Kakyoin, it’s his best chance now. He takes off at a run for the mouth of the alley, but something invisible strikes his ankles and knocks him down.
“I won’t let you get away,” the man says, coming up to him, “especially after you had the audacity to lay a hand on me.”
Can’t run until he’s beaten this guy up, then? Fine. Just like everything else in his life. He lashes out and kicks the man in the side of the knee. Not a clean hit, but enough to make him scream and buckle. Jotaro seizes the opportunity, grabbing the man’s shirt and dragging him down to slam him bodily against the ground.
A hit to the solar plexus to knock the wind out of him, a hit to the crotch so it’ll be a bitch to recover. Something blunt and invisible jabs itself into Jotaro’s stomach before he can hit the man’s head though, and he falls away with a gasp, just long enough for the man to twist himself up with a wheeze, holding something plastic and rectangular in his hand—
The man jabs the object against his arm, and every muscle he has instantly seizes. He collapses on the ground hard enough to leave a bruise on his face, limbs spasming uncontrollably as he desperately struggles to draw in breath. It hurts. It fucking hurts.
“Ah, that was satisfying.” A sharp kick to the ribs. “You were stronger than I expected at this age, but no matter. You can’t do anything to me like this. It feels great. I love picking on the weak.”
The fuck is… Jotaro’s whole body aches, but at least his muscles have stopped twitching on their own. He lifts his head up and spits on the man’s shoes.
It earns him a heel brought down hard on his head, smashing his forehead into the pavement hard enough that stars burst behind his eyes, leaving him gasping on the ground. “I’m so glad I have time to draw this out,” says the man. Jotaro feels a pair of hands lift him up and prop him against the wall. “It’s too much fun, playing with someone weaker than you like this…”
Jotaro opens his eyes, struggles to focus them on the man in front of him. Who the hell…
A leering smile. Hands sliding up beneath his shirt. Hands touching
— a locker room, a half-closed door, hey, don’t be like that, just relax —
Jotaro headbutts the man in front of him as hard as he can.
The man reels back. Jotaro grabs him by the hair and smashes his head into the ground. Then he smashes it again, and again, and again. His heart is racing so fast it feels like it’ll burst. “Don’t fucking touch me!”
“You little—” The man snarls and Jotaro ducks on some instinct he doesn’t know. A deep furrow gouges itself into the wall next to his head, as if drawn by an invisible knife.. What the fuck was that? “It hurts, you little shit—”
Jotaro breaks his nose. The man screams. Jotaro runs.
His shoes are missing, he realizes as he goes. Rocks digging into the soles of his feet. The clothes he’s wearing don’t fit him, and his whole back aches. Gotta find his first aid kit — no, injury like this one, he’ll have to get a professional — no, first he needs to find—
He needs to find…
…
Where the hell is he?
The people around him look Indian, not Japanese. All the signs are written in a language he doesn’t recognize. He can’t spot a single familiar thing. He feels around in the pockets of the coat he’s wearing for any clues, only to find an unknown wallet with coins that are definitely not Japanese yen, and a school ID with his name on it but that belongs to a high school. The person in the picture looks like him, but it’s not him. What kind of prank is this?
He investigates further and finds a pair of cool snake earrings, and a really cool treatise about shipbuilding in the Indian subcontinent during the 1600s. Not that any of that helps him any. He tries to remember how he got here. Nothing. Did someone knock him out and kidnap him here? Was it that guy from earlier? Who sent him? Was it that bastard Yasutake again? Jotaro clenches his hands. Was the last thing Yasutake cooked up not enough?
Whatever. Figure it out later. First he needs to figure out where he is and find a hospital, and then he needs to get back home.
Jotaro uses English to ask the nearest stall owner where he is. The stall owner gasps at the blood on his face and clothes and makes him sit down, handing him a clean rag and a bottle of water to wipe himself off with. She tells him that they’re in New Delhi, India, and that she’ll get a friend to go call for a doctor from the nearest payphone. She asks him if he’s traveling and where his parents are. He doesn’t know, so he stays silent.
She looks worried and makes him lie down on a bunch of chairs she arranges in parallel, and goes over to a nearby stall to speak rapidly to the owners in a language he doesn’t know.
That’s when a flash of green catches his attention down the street. It’s a boy with weirdly styled red hair and a distinctly Japanese green school uniform. He looks worried, mouth pressed into a thin line as he scans the crowd with sharp eyes. More than that, he looks familiar.
Jotaro knows him from somewhere. That means he’s suspicious. Maybe he’s one of the high schoolers that Yasutake hangs out with sometimes. Jotaro ducks beneath the table while the boy in green passes by and watches him go down the street, making a mental note of which way he goes. Then Jotaro goes back to the chairs. He reaches with shaky hands for the bottle of water the stall owner gave him and pretends to accidentally knock down one of the clay pots she’s got displayed.
It shatters cleanly on the pavement. It’s not hard to fake apologizing to her, because he really does feel sorry about it. She shoos him away from cleaning it up, but he manages to pocket one of the larger, sharper shards before she does.
Then while she’s distracted he slips out the back of the tent and runs after the boy in green. As he goes, he rips off the bottom of the shirt he’s wearing and wraps it around the clay shard to form a makeshift knife. Normally he wouldn’t pick a fight with a weapon — it’s better not to bring something that can be taken away from and used against you — but the boy in green is taller and older, and if he’s the one responsible for bringing Jotaro here then Jotaro’s gonna need an extra edge (heh) to take him on. He grips the knife in his left hand, hiding the blade under the overly long sleeves of the coat.
It takes a minute to find and catch up with the boy in green. He’s standing at the corner of an intersection into an unpopular street, frowning as he stares vaguely at nothing. Still in plain view of plenty of people, though, so if Jotaro confronts him here damage will be limited by witnesses. Jotaro steps up and says loudly in Japanese, “Hey, asshole!”
The boy in green turns around. “You the one who brought me here?” Jotaro demands.
He blinks. “Jojo?”
He knows his name. “So it was you,” Jotaro says with a glare, planting his feet on the ground. “Who put you up to it this time, huh? Yasutake? Or one of his friends?”
“...I don’t know who that is,” the boy in green says. “You’re bleeding. “
No shit? Can’t show any weakness here, though. “Tell me how to get back home and I’ll leave you in a better state than me.”
The boy in green studies him for a moment. Not aggressively or maliciously, which would make sense, but not really anything else either. “I’ll tell you if you talk to me for five minutes.”
What kind of bullshit is that? Jotaro narrows his eyes.
“So glad you agree,” the boy in green says, which makes Jotaro want to kick his shins and leave. “How old are you?”
Seriously? “Old enough.”
He quirks his lips but doesn’t push, which is weird. “What date is it?”
“December twelfth,” Jotaro says suspiciously.
“And the year?”
What is this, a concussion check? “1986.”
“Hmm.” What’s with that look? “Where are your shoes?”
“Didn’t need ‘em,” Jotaro says, instead of admitting he has no clue.
“I see. And can you see this?”
The boy in green proceeds to do absolutely nothing. “See what?” Jotaro says.
The boy in green purses his lips. “Hmm, that makes things more difficult.” He regards Jotaro thoughtfully for a moment. “I’m going to prove I have psychic powers to you now. Don’t freak out.”
Where the hell did that come from. “What do you mean — whoa!”
Something invisible and rope-like wraps around his arms and legs. The strands lightly pull him forward towards the boy in green, and when Jotaro tries to back away they don’t let go. It’s a strong grip. He can’t break it. He reveals his knife and stabs at the invisible threads.
He doesn’t feel any impact, but whatever force it was, it quickly lets go. “No need to go that far,” the boy in green says, arching an eyebrow and looking at Jotaro like he’s just done something strange. “Do you believe me?”
“Don’t touch me,” Jotaro says fiercely, backing away to put some distance between them again. He clutches his knife. He didn’t mean to show his hand so early. It was just — “What was that?”
“My psychic powers, colloquially speaking,” the boy in green answers easily. “I need you to believe in… the supernatural, I suppose, in order to explain things.”
What. “Explain what? Who are you? Why do you know who I am?”
“My name is Kakyoin Noriaki. I’m your friend. Or at least, I will be, in three years.” What? The boy in green crosses his arms and tilts his head. He taps his finger on his arm. “There’s a great variety of powers in this world. Mine allows me to do what you might understand as ‘telekinesis.’ And it seems, in the fifteen minutes we’ve been separated, you’ve been hit by a power that has turned you back into your younger self.”
What the fuck is going on.
———
The first thing Kakyoin does is bring him to a doctor’s clinic. Jotaro is initially suspicious of getting in the car with him, but he doesn’t seem hostile, and he wasn’t lying about the psychic powers, so maybe he’s telling the truth about being a friend. There’s a jazz radio station playing when the car turns on. It sounds nice. Kakyoin tells him it’s his favorite radio station in India, in the future.
The doctor at the clinic goes all serious and unhappy when he sees the injury on Jotaro’s back. Says something about it looking like a really bad knife fight or something. Kakyoin cooks up some vague story while the doctor disinfects, cleans, and stitches the gash shut. It hurts but Jotaro manages not to make any noise, ‘cause he’s gotten way better at keeping quiet and still now. The doctor says he’s the most well-behaved patient he’s ever seen. It’s almost enough to make him want to preen.
After the doc warns him to try and stay still and keep the injury clean, Kakyoin buys him a cheap pair of sandals to wear and takes him to get food at some fancy restaurant. He tells Jotaro to pick any table, so Jotaro picks a table where he can see all the exits. He also tells Jotaro he can get anything he likes on the menu. Jotaro doesn’t recognize any of the dishes, though, so he points to the most expensive ones and watches Kakyoin carefully.
“Interesting choices,” Kakyoin remarks. “I haven’t tried some of these yet.” He orders them all without hesitation, plus some extra dishes Jotaro doesn’t know. And… that’s all he says about it.
So he doesn’t care about money, or maybe he does but he follows up on what he says anyways. But how does he know him? Is he really a friend?
“I imagine you have some questions,” Kakyoin says, settling back in his chair. “Go ahead and ask.”
Jotaro gives him a hard look. After a moment’s thought, he opens his mouth. “Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why let me ask questions?” And why the nice restaurant, and the doctor, and everything. It’s too nice, way too accommodating. There’s gotta be something in it for Kakyoin to care.
“Well. You’re my friend,” says Kakyoin, as if that should explain everything.
Jotaro gives him an unimpressed look. “Yeah, and why?” Jotaro knows full well what it’s like dealing with all the shit that comes with him. Anyone’d leave if they saw what kinda trouble Jotaro drags in through the door.
“Can’t I do these things because I like you?”
“No one likes me.”
Kakyoin pauses. His expression is hard to read.
“No one liked me either, in school,” he says. “Or at least, they didn’t like it when I acted like myself. So I always pretended to be someone else. You saw through it, though. You’re… the only person who liked me for me.”
“Oh,” says Jotaro. He doesn’t know what to say about that, so he doesn’t. “I don’t know you right now, though.”
Kakyoin gives him another unreadable look, fingers tapping on the table.
“Think of it as me repaying a favor,” he says.
“What kinda favor?”
“You did something similar for me, recently.”
“You got cursed too?”
“Something like that.”
Well, that sure wasn’t vague or anything. But at least the motive makes sense. It’s important to pay back what you owe, and if Jotaro owed someone he wouldn’t wanna run his mouth about it either. He nods. “So why’re we in India?”
“We’re traveling together to Egypt. It’s been fun.”
Traveling? “How long have we known each other?”
Kakyoin smiles. “Would you believe me if I said not that long? A couple months, maybe.”
Yeah, that isn’t long at all. “I guess I must really like you or something.”
Kakyoin full-on grins at that. “I certainly hope so.”
Jotaro frowns, because he doesn’t know what to make of that statement or that tone of voice. He decides to ignore it. “So what do I…” No, wait, should he include Kakyoin in the statement? Will Kakyoin be upset if he doesn’t? “What do we do from here?”
“The person who cursed you most likely wants to finish the job,” Kakyoin answers easily. “I’m using my powers to keep an eye out for now. They’ll come eventually.” He tilts his head. “Do you remember anything about your attacker?”
Calling the guy an attacker feels uncomfortable, like saying Jotaro’s some hapless victim who got jumped or something, but what happened was an attack, so he probably didn’t mean any insult by it. “Short,” Jotaro says. “Didn’t reach five feet. Black hair twisted around, kinda like horns or a jester hat or something.” He sketches the shape of it in the air. “Got bells hanging from it, and these half-circle glasses. And…” He frowns. There’s a faint impression of— “Something about shadows?”
“Shadows?”
Jotaro shrugs. “Also, he had a taser,” he adds, because knowing what weapons your opponent’s got is always more help than not.
Kakyoin frowns. “You know what a taser looks like?”
He shrugs again. “He hit me with it.”
The expression on Kakyoin’s face darkens before smoothing back out into something relaxed and easy. “That must have hurt.”
“I still got him,” Jotaro says, lifting his chin.
“Oh?”
“Yeah. I broke his nose. Hope he has a concussion too.”
“I see. Well, that’s good.” Kakyoin smiles. “You’ve always been good in a fight.”
Jotaro finds himself smiling back a little bit. He likes the sound of that. “Yeah?”
“Mm-hmm. I’ve always wondered where you got so good. Do you do martial arts?”
“It’s just ‘cause the guys at school’re always picking fights with me,” he says dismissively. “I wasn’t so good at first but I got better quick. The taekwondo gym kicked me out ‘cause I kept getting in trouble, though.” He scowls at that. It’s not his fault everyone’s always starting shit with him. He can’t let them just think they can get away with it.
Kakyoin raises his eyebrows. “Shouldn’t they be happy you’re putting your self-defense lessons to good use?”
Jotaro scuffs his foot against the floor and looks at the grainy wood of the table. “The other guys’re always sayin’ I started it, and there’s more of them.” And they’re more popular too. “I don’t care though. I’m still way better than them at fighting so they don’t start anything anymore unless they got more people.” Or a trick up their sleeve. It’s the tricks that’re the worst.
“So they gang up on you? That seems quite unfair of them.”
“Whatever,” he says. It’s not like there’s anything he or Kakyoin can do about it besides beating them all up, which Jotaro was planning on doing anyways. And also, this is three years in the future, or something. “I’ll get ‘em all back soon.”
“Good,” Kakyoin says. There’s something vicious in his voice, the spreading sharpness of his smile. “Someone has to pay for the incident with the shed.”
Jotaro narrows his eyes. “How’d you know about that?”
“I’m your friend, remember?” Kakyoin says with a smile. “You’ve told me some things.”
“I don’t tell people who ain’t involved.” All the rumor mill knows is that Jotaro was near the shed when it caught fire and he got sent to the principal’s office, and sure, they’re all saying he’s the crazy bastard who burned it down. But if the true story gets out, then everyone’ll know that Yasutake got the drop on him. Better a crazy bastard than a target.
Kakyoin tilts his head and widens his eyes, putting a finger to his chin. “I am involved, though?” he says faux-innocently. “I’m your friend.”
Annoyingly enough, Jotaro can’t think of an argument against that. Friends do get involved in their friends’ business, even if it would be way better if they left well enough alone. Shouldn’t be surprising that Kakyoin knows a bit. Then the right question to ask is… “How much do you know?”
“Oh, the usual,” Kakyoin says airily. “School kids giving you trouble” — sounds about right — “and yakuza giving you trouble” — what the fuck, do the fights with the school gangs escalate that much? — “and chasing teachers away—”
“Teachers?” Plural. Jotaro sits up straighter. “Do I get Takeda, too?”
Kakyoin pauses. Then, “Yes, you do. I don’t know about the others, though. Have you already chased someone away?”
“...Yeah.”
“You don’t seem happy about it.”
“She was nice,” says Jotaro. He scuffs his shoe on the floor again. “So she had to go.”
“You'll have to explain that one to me,” Kakyoin says. His tone of voice has gone mild, but in the same way Yasutake’s older friends talk sometimes: all casual-like and airy like they don’t care a bit, but when you look away, that’s when they’ll nail you to the ground. Jotaro eyes him warily. Kakyoin’s mad. If he doesn’t give a good answer, are they gonna have to fight?
Kakyoin catches him looking and smiles, by all appearances something unbothered and friendly, but Jotaro’s already seen enough to know the shape of the vicious thing underneath. “Don’t worry, I won’t judge,” he says lightly, like that’s the thing Jotaro’s worried about. “I’ve probably done worse than you.”
And he doesn’t attack, but he does look at Jotaro with an intent that makes it clear that even if Jotaro dodges the topic here, he ain’t gonna let it go.
“...Nurse Fuyugawa,” Jotaro says slowly, watching Kakyoin’s expression carefully. “She taught me how to do bandages and stitches ‘n stuff. She let me stay in the infirmary between classes though, so Yasutake ‘n his friends trashed the place.”
He still remembers the nurse’s wan face, the thin smile and the cuts on her hand from broken glass. Thinking about it feels bad enough he drops his eyes from Kakyoin’s face to the table instead. “When they said I did it she tried to say something, but if she said anything against the team she was gonna go up against the principal and that bastard Takeda too, you know? So I told her she was only making things worse and I didn’t need her helpin’ me and she should piss off.”
He chances a look up; Kakyoin has this awful blankness on his face that makes all of Jotaro’s hairs stand on end. Kakyoin quickly hides it away behind a look of gentle understanding. Too late to hide it, though. “I didn’t mean to chase her out,” Jotaro says quickly, shifting in his seat. He palms the terracotta knife under the table, just in case. “I just meant for her to stop tryin’ to do stuff for me. But she cried. And then she left.”
They made fun of him for that, for a while. Said he was a mad dog who’d bite the hand that fed him; that crazy Jojo, if you’re nice to him he’ll follow you home and rip you to shreds. Then Jotaro said if that was true they should see what he’d do to the hand that hit him, and he broke both of Miyamoto’s legs and beat up Miyamoto’s gang friends besides. They don’t say anything to his face anymore, but now the gang keeps coming after him with a grudge and he can’t get them to fucking back down.
“It’s alright, Jojo,” Kakyoin says with a sigh. He’s dropped the pretense of niceness to show something more tired underneath. “I’m not mad.”
“You are mad.”
“Not at you.” Kakyoin looks at him seriously, eyes clear, mouth set in a thin, unhappy line. “Jojo… None of what happened is your fault.”
It’s so unexpected and so horrifyingly close to what he’s wanted someone to say this whole time that he almost tears up.
“How would you know?” he challenges. “Maybe I’m the one who started it.” ‘Cause sure, it ain’t his fault everyone’s got a problem with him, but he’s still the one who threw the first punch and started the first fight, and now it’s all…
“You wouldn’t fight without a reason,” Kakyoin states, as certain as if he was saying the sky is blue. “If you started something, it would’ve been because it was the only good option out. They shouldn’t have cornered you like that. It’s not your fault.”
It takes a moment to swallow the lump in his throat. “Yeah?” he says, trying — and maybe failing — for casual. “You really think so?”
“Of course. You’re a very nice person, you know. If you couldn’t get along with someone, all you’d ask is to be left alone. The fact that all these people at school are constantly targeting you is hardly your fault.”
“That’s what I’ve been saying,” Jotaro says, with more emotion than he meant to show. Months and no one got it, that if they didn’t look for any trouble with him he wouldn’t go looking either, but they didn’t wanna lose face so they didn’t back down — and now they’re all stuck in a horrible escalating cycle where no one can back down anymore.
“I know. You tried, Jojo. It’s not your fault no one listened.”
And here’s Kakyoin, who only talked ten minutes with him before getting it better than any of those bastards ever did. Maybe there’s something funny to be said about it, but mostly it just feels horribly unfair. Because if Kakyoin got it, then why the hell didn’t they? He bunches up the fabric of the pants in his clenched hands. “I don’t even want… I don’t…”
He lowers his head, feeling an awful pressure building up in his chest. “It’s okay,” Kakyoin says softly. He shifts, and a moment later, Jotaro feels Kakyoin’s hand settle on top of his. “You didn’t deserve any of that. I promise.”
“I just wish they’d gimme a fuckin’ break,” Jotaro bursts out with, voice cracking on the end, and then he wipes his eyes furiously ‘cause there ain’t any hiding the waterworks now but he didn’t wanna embarrass himself in front of Kakyoin like this, either.
Kakyoin squeezes his hand gently. He waits patiently as Jotaro sniffs and swipes at the traitorous tears that keep spilling out. He doesn’t give any bullshit words of comfort, but he doesn’t make fun of Jotaro either. And it’s — nice. Everything Kakyoin’s doing for him is so nice and he almost wants to start crying again because when he first saw Kakyoin he’d been so scared that he’d been kidnapped to another country and he’d have to fight the boy in green to get back home, but instead Kakyoin’s gotten him stitches and shoes and dinner and he’s saying it’s not Jotaro’s fault. He’s — unreal, like a dream of a friend, and Jotaro wants, so badly.
When Jotaro’s finally gotten himself under control, Kakyoin gently squeezes his hand again and starts to pull away. On some impulse he can’t name, Jotaro grabs his hand before he can go. Jotaro doesn’t look at him, ‘cause he doesn’t wanna see what kinda expression he’s got, but he doesn’t let go either, squeezing so tight it’s got to hurt. But Kakyoin goes still. Kakyoin doesn’t pull away. It’s so dumb of Jotaro to be hanging on like this, but Kakyoin said they were friends and that it wasn’t his fault, and Jotaro wants to believe it. He really….
“Do I win?” he demands.
“Huh?” says Kakyoin.
“You said I told you stuff about what happened.” He lifts his head to glare challengingly at Kakyoin. “So? Do I win? Did I make ‘em all pay?”
Kakyoin studies him for a moment, and then he nods.
“Yes,” he says. His voice is steady. His eyes are clear. “You win. You get stronger, until they can’t hurt you anymore.”
“Good,” says Jotaro fiercely, and wipes angrily at his eyes again.
When the food arrives, Kakyoin gently extricates his hand and starts putting things on Jotaro’s plate. Some rice and curry, some bread, these dumpling-looking things that he promises Jotaro will like. He’s right about all of it. It’s delicious. He tells Jotaro about some of the places they’ve visited as they eat, and by the end of dinner Jotaro feels a lot better. They walk around in the streets for a while afterwards, and when Kakyoin sees him looking at a shark t-shirt he buys it with no hesitation.
“It’s too big for you right now,” he says, “but when the curse wears off I’m sure it’ll fit.”
It almost doesn’t feel natural to have someone be this nice about what he wants. But Jotaro really likes the shirt, and he — he really likes Kakyoin, too, so he folds the shirt neatly and carries it carefully as they walk.
“Hey, Jojo?” says Kakyoin, on the way back to their hotel.
“Jotaro,” he says. At Kakyoin’s curious look, he explains, “Jojo’s just what everyone at school calls me, and all those bastards too. But Jotaro’s for family and friends.”
Kakyoin smiles a little bit at that. “Am I your friend, then?”
“You’re the one who said it first.” He lifts his chin. “No take-backs!”
Kakyoin laughs. “Okay, okay. Are you sure, though? Your future self hasn’t given me permission yet.”
“Well, he’s not here right now, is he?” Jotaro says, which makes Kakyoin laugh again.
“Okay then. Jotaro. I wanted to ask something.”
“What is it?”
“You don’t have to tell me, of course. But I always wondered why those kids at school kept fighting with you, even after you showed you could defeat them handily one-on-one.”
“Oh.”
“You’re not obligated. I’m just curious.”
“Yeah,” says Jotaro. But Kakyoin’s been super nice to him this evening, and if there’s anything Jotaro knows it’s that you pay back what you’re given. “I dunno. I think they’re jealous ‘cause that bastard Takeda’s always runnin’ his mouth and giving me special treatment. Real nice to me during team practices, says I’m super mature for my age, and always invitin’ me to talk to him in his office one-on-one.” Not that Jotaro’s taken him up on that offer again after… that. “Everyone was real mad about him scoutin’ me for the team specially, so they already had it out for me when I joined, and then he just kept goin’ even though it made everything worse. Used to think he didn’t realize what he was doing, but.”
Well, there’s a lot that is clearer in hindsight.
“He isolated you,” Kakyoin states.
Jotaro scowls. He wants to deny that Takeda’s got the power to do anything to him, but. “Whatever. I guess.”
“And he continued with preferential treatment, even after fights broke out within the team?”
“What’s he gonna do? I bet he likes everyone fightin’ for his attention.” He clenches his fists. “Well they can fuckin’ have it if they want it.”
Kakyoin doesn’t say anything, long enough that Jotaro looks up. Kakyoin’s watching him, and he doesn’t look mad or doubtful or anything but he’s got this serious expression that makes Jotaro feel on edge anyways.”
“Takeda. Your… coach.” Kakyoin says it with great, clinical precision. “Did he…” His mouth twists ever so slightly. “...do anything else?”
“That’s none of your fucking business,” says Jotaro, ‘cause even if Kakyoin’s his friend there’s things that no one ever gets to know.
“Okay,” says Kakyoin. He lets the topic drop. “You know, I’m glad you chase him off in the future. I bet he’s a real dick.”
“He really is!” Jotaro says, heartfelt. “I thought Yasutake was gonna clock me in the jaw for saying it, though. It’s all so fucking dumb.”
“People are dumb,” Kakyoin says sagely. “It’s really not worth bothering with them, most of the time.”
“Yeah,” Jotaro agrees. It’s why he doesn’t really try explaining his fights to the teachers or the principal anymore. No point in trying to explain, right? They’ll either understand or they won’t.
The two of them have only been at the hotel for thirty minutes, watching nature documentaries together, when Kakyoin pauses and turns his head to look somewhere beyond the walls of the room. “Hey… Jotaro. The one who attacked you, was he wearing a vest?”
“Yeah.”
“He’s here, then. Come on, let’s go beat him up.”
Jotaro doesn’t move to get up, even when Kakyoin goes to the door. “You shouldn’t get close,” he says.
Kakyoin tilts his head. “Why?”
“Because…” Jotaro frowns. He’s not sure why he said that. “...Nevermind.” At Kakyoin’s querying look, he says, “‘S just a feeling.”
“Feelings all come from something; your intuition could be correct. I’ll make sure to keep my distance. My powers have the advantage at mid- and long-range, anyways.” He smiles foxily at Jotaro and holds out his hand. “Shall we go?”
Jotaro hesitates, but he seems confident, so he reaches out and takes his hand.
Kakyoin takes them sneaking out of one of the exits at the back of the hotel, then around the corner to circle to the back of a nearby alley. When Jotaro peeks beyond the wall, he sees the short man standing at the other mouth of the alleyway, looking at the front of the hotel.
“Is that him?” Kakyoin says lowly. Jotaro nods. “Good. This won’t take a minute.”
Kakyoin stares intently at the short man. A moment later the short man wheezes and claws at his throat, stumbling backwards, and then he’s flung into the wall with a great crack. An invisible force lifts him up and turns him around to face Kakyoin. His legs kick futilely in the air.
Jotaro stares a little, because whoa. Kakyoin’s psychic power is way stronger than he thought.
“So you’re the one Dio sent crawling out of the gutter,” Kakyoin says savagely. “Thought you could touch Jotaro while I wasn’t looking, did you?”
The short man snarls at him, red-faced and out of breath. A moment later, Kakyoin pulls Jotaro violently out of the way of … nothing? “So that’s your Stand. I suppose it’d be a bad thing to let it touch me, hm? Such a shame your range seems worse than mine.” Kakyoin lets go of Jotaro’s coat and steps forward. His eyes have gone all cold and sharp, and there’s something jagged about the way he leans, like something is clawing under his skin just howling to be let out. “I’ll give you two choices. You undo what you did to Jotaro, or I kill you and the effect undoes itself anyways. Shall I give a hint about which option I prefer?”
The short man gurgles. Kakyoin’s smile is hard to look at, so Jotaro doesn’t. He looks at the short man’s face twisting in fear and hatred, instead.
And then he feels dizzy, and then his senses go all wonky, and then he’s stumbling to the side and Hierophant’s supporting him with a tangle of tentacles. Hierophant Green. He can see it again. He straightens up, and he’s back to being taller than Kakyoin, the bruises on his body are in the right places, and the searing ache on his back is gone. And—
And Kakyoin saw him at fourteen. Kakyoin knows.
An awful feeling builds up in his chest, and Star Platinum appears without him having to say a word. He turns. Hierophant drops the short man to the ground. The short man coughs and wheezes, “You’ll regret this!” like a two-bit villain, even as he scrambles up to run.
Jotaro hates him.
He moves forward — Kakyoin calling out, “Wait, Jotaro, your range,” but he doesn’t fucking care — and the short man’s shadow lashes out across the ground, like a thing alive. But it’s slow. Everything is slow, so slow they might as well be standing still. It feels like the easiest thing in the world to just — sidestep the shadow spirit, take three long strides through the alleyway, and sucker punch that asshole in the face.
The guy doesn’t even see it coming until he’s flying through the air. He lands in a blubbering mess of a heap. He’s saying — something. Jotaro doesn’t listen. He stalks forward in that slow-time perception, dodging the shadow’s second surging attack with ease, and stomps on the short man’s ribs with an audible crack .
The world slips back into normal time, and the man screams. “You love picking on the weak, huh?” Jotaro spits. “You wanted time to draw it out? Fuck you!” The man is blubbering and trying to crawl away. Jotaro kicks him sharply in the elbow, breaking the arm. The man curls up and whines. He’s speaking. Jotaro doesn’t care. “If you touch me again I’ll fucking kill you!” he snarls, stepping on the guy’s face, and then he stomps on his head so hard he feels the flinch of impact down to the bone.
The man goes limp. He kicks the man’s unconscious body a few more times for good measure, because fuck him. Blood pools on the ground beneath the man’s head, trickling under Jotaro’s sandals. He stands there for a moment looking at the limp and bloody form on the ground, his shoulders tense, fists clenched, breathing heavily. That was too quick. That was not nearly enough, not satisfying at all.
The click of Kakyoin’s shoes against the ground behind him. “That was fast,” Kakyoin says. “I didn’t even see you mov—”
Jotaro whirls on him with a snarl. Kakyoin’s eyes widen, but he doesn’t react fast enough to stop Jotaro from decking him across the jaw.
It’s not Jotaro’s best punch or steadiest stance, but apparently it’s unexpected enough that Kakyoin’s sent stumbling to the side. He holds a hand to his face, whipping his head around to face Jotaro. “What was that for?!”
“Was it fun?” Jotaro demands, stalking forward. “Digging up all my secrets while I was too stupid and naive to know any better? Bet it was so fuckin’ funny, watchin’ me run my fuckin’ mouth about shit you ain’t got any right to know—”
“I didn’t do it for fun!” Kakyoin snaps. “I just—”
“Just what? Wanted some dirt on me ‘cause I knew too much about you ?”
Jotaro is barely fast enough to block the hit from Kakyoin. “That’s not why I did it!” Kakyoin shouts, shoving him away. Hierophant coils by his side. “I just wanted to know, alright? I’m worried about you, idiot! And I knew you’d never give a straight answer if I asked, otherwise—”
Jotaro laughs. “Oh, so you kept askin’ about it ‘cause you knew I didn’t want you to know?”
“I asked because you need help!” Kakyoin shouts. “But you’re so repressed you’d fuck off and die before it even occurred to you to tell anyone about it! You won’t even admit it!”
Jotaro snarls. He feels Star Platinum echo it behind him. “So that gives you the fucking right to — to—” Star Platinum roars. Beside him, the brick wall explodes into chunks of flying stone. Neither of them blink. “You don’t get to decide what’s best for me!”
“Well, someone has to, since you won’t!”
“And why the fuck does that someone gotta be you!”
They snarl at each other in a moment of perfect tension, and then, in forgone conclusion, Jotaro surges forward with fists swinging and Kakyoin meets him halfway.
By some unspoken agreement, they don’t use Hierophant or Star Platinum for anything but defending against the worst blows. No, they fight with their own bodies, their own hands. “You’re such a stubborn asshole!” Kakyoin shouts, pulling Jotaro off balance by his hair. “Always acting like I’m the crazy one, when you have people crawling out of the woodworks to kill you and you don’t even care—”
Jotaro slugs him in the stomach. “Maybe I do care!” he shouts right back. “I just don’t do it in a way you understand, ‘cause if I ain’t spilling my guts to you then of course it’s wrong —”
“If you care then act like it!”
“This ain’t a fuckin’ performance for you!”
Jotaro knocks the feet out from under Kakyoin. A moment later, Kakyoin pulls him down, too. He leaps at Jotaro like a wildcat possessed, eyes shining coldly with that howling thing once more. “It’s not about me!” he screams. “It’s about you , you hypocrite, telling me I’m the one with control issues when you keep yourself on a leash short enough to choke on!”
The hell does that mean! “You’re the fuckin’ hypocrite!” Jotaro blocks an incoming punch, twisting around to wrestle Kakyoin to the ground. “Going on and on about the importance of choice, but only when it’s fuckin’ convenient for what you want to do!”
Kakyoin bares his teeth. “Maybe I just want you to care about yourself, is that so hard?!”
And even as he smashes his elbow into Kakyoin’s side and Kakyoin bites his arm hard enough to draw blood, even as they roll around on the ground kicking and screaming, Jotaro has a strange feeling that no matter what paths they walked or what choices they made, they’d always end up here: tearing into each other viciously, not out of a desire to tear each other down, but out of a horrible, angry helplessness — not knowing what else to do.
That anger burns so hot in him that he barely even feels it when Kakyoin nails him in the side. “Don’t go around talking like you know me better than I do!” he snarls, blocking an incoming kick. “You think you’re such a fuckin’ expert—”
“I do know better, ‘cause at least when there’s something you want I’ll acknowledge it!” Kakyoin shouts, hitting him on the shoulder. “You won’t even let yourself want—”
Jotaro grabs him by the coat and swings to the side, smashing him to the ground. “Shut up! So what if I don’t talk about shit, it’s my choice!”
“And it’s dumb as hell!” Kakyoin knees him in the stomach. “So maybe I’m exercising my right to choose to ignore your shitty fucking need to keep to yourself—”
“Just like the rest of them, huh?” Jotaro shouts. “Just like everyone else, is that it? None of them listened, none of them cared—”
He stutters. He falters in his movement, wide open for any hit Kakyoin’d try and land. But Kakyoin has gone still too, looking up at him with bright wide eyes. Jotaro didn’t mean to expose himself so badly, but it’s lying right there out in the open now, how somewhere along the way he started thinking Kakyoin would be different, how he’d started trusting Kakyoin to back off when it really mattered, and then Kakyoin just — just went behind his back like that, pulling all his secrets out from where he’d left them to rot.
“Jo—” Kakyoin cuts himself off, looking as uncertain and bewildered as Jotaro’s ever seen him. “Jojo—”
“Shut up!” Jotaro shoves Kakyoin away and gets to his feet, taking a few steps away. “Just — fucking — shut the hell up!”
He reaches up to pull the brim of his hat down, but somewhere along the way today his hat has been lost, so he ends up running his hand through his hair. And without the hat to block eye contact, he turns away from Kakyoin instead, feeling himself shaking with the adrenaline — the anger, the rage, the… fear. It is fear, he can’t ignore it anymore, not with the way his heart’s humming at jackrabbit speed under his ribs. Of all ages, why did Kakyoin have to see him at fourteen? Of all times, why then?
“Jojo,” Kakyoin says softly behind him. “I didn’t mean…” An exhale. “I’m sorry. I… I guess I would be upset too. If someone took advantage of me intentionally like that. Even if they said they were doing it for me.”
“You weren’t—” Jotaro clenches his hands. They’re still trembling. “You weren’t. Supposed. To see that. Any of that.”
“I won’t apologize for seeing,” Kakyoin says. “But I’ll apologize for digging further than was necessary. You … the you of right now, should’ve gotten the choice of how much to show.”
“Yes, I fucking should’ve,” Jotaro snaps. He drags a hand across his face. He doesn’t — he doesn’t want to be angry at Kakyoin. But he feels like an exposed wire, a wound torn wide open, and the knowledge that Kakyoin has seen everything he’s tried so hard to bury away makes him want to beat Kakyoin’s face in until he can’t look at him with those piercing bright eyes anymore.
He lets his hand drop, still refusing to turn and look at Kakyoin face on. There’s gonna be something in Kakyoin’s expression that’ll set him off, and then they’ll fight again, and then Jotaro really might leave for real. That’s why he won’t look. “I’m gonna go find my hat,” he says. He looks down. “And my shoes.”
“Okay.” Footsteps shuffling on the pavement. “Do you want me to…”
“I’ll do it myself.” If he stays with Kakyoin right now he doesn’t know what he’s gonna do. “Just — go. I’ll meet you back at the hotel.”
“...Alright.” A hesitant silence. “Hey… I really do mean it, okay? I’m sorry.”
Jotaro exhales and closes his eyes. “I know,” he says. Kakyoin doesn’t really do apologies; they’re both alike in that way. The fact that Kakyoin has tried anyways is — well.
It’s the reason he’s not leaving, or at least, not for long. The reason he’ll come back.
Jotaro catches a taxi back to Dilli Haat Pitampura. He spends half an hour retracing his steps until he finds the alley where he first got into a fight with that man. Somehow, his shoes are still there, lying haphazardly to the side and scuffed with dirt but otherwise in good shape. The hat is there too, discarded halfway behind some bins and covered in dirt. He feels… glad. Coming out here to find his stuff was a long shot, more to give himself space to calm down than because he thought there was a good chance they’d still be there, but it’s… nice, that he won’t lose anything more here today.
Then he goes to the stall of the woman who helped him earlier that day. Her eyes widen when she sees him; he tells her that his younger brother had gotten in trouble earlier that day, and as thanks for helping, he wants to pay for the pot his brother broke. She tries to refuse him, until he just starts dumping money from his wallet onto the table.
She asks him if his younger brother is okay.
“He’s fine,” Jotaro says. “A friend of mine found him and took him to the doctor’s.”
She smiles and says she hopes that he gets better quickly, and that he watches out for himself out there. He’s lucky to have someone like you looking out for him, she tells him, which makes Jotaro feel a little bit uncomfortable and weird.
After that, he wanders around until he finds a corner store, and then he buys a lighter and a pack of cigarettes before heading back to the hotel. There’s no sign of the man with the shadow spirit when he arrives, other than a dark stain on the ground. Jotaro wonders briefly what happened to him, and then dismisses it. Kakyoin probably did something to take care of it. He goes up to their room and only hesitates a moment before opening the door.
Kakyoin perks up from where he’s sitting at the desk, tour guides and pamphlets scattered all around him. “You’re back.”
Jotaro nods and carefully closes the door behind him with his foot. “I’m going out for a smoke,” he says, and he goes out to the balcony to do just that.
Smoking after weeks without it feels weird. He forgot how much the scent bothered him. He doesn’t stop, though. It’s a bit of a shame, he thinks; if he managed to go this whole trip without smoking, he really might’ve dropped the habit for good. Mom would’ve been happy. Too bad he rarely ever gets what he wants; he cares about her, but not enough to put down the cigarette.
By the time Kakyoin joins him outside, the stars have come out and Jotaro’s smoked through half the pack. He hovers behind Jotaro to the side, neither speaking nor moving away, just holding still with uncharacteristic uncertainty.
Jotaro contemplates leaving it like that, but then he thinks about Kakyoin holding his hand and saying, You win , and he thinks about the way he sounded when he said, I’m sorry.
Jotaro doesn’t bother explaining anything, most of the time — people will either understand, or they won’t — but this time… he doesn’t know. Maybe it’s worth a try. He blows out a lungful of smoke and taps the cigarette on the balcony rails, and opens his mouth to speak.
“I didn’t realize Yasutake and the rest were tryin’ to bully me, at first. I was always kinda a loner, so I didn’t notice when they started leavin’ me out. Not ‘til they got tired of me ignoring it and one of ‘em told me to my face.”
He takes another drag of the cigarette. Kakyoin moves forward to stand at the railings with him. “You don’t have to tell me,” he says quietly. “I… stepped out of line this afternoon. I don’t want you to feel like you have to prove…”
Jotaro flicks ash off the end of the cigarette at him. “You wanna hear the rest or not?” Kakyoin closes his mouth. “That’s what I thought. Just be quiet and listen.”
He turns his gaze back to the stars in the sky and takes another drag before speaking again. “The team started with outright harassment after that. Insults and rumors and messing up my stuff. They wouldn’t lay off, so the second time I found Aozaki rippin’ up my books I beat him up. Thought that’d finally make ‘em think twice. But Yasutake got mad instead. Couldn’t let me get away with it, or he’d look bad in front of all his friends. So when Takeda wasn’t looking they jumped me, and I fought back ‘cause what else was I gonna do? But Yasutake wasn’t gonna give up ‘til he put me down and I stayed down, and I wasn’t stayin’ down, so it just kept getting worse.”
He inhales from the cigarette. “Takeda was real nice to me. Too nice. That only got everyone else angrier at me. I really thought that he was tryin’ to help, for a while. But it turned out he was a real bastard too.” He’s quiet for a moment. Kakyoin says nothing; he just waits as Jotaro exhales a plume of smoke. “‘Course, I was the ungrateful bastard who’d turn on anyone who got too close to him. That crazy Jojo, hating Takeda after all the coach’s done to try and help him, always pickin’ a fight with the rest of the team. Who was gonna listen ‘bout anything after that? — I guess Mom didn’t believe the reports at first, always said I wouldn’t fight with no reason even when the teachers all said otherwise. But after I sent a couple bastards to the hospital she couldn’t deny it.” He works his jaw. “‘Least, she couldn’t deny the fightin’. Still said there must be something going on, but wasn’t like anyone was gonna tell, and I sure wasn’t either.”
One of the worst parts of it, he thinks, is how it affected Mom. The neighbors would all whisper about how she hadn’t raised him right; of course a foreigner wouldn’t understand proper societal values, would she? Mom never said anything about it. Not even after the umpteenth time being called for a parent-teacher conference and maintaining with a smile that Jotaro was a good kid; not even after angry phone calls from the families of people Jotaro had beaten up; not even after the time the school tried to press charges against him for burning down the shed, to make her pay damages.
He still doesn’t know what she said, in that meeting, but the school never tried to press for anything again.
His cigarette burned down while he was thinking, so he puts it out in the ashtray and lights up another stick. “The fights got worse for a real long while. When I got good enough to take ‘em all on, Yasutake called in his high school friends, the ones in the gangs. Then I got good enough to beat them up, too, and their friends with the yakuza started gettin’ all in on this shit, too. Wasn’t ‘til I pulled Kinjo outta the ocean and…” His hand tightens on the rail. “...stopped Takeda from tryin’ any shit with Yasutake, too, that they finally lay off.” He takes a breath. “Heard some of the higher-ups in the gangs got fed up with it, said there was no business fightin’ me when it kept wastin’ resources and there weren’t even a profit, and I wasn’t even doin’ nothing to them anyways. Who cares about some stupid grudge between kids? Just drop it.”
Someone had stepped in eventually — but not until it didn’t really matter, anyway. Where the fuck were they when Yasutake had jumped him for the first time? ‘Least it means they don’t press when he eats at their fronts without paying, but the cooks still put shit in his food every now and then.
Jotaro takes a drag and slowly exhales another plume of smoke. When he speaks, he can hear how his voice has gone a little flat. “Never had any reason to talk about it before,” he says, because everyone involved already knew, “so… you’re the first person I told.”
“Yeah.” Kakyoin is quiet for a second. “Thank you.”
“The hell are you thanking me for? Fuck off.”
“Okay. Can I ask a question?”
That’s like the exact opposite of fucking off. Typical Kakyoin. “What?”
“I just wanted to clarify,” Kakyoin says. “Even after all that, when this… ‘Kinjo’ was in trouble, you went and saved him?”
Jotaro shrugs. “Was sorta my fault anyways.”
“How?”
Jotaro sighs and takes a drag of the cigarette. “Had this spot by the ocean I’d go to sometimes. Dunno how Kinjo found me, but he tried to shove me in, I guess. Anyways, I knocked him around and he slipped and fell off the rocks. Gave him a concussion, so… he probably woulda drowned if I hadn’t pulled him out.”
“You saved him. From the consequences of his own attack.” There’s something angry and vicious leaking out into Kakyoin’s voice. “You should’ve left him to rot like he deserved.”
“‘S that the way you see it?” Jotaro finally turns to face Kakyoin. “I dunno anything about deserving, but the way I figured, I wasn’t gonna let myself become a killer because of him. ”
He didn’t want to kill anyone, and he didn’t want anyone to die because of something he did. He still doesn’t. There’s so many lines he crossed in those days, fighting all the time, but this line, at least, he managed to keep.
Kakyoin’s mouth opens in a silent oh. “Then… what about when you helped Yasutake?”
“Didn’t have anything to do with him. I just wasn’t gonna let Takeda get his hands on anyone else.” He allows himself a moment of brief, savage satisfaction, remembering the crack that rang out when he swung the baseball bat into that bastard teacher’s skull. The fear flashing in that bastard’s eyes as he clutched his bloody temple, saying, I’ll have you expelled, the way he’d tried to run when Jotaro said, Then there’s no reason for me to stop. It wasn’t nearly enough to pay back what he owed, of course. But it had been amazing.
“He resigned after that,” Jotaro says, ashing his cigarette. “Good fucking riddance.”
“Good,” says Kakyoin viciously. “I hope he rots in hell.”
He doesn’t say anything else. For a while, they’re simply silent, looking out at the stars and the street lights of the city below.
“I was … bullied, before, too,” Kakyoin says, eventually.
It takes a conscious effort not to change his expression. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. Of course, they weren’t as persistent as that Yasutake you mentioned. I only had Hierophant break a few bones, and they stopped trying anything after that.” He tilts his head. “Not that it changed much else. Everyone still kept a distance — no one wanted to get close to the weird, quiet kid who did something so mysterious and horrible to his attackers that they wouldn’t even talk about it to the police.”
“You were lonely,” says Jotaro.
Kakyoin lets out a breath. “Yes. I was.”
Jotaro nods. And, remembering what words of comfort Kakyoin said earlier, he says, “You didn’t deserve any of it.”
Kakyoin snorts a little. “So what? I got out of it fine, didn’t I?” he says, echoing what Jotaro told him the day that he’d asked about the shed.
“Good point,” Jotaro says, raising an eyebrow. “What an astounding display of Kakyoin’s usual wisdom and astute judgment. I better learn from him and adapt this way of thinking, myself.”
“Hey, no need to bring out the sass.”
“Don’t get cute with me then. You wanna get on my ass about what I do, you better not do it yourself neither.”
“Please, I’m much better about things than you are. You’d run straight into traffic. I would take at least two other people with me.”
“I get it,” Jotaro says with a roll of the eyes. “You think being evil is very fun and cool.”
“Hey!”
“And you’re real fuckin’ bad at actin’ like it, too.”
He means it as a taunt, but Kakyoin doesn’t fire back. He opens his mouth, and then closes it, like he’s not sure whether he should be offended. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Jotaro shrugs. “Means you care an awful lot for someone who supposedly loves being evil, I guess.”
“‘Supposedly’? I thought you think I’m crazy and evil.” Hierophant shimmers into view, waving its tentacles about. “You literally think all Stand users are evil.”
“There’s definitely something wrong with you,” Jotaro says, “but you’re not evil.”
Kakyoin looks at him. “But earlier, I…”
“The fuck you want me to say about it? You were being an entitled asshole, not an irredeemable bastard.”
“I killed Alessi,” Kakyoin blurts out.
Jotaro blinks. “Who?”
“The — the one who attacked you today. I killed him. When you left. I woke him up and I — I wanted him to see it coming. I wanted him to be scared.” Kakyoin looks away, but his eyes have gone hard and cold. “I’m not sorry about it.”
Jotaro considers that for a moment. Then he says, “Okay.”
“I — okay?” Kakyoin looks back at him, expression strangely raw. “Is that it? I thought you’d be mad.”
“Maybe I should be,” Jotaro says. He can’t articulate why he isn’t. “I dunno, Kakyoin. I can’t tell you why some things feel okay to do in the moment, and some don’t. But I’m okay with this, and I’m okay with you.”
“I think maybe you shouldn’t be so okay with me murdering someone in cold blood.”
“It’s like you want me to think you’re evil.” Jotaro rolls his eyes and blows cigarette smoke in Kakyoin’s face, just to be annoying. “Look, Kakyoin. Everyone’s got lines they won’t cross. Yours are different than mine, and yeah, I guess that fucking freaks me out sometimes. But I don’t… even if you were fucked up and evil, I’d still—”
He cuts himself off. I’d still want you here. That. That is too much to say, at least out loud. For a moment, Jotaro can almost see the depth of it, how much he cares about Kakyoin — and he has to close his eyes, put the thought away.
“You said we’re friends,” he says, when he opens his eyes again. “That’d still mean something, even if you were evil. So you got nothing to prove to me. Got it?”
“I—” Kakyoin’s laugh sounds a little hysterical, when he does it. “I seriously don’t get you.”
“Feeling’s fuckin’ mutual.”
Kakyoin laughs again. “Yeah… yeah.” He goes quiet for a second, and then he says, “Hey, Jojo?”
Jotaro takes a drag of the cigarette. After a moment’s consideration, he says, “Jotaro’s fine.”
Kakyoin glances at him sharply. “Are you sure?”
“Don’t make me say it a third time today.” Kakyoin keeps looking at him, though, so he elaborates. “We’re already at the point of being… friends. Or whatever. And I already said it before, so. Just go with it.” He scowls. “I swear to God, callin’ us friends and letting you call me by first name. We better not bust out the friendship bracelets next.”
That makes Kakyoin snicker. “Okay, Jotaro it is.” He smiles. “You know, you can call me Tenmei if you want?”
“Thought your first name was Noriaki.”
“Yeah, but you can also read the characters as Tenmei. That’s what my sister calls me. Tenmei, for family and friends. What do you think?”
“...Feels weird.”
Kakyoin laughs at him. “Well, don’t push yourself, if you don’t want to.”
“Whatever.” He’s gotten used to calling him Kakyoin, so if Kakyoin’s fine with any name he’ll stick with what he knows. “What were you gonna say?”
“Ah, right, that.” Kakyoin tilts his head up to look at Jotaro, his eyes bright and clear. “I just wanted to ask, would it be okay to hold your hand for a bit?”
Out of anything he could’ve asked, that takes Jotaro by surprise. “What for?”
“I just want to.”
Jotaro looks at him askance. “You can say no, I won’t mind,” Kakyoin says.
He’s seriously considering it. “You gonna tell me what prompted this?”
“Hmm, let me think about it…” Kakyoin taps his chin thoughtfully. “No.”
Even at times like this, he’s still so annoying. Jotaro rolls his eyes and puts his cigarette out in the ashtray. “Fine.”
“Fine as in ‘fine, be that way,’ or fine as in ‘yes, Kakyoin, I’d love to hold your hand’?”
“Fine as in hurry up before I change my mind.”
Kakyoin laughs, bright and cheery, and a moment later, Jotaro feels him lace their fingers together. They stand together like that at the balcony for a while, looking up at the stars.
———
Jotaro wakes up in the middle of the night when he feels weight shifting on the bed. He sits up blearily to find Kakyoin climbing into bed with an extra pillow in hand.
“Scoot over, will you?” Kakyoin says, and when Jotaro stares at him mutely, shoves him over himself.
“What are you doing?” Jotaro says.
“What do you think?”
Jotaro gives him a flat look. Kakyoin sighs and rolls his eyes. “You know you have nightmares? You talk in your sleep. But you sleep better when there’s someone with you, and I’m tired of hearing you tossing and turning without doing anything about it. So deal with it.”
There’s a lot that Jotaro ought to contest, there, but instead of denying the nightmares, he finds himself saying, “How d’you know I do better sleeping with someone else there.”
“‘Cause I remembered, idiot.” Kakyoin scoots under the covers and shamelessly burrows next to Jotaro. “You can tell me to go if you really want to, but otherwise, I’m staying.”
“...No.” Jotaro lays back down, closing his eyes. After a moment, he adds, “...Thanks.”
“Sure.” He can hear the smile in Kakyoin’s voice. “What else are friends for?”
———
In the morning, Kakyoin packs up their suitcase and checks out of the hotel. He’s practically vibrating with excitement.
Jotaro thinks about not saying anything, but Kakyoin looks like he’s gonna explode if Jotaro doesn’t ask before they finish breakfast, so he says, “Oi, Kakyoin. Where are we headed today?”
“I’m so glad you asked,” Kakyoin says cheerily, and Hierophant instantly pulls out three separate pamphlets and lays them on the table in front of him. “We’re going on a cruise!”
Oh shit.
“I figured after everything that’s happened recently we deserve a break. I booked us a flight to Mumbai last night. The cruise leaves in two days, which gives us plenty of time to see the city. And then we’ll be out at sea!”
Out at sea, huh? Jotaro can’t say he hates the sound of that. He looks at the pamphlets. Hierophant helpfully points out a picture of a map of the cruise’s itinerary, as well as some photos of their destinations. Seems like the boat will take them to the Arabian peninsula and drop them off at the entrance to the Red Sea.
Kakyoin is still vibrating at him expectantly, so Jotaro says, “It looks good.”
Kakyoin grins. “I knew you’d like it. This is going to be so much fun.”
———
Miles away, Joseph and Avdol gather around a table with a variety of photos spread out on it. Some of the photos feature Jotaro and Kakyoin walking around unfamiliar locations together. Some feature them chatting over a meal. One shows them fighting each other in an alleyway with an unconscious man’s body behind them, and another shows them holding hands on a balcony.
The latest picture, which Joseph holds, shows Kakyoin chatting happily with Jotaro while Hierophant points to Mumbai on a map.
“Finally,” Avdol says.
“Finally,” Joseph agrees. “My cute little grandson has resolved their fight! A real charmer, isn’t he?”
“I don’t know if it has anything to do with charm,” Avdol says dryly, glancing at the picture where Jotaro and Kakyoin look like they’re trying to beat each other to death. “And I was going to say, finally, we have a bead on where they are going.”
“Well, yes,” says Joseph, “but isn’t it more exciting to gossip about their love lives?”
“I’m sure Holly will be delighted to hear the good news.”
“What news?” Holly appears in the doorway. “Oh, Papa, did something happen with Jotaro again?”
Joseph presents the photo to Holly. “Look! They’re eating together again! How sweet!”
Avdol sighs as Joseph and Holly giggle over the photos together. He wouldn’t be so tired out by it if not for the fact that they did this nearly every time Joseph took a photo, and Joseph was smashing 30,000-yen cameras nearly thrice daily simply to get status updates on his grandson’s love life. Avdol is starting to feel more like the supporting cast of a romantic comedy than a Stand user on a mission to protect the innocent and exact justice.
“Holly,” he calls, interrupting the ongoing conversation. “We know where they’re going now. They’re headed to Mumbai.”
“Mumbai…? Oh! That’s only a day’s drive from here, isn’t it?”
“Yes. It shouldn’t take long to reach. Hopefully we won’t run into any more delays from Stand users attacking.” Avdol rubs at his forehead. He’s lost count of the number of times their vehicles have been destroyed by enemy combatants on this trip.
Holly smiles brilliantly. As her Stand blooms around her shoulders, she puts one hand on her hip and punches the other into the air heroically.
“Wait for me, Jotaro! Mama’s on her way!”
Notes:
SPOILER WARNINGS FOR THE CHAPTER: alessi is in this one :(. Past peer abuse, predatory/grooming behaviors from an adult, implied/referenced past noncon/sexual assault/pedophilia
someone left a comment last chapter remarking about how they laughed less with every chapter. im sorry :”) hopefully we will be back to shenanigans in chapter 7. i just had to release all the noxious odorous toxic poisonous fumes from my brain first. there were a few times where i was like no... this is too much .... no one wants to read this... but first of all i love projecting <3 second of all i am insane <3 its my fanfiction and i get to decide the crazy catharsis moments
i want to say thank you to @succubused for writing an unpublished kakyoin pov of the events of chapters 4 & 5, as well as ‘nothing like the sun’, both of which contained lines and ideas that were echoed here, including but not limited to the line where kakyoin tells jotaro he keeps himself on a leash short enough to choke on. she is also directly responsible for kakyoin’s backstory here!
as always, if you enjoyed the chapter, please let me know what you liked! your feedback is what keeps me going!
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