JoJo 2029: Stardust Rebels

by Real_Jorge_Hernandez

Summary:

"This is the story of ‘Ziggy Stardust’—two fallen stars destined to unite as one, bound by the thread of a red string."

Set in a 'merged universe' between the Phantom Blood & Steel Ball Run continuities during the year 2029, fashion model Joshua Johnson and rebellious tomboy Jocelyn Johannssen find themselves embarking on their own bizarre adventure, as they are forced to work together to solve the mystery of a chemical attack on the UCLA while avoiding the authorities, a dangerous femme fatale adversary, and dozens of enemy Stand users blocking their way. If only they knew their mutual disdain would turn into a complicated love story...

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Chapter 1: Vol. 1 - Year of the Rooster, Part 1

Summary:

After blacking out on a modeling gig in Hollywood, Joshua Johnson reminisces on a tragic event that occurred five years ago—the last time he ever used his Stand; meanwhile, during his daily commute home, he encounters Jocelyn Johannssen... and the two meet in bad terms.

Notes:

Starting tonight, we welcome you... to the year 2029.

Special thanks to all the wonderful and talented members of the JoJo's Bizarre Fanworks server for their support and encouragement! This is also my opportunity to promote and 'shill' their projects. Go read them, they're all wonderful and incredible reads! Also a very special thanks to some close friends of mine (will not mention their names out of privacy concerns) for letting me use some of their ideas for the story!

Never would I have thought in over 5 years that I'll get the chance to write this story, and I hope you guys would have a blast reading it! Enjoy!

Sincerely, Your Author - Real_Jorge_Hernandez

UPDATE (5/25/22): Added Author's Notes document.

UPDATE (9/14/22): Added Volume marker.

UPDATE: (1/29/23): Rewrite has been published, relegating the last two scenes to new chapters releasing soon.

UPDATE: (6/24/23): Part 1 of an upcoming overhaul to Vol. 1 has been published.

Volume I - Rebel Moon Feedback

BEGIN

Foreword

LOS ANGELES, 2029…

 

Though the city was beginning to resemble its depiction in most dystopian fiction—a megalopolis of glass and advertisement screens, its aging skyscrapers ‘bandaged’ together by construction cranes and screens hiding its cracks—it nevertheless was the iconic Los Angeles its denizens came to know and love. Despite the urban decay becoming more and more visible as each month passed, it remained a city full of the state’s trademark Californian love and the supermassive Hollywood industries flourishing its economy.

But mistake it not for the city any sane person from the ‘aborted reality’ would remember.

This is not the same reality you would remember.

Although it remains to be seen whether the familiarities and events from that other reality, or a separate but similar reality remain in this one, take into account that nothing from those realities in the new one are written as true:

A man from a noble family dies tragically young. His son is born. He ceases to live on in the trenches of the Great War.

The son’s child is born. He is thought to have died in an erupting volcano, hurtling an immortal tyrant into the dark depths of space; but lives on, ensuring the prosperity of his family’s legacy.

His grandson is imprisoned. Born with a special ability he lacks control of. He goes on to battle and defeat a mortal enemy from a century long gone, in the midst of losing his friends and his grandfather in the midst of a city-wide protest.

The grandfather’s wedlock heir is discovered. He, like the grandson, is born a Stand user, going on to stop a serial killer’s rampage.

The mortal enemy’s son is discovered. He topples a criminal empire and seizes control of it to restore virtue to his country... and fulfill his dreams.

The grandson’s daughter is born. She battles the final remnants of the mortal enemy’s agents as the universe meets its end.

And then, the universe ends. And then, it begins anew. Holes in time are patched, and histories of the dead altered; even replaced with new ones from fragments of their past lives.

In another universe, a son dies.

A brother loses everything. But still, he races to gain his ‘zero’ back, but at the cost of a friend.

The brother dies.

A century passes. An ‘equivalent exchange’ occurs, and a being is born of two. The race to capture a miracle cure leads the being to discover his true self and the family he’s longed for.

All of those stories, as we remember it, differ from the stories forming the foundation of this reality.

In this reality, the Zeppeli Family is perpetually divided. Those who practice the ways of the sun, and those who seek to restore an oppressive authority whose ways are rooted in the ‘Golden Triangle’ and human anatomy. One such Zeppeli walks both ways, but has chosen to distance himself, so as to not feel centuries’ worth of pain weighing him down.

In this reality, Stands are not only obtained from the Arrow’s properties; they are also obtained from the identified Devil’s Palms in America and the Wall Eyes phenomenon in Moriō-chō resulting from the 2011 Tohoku earthquake.

Though these facts may seem rather useless, they are all part of one grand and overarching story…

For in this reality, we will bear witness to a new story being told.

This is not a story about the power of the sun, nor of wisecracking tricksters, of ambitious gangsters fulfilling their dreams, or the curse of one family’s ‘bizarre’ legacy…

This is the story of ‘Ziggy Stardust’—two fallen stars destined to unite as one, bound by the thread of a red string.

Their story is about to begin.

Everything about them is written as true.

 

 

—|[ CHAPTER 1 ]|—

Year of the Rooster, Part 1

“Lookin’ good, JoJo!”

The camera flashed. Though his posing was quite off, the aforementioned ‘JoJo’—our first fallen star Joshua Johnson—made up for his shortcomings by staring deeply into the camera, as if he were gazing into another soul’s eyes. It was certainly unusual for a 23-year-old model of his age to have such traits; but alas, it was a trademark that secured him a positive reputation amongst his peers and contemporaries.

Draped in a customized black-and-gold leather suit-and-tie commissioned for the shoot by Harper’s Bazaar fashion magazine, he struck the usual kinds of poses for shoots relating to men’s clothing of that magnitude—adjusting his tie and cufflinks, hands on his pockets, removing his jacket and draping them over his shoulders—but he did it in such a way that made them seem fresh. Of course, his signature stare helped; as did incorporating a few posing techniques that were traditionally used by female models.

“You were born for the camera, JoJo!”

Joshua couldn’t help himself but chuckle awkwardly at the comments from several crewmen in-between each shot. Leaning by a column for his next pose, he couldn’t tell if they were flirting with him or offering genuine appraisal.

‘Are these guys even thinking straight?’ He thought to himself as the camera flashed again.

“And that is a wrap,” shouted the photographer of the shoot, “Woo!”

Everyone inside the studio expressed their cheers and applause, and helplessly Joshua even joined in, albeit his clapping was more dedicated to the crew who helped make his somewhat less-than-stellar work look better than how he’d like to imagine it being.

“Wow, Josh!” His agent, the oft quirky and Hollywood-smart Dex Poundstone clapped and marched his way to the young model. “You’re a magician, kid! How is it you’re still able to do really well despite coming straight from class? I can’t fathom it, Jesus...”

“Well,” Joshua shrugged, blowing messed-up strands of his dark blue hair off his face, “My posing was kinda off, yeah... but I got nothing better to do, I guess...”

“Ehh, cut yourself some slack,” Dex raised his heels to pat the 6-foot-5 gentleman in the shoulder, “Everyone knows you can’t go wrong once you lock your eyes in the camera lens.”

“C’mon, Dex! All that effort so you could give me a pat on the shoulder?” Joshua chuckled.

“Well, I blame God or whoever your folks were for making you such a huge guy.”

Joshua and Dex shared a chuckle each, walking away from the studio into the dressing room. But on their way there, Joshua suddenly stopped and forced himself to look away from everyone in the studio.

‘W-What the f—’ Joshua’s fight-or-flight response kicked in violently as he circled his eyes back and forth between himself and the crewmembers of the Harper’s shoot. At one moment, he wanted to dash off to the dressing room and lose sight of the crew. In another, he was considering something as irrational as killing them all and covering it up.

“J-Josh?” Dex asked, noticing Joshua’s odd behavior. “A-Are you okay?”

“Y-Yeah, I...” Joshua let out a small cough, before unexpectedly limping and collapsing down to a nearby curtain by the dressing room’s door.

“JOSH!”

Dex ran over to Joshua’s side and shouted, “Get me some help over here, NOW!”

Joshua felt as if he was being attacked by some dark intrusive entity feeding him thoughts of panic and distress. And at the same time, the sensation that he was about to die. Not that he was actually gonna ‘die’, but it was as close to death as he would’ve thought of being.

'W-What is going on with me,' he thought internally, 'Why is this h-happening... all of a... s-sudden...?!'

He heard quiet rumbles, seeing mouths open without even speaking, and a swarm of concerned crewmembers swathing the surroundings around him. Though he could not speak it out, Joshua knew in his heart he wanted to stay away from them and run off from the studio. But at the same time, he was paralyzed. Petrified from his legs up. And in the midst of all this, he did not realize—until now—today's date and occasion... And when he did, all that was stuck in his head was this exact, 'fateful' date…

May 25.

And as he remembered what exactly happened on that day, the deafening silence in his ears from the anguish he was undergoing broke when Dex shouted: “Josh! Are you alright?!”

Everything for him returned to normal almost instantly.

Though he struggled with identifying what or who he was seeing in front of him, he immediately knew the expressions on everyone’s faces. Some agitated, some worried, others ambivalent. When he did so, he felt a gulp sinking down his throat. With his mouth subtly ajar, Joshua had a ‘zombified’ look on his face, feeling ashamed by the fact he had so many eyes directed at him—made worse knowing he had a strong work ethic when it came to modeling photoshoots.

“Josh, hey. Look at me,” Dex said, holding Joshua’s face so he could look at him clearly. “You okay, kid? What’s going on? How are you feeling?”

Biting his lip, he responded in a ‘defeated’ voice, “Y-Yeah, I... I-I have no idea.”

“Is there anything we can do to help?” The photographer’s voice joined in amongst the sea of onlookers.

And helplessly, he could not say anything else more than, “I need some fresh air.”

 

–[ ★★★ ]–

 

Immediately after his request for ‘fresh air’ was granted, Joshua now found himself sitting in the modeling studio’s dressing room. He had already stripped himself of the leather jacket and undershirt, wearing nothing more than the pants and his shoes that came with the commissioned outfit.

Staring deeply in the mirror, the lack of a shirt in him meant half of his well-built muscular physique was exposed. Surely, any comment about how he was ‘ripped’ would be met with slight embarrassment; but it didn’t matter for him in this situation. He only removed those two aforementioned garments as they felt ‘suffocating’, like it constricted his breath and cut off circulation on his upper extremities. Not only that, but he felt somewhat amateurish at the same time.

No.

There was a strong mix of conflicting emotions in him. And as he gazed further into his own reflection—almost expecting it would suddenly ‘speak’ and engage in a conversation—all those emotions were reduced to merely two, once he had an unfortunately better grasp at what memories he was experiencing.

‘Remorse’... and ‘Guilt’.

For Joshua, the past five years had been the happiest he had ever been in his life: the young gentleman himself has had quite the successful career as a part-time stalwart for Mandelle Modeling Agencies (MMA), with aspirations for a ‘legendary’ career in the ever-evolving famescapes of Hollywood; and lest he forgot, his ongoing studies as a senior student at the world-class University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) where he was known by fellow students as a reliable, friendly, and outgoing student who imparted wisdom beyond his age to freshmen and sophomores seeking it. Needless to say, even he himself could not escape ‘allegations’ of being a workaholic.

But none of those things mattered in the state he was in, now. As the experiences he thought he had forgotten crept back in his mind, Joshua helplessly put his hand over his right shoulder where a ‘star-shaped’ tattoo was marked. 

Caressing the tattoo, he flashed back to the good ‘ol days... when he was just a young impoverished man making his way through treacherous waters. And he was there. He focused his fingers on an inscription next to the star which read his name…

It was the name of a person he knew. It resembled more of an undecipherable inscription, like a doctor’s handwriting. 

But only he and only he himself knew its true meaning.

And God forbid he remember that meaning, because what it did was bring him nothing but pain. A pain that lost something that gave his past memories meaning. A pain he blamed himself for causing. And the way he felt it, it felt like he ‘murdered’ that memory, believing he had committed an act so vile and heinous; he switched identities and careers to avoid prosecution.

And then came a voice he thought he had long forgotten.

That sickening, damned voice…

“Remember, my boy... This is the very first day of your life.”

Clutching his head so tightly, Joshua growled and muttered solely to himself, “Get away from me, you son of a bitch... I don’t wanna see that face of yours ever again... even... after I had ripped it off your—”

Dex suddenly barged in, causing Joshua to quickly recompose himself and be rid of all those dark and depressing emotions he was feeling.

“S-Sorry, I...” Dex felt like going back and closing the door, before gulping and informing him, “Just wanted you to know that the film guys developed the negatives on your shoot at Swift’s. They’re all finished.”

“...Huh.” Joshua scoffed, before turning back to the mirror.

“Film, am I right?” Dex stepped in and closed the door, chuckling. “Takes forever to do shit with compared to digital. No wonder why people stopped shooting on film!”

Joshua turned back to Dex, raising an eyebrow. He questioned why he would dare say such an insulting thing to the industry.

“Ehh, my bad,” Dex apologized, rubbing his head. “Look. I don’t feel like asking again, and I’m sure you don’t wanna be annoyed right now. But can you explain to me what just happened to you? I-I’m just worried about you, is all. Like—”

“I’m fine,” interjected Joshua.

“You’re fine?” He questioned Joshua’s answer.

“For starters, Dex,” Joshua began to clarify, “I feel fine, now. Better than when I collapsed, I guess. Maybe I just wasn’t feeling well, or I accidentally tripped on some stupid rock on the fucking floor. I dunno. I don’t think I’m thinking straight at all.”

Walking around in circles, Dex sighed. Raising his arms up high in-between each sentence, he ‘ranted’, “Josh, I have no idea how to say this to you, but goddamn if I tell you we could be screwed if insiders get word about this! Especially if we end up giving Visa a fucking heart attack just because you blacked out after you finished a shoot! I mean... Look, we’d be grasping at straws for PR if we have to salvage your name after this—”

“We’ll be fine, Dex!” Joshua reassured him. “If Visa wants a word with me, I can handle it all by myself. And besides, the whole Patricia Renetti thing happened like what? Three weeks ago?”

“Yeah,” Dex shook his head, fixing his necktie. “But the thing is, her followers on social media—”

“They’re just followers, Dex,” Joshua cut him off before he could finish. “They ain’t worth my time at all. They’re just here to blindly defend a money-grubbing bitch like her without even reading the context correctly! And I’m sure that everybody knows I’m in the right here, not that I wanna brag about that or anything.”

“Fair, fair...” Dex stifled a laugh. “Just thinking... It’s weird. You blacking out and shit. Like you remembered something you know you shouldn’t have, and your body went crazy trying to deal with it. If that’s what happened.”

“Yeah, yeah, I...” 

Joshua was about to say something—perhaps an answer explaining everything—but at the last second, he got cold feet and added a moment of silence in the dressing room.

Noticing that moment, Dex inquired, “Josh? Were you about to tell me something?”

“...Forget about it,” he sighed. “I don’t want you to press or anything. Maybe I just felt so stressed, even after I finished what the fuck I was doing back there. I did come to the studio straight after finishing my paper for our group thesis, so...”

“Okay,” Dex’s voice trailed off as he sheepishly went for the door. “If there’s one thing you should be doing, kid,” he said one last time to Joshua, “Put a shirt on.”

Joshua chuckled as soon as Dex left the room, and the sooner he did; the better. And now that he was all alone, he felt as if he was free. Free to let loose everything he held in reminiscing about a painful and traumatic past he’s lived.

Soon, Joshua drowned himself to tears alone.

He sobbed, mourning for the ideals he wished to strive towards, but couldn’t. 

And sobbed, he did…

 

–[ ★★★ ]–

 

“GOOO~~D EVENING, everybody! And ‘welcome’ to California Love, your #1 radio podcast on 101.9 Jet Set Radio FM! I’m your host, DJ J.R. Castor, and tonight we’ll be uncovering some shocking news that came to me on short notice earlier this afternoon!” 

What followed from that introduction was a maddening disharmony of airhorns, vuvuzelas, and stock applause sound effects any sane person could search and download online.

Joshua was now in his beloved Mitsubishi Lancer EVO X-series 2027 model automobile in the quiet but traffic jammed streets of Downtown Los Angeles. He, along with many other average dull cars and nameless citizens, considered the city to be a place they always called ‘home’. It was the largest city in the state of California, and the second most populous city in America (over 3.9 million in population compared to New York at 9.1 million). It also served as home to ‘Hollywood’—the largest and oldest entertainment sector in America and the world.

He was busy tapping the steering wheel of the Lancer, whistling a tune as he waited for the traffic jam to subside. He was in the middle of 201 N Spring St. next to the Los Angeles City Hall and palm trees occupied with vibrant and colorful screens surrounding the buildings.

His attire was considerably different in comparison to the ones he wore for the shoot. He was—for the lack of better ‘outdated’ terms in this day and age—wearing his ‘class drip’, or rather his campus uniform. He wore his signature black trenchcoat outlined in checkerboards with a red outlined star emblazoned on the left; underneath it was a UCLA Bruins varsity jacket with a red slightly cropped T-shirt, and lastly a pair of blue jeans with two checkerboard belts and red-and-black Air Jordans. Not to mention his thick-framed jet black glasses, which aided his near-sightedness all too well. He lambasted wearing contact lenses, after all…

As for his Lancer, it was a hard-earned custom-painted one with a sleek dark purple color, accented by red LED strips around the car’s frame—making it quite ‘invisible’ to the naked eye around nighttime.

“For tonight’s guest,” the DJ said on the Lancer’s radio, “He came to me on short notice, because apparently the news we’ll be receiving on this lovely little chat tonight is top secret. You know what that means? Highly-classified stuff! But that doesn’t matter if I end up being on the news, because at least I’m throwing my life away to reveal something important than let all those daft old fucks rot our braincells into believing their misinformed half-hearted bullshit—”

Though anyone would usually feel some sort of agitation when it came to podcasts like these, Joshua was unusually relaxed. He did not listen to those podcasts because it appealed to him and spoke of false ‘truths’ that many sadly believe; he came to witness a slow and arduous ‘train crash’ about to hit the abhorrent ‘shitshows’ men like J.R. Castor produced on a daily basis.

‘If there’s one thing I love better than that shit,’ Joshua thought, ‘it’s seeing stuff like this slowly crash and burn...’

As he sat there in silence, observing cars and people passing by the city streets, one particular thing suddenly caught his eye: an interesting thing... or person. "Huh," he almost shouted, as he raised up his glasses and leaned outwards the car's windshield to see…

A woman standing right by the street's bus stop with her Harley Davidson LiveWire 2023 motorcycle parked by a lamppost adjacent to it. She was beautiful. No. Beautiful wouldn't do her justice; but something about a disheveled copper red mullet with thick fringes covering half her left eye, her somewhat 'kaleidoscopic eyes' that shone like a rainbow even from afar, her soft and vaguely Asian face despite her rough exterior, or even the blue-and-pink two-toned leather getup she had?

Something about all those traits seemed to hit all the right buttons for Joshua. But the thing that caught his attention most was her maroon scarf.

'That's weird...' He questioned that logic. 'I-I don't know if that's how it works, but... Wouldn't the scarf get caught by the back wheel and twist her neck upside down and kill her?'

But notwithstanding that dubious rationality, something about her made Joshua internally admit, 'Wow... she is pretty... But y'know what? I gotta stop thinking about her before it gets too creepy...' 

And at the right time, green traffic lights glinted at Joshua's eyes. Without hesitation, he stepped on the gas pedal and headed straight into his commute home.

Listening to the podcast once again, he noticed that someone else was now speaking next to DJ Castor. It was a vague, unidentifable voice—perhaps 'modulated' from a voice changer—that said, "Motherfucker, you got any fuckin' clue what's been up with the Speedwagon Foundation, bro? Especially what they're cookin' and shit?!"

"Yeah, no—"

"I'm serious, J.R.," the voice insisted, "It's fuckin' crazy!"

"I know it is, but that is the Speedwagon Foundation we're talking about," DJ Castor said as he 'exploded', "And frankly, those kinds of people SHOULD not exist! I mean, these are billion-dollar capitalists! With an iron fist on the fucking government, hell they even got guys on the FBI and NASA! Every good thing about our society they touch, they turn into what the 'woke' envision for our America!"

"Exactly! But this isn't what I came to you for!"

"What did you come to me for, exactly?"

"Y'see, bro," the voice explained, "I used to be a cafeteria cook at that Superlab of theirs in DC. Not anymore, though, but jokes on them! At least they won't be able to pinpoint who the fuck I am considering all the good people they lay off every fuckin' day."

"Okay. Then what?"

"Then," the voice resumed, "I both heard and saw that some of those crackpot science wizards were cookin' some million-dollar-shit. Bioweapons, my brother! Y'know what I'm sayin?" Concluding their rambles, they shouted, "Anyways, few days 'fore I got fired, some of the personnel were freaking out and stuff. They said that after keeping it top-secret for so fuckin' long I can't even imagine, some asshats from those Shakedown slums stole the damn thing like it was paperweight!"

"How do you know they were from Shakedown—"

"I don't!" They interjected. "But if anyone's capable of pulling off some crazy stunts like these? It's the whole population of that freakin' Kowloon-looking shithole! And y'wanna know why that's a bad thing, bro?!"

"Ask away. Tell me something that could burn those capitalists down."

Though it took a brief while, the voice answered with utmost insanity, "J.R., this bioweapon's something anyone and their mother or any of those Shakedown fucks shouldn't even get their hands on! Y'know why, bro?! I shit you not, this stolen-motherfuckin'-bioweapon could turn any goddamn human into a goddamn motherfuckin' superhero! You’re familiar with the—"

Hearing the voice’s words, Joshua gasped with his eyes widening like a camera lens. His heart was beating in triplets, losing control of his breath and nerves shivering in non-existent cold. ‘No... No, no, no, no, no, no, that can’t... be...’ Like what happened in the dressing room, Joshua’s memories flashed violently back to a nightmare he wished he’d forget. The sins of his past, the tragedy he endured, and the voice in his head... they slithered back into his mind like they never left him.

‘That’s not right, ain’t it? No... I-I must be imagining things! Jesus, oh Jesus fucking Christ... It’s gotta be something else. Don’t be a Stand thing... please don’t be a Stand thing...’

“You gotta understand, bro! I’m not sayin’ this just ‘coz I wanna spread misinformation like 99% percent of every fuckin’ news company in America, right now! They’re real! And you’ll see that I’m right when everyone hears my GODDAMN story and the truth that comes with it—”

Feeling he need not listen to any more of that podcast, Joshua turned off the radio to soothe his horror. He took a long, heavy, and hopefully relaxing sigh as he looked out the windshield. Instead of feeling respite, he felt confusion. There would’ve been cars and bystanders full of people across the crossroads on 598 W Temple St. near Grand Park and the Civic Ctr / Grand Park subway station; but no one was there. Not a single soul, not a car zooming by... it seemed that Joshua himself was all alone, there. The fact that this was happening right now felt quite... ‘bizarre’.

‘What the fuck is going on, now...?’ Joshua nearly said it aloud to himself as he drove along the empty crossroads, until…

“HOLY FUCK!!!”

Joshua rushed to stomp on the brake pedal as he saw the same pretty woman from earlier, precisely on his windshield. He steered quick enough so he would narrowly avoid her bike, but at the last moment…

The Lancer’s bumper crashed onto the rear wheel of the LiveWire, causing her to lose control and spin the bike at an uncontrollable pace. The Lancer screeched to a grinding halt from the impact; and if not for the seatbelt, Joshua would’ve been struck by blunt force trauma from hitting his head on the steering wheel. And the woman jumped out of her bike, rolling on the concrete road as the bike stopped and finally fell on its left side.

Unexpectedly, the crossroads were now populated only by two…

Two ‘souls’.

‘Souls’ with no perception of the perilous fate that lay ahead in their respective futures.

When the dust settled, a breathless Joshua caught his breath. Feeling constricted by the seatbelt, he panicked, “Oh, no, no, no, no... Oh, shit shit shit shit shit—”

He looked down on himself, afraid to see if he actually did run over her—let alone unwittingly kill someone upon his tragic past’s reminiscence. “No, no, no, no, no, no... I think I fucking killed somebody, did I—”

Then came a whistle from out of nowhere. “HEEEEEYY~~, YOU SON OF A BITCH!!!” She shouted from a distance, her Brooklyn accent leaking through. Joshua couldn’t hear her well as his windows were closed, but he understood from that muffled shrill that she was pissed. He saw her approaching the car with dangerous intent, clenched fists, a small crack on her bike’s helmet and a slight limp on her right leg.

‘...Shit.’ He realized now. ‘That’s her... And she even came out of fuckin’ nowhere! How the fuck am I gonna explain this... she’s gotta be really pissed at me right now—’

“Do you know what the fuck you just did?!” She cried out, inching closer and closer to the Lancer with every step. “Are ya fucked up or somethin’? Jesus! This LiveWire cost me more than how much you paid to steal this car, BITCH! Where’d you steal this from?!”

Immediately, Joshua pressed the left window switch, opening the window.

“Listen up,” she tilted her head, hands splayed on her waist, “If you really wanna throw hands on me just ‘coz I ran onto you stealing that car, I’ll do so without hesitation—”

“Ma’am, listen,” Joshua interjected, polite. “I understand, okay? And I’m sorry, for both running you over and smashing your bike, I just didn’t see you coming—”

“Ugh,” she groaned at the sight of him. “What the fuck were you doing? Your glasses fell off and you tried pickin’ it up?” 

“T-That’s not exactly what happened, I swear! And please, can we just discuss this reasonably? What’s your name?”

In defiance against his wishes, the woman stripped herself of her helmet, her once ‘kaleidoscopic eyes’ now casting a shroud inwards her face. “It’s Jocelyn,” she answered, “And you bet your ass I feel reasonable to speak with...”

“Alright... Jocelyn...” He opened the door, and with slight hesitation he stepped out of the car. “We can settle this peacefully. I know you want to.”

Blowing hair off her face, Jocelyn scoffed in annoyance. She expected someone like Joshua, someone who—to her—looked like a carjacker disguised as a ‘thief’, to be almost a foot shorter than her. But the most unexpected thing of all was that they both happened to be 6-foot-5 altogether.

“The fuck,” Joshua said in confusion.

“None of your business, fuckhead,” Jocelyn explained, glaring holes at him. “If you really wanna settle this, then tell me you’re gonna pay for my fuckin’ bike. If not, I’ll fucking kick your teeth down your throat!”

“Okay, okay, okay,” Joshua raised his hands. “How much are you willing to take?”

“Two-and-a-half grand.”

“Three grand for—” He frowned, perplexed by her demands. “Nearly three grand for bike repairs sounds a bit too overkill!”

“That accounts for my rear wheel, my kickstand, my fuckin’ battery, and the MOTHERFUCKING lights on the damn thing!” The way she explained her price, she sounded both irritated and irrational.

“O-Okay. Understandable.”

But then, a red light suddenly glinted on Joshua’s glasses. “The fuck?” He muttered, darting over the light’s direction. It was beneath the bike’s chassis, blinking in a ‘ticking’ rhythm reminiscent of a countdown.

“Hey,” Jocelyn asked with her arms crossed. “Fuck are you looking at it for—”

“Shh,” he hushed her. Continuing with a whisper, he asked, “Hey... Don’t you think it’s weird that we’re the only ones in this place?”

“Fuck do you mean?” She whispered back.

“Could that light on your bike be a part of it?”

Exercising caution, they went as close to the LiveWire as they could while keeping their distance from the blinking light. As Jocelyn crouched to inspect the light a bit more intimately, she presumed, “That thing... That can’t be that now, can it?”

“What do you mean?” He asked her.

“A while ago, some colleague of mine said somebody was tryin’ to kill me,” she explained. Later, she mused, “Oh, bother... I’ve been on LA a few weeks and now some fuck wants to kill me? I only dated a gangster who I found pretty, for fuck’s sake! Not like our breakup warranted an attempt on my life, or anything...”

“Who, me?”

“Not you. You look too stupid to be an assassin.”

Joshua scoffed. “Wow,” he rubbed his head, “Good way of vindicating I didn’t do anything wrong, I guess.”

“That’s your guess. Not mine.”

Jocelyn crouched over to the LiveWire’s chassis, fidgeting with it to see if there was something lodged on its metal frame that was connected to the red light.

“Could this be a bomb?” She theorized.

“Looks too small, but I wouldn’t rule it out,” Joshua joined in sotto voce, “But I wouldn’t advise touching it. You could blow us up if you touch it wrong!”

“Like touching it wrong triggers the fuse—”

Suddenly, the blinking light had shut off. And from it came a loud beeping noise from its direction. In a fit of misfortune, Jocelyn’s suspicions were proven correct—the red light around it happened to be a bomb! 

“Shit!” Joshua grimaced.

The beeping transitioned to distorted ticking. Almost instantaneously, Jocelyn began the task of removing the miniscule improvised explosive from the chassis.

“What the hell are you doing,” Joshua hissed at her, “Didn’t I just say you could blow it up if you keep fidgeting the damn thing like that?!”

“I don’t care if I lose an arm or a leg,” Jocelyn growled at him as she resumed the task, “I’ll save this damn thing, no matter what!”

The ticking went faster, just as a robotic voice from the bomb announced:

“Initiating detonation sequence.”

Jocelyn removed the bomb from the chassis as soon as that announcement was made. In triumph, she cried, “H-HahahaHAAAAAA~~, I got you, metal piece of stinkin’ shit!”

“Ten.”

“JOCELYN!” Joshua screamed, retreating to cover.

“Nine.”

Jocelyn threw out the bomb on the concrete sidewalk next to a lamppost, pointing at it without fear.

“What the hell are you doing?! You’re gonna get yourself killed!”

With a cocky grin, she shouted back, “No shit, Sherlock! Don’t even think that this is my first rodeo with contraptions like these!”

“Eight.”

Inhaling her breath deeply, Jocelyn raised her finger up in the air, eyes locked towards the bomb. ‘Tell me something you don’t know about me,’ she contemplated, ‘Mr. Bombmaker or whatever... or that nerdy fuckface who almost ran me down...’ And as the countdown struck “Seven” she lowered her finger and pointed it like a ‘gun’. She called out...

『Blade Runner』

Soon, in a flurry of bright fluorescent flashes, trails of blue-&-pink stars and sparkling lights zoomed behind Jocelyn, forming the two-toned armored figure of her Stand: Blade Runner. It was a pink-and-blue feminine humanoid with a slender but muscular frame, black and gunmetal grey armor pads accenting the two dominant colors; with a black hood over its head and an elaborate gold Masquerade mask covering every part of its face but its mouth. In its hands were two katanas connected to a tank attached on its back, with the number “2049” engraved in both blades.

“Five.”

Joshua clutched his hands with surprise, as he mused very quietly, “Holy shit... she’s a Stand user...?” 

“Four.”

“Hate to rain on your parade,” she said, as though she was ‘speaking’ to her assassin, “But I’m not dying today.”

Silently, she commanded Blade Runner to dash forth and perform her bidding. Crossing its blades, it thrust its right katana over the explosive and activated its ability: a faint pink aura enveloped the contraption, and as the voice on the bomb counted to “Three”, the aura around it began to change. It glowed brighter on the edges, and momentarily, a blue color was painted over its brightest spots, from which small crackles of ice manifested itself. The icicles spread in conjunction to the ‘blue’ color enveloping the aura, and once enraptured; the now-blue aura vanished, leaving behind a block of ice from which the bomb was frozen.

Pretending to not have any knowledge about Stand abilities, Joshua shouted at her, “W-What the fuck did you just do?”

“Delay it long enough so it wouldn’t explode so fast,” she responded.

“But how?! I-It’s frozen, for some reason I don’t even know about!”

“You can’t see it, can you?!” She pointed at Blade Runner. 

“Why the fuck are you pointing at the air?!?” He shouted back.

“Okay,” Jocelyn sighed. “Just get back to the car, I’ll go and pick up my fuckin’ bike and put it in there!”

“How the fuck can a bike like that fit inside my car—”

“DON”T FUCKING QUESTION ME, DUMBASS!”

“O-Okay,” Joshua surrendered, “I read you!” 

In a rush, Joshua scrammed for the Lancer and sat down on the driver’s seat with his seatbelt fastened tight. He could barely register going from outside his car to inside from the adrenaline rush, as he saw Jocelyn sprint for the car while lifting her LiveWire on both hands. The way he saw it, she struggled to carry the bike due to its understandably heavy weight, but she managed to push through and reach the Lancer just in time.

As she opened the Lancer’s door and inserted the bike—which surprisingly fit in the backseat within its compact frame—Jocelyn knocked at Joshua’s window and yelled, “Now drive and get us the fuck outta here!”

“Whatever you say...”

Jocelyn immediately went inside the Lancer and rode shotgun next to Joshua as he stepped on the gas and drove off as far from the frozen bomb as they could.

Reaching further and further into the horizon, Joshua looked over the Lancer’s rearview mirror in case someone was following them. No one was there, but he saw a medium-sized fireball erupting from the frozen explosive.

“Shit!” He screamed, looking away.

The shockwave of the explosion bursted the fire hydrant into a fountain of water, breaking the concrete on the sidewalk and collapsing the streetlight. From it came the remaining blazes of the fireball... and then nothing.

“O-Oh, God,” Joshua said, breathless as he stared back at the windshield window.

Aimlessly, he drove forward; not even thinking of steering onto different directions. He and Jocelyn were now as far from the potential crime scene as they could, far from the crossroads they met in—fountains & fireballs and all. Though they met in worse terms than they could’ve ever imagined—it was a miracle they came out of it unharmed, had it not been for Jocelyn delaying the bomb from detonating with Blade Runner’s ability.

And now that they were together, even if they didn’t agree on that ‘union’, perhaps it was best to stick together... if it meant staying alive once more.

Notes:

Remember to give kudos and (optionally) a comment! This helps in supporting this fic and its future endeavors.

 

Special thanks to PhantomDouglass for beta-reading this chapter in its current revision! (Which also means that after years of being a solo act, I now have a beta-reader. Woohoo!)

Chapter 2: Vol. 1 - Year of the Rooster, Part 2

Summary:

Later that night, both of our JoJos learn miscellaneous things about each other; before finding themselves in the crosshairs of a mysterious new foe...

Notes:

Shout-out to armesstein, TheRealJester, EdgyElla and the two guests who left a kudos in the previous chapter!

UPDATE (2/5/23): Rewrite has been published.

UPDATE (7/5/23): Part 2 of an upcoming overhaul to Vol. 1 has been published.

UPDATE (2/17/24): Readjusted most of High Jack's quotations.

—|[ CHAPTER 2 ]|—

Year of the Rooster, Part 2

 

Mere minutes after the explosive encounter that led to their 'unholy' union, a phone rang.

The sound of an old telephone ringing played out in the Lancer's cramped space, as Joshua & Jocelyn both felt suffocating tension between each other amidst the phone's rings. Joshua himself felt afraid and uncertain of what he had just gotten himself into; taking into consideration how Jocelyn said someone was out to kill her. Meanwhile, Jocelyn was figuring out a complicated puzzle of how and why the attempt on her life came to be; and who ordered the hit.

Though 'frozen' as he drove forward out of the neon-lit downtown into colorless buildings in Inglewood, Joshua felt whomever was calling him needed him.

And receive him, that person would.

Hovering his hand by the cellphone docked on his dashboard, Joshua thought, 'Look... I-I don't know if I can do this... but I better make sure whoever's calling me won't notice how I'm feeling, right now... I almost got killed, for fuck's sake! By a bomb, no less! To think that the pretty girl I met on the City Hall had a hit on her—'

"If you're gonna take that call," Jocelyn interrupted his thought procession, "you better take it now."

A small pause followed. Joshua sighed, and said, "O-Okay..."

Joshua picked up an earpiece from his pockets—so as to avoid using the speakerphone option—inserting it on his right ear as he answered, "Yeah, hello? Visa?"

He was met by a chill, soothing feminine voice from the other end. "Helloooo~, Josh!" His manager Visa Mandelle answered.

"Oh, hey!" Joshua answered back with a chuckle.

His sudden change in behavior did not go unnoticed by Jocelyn. 'The fuck?' She thought in confusion.

"Hiiiii~~! I heard from Dex you did great at the Harper's shoot, by the way!"

"Oh, really?" Joshua scoffed. "I'm just doing my job, is all."

Visa chuckled back, "Yeah... You're a miracle worker, Josh."

"Yeah, you called?" He asked her. "What's wrong?"

She explained, "Well, Josh, I wanted to say that you did great at that shoot. But I also wanted to tell you… um... how do I say this? Well, uh, Dex told me something about you blacking out. Dunno if that's true."

"It is. I actually blacked out."

"Wait, you what?!"

"L-Look, look, look," he sighed, "I-It's nothing too bad, okay? I swear. I-I was just tired, y'know. Had to help out on a group thesis for college before doing the shoot. UCLA business and all..."

"Uh huh," she answered. "I keep forgetting you're still studying, y'know..."

"I understand," he tried to reassure her, "I mean, I gotta secure my educational fees, y'know? Not like I do this to stress myself out or anything."

"Okay..."

"Look, the thing is... if news gets out of this, I don't want you to waste another PR campaign saving my ass, okay? I'll take responsibility if that blackout of mine gets me into trouble."

"It's not just a blackout, though."

"I know, Visa, I know. I mean," he scoffed again, "everybody blows things out of proportion nowadays—"

"That's not what I was talking about, though," she clarified, her tone more serious and worrying than her usually jovial one. "Look, if you're dealing with health problems, or need a break considering you've just told me you worked on a thesis before the shoot... Let me know. I'll pay for your medical bills, too."

"I-It's nothing too serious, I swear!" Joshua insisted.

"I know, Josh. Just that I'm worried about you. I don't wanna be blamed for overworking someone as obscenely talented as you are."

"...Okay," Joshua sighed.

"Well, if I'm certain of it," Visa revealed, "You're gonna have a shoot with Men's Health next week, and then a guy wants to interview you about the whole drama you had weeks ago. Again." She said that last word with a heavy sigh.

"Yeah, I feel you," he empathized, "The bad press about it is starting to annoy me..." 

"Oh, and one more thing." She ordered him, "Don't come to the agency tomorrow. I want you to take a week-long vacation, so you can be 100% when that Men's Health shoot happens. Okay? No more coming after college."

"You're not my Mom, though..."

"Do I have to be?"

"Fine," he sighed, reluctant. "I know I still have college, but... I'll do as you say. You have my word."

"Good. You don't always have to work so hard, y'know..."

"Yeah, yeah... Just can't help it."

He heard Visa whistle on her phone. "I take it you're going home, right?"

"Mhm."

"I see."

"Yeah, I think I'm taking too much of your time here," he stifled an awkward laugh. "Guess I'll be going, then!"

"Me too! Byeeee~~! See you around next week!"

"You too, bye!"

Visa hung up immediately. Once the call ended, Joshua relaxed himself and removed the earpiece as he passed by nameless and generic structures around the streets. He paid careful attention to the road, towards every block or turn along the way; yet one thing that was still in his mind was the trajectory of today's events, in particular...

'Fucking hell... This day has been quite the day for me,' he contemplated. 'Yeah, I feel sorry 'coz I ran her over, but... Who the FUCK is she?! She was talking about an 'attempt' on her life, and... O-Oh, God, what have I dragged myself into?'

"Who the fuck was that," Jocelyn broke her silence.

"My talent manager," Joshua answered. "Her name's Visa Mandelle. She owns the agency I work for. I'm a model for MMA, you see..."

"Pfft," Jocelyn found his answer amusing. "You're fucking with me."

"I'm dead serious," frowned Joshua, "whatever you're thinking in regards to what I said, I-I'm not fucking around!"

"So, what are you? Like..."

"Look up @JoJo_ModelMMA on Instagram," he said.

"Great. You just had to pull up the Instagram card..." Swiftly, Jocelyn pulled out her cellphone from a purse attached to her heavy belt, and did as Joshua said: once she got there, she realized that he was not lying.

“Damn, look at you...” She muttered, scrolling down and seeing every picture of Joshua she could find in his Instagram profile. “You don’t look so bad after aaa~~ll... At least, whoever that guy is who looks scarily like you. Damn.”

“Um... Thanks?” He frowned in confusion.

Jocelyn likewise frowned, although not in confusion. “The fuck are you looking like that for,” she asked him, “You jealous you don’t look at least half as good as he is?”

“...He’s me.”

“Bullshit,” retorted Jocelyn.

“I’m dead serious! Hell, I could even just... d-do this thing, and... maybe...” Clearing his throat, he winked at her and said in a smooth deep voice, “Feelin’ lucky today, aren’t we?”

A pause. And then...

A small chortle came out from Jocelyn. And then a fit of laughter followed. She laughed so hard, it made Joshua frown again. He was even more confused than he was before, but then he slowly came to realize; maybe she wasn’t laughing because he was himself, a very famous guy that most people following the modeling showbiz knew.

Maybe it was worse.

“W-Wow, haha—” Jocelyn coughed as she tried to stop her guffaws, feeling weak. “Goddamn, I haven’t laughed this hard since fuckin’ high school or something...”

“Uh, what...?” Joshua questioned.

Suddenly, she smashed her fist on the car’s dashboard, noticeably wrinkling the leather padding. "Of course, it had to be you people," she yelled, enraged. "Do YOU fucking get it?! You people! Oh, no, no, no, no, yeah, I don't see how you'd understand what I'm talking about, 'spesh that look on your FUCKING face!"

"What the hell are you talking about," he talked back, "are you talking to me in a riddle—"

"YOU, asshole!" Jocelyn jabbed a finger at his chest. "You and your kind of people. CELEBRITIES, you fucking dumbass! Do you even realize your own nature, you fucking piece of shit?!"

"What the fuck, man—"

"Yeah, no," she interjected before he could speak, "of course, you wouldn't understand. Because you don't understand what your kind of people are, you don't FUCKING understand that you and every other goddamn celebrity are inherently pieces of shit! And the way you fuckin' ran me over, almost giving me a stupid limp before I could finish college, proves that theory!" She smashed her fist on the dashboard again, further wrinkling the leather.

"How the fuck am I a piece of shit?" Joshua was left confused by her rambles.

"Oh, my fucking—" She planted her hands over her face, embarrassed. "Have you been listening to me? 'Your ears ringing after the bomb went kaboom? You deaf—"

"I'm perfectly fine, thank you." He put his hand over her finger. "Can you put your finger off me, please? I'm not one to get distracted by it while I'm driving off to go home."

“Okay,” responded Jocelyn, as she let go of his chest. “Well... I don’t know about you, but... You’re like a famous guy, with millions of dollars worth of shit paid to you by your agency... So it makes sense you live in a mansion where you bathe in a pool of money, right?”

“I’m not a piece of shit enough to do that,” he replied, “But yeah. Been living in a mansion in LA for five years now. And I guess I could say that my caretakers... Um... I don’t think you care enough to know their names, but... Thank God for Bernard and Coniglio saving my ass every time I have to deal with being... I don’t know, stressed? I stressed myself out doing a college thesis and modeling at the same time recently, and now Visa’s telling me to go on a week-long vacation, so... I’ll go and take that vacation however I want, once I’m back home.”

“Yeah, funnily enough,” she began, “I actually know ‘em. And I was gonna move onto that crib of yours and unpack my shit, then you gone and fuckin’ ran me over.” A groan.

Suddenly, Joshua stopped the car hearing that revelation being casually dropped. Giving her a glaring side-eye, he uttered, “...What?”

"What," she mocked him, "What, what, what—Yeah, you heard me alright. Though I don't feel like questioning that coincidence, right now."

"Yeah, well... Since when the fuck do you know Coniglio, huh? And Bernard?" He questioned her, especially the circumstances of how they both met.

Sighing, Jocelyn explained, "I knew Coniglio back when I was living in Italy. Papa's been a longtime colleague of hers, back when he and Mama were kids and stuff. When they were younger than my age, by the way."

"Your age?" He raised his eyebrow.

"22. My birthday's on the 6th."

"Okay. Then what?"

"Well, as for Bernard," she smacked her lips, “One time, he and Coni visited us on a vacation. And boy, he couldn’t shut up about how you were such a good kid. A hard worker, at that.” A sigh came, then... “You already know what I think about celebrities. Actors, actresses, models, influencers, whatever... How they’re all shitty people under the kind ‘masks’ they all wear. And hearing what Bernard had to say about you? For once, I thought I was gonna be proven wrong... then you fuckin’ hit me on the way home. Once again, moral of the story: all celebrities are inherently bad people. You included.”

“And if you’re wrong,” doubted Joshua. “What are you gonna do?”

“I have poor judgment,” she began to answer, “And I’m aware of the fact I’m so fucking angry all the time. But I’m never wrong when I say you’re a lost cause. They’re all gonna see you as I do, one day. A so-called ‘good guy’ one step closer from having everyone AND everything take from you what they’re owed.”

And then, silence followed.

‘...Damn,’ he thought, almost terrified by what she just said. ‘What she said about a debt coming due... Jesus. Almost like she’s a prophet or something... It can’t be like that, now... right? I know the date. And I know what happened on the fucking podcast. But I don’t know what the hell I’m gonna do if that means I’ll lose everything when everyone finds out about the real me—’

“OH, WHAT THE FUCK?!?”

Both Joshua & Jocelyn themselves were startled at the sight of a mysterious man by the car’s headlights. Upon seeing him, Joshua immediately stomped on the brakes and sent the car to a screeching halt before he could get himself into yet another traffic incident. 

Shaken, Joshua could only say, “Holy sh—” as he observed the man on the highway road.

The man was a rather eccentric hunchbacked person by appearance alone—aside from the aforementioned ‘hunchback’ from a poor standing posture, he was characterized mostly by a full yellow bodysuit with the upper half, the wool knit resembling that from a cardigan sweater. He had a translucent-silver shower cap on his head concealing brunette spaghetti-esque hair with curly strands, and thick green straps by his waist and elbows from which metal baubles were attached to. In his right hand was a walking cane surrounded by small patches of grass, and in his eyes were a pair of welding goggles with lenses darker than your average shades.

Surprised, Joshua asked, “H-How did you know someone was there?”

“I have a good eye for people,” she simply answered.

The yellow man was treading down the left side of the road, almost looking uncertain of his path. He used his cane, tapping it on the ground to scan his surroundings, and continued moving forward.

“Why is he moving so fucking weird?” Jocelyn whispered to herself.

“He’s blind, Joce,” whispered Joshua. “Cut him some slack.”

“I know, dumbass,” she retorted, “don’t make me look like I discriminate blind people! And how the fuck did you hear me?”

“If you’ve got good eyes,” he explained quickly, “Then I’ve got good ears.”

“Don’t copy my flow, asshole.”

"I wasn't trying to." Quickly, Joshua unbuckled his seatbelt and exited the car. He carefully approached the yellow man—like how he approached the bomb earlier—and called out, “S-Sir? Can I help you? What’re you doing in the middle of the road?”

The yellow man quickly glanced where he heard Joshua’s voice, then turned back.

“Oh, no," said the man, sheepish. “Can I help you?”

“I-I don’t know, sir... Are you lost?” Joshua inquired.

“My, oh my, where have I gone now,” he coughed, his voice hoarse and dry. “I fear I’m lost here, young man”—he chuckled, fidgeting one of the baubles on his waist—”and I fear my disappearance is permanent!”

“Look, sir, I’m gonna call 911—”

“Please, no,” he protested, “The cops will do ‘nothing’ but eat ‘glazed bagels’ while a person goes ‘missing’ every hour. I can’t trust them with ‘policing’ this ‘city’ anymore...”

“O-Okay,” responded Joshua. He offered him, “Do you want me to take you home, sir?”

“Oh, don’t mind if I do, boy,” chuckled the yellow man, amicably. He took up his grass cane and tapped the ground, turning to the direction of Joshua’s voice. “Say, uh, I have no way of telling you my address,” he resumed, “but I believe my phone has my address written on a note by my caretaker. A lifesaver, she is.”

“Where is it, though?” Joshua stroked his chin.

“I believe I put it in my left chest pocket,” he answered, tapping his cane. “Or my right… or somewhere around my rear pockets. I sometimes cannot tell, heh.”

A tap.

“While we’re at it,” asked the man, “would you be interested in answering a few questions? I've had some... really... unpleasant thoughts... about holding them in.”

Another tap.

"Okay?" Joshua cleared his throat. "Ask away."

"Hypothetically speaking," the yellow man began, again tapping his cane on the ground. "If you happened to 'run' into a 'bomb' ten seconds from blowing your 'life' away, would you take the 'coward's way out' and run? Or would you 'play hero' and defuse it?"

'A bomb?' Joshua thought, anxious. 'That can't be yet another coincidence, right?'

Another tap, and a pause.

The man continued, “Me, personally... If I had to choose between ‘playing hero’ and being a ‘self-preserving coward’, someone as ‘irrelevant’ as I am would make more of an ‘impact’ if I defused the whole thing. I believe that it is the ‘right thing’ any ‘ordinary man’ would wish to devote their ‘time’ towards.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t quite get it...?” Joshua asked, uncertain.

“I thought you’d ask that,” chuckled the man, who began tapping again. “Then again, ‘no one’ would ‘get’ what I ‘mean’ by all that load of ‘bullshit’... So I ‘understand’ your ‘confusion’.”

Though Joshua didn’t notice what that man was tapping the ground for, Jocelyn—who observed them from inside the car—could only feel aghast at the ‘pulse’ growing from every tap the cane made. Even if she didn’t want it to be true, there was no mistaking that the blind man right next to Joshua, was in fact...

‘A fucking Stand user...?! ’ She internally exclaimed. ‘That’s sooooo~~ goddamn unfair! Thank God for Eve telling me about the fuck who tried to kill me with a friggin’ bomb, but now I have to save this piece of shit celeb and kill a motherfucking Stand user at the same time?!’

Weighing in her options, she resumed, ‘Yeah... He ran me over, but I ain’t lettin’ his ass get fucked by some ghost thing he can’t even see!’

“However,” tapped the man yet again, “I could tell that you’re not ‘alone’. How is she, by the way?”

“W-What the—”

Joshua recoiled upon hearing the man’s claims. ‘H-How does he know?!’

“Can’t answer?” He hovered his other hand on one of the baubles, which—upon a small touch of his palm—began spinning and vibrating at an erratic rate. “Well, I guess I might have to ‘rip’ that answer from you.”

“JOSH, LOOK OUT!”

“W-Wha—”

From out of nowhere, Jocelyn fled the car and shoved Joshua out of the way, pushing him onto the ground. And then...

Without letting her make a counter-attack, the blind man locked onto what would’ve been Joshua’s position; and in a split-second, released the spinning bauble from his waist and ‘shot’ it at Jocelyn’s abdomen. The force of the bauble was so great, it caused the ball to almost be ‘absorbed’ within and propel her a few meters away from her position. She let out a pained scream as she was launched and rolled over nearly three feet away from the scene, feeling as if she was run over by a freighter train.

 “JOCELYN!” Joshua cried, as he helplessly saw her lie in the ground, almost paralyzed.

Quickly, he turned back to the blind man, who struck a pose as the bauble redirected itself in his hand. “W-What the,” he gasped in shock, “Y-You... You’re—”

“I am many ‘things’, Joshua Johnson,” said the blind man, speaking in an almost disembodied voice. “You can’t think of at least half of them... But what I can say is this...”

The man gave Joshua a creepy grin, though he was facing the other way.

“You can call me... High Jack,” he announced, “And with the ‘powers’ invested in me by my Spin mentors and the Arrow, with these ‘strange’ abilities combined you and your precious little hitchhiker are now within the ‘range’ of my Stand...”

『Just A Bullet Away』

Notes:

Remember to give kudos and (optionally) a comment! This helps in supporting this fic and its future endeavors.

 

Special thanks to PhantomDouglass for beta-reading this chapter in its current revision!

Chapter 3: Vol. 1 - Just A Bullet Away

Summary:

Ambushed by High Jack, the two JoJos now find themselves in the midst of a battle they risk losing.

Notes:

Chapter originally written July 12th, 2023.

Part 3 of an upcoming overhaul to Vol. 1

UPDATE (2/17/24): Readjusted most of High Jack's quotations, and added a few missing elements and slightly rewritten dialogue lines.

—|[ CHAPTER 3 ]|—

Just A Bullet Away

 

All Jocelyn could think of was how much it hurt.

Though the ‘mysteries’ of the Spin were left unexplored in her mind, there was no mistaking the way High Jack’s bauble spun and struck her. While she was launched meters away from the car, she felt as if her entire abdomen was unraveling into a bodily ‘spiral’. Not only that, she couldn’t even get up on her own feet and brawl with him in the night sky...

‘...Shit.’ Jocelyn thought, paralyzed from the waist down. ‘He fuckin’ hit me... with a goddamn ball... Fuck... How am I gonna beat this fuck if I barely know how that thing works?!’

As she felt her stomach churn itself from the inside from the Spin’s effects, she recalled in her mind, ‘From what I remember, well... When I was 14 or somethin’, some fascist fucks going by the surname Zeppeli offered Mama and Papa to take me to a summer camp in Sardegna. Said they saw some kind of ‘potential’ in me to be taught some mathematical stuff called the Spin. Apparently, from what I looked up on Google, it involves somethin’ around the lines of spinning balls and making wacky unnatural vibrations with it. I know it was used by royal guards of the Kingdom of Naples to execute criminals on death row, but... the fact that I only know the bare minimum about it? Jesus... I’m gonna fucking die here. Just when I saved my ass from freezing a fuckin’ bomb...’

All she could think of now was, ‘Well... Good luck running, Josh... You’re gonna need it.’

Meanwhile, Joshua found himself petrified as he helplessly stared at High Jack, who flaunted the baubles on his elbows. For him, it seemed that his bad luck from earlier had come to a climax: besides almost dying to Jocelyn’s unknown ‘assassin’, he was now facing a Stand user he had no idea how to deal with.

Let alone the fact that he hadn’t used his Stand in over five years; he would rather forget the last time he did than gloat over it like a serial killer would.

“Oho? What’s this now, hm?” High Jack said, cane floating by his hand. “Is that ‘fear’ I sense in you, Jooo~~sh...?”

Letting go of the left elbow bauble, he ‘spun’ the cane back in his hand.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

Pulse.

Though Joshua couldn’t notice it, High Jack heard a ‘heartbeat’ coming from an area in the road where he tapped in a consistent rhythm. It was the ability of his Stand—Just A Bullet Away—to detect his targets through some form of echolocation.

“Are you just gonna ‘stand’ there, boy? Or are you gonna ‘run’ like all cowards do?” High Jack guffawed. “No matter what happens, I can ‘find’ you. All I gotta do is ‘track’ your ‘heartbeat’ from within 15-meters”—he applied the Spin to his right elbow bauble—”and I’ll just let my ‘other ability’ do the ‘work’ for me...”

Without hesitation, he ‘shot’ the spinning bauble at Joshua’s position near the highway’s sidewalk.

Joshua muttered, “Oh, shit—” as he quickly dodged the bauble, barely missing it.

Quickly, Joshua sprinted as far from High Jack as he could; but suddenly, he was struck in the back by a second bauble. Unlike the attack on Jocelyn, he wasn’t propelled a few feet away, rather he was frozen into place.

“You think you could run away from me that ‘easily’?” High Jack cackled once again, returning both baubles to his hands. “Heh... The ‘coward’s way out’ doesn’t usually ‘work’ when I’m around.”

Joshua yelped as the Spin imbued on his back ‘dragged’ himself back towards High Jack without his control. He felt as if he suddenly became narcoleptic, feeling as if the few seconds it took for High Jack to drag him happened almost instantaneously from his point-of-view. When his consciousness returned to normal, he found himself immobilized; kneeling in front of High Jack like a hostage. 

“...H-How?!” Joshua cried, perplexed.

“I am ‘using’ the Spin to take ‘control’ of your ‘body’,” explained High Jack, “And you know you can’t do a damn thing because YOU have no idea how to stop it... I would offer to ‘teach’ you how, but... Sadly, it appears to me you’re not anywhere close to being ‘capable’ of learning the Spin... So now, I’ll just put you out of ‘misery’.”

Joshua grimaced, shutting his eyes tight as he prepared another—yet alone fatal—attack from High Jack’s Spin, but then...

“HEY, FUCKHEAD! LEAVE HIM ALONE!”

Though he could not turn his head from being immobilized, Joshua knew that exact husky Brooklyn voice. And then, respite came; as High Jack released his Spin-infused grip on Joshua, giving him an opportunity to run back to the Lancer. And he did so, retreating to the car's driver seat as soon as he got inside. 

High Jack could only growl as he hissed, “You can’t just ‘give up’, don’t you?”

Jocelyn, with all her strength, limped over them whilst maintaining her distance. She was leaning quite a bit to the left, being careful not to put too much pressure on her injured right leg. Though her first impression of Joshua was catastrophic, there was no way in Hell she would let anyone harm him maliciously; knowing he was just a normal man roped into her mess... or was he?

“That’s not how it works, jackass,” she said, wincing. “I don’t stop ‘till I beat you the fuck up, yeah?”

“Classic Jocelyn Johannssen,” replied High Jack, scornful. “Doesn’t fancy to stop ‘fighting’ ‘till she drops ‘dead’. I admire your ‘resolve’, dear. As futile as it would seem...”

When he heard her full name being said by High Jack, Joshua could only feel his mouth unhinging itself, fastening his seatbelt rashly. ‘What the fuck?’ He thought. ‘Is she also called... JoJo...?’

“Don’t call that resolve, bitch. It’s ‘obsession’, and you know damn well I’m not stopping...”

Pointing her palm down the road, a pink outline of a katana connected to a tank appeared. And then, flashes of blue-and-pink stars followed as she summoned Blade Runner in a fighting stance. Crossing its blades, it stared holes at High Jack—even though he was blind—and snarled like a tiger. 

“...‘Coz one of us is gonna walk away from this alive,” she continued, pointing a heavy finger at him. “And it ain’t gonna be you. I’m cutting you to pieces ‘till you can’t breathe no more, you son of a bitch!”

High Jack grinned, “That’s ‘suicide’. You don’t even know half of what I can do!”

“I like me a suicide mission, either way,” she winked. Turning to Joshua, who was sitting by the car’s driver seat, she ordered, “Go, get the fuck outta here! I’ll meet you at your crib once I’m done with this jackoff.”

“W-What the fuck are you thinking,” questioned Joshua, “You’re limping! Can you even fight him like that, especially with that spinning thing he keeps talking about?!”

Blade Runner moved up to Jocelyn’s side almost instantly and pointed one of its blades close to Jocelyn’s thigh. Opening a zipper where the blade was pointing to, she exposed the skin and allowed its ability to take place: a pink aura grew around a portion of it where the most pain was felt, and then, it vanished before it could turn blue—’stealing’ the heat around it without freezing it completely.

Jocelyn quivered as she numbed the pain on her leg, feeling it sting as she fought through to answer: “Fuck all those doubts about me, dumbass! I can take him on... even if I die trying.”

Joshua could only gulp in response.

“Now, go!” She shooed him off the scene as Joshua started the Lancer and drove as far as he could from them.

When the dust settled, it was now just the two of them on the highway road. Jocelyn and High Jack both stood a great distance from each other, both armed with their own abilities to fight with. Though she knew nothing sufficient about High Jack’s Spin and Stand ability in tandem, she knew she had such a strong and fast close-combat Stand in Blade Runner. For High Jack, he felt fighting her was going to be a walk in the park; he knew her lack of knowledge in regards to the Spin was her biggest weakness, and sought to exploit as much of that as he could. 

“Tch. Let me guess...” Bringing light into the myriad of coincidences and ‘connections’ she formed in her head, she said, “You’re the one trying to kill me. Right?”

High Jack chuckled, a sneer forming itself. “Right on the money,” he answered, “If the ‘bomb’ wasn’t enough to kill you, then perhaps I ‘shall’ do the ‘trick’. Besides... my superiors don’t want you and your father’s ‘stench’ roaming anywhere, for we would rather 'kick the bucket' than let him contaminate our 'operation'.”

“Yeah, well... Fuck everything your ass stands for, YOU tried to kill me when I even barely know who you’re working for!”

She raised her palm up, aiming it directly at High Jack as she commanded Blade Runner to dash onto High Jack’s position; blades armed and ready.

Picking up the sound of Blade Runner zooming over, High Jack frantically raised up Just A Bullet Away and—

TapTapTap. Pulse.

—released a pulse from which he heard three ‘heartbeats’ beating within 10-meters, which was moving quite fast.

Sensing that Jocelyn was closing in by sliding quickly to shorten the gap between him and her Stand, High Jack quickly rolled over a few meters and propelled two Spin-infused baubles from his waist strap onto Jocelyn’s last-known position.

Blade Runner swung its blades and deflected the baubles—even damaging it slightly by scraping part of the metal—skating onto High Jack at high speeds.

As it raised its left katana to attack High Jack, it shouted: “MUDA!”

The moment he heard its cry—as well as the ‘zoom’ sound from earlier—High Jack realized his suspicions were correct: Jocelyn possessed a close-range Stand. Quickly, he brandished another bauble from his waist, applying the Spin as fast as he could.

Blade Runner swung the katana’s blade at High Jack’s shoulder; but as soon as its blade struck him, both it and Jocelyn displayed shock on their faces.

“No fucking way,” she groaned, as she saw...

“Did you ‘think’ fighting me would be that ‘easy’ for you?” High Jack gloated over his ‘victory’, showing no sign of damage or bleeding from the attack, as he took this moment to sprint off and reposition. 

“How the f—”

“Here’s a ‘quick lesson’ for you, Jocelyn: ‘hardening’ the skin using an ‘object’ which you ‘apply’ the Spin to, will make you… ‘invincible’. For a short while, perhaps. Make of those ‘facts’ what you will.” High Jack grinned, as he recalled all the deflected baubles. He immediately re-applied the Spin on those baubles in addition to the one used on his skin, and again used Just A Bullet Away’s ability:

Tap. Tap. Tap.

Pulse.

The area in which the cane tapped released another pulse. He heard Jocelyn’s singular ‘heartbeat’ on the 15-meter range; she was standing roughly by a lamppost on his left side. His head was ‘locked’ onto that heartbeat’s position, preparing to throw the three baubles at her once again.

As soon as the pulse was set free, Jocelyn was quick to notice a white inverted ‘triangle’ that was 15-meters long glowing on the ground, divided into three; she was standing within the outermost triangle, where she saw a triangular mark on the concrete where she stood. It was pulsating, and emitted a “thump-thump” sound she heard that resembled a heartbeat.

‘W-Wait a fuckin’ minute, ’ she thought, carefully analyzing the triangle as quick as she could, ‘He’s blind, right? And he was able to shoot that ball precisely at me without even looking. Yeah, I wasn’t able to see it properly from Joshua’s car, but... Are you telling me...’

Her mouth ajar with epiphany, she realized, ‘Fuuuuck! I think I figured it out! His Stand allows him to find targets that his blindness limits him from seeing through echolocation!’

“Don’t ‘stand’ too ‘still’... it makes ‘everything’ a bit too ‘easy’,” High Jack muttered, as he launched the baubles onto Jocelyn’s position.

The moment she saw them propeling towards her, Jocelyn knew she had to act. Quick. “Fuck,” she cursed, “Blade Runner, get back!”

Obeying its user’s command, Blade Runner recalled itself to Jocelyn’s position and deflected two of the baubles with its blades; while failing to deflect the third, however. Before it could hit her, Jocelyn quickly dodged and rolled over the right to avoid it, albeit sustaining a minor injury to her thigh as a result. 

She yelped, and quickly clutched her thigh, moaning, “F-Fuck, not now...!”

High Jack chuckled quietly as he heard her grunts of pain. “It’s starting to 'bite back' at you, isn’t it?” He said, snickering as he carefully traced his steps towards her. “He’s a part of your ‘misery’, you know. I bet on my whole life, that perhaps, you would’ve ‘killed’ me already. Had it not been for... well... your little ‘accident’ at the crossroads...”

“Fuck kind of idea are you planting on my head, asshat...?!” Jocelyn growled, opening the zipper on her thigh again.

“Joshua Johnson’s not who you ‘think’ he is,” explained High Jack.

“Yeah, well... he’s a dumbass,” she laughed, while numbing the pain on her thigh with Blade Runner’s ability. “Fuck are you gonna do about it? Are you mad that I robbed you of your playtime with him?!”

High Jack sighed. “Tsk, tsk, tsk,” he groaned, “I had a ‘hunch’ you were gonna ‘say’ that... But what I’m trying to tell you is to not ‘look’ at him and think he’s anything but normal. He’s more than just the man who ran you over.”

“And you’re telling me this in spite of you trying to kill me, because...?”

“To spare you of the pain he will cause... when he is ‘born again’.”

“I don’t know what you’re fuckin’ talking about,” she hissed, “But I’m sure as hell bringing him up when he’s not around is absolute stupidity at its finest. This fight is between you and me”—she pointed at herself then High Jack—“and let’s fuckin’ keep it that way.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t advise such a thing,” he replied, as he stopped walking. “Ignoring the ‘symptoms’ would only worsen the ‘disease’.”

“I’m already diseased, fuckhead,” she stood up on the ground, hobbling a few meters away from him as Blade Runner raised both of its blades up the lamppost’s light.

“...Fair enough.”

High Jack spun Just A Bullet Away once again, tapping unto the ground—

Tap Tap Tap.

Pulse.

—to let loose another triangular pulse tracking Jocelyn’s whereabouts. To his surprise, he heard nothing from the pulse. She was too far away from him to detect from at least within the 15-meter triangle, which he also reacted with disappointment.

“Great... where the hell are you, now?” He muttered with a rasp, slightly frustrated.

He tapped again—

TapTapTap. Pulse.

—quickly doing so and releasing another triangular pulse. Though his tapping was quite quick, the rhythm was consistent enough to activate it.

As he searched for her whereabouts, Jocelyn quietly limped around and avoided stepping on Just A Bullet Away’s triangle—at least a foot away from the outer triangle. Devising ways to ambush High Jack in spite of her slightly-limited mobility, she thought, ‘Okay, so... Now that I know a good chunk of how his Stand works, I have to find a way to stay off those triangles until I can actually fight him. And it’s not like the Stand is bound to the cane, either! From what I can tell, the cane is the Stand itself, which means...’  

She took the moment to observe High Jack creating another triangular pulse to track her, concluding internally, ‘If I can waste his ability, I can sneak past and get a good hit on him!’

Meanwhile, as he created another pulse, High Jack growled to himself, “Where the hell is she?”

He walked down the road with slow, sauntering steps, carefully anticipating where she may have gone. It was at this point that the pulse had dissipated from the ground. 

‘Now’s my chance,’ she exclaimed.

High Jack, continuing his slow but careful approach to his search, tapped Just A Bullet Away on the ground to scan his surroundings; pecking it arrhythmically to avoid setting off its ability by accident.

“I know who ‘you’ are, Johannssen!” He shouted, crying out his frustrations. “Do YOU think your ‘obsession’ lets you walk away ‘scot free’ from your father’s shadow?! No, no, no, no, no—YOU ARE WRONG! You see, I know the real, reeeaa~~l you. You know, deep down, you can’t unburden yourself from his ‘resolve’, his ‘legacy’... Drooling over ‘obsession’ like it’ll help you ‘run away’ from your problems does not help your case, because someone like you doesn’t really know what ‘obsession’ really means...”

Spinning the cane, High Jack began to—

Tap...

—looking for Jocelyn once more, ‘isolating’ every sound he could pick up that wasn’t his own making as he prepared another pulse.

“In fact, your interpretation of ‘obsession’ is WRONG,” he resumed, “Or at least, the one you’re wrongly ‘gravitating’ to... because deep down—especially ‘knowing’ you—your real ‘obsession’ is to fight whoever stands in your way... until you die. Die, die, DIE...!” 

Tap...

“Because you can’t find it in yourself to 'love' every part of you.” He chuckled, finishing, “So let me help you find the battle in which you finally die.”

Tap...

Pulse.

Upon releasing Just A Bullet Away’s pulse, he expected nothing initially, that was the case, until...

“W-What the...?!” High Jack gasped in shock.

To his horror, he heard a distressingly high-pitched “BEEP-BEEP” ping, which—for him—spelled inescapable doom... 

The enemy was now within the 5-meter triangle.

 

–[ ★★★ ]–

 

Driving down unfamiliar streets and the fallout of today’s explosive events made Joshua feel like he was on the verge of exploding like a time bomb.

Though a few blocks away from the action, he still felt as if it was happening right behind him. Like it was following him, stalking him, unwilling to fully let him off its grasp. He was stressed out earlier that evening, when he blacked out after finishing what he felt like was an amateur photoshoot... but what happened after that crossed the line from feeling horrible to feeling like the world was about to end.

‘Jesus,’ he thought, ‘Oh, Jesus fucking Christ...’

He almost felt bile forcing itself off his throat, bit by bit. Not just because the pressure was too much to comprehend, and neither because he was feeling side effects from having the Spin be used against him.

Rather, he felt disgusted at himself. He felt awful that he was leaving Jocelyn to die at High Jack’s hands; even though she herself made him do so.

“...GOD!” He shouted in a rather indecipherable mix of frustration, regret, and anger; smashing his palms against the steering wheel. 

Heavy breaths followed, and in his own contemplations, he debated: ‘What... the fuck... am I gonna do...?! I don’t know anymore, I... Am I the coward for allowing me to leave her behind, or—’

Something just came up in his head.

‘W-What...’

Immediately, he pulled over amid the empty street, ignoring all the nameless dull buildings and streetlights to focus strictly on himself.

‘Wait a minute,’ he thought thoroughly, ideas piling up each second that passed by. ‘This is a weird thought... but I think it’s possible. Now, what if... What if I go back and help her? I know she seems like a capable Stand user, considering she delayed the detonation of a bomb from 3 seconds down to what, 30 or something? But the problem is, she’s fighting some guy with an ability that even we barely know about! That’s the biggest problem I have to deal with here. Hold up, that’s not even the biggest problem...’

Joshua’s eyes went wide, nearly as petrified as he was when he was immobilized by High Jack’s Spin, as he realized internally, ‘I haven’t been a Stand user for over five years.’

He struggled with the urge to not pull hair off his head as he did so. ‘FUCK! What am I gonna do?! I know I stopped using it for good reason, but there is a goddamn life on the line here! And I barely know what I can do with it, these days! Jesus...’

As he drove himself crazy over bleak possibilities that he might not survive due to his ‘rustiness’ in using Stands, a corporeal arm with a blood-red outline appeared next to Joshua’s hands. 

‘Oh, well... If I end up kicking the bucket, I might as well save a life doing so...’

The arm’s hand grew syringes on its fingers, phasing immediately outside of the car as it immediately pierced the car’s hood, ‘sucking’ an unknown material out of it.

Whatever he had in him, would inevitably alter the trajectory of his life...

For better or for worse.

 

–[ ★★★ ]–

 

As soon as Just A Bullet Away released its third pulse, Jocelyn felt a sense of gratification when she managed to let High Jack’s tirade distract him from finding her. And the fact that she was now within 5-meters away from him added more to that euphoria.

She felt like grinning akin to a cartoonish madman as she thought, ‘Now’s my chance!’

When High Jack reacted with aghast that the person he had been sent to kill was now within 5-meters of him, he hastened with another Spin-infused bauble and used it on his face—the only exposed part of his outfit—to ‘harden’ the skin in case he faced another attack. As he readied for another attack, he heard Blade Runner’s ‘shimmery’ skating onto his position.

“There you are,” he said, before— 

“MUDA!” Blade Runner cried out, as it flipped itself into the air with its blades, both glowing a bright pink color, spinning sideways as it raised its left katana up high and swung it over High Jack.

He expected that, by hardening his skin with the Spin, his invincibility would null the attack—like how it first attacked him—so he was greatly appalled when his trick did not work this time.

This time, Blade Runner managed to secure a ‘good hit’ on High Jack—it did so by landing on its two feet and driving the left blade deep in his right shoulder, cutting through the flesh and muscle as blood washed and trickled down, painting a part of his bodysuit’s yellow fabric in deep crimson.

The torturous scream High Jack let out was so agonizing, it could almost be heard even from a mile away.

“Not so ‘invincible’ now, are ya?” Jocelyn mocked him, wiping her mouth.

She felt a sense of catharsis as she relished in High Jack’s cries of pain, commanding Blade Runner to release the blade off his shoulder. A few small splotches of blood were splattered on the concrete floor as it was let go; the heat of the glowing blade having cauterized huge chunks of the wound.

Near-instantaneously, Blade Runner zoomed back to Jocelyn’s side, crossing its katanas once more.

High Jack let out heavy labored breaths, torso limping down his right side in agony—from the singed split on his shoulder —as he exclaimed, “...H-How?! Nothing can ‘break’ my body when I have the Spin harden it... but you... You broke through it...! HOW?!?”

“That’s right, bitch,” she retorted with a sneer. “You think you’re hot shit just ‘coz you doubted the power of my ‘obsession’... you’re wrong.”

High Jack could only growl in response.

Jocelyn explained, “Thanks for the lesson in invincibility, shitface. I may not know jack about what those fascists taught you, but if I could steal enough ‘heat’ to cook up my blades... theoretically the blades would be ‘hot’ enough to ‘break’ through your ‘defense’, right? You can’t see it”—she pointed at Blade Runner’s tank, which had orange light strips glowing and leaving visible heat waves—“knowing you're blind... but that is the ability of my Blade Runner. It takes ‘heat’ away from anything that’s hot...” 

She snapped her fingers, as the cables connecting the katanas and the tank began glowing pink, the light strips on the tank growing dimmer.

“…And takes it ‘somewhere’ else!”

Within a split-second, Blade Runner spun and hurled two high-velocity medium ‘heat rings’ which emanated from the blades’ ‘heat’, all of which drove towards High Jack’s direction in a curved motion.

Though he could not see them, he could hear the rings approaching, muttering a quiet “Shit” as he rushed to avoid the rings—in spite of his wounded shoulder. He was able to barely dodge the first ring, but his luck ran out when he was hit by the second. Upon impact, he was pushed a few meters without falling to the ground; though being hit by it was less than favorable in terms of his current injury; the burning sensation doing most of the work.

“Grr,” he winced, his shoulder flaccid and lifeless. “You think this is over, huh...?!”

“Just give up,” shrugged Jocelyn, “You know you won’t be going back to your turf tellin’ your boss that you killed me. So why waste time tryna finish a job you can’t accomplish, huh?”

“You don’t ‘understand’, you sanctimonious little bitch...”

He began reaching below the hump on his back with his left hand. “You already know my ‘name’... And I rightly ‘believe’ you think that’s the case.”

Jocelyn furrowed her eyebrows in confusion.

“Do you know what else they call me?”

She heard a zipper being opened on his back, from which a mysterious vase fell. He caught it in his hand, just in time to announce…

“CACTUS JACK!”

It was at this time that High Jack—or Cactus Jack, as he now called himself—opened the top silvery half of the vase to reveal a cactus hidden inside. The cactus vase hidden in his back produced his iconic hunchback silhouette; but now it was gone, he stood firmly upright as he dropped the vase and cackled, left hand now reaching for a bauble in his waist strap.

Left with no time to react, Jocelyn shouted, “Oh, shit!”

She slid by a barrier in the highway to avoid the potential attack, as Cactus Jack kicked the cactus perfectly into position, hurling the Spin-infused bauble onto the cactus. The bauble began carving a hole into the cactus as it spun, releasing a fast cluster of needles and green chunks of the plant hurtling precisely at Jocelyn.

“Blade Runner,” she yelled, “Keep it away!”

Obeying her command, Blade Runner skated by her user’s side and began rapidly deflecting the attack with a katana barrage, shouting “MUDA MUDA MUDA MUDA MUDA MUDA MUDA—” in a loop as it swung its blades and rebounded the needles and clumps before it could hit Jocelyn.

While its barrage was speedy yet precise, a few stray needles managed to hit Blade Runner’s masked face, the damage also transferring to Jocelyn due to Stand users sharing damage with their own Stand. Jocelyn shrieked and fell to her knees as she felt the cacti’s chunks burrow onto her skin through Blade Runner, tiny spurts of blood bursting out of her face. Though her eyes were fortunately left unaffected, she still felt a sharp sensation of what she thought were microscopic knives stabbing and pricking every facial muscle that was affected. It hurt so much; even the slightest movement of her mouth felt like being cut apart on the inside.

“Hurts, doesn’t it?” Cactus Jack said, his cocky sneer now desperate yet unhinged. “If you thought telling me to ‘walk away’ and leave my task unfulfilled would work, you are terribly ‘mistaken’...”

As soon as the top half of the cactus was completely gone, he recalled the bauble to his hand.

“I will ‘finish’ the job, no matter what,” he hissed, before unleashing into a full-on snarled jeer, “WHICH MEANS YOU’RE GOING TO ‘DIE’, WHETHER I PERISH WITH YOU OR WALK FROM THIS AN UNRECOGNIZABLE MESS!”

He hurled the bauble at her again, which Blade Runner deflected with its blades.

“COME ON,” he yelled, “JUST GIVE UP!”

He recalled the bauble, brandishing a second one from his waist, and applied the Spin to both. He tossed them violently over where he heard Jocelyn’s pained grunts. Blade Runner deflected them again, being recalled to Cactus Jack's hands almost immediately. Then began a loop: Throw the spinning baubles... Deflected... Recover them… Replace any if lost... Rinse and repeat... Throw the spinning baubles... Deflected... Recover them… Replace any if lost... Rinse and repeat...Throw the spinning baubles... Deflected... Recover them… Replace any if lost... Rinse and repeat...Throw the spinning baubles... Deflected... Recover them… Replace any if lost... Rinse and repeat...

As the loop ran its course and the gap between them was closer and closer, Cactus Jack became frantically absorbed with the thought of killing Jocelyn, barking like a mad dog as he repeatedly blasted off the baubles, whether or not they return to his hands or are disposed of. Meanwhile, Jocelyn felt exhaustion: she knew he wouldn't stop until she had fatigued Blade Runner from redirecting the baubles' trajectory off her over and over, and that making one mistake would cost her everything.

The only thing she could do now was crawl as far from him as she could, unable to even stand up from how seriously painful her thigh injury was getting.

"YOU KNOW ONE OF US IS GONNA WALK OUT OF THIS ALIVE..."

He threw another bauble. 

"AND IT WON'T..."

And another.

"BE..."

And another...

"YOU—"

Before Cactus Jack could finish his shout, Jocelyn could only feel some sense of relief as she heard hard rubber tires screeching to a halt, stark white headlights turning itself on. The presence of such a strange car surprised them long enough to pause the fight, with Jocelyn covering her eyes from how blinding its shine was. 

As the car’s sole passenger made his exit and revealed himself, Jocelyn’s relief soon turned into alarming worry as she realized he did not go through with her wishes…

“What the fuck are you doing?!” She could only say much before the sensation began again.

When he realized who came by eavesdropping on her, Cactus Jack hissed in irritation. “Oh... It’s you again.”

“Yep. It’s me,” Joshua answered as he stood between the headlights, facing Cactus Jack down intently. “Call me ‘stubborn’ all you want. That won’t change the fact I’m not willing to let someone nearly kill herself fighting you.”

Somehow, the tone of his voice was different. As was his demeanor. He was usually gentle and modest—even referred to as a ‘dumbass’ by Jocelyn—but none of those traits were on display now. He had a baritone whisper that had a subtle rasp at the end of every word, with a cold and disdainful emotion laced to it. It was like he had called an old friend one last favor to fulfill... or resurrected something he had locked away for a long time.

“I take it your hunchback-looking ass wanted to do your way with me, right?” Joshua questioned Cactus Jack, quietly confrontational. “Well, not so much of a hunchback now, but... Your target was ultimately her, but... why were you being so ‘aggressive’ towards me while she ‘recovered’ from your ‘attack’?”

Cactus Jack frowned. “I needed a way to 'dispatch' you,” he answered, “You were the only one standing between me and her.”

“Really? Is it just ‘that’?” He inquired further. “I ‘expected’ something a little more... vengeful.”

“Are you suggesting that I hold grudges against you?” Cactus Jack probed.

“Yes,” Joshua took a step forward. “Or maybe something else. Maybe... You are ‘indebted’ to me.”

“Where the hell are you getting this from?!”

“Easy there,” Joshua calmly raised up his hand, “I wouldn’t want you to be so overly aggressive for questioning your intent with me. I was simply...”—his lips smacked—“I don’t know. I was trying to come up with a valid reason as to why you wanted to put me out of my misery.”

“Because you seemed pathetic,” Cactus Jack truthfully said, “or at least... you were. Not sure how you became something else completely... but it’s better than how you were, the last time you came around.”

“That’s right.”

As Joshua closed the gap between himself and Cactus Jack, Jocelyn resisted her pain long enough to shout, “What the hell do you think you’re doing, dumbass?! I told you to get outta here, and now you come back and think you can ‘play hero’! Do ya have a fuckin’ 'death wish' or something?! You’re gonna get yourself killed!”

“Who says I’m getting myself killed?” Joshua responded with a wink.

Jocelyn could only groan as she sat there, witnessing Joshua confront Cactus Jack without a semblance of fear... unaware he was more than she had initially thought.

“She’s right, y’know,” Cactus Jack said. “Knowing whoever you’re pretending to be, right now”—a hic—“It’s ‘suicide’. Trying to beat me with words without an ‘ability’ of your own is suicide!”

Joshua ignored his response, continuing to stride closer to Cactus Jack.

“That’s a nasty split you got there,” he said, looking at Cactus Jack’s shoulder wound. “Weird how it seems to have been cauterized, though. Nothing could be hot enough to cause this.”

“I did, jackass,” Jocelyn commented.

“...Okay.”

“Didn’t listen to me, huh? What you’re trying to do is suicide. It’s SUICIDE, dammit!” Cactus Jack cried out.

Now standing face-to-face with Cactus Jack, Joshua firmly stood his ground and pocketed his hands. He said, “...That I find alarming. Your lack of awareness as to who and what I am. I want you to consider, though... that maybe... she’s not meant to die yet—”

“BULLSHIT!” Cactus Jack interjected—

“I’m not done talking here!” raised Joshua’s voice, who grabbed Cactus Jack in his injured shoulder. The latter grimaced in pain as Joshua continued, “Let’s take that part into consideration. Maybe she has unfinished business to settle, and that you’re standing in her way. How about this, Jack? I’ll give you two options: you let us go scot free, or do what you’re here for... to kill her. The choice is yours. And choose wisely, will you?”

A pause... a silent, yet careful one...

“Let me ‘kill’ her.”

“...Deal.” Joshua faintly smiled.

Outrageously, Jocelyn reacted, “What the FUCK—”

“First, though... You might want to shave off that pain a little bit.” Joshua unpocketed his right hand and offered him... a RELX brand vape.

“What are you ‘trying’ to ‘give’ me?” Cactus Jack questioned. “I’m blind, y’know.”

“A vape,” Joshua simply answered. “Prescription CBD. Weed. Calms you down and kills the pain you must be feeling for a bit. If you want to fulfill your chosen decision, then smoking it would make your work easier to handle.”

Another pause.

Joshua clicked something in his other pocketed hand, which turned off the headlights. Shockingly enough, the purple paint in the car’s body was gone, appearing to have turned into ‘greyscale’ monochrome. And parts of the body itself—noticeably the hood—appeared shrunken like a deflated balloon.

Jocelyn felt her mouth unhinge itself upon noticing the body, and turned to Joshua...

“...Fine. Just give the weed to me.” Cactus Jack reached out his hand.

“Okay.”

Without hesitation, Joshua placed the vape in Cactus Jack’s hand. ‘Now... we wait.’

Cactus Jack, despite his blindness impairing him, was able to quickly hover the vape over his slightly opened mouth. He pressed the button, allowing vapor to enter. But to his immense shock, it wasn’t weed he smoked; instead, it was something... toxic.

He recoiled and instantly found himself in a violent coughing fit, dropping the vape.

The sensation he felt upon smoking the supposed ‘vape’ was so complex, he couldn’t even discern what exactly was hurting: at times, he felt dizzy and nauseated. Other times, he tasted something metallic in his mouth; he couldn’t figure out if it was blood. But the thing he felt most was something building up in his lungs—a fluid he could not spew—which caused his breath to shorten tremendously. Gasping for air, Cactus Jack realized that he did not give him vape laced with weed: he gave him something much more dangerous to breathe in...

“Y-You...” Cactus Jack coughed up blood, growling. “What did you do to me...?!”

Coldly, Joshua answered: “I did as I’ve said. Give you something to help with your pain. Although, I lied when I said it would kill it temporarily. It worsens it, however...”

Cactus Jack coughed again, gasping as a response.

“I ‘extracted’ as much toxic metals as I could from my car’s body,” Joshua explained, “And 'injected' all of it into the vapor. What you just smoked wasn’t merely a small tinge of it... rather...”

Red mist emanated from Joshua’s body, which floated away from him and formed the silhouette of a humanoid bird-like figure, as a red glow absorbed and ‘imploded’ the mist. The implosion revealed a horrifying, almost-manmade terror whose exposed musculature was stark white, with black veins accentuating its lanky yet physique. It had a torn-up black cloak with a crescent symbol in the middle; six pipes in its shoulders and back in a symmetrical pattern; and a bird skull with cat ears and shadowy eyes on its hollow, stringy neck. The eyes had tiny white pupils which glowed in the dark, almost as if it was inviting its victims to stare into its own abyss...

“You smoked it all.”

While Jocelyn expressed great surprise that Joshua was a Stand user like her; Cactus Jack could only react with a complicated mix of rage and fear, unable to comprehend what had just happened to him, as Joshua declared...

『Rebel Moon』

“That is the name of my ‘Stand power’. And now... Your decision to ‘pursue’ killing her has cost you everything.”

Rebel Moon hissed, exhaling red fumes from its mouth and pipes, as it grew syringes on its fingers... waiting for its user’s command.

"N-No," Cactus Jack shivered, stepping backwards from him. "You... Get off me! STAY AWAY FROM ME!"

Instantly, Cactus Jack hurled a Spin-infused bauble at Joshua from his left hand. Protecting its user, Rebel Moon shoved the bauble away with its forearm. It made gnarly, inhuman croaks—the sound resembling a bird’s chirps with robotic echoes and gears grinding against each other—as it stared down Cactus Jack with unfathomable rage.

As both Stand and user marched towards its target, Cactus Jack—even without his eyesight—could still feel with his remaining four senses an aura of ‘menace’ looming towards him, prowling his every step as he grabbed another bauble from his waist.

“YOU!” He shouted, as he launched the bauble.

Likewise, Rebel Moon deflected it, making more deep chirps and gasps as it closed the gap between itself and its target.

He recalled the bauble to his left hand, and threw it again; later procuring another one from his waist—which was now down to three remaining ones.

“Stay...”

He released the second bauble. Rebel Moon diverted both away from Joshua’s direction.

And then, the back and forth loop happened again: Throw the spinning baubles... Deflected... Recover them… Replace any if lost... Rinse and repeat... Throw the spinning baubles... Deflected... Recover them… Replace any if lost... Rinse and repeat...Throw the spinning baubles... Deflected... Recover them… Replace any if lost... Rinse and repeat...Throw the spinning baubles... Deflected... Recover them… Replace any if lost... Rinse and repeat...

“Away...”

Now, he was down to two remaining baubles. Cactus Jack picked up the first... and broke the loop.

As Rebel Moon’s hisses came closer, the bauble he launched made a direct hit towards Joshua’s left shoulder, which forced Joshua to stop as he lost all sensory feeling for most of his left side.

“FROM ME!” Cactus Jack finished, breathless. 

When he sensed that Joshua halted after he was hit by the bauble, he laughed in relief. The ‘menace’ he felt had ceased, which meant that; despite Joshua’s terrifying confidence, he was anything but invincible. But...

Strangely enough—despite limping due to his motor cortex being inhibited by the Spin—Joshua did not stop marching. He continued his slow, methodical pursuit of Cactus Jack, Rebel Moon continuing to hiss at him.

Hopeless, Cactus Jack helplessly screamed in defeat as he made one last-ditch effort to procure the last Spin-infused bauble attached to his waist—and his own body to an extent—and prepared to hurl it at Joshua. But before he could throw it away, Rebel Moon dashed and grabbed hold of his left arm, locking it and the grip it had on the last bauble.

“N-No...!” Cactus Jack cried, trying to shake its firmly heavy grip off his arm.

“Y’know,” Joshua said, his mouth partially sunken from the Spin-induced paralysis. “I think you had the ‘advantage’ against us, because you used a ‘power’ that us Stand users wouldn’t know of... And yet...”

Rebel Moon began twisting Cactus Jack’s left arm, forcing it towards his own abdomen.

“You lost that ‘advantage’ when you decided to keep ‘fighting’, even though you were seriously hurt.”

“N-No, damn it,” Cactus Jack hissed. “T-This isn’t... how... this was all supposed to GO! I-I had it all... the pieces needed to solve this damn battle... and you... YOU RUINED EVERYTHING! DAMN YOU, AND DAMN YOUR WEED!” 

“It is a shame,” Joshua replied, with a smirk. “Seems to me that all the pieces fell off before you could pick them up. Shouldn’t have smoked the vape in the first place, yeah?”

As he snapped his fingers, Cactus Jack immediately knew that; either way, he was doomed as soon as Rebel Moon was summoned. The latter squawked like a hawk as it drove Cactus Jack’s left arm into his abdomen—dealing a fatal, crushing blow to it. Both its fist and the bauble barely touched his spine as blood and guts spilled everywhere. He spat out a mix of blood and saliva as he shrieked in shock and agony; having felt his skin, bodily tissue, and blood vessels be violently penetrated in a split-second.

But the worst was yet to come: given that the attack also applied the Spin to himself.

Neither he—the one who knew the Spin’s arts—nor Joshua knew what would happen if the Spin was used on one’s own self, but it was already too late for that.

Feeling his insides ‘spiraling’ beyond control, Cactus Jack could only close his eyes in anticipation, as the Spin’s energy inside his body exploded and caused rotational holes to burst itself on his back, shoulders, and head, heavy chunks of gory flesh and blood raining down in a pool of his own remains. Hastily, his body fell chest-first on the ground, now taking the form of a mangled, unrecognizable mess compared to who he used to be.

---

『 User 』 — Jack Ronson
『 Stand Name 』— Just A Bullet Away

Power: ∅   Speed: C   Durability: E   Precision: A   Range: C   Potential: ∅

『 Observations 』— Manifests as a white cane that allows its user to locate targets through echolocation. By tapping the ground three times in a consistent rhythm, it releases a ‘pulse’ in the form of a 15-meter triangle divided into three triangles. Within the 15-meter triangle, it tracks a singular ‘heartbeat’ from any target. Within the 10-meter triangle, it ‘live’ tracks the heartbeat for three beats. Within the 5-meter triangle, the user is notified by a loud  ‘alert’ ping to reposition.

『 User Status 』 —  D E C E A S E D
TERMINATED BY ANOTHER USER

---

Rebel Moon hissed, its objectives accomplished, as it was recalled back to its user in a red mist.

As soon as the Spin’s effects on his motor cortex had dissipated, Joshua sighed in relief that the battle was over, barely shocked nor fazed by the bloody sight of Cactus Jack exploding from his own power being used against him, as he fixed his glasses and turned to Jocelyn. Though she was a good distance away from him, he could tell straight away that she had mixed feelings in regards to his true nature.

“Jesus,” she said, overwhelmed. “Now it all makes sense why we met... Since when were you—”

“Seven years,” he answered quickly. “I stopped for five, but... I did what I could with how long I've kept it locked in. He wasn’t gonna let you live, no matter the circumstances.”

Without hesitation, Joshua quickly ran over to Jocelyn's side and crouched. "You okay?" He asked, checking her injuries.

"Well..." She winced. "He gave me a bad case of cactus shit all over my face... and my leg must've torn from how bad the crash went."

"It was an accident, alright?" He apologized.

"Yeah, well... You fucking impaired me for most of that fight, thanks to that!"

Joshua groaned. "I'm done apologizing, y'know. I just saved us even without knowing jack 'bout the Spin, and you're gonna give me shit just 'coz you won't let go of what happened between us?! Damn... Your parents must've raised one hell of a disappointment if you're gonna keep bitching about that."

In response, she laughed, “H-Hah... Using the ‘parents raised a disappointment’ card... How original”—a hic—“you fucking dumbass...”

“Let’s get outta here,” Joshua sighed, as he began wrapping his arms behind Jocelyn’s neck and waist. “Are you good to go?”

“Yeah... Just do what you need to do... if it means going home...”

“Okay...” Joshua grunted as he carefully lifted Jocelyn off the ground, carrying her onto the Lancer.

“Y’know,” she said, “being carried away like this... it feels kind of romantic...”

“Now you’re making me blush,” Joshua replied, his face awkwardly blushing a slight red color.

“Shame you’re a piece of shit, though,” she continued.

“Do we really have to do this bit again?” He hovered his right hand over the car’s door.

“As long as I want to...”

Joshua sighed again as he opened the car door, putting her on the seat next to his, as he immediately went in the driver’s seat and twisted the car keys to start the car. As the two of them quickly fastened their seatbelts, one of the screens in the dashboard suddenly opened—the car’s radio began playing a song through the Spotify application; its sound being from a bygone era...

While she groaned in response to the radio turning itself on, Joshua chuckled as she said, “Oh, I know this song!”

“What?” Jocelyn inquired, frowning.

“Bernard and Coni dance to this song from time to time,” he explained. “It’s also one of my favorites. Something about music from the 70s really speaks to me. They just hit... different, I guess.”

“No shit,” she shrugged. “I’m more of a 2000s punk rock girl. Rubber Armadillo, in particular... They were the shit. And they still are.”

“Fuck is that,” he asked, confused.

“Helloooo~~?! Punk rock band from Italy, led by the badass Beatrice ‘Trish’ Una? They have songs in both Italian and English, and they all kick ass! You’re missing out on some of the coolest shit you’ll ever hear!”

“Okay? Thanks for the rec... as weird as it sounds...”

Joshua stepped on the gas and drove off the highway to finally conclude his commute home, leaving behind the roadblock to his journey that was Cactus Jack... or what remained of him. The possibility that his own victory could be achieved was already certain: that he had the maximum advantage possible against them, thanks to the Spin. But alas, ‘fate’ proved that the fight was ultimately never in his favor. That his victory was doomed from the start...

For crossing antagonistic paths with Ziggy Stardust would not go unpunished.

---

『 User 』 — Joshua Johnson
『 Stand Name 』— Rebel Moon

Power: C  Speed: A   Durability: B   Precision: A   Range: C   Potential: A

『 Observations 』— Grows syringes on its fingers that ‘extracts’ chemical elements from any inorganic object; with a limit to ‘one’ element each on all fingers. It ‘injects’ the elements into a substance/contraption (i.e. a powder, water, smoke grenade, or explosive, etc.) that ‘triggers’ chemical reactions depending on the elements mixed. It can also detect and trace nearby chemicals and its sources within a 5-meter range.

『 User Status 』 —  R E A C T I V A T E D
AWAITING FURTHER TRIBULATION

 

『 User 』 — Jocelyn Johannssen
『 Stand Name 』— Blade Runner

Power: A   Speed: A   Durability: C   Precision: B   Range: E   Potential: C

『 Observations 』— Possesses two katanas attached to a tank on its back, each with the capability of siphoning heat from a small area to be used as ‘fuel’. The ‘fuel’ can be used to heat up the blades and enhance its damage; or redistribute it to another area (i.e. cauterizing bleeding wounds, starting fires from gasoline oils or steam). When enough heat is stolen, it can freeze something in the area’s place.

『 User Status 』 —  A C T I V E
USER CURRENTLY DOES NOT POSE A THREAT

Notes:

Remember to give kudos and (optionally) a comment! This helps in supporting this fic and its future endeavors.

 

Special thanks to PhantomDouglass for beta-reading this chapter!

Chapter 4: Vol. 1 - Disposable Heroes, Part 1

Summary:

Galen Crawford of the Disposable Heroes criminal gang intercepts a drug deal between dealer Draco Esparza and customer Rooney Smith of the California Girls.

Notes:

Chapter originally written November 12, 2022; originally part of the original Chapter 1 before the rewrites of the first two chapters.

Part 1 of a double-release special!

UPDATE (8/25/23): Part 4 of an upcoming overhaul to Vol. 1

UPDATE (2/17/24): Added link to Spanish translations at the end, and revised some minor dialogue lines.

—|[ CHAPTER 4 ]|—

Disposable Heroes, Part 1

MEANWHILE…

 

46 McLaughlin Avenue, Shakedown Street.

Shakedown Street was a place in the Greater Los Angeles area that no sane person would dare to go. A ‘phantom settlement’ whose existence is often questioned by conspiracy theorists, it was a place that anyone who lived; or have lived there, would call a lost cause. It was a grim and downtrodden slum with an assortment of nightly dangers either human or supernatural. The slums itself were ruled by countless criminals—the kinds who would strike fear in the hearts of infantile and weary denizens, and the ones who would eat each other alive... if it meant getting a taste of absolute power.

It was now 11:02 PM. Gang curfews had been in effect for well over thirty-minutes, now... just in time for Draco Esparza and his gang—the ‘El Dragóns’—to await their customers. 

The empty, desolate atmosphere of 46 McLaughlin Ave. at night was often a hotbed for drug dealers to advertise their products to potential buyers; its aforementioned qualities being perfect for those events.

It was so vacant and deserted; even they could not tell if an ambush was being planned.

But not for Draco. Though he seemed cool amidst the paranoia, assassins sneaking around the street for an opportunity to strike wasn’t what worried him the most. Even with his rat-faced visage expressing a calmness that contrasted himself from his hoodlum peers, he could barely hide chills thinking about who was coming to buy his products...

“Hey, Edgar,” his almost-falsetto tenor whispered to his loyal enforcer. ”¿Qué tanto hacen esas perras? Están tardando demasiado.”

“No sé,” Edgar replied in deep bass, cracking his knuckles and flexing his larger-than-life biceps. “¿Algo de lo que me debería preocupar, Draco? Te ves temeroso.”

“No lo sé.” He scratched his head.

“¿No sabes...?” Edgar was worried.

“¿Alguna vez te has sentido asustado de algo que has esperado por un tiempo,” expressed Draco, “¿Así como no saber si te van a dar una Playstation 6 o una estúpida camisa en Navidad?”

“Lo he sentido, si,” replied Edgar.

“Así me estoy sintiendo, vato.” Draco sighed, pulling out a nicotine vape which he smoked a few puffs of. “California Girls, ese... Se ven... No sé. Tal vez siento lo que ustedes, pero... Solo porque se vistan como esos Black Velvet, Pink Generation cualquieras no significa que deberíamos bajar la guardia. Ellos también tienen Stands, ¿Me entienden?”

“¿Tienen Stands?” Edgar exclaimed, almost gasping.

“Si. Es lo que escuché. ¿Con la más mínima probabilidad de que la caguemos, Edgar? Nos matarán a todos. La peor parte es que ni siquiera veremos nada, porque no tenemos Stands como ellos—”

Suddenly, from out of nowhere, the sound of a 2023 Cadillac XT5’s engines roared softly from the other side of the road; cutting off Draco and Edgar’s conversation. Speak of the devil, and they shall come.

“Ahí están esos malditos, Edgar...”

The Cadillac, characterized by a rose-colored paintjob and roof-mounted headlights, immediately pulled over in front of the Dragón hoodlums; not even afraid of the potential hostilities between themselves due to break out.

Collectively, they were the customers Draco mentioned: the California Girls. An all-female gang of six—recognized by their K-pop aesthetic and masks of varying emotions. Though they were all women, it did not stop them from having a high position in the Shakedown criminal hierarchy; second only to a mysterious gang at the head of it all. And just as Draco also mentioned, they were all Stand users: meaning they were infinitely more dangerous than they looked.

One by one, each member stepped out of the car, consisting of:

Rooney Smith, team-leader. African American, early 20s, with an ombre pink-and-blonde straight hairdo and a no-nonsense demeanor. Dons a ‘smiley face’ mask.

Rosa Lopez, second-in-command and trigger-happy enforcer. Hails proudly from Madrid, Spain as a foreign exchange student; early-to-mid 20s, with bright blonde hair and a tough face underneath her mask. Dons a ‘sad face’ mask.

Charli Taylor, resident ‘tech fashionista’ and hippie. Early 20s, disheveled brunette with prescription glasses and a dark side. Dons a ‘nerdy face’ mask.

Gemma Cyrus, the gang’s Consigliere by night and ‘criminal lawyer’ by day. Late 20s, characterized as a gothic tomboy with raven hair and dark eyeshadow. Dons a ‘poker face’ mask.

Clarity Reid, smuggler and parkour artist who serves as a reconnaissance expert. Dirty redhead, mid-to-late 20s, incredibly athletic and flexible with a penchant for piloting drones. Dons a ‘winky face’ mask.

And lastly, “Big Bertha”, real name unknown. Filipino-American and the youngest of the team at 21, yet is the tallest and most physically dominant of them all. Only the girls know of her true face and identity. Dons an ‘angry face’ mask.

Approaching Draco and his men, the Girls followed Rooney with their varying paraphernalia save for Bertha—Rosa with her trusty MAC-11 ‘Blade’ submachine gun, Taylor with her phone and various gadgets, Cyrus with a pen and clipboard full of legal papers, and Clarity piloting a drone hovering up in the air for recon. As they closed the distance between them, Bertha strode over Edgar and a few other hoodlums, making the former look smaller than he should.

“About time you motherfuckers showed up,” Draco’s nasal voice shrilled into the night sky, “So what’s with the fuckin’ name, señoritas? You call yourselves ‘California Girls’ for what? Shooting up BB guns and complaining about the shit LA traffic all day—”

His rambles were silenced by Rosa shooting her MAC-11 in the air, causing him to flinch off to Edgar’s side.

The hoodlums and Edgar responded with silent fury, their grips tight on their own weapons.

“WOOAAAAA~~HH Stop right there!” Draco yelled, raising his hands. “L-Let’s not do that now, okay? We wouldn’t want any fuckin’ vigilante or something tryna fuck over our deal before we even finish it, yeah? We good?”

Rosa, who lacked any thought of respect to him, whispered to herself, “Puto rata hijo de perra... Para de hablar así, me estás poniendo de los nervios...”

“Rosa...” Rooney raised her voice, her hand on Rosa’s wrist. “You know this deal won’t go through if you keep this up.”

Rosa sighed, exasperated. “Sorry, Boss,” she apologized in a fading Spanish accent, lowering the gun, “The silly cabron just needs to eat his words, and I’ll be good.”

"Jesucristo," Draco muttered to himself, "They're not fucking around, aren't hey? No shit, I thought I was dead meat...!" 

Rooney turned her attention to Clarity, who was still piloting the drone.

“Got anything, Clare?” Rooney darted her eyes at every dark spot in the street. Cautious.

“Nope,” she answered, “Got nothing in my sight. We’re all clear.”

Rooney sauntered over Draco with one hand on her waist, and inquired, "Let's cut to the chase here, rat. Show us what you've got in store. All of it. You're clearly new to the Shakedown way of dealing drugs here, so the deal between us means getting the necessary experience to move up the hierarchy."

"O-Okay..." A hic. Draco immediately went to one of two vans his gang had set up for the meeting, opening the trunk as he asked, "So whaddya want from my stash, girls? 'Coz I've been meanin' to sell 'em all since I first got my hands on it!"

Upon revealing the stash of drugs within the van's trunk, the Girls reacted with both surprise and confusion.

Showing off his collection, he explained in thorough detail: "So what I've got is like the friggin' 'El Dorado' of drugs, y'know? I've got shit like crack, meth, weed—"

"I love weed!" Taylor shouted.

"—LSD, MDMA, shrooms," Draco took a sachet of shrooms and showed it to Rooney. "Ya like shrooms? I've got more sachets than that!"

"I'm not a fan of psilocybin," said Rooney.

"Understandable," shrugged Draco. Returning the sachet to the stash, he continued, "I also got some heroin, morphine injectables, vicodin... You should try some of my Perc 30s on the other side"—pointing at the aforementioned sachet of painkillers—"It's a real kicker! I sold it to some of my Latino wrestlers, y'know. Took some and could barely feel any pain while doing DDTs and shit!"

"How much do these sachets cost," asked Rooney.

"On average? About a hundred dollars for each sachet," answered Draco.

"And how did you manage to get those supplies," she asked again, "considering this is high-grade stuff you're moving from San Diego to LA?"

"I have connections," he explained, "Not just 'coz I talk fast and loud, but I like to think I'm pretty good at talking my ass into some high-grade deals. A lot of my stuff comes from Albuquerque"—he pointed at the methamphetamine sachets—"explaining the blue meth ‘round here. I also get some supplies from Las Vegas, Naples, or just about any manufacturer with connections to the Mafia. I gotta admit, though, trying to import them from Naples was fuckin’ hell and back ‘coz of Passione’s weird obsession with cracking down drugs in their turf. Fuckin’ hate that shit."

“You play a dangerous game running drugs in Passione territory,” Rooney crossed her arms. “Especially considering they have guys everywhere trying to expand their American businesses. You know about Steal Your Face?”

“No, not at all,” he replied with uncertainty. “I do know about that super-sized redhead bitch who just moved here a few weeks ago. Always likes to fight every fuckface she sees like a wild bull. Some matador shit, y’know.”

Rooney could barely hide a sign of regret and longing at the person Draco mentioned.

“Anyways, you’re right!” Draco chuckled, rubbing his head “I play a dangerous game importing my shit here under Passione’s fist, girl. And I’m proud of it. It’s what I do best, mi amor!”

“I’m not your love, rat,” hissed Rooney.

“I didn’t mean it like that,” shrugged Draco, nervous. “I just called you that as a sign of good will and respect, okay? Nothin’ malicious about the whole thing.”

A pause.

“Say... How much are you selling?” Rooney scanned the plethora of drugs in the van.

“About $300 a pack for the weed,” Draco answered the question, “$15,000 a pound for the meth, coke is $200 per sachet... The rest is about $320 a pack. It ain’t cheap, but it is costly enough for the quality these products have. Gotta sell that shit fairly, is all.”

“$15,000 for a pound of meth,” she whispered to herself. With quick thinking, she turned to the Girls and beckoned Bertha to her side. Upon calculating the total price of the drugs and additional money she wanted to hand over, she ordered, “Get the 18-grand sack of money in the Caddie.”

Bertha nodded, complying with her request. With ease, she lifted the quite heavy sack containing $18,000 worth of money.

Both Rooney and Bertha came to Draco, the former saying in reply, “Here’s 18-and-a-half grand. This accounts for both the drugs and another two to help secure your position in Shakedown territory.”

“Giving me more than expected,” Draco smirked. “I like that.”

“Don’t think I’m doing this out of courtesy.”

As soon as Draco ordered one of the unarmed hoodlums to assist with bringing out that the Girls purchased, Edgar spotted something mysterious in the shadows and shouted in a low bark: “¡Ey, ey, EY! ¿Quién chingados es ese?”

The rest of the Girls and Dragóns were alerted to Edgar’s call, taking up their arms and aiming it at the man. In their sight was a hooded man whose face was concealed in the dark, wearing a cross between a leather-and-cotton jacket; with an orange light-up collar and a dark grey kilt. He arrived in a red Ducati 300cc motorcycle, parking directly in front of them.

“¡QUIETO, IDIOTA!” One armed hoodlum shouted.

“¡No te muevas!”

“¡Te tenemos acorralado! ¡Ni un paso!”

Compelled to explain himself, the hooded man—whose right hand was clenched and left wide open—spoke in a low, ‘chainsmoker’-esque voice, “Take it easy...”

“Clare, I thought you said there wasn’t anything watching us!” Rooney was perplexed.

And so was Clarity. “I swear, he wasn’t there the first time I looked!” She laid eyes on the tablet again. “I would’ve picked him up earlier if he was driving straight to us!”

“Tranquilízate, mis huevos…” shouted Rosa, who pointed her MAC-11 at him. “Explain yourself, asshole! Or I’ll shoot your ass ‘till you can’t stand no more!”

“Take the sack and go,” Rooney said to Draco. “I’ll handle this stranger myself, rat.”

Draco gulped and seized Rooney’s sack of money, scurrying off to Edgar’s side for protection.

“Charli, get the drugs!” Rooney ordered.

“Y-Yes, Boss, I got it!” Taylor rushed over to the hoodlum with the bag of drugs and gently took it from them, returning to the Girls once she was finished.

Reaching out for her holstered gun by her right hip, Rooney approached the man, keeping her distance as she yelled and threatened him, "Who the hell are you, sir?! Undercover FBI, DEA, a goddamn vigilante?! Speak NOW, or we will shoot!"

Unfazed, the man smiled, and said, "Rooney Smith... the tales of your exploits do not do you justice. You are as beautiful and brilliant as they say you are..."

"Excuse me...?!" Rooney inquired, both insulted and confused.

The man did not care to explain himself. He stood there, silent.

"You listen here, dipshit," she took a step closer, almost unholstering the gun on her hip. "I am NOT saying this again: walk away while you still can, and let us do business. And if you dare move a damn inch, I won't hesitate to cap you before you even get closer!"

The man was silent again. Although, he then turned his focus to Bertha in a slow, almost methodical manner.

"What the—" Rooney exclaimed, before turning around to his direction and realizing whose gaze he had locked onto. Out of ridicule, she mocked, "Oh... So that's who you're looking at, huh? Trust me, I wouldn't advise you to cross paths with Big Bertha. If you wish to stay alive, that is."

"Stay alive...?" The man finally spoke, almost reaching out to something. "Oh, dear... So unwise of you to not ask her if she wanted to live."

"The hell are you talking about—"

In a split-second, the grinning man manifested a lever-action shotgun with gold plating and a cobra-shaped barrel in his left hand. BANG!

Big Bertha went down as she was shot right in her sides, the shotgun screaming hellfire and a rain of 12-gauge pellets. Immediately after she was shot, Bertha fell over the concrete road on her back and let out a piercing howl of pain she had never felt before. 

As she carried the drugs to the Cadillac, Taylor shrieked, "BERTHA!!!" crying out for her dearest friend.

Upon seeing him draw fire, Edgar shouted from the top of his lungs, "Maldito bastardo, ¡DERRÍBENLO, AHORA!"

The Dragón hoodlums followed Edgar's orders without hesitation, and instantly fired a blaze of gunshots unto the hooded man. Pistol rounds, submachine gun rounds, shotgun shells—they fired everything they could to shoot down the man in a torrent of bullets; but the man rolled over a dark alley in the street to avoid the gunfire.

"¿¡DÓNDE MIERDA ESTÁ!?"

"¡Disparenle tan pronto como lo vean!”

"¡No se puede esconder siempre!"

Teary-eyed, Rosa felt nothing but unbridled rage against the man who dared shoot Bertha. Though most would find her intimidating, she and the Girls found Bertha undisclosably sweet; so for her to go down like she was nothing made Rosa snap. “Hijo de puta,” she snarled, as she joined in on the gunfire parade with her MAC-11. “OJALÁ TE MUERAS Y ARDAS EN EL JODIDO INFIERNO PARA SIEMPRE!!!”

Seemingly unafraid of the suppressive gunfire on his hiding spot, the man ducked out of cover and quickly shot down Rosa's MAC-11 without harming her directly, pulling the lever and hiding back to cover afterwards. 

Rosa screamed and clutched her hand in pain, as the MAC-11 being shot caused her grip on it to burn up.

Amidst blistering bullets and deafening cracks, the hooded man smiled again. "Now for the main event," he muttered, whistling as he put away the gun and pointed his hand at the Dragóns' position. 

And then...

A swarm of bees emerged from the alley, which hovered up in the sky near the Dragóns. Oddly, they did not seem to react alarmingly to the swarm, ignoring it as they resumed firing their weapons. However, only Rooney and the Girls noticed, as the former correctly mused...

"Oh, shit... A Stand ability…?!"

The swarm of bees fired a hail of stingers at the Dragóns, most of them ceasing fire from the unexpected swelling sensation of pain throughout their body. A smaller group fired stingers at the drug carrier van, which began burrowing into the van's body. Draco was left unaffected as he took cover behind one of their escort vans, fazed and confused as to why they suddenly felt like being attacked by a horde of bees. 

Only to realize that, upon closer inspection of the stingers in Edgar's arm, that they were attacked by bees. Just not real ones.

"O-Oh, God no..." Edgar dropped his pistol in shock, realizing what had just happened to them. He relayed his observations to Draco as he yelled, "¡DRACO SAL DE UNA MALDITA VEZ DE AQUÍ! ¡ES UN USUARIO DE STAND—"

Before he could finish warning Draco, the stingers burrowed on the van’s body released a charge to the other side. The charges detonated sequentially; from the first all the way to the last, causing the carrier van to explode into a fiery blaze—the shockwave concussing and throwing most of the Dragóns onto the ground. Those left standing barely felt the glass and shrapnel penetrating their flesh. But before they could even figure out how exactly wounded they were, the stingers on their skin also released charges that detonated smaller, if not fatal explosions—small chunks of their flesh and muscle blown apart into small, gory bits; if not completely blowing apart limbs or heads.

Though the Girls were left unaffected, they still had to pay close attention to Bertha’s injuries, tending to them as best as they could. The gravity of the situation was so distressing, even they could not notice the swarm of bees disappearing, and the hooded man walking towards the bloody and fiery scene with a flowing saunter; almost as if today was routine.

“N-No, no, no, no,” cried one hoodlum, who was crawling for dear life with both his legs blown apart by the bees’ stingers. “Por favor... ¡Ayúdeme...”

As the man approached the hoodlum, he said, “You look miserable... I can fix that.”

“N-No! ¡No lo hagas! NO—”

BANG! In seconds, the man put the hoodlum out of his misery with his shotgun, blasting his head off into a bloody unrecognizable crevasse.

Without hesitation, he immediately pulled the lever and moved to his next victim, who had lost all of his limbs, and shot him in the head with the shotgun. Pulling the lever again, he moved onto his next victim: Edgar.

Edgar, who was crawling away with his right arm avulsed from the stingers’ charges, reached out for a double-barrel shotgun dropped by an amputated hand with his remaining arm. Before he could grab it, the hooded man shoved the shotgun out of his reach. Though his vision was blurry, he could make out the cobra-shaped barrel of the man’s shotgun directly in-between his eyes.

Using the last of his strength to speak, he said in defiance, “...L-Loco. I-I’ll make sure... the gods of k-karma... will make you s-suffer... as we have.”

“Hmph. You amuse me,” chuckled the man, as he too blew Edgar’s head off into a crevasse the same way he did to his first victim.

“STOP!” Draco shouted from afar, leaning behind the escort van. “¡Por favor, bastardo enfermo! You’re killing them!”

The man turned to Draco, glaring holes at him as he pulled the lever. “I’m not,” he said, ‘justifying’ his acts by explaining, “I’m just putting them out of their misery. Just like how I’m stopping you from running drugs to your death.”

He instantly shot Draco, the bullets driven through his skull killing him swiftly.

With his work on terminating the Dragóns finished, the hooded man returned his attention to the Girls, observing the five of them collectively tending to a wailing Bertha. He walked carefully back to them, avoiding stepping on some of the blood and flesh laid around the burning carrier van; he even had the gall to squat right next to them, watching Bertha’s agonizing screams with a sickening grin.

“Having fun writhing in unimaginable pain, you poor thing?” his curious bassy rasp startled the Girls, seeing him perched on the road near them.

Though understandably enraged at the way he conducted himself, Rooney raised her palm and stopped them before any rash attack could be executed. With heavy breaths, she glared holes at him and snarled, “...You sick fuck. You’re gonna pay for that.”

“Do you really wanna try that, Rooney?” He dared her, clutching his shotgun. “Look what I did to these people. Challenging me in the fragile state you’re in would be so unwise.”

Rooney growled in response.

Before he could finish talking, he was interrupted by the sound of a vibrating cellphone in his coat’s pocket. He picked up the phone and saw a text message from his superiors, reading:

(R)
Renata

“Garage. Urgent.” Sent 11:10 PM

After sorting out the message, he returned his attention to the Girls.

“As for the rest of you,” the man calmly threatened, “Feel gratitude in the fact that I spared you. But if you ever think of hunting me down and killing me... rescind those thoughts immediately. Doing so would thrust you in a battle which you’ll lose, no matter your drive nor resolve.” 

The Girls helplessly watched as the hooded man urgently went back to his motorcycle and fled the scene for his superiors’ garage, not even expressing an ounce of remorse for the crimes he had just committed. 

Watching him slowly shrink into a small red blob the further he drove, all the Girls—knowing he had wronged one of them—came out of this day knowing nothing.

Nothing... but revenge.

Notes:

Remember to give kudos and (optionally) a comment! This helps in supporting this fic and its future endeavors.

 

Special thanks to PhantomDouglass for beta-reading this chapter, as well as MonkyWorks and Hypern_Nova for assistance in translating the Spanish dialogues in this chapter!

 

Read the translations here!

Chapter 5: Vol. 1 - Disposable Heroes, Part 2

Summary:

Galen's superior Renata Clariss and the gang's engineer Rian Zedd observe the moment the Speedwagon Foundation weapon they stole was stolen again—and they find the identity of the culprit shocking.

Notes:

Chapter originally written January 31, 2023; originally part of the original Chapter 1 before the rewrites of the first two chapters.

Part 2 of a double-release special!

UPDATE (8/25/23): Part 4 of an upcoming overhaul to Vol. 1

UPDATE (2/17/24): Adjusted the formatting and a few dialogue lines.

—|[ CHAPTER 5 ]|—

Disposable Heroes, Part 2

Amid rattling chains stood a woman.

The chains looked and weighed heavy, like a row of tiny dumbbells linked to each other; yet there she was, pulling them towards her with ease. Her face was obscured from the blackness on her dimly-lit gym, as was the rest of her body. Yet the countless beads of sweat gave her skin a reflective silhouette that revealed her 7-foot-tall, impossibly robust and stout physique.

Renata Clariss was her name—27-years-old, and the hooded man’s head superior. She would’ve texted the man for an urgent meeting more than an hour from now, but it wasn’t the time yet.

She pulled the chains again, dragging it to her direction as the light revealed the chains weren’t that heavy... rather, she pulled a 3-foot 40-pounder tire linked to the edge of the chains.

With an iron grip on the chains, she pulled them again with incredible strength, snarling as she ripped the chains off the tire whilst moving it a foot closer to her feet.

Renata gasped for air after she was done, wiping beads of sweat off her forehead as she let loose her tied-up strawberry blonde hair, unfurling it into a tousled mess. Now, it was time for her to move onto her favorite personal pastime...

Her self-developed rigorous physical exercise regimen—one so brutal, any sane person would believe it was borderline self-harm. She had practiced that regimen for over 12 years: it was tried, tested, even questioned by the small cult of personality she cultivated herself, but nothing on Earth changed the fact that she enjoyed doing it very, very much.

With her warm-ups with the tire finished, next in the program were the following: 50 push-ups, followed by 25 one-armed push-ups for each arm to build core strength; heavy ropes training for 15 minutes to improve cardio conditioning and burn body fats; 25 weighted sit-ups with 15 kg plates; 12-rep dumbbell squats for 2 sets; 8-rep deadlifts for another 2 sets; and last but not least, weighted pull-ups for the last 15 minutes of the routine. For over 40 minutes, she performed each step with near-obsessive precision and attention to detail.

She was almost fanatical in the idea that she had to be in peak physical condition, not because she needed to be the most imposing woman in the room; but for rather personal reasons. Made worse given the voice in her head, which said:

“Papa, wake up! Papa, please don’t leave me!”

Now beating down the gym’s punching bag with only her gloved bandages, memories of the past flashed before her eyes every time she drove her fist on the bag.

It was as if she had recently experienced it:

A Thanksgiving family dinner in her hometown of Florence. She was 11-years-old at the time.

Her father was there—as was the rest of her family, even her grandparents came in spite of their very strained relations with some of her uncles and in-laws.

Nine suits came. They were armed to the teeth.

One man with a lavender-painted Mateba Model 6 Unica handgun in .357 Magnum came as the suits put down and restrained everyone in the family.

The man with the Unica came close to her father.

He begged and screamed for his life, but his pleas were cut short...

BANG!

She could remember how horrified she was to see her father’s body fallen over the roasted turkey on the table, blood pooling in its orifices...

But that wasn’t even the worst part.

Even after begging her father to wake up, she felt helplessly enraged the moment he stepped into the dinner himself.

He was the most powerful man in all of Italy: Giorno Giovanna.

But to her...

He was the man behind her father’s slaughter.

The memory of seeing his vaguely half-Asian face, his slick blonde mullet and blue suit-and-tie with three maroon ladybug brooches was enough to enrage her long enough to punch a hole in the bag, grains of sand spilling into the floor afterwards.

Breathless, it was an understatement to believe she felt better. But one thing was clear: if her regimen wasn’t to ensure her dominion over those standing in her way, it was to ensure her obsession with revenge would be kept in check. Maybe it was to let out stress or anything negative she felt. But who cared, anyways? 

She was done.

But the real work was about to start.

“Boss, we’ve got trouble,” a husky feminine voice on the gym’s PA system announced. “You might wanna see this for yourself!”

 

–[ ★★★ ]–

 

Heeding Renata's call, the hooded man made a quite lackluster entrance to the garage: the base-of-operations of their gang, named the Disposable Heroes. The garage was large, dilapidated: with stained concrete walls and a rusting truss system holding rows of fluorescent lights at the top; well-kept on ‘life support’ by an electrical generator apparatus linked to two computer systems, electric automobile charging stations, and a video monitoring system connected to every CCTV surveillance camera in the Greater Los Angeles Area.

Parking the bike in the garage, he was greeted by an unprecedented scene: Renata was there, gathered around the CCTV monitoring system. As was the rest of the gang’s most prominent operatives, which he was also a part of.

The members of the Disposable Heroes comprised of the following:

Chief engineer and second-in-command Rian Zedd. Identified as non-binary, 26-years-old, about 6-feet-3 with heeled boots and serves as the main operator of the CCTV monitoring system and a self-proclaimed genius ‘madman’ at that. They had a purple pixie cut with orange highlights, a fashion sense with complete androgyny and facepaint; the latter two which shared hints of the non-binary pride flag’s colors.

Field operative Casey Shimmer. The youngest of the team at 24-years-old, who also acts as a mischievous ‘class clown’ lightening up the mood. Characterized as having gold lightning motifs around her pink-and-orange braided hair, a white-and-black dress with circular holes around the thighs and five-inch elevator boots that elevated her height up to 6-feet-5 1/2.

‘Captain’ Mobius Bludworth, who shared the same job with Casey. Though unspecified, he seemed to be in his mid-20s, dressed often as a ship’s captain from the era of the Galleon trade. Despite this, his affinity for dressing up as a ‘pirate’ did not hide his snarky Australian etiquette.

Getaway driver Maverick Dallas, the newest member on the team. Birth records from a Boston hospital claim he was in his early-30s, yet he seemed much younger in appearance and personality. He was the most plain in appearance, wearing only a simple but untidy black suit-and-tie; with his most unique features being a ‘human penguin’ at 5-foot-6 and a balding, Falstaffian build.

The hooded man himself, Galen Crawford. Late-30s, built like a soldier in his prime. Besides his ‘chainsmoker’ voice and his hooded trenchcoat, being in much brighter lighting conditions than the darkness of 46 McLaughlin Ave. revealed details about his appearance: the left-breast-side of his coat had a gold inscription resembling the letters “GC”, and angular sunglasses around his tanned Adonis mohawk. 

And lastly, the elephant in the room: Renata, the boss. Now in a brighter-lit environment, a lot of her features were clearer—aside from her Herculean physique, she had shiny amethyst eyes; a ghastly pale complexion and an unusually soft face accentuated by faint eyeshadow resembling ‘eyebags’. Mostly dressed in white, with a rolled-up sleeved overcoat outlined in black lines and silver fur; a ‘KCOT · KCIT’ pattern around the lower end of the coat; and dark undergarments with gold accents and fishnet stockings.

Hearing Galen’s arrival, Renata asked in a lackadaisical low alto, “Galen... If you would give us a good excuse for your tardiness, I’d be satisfied.” 

The rest of the gang save for Renata and Dallas gave questioning looks at Galen.

“What did you think I was doing, Ren?” Galen crossed his arms and approached the others. “I took care of the Esparza business, just so you know. The cleanup of the mess was exhausting.”  

“You got some good news for us?” Casey looked up at him with a smile.

“A little bit of both, kid.” Galen sighed, adjusting the shotgun strapped to his back. “Good news is, I made sure he and his cronies won’t ever set foot on Shakedown again, because they’re all dead.”

The gang raised eyebrows at Galen.

“...Just as I was ordered to do, you kids,” he explained himself with a subtle groan to every word. “But the bad news is, California Girls got in with the deal, and even I didn’t account for that possibility.”

“Fuck,” muttered Zedd, worried.

“Well, that’s a whoopsie daisy right there,” Bludworth chuckled, fidgeting with his pirate hat.

“Those kids?” Renata leaned closer to Galen.

“Yes,” he answered. “But I didn’t kill anyone, before you start worrying about accidentally starting a war. I only hurt them long enough to put ‘em out of commission.”

“That’s good,” Renata slightly smiled. “That should let them know who the real one in charge is.”

Galen went over to the monitoring system, and checked out one of the monitors. “What about Jack,” he asked them, “Is he taken care of?”

“The traitor? Yes. With ‘explosive’ fashion, too.” Renata chuckled quietly. “Admittedly, he’s not as slick as he thinks he is. And neither are all the things he usually demonstrates in the field...”

“Yeah,” Casey joined in, rubbing the lightning hairpin on her head. “I might be annoying at trying to be funny, but even I wouldn’t make a ‘Dad joke’ of myself with what he does, y’know? Calling himself ‘High Jack’ just ‘coz he hijacks some gangbanger's car and shit? That’s the worst thing I've had to deal with, for months!”

“At least I tolerate him better than the shit you pull,” shouted Bludworth.

“Oh, fuck you, ‘captain’,” she mocked him. “At least I try to be safe and funny with my pranks and stunts! Unlike that blind welder-ass snitch who tried to rat us out—”

“Casey,” Galen raised his voice. “Let’s not start this thing between you both again, kid.”

“Sorry, Galen,” Casey frowned.

“By the way,” Galen inquired, “about the urgent message. What the hell happened this time?”

Sighing heavily as they pressed keys on the system, Zedd answered, “...You know about the thing we stole from the Speedwagon Foundation back in Washington?”

“Yeah. And what of it?”

“It’s been stolen from the storage room we locked away.” Zedd groaned with both palms burying their face.

“Who stole it?” Galen marched towards the system, as if he was forcing his way through the thief’s whereabouts.

“Easy, chief,” Dallas stopped him. Nervous. “Wouldn’t wanna rush if I were you...”

“The thing is, Galen,” Renata mustered up the courage to explain, “we don’t know. We already inquired about the guard’s witness account watching over it, but he was knocked out before he could get an ID on him. So the only thing we have now to search for leads is one of the cameras in the storage room. Unfortunately, it was broken during the scuffle with the thief and the guard, but I believe we may be able to recover it. Speaking of...”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Zedd turned their attention to the system, pressing keys on the keyboard. “I’m on it. Give me a few minutes, tops. If not, half-an-hour ‘coz footage from broken cameras take a whiiii~~le to recover.”

“Alright.” Renata then focused on Bludworth and Dallas next. “Pirate. Driver,” she requested, “See if you can find any more clues in the storage room. We need as many clues to the thief's identity as we can.”

“Yes, Boss,” both men nodded, and approached the storage room by the middle of the two charging stations.

“Galen. Casey. You’re with me,” she ordered. “This is a meeting to ourselves, and nothing more. I can’t fully trust that the two of them have faith in us, especially considering the price Jack ultimately paid for trying to rat us out.”

“But they’re cool, though!” Casey argued. “Even if Bludworth’s such a pompous dick...”

“I understand, Casey,” Renata sympathized with her, “but I can’t risk it. They haven’t known us longer than the three of you have.”

Casey frowned, nodding in defeated acceptance.

Galen swooped by the monitor, noticing one of the seven monitors in the system showing a different image than the rest. “Ren, I know I’ve never questioned you. Hell, I’ve never questioned my loyalty to the gang, or any decision you’ve made. But...” he hurled a pointing finger at the image in the monitor. “What the hell is this?”

The image showed surveillance footage of Joshua & Jocelyn’s first meeting, with a tiny amount of static and distortion around it.

Renata turned to Zedd with a serious eye. “Zedd,” she asked them, “Why do you still have the subway camera in the system?”

“I dunno,” they shrugged as they clacked keys. “Thought you were gonna look at it for more deets or something...”

“Good point.” Renata smiled and leaned closer to the monitor. “Galen did ask about them, after all.”

“Listen here, I don’t seem to know who these two are.” He raised an eyebrow. “But why them? They are quite inconsequential to your endgame, or so it seems...”

“Good question,” she smiled again. “Do you know who the girl is?”

“Eh, no.” He shrugged.

“She was a part of Jack’s last op before we pulled the trigger on punishing him,” she explained. “Now, I don’t feel like you’d give a damn about who she really is, even though I know the answer to that.” She hid a face of contempt over her identity. “But the boy... Well, if you don’t mind taking a trip down your memory lane...”

“My memory lane?” Galen crossed his arms, probing on that phrase.

“Oh, you’ll have to thank him yourself. Because if it weren’t for him, I don’t think you and I and everyone else here would’ve even crossed paths. He is, after all, our biggest contributor to how and why we possess these strange ‘abilities’ in our disposal.”

“Oh, no...” Galen’s mouth was left ajar in realization. “Vespertine...”

“Not necessarily,” she clarified, “but the bioweapon we stole from our trip to Washington? Hm. Let’s say they used that as a basis. Using the Stand Arrow to turn it into a gaseous substance is genius on a level I have and will never reach. That’s impressive, even to someone as smart as me.”

“What were you trying to do with it, Ren?” He recoiled a tiny bit, stepping slightly away from her proximity.

"Well," Renata shrugged. "The sins of that boy's past. He cannot escape it. Because I won't allow him to..."

"You do realize you risk crossing a very thin line here, right?" His deep voice began to strain a tiny bit. "At best, the casualties would be very minimal. But that chance is slim. You COULD end up killing dozens, for Christ's sake! Do you really understand the 'gravity' of the situation where you end up using it, Ren?"

"Yes, I do," Renata stood adamant. "Maybe think for one second that he brought everything upon himself, Galen. And if someone, most preferably me, would use it: the act is easily justifiable. Their blood will be on his hands, after all. Nothing more, nothing less. All is fair and balanced. Now..."

She crossed her arms and raised a slight eyebrow at him. "If you would like to further question my decisions on the matter, I'd be obliged to listen."

A pause of silence.

"H-Hey, are you guys done?" Zedd broke the tension. "I've got the footage, already."

Renata and Galen both darted to Zedd.

"Pull it up on the big monitor," she ordered.

Pressing keys, Zedd followed Renata's orders as they pulled up recovered footage from the storage room's broken CCTV camera. Casey soon sauntered her way over Zedd's chair as the four members of the administration began observing the footage.

"I should start with the moment the guard went out cold," they said, scrubbing the footage to that point. "Should be a good starting point to see what the fuck actually happened."

"How much resolution does that camera have," asked Renata.

"6K res. 2K pixels less than every camera in LA, right now."

"That should make things more difficult to discern," she mused.

"Yeah, but... On the flipside," Zedd reassured, "it's not that bad, Boss! We'll still be able to get a clear picture of the guy's identity... if zoomed in."

As the aforementioned guard slumped down to the wall with a lack of consciousness in him, a man in dark robes with a large hood concealing his face—the lone thief who stole the Speedwagon Foundation bioweapon—proceeded to the storage room containing the bioweapon. It happened around the time Renata was working herself to near-death in the garage's gym, and when Zedd was busy observing Joshua & Jocelyn's miraculous escape from the bomb. The thief traced his steps to an area outside the camera's range.

"The fuck?" Zedd was baffled. "Why would he go in the damn thing without a gas mask? Is he stupid?"

"Or," Casey proposed, "They could be a Stand user. Why call the thief 'he' if we haven't seen their face?"

"I dunno," they shrugged. "Seems like how a man walks and acts to me..."

Zedd scrubbed the footage's playback forward three minutes, surprised that he hadn't moved away yet. He was somehow still there. "Weird," they commented, "Jackass hasn't even left, yet..."

"Well," Galen dryly said to Renata, smirking, "Guess your plans for literal terrorism's gone out the window. What now?"

"I don't know..." Renata turned to Zedd immediately. "Zedd, scrub it forward eight minutes. It's possible he had gone with the gas in hand at the time."

"Gotcha." Zedd followed through with the request, and saw that the thief was dragging the bioweapon—which assumed the form of a tall, thin gas cylinder—being dragged by the thief through a wheeled trolley within the camera's range. "He's leaving—Oh, shit."

Suddenly, the thief stopped. He later turned to the camera, as if he was acknowledging being watched.

"The fuck?" Casey felt perplexed by the thief. "Why would he fuckin' steal it if he knew there was a camera lying around? I dunno, that's... t-that's just bizarre, I'm tellin' ya."

"Hold it," Renata stared carefully into the monitor. "This doesn't feel right..."

"Feel right, how?" Zedd looked worriedly at Renata.

"This... it's wrong. It's all wrong." Renata came to a distressing conclusion. "He wanted US to see him... And I didn't realize—" 

Then, the moment came as the thief uncovered his hood before them. It caught the four of them by surprise when they realized that the thief himself looked frighteningly close to Joshua. The exact same hairstyle, exact same face and glasses. It was, without the shadow of a doubt, either him... or an imposter lurking about.

"The fuck?!" Casey exclaimed. "Isn't that the fuck who models like a girl—"

"What the absolute shit, are you kidding me?!" Zedd almost jumped off their chair in outrage. "I swear to God, I've legit seen the guy survive one of my bombs on the city! And yet, he's standing THERE with the gas we stole! What the fuck is this?!?"

The four of them were left standing there, speechless. Renata moreso, given her struggles with processing that not only was committing mass murder with the bioweapon was justified by putting the blame on Joshua—but that the man standing before them in the monitor was an almost 1:1 copy of him; if not the actual person in the flesh. The grave possibility that his intentions for the bioweapon were inherently despicable had now been realized.

“I-I...” Renata recoiled. “I didn’t account for this.”

Needless to say, for her...

Things had just gotten out of hand.

Notes:

Remember to give kudos and (optionally) a comment! This helps in supporting this fic and its future endeavors.

 

Special thanks to PhantomDouglass for beta-reading this chapter in its current revision!

Chapter 6: Vol. 1 - Joshua's Bizarre Home Life

Summary:

The following morning, we get a small insight into Joshua's daily morning routine; including his own internal debate whether to trust Jocelyn after last night's tumultuous events or not.

Notes:

Chapter originally written August 21st, 2023.

Part 5 of an upcoming overhaul to Vol. 1

—|[ CHAPTER 6 ]|—

Joshua's Bizarre Home Life

“Sooooo... That’s basically what happened, right?” Coniglio felt curious about the circumstances behind their meeting.

“...Yeah.” Joshua whistled, rubbing his neck.

“Well, you’re looking at it from his point-of-view,” Jocelyn added, “and a very unreliable one at that. What actually happened is that he fuckin’ crashed into me, got almost blown up, yada yada yada, and then the shit you found me with is what happened to me. The fucked-up quad and cactus needles all over my face, by the way.”

“And then because you got hurt so badly, he had to intervene and use his Stand to kill that guy. Right?” Coniglio paid close attention to Jocelyn.

“From both our points-of-view, yeah,” Joshua sighed. He put his glasses up before they fell.

“And that was the only thing he did right, Zia Coni. Because what else is he but a piece of shit?” She jabbed a slight elbow on Joshua.

“You’re STILL stuck up about that?!” Joshua was outraged.

“Yeah. Got a problem about it?”

“Simmer down, you two,” Coniglio felt the burden of being the mediator of their conflict. “There’s no need to get all pissy about how you two met, y’know. Besides, Josh already apologized about the thing, and I’m adamant it was just an accident beyond anyone’s control. Am I right, Josh?”

“Well, I’m done apologizing, so...”

“Yeah... Like hell I’m gonna just forget about that and move on.” Jocelyn hid a contemptuous mutter from them both.

It was now morning in the mansion where Joshua lived, owned by his legal guardians Coniglio and his trusted mentor/confidant Bernard Kingsley. Though last night was an arduous; if not life-threatening ordeal, the two JoJos were treated to a nice and warm breakfast in the dining room. It was relieving, yes—but not enough to soothe them out of their hostilities. Mostly Jocelyn’s, even though she was understandably the aggressor between them both.

Though both of them dressed in their outfits from last night—or at least a fresh copy of them, considering how roughed up they were from surviving both an explosion and an enemy Stand user—the near 50-year-old Coniglio was just wearing simple home clothes in contrast. 

“You do realize how messed up that sounds, right?” She rubbed her long, wavy light brown hair.

“Maybe,” Jocelyn turned away.

“Like any single one of you could’ve died there!”

“I know, Coni,” Joshua relaxed in his seat. “I know... Trust me, I even doubted if I was gonna make it out of that situation alive.”

“And guess what? We did—N-No, I did,” Jocelyn pointed at herself, “He just tagged along ‘coz I would’ve had that guy by my fists if crashing into each other didn’t tweak my leg—”

“You’re getting kinda annoying with this whole ‘blaming me for your troubles’ schtick, Joce,” Joshua sighed, irritated.

“Oh, yeah? Deal with it, nerd.” She clicked her tongue and made finger guns. 

“I’m not a nerd.”

“Well, you look like one! So I might just call you that.”

“Jocelyn...” Coniglio groaned. “Don’t do him like that. He’s had it rough these days.”

“Sorry, Zia Coni,” she sheepishly apologized, though with a subtle hint of scorn.

“So how long are you gonna be here for, Joce,” Joshua asked, “Weeks? A month? Since you dropped out of Hugh Hudson to move in with us.”

“Six weeks,” she answered. “If I’m starting to annoy you—which you totally deserve ‘coz of what you did to me last night—then you’ll have six weeks to wait. Then I can fuck off and do whatever when graduation comes by. Until then, be lucky that you’ve got a bad bitch you can play with anytime~”

As she chuckled mischievously and elbowed him in the shoulder, Joshua resisted the urge to blush as he instantly knew what she meant.

“What?!” He resisted again. “No, no, no, no, no, t-that can’t—That can’t be right!”

“Jocelyn.” Coniglio raised her voice.

“What, Zia Coni? I’m just messin’ with him!” Jocelyn shrugged, frowning.

A tall man about Coniglio’s age—if not older—swooped into the dining room, wearing a white Nike-branded muscle tee hoodie while wiping sweat off his bulging dark-skinned muscles with a thick, blue towel. This was Bernard.

“Morning to you, kids,” he said, leaning by an empty side of the table.

“Ah, Bernie the Big Puppy! G’morning to you!” Jocelyn waved.

“I’m not a puppy, y’know,” Bernard sighed, wiping his nose.

“Really, Joce? Now you’re gonna disrespect him the same way you’ve been disrespecting me?” Joshua glared.

“It’s affectionate, dumbass,” she explained, adjusting her scarf. “There’s a difference between how I treat him and you.”

“Damn, you didn’t have to do him like that, though!” Bernard leaned close to Joshua and patted his shoulder. “Besides, kid, don’t mind her too much. She’s just always mad in ways even I don’t understand.”

“Acting like I’m a troll or something...”

“Josh, I think you and I should have a little talk.” Bernard asked. “Are you done eating breakfast yet?”

“Yeah,” he answered, “I was gonna get the car started for the mixer. What’s up?”

“I’lll explain when we get there.” Bernard smiled, and made a trek for the foyer.

“Yeah... Have fun catching up, girls,” Joshua waved with a half-hearted smile, rising up from his seat and following Bernard for their talk.

“See ya, Josh!” Coniglio waved back.

By the time they reached the foyer, the two men—both ever closer with each other—felt it was appropriate they talk about something... most preferably, for Joshua himself, getting feelings off his chest. Because the night of May 25th, 2029 was unlike any night he had ever lived to see.

It was self-explanatory at this point, so he needn’t feel like recapping everything in great detail.

So instead, Joshua asked, “Well, Bernard... How'd your gym time go?”

“Bench pressed 450 pounds, no big deal,” Bernard answered, nonchalantly.

“No big deal?” he scoffed. “That’s like, more than twice your body weight! And at your age, too! Ridiculous calling it nothing, Bernard, ‘coz it’s probably your personal best when you’re not uhh... y’know... what Jocelyn called you earlier.”

“Yeah, I wouldn’t want to think highly of that, kid.” Bernard unhooded himself, wiping his forehead sweat with the towel.

“Anyways,” Joshua shrugged, pocketing his hands, “I don’t know what’s up, but I’m free to talk about whatever. Something to kill time before Joce and I both go to the Foundation Day mixer by eight.”

“I thought you and I should talk about last night.” Bernard crossed his arms.

“I was afraid you were gonna say that,” Joshua felt a little aghast.

“Well, what else did you think was I gonna talk about? Setting my own records at the gym?”

“Anything but that.”

“I thought so.” Bernard sighed. “Did you really do it?”

“Uh, what?” Joshua scratched his head.

“Your Stand,” he explained. “Did you really use it after what, five years?”

“Five years, yeah... First time since I stopped.”

“Well, I was afraid it was gonna happen,” Bernard splayed his hands across his waist, tilting to the right. “Given it’s the 5th anniversary of—”

“I don’t wanna talk about him, though...” Joshua felt pain at the thought of remembering a memory long gone.

“Sorry,” Bernard frowned.

“It’s fine, you were gonna ask about him, anyways...” Joshua fixed his glasses. “Not like I could stop you from doing so.”

“So, about the User...”

“Yeah,” Joshua scratched his hair, “he was blind, but his ability let him echolocate our positions with triangular pulses... He attacked by using something called the Spin to weaponize some metal balls he attached to his clothing.”

“Oh, the Spin? Haven’t heard of that in a long time.” Bernard scoffed.

“How’d you know about that?”

“I mean... considering I helped train Chancellor Zeppeli with Hamon all those decades ago... you could ask him about it, if you want. Not like I think you’re interested in learning all about it.” Bernard sighed, rolling his eyes around.

“Yeah. He had it all going to plan, and he still fucked it up.”

“What’d you do to him, anyways?” Bernard was curious.

“Your old vape, from when you were trying new things,” Joshua simply explained. “Extracted enough metals from my car... then I convinced him to smoke it. I think we would’ve been dead if I hadn't tricked him into smoking it all. As far as we know, he's dead. I don't think anyone could save him with Protoman stuff, given that much of his upper extremities were blown up. Brain included...” He sighed afterwards.

"Jeezus," Bernard felt a little disgusted imagining how that scene played out.

"But that's not even what I'm worried about, Bernard," Joshua expressed. "Yeah, I know for a fact that almost getting blown up AND almost dying to a Stand user is one heck of a double whammy. But the fact that those two incidents are connected because she's being targeted by some powerful entities even us both don't know about? Yes, I'm worried! Because what the hell's gonna happen if more of them not only come for her, but also come for me 'coz I killed one of them while protecting her?!"

"Josh," Bernard reached his hand out, almost pleading.

"Yeah, I know," Joshua recoiled slightly, "I know you're gonna tell me that I'm paranoid, that I worry too much, but can't my worries be at least justified this time? Besides, I don't think I'll be able to handle another enemy Stand user. I had to use whatever scraps of my memory using Rebel Moon I had to kill him. And it was all of it."

"Don't over exaggerate things, too much." Bernard patted him in the shoulder. "I think you did your best."

"Mhm, I thought so," Joshua sighed again, "but do I really have to trust her? After everything that happened to me last night?"

"I mean," Bernard leaned closer to him, "it's fine if you don't."

"How so?" Joshua was a little confused.

Crossing his arms, Bernard explained, "I don't... exactly trust Jocelyn, too. Given what you said about her being targeted by some threat we don't know of. Apart from the time me and Coni went on a vacation to Italy and met with her folks, I don't have too much of a good impression of her. But hear me out, okay?"

"Alright," Joshua relaxed. "I'm all ears."

"I think she's a well-meaning kid who's got into the wrong crowd," he said, "But whatever you think of her, Josh—whether you believe she's the Antichrist or someone misunderstood—tell her how you feel when she's around. Whether you trust her or not, just tell her. And tell it, quick. Because I don't think it'll end well if you don't decide anytime soon."

A pause.

"Okay..." Joshua sighed, and checked his watch. "Shoot," he muttered, "It's a minute 'till eight. We gotta go."

He turned to Jocelyn, who was sharing a laugh with Coniglio at the dining room, and shouted, "Yo, Jocelyn, we gotta go! I don't think everyone on campus will appreciate us if we show up late!"

"Yeah?! Okay, I'm going!" Jocelyn stood up from her chair and waved goodbye at Coniglio.

"Stay safe, you two!" Coniglio waved back at them.

"Don't worry, we will!" Joshua shouted and waved at her.

"And please, just bail if you two find another Stand user out for blood!" She advised them.

"Yeah, I won't forget about that!" Joshua marched his way for the foyer's door, and left for the garage with Jocelyn, who was following him.

"Bye!"

"Don't forget about what I said, kid!" Bernard shouted at Joshua.

And then, came silence.

"Damn..." Bernard whistled. "You think they'll be okay," he asked aloud.

"I don't see how something bad's gonna happen, no," Coniglio shrugged.

"Okay..." Bernard walked back to the dining room, hoping for the best in the two JoJos’ travels.

If only he knew today would be the last time their lives would taste peace...

Notes:

Remember to give kudos and (optionally) a comment! This helps in supporting this fic and its future endeavors.

 

Special thanks to PhantomDouglass for beta-reading this chapter in its current revision!

Chapter 7: Vol. 1 - The SPW-0987 Incident

Summary:

The next morning on UCLA's 110th Foundation Day festivities, thousands gather at Royce Hall for Jeremiah Speedwagon's keynote; but something dark begins to unfold—and with it comes fatal consequences.

Notes:

Shout-out to SimpingForCreamSoda and two other guests who left a kudos in the previous chapter!

UPDATE (2/6/23): Added a small easter egg hinting at a future character in the second scene.

UPDATE (10/10/23): Part 6 of an upcoming overhaul to Vol. 1

—|[ CHAPTER 7 ]|—

The SPW-0987 Incident

Prestigious as it is immortal. Illustrious, grand, and home to aspiring intellectuals. That is what the University of California, Los Angeles is, for most of its students and alumni.

Founded on May 23rd, 1919, UCLA is widely recognized among other universities as the best of the best in the world. With its Romanesque Revival-style architecture for the campus that has shown its graceful old age and the origin of millions of stories state-of-the-art research facilities and modern housing dormitories that exhibit its evolution; and faculty, researchers or even alumni having over 27 Nobel laureates to add to the university's accolades, the UCLA has earned its right to be called the top #1 university around the globe. It has also bred numerous talents from sports to Hollywood, to even people of controversy.

And now, though it was three days behind, it was on the verge of celebrating its 110th Foundation Day. Students and alumni from all walks of life—freshmen, seniors, or even transfers—were bound to attend, with an opening keynote by Speedwagon Foundation CEO Jeremiah Speedwagon spearheading the opening festivities.

Joshua and Jocelyn themselves also happened to be attending the celebration mixer.

While it took them heavy traffic from Sunset Boulevard to campus grounds, they came right at the nick of time; not too late, not too early, but just in the right time to see piles of students approaching the 87-step Janss Steps leading to Royce Hall, where the keynote was scheduled to begin. The thousand-strong crowd was diverse, ranging from people of varying races, genders, body shapes; heavyset to lightweights, nerds to jocks, and party goers to wallflowers... They could almost see a blond woman in dark clothes clutching a black umbrella standing by a tree's shade.

"Jesus," muttered Jocelyn, "There's so many of them, I could almost count sheep..."

"Yeah, well," Joshua scoffed, nearly imperious in his chuckle. "You're gonna have to get used to it." He bumped her shoulder as he walked onto the steps.

"Great," she groaned, "While you were a dumb piece of shit the night before, now you're being both a total dick and a piece of shit! Ugh..."

Since they were possibly the only non-athletic students in UCLA who were above 6-feet, it made sense that they were total standouts amongst the sea of students and alumni by the stairs. Some bothered the thought of morbidly stepping into a burial site of the stairs' namesakes, but others not only thought of how marvelous the sight of such tall people—they also pondered that Joshua, arguably the most popular student on campus due to his modeling career, may have found love...

Even Jocelyn could hear murmurs of students speaking their contemplation out loud. Hastily, she whispered to him, "Hey, how the fuck can you walk around and not get embarrassed by what everyone's saying?"

"What are they saying," he whispered back.

"They think we're a fucking couple," she hissed, "How can you live with that?!"

"Are you really nervous about something you're overthinking?"

"No, just put your so-called 'good ears' to use! They're all thinking we're dating or fucking or something! Jesus..." She groaned, exasperated.

"Why don't you just yell them out of it?" He whistled quietly.

"You wanna get me kicked out on my first day, dumbass?!" She hissed again, fighting the urge to do such things.

"It's better than doing nothing," he shrugged.

Suddenly, from out of nowhere, a nasal-sounding voice cried, "Yo, is that who I think it is?!"

"...Shit," Joshua suddenly recomposed himself, fixing his glasses.

"Who the fuck is that," asked Jocelyn.

Both of them turned around and saw 19-year-old Ricardo Salamanca of San Diego Fame. He was thin, but athletic, wearing a backwards cap and various UCLA Bruin-themed paraphernalia; even wearing sneakers colored in blue-and-yellow paint. He ran up the steps with enthusiasm in his eyes, as he shouted, "Look at you, Josh! You got that rizz now, huh?"

"Oh, you," laughed Joshua, as he converged with Ricky's path and made a quick embrace. It was barely even a day, but they felt great to see each other again.

Jocelyn felt herself instantly groaning at the sight of them. "Ugh..."

"How's it going, mi hombre? You doin' great?" Ricky asked, a little concerned.

"I'm fine, thanks," chuckled Joshua, "Uhh, aside from me stressing myself out with some of the questions for our group thesis, I'm doing pretty great! Shoot with Harper's went a bit crappier than I thought, but I think the crew did a good job at hiding how shit I was."

"Yeah, well, I can't blame you. T'was hell trying to spitball interesting shit that would turn on the judges' brains and stuff..." 

"I'm sorry, what the fuck is this now?" Jocelyn asked the two, frowning.

"Oh, pardon him," Joshua chuckled, 'changing' personas. "He's just a good friend of mine, a sophomore. Helped out on his thesis for Philosophy and stuff. By the way, Ricky, this is Jocelyn"—gesturing around them for a handshake—"she's a transfer student from Hugh Hudson. My folks took her in since they're close with her folks."

"Ahh, my manners," Ricky rubbed his head, offering a hand to Jocelyn. "Ricardo Salamanca, resident weirdo of San Diego."

"Jocelyn Johannssen," she responded with a handshake, somewhat contemptuous. "Former shithead in charge of Delta Gamma in Hugh Hudson. Also a former star athlete for the volleyball team."

"I don't know what's going on with ya, sis," he smiled nervously, "But whatevs. Nice to have someone new to Bruin culture... Oh, and uh, they call you 'JoJo' too, right? "

"What are you trying to do with this?" Jocelyn frowned.

"M'just sayin', osa! It's trippy, but shiiiieet people are gonna ship y'all so HARD you just 'coz you and Jo-migo here"—he pointed to Joshua—"share a nickname."

"It's not like that!"/"We're not like that!" Both JoJos shouted in stereo.

"Okay," shrugged Ricky. "I won't press no more. Keep your secrets."

Ricky stepped away from them a tad bit, as he let Joshua & Jocelyn be. Ignoring everyone trodding up the steps, they tended to themselves as Jocelyn hissed, "Y'know, you make really shitty friends. He can't just go on assuming we're an item like that!"

"Yeah, well, we've gotta get over it," Joshua responded, callous. "Everyone's gonna assume we're a thing, either way. Can't be helped we're both called 'JoJo' and are both Stand users in the first place."

"Oh, yeah? I'm not gonna get over it!" She growled. "Oh, and by the way," she pointed at him, "Fuck is up with you? We've gone and overcame the spinning Spinny thing and blew off that Jack guy's guts and shit! Why're ya a bit too damn off, right now?!"

"That's your problem," he pointed out, "you think I can trust you too fucking easily."

"Really? After all the bullshit we've lived through?!"

"Okay? Hear me out." Joshua became serious as stone. "I want you to know this, Jocelyn"—he darted a finger near her chest—"I don't like you. Hell, I don't think I have the right to trust you, ESPECIALLY after last night being as life-threatening as it was. We almost got blown the fuck up! Not withstanding the fact that we almost got killed by a Stand user who's got business with whoever the fuck you are! Can I even trust someone like you, who's got some kind of bounty on her fucking head, and expect to live another day?"

Jocelyn stood her ground, scowling at him.

He resumed, "I understand that we're gonna need each other's asses to survive whoever comes our way. But that doesn't necessarily mean that I'll willingly work with you. And I'd like to keep it that way." He sighed. " I may have not been an active Stand user for five years, but I know how to survive, no matter what."

A moment of silence between them occured.

"...Fair enough," she answered, "If you want that shit, you'll get that shit. No bullshitting me into changing my mind, will you?"

"Who says I'll do such things?"

In a moment of 'imperfect timing', Ricky shouted, "Great, the paparazzi?! Who the fuck's this, now?!"

Both of them turned to where Ricky shouted, and then... fun and games were now razed asunder as Joshua expressed contempt. 'Oh, goddamn it... Not like this...'

Reporters from varying news stations and the Daily Bruin student newspaper surrounded a particular person-of-interest that Joshua was more than happy to feel angered from. By the path from the gates to the steps leading to Royce Hall, Patricia Renetti—accompanied by her posse of bodyguards—expected to head down the hall as a new transfer student peacefully. If only she knew the reporters' presence meant her desire for peace would go unanswered.

"Oh, you," Jocelyn muttered to herself, "Here comes the biggest hater..."

"Ms. Renetti, Ms. Renetti!" The reporters' voices deafened her, over-stimulating her senses to a fault. 

"Can you tell us about the Vogue controversy—"

"—Are you interested in the MAISON partnership—"

"—do you feel inclined to express your feelings toward Joshua Johnson—"

"Will you ever work with Mr. Johnson again?"

"—will this incident affect your working relationship with Mandelle Modeling Agencies—"

"Ms. Renetti, what made you return to education?" Out of all those questions, she somehow singled that one out. 

She stopped, and raised her $400 Bottega Veneta sunglasses up her head, turning to the reporter who asked that question and answered, "I'm not inclined to answer your questions."

"And what about the possibility of working with Joshua Johnson in the future," came another reporter. "Will your controversial behind-the-scenes exposé affect your current relationship with his agency?"

"Like I've said," Renetti resumed, impatient. "I am NOT inclined to answer any of your questions, as of this time. I have a Foundation Day to attend to, and I don't want any single one of you stopping me from getting first in line." She beckoned for her bodyguards. "Boys? Let's go. Greatness awaits!"

Renetti then left the paparazzi behind with the bodyguards for the stairs, some slowing down to prevent other reporters from catching up and annoying her even more.

“Let’s just get outta here, guys,” Joshua groaned in annoyance, facing the other way. “I don’t wanna fuck around with that greedy bitch—”

“Joshuaaaa~~!”

Joshua could not mistake the almost-gleeful inflection in her voice.

“...Shit.”

“I’m surprised you’re actually here!” Renetti laughed, signaling the guards to stand their ground and walked up to the trio. “Had a hunch you were a no-show ‘coz of your... thing at yesterday’s shoot, but... Speak of the devil, and heeee shall appear.”

“I could think the same to you,” Joshua crossed his arms. “Guess I made a mistake not buying you were actually coming to study here.”

“Well, better to believe your eyes than the news.” She gave him a haughty grin.

Jocelyn could only groan at the sight of Renetti thinking her ego could outgrow the three of them.

“Aren’t we all supposed to go, man?” Ricky slightly elbowed Joshua.

“Yeah, who are you now?” Renetti turned to Ricky, offended.

“Yeah, yeah, why don’t we all just go and get to the hall?” Jocelyn stood between the two boys and Renetti. “Better to go and listen to that capitalist’s speech than waste time blocking the fuckin’ way.”

“Pfft,” Renetti chuckled. “I knew it. Using your fans as a shield.”

"Why would I be a fan of this piece of shit?" Jocelyn raised her eyebrow, closing the distance between her and Renetti. 

“Can we not?” Joshua stepped in and separated them. “Can we please just go and fuck off to the hall? Besides... I’m not interested in something like Vogue happening again. And I’m half-sure that you don’t want it, either.”

A tense pause.

Renetti sighed, lowering her shades. “Well, then...” She chuckled. “See you at the hall, then.”

She signaled for the guards to follow her onto the hall, after what seemed to be moments of halting a crowd of angry students from reaching there.

Once she left with the guards, the three of them felt a moment of warm respite.

“Fuckin’ bitch,” Jocelyn sighed, infuriated with her fists clenched. “If only I could rough up that piece of shit... Annoying...”

“Believe me,” Joshua patted her in the shoulder, “I could, if I wanted to...”

“Let’s just get outta here,” Jocelyn turned back to the hall and marched up the stairs, visibly infuriated.

“Same,” Ricky followed Jocelyn up.

When the dust settled, Joshua let out a hopefully relaxing sigh as he followed the others up the hall, waiting for the stage to be set...

Waiting for the moment their lives would spiral into a terrible darkness.

 

–[ ★★★ ]–

 

“Good morning, everyone!” UCLA Chancellor Andreas Caballero Zeppeli greeted the attendees seated in Royce Hall.

Many of whom were in the Janss Steps before—counting Joshua, Jocelyn, Ricky, and Renetti among others—have now gathered inside the famed Royce Hall, a 1800-seater auditorium that stood among the original four landmarks of UCLA’s campus; as well as its most iconic. Though its exterior remained the most-well known of all the buildings on campus, the auditorium was equally as reputable as its facade.

Over 1,710 of UCLA students, faculty, and alumni—save for those on stage and out—convened in the hall for Jeremiah Speedwagon’s forthcoming keynote... even though he had yet to arrive.

And though he was 56-years-old, the dirt blond Zeppeli himself oddly looked as if he was in his mid-20s.

“I’m sure most of you in attendance have come to understand,” he said into the microphone pedestal, “that three days ago marked our 110th founding anniversary. But the festivities itself actually begin today, May 26th, in the year of our Lord 2029. Our 110th annual Foundation Day, as a matter of fact.”

Most of the audience expressed a few nods in agreement to what he said.

“I can assure you,” Andre smiled, “that on behalf of all the staff and faculty of UCLA, the Foundation Day festivities will be an extravagant weekend of celebration. It’s what all of us want. For us to celebrate more than a century in this long and prestigious ride, and those who have the prideful honor of saying”—he looked at the audience from the lower levels to the upper floor—“that UCLA has helped them become... something greater.”

He turned to one of the cameras in the hall’s upper levels.

“By the way, for those unable to make it here in-person,” he informed the audience, “We’re currently live-streaming all of the ceremony’s festivities in all our social media platforms, so... Welcome to all viewers watching the stream! Now, this does not suggest I want all of you in-person to watch everything with your phones, but...”

The audience chortled at Andre’s comment.

“Moving on...” He began his speech. “Though I am currently serving my fifth year as Chancellor of UCLA, I express no doubt in my pride and gratitude for being a part of this administration. Despite the position I hold, I have tried to maintain as close a relationship with the university’s officials and students as possible. And I also express no doubt that I have seen many great students come and go. For instance...”

He pointed to one member in the bleachers.

“Clarice Hildebrand,” he stated, “who led the women’s basketball team to a staggering 30-game victory and won us the NCAA Division 1 championship for the 2024-2025 season...”

Much of the audience gave their plaudits to the aforementioned athlete, with resounding claps and cheers. She reacted with utmost flatter.

“The all-time great Deacon Blues, two-time Olympic gold medalist in figure skating and instructor in Hugh Hudson Academy...”

The same plaudits went to Deacon, who gave a similar reaction to Clarice’s.

“And arguably, the most famous man in the world right now...”

Everyone paid close attention to Andre’s words, tension growing as to who that exact person was... even though the identity seemed obvious, already.

“Now, where is he...?” Andre adjusted his mic, pretending to have found the mystery man. “Ah, there he is! Joshua Johnson, everybody. And the first time in a long time he’s come so early!”

While many of those in the upper levels chuckled, it took more than half of those below to point fingers at Joshua. An embarrassing, but hilarious scene. The laughter soon transitioned swiftly into applause.

Joshua felt flustered by the reaction. “Uh, thanks?” He helplessly joined in the applause.

Jocelyn, who sat two rows below him, did not join in the cheers—rather, in stark contrast to the outpouring of praise, she cursed inaudible jeers and gave him a strong middle finger with her gloved hand.

“Now, now,” Andre signaled the audience to simmer down, “I’ll be the first to admit bias in shouting him out, given that he’s one of my favorites, but...” He cleared his throat. “I’ve seen many like those I pointed out come and go throughout the years. But... there is one man... a man whom I believe is the best of them all. A man who’s had the honor of being the most hardworking student I’ve ever met... and a good friend of mine. Please welcome to the stage, Mr. Jeremiah Speedwagon!”

Andre pointed to the left as the speaker of the occasion—Jeremiah himself—emerged from the curtains. With him, came a generously loud applause from the audience. The 31-year-old Jeremiah, characterized by a greying-green ponytail with an abundance of hat-themed motifs in his coat, and a large Speedwagon Foundation logo attached on his right coat pocket, was honored to receive such a standing ovation from the audience. 

“Well, there he goes...” Joshua smacked his lips and clapped. “The prodigal son is back...”

Jeremiah did the honors of shaking hands with Andre and quickly embracing him, as he made his way to the stage and stood on the very pedestal his friend once stood.

“Thank you,” he said to the microphone, drawing the audience to silence once more. “Thank you, Chancellor Zeppeli, for such a generous introduction. And thank you all, for your attendance... Now, to be completely honest first and foremost... I wasn’t the first one considered to speak for this keynote.”

A collective chuckle came from the audience.

“I dunno, I’d say... I was expecting a huge celebrity to come and do this speech”—he pointed at Joshua—“like him, for example. So it surprised me to think that Andre would call me one night at 3 AM to do this... Well, I was admittedly pissed at first, given that I was woken up hours too early, but... The moment I heard his voice and offer, I didn’t even hesitate to give him a yes. That’s how close the two of us are.”

He cleared his throat. “Anyways... the road to being CEO of my family’s company wasn’t an easy one. Given that I became a father even before I was about to graduate... but... in spite of those hardships I’ve endured, I thrived. Accusations of nepotism be damned, I don’t think I’d be here, speaking before thousands of you, if it weren’t for UCLA.”

He began pointing to a screen showing images. “The $50 million dollar Speedwagon-UCLA partnership for scientific research, formed two years ago on this very day, has successfully brought in 27% more students studying science-related courses compared to before the partnership’s establishment. Not only that, but it has also given interns and employees of the Foundation new career opportunities; as well as 19% increased interest in the field of scientific research in UCLA for the years to come.”

Most of the audience applauded this information.

“Partnership aside, though,” Jeremiah resumed, “I feel like seizing the opportunity to talk about something that I know many of you are experiencing, as of now... June is drawing nearer, yes. But the one thing I’m sure most of you are curious about is: what happens to your lives after graduation happens? Trust me, I’ve been there. Student debts, career aimlessness, the uncertainty of fulfilling your goals and dreams... I’ve felt the same things you’re all feeling as of late, so allow me the moment to impart personal advice to those of you graduating this year.” 

He adjusted his hat.

“No, it’s not ‘you shouldn’t worry too much’ or anything that remotely sounds like that. I don’t wanna be that guy, or anything. But rather, I’m here to help you understand that it’s okay. It’s okay to be scared of what happens next, it’s okay to tell those closest to you about it. And it’s okay to be afraid. Because if you understand your fears and insecurities about the situation well enough...” He clenched his fist. “You’ll conquer it in no time.”

While listening to the speech, Joshua began to smell something funky being released into the auditorium. As he picked up more and more of its scent, he quickly knew just how familiar that scent was to him. It smelled like Marlboro cigarettes mixed together with Calvin Klein perfumes and a secret ingredient locked deep in his memory…

“N-No,” he muttered to himself. “No... That’s not...”

As Jeremiah went on about his speech, one member in the audience began coughing. Feeling phlegm in her throat, she covered her mouth and coughed twice. But once she took it off her mouth, she realized in horror what she expelled off her throat.

Blood.

As blood began dripping from her lips and nose, she coughed again. And again, and again, until the fits became loud enough to cause a distraction. When more and more members took notice of the couching attendee, Jeremiah was quick to notice the escalating situation beforehand.

“Oh, God,” he muttered, before shouting into the microphone, “Someone get help for that girl in the lower seventh row, NOW!”

Nameless stage hands emerged from the curtain, hoping to give sufficient medical attention to the attendee as the audience began to panic and retreat rashly from the auditorium. Screams of distress and sounds of seats being ripped apart from the chaos formed an unpleasant cacophony, as the coughing began to multiply one by one.

In the ensuing chaos, Joshua was frozen. Though he bargained for it to be a horrible dream, his pleas would go unanswered: this was indeed happening. The scent he felt wasn’t a mere scent: but the scent of a virus he remembered all too well.

All that happened to him last night had led to this nightmarish climax.

And right now, he was feeling helpless.

One attendee coughed up blood. And then another. And another. Followed by yet another one. Until all they could cough up were bits of their own dead lungs. The coughing infected ten more... but even that paled in comparison to this.

An attendee on the upper floor violently coughed, dizzy from the virus’ effects on his body. And it got to a point where he fell from the floor’s railing, plummeting 25-feet down to a skull-crushing demise.

Two others befell the same fate, though in different ways.

One fell on his back and died after pieces of his shattered spine severed his heart from his body. Another fell directly on two attendees running for the exit, knocking them unconscious immediately from the landing.

The coughing spread itself. 

Hundreds were infected, as did hundreds more. 

A large stampede of agitated, frightened attendees grew on the emergency exit doors; the infection steadily counting upward to thousands.

Bodies collapsed. 

Blood rained from the upper floor down the lower level. 

Blood ran down the lower level floors, bits of their flesh and organs stuck to every seat imaginable.

And gradually, the coughing died down.

They coughed up so much blood and organs, they choked themselves to death. Some quick and painless, others slow and excruciating.

Yet even that wasn’t the worst part.

Those who were safely away from the stampede began to witness faint lights coming from over eighty attendees mostly lodged in-between the stampede and the corpses, its colors alternating between every hue in the electromagnetic spectrum.

For those who were normal prior to the infection, they were confused yet relieved to have survived.

For those Stand users in the infection, something had gone horribly wrong.

The infected were all dead, masses of corpses lying around the seats and exit doors. And the survivors among the bedlam were scattered, left to ponder what had just happened to them.

“JOSH?!” Ricky shouted. “Josh, can you hear me?!”

Though he was stuck in his seat with multiple corpses blocking the way, Joshua found himself back to reality as he saw Ricky near the exit doors. 

“Yeah?! I’m fine! Don’t worry about me! How about you?!”

“HEY!!! PLEASE HELP! I’M STUCK! ” Renetti cried out, being in a similar situation he was in.

As Joshua darted towards her voice’s direction, he realized, “Oh, shit—” as he pushed off the bodies blocking his way with Rebel Moon and rushed to her rescue. 

He saw her yelling and crying in Italian curses, buried in her seat beneath two dead bodies with bloodstains on their mouths and wide, bloodshot eyes.

“PATTY?!” Joshua summoned Rebel Moon to his aid again. “Patty, are you okay?!”

“W-What the f—” Renetti darted to Joshua’s direction. “You’ve gotta be kidding—What the fuck are you doing here?!”

“Saving your life,” he began punching the bodies out of her way, “in spite of everything.”

As soon as the bodies were off Renetti, he came to her side and prepared carrying her off to safety; but unexpectedly, she shoved him away from her.

“N-No,” she screamed, “Get out! S-Stay off me, you son of a bitch!”

“W-W-Wha—” He exclaimed, perplexed. “The fuck are you—”

“GET THE FUCK OFF ME—”

“I’M SAVING YOUR FUCKING LIFE HERE, DAMN IT!” He had lost his temper.

“No, you’re not—”

“STOP BEING SUCH A HARDASS LET ME HELP—”

Her aggression eventually caused Joshua to be sent flying a few feet off her. It hurt him quite a lot, both her pent-up frustration and the way he landed on the ground—but it wasn’t even what he paid attention to.

A specter of a humanoid was lying on the floor, next to Renetti.

“H-Hey...” Joshua pointed at the humanoid. “Is that... yours...?”

“What do you—”

Suddenly, the humanoid came to life, contorting its reversed torso back to normal as it stood before Joshua in a rather unstable stance. It assumed the shape of a feminine, mechanical princess—with a pink hue across its porcelain-white body and warm blue-green and gold accessories across every limb in its body. It stared blankly into Joshua’s eyes, almost studying him as Joshua understood horrifically what was standing before him…

A Stand. Or rather, her own Stand.

“Oh, no,” he whispered, bargaining once more. “No, no, no, no, no, no...”

It took a while for Renetti to fully grasp what was happening to her; but putting the infection and the glowing lights together, she began to understand what the ‘princess figure’ was.

“You... What happened to me...?!” She stood there with an expression of confusion, terror, and rage.

“Patty... Y-You... You’re a—”

“SPIT IT OUT!” She snapped at him.

Instead of answering her questions, Joshua instead looked at the surviving attendees. And though he wished he was dreaming still, he could clearly see that they’ve awakened Stands of their own. Some were humanoid like Rebel Moon and Renetti’s Stand, and some were less recognizably human, even assuming the form of objects like ropes and watches.

And at the end of it, Joshua realized one thing:

The consequences of his past finally came for him after so long. And with the blood of thousands in his hands... 

He could do nothing... but scream.

Notes:

Remember to give kudos and (optionally) a comment! This helps in supporting this fic and its future endeavors.

 

Special thanks to PhantomDouglass for beta-reading this chapter in its current revision!

Chapter 8: Vol. 1 - Requiem For Academia

Summary:

After the UCLA incident five hours earlier, Jocelyn recalls the events from her perspective—but upon eavesdropping on Joshua after a traumatic meltdown, she makes a shocking discovery.

The following week during the wake for the incident's victims, Joshua and Jocelyn get into a heated confrontation and discover secrets about each other.

Notes:

Shout-out to CapNBlood and AllShaftsFall who left a kudos in the previous chapter!

UPDATE (10/10/23): Part 6 of an upcoming overhaul to Vol. 1

—|[ CHAPTER 8 ]|—

Requiem For Academia

That scream of his.

Out of all the blood and gore shed in Royce Hall, hearing his bloodcurdling screams echoing amid a dozen newly-awakened Stand users was the biggest thing she remembered most. Aside from the fact they had to leave when troops of FBI agents arrived to investigate the gruesome ruckus.

It was the way it sounded she picked apart, most of all. 

The wailing from the top of his lungs, which briefly transitioned into a bellow at the last second sounded... traumatic. In a sense that it was years of unresolved trauma coming to light, or maybe it was a horrible secret escaping his grasp. Needless to say, she wasn’t sure why exactly he screamed like that, but the possibilities still lurked deep in her mind: maybe he wasn’t who he said he was.

Sighing, she slumped down on her bed in the room she stayed in; which was uncharacteristically tidy for someone with her kind of personality. She hadn’t even changed her two-toned leather clothes, even with all the bloodstains from hours ago. 

Lying on her chest, she grabbed her tablet and began writing down a journal entry based on her perception of today’s events, pondering: ‘Great, so... First, this piece of shit Joshua said he was willing to work with me; but not trust me at all. Then, I meet this other piece of shit Patricia Renetti, who, as a matter of fact, is as shitty in person as she is on TMZ and stuff. Then the bullshit with No. 1 Capitalist Jeremiah and that virus thing I sniffed fucked over what was supposed to be MY day! My day to make a ridiculously good first impression as a month-long transfer student! Fucking hell…’

She groaned, and resumed writing, ‘Okay... I think that shit affected me a little—just a little, but regardless; it fucking sucks. The fact all those people died ‘coz they weren't strong enough to awaken their own Stands, and the sick fuck who thought of doing this to them. How FUCKED UP are they to think—’

Jocelyn was interrupted by a loud bang from outside, startling her. ‘What the fuck?!’ She thought, leaving her entry unfinished. ‘I better check it out.’ 

Without hesitation, she left her tablet on the bed and jolted right off the mattress, rushing quickly to the door. 

Upon leaving the room through the door, she snuck out through the hallway and heard muffled cries and pleas. She was still unsure what exactly caused that loud noise—believing a burglar or two had broken into the mansion. Unlikely, as the noise wasn't that of glass breaking; but once she went to the balcony and laid eyes below, she immediately understood the situation:

Joshua was grappling with the 'supposed' trauma he experienced hours ago, having seemingly smashed a table in half. Bernard and Coniglio were standing next to him, trying to comfort the poor lad.

"It's not fair," she could both see and hear him say that. "I-It's not fucking fair..."

'What the hell is he talking about?' She was baffled, even though she knew what he might've been feeling after seeing all those people die in the auditorium.

"I know, Josh," Bernard patted his shoulder, "I know... But you've gotta accept that this is in no way your responsibility—"

"NOT MY RESPONSIBILITY?!" Joshua lashed out at Bernard, disgusted. "Are you FUCKING kidding me, Bernard? How can you say that, dammit?! Do you have... ANY FUCKING CLUE what I saw at Royce Hall?! Bernard, I—"

Joshua sighed, exasperated by his claims. He rubbed his face, a heavy load weighing heavily on him. "I saw good people die, okay? Good people, innocent people! Fuck if I can't say I have every right to blame myself, here!" 

"Josh, please! Listen to him." Coniglio pleaded. "You have to think this straight—"

"Look, Coniglio, I'm sorry if you think I'm wrong," he insisted, fixing his glasses, "but you're wrong. Both of you are WRONG! To think that I'm not guilty in some way for all this?! BULLSHIT! 16-hundred people in Royce Hall are DEAD, all their blood is on MY HANDS, and I don't know how to feel about the survivors, okay?! Because now they're all gonna roam the damn state as Stand users—" 

He growled and smashed the table again with Rebel Moon's fist.

"—AND I'M GUILTY IF THEY BECOME MONSTERS LIKE I WAS!"

"Joshua, take it easy!" Both Bernard and Coniglio rushed to Joshua and stopped him before he could get more violent than he already was.

Then came tears. And sobs.

She couldn't quite hear him, but she could make out what he mouthed as he sobbed: "Five years, goddamn it... All it took was five years, and they pull me back in..."

Five years.

The fact that she perfectly picked that tidbit up made her wonder... maybe he really wasn't who he said he was.

So she recalled, 'Oh, my God... It makes too much sense... 'coz I remember when James Glitter and his cronies got taken down five years ago. Like... I wasn't really neck-deep into Passione business at the time, but that's one thing I remember a lot. Especially this one guy that everyone and my Dad wanted a piece of, one time. What was his name again...?'

Remy Wanderlust.

'Yeah, that guy,' she hid a chuckle, 'Aside from the DEA still looking for his ass, I don't think anybody in the world knows he exists. Only them, my old folks, and me. The most infamous thing he did was turn the Arrow into a gaseous form via a drug that Glitter sold called Vespertine... and... wait a minute... T-That can't be right.'

Recalling more and more of who Remy Wanderlust was, she thought, 'Oh, my God... it makes too much perfect fuckin' sense... Because Remy and Joshua match descriptions, the symptoms Vespertine had on a human being matched what happened to everyone on campus... and the scream. The goddamn pitiful fuckin' scream. Which means...'

'Oh, my God. They're the same guy.'

 

–[ ★★★ ]–

 

When bells tolled, thousands marched in the rain. Many of them dressed in black-and-white for the occasion. They brought nothing but pity and sadness and mementos of lives lost; personal belongings, portraits of their visages, among countless others in association with the deceased.

It has now been one week since one of the most unprecedented disasters in American soil. One which claimed over four-thousand lives within a single hour. And now was the time to lay the deceased to rest.

Yet they asked themselves, even during the day it happened...

What did those poor innocent souls do to deserve such dishonorable and unfair deaths?

Many of the victims' families & relatives, as well as survivors from Royce Hall gathered at Rose Hills Memorial Park in Whittier, 20 miles far from Los Angeles. 

Mozart’s Lacrimosa played across every loudspeaker within the cemetery’s vicinity, performed by a children’s choir inside the venue where the graves are to be lowered and the victims to be laid to rest: a massive closed-tent dyed in white the size of a small mansion, where attendees proceeded through security checks to safely enter the tent.

Reporters from across all regions of California—CNN, Fox News, NBC, to even local news stations within Whittier—were there, too. 

Despite the funeral ceremony being slightly mishandled and disorderly due to the stress and pressure the security is enduring, the reporters worked around the clock to deliver news of the ceremony to the public as truthfully as they could; despite rampant misinformation from conflicting sources threatening to deceive the public.

As Joshua waited in the long line of attendees, he took a moment to glance at everyone who came.

‘Look at all these people,’ he voiced his thoughts internally, musing on what he felt he did. ‘They’re all here... because of me. Because I killed them. I killed them all...’

Ashamed of what he thought he was responsible for, he covered his face with his right hand, feeling better that no one would recognize him right away.

However...

“E-Excuse me, young man,” an old lady’s voice said as he felt a touch on his shoulder. “You’re Joshua Johnson, yes?” 

He turned to see a veiled woman in her 70s, with amateurly-dyed auburn hair and more wrinkles than the ones in his simple black suit-and-tie.

“...Y-Yes?” He said, sounding almost dead.

“I don’t know if you know me, but... my granddaughter...”

‘Oh, shit...’ Joshua’s heart sank upon what she implied. 

Feeling a smile break out of her face, the old lady pulled a folded letter out of her purse.

 “My granddaughter knew you,” she said, “And she thought of you very fondly in her last days... though you were ambivalent to the fortunes she ‘divined’ for you.”

“Oh.” Joshua let out a forced chuckle in recognition. “Alison...”

“She wanted you to have this,” the old lady handed the letter over to him. “She told me to give it to you in the event that she... S-She...” Tears and sniffs were about to break out of her eyes and nose, though her veil obscured that quite well. 

Standing there, Joshua felt conflict brimming inside of him. He wanted to comfort her, tell her half-hearted things to ease her granddaughter’s loss... but the fact that he was the indirect cause of Alison’s demise furthered his feelings of guilt. He grappled with all those choices in his head, doubting if it was right to offer his condolences; even considering outright telling her it was all his doing.

Yet the only thing he could do and say about the matter was patting the old lady in the shoulder, and telling her, “Ma’am, I feel your pain. Just know that she’s—”

“Take the damn letter from me, please,” she interjected. “I needn't hear anyone telling me she’s somewhere better now... I know it.”

“But ma’am, I don’t know if I want the letter—”

“It’s for the best,” the old lady smiled, again interjecting. “Taking it would honor her memory... and save yours...”

“Save mine—”

“Josh,” Jocelyn barged in and tapped him in the back. “They’re waiting for us at Gate B. C’mon, let’s go.”

“B-But—”

“We don’t have time, stupid!” She marched down the line whilst dragging Joshua with her.

But as he was being dragged, he decided to take the letter with him. The old lady then went her separate way afterwards. He was confused by her phrasing in terms of ‘saving his memory’, but he took it anyway; even if it risked being cannon fodder in the end.

As the choir’s voices came to a climax, the funeral mass presided by Cardinal Raymond Warren of the Holy Catholic Church came to a close. Then came the time to bury the dead. When the graves were lowered and filled with dirt by machinery—since it would’ve been nigh-impossible for human labor to pull off such a gargantuan task—those mourning the losses couldn’t begin to fathom just how tragic the dreams of the dead were squandered before they could be achieved.

The vast potential of Stands, heavy prayers to God in hopes of a miraculous resurrection: they did not matter. They have now gone from this world—and nothing in it would ever bring them back.

And this was just the beginning.

 

–[ ★★★ ]–

 

About an hour’s drive from Whittier to Pasadena would’ve passed by now. 

A good portion of the mourners by the hundreds—staff, students, university officials, alumni or grievers of the dead—now gathered inside the five-star Langham Huntington hotel for the wake. The hotel, founded in 1913, served as a frequent destination for wedding receptions due to its signature rosy gardens and grand architecture. The wake in particular was held inside the hotel’s Huntington Ballroom, an expansive space whilst capable of hosting 1000 persons inside.

Every wedding, especially those hosted within the hotel itself, were meant to be the happiest days of an average human’s life. To ensure the world that the love of two would be celebrated, regardless of circumstances beyond their control. That they would cherish each other in sickness and health; ‘till death do them part.

This time, it served a venue for a much darker purpose.

For the ballroom to be used for a funeral’s wake—let alone a wake for one of the worst chemical disasters in American soil—was painfully ironic.

Yet, oddly enough; from Jocelyn’s perspective, gone was the mourning. They were all smiling, blabbing about each other’s businesses; even the children that came with the grievers were running and playing around to their heart’s content.

‘I know it’s normal,’ she thought, sitting alone with her ladybug necklace; simple black dress; and half-worn silver blazer as her chosen outfit, ‘But... fuck, man... It’s so fuckin’ weird to see people like this. Like... earlier, they were crying their friggin’ hearts out, and here they act like nothing bad happened. Most of them, though. Can’t vouch for everyone else.’

She glanced at Joshua, who also sat alone in the distance. 

‘Like how I could tell how he feels horseshit about the damn thing. Admit it, Josh... you really wanted this to happen in the first place, huh?’

Meanwhile, Joshua felt nothing but how terrible it was to feel responsible for all this...

Assuming self-inflicted responsibility of the disaster weighed him down, like a heavy crown worn on his head, by blaming every death and Stand user born that day on himself. After all, he immediately recognized that the infection was of his own making, given its scent. That somehow, even though he believed to have destroyed all traces of it, one still managed to slip into the Speedwagon Foundation’s hands: and the rest was history.

Who could blame him for feeling this way? Sure, he had thoughts that maybe he was overreacting—that the trauma he endured was affecting his rationality. But that wasn’t enough to stop him from believing otherwise.

His mind fed him many thoughts: either to tell the truth directly to those in the ballroom, or do something... darker... ranging from killing everybody to hide his past; to letting his downfall play out without significant resistance, or...

Actually, maybe begging for Death’s sweet release could be a good idea.

Before he could consider that idea further, though…

“Hey, Josh?” Renetti’s voice interrupted his thoughts. Lo and behold; the moment he turned, she saw her standing before him.

“Hm?” Joshua raised his eyebrow. “What is it, Patty?”

Renetti was strangely different from what she was last week—thanks to the occasion being a funeral, but... She looked less of a snobbish egotistical ‘rich kid’ and more of a simple lowly griever. A cheap and simple pair of shades and a low-cost ‘normal’ dress was all she wore to the occasion.

“Uh, y’know... Just wanted to talk to you and stuff,” she raised her sunglasses up her head. “Well... I dunno how to put it into words, though. What I wanna tell you, that is...”

“Well, what do you wanna tell me?” Joshua crossed his arms, as though he was expecting a tirade.

“Stuff, I guess?”

“I can’t help you figure it out if I have but a sliver of what you’d like to express yourself with.”

Renetti sighed, frowning at him. “Why’ve you gotta be such a hardass, right now?” She muttered to herself, before saying aloud, “Josh, I... T-There’s... There’s some things I wanna tell you about, and some things I regret ever telling you. I... L-Listen closely, because... for all the shit that went down all those weeks ago, Josh?”

She leaned closer to him. “I’d like to apologize for all that.”

“Apologize...?” Joshua was perplexed. He thought it was very uncharacteristic of her to say that.

“I get it,” she was quick to notice he was doubtful of her intent. “I get that you think I’m bullshitting you. But believe me, I truly am sorry. I just wanted you to know that.”

Joshua reacted with a blank face.

“I know bridges between us were burned and all, but... I’m sure that making up for everything isn’t impossible... Right?” She sighed, glancing quickly at the ballroom crowd. “I guess almost dying gaining this ‘ghost’ thing made me realize I wanted to tell you that. To say... that I’m sorry... for everything.”

A pause.

“Okay...” Joshua was nonchalant about the whole thing.

“You got any of that, right?” She looked worried.

“Yeah. All of it.” Joshua sighed. “But do you think I’m gonna forget about what happened just because you claim you’re sorry for everything? No. I won’t. Maybe I’ll accept your apology; just a tiny bit of it. But not accept it in full. Because let’s face it: your apology isn’t enough to make me pretend that none of that happened in the first place, nor make me get over it and be friends with you.”

“...Okay?” Renetti responded, feeling passive-aggressive about his harshness.

“Anyways,” he immediately switched topics, “about that ‘ghost’ of yours...”

“What about it?” She was still a bit irritated from Joshua’s response.

“I’ll tell you this,” he leaned closer. “Just this once. Since you just awakened that ‘ghost’ of yours last week, know this: nothing about your normal day-to-day life will ever be the same, ever again. Because you’re now in a world where people like you and me exist for one purpose; to attract each other because they have the same things we do... and kill, tear each other apart to prove we’re better than them. To simply put it, you’re an apex predator atop the food chain now.”

Renetti was horrified. Not because of the fact he knew about what she had just awakened during the disaster at UCLA, but what he meant by her becoming an ‘apex predator’. 

“W-What? Why? I-I—” She bargained for it to be a stupid joke. “I don’t understand...”

“Trust me, I’ve been like that for almost eight years now,” Joshua resumed, “And I’ve accepted the fact that it’s going to be inevitable. Seeing people get killed because they had what we both have. Accept it, too.”

“You’re a monster.”

“We all are.” His face was blank the entire time. “We can’t help ourselves.”

At that point, Renetti had nothing but disgust for him. “Like I’ll become America’s worst serial killer overnight,” she said under her breath, before storming off to whence she came.

Joshua sighed. He was glad to see her out of his sight, yet the choice of words he spoke out of his mouth were anything but favorable. Rubbing his head, he was again left alone. Until...

“Josh?” He heard Jocelyn’s whistles from the opposite side. “Don’t tell me you’ve run away!”

“Ugh,” Joshua groaned.

“Oh! There you are!” Jocelyn hopped over to Joshua as soon as she saw him, and sat by an empty chair next to him. “Took me so long to find your blue-headed ass. Anyways, we gotta talk.”

“Talk about what?” Joshua tilted his head.

“Urgent matters and shit,” she likewise tilted her head. “Doesn’t matter if it’s important or whatever. C’mon, we gotta go. Fast—”

“Ah, Mr. Johnson!”

Both JoJos frowned when Andre came to their side, looking quite dapper despite wearing a strikingly similar suit-and-tie to Joshua’s.

“I was wondering what you were up to,” Andre chuckled, not even exhibiting a sign of stress contrasting his highly-demanding role as UCLA’s Chancellor. “Might I be interrupting a moment between you two, Ms. Johannssen?”

“N-No, not at all,” Joshua feigned a chuckle.

“We were just gonna go outside and talk about stuff, sir,” Jocelyn felt nervous, “Just some private stuff, nothing special.”

“Here, I thought you found a girlfriend like everyone else thought.” Andre scratched his head.

“Oh, come on,” Joshua blushed, “You of all people?”

Jocelyn growled, hiding a blush from both men.

“Relax,” Andre laughed, “I’ll just... leave you two to be. I just thought I’d have time to discuss some things with you, Mr. Johnson.”

“We can talk later, I guess,” Joshua smiled.

“Okay.” Andre immediately left them for a crowded table nearby. “Don’t take too long, you two!” He said, as he disappeared into the crowd.

Another pause.

“Well? I reckon we should go.” She pointed to the ballroom’s exit.

“Where do you think I’m going?”

The two of them stood up from their chairs and made their exit from the ballroom to someplace elsewhere... just as Renetti observed them and thought of nothing but contempt for them both.

 

–[ ★★★ ]–

 

It took a while for them to get out of the hotel. With both of them being very tall people easily standing out; and Joshua being quite popular with paparazzi, it was understandable they’d find great difficulty getting past the ballroom. But shockingly enough, even with a few fans of Joshua noticing them both, nobody was there to bother them.

Which made their entry into Horseshoe Garden easier.

While not much larger than the ballroom itself, it was still a big place in its own right; with rosy pink trees & florae and green grass & vegetation forming a dreamlike balance perfectly suited for weddings.

Only this time, it hosted a much different occasion.

Of course, she did think over who or what exactly Joshua’s supposed real identity—Remy Wanderlust—was, in the grand scheme of things. She had been waiting all week for the perfect opportunity to ask that question; having done her research to pass time, investigating him like a detective attempting to solve a murder case... But the question she asked herself was: is she right or wrong about him? Or perhaps, could the situation about him be far more complex than she anticipated?

Before she could talk, however, Joshua asked her, “Jocelyn... If you’re telling me there’s something we need to talk about, then I wanna know why.”

Nothing came from her. Not even an answer... yet.

“Hello?” Joshua frowned, perplexed as he fixed his glasses. “Weird how you’re not explaining why you went out of your way to drag me here, just to have a little chat about nothing.”

“About you...” She finally broke her silence. “I just have a little... question... about you.”

“What is it?” He raised his eyebrow.

“Who the hell is Remy Wanderlust?”

Who the hell is Remy Wanderlust?

Her words echoed in his mind. For a split-second, his eyes bulged wide-open, and for the next few; his organs felt like crumbling, his stance was staggered and unstable, and his chest tightened like a seatbelt closed too harshly. There was no way he heard her right. No way someone in the world outside of himself, Bernard, and Coniglio who found out about his secret.

‘The fuck?’ Jocelyn was both confused and suspicious. ‘He had a friggin’ panic attack after I asked... This means he definitely knows something about him. And it’s ugly.’

She shouted, “Heee~~yyyy, dummy! I asked you a question, and you’re actin’ like you’ve just seen a goddamn pet dog die! Fuck is up with you, Josh?”

Her shouts were enough to break Joshua out of his panicked state.

Hastily, he said, “I-I’m sorry, what was that?”

“Great, you’re back to normal,” she crossed her arms, “Now, would you kindly ask to make me repeat that question so I could punch your ass out?”

“N-No,” he rubbed his head, “Now, why would I do that if it pisses you off... I think?”

“So you got what I was asking you about.”

“Mostly, yeah.” He loosened his tie a bit. “You asked me if I knew some guy called Remy Wanderlust, yeah?”

“I did.”

“Enlighten me, perhaps...” He feigned a lack of knowledge.

Jocelyn took a step closer and made direct eye contact with him, the shroud in her eyes slowly materializing before him. “Five years ago,” she explained, “Remy Wanderlust was some guy who’s done and pissed the DEA enough to make them wanna hunt his ass down, even today.”

“The DEA?” Joshua also feigned a look of concern. “T-That’s the Drug Enforcement—”

“Yeah, that DEA.” She pointed at his chest. “Meaning that the guy’s been involved in the American drug trade. Which is correct, by the way! Because he’s not a dealer like you’d automatically think he’d be.”

“Why would I think he’s a dealer?”

“Let me finish, asshat.” She growled.

“Okay...” he whistled nervously.

“Well, Remy Wanderlust himself is wanted for cooking drugs,” she resumed, “in particular a kind of drug that many believe is the most dangerous one ever sold across the globe. A drug called Vespertine. Imagine this: he’s a manufacturer, so it stands that he needs someone to distribute the batch he cooks every time.”

“And...?”

“Basically, that’s what this fuckface James Glitter is to Remy. He’s the one distributing his shit, and when everyone who bought it got a taste, it was a coin toss as to whether they’d survive or not.” She tilted her head. “Most people died. Others lived because Vespertine is the first of its kind to actually awaken Stands that aren't the Stand Arrows. If I might add, Glitter’s drug ring uses Vespertine as a recruitment method.”

“The fuck?” He again feigned a look of shock. “How the hell do you know about all this?”

“About all that? How about you tell me?”

“Look, if it turns out you’re actually a wanted criminal—which explains the bomb and why Jack went after your ass—I won’t be surprised.”

“Maybe you’re the wanted criminal, Josh.” She glared at him.

Joshua pretend-laughed at her claim. “M-Me, a wanted criminal? Look, that’s just... BULLSHIT... to think of me like that. Did you say that because you’re pissed that I didn’t wanna trust you since last week or—”

“You LISTEN to me, you piece of shit!” The shroud in Jocelyn’s eyes made itself clear when she wasn’t having any of his lies. “Do you honestly think you can fool me with that shit, Josh?! I knoooow when someone’s lying, shithead! And right now, you’re doing that exact thing to me. YOU’RE LYING! Lying about something you don’t want me to know, lying about something that could help me—”

She growled, stopping herself and taking two steps back as the adrenaline from being enraged at him was too high for her to handle.

“Lying about what...?”

Yet somehow, that question was enough to trigger her rage.

“Oh, you listen here, you son of a—”

“Lying about WHAT?!” Joshua raised his voice in an echo of his previous statement.

Then, silence came. In fact, it was similar to the one they had during their first meeting; only instead of speechlessness, it was about the animosity between them. It was initially both playful and irritating, but this was different.

For Jocelyn, it felt like her intelligence was being insulted, feeling like he was playing a puzzling game she desperately wanted to beat. For Joshua, the more lies he could tell to deny her from knowing the absolute truth, the better.

“Funny you ask that,” she crossed her arms, “You wanna know what you’re lying about? Fine, I’ll let you know.”

“...I’m all ears.”

“Okay...” Though she was left wobbly from her unstable temper, she explained, “I’ve spent the whole week figuring it out. ‘Coz not only does this guy have the same hair, height, and age as yours; he’s got the same pair of glasses and clothes you usually wear. And that’s from the fact I had to dig up the family archives to get this. He had the same trenchcoat you wear. The same FUCKING star on that coat, I’d tell you!”

Joshua stood still, forcing himself to react with a face as hard as stone.

“Whether or not that’s a fucking coincidence, then I need to know WHO THE FUCK YOU ARE!” Jocelyn grabbed and pulled him by the blazer, scowling intensely at him. She hissed, “Besides, Josh. I could cut your ass up with my Stand, right hand to God. So you better tell me the goddamn truth... today. It’s that simple. Don’t be a coward and just tell me.”

She let him go the instant she said that.

Then came a frown from Joshua. A worrisome expression, in contrast to the ones he had trying to feign denial and confusion.

“If I tell you,” he asked worriedly, “you won’t tell everybody, right?”

“Whatever happens, this conversation never happened.” She blew hair off her face.

Feeling reassurance from those words in spite of his distrust of her, Joshua mustered up the courage to admit: “Okay... you’re right. I am Remy Wanderlust.”

When he first pondered the possibility that he was gonna say those words, he felt dread. Anxiety. Sure, he was one of the DEA’s Most Wanted for his time under Glitter, but to feel relieved that he could share his secret to someone worthy enough to keep it was... odd.

He was left almost in tears from that.

“Okay... Remy...” She crossed her arms again, tilting her head.

“...I think that...” He gulped. “What happened last week is my own fault.”

“Your fault, how?”

“Vespertine,” he frowned. “The coughing virus that everyone caught in Royce Hall? I’m a hundred-percent sure that’s the same smell I remember from making that. If someone doesn’t have a ‘fighting spirit’ to materialize their own Stand, their lungs die. And then... eventually, all of their organs break down. I know that it’s possibly Speedwagon property based off what that right fuck J.R. Castor said last week, but... it took five years to drag me back to this hell I don’t even wanna go back to, huh?”

A slight pause.

“Oh, you have no fuckin’ idea who you are...”

“The one that got away.”

“Yeah, not only that, dipshit,” Jocelyn closed in on his face and popped off again. “You’re on the DEA’s Most Wanted, remember?! And hell, now you’re an even bigger piece of shit knowing you’re a fuckin’ model now or whatever. And God knows what I know, ‘coz everyone in the goddamn world wants a PIECE OF YOUR ASS! The government, the Mafia, hell... even Passione’s out for your fuckin’ blood! And don’t tell me you don’t know that, because deep down, you know exactly what your reputation is.”

“Passione?” He pointed out. “How the hell do you know about Passione?”

“You told me who you really are, Remy.” She said it in mockery. “So it stands that I’d go ahead and tell you who I really am.”

Pulling a part of her dress’ left sleeve down, Joshua was shocked when she revealed a birthmark on her left shoulder. And not just any birthmark...

The Joestar Birthmark.

A symbol of the Joestar Family—a family whose lineage told stories of bizarre adventures that shaped everyone associated with them. Good or bad, life or death, their legacy was roundabout in every way possible.

So it was an out-of-left-field surprise to find out she was part of that lineage itself.

“T-That birthmark on your—”

“Absolutely fuckin’ right,” she grinned, covering the sleeve and striking an odd pose. “My real name is Giodessa. Giorno Giovanna is my father, and my mother... Well, I’d rather not discuss about her even if I’m her biggest fan, but you know for damn sure that my Dad’s gonna move the ends of the earth to put you down.”

She expected Joshua to feel dread, pleading for his life. Yet... He was standing there, laughing.

“Oh, humor me, Giodessa,” he likewise mocked her name. “Now, how would that work? Giorno hunting me down?”

Jocelyn was left fuming. “Fuck are you on about?! My brother in Christ, you’re the kind of guy that Passione cracks down on a daily basis! And I’m sure as hell you enjoyed it seeing all those people die in Royce Hall! Why would my Dad go SOFT on you, then?!”

“Ask yourself... If your Dad wanted me dead, why was he the one who got me adopted by Bernard and Coniglio in the first place?”

“W-Wha?” She recoiled in shock.

“You’ve been talking about what you know about me, all the misinformation and whatnot. So let me clarify a lot of things and tell you my side of the story.” Joshua fixed his hair and glasses, making closer eye contact with her. “Believe me when I say that your father helped me. Because if it weren’t for him, I wouldn’t have had a life to begin with. I wouldn’t have had good people like Bernard and Coniglio pushing me to achieve my goals, and I sure as hell wouldn’t have had a career I’m proud of. For YOU to think of me like I wanted this to happen? That I enjoyed seeing them suffer and die because THEY got hit with Vespertine?!”

He scoffed. “If there’s anyone to blame other than who ACTUALLY did kill them, blame me. But don’t fucking go around and believe what you’re telling yourself!”

Joshua paced around in circles, trying to find words on the spot.

“Look, I get it,” he said, “We’ve barely known each other for a week. But do you think I loved cooking Vespertine for Glitter to sell?! NO! He’s an evil motherfucker who’s rotting behind bars with one less face to look in the mirror. And you’ve got the FAINTEST idea how much I wanna go to his prison cell and finish him off myself.”

At that point, his voice was beginning to crack from how overwhelmingly emotional he got. “HE ROBBED ME OF AN ENTIRE FUCKING CHILDHOOD! He took me from my REAL family, forced ME into making the hard decisions when I couldn’t tell what was right and wrong, and made me enjoy cooking Vespertine without realizing what it actually does to people. And then… when I realized why he made me learn all this, I... I realized too late he groomed me to be a monster.”

"I-I..." Jocelyn felt like a void of pity in her heart burst open. "I-I didn't know that, I... I'm sorry."

"As much as I hate to say it, knowing how you treat me," Joshua felt like he could tolerate her better. "I don't blame you for thinking that way. I would've said the same things if I were you." 

He sighed. "Best I can do now is feel dread for the future, 'coz I know there's not a damn Stand in the world that can bring them back to life... and stop everyone from figuring out who I really am."

And then, came silence.

For Joshua: he was still stunned to know that standing before him was the daughter of Passione—filling in the gaps of why she had two consecutive attempts on her life. But one thing he began to wonder was: could it have been a coincidence they met because of their connection to Giorno, or did he unwittingly drag himself in affairs that risked killing him?

For Jocelyn: she felt horrible thinking 'Remy Wanderlust' was a heartless monster, when he was just a victim of Glitter's machinations, who had zero regard for his own free will. As guilty as she was, there was no doubt she wasn't as good as her father when it came to observing human emotion—but the one thing she hated most was having poor judgment.

She looked for words to speak up, starting with, "Remy—"

"Don't call me that." Joshua felt pain. "Just this once... never again. I don't want to remember what I lost all those years."

"Okay... Josh..." She walked up closer to him, almost even moving her hand up to his cheek. "Here's the thing. I understand how royally fucked-up the direction of your life went, so listen up. I'm gonna tell this only once. I won't tell anyone who you are. I'll keep all of this a secret, nobody in this hotel or the rest of the world aside from us will find out. And right hand to God, you have my word. Under one condition..." 

"And that is...?"

"Barring the fact you said you didn't want to trust me, I will tell everyone if you do the following: if you do something that contradicts what you've told me, or if it turns out you've been lying about this all along." She smirked. "No complaints."

"...You've got a done deal," Joshua nodded. "Fair and square?"

"Fair and square." Jocelyn chuckled, and turned back to the garden's exit. "Perhaps, I reckon we should get going. Don't want anyone to think so suspiciously of us having been gone for too long."

"Alright."

And there they were, leaving off to the ballroom as the dust settled. Whether or not their hostilities would cease, it didn't matter. As long as they made an agreement that was satisfactory with their wishes, they were content with what they wanted. And, per Jocelyn's words: fair and square.

Notes:

Remember to give kudos and (optionally) a comment! This helps in supporting this fic and its future endeavors.

 

This chapter was released without beta-read edits.

Chapter 9: Vol. 1 - Revelations

Summary:

The night following the funeral, Joshua receives an urgent call from Andre to assist Jeremiah in investigating the incident at UCLA campus—now believed to have been an attack. But their plans are now complicated when Jocelyn follows them.

Now forced to work together, the makeshift trio explore the underground tunnels... and discover some shocking revelations along the way.

Notes:

Shout-out to ten guests who left a kudos in the previous chapter!

Special thanks to (also) AllShaftsFall and EdgyElla for livereading the first chapter in the Fanworks Discord last December 14th! I enjoyed listening in and had a good time there. Kudos to you both!

UPDATE (10/28/23): Part 7 of an upcoming overhaul to Vol. 1

—|[ CHAPTER 9 ]|—

Revelations

Night fell as Joshua arrived on UCLA's campus with his Lancer, in a meeting place he was sent to around the middle of Dickson Court and the abandoned Arroyo Bridge. As he felt anxious about the meeting and the red flags the idea of it set off, Joshua recalled what was said about him hours ago:

“You’re a man of great skill, Josh,” Andre said in a phone call between them. 

“Yet you ask why. So let me tell you this: out of all the people in my contacts to accompany Jeremiah, I chose you. I just can’t trust anybody else to do the job.”

Yet the answer wasn’t enough to alleviate his doubts. Andre did explain on the phone that he specifically was picked to assist Jeremiah in investigating last week’s chemical disaster; the latter firmly of the belief that it was a terrorist attack. He hadn’t really thought much of the possibility it was an attack—aside from the fact that he insisted he didn’t do anything during his argument with Jocelyn that afternoon—but the more he thought of it, the more he was convinced that someone was responsible for more than four-thousand lives lost that day.

Setting aside that possibility though, Joshua sighed and exited the Lancer. He was greeted by the sight of Jeremiah overlooking the abandoned bridge.

He gulped. He was here wearing his campus uniform—the very same one worn last week—pondering why he hadn’t changed to something as snazzy as Jeremiah’s hat-themed attire. Or rather, if he ever changed at all.

“Ah, I thought you’d come early!” Jeremiah said, staring at the grassy foliage around the bridge’s site.

“My sincerest apologies, Mr. Speedwagon,” Joshua affably chuckled. “Westwood traffic can go fuck itself all the way to Hell...”

“Please, Johnson, call me Jeremiah.” He stretched out a hand. “Formalities are never my strongest suit.”

Though hesitant, Joshua shook his hand.

“I don’t know, sir,” he nervously chuckled, “It’s ironic you’re shit at formalities while wearing some pretty classy clothes.”

“What can you say? It runs in the genes.” Jeremiah chuckled back.

They let go of each other’s hand. Then, they turned their attention to the view overlooking both Arroyo Bridge and the distant city lights beyond the campus’ regions.

“It’s a helluva sweet view,” Joshua said to himself.

“Indeed.”

“Why the old bridge, though?” Joshua fixed his glasses. “Surely, I don’t see any good reason why we should bother going there.”

“Oh, y’know...” Jeremiah sighed. “If there’s anything that should explain how and why the attack was pulled off, then going to the tunnels underground would help us tremendously. And catch the attackers a lot sooner before the FBI could.”

Joshua’s eyes widened with shock. “We’re going THERE?!”

“Mhm.” Jeremiah looked up at the night sky, counting stars as he reminisced, “Sneaking up and going there was a nice little tradition. For me and a few alumni, I mean. I always appreciated the handy wirework and plumbing that went into maintaining the campus. And... it was more fun to have family around, especially the girls back home.”

He chuckled. “God, if you’d look at her... Kids these days grow fast. Can’t believe little Liza’s 12, now. Where’d all the time go?”

“Yeah...” Joshua couldn’t help but chuckle, too. “By the way, there are a few things here I want to get cleared up.”

“Hm?” Jeremiah raised an eyebrow.

"Like... I understand that our purpose here is to collect evidence supporting your 'chemical attack' theory, but... I-I don't know, I... Why me, to be clear? Why not anyone else from Chancellor Zeppeli's contracts, like... some random detective guy or whatnot?"

"Well, he did speak of not trusting anybody else, other than your supposedly great set of skills, hasn't he?" Jeremiah pointed out bluntly.

"Yeah, I know. It's just..." Joshua sighed, shrugging. "To be honest, he's probably right. Or he's wrong, or... The gist of it is, I'm not as good as he thinks I am. But if I had to choose between accompanying you or letting bad guys ambush you with no protection? I'd rather be with you if it guarantees a chance of safety."

Then came silence.

"It's fine, y'know." Jeremiah felt a bit sheepish. "Any good or bad helping hand is enough for me."

"Gotcha." Joshua nodded.

But then, both men were drawn to the sound of a distant motorcycle. It drove down the path Joshua took to the meeting, and its engines growed louder and grittier in each passing second. 

"Hey, Johnson," Jeremiah asked with uncertainty. "This you?"

"I-I don't think so, no..." Joshua was just as perplexed as the elder was.

A headlight from the far end of the road appeared. And the closer it was, the more they could see the mysterious biker who followed them. The bike—a LiveWire electric motorcycle—parked itself before them, the light almost blinding them, revealing: Jocelyn, all-decked out in her signature blue-and-pink leather and motorcycle helmet combo she donned since her first encounter with Joshua.

"What the fuck...?" Joshua was worried about how she came here.

"You boys best got 99 things to explain here," Jocelyn yelled, stepping out of the LiveWire and stamping her way to the two men, "Because I ain't playing when I think you two fuckers are onto some wicked shit!"

"The fuck?! What the FUCK are you doing here?!" Joshua hissed, raising his hands up.

"I could say the same to you, fuckhead." The outline of Blade Runner flickered next to her, then—

"STAY BACK!" Jeremiah pulled out a taser gun, aiming it at her threateningly. "I don't know who you are and what you want with the boy, but I will be forced to restrain you until the authorities arrive."

"You don't fuckin' remember me?!" Jocelyn exclaimed, snapping her head towards Jeremiah.

"Should I?!" He continued aiming the taser.

"What, is it because of the helmet?" Without hesitation, Jocelyn removed her helmet and placed it on a hook attached to her belt.

"There. Now you remember me, capitalist?"

"Jesus," Jeremiah's eyes widened as he put away the taser gun. "Giovanna...?"

"N-Now, how do you two know each other?" Joshua was confused at first, but later he realized why... "Right. Joestar business..."

"Damn, I didn't know you moved into LA," Jeremiah rubbed his hat. "When did you?"

"Three weeks back," she explained, blowing hair off her face. "Had a little date and stuff before almost getting my ass killed by both a bomb and a Stand user last week. Now, are you gonna tell me what it is you're doing?"

"Trying to figure out who's behind this mess," Jeremiah shook his head. "Chancellor Zeppeli requested the boy to join me in this matter, and despite reservations he agreed."

"Uh huh." Jocelyn tilted her head, hands splayed on her waist.

"Just how the hell did you know we were here in the first place?" Joshua frowned. "Let me guess, did you track me here or something?"

"Yeah, I did."

"You WHAT?!"

"I what?" Jocelyn scoffed. "You think I wouldn't do such a thing?! I did it because I had my suspicions before I found out exactly the kind of person you were, Josh—"

"Hold the phone, here." Jeremiah stood between them. "What the hell's up with you two kids?! How do you both know each other, and what the hell are you talking about?!?"

"Private business, nothing else." Jocelyn shrugged.

"Okay... have fun eloping, you two."

Jocelyn whistled, rolling her eyes. "Look, if you guys are trying to find out whoever's behind this mess, allow me the chance to help out." She pulled out her tablet from her purse, scrolling through her gallery to find pictures.

"Help out...?" Joshua looked intently.

"Here," she showed them pictures of a biohazard-within-a-pentagram symbol, with writing in Braille beneath it. "There's something about this shit that's more complicated than we thought."

"What's this supposed to be, Giovanna?" Jeremiah analyzed the picture.

"My old folks sent me these from one of the FBI agents investigating the disaster under their payroll. Matched it with a group kidnapping teens in Napoli lately, hence the comparison between these two." Jocelyn pointed at the picture on her tablet. "And the writing in Braille for both pics? It translates to 'A New World Is Coming' in English."

"What are you trying to suggest with this?" Joshua went closer to the picture.

"As far as I'm concerned, dumbass? Some super-duper secret fuck all cult is out to do something world-threatening." She returned the tablet to her purse. "And whatever it is, we might be able to stop it before it fucks us all over in the butthole."

"Sounds like a good plan..." Jeremiah fixed his hat, turning to Arroyo Bridge. "I reckon we should all get going and find out what their deal is."

"I'm with you," Joshua followed him down as they began departing for the bridge.

"As am I." Jocelyn likewise followed the two men down.

 

–[ ★★★ ]–

 

As they began their trek for the bridge and the underground tunnels following their way, an unknown group watched them from a dark distance. A voyeur observing their every move, from body language to their manner of walking.

"Looks solid," a man with a chainsmoker voice said, looking at the trio with binoculars. Galen. "They seem to not know they're being followed."

"That's good," Renata answered from the backseat. "The more they don't know, the better."

"Rightly so." Galen sighed as he disposed of the binoculars.

The entire Disposable Heroes crew—mainly Galen and Renata—were watching and preying on the trio, oddly calm in spite of the possibility they were being spied on by a third party. Dallas was in the driver’s seat, with Galen riding shotgun; the other members—Zedd, Casey, and Bludworth—were in the back seats, with Renata occupying most of the furthest backseat due to her larger size.

“Won’t you look at that,” Dallas chuckled, “Galen Crawford in his natural habitat. Must be good at sniffin’ crooks from afar, eh?”

“That’s not all who he is, newbie,” Casey was quick to clarify some things.

“...Right.” Dallas gulped. “The whole Esparza thing last week.”

“If it helps,” Galen loaded 12-gauge shells in his shotgun, “Years serving in Special Forces honed everything I use in my skill set to its maximum limit. Shame they had to discharge me for something I clearly was forced to do, I even had five years worth of shit left for them. And all they gave me was nothing.”

“Why’s that?” Dallas was worried.

“The man responsible for my discharge? I intend to pay him a little visit.” Galen pulled the lover of his shotgun, loading a shell in. “And I can assure you, rook... there’ll be hell to pay. And blood.”

“Yeah,” Casey laughed triumphantly, “Show ‘em who’s the real motherfucker in town, Galen!”

“Alright,” Renata raised her voice, silencing everyone. “Simmer down, simmer down... Let’s get this show on the road. You already know the drill, Galen. Move in, kill them all, and move out. But be aware: the three of them are Stand users whose abilities are a mystery to us, which means achieving this goal isn't a walk in the park."

"I know..." As he prepared to step out of the van, he chuckled, unbuckling his seatbelt. "But they won't know what hit 'em."

"Indeed." Renata smiled, adjusting her gloves.

"H-Hey, Galen," Casey called out for him, who sat beside Renata. "Do me a favor, okay?"

"Anything, kid," Galen smiled at her.

"Promise me you'll be back for Uno night after we get home from Vetra." She had a pleading expression on her face.

"I will." Soon after, Galen exited the van with the shotgun strapped to his kilt’s belt. 

“Practice, too!” Casey shouted, her voice going through the van’s open window. “We gotta work out what combo’s best if we face a couple of bad guys head-on!”

“I will, don’t worry!” Galen shouted back.

At that point, he was nothing more than a shrinking black blob approaching the bridge. And all they wondered about is if they were going to see him again. That he would come back from the contract safe and sound.

If only they knew who they were fighting against...

 

–[ ★★★ ]–

 

Into the rabbit hole they go... and possibly never return.

The makeshift trio of Joshua, Jeremiah, and Jocelyn found themselves venturing deep inside UCLA's most forbidden and mysterious location of all—the underground maintenance tunnels. A sprawling network of claustrophobic tunnels connecting the entire campus together; designed to maintain every crevice in the university by providing steam, electrical power, and so much more.

Some lived to tell the tale of being there, some faced permanent expulsion for sneaking illegally. Others were fed the belief it did not exist, the rest unaware.

For Jeremiah, revisiting the tunnels was nostalgic. A place to remember memories of old, the sensation of risk-fueled excitement, and an escape from 'boring days' of paperwork and meetings.

But for both Joshua & Jocelyn, even they could agree with their chaotic differences that the tunnels stinked hard.

It HAD to be steam tunnels. They were by far the murkiest, gloomiest thing to ever grace their eyes and nose; given it smelled vaguely metallic and dusty, and that they could barely see anything with how dull and faint the lighting in the tunnels were. The rest of Los Angeles was a neon paradise, yet here—it was the extremely polar opposite of a paradise. Something about the network was dirty, unpleasantly toxic with foul odors. And it was also a painful assault in the eyes, with poor cable management in the wiring and paint chipping off the pipes and walls.

That, and one wrong move and a broken pipe would release 400 °F blazing fumes of steam into the tunnels, flooding it with a burning singe.

It did not help that the three of them were of very similar heights, being above the 6-foot range meant that jumping high would instantly make them hit their heads. The fact that the pipes were metallic made the thought of hitting their heads worse.

Jeremiah led the way, with Jocelyn behind him, and Joshua following last.

"So, how are the tunnels so far?" Jeremiah was curious to know the two JoJos' opinions.

"Sucks ass." Both of them responded in stereo. They both looked at each other, oddly fascinated at how it sounded.

"Eh," he shrugged nonchalantly. "You'll get used to it."

As the three ventured into the tunnels, Joshua had another misconception he wanted to get cleared up. "By the way, I know we're searching for evidence. But why here? Why the tunnels?"

"Heard Feds talk about an intruder breaking into the tunnels hours before the attack," Jeremiah explained. "Now, I'm not trying to haze you kids or anything. But if we want to learn more about who and what our mystery kidnapper-terrorist cult may be, then searching here is the best way to do so."

"I don't know," Jocelyn sighed, "Based on how shit this looks and smells, you're definitely hazing. Or was one who hazed people, but retired and did it again for shits and giggles."

"I already said what I had to say about this, kid." Jeremiah whistled, pocketing his hands. "Knowing your father, I really wouldn't want to copy his schtick and dislike repeating myself, y'know..."

But then, Joshua had a quite bright idea in his head. He proposed, "By the way, about searching for clues..."

Both of them stopped to turn at him with raised eyebrows.

"I think I can help with that."

"How so?" Jeremiah tilted his head. "Thought you weren't as good as Andre claimed you to be."

"Only because I haven't been an active Stand user for five years," Joshua replied. "I might not be at 100% because of this, but I can tell you... This being a chemical attack,"—he stressed 'chemical' with a clenched fist—"given what my Stand ability is, makes investigation a hundred times easier. Heck, I don't think we need to walk 15 minutes more in this shithole."

Silence followed.

"Hmph," Jeremiah shrugged, chuckling. "Here, I thought you weren't good enough because you just gained your Stand. Not that you've had one for years."

"I thought your ability was injecting shit into stuff, based on what you said to Jack." Jocelyn furrowed her eyebrows. "What do you mean you can help out?"

"What?" Jeremiah was confused.

"Private business." She clarified.

"Well," Joshua began to explain, "What you said is one part of its ability. The other part is being able to detect chemicals and trace where the source is, which is why I thought I could help out substantially with our plans. But it'll probably take me a while to isolate the chemicals used in the attack, given how rusty I am. Also the tunnels being the way they are."

"Okay... Take your time, then." Jeremiah stepped back from Joshua.

Jocelyn did the same, albeit confused as to why he did just that.

"Y-You might wanna turn your backs for a bit," Joshua advised them.

They complied immediately.

Soon after, Joshua muttered to himself, "I haven't done too much with you nowadays, but... Rebel Moon, please help me with this."

Red mist formed and imploded around Joshua as Rebel Moon manifested under his command, exhaling red fumes with a rattling sound. By instinct, it followed his orders and began sniffing the tunnels' pipes and wires for chemicals outside of the periodic table. It moved in an erratic twitch, pumping out red fumes from its pipes and making inhuman robotic-sounding noises as it did so.

Feeling unsettled by Rebel Moon's growls, Jeremiah asked, "H-Hey, Johnson? Mind if we turn back, now?"

"No," Joshua answered, "You're gonna make it hard for Rebel Moon to do its work. It gets a little agitated when Users like us look at it."

"Okay, Johnson," Jeremiah gulped. "Whatever floats its boat..."

Even though he wanted to turn around, Jeremiah felt in his heart that Joshua didn't like it if people looked at his Stand. He didn't mind, but he was beginning to once Rebel Moon moved and sniffed the area he and Jocelyn stood in, reveling in the smell as it made garbled noises of joy.

That act was the last straw for him: he couldn't resist keeping his curiosity in check as he turned around, only to be STARTLED by Rebel Moon's dark eyes staring at him. It growled and snarled about, its beak slightly poking Jeremiah's cheek and hat. And his heart raced violently, Jeremiah himself frightened by learning what monstrosity the abyss spat out served as Joshua's Stand.

"...You looked." Joshua sighed, frustrated he disobeyed his wishes.

"I'm sorry," Jeremiah apologized, "I just... Wow... You've been living with THAT for years?!"

"Mhm." Joshua rubbed his nose. "Anyways, it's done."

Rebel Moon rushed quickly to Joshua's side and rattled, pumping fumes off its pipes again as it expressed nonverbally what it just found.

And luckily enough...

"...It's the gas," Joshua revealed.

"How?" Jeremiah was curious.

"I can smell what my Stand smells," he answered, "And I know for sure it's the exact same gas in the Royce Hall attack. The Feds were right, Jeremiah, someone must've broken in here  with the gas before the attack happened."

Jeremiah adjusted his hat. "Can you point us to the source?" He asked,

"Yes, I can. I'll direct you to wherever the source is, but I'm not sure where in the tunnels it could possibly be." He turned to the direction of the source. "And wherever it is... I'm not feeling good about it."

"Alright, let's move." Jeremiah turned to the end of the tunnels. "Johnson, take point and lead the way. Giovanna, you're watching our six: if something comes our way, beat it off."

"My favorite," Jocelyn giggled. "Been itchin' to do that, lately."

"Right..." Joshua sighed. "If there's any chance I'm right, we should move forward in Jeremiah's direction. There seems to be a pathway down the end of this tunnel which leads to another section. At least, it's what I'm sensing..."

"Got it. Let's go."

With the two following his lead, Joshua directed them to the scent's direction, combining Jeremiah's experience venturing the tunnels and his ability to search for trails of the gas much faster than anticipated. As each minute passed, they went through every crevice and obstacle in their way—ranging from narrow spaces they had to crawl through, hiding from a janitor cleaning sections of the tunnel network, and the struggle of finding shortcuts that either led to dead ends or otherwise.

Nonetheless, they persevered in spite of the risks of being caught.

While following Joshua and guiding him through the tunnels, Jeremiah couldn't stop thinking about the way Rebel Moon looked. To say he was creeped out was a massive understatement. Given the fact that; not only did it look stark white and act so feral in the way it conducts itself, Rebel Moon's blackened eyes with only small glowing pupils was the biggest contributor in the fright he felt. It being a living monster madly juxtaposed the way Joshua was gentlemanly as could be, and Jeremiah couldn't fathom why that was.

But Jocelyn, on the other hand, felt awed. She didn't think that—to her own honest observations—that Rebel Moon was anything more than just a Stand that extracted chemicals and injected them into anything that could form chemical reactions. It fascinated her. She was admittedly impressed, envying him for having such a complex ability he could use well. But realizing her thoughts were drifting towards forbidden territory, Jocelyn felt like ripping hair off her head as she remembered she wasn't supposed to like him.

Eventually, the trio have now found themselves in the trails' source: UCLA's air conditioning system. The room was noticeably larger than those in the tunnels—it had much more breathing room, with properly-maintained pipes and cable management. The main attraction of the room were five large vent holes with pipes connected to a massive air conditioning apparatus mounted on a wall.

"Well, there goes the source," Joshua said, shrugging.

"Really?" Jocelyn looked up to the holes. "Just this? There's gotta be more to this, 'coz this ain't it!"

"I know," he was confused, "I'm asking myself the same question, too..."

"Johnson?" Jeremiah frowned. "Are you sure this is exactly where the source leads to?"

"A hundred-percent, Jeremiah," Joshua answered, "Unless..."

"Unless what?"

Realizing that there was something that directly led to the source than the AC unit, Joshua exclaimed quietly, "What the fuck is this...?!"

"Johnson?" Jeremiah was worried.

Without hesitation, Joshua marched directly to the source, finding a lanky gas cylinder painted in glossy black in a dark corner of the room. It was attached to a wheeled trolley, with a rubber hose connected to a regulator in the cylinder's valve.

"That's gotta be it, huh?" Joshua wheeled the cylinder near Jocelyn and Jeremiah, the light revealing more details obscured by the shadow.

"I presume so," Jeremiah followed up on Joshua's assumptions, before...

The situation had been pretty lax, if not tense due to their unfamiliarities being together... But upon noticing the Speedwagon Foundation's coat of arms and the writing "PROTOTYPE SPW-0987. DO NOT REMOVE FROM CONTAINER" inked in the cylinder, all of them felt their stomachs drop collectively in great shock and horror. Not because of the cylinder bearing the company's logo, but that there was a Speedwagon among them.

Both JoJos turned slowly towards Jeremiah, apprehension growing between the two parties.

"Jeremiah...?" Joshua's glare felt murderous. "Care to explain yourself?"

"I-I..." He was at a loss of words. "Johnson, it's not what y-you think..."

"Not what I think?!" Joshua hastened himself before Jeremiah's face. "You listen to me very carefully. I always thought that right fuck J.R. Castor and whatever names his guests have for themselves were spewing some horribly wrong conspiracy theories, and I love making fun of them for it. But the fact that he was right this time..."—a hic—"I-It makes me sick to think that YOU approved this shit in the first place, y'know..."

Jocelyn stepped back, gulping.

"Johnson, you have to understand," Jeremiah explained himself, "T-That's not me. I didn't KILL all those people, and I would never do a goddamn—"

"THEN WHY THE FUCK IS YOUR GODDAMN COMPANY LOGO IN IT?!" Joshua interjected, barking right at his face. "Because by extension, you're the irredeemable murderous FUCK who approved of making this, asshole! WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU DO IN THE FIRST PLACE, HUH?!"

Jocelyn whistled loudly, breaking off their argument before it got worse. "HEEEEE~~YYY," she shouted, "YOU DUMBASSES! Stop going at each other's throats and LOOK at this for one goddamn second!"

The two men stopped and saw Jocelyn pointing at the same 'biohazard pentagram' in her photographs drawn in the cylinder's rear, with the same Braille writing below it.

"Oh, shit..." Jeremiah kneeled closer to the pentagram. "If it wasn't me, Johnson... It was them."

"Still doesn't explain shit as to why you let the science team go through with this," Joshua crossed his arms, dismissive.

"Oh, please," Jeremiah snapped, "Won't you stop to think for one fucking second to hear me out?! I had NO CHOICE! Either the military threatens us to cease our operations, or we save our skins by doing their dirty work for them. Even I protested against it, but they were too neck deep into pulling the goddamn trigger—"

"CUT THE DAMN SHIT AND FUCKING LOOK!"

Jocelyn showed them a USB drive in her gloved right hand.

"What the hell is this...?" Joshua took a closer look at the USB.

"Found it right by the trolley," she explained, "And instead of over-FUCKING-reacting, we should go check it out. This could be evidence, as far as I know..."  

Swiftly, Jeremiah took the USB from Jocelyn, and pulled out a notebook-type laptop from his overcoat—an unidentified brand with the Speedwagon logo—and placed it on a table next to them. He directly plugged the thumb drive in the laptop without checking if it was hacked or not, as the trio stared at a folder containing the USB's files.

"The fuck? 'The Truth Shall Set Me Free'...?" Frankly, Jocelyn was weirded out by the folder's name.

Inside the folder contained files of a wide variety, chief among them a sub-folder of documents named 'R.W.', photographs of various writings in Braille, and the main attraction: a video.

"Guess your intuition is right, Giovanna," Jeremiah sighed. "If this is evidence, then it better be good."

"What's up with the video, though?" Joshua pointed to the video in the folder. "Inciting... incident? Fuck does that mean?"

"Well... it's time to find out."

Jeremiah clicked the 'INCITING INCIDENT' video, a media player instantly opening on the screen showing the video's contents. In the video itself, a man in dark robes stood by the aircon unit with SPW-0987 in hand. He was staring at the cylinder with malicious intent, following it by wheeling it up to the vents and raising the tube up there.

"No..." Joshua felt sick upon realizing what the video was. "H-Holy fucking shit..."

Then the robed man turned and stared at the camera with horrible, chalk-white eyes. Joshua turned and saw that he was staring at a surveillance camera in the room; albeit now, it was a mess of broken and strewn-up wires.

"Josh, what the hell are you—" Jocelyn turned to where Joshua stared at. "Oh..."

As they turned back, the robed man twisted the cylinder's valve to release the gas into the vents. In an abrupt 'glitch' transition, surveillance footage of the Royce Hall attack was displayed in place of the air-con room's perspective, inciting a traumatic kind of fear in the trio once more. The further they recoiled, the more it reminded them of what horrible things happened to them: it now showed different perspectives from Haines Hall, Powell Library, and Renee and David Kaplan Hall's surveillance cameras. 

The dissonant cacophony of the victims' screams in the audio—most notably Joshua's wails of anguish and horror being looped every few moments—alongside noises of coughing, bell tolls, and flatlines harrowingly complemented the video's oppressively desaturated visuals, reflecting the chaos the attack wrought onto both its victims and survivors. It was filmed and edited in a way that was frighteningly comparable to a perverse snuff film.

Yet... it wasn't even the worst part of the video.

Transitioning back to the room's perspective, the robed man's white eyes gradually vanished, lulling the trio into watching closer like a hypnotic trance, as he uncloaked himself and revealed his face before the camera.

Both Jeremiah and Jocelyn shared a gasp, but Joshua, on the other hand... 

His reaction was the most intense of them all, almost screaming at the fact that; not only was the robed man nearly his exact duplicate, it was pure happenstance he was there on Royce Hall when the attack happened. And his mind began to blend images of the dying infected drowning in their blood and his imaginings of the attack from the robed man’s point-of-view. 

He was terrified. 

No... ‘terrified’ wouldn’t do his reactions justice. 

Rather, he was—by the grace of God—truly baffled and petrified by the living contradiction that was the ‘INCITING INCIDENT’ video.

“What in the GODDAMN?!” Jocelyn exclaimed, grasping at straws for a reasonable explanation of this. “This is hurting my brain, dammit! Josh was at Royce Hall, right? Who the fuck is he, then?! Probably a fuckin’ deepfake or something!”

“Johnson...?” Jeremiah turned and gave Joshua a questioning glare.

“T-That’s not... me...” Joshua took a step back, mouth left ajar from the robed man’s presence. “She’s right, I-I was at Royce Hall...! Right hand to God...”

The robed man waved at the camera and gave it a wide grin, as an unknown projectile appeared in a split-second before hard cutting to static, ending the video and closing the media player.

Without any downtime for the trio, a mass of notifications appeared on the laptop’s screen. It multiplied one by one, as Jeremiah realized what the drive was doing.

“Oh, no...” Jeremiah felt dread. “Oh, no, no, no, no, no...”

“What the hell’s going on?” Jocelyn helplessly watched the notification spread like wildfire.

“The drive’s hacked,” Jeremiah explained, frantically trying to stop the notifications. “It’s automatically copying every single file in this damned drive and pasting it to every goddamn news company around this city! CNN, Fox News, NBC... Shit. This isn’t gonna bode well for Public Relations...”

The two of them were becoming agitated by the mess; but Joshua, on the other hand...

“Open the files,” he broke silence, bringing an almost dead quality to his voice.

They turned towards Joshua.

“W-What?” Jeremiah frowned.

“I need to see what’s in those files,” he stepped forward. “Especially that ‘R.W.’ folder. Please... I have to know.”

“Okay...” Jeremiah quickly opened the ‘R.W.’ subfolder, pulling up the first document on the screen. The three of them were greeted with an elaborate document that Jeremiah quickly read and reacted with uncertain terror.

"Oh, my God..." he muttered, as the more he scrolled; the more he received a gift of cursed knowledge he wished not to learn.

"What the hell is that...?" Joshua was severely lacking in comprehension towards it. "Someone tell me what's going on, here!"

"No, no, no, no, no... That can't be right." Jeremiah was shaking his head, in denial of the information the document presented before his eyes.

"Fuck do you mean?!" Joshua was more and more disconcerted by the lack of a proper response. "Get your head STRAIGHT, dammit! What the hell's in that document, Jeremiah?!?"

Slowly, Jeremiah turned to Joshua, swallowing in what he saw from the document. Almost frozen just by staring right as his eyes, he could only say this: "W-Who are you, really...? Joshua Johnson... or Remy Wanderlust?"

Hearing his real name uttered by anyone other than those who knew of his secret instantly broke Joshua's world into shattered glass.

"N-No, I..."

The further he processed that question, the more his vision blackened, body growing limper and limper. He could hear nothing but deafening silence, and his expression went from being mortified... to being dead. Maybe this was the robed man's strategy: to not only utilize his uncanny resemblance to frame Joshua for his crimes, but leak evidence of his true identity and past as Remy Wanderlust along with it.

Five years of a 'normal life' just crumbled within his eyes.

And his last thoughts before completely blacking out was the day he earned the opportunity of a lifetime.

The day he became a model revered by the masses was the first time he felt true happiness.

And quite possibly the last time he ever would.

Notes:

Remember to give kudos and (optionally) a comment! This helps in supporting this fic and its future endeavors.

 

Special thanks to PhantomDouglass for beta-reading this chapter in its current revision!

Chapter 10: Vol. 1 - Gold Cobra

Summary:

Following the exposure of Joshua's identity, the trio face a difficult challenge ahead: when they are forced to fight Galen himself, ordered to dispatch the three of them once and for all.

Notes:

Shout-out to one guest who left a kudos in the previous chapter!

UPDATE (10/28/23): Part 7 of an upcoming overhaul to Vol. 1

—|[ CHAPTER 10 ]|—

Gold Cobra

Today, of all days, was the last thing he expected for the exposure of his real identity to happen.

Remy Wanderlust was known by the masses as the grand list-topper of the DEA's Most Wanted in the last five years, due to his (unwillingly-committed) crimes as the enigmatic chemist of Vespertine in James Glitter's drug syndicate. Many doubted if he even existed—save for Glitter himself and the syndicate's inner circle.

So who in the great public would've thought that Joshua Johnson not only was Remy Wanderlust; but the monster behind the UCLA chemical disaster the week before?

As a consequence, it meant that the life he had spent five arduous years building to a state of normalcy, vanished... within the blink of an eye.

His blackout meant that getting out of the tunnels—for the other two beside him—would be a tug of war. As Jocelyn and Jeremiah moved the heavens to get him out, Joshua was drifting between completely losing his consciousness and hearing faint voices in a comatose-like state.

"Motherfucker, why did he have to FUCKING black out?!" He could hear Jocelyn's snarly Brooklyn voice yell out. "Come on, you fat-assed nerd! Don't fucking give out on us like that!"

Though a small part of him was alert, he was completely dazed. 

He could feel nothing. He couldn't think. He couldn't voluntarily move his limbs, as he was in a state of near-paralysis. 

Rather, he could only feel blood rushing in his ears, throbbing uncomfortably loud. And he could only see nothing but darkness, save for a miniscule bit of light leaking through.

But suddenly, they stopped. He knew that because that was the only thing he could feel.

'What's going on...?' He thought to himself.

Eventually, the realization hit him: someone was standing in their way.

He knew that because his vision started to brighten and clear itself up. And he saw a black blob for a figure, speaking in a bassy chainsmoker-esque voice.

He could not hear what they said. It sounded like muffled shouts to him, the tone sharing similarities with curses and expletives.

But it wasn't until the man said—

"My name is Galen Crawford... and I've come to kill you."

—that Joshua regained full consciousness. He knew something bad was about to go down, as he scrambled off in a sudden adrenaline rush.

Jeremiah shouted, "Johnson, what are you—"

BANG!

Then came Galen's shotgun, unloading a single 12-gauge round onto Jeremiah's abdomen. Jeremiah screamed and collapsed to his knees, as Jocelyn shrieked from panic.

Galen shot again, but missed as Jocelyn hurriedly ran off for cover.

Jeremiah was left behind, however, as the gunshot was enough to immobilize him. Blood began to drip out of his wound, moaning in pain as Galen squatted before him.

"Too easy," he rasped, turning his attention towards the two JoJos who ran away. "After I'm done with the others, then you have my permission to die."

He was about to walk away in search of the two who got away... but Jeremiah helplessly tugged at his ankle before he could do so. Galen gave him a glare as he observed Jeremiah's speechless, but defiant expression; he was unwilling to let him go after them. But that effort was futile nonetheless, as he swiped his hand away from the ankle and commenced his hunt.

Galen made a slow, methodical approach to a dim and narrow section of the tunnels, carefully not making any loud footsteps. He was pointing his shotgun forward in a defensive stance, his grip locked tighter than an anchor, as he observed the section very carefully.

“Still running, you two?!” Galen howled as his voice resonated in the hallway. “It’s unwise of you two to let him bleed to death, y’know! That doesn’t just make you look like a coward, but a traitor!”

He stifled a scornful chuckle as he continued sauntering out into the darkness.

He kept his course, avoiding fragile pipes and wires in his path, until he stumbled on a triple-path crossway in the tunnel network. The crossway was brighter, with more lightbulbs around it, and led to different sections—the left path led to a tunnel with more breathing room to walk and jump; the right path was slightly similar; and the middle path was strewn with decommissioned pipes ‘vandalized’ with ink-based writings, usually for remembrance by UCLA tunnel explorers who came before. The pipes had a gap in the bottom allowing people to duck and cross through, with a ladder situated next to it.

Some writings on the pipes were from strangers, others from Jeremiah or his peers and family. 

But he didn’t care. All that mattered to him—more than useless texts on the pipes—was to hunt and kill the two JoJos himself. He scanned the environment with his eyes, searching for anything that helped his pursuit. 

When he was done, he shouted again, “Your unnecessary cruelty to his poor soul is PISSING ME OFF! Either you come out and help him, or I’ll put him out of his misery myself!”

As Galen continued observing the crossway, something in his gut feeling was telling him there was someone right behind him. He cautiously strode forward with the shotgun in hand, persistently suspicious of who among the two would dare ambush him. But there was a miniscule ability that his newfound suspicion was paranoia from the adrenaline he got from shooting Jeremiah.

He later focused his hearing on picking up even the faintest of sounds: either that of fluid dripping from the pipes, or footsteps no one would hear without proper training.

He took a step further, preparing to duck down and cross the front pathway, when he suddenly heard a single, near-silent thud come from behind him. He was right. Someone was sneaking behind him. 

When he turned to gun down his would-be attacker, he was met by a fist to his cheek instead.

As he clutched his cheek with his other hand, he expressed subtle anger at his attacker’s identity: Jocelyn.

“Oh, you—”

She threw a haymaker right at his face, sending him down the ground hard.

“Think faster, pussy!” Jocelyn yelled, as she threw another.

Only this time, Galen dodged and lunged underneath her. He went in to throw a punch at her gut, slowing her down long enough to shoot her.

But to his surprise, she was not to be underestimated when it came to fighting prowess.

Jocelyn managed to sidestep his punch and countered it with a knee to his chest. Galen grunted, taking the hit and falling over the wall next to the decommissioned pipes. She screamed, tackling him to another wall as she pummeled his abdomen. He spat out saliva as she readied for another pummeling, but he managed to stop it by clubbing her in the back with his forearms.

Their fighting was a mess. Sloppy, without technique. Yet they were throwing everything in their cards to kill each other.

Jocelyn threw Galen across the pipes, hitting his jaw and landing directly on his neck. She tried to take advantage of this by attempting to stomp him, but he rolled away and sweeped her legs onto the other wall, hitting her face.

Their screams were mad, chock full of adrenaline and pain as they destroyed each other until one of them could go down. They barked like mad dogs, with Jocelyn having an advantage on the offensive side of things: thanks to the fact that she was willing to use 'dirty fighting tricks' on him. But Galen was a smarter tactician, as he was dodging as many of her attacks as he could, to wear her down and strike when she was vulnerable.

Their arms were now interlocked against each other.

Jocelyn was trying to disarm his shotgun, but Galen resisted. He was using reverse tension to try pulling her arms away, allowing him the opportunity to take a shot. But he did not expect Jocelyn to persist, even going as far as to poke and gouge his eyes.

Galen yelped as he dropped the shotgun and covered his eyes, his screams gratifying Jocelyn as she chortled.

"Told you to think fast", she mocked Galen, as she went all out on striking him with fast, but heavy blows. She was breaking his guard; even tearing some bodily tissues extremely slightly, as she jabbed him in the throat.

He choked on his saliva, and was rashly tossed into the ground by Jocelyn.

"Now to finish you off..." She meandered with heavy steps, staring at him thrashing in soreness and choking from her assault. 

She wasn't trying to play with him; she would be satisfied if he was permanently incapacitated, however.

But before she could do the task...

BANG!

A swarm of bees for a hand grabbed the shotgun and fired at Jocelyn, hitting her in the abdomen. She was sent flying a few feet away, the back of her head narrowly missing pipes by inches.

The firing of the shotgun shell was so loud... that he failed to notice a quiet metallic impact from where she was shot.

Regardless, they were now at a level playing field. Both were incapacitated after a long while full of hand-to-hand beatdowns and bodyslams across every corner in the crossway. Galen could barely move anything after that fight, other than his neck and left arm. He couldn't even see properly. So when everything for him was less sore and blurry, Galen rose from the ground and grabbed the shotgun from the bee-swarmed hand, which vanished.

But to his surprise and disappointment, she was gone.

Not only that, but she didn't even have a trace of blood. Nor any footsteps he could hear running for dear life.

"Damn it," he muttered. "Where did you go...?"

It was at this point that Galen resumed his hunt, presuming that Jocelyn ran over to the dark section of the tunnels.

"Run all you want, punk bitch... But you're not getting away with this. Not this time."

 

–[ ★★★ ]–

 

Meanwhile, Joshua was fighting to keep Jeremiah alive as he applied all the pressure he could on Jeremiah's bleeding wounds, using his trenchcoat for the task. And though it was a hard one, Joshua was giving it his all.

After all, there was a family waiting for him at home.

"Jesus," Jeremiah winced. "How the hell are you doing this...? Where did she go?"

"We accidentally rendezvoused in one of the sections we went through," Joshua explained, tending to the blood spilling off Jeremiah's abdomen. "Took her a lot of convincing, but we split up. I take care of you, she takes care of Mr. Boomstick Guy. So far, the plan's working."

"I see," Jeremiah hiccuped as he tried to stay awake.

Though he feared he would fail, Joshua constantly thought of 'resolve'; the idea that he would succeed, no matter the insurmountable odds stacked against him. He had every reason to blame Jeremiah for the suffering he was going through, but he was for damn sure unwilling to let him die.

"H-Hey, Jeremiah? You're feeling good, right?" Joshua was worried. "Not feeling anything... painful?"

"Y-Yeah... This isn't even my first rodeo being shot like this..." Jeremiah wheezed, laughing.

Joshua almost laughed too. "O-Oh, God... You're making the fact that you’re losing a lot of blood seem lax."

The two of them went silent.

"Wait, I-I'm losing a lot of blood?"

"N-No, no, no, no, no," Joshua corrected himself, "You're not, okay? You're doing great. Just sit tight, and we'll get you outta here. Just... Jocelyn's a little busy trying to beat his ass off, right now."

"Okay," Jeremiah sighed. "Is it true, though?"

"What?"

"The files about you..."

"Yeah..." Joshua frowned. "Everything. Down to the last detail. Whoever's the guy behind this mess also outed who I really am to the whole world."

"Damn..." Jeremiah was virtually nonchalant about it. "Didn't think someone like you turned out to be a world-class chemist forced to do someone's dirty work..."

"I know..." Joshua sighed, reflecting on his past. "Look. If there's anyone out there to blame more than him... it's me. If it weren't for me letting that jackass Glitter get into my head that easily... maybe they would all still be alive. Maybe I would've had an actual life to begin with... that I would've been happy living like that."

“B-Bullshit, kid... It's your fault, it's my fault, it's that doppelganger's fault... who cares? We shouldn't bury ourselves with past burdens we struggle to bear"—a hic—"no matter how much they hurt. We keep moving forward, kid. We have to.”

While they lamented their regrets, Jocelyn returned from her fight with Galen and collapsed onto a nearby wall, exhausted. She sat down, breathless, as she clutched her bruised abdomen, unzipping her leather jacket.

“F-Fuck,” she muttered, pulling out a dented body armor plate off her.

“Holy shit,” Joshua turned to her, “A-are you okay?”

“Giovanna...?” Jeremiah had concerns over her wellbeing.

“Do I look okay to you both?!” Jocelyn growled, zipping her jacket back up. “Try taking a shotgun blast point blank, especially with body armor. F-Fuck, I think I broke a rib... Goddamn it...”

Joshua’s lips quivered. “W-What’s the plan now? He’s not dead yet, right?”

“I don’t know... I’m fuckin’ spent. Drilling him hard took the wind out of me...” She looked at Joshua. “What about you? You’re the genius who came up with this plan, here! Tell me somethin’ that’s more than just splitting up.”

“O-Okay...” He took a while to think, mainly because of chills running down his spine. But he answered, “We get the hell outta here. Make a run for the exit, avoid getting shot down, and take Jeremiah to the hospital. Do it now, and do it fast. That guy doesn’t seem like he wants to stop going after us.”

“What if he’s faster than we think, then?” Jocelyn argued. “Who the fuck’s gonna stall him before we could get outta here?!”

“You tell me,” Joshua grimaced, “I can’t risk it. You know what Coni told us last week, right? Bail out if someone, let alone another Stand user, wants to fuck us all up—”

“Cut the shit, DAMN IT!” Jocelyn was livid he dared use that excuse. “Where the fuck has he gone, Josh?! The guy who could’ve gotten away because I told him to, but still saved my ass because he felt it was right? The guy who destroyed someone who could’ve easily killed us because we didn’t have the skills and abilities he had, and the guy who helped us learn so much more about the attack last week? T-that’s—that’s who! That’s who I’m trying to look for, Josh! And now YOU’RE throwing that side of yourself away, just to follow Zia Coni’s advice of being a coward?!?”

“Giovanna, please,” Jeremiah pleaded, wheezing, “D-Don’t force him if he’s right—”

“Bitch, if I was forcing him, I would’ve taken his ass HOSTAGE!” She sighed, moving over to Joshua’s side. She shook him to get her point through. 

“You best fucking listen to me here, Josh. It’s all up to you now. You keep obeying her advice, the more he gets closer to killing us all. You keep chickening out of this, then we’re all FUCKING DEAD. So go out there... and rip him apart  ‘till he can’t live anymore, yeah?”

Joshua was silent.

Jocelyn let go of him and went over to Jeremiah. “I’ll handle him,” she said. “He’s in good hands, okay? I'll cauterize the wounds long enough to stop the bleeding, then I’ll get him medical attention.”

“...O-Okay,” Joshua sighed, rubbing his head.

Soon after, Jocelyn picked Jeremiah up with all her strength, fighting through the pain in her abdomen’s bruises as she got themselves out of the tunnels. Once they had left his sight, Joshua was now all alone.

He stared blankly at the entrance to the dark section of the tunnels.

Unsure of what to do, even if the words needed to motivate him were spoken.

As he put on his bloodied trenchcoat, Joshua pondered the situation, thinking: ‘Now, what? These goddamn tunnels have nothing. Nothing! Jocelyn should’ve listened to me, dammit... If I can’t find a single object I can ‘extract’ to good use, then what am I doing here? Waiting around until I’m forced to play fisticuffs with him?! Fuck...’

Fortunately for him, something came to his line of vision: a bucket of paint and a rusting, detached metal pipe next to it; both situated over one of the tunnel section’s wiring arrays.

‘A-Actually,’ Joshua thought, a smirk appearing in his face. ‘I think I could do something with these....’

With a somewhat unclear idea of what to do, Joshua seized the two objects and began scavenging for items that could go in tandem. While he was careful to not cross too early into the dark section, finding the items was a struggle. He was in an underground tunnel network which made scavenging them impossible. And he wasn’t sure if his idea was going to work.

But one by one, he was shocked and satisfied to see that everything he needed was inside.

A car battery, one set of damaged jumper cables, a roll of duct tape, a tiny ziploc bag the size of his hands, a cement brick, a pair of AAA batteries, and baby powder. As well as a wheeled trolley for the car battery.

Cracking his knuckles, Joshua began to assemble what he considered to be his best wildcard at taking Galen down:

First, he wrapped the jumper cables around the car battery and summoned Rebel Moon, extracting the necessary elements needed from the paint bucket and the rusted pipe. Next was forming a base from which the elements were to be contained, by pouring large quantities of the baby powder in the ziploc bag. Then he used duct tape to encase the ziploc and bind it, the cement brick, and AAA batteries together in an improvised contraption. Lastly, Rebel Moon injected the elements into the ziploc, desummoning as soon as Joshua attached the car battery to the trolley.

Now, he was ready.

Though still doubtful of his plan’s effectiveness, Joshua knew he had to end Galen’s rampage to save himself and the others.

It was now or never.

Whoever hits first wins the duel.

 

–[ ★★★ ]–

 

Galen made his approach to the dark section of the tunnels once again, shotgun in hand.

He felt less sore from the assault, but the pain still bothered him. Not only that, but the man responsible for his downfall was still alive. He was bitter about losing his career as an elite soldier, but he could not stand the thought of him surviving tonight.

It was repulsive. The idea of it sickened him greatly.

But now was not the time for regrets, nor personal fears and insecurities.

The one thing his experience gave him was ‘drive’.

The motive to hunt him down and kill him dead, so he could finish off the rest once he was done.

And it was all but certain... that one of them would die.

It was just a matter of who would suffer that fate and how...

As Galen took a step closer, he heard what sounded like a ‘death whistle’, emerging from the darkness beyond.

“You lookin’ for me, you son of a bitch?!”

Joshua’s shout echoed across the section, as Galen stood guard and aimed at the direction his voice originated.

Then, he began to smell blood.

But it wasn’t his own blood. He recognized the scent to be that of Jeremiah’s blood when he shot him in the abdomen. And when the realization hit him that they weren’t as cowardly as he thought, he smirked.

The bloodied threat he faced—Joshua himself—came closer and closer, with Galen likening each footstep of his to that of rocks dropping on the floor.

And then, there came he, standing a meter away from him. 

Half of himself was wreathed in a lightbulb by his right, the other side obscured by darkness. And in his hands were two things Galen could not see well in the dark: the trolley’s handle on his right, and the improvised contraption on his left.

Galen was likewise the same, though on opposite sides.

“I was wondering when you’d show up...” He chortled.

“I could say the same to you.”

Though mostly in shadow and a cramped space, the scene was reminiscent of a Western gun duel; instead of guns, however, they had weapons in hand.

Galen’s was, ironically, an actual weapon: a lever-action shotgun that has claimed too many lives to count. The cobra head on the barrel’s muzzle—which was part of the shotgun’s gold-plating—made his weapon feel like a dragon, breathing hellfire on those who opposed him.

Joshua’s was unorthodox, however, but something he prayed was effective. It spoke volumes about his knowledge of chemistry, his ability, and craftsmanship in making use of every object he could use for the contraption. But the real question was if his plan to take Galen down with it would succeed... or fail.

“You’re being very brave doing this, boy.” Galen’s gritty rasp spelled conceited disdain. “A little too brave, in fact. But you’re not gonna win against me. Not until you’ve already spilled blood all over you.”

“Oh, yeah?” Joshua ‘transformed’, speaking to him in a baritone whisper. “I beg to differ.”

“How so? You ran away just to let him die.”

“Who says he’s dying?” Joshua grinned. “I’d hate to inform you... But you’re not finishing the tasks given to you tonight.”

Though he hid it well, Galen had a note of fear in his expression. His shooting hand trembling unstably, he knew that this wasn’t the Joshua Johnson he knew of in interviews and public drama... or even his own impression of him from the video he saw with his fellow gangsters last week.

Something about him had broken free of its chains.

Some kind of... primal beast… or an apex predator... something that had been shackled for years, but was let loose to commit another favor. 

Perhaps it was the same caged monster that eliminated the traitor Jack Ronson the week prior. Or something else entirely...

“I won’t allow it... But I think you should lighten up and reconsider your life choices,” Joshua unfurled the damaged jumper cables tied on the car battery.

Galen initially frowned, and then laughed. “Lighten up? Who do you think you are?”

“Your guess.”

Joshua hooked the positive jumper cable onto the car battery’s negative terminal, connecting the other half of it to the batteries bound to the contraption. He did the same for the negative jumper cable, as both the car battery and jumper cables began to spark.

He lifted the contraption before Galen, the light revealing it in its full glory.

Galen realized too late what Joshua was planning as his mouth went ajar, recoiling.

“What... are you DOING... to that ‘battery’...?!” Galen quivered.

“Your guess,” Joshua repeated himself, “Never ask me about anything again.”

As soon as the batteries in the contraption sparked and went aflame, Joshua hurled both the trolley and contraption towards Galen, both of which were about to reach him. He ran as far as he could from the potential blast radius.

Galen screamed as he shot down the trolley, hoping to stop its momentum.

Instead of halting the trolley, most of the shotgun shells struck the car battery. The battery exploded afterwards, engulfing the contraption in a blaze, as well as sending loads of shrapnel everywhere in the dark tunnel.

Galen was luckily not hit by any shrapnel, but soon found great misfortune ahead of him as the burning contraption itself beneath his very feet.

Searing, incendiary sparks flew upwards from where the ziploc was in the contraption. Galen covered his face with his right arm, just as the sparks set his kilt, leather jacket, and shotgun on fire. He took a step back and cried in pain from the fire burning his clothes, dropping the shotgun and attempting to extinguish the flames with his bare hands.

‘YES!’ Joshua snickered, triumphant at the success of his plan. ‘It worked! It actually fucking worked! Now that’ll set him back a little...’

This was why he specifically chose those objects for the attack he made on Galen:

By hooking the damaged jumper cables opposite where they normally would’ve been on any car battery, Joshua was able to overcharge both the battery and cables long enough to cause a spark. The overcharging also set ablaze the AAA batteries next to the ziploc, which would ignite the ziploc and create an incendiary chemical reaction based on thermite. The chemicals used were ‘aluminum powder’ and ‘iron oxide’—both derived from the paint bucket and rusted pipe that Rebel Moon extracted those elements from.

But it was at this point that his feelings towards this small victory became a concern.

‘’I better not get carried away, right now,’ Joshua thought, ‘That should be the first of many. I gotta wear him out first, and then... I’ll kill him before he can kill us all.’

He took advantage of the thermite’s ignition by running away from the dark tunnel section into the one where he last left Jocelyn and Jeremiah, hiding immediately in a dark alley he believed Galen wouldn’t see.

As soon as the sparks fizzled out, Galen took off his jacket and kilt, extinguishing the flames. Now, he was only reduced to a bland grey tank top and gym shorts combo, with his shotgun rendered unusable. Drenched in sweat, giving his bodybuilder-esque silhouette a wet shine in the shadows. But that wasn’t what pissed him off.

Gritting his teeth, he snarled, “Running away from me yet again, aren’t you?! THIS ISN’T EVEN THE LAST OF ME, JOSHUA JOHNSON! DO YOU THINK I’M JUST A CRAZY ONE-MAN ARMY WITH A GUN?!”

A small colony of bees appeared, surrounding Galen like an aura.

“We’re just getting started, you and I!”

Without hesitation, Galen stepped out of the dark section with the bees following his every move. He wasn't even trying to be methodical with his approach anymore; he was rather livid, walking with heavy rageful steps, all thanks to Rebel Moon's attacks on him. The stress and adrenaline triggered such a violent reaction in him—that killing Joshua would prove therapeutic, in more ways than one… 

"Hey, Josh?! You still there?!" The bees surrounding Galen were slowly growing in numbers, one by one. "Or perhaps, that little attack of yours was a fluke...? I'd rather your situation be the latter, because I'm not having any of YOUR SHIT!"

As he looked for the bespectacled assailant, Joshua was hiding in the spot he took earlier. He wasn't found yet, but whether he remained hidden was uncertain.

'Goddamn it,' Joshua scratched his head, 'This is the shit I'm most worried about! Yeah, I gave him a good setback with thermite, but the other aspects of this beatdown is something I'm not too sure with. How am I gonna make something like that thermite again, let alone throw a punch with Rebel Moon?!'

"Either way, you're already DEAD!" A bee shot out a stinger on a lightbulb, exploding it to emphasize his point. "Don't prolong the inevitable, boy, for you know deep in your heart that NOTHING CAN SAVE YOU! Do you understand?!"

Joshua gulped, thinking he was doomed. However... 

‘Oh, yeah...?’ He swallowed down his doubts, Rebel Moon's blood-red outline shining in the dark. ‘I'm not ready for this... but neither are you!’

As soon as he appeared in his line of vision, Joshua called out Rebel Moon in a puff of red smoke, sending it to dive and tackle Galen onto the ground. It squawked and pressed itself against him, punching his face. But as it went for another, the bees around Galen formed into two fists that punched Rebel Moon in the abdomen, throwing it onto a wall.

The attack caused Joshua to stumble out of his cover, grunting in pain. Stands share damage with its users, and he was no exception.

"F-Fuck," Joshua shouted as he ran off to cover, distancing himself from Rebel Moon and Galen. He could do nothing but watch as the bees surrounding Galen gradually grew, until it completely assumed the form of a dark silhouette.

"You think you could hide and strike me down like that?!" Galen faced Rebel Moon, as though he was talking to Joshua himself. "Trust me... I would feel delighted mutilating you until you keel over and die."

The swarm of bees moved away from Galen, standing by his side as it revealed:

『Gold Cobra』

Though it still looked like a bee swarm, it took on a humanoid form; which bore a similar physique to Galen's, save for the fact its head was cobra-like—complete with its 'hood', some of the bees' stingers having a yellow glow resembling eyes, and a hollow mouth with fangs.

"Fuck..." Joshua frowned at the sight of Gold Cobra. "I should've known..."

"TAKE HIM OUT! FINISH HIM OFF!"

Gold Cobra snarled as it jumped Rebel Moon and thrusted it against the wall, cracking the concrete while breaking some of the pipes and wires around it. Rebel Moon let out painful chirps as it clubbed Gold Cobra and pushed it away.

It squawked as it wrestled Gold Cobra with heavy strikes to make up for its out-of-practice combat skills. Joshua was careful not to go too far from Rebel Moon, as it only had a short effective combat range of 1-2 meters.

But Gold Cobra had enough endurance and agility to dodge most of the attacks, even attempting to shoot out stingers from its fingers in-between. 

This was a fight where neither of them had the advantage, nor could they turn the tide.

Eventually, it reached a point where a stray stinger from Gold Cobra's fingers hit Joshua in his left pectoral. He reacted in great pain as he felt a burning sensation from where he was struck, clutching it immediately.

This caused both themselves and their Stands to stop fighting, Galen reacting to this with a gleeful sense of satisfaction.

"Y-You—" Joshua gritted his teeth from the pain. "What did you do to me...!?"

"Oh, you're about to find out." Galen grinned.

Joshua could feel something burrow into his skin, coming from where the stinger hit him. It wasn't anything painful, but he could feel that everything would go horribly wrong for him... and it did.

The stinger released a charge inside Joshua's pectoral that exploded immediately into a small, but concussive blow that tore open a bloodied crater of flesh and muscle tissue. Instantly, he screamed and fell on his knees, the pain so agonizing he couldn't move his right arm or it'd hurt otherwise.

"F-Fuck," he cried, "A-Argh...!"

Galen couldn't help but laugh, reveling in Joshua's pain. 

"Now you know how I feel," he said, nodding at Gold Cobra.

Following Galen's nods, Gold Cobra decked Rebel Moon onto a wall, pushing it down there to the point where it couldn't move. It put his hand over Rebel Moon's pec—the same area where the maim was—and pressed against it tightly.

This caused Joshua's pain to reach magnitudes beyond what he had already felt. It wasn't just agony he felt; but a part of his 'soul' that escaped his body. His screams were harrowing, gritty enough to make a singer of the metal genre jealous. There was also a crack to his yells that signaled to Joshua that this fight wasn't a walk in the park—as much as he was forced to partake in such activities.

This was a life-or-death situation.

And the risks of dying had now multiplied tenfold.

"So long, you undying cockroach," Galen smirked as Gold Cobra pummeled Rebel Moon three more times down to the ground, kicking and stomping on it.

Now, it aimed its fingers at Rebel Moon.

'D-Dammit,' Joshua thought, continuing to clutch his wounded chest. 'I had him, I absolutely fucking had his ass right where I wanted...!'

"Kill him," Galen declared.

Obeying his command, Gold Cobra shot out stingers at Rebel Moon; only for it to be desummoned. The stingers completely missed by milliseconds, which could've been disastrous for Joshua had he been a second too late.

Of course, this naturally made Galen even more livid than he was.

As he turned to see the bleeding Joshua grinning at him, he growled, "Y-You... son of a BITCH...!"

Immediately, Joshua fought through the pain and made a run for the tunnel's exits as fast as he could, keeping himself from bleeding as Galen gave chase with the humanoid Gold Cobra splitting itself into a swarm of bees—its secondary, alternate form—following the growing trail of blood Joshua was making as he ran.

'Holy fuck,' Joshua thought, 'W-What am I gonna do?! I'm bleeding like crazy here, and I'm for damn sure making a trail he's absolutely following! I came here to exhaust him 'till I could kill him without worry, not run for my fucking life here! I'm failing…! I thought I could play hero, but I should've just pulled out when I had the chance...'

"WHY WON'T YOU FUCKING DIE?!?"

Joshua ran in a zig-zagging motion as he strafed constantly to avoid getting hit by Gold Cobra's swarm of stingers, which collectively fired like a machine gun. He was careful to not let go of his wound, pushing it down to stop the bleeding; as much as it made him hurt.

Both Joshua and Galen themselves began to feel the temperature rise in the tunnels from the frenetic chaos of their chase breaking open countless pipes, as it went on and on. They kept changing directions, utilizing many obstacles to set each other back.

Galen was still hot on Joshua's tail, rashly having Gold Cobra fire as many stingers as it could if it meant getting a hit anywhere in his body.

But Joshua summoned and desummoned Rebel Moon to throw him off and gain as much distance from him as he could. 

As he ran, he was getting gradually dizzy from the blood loss.

'Come on, you're almost... there...!' He could feel his consciousness dwindling every second. 'Don't pass out, now!'

At that point, the chase ended as Joshua forced himself into cover in a two-path crossway, with another dark alley similar to the one he hid in previously.

Galen stopped and caught his breath. He was sweating so much, he looked like he had been in a sauna for hours on end. He let out an exasperated sigh as he observed the crossway before his eyes: while it retained the tunnel network's dark and grungy aesthetic, it seemed much more vibrant; there was graffiti on one pathway, half of it being covered up in grey paint. The other pathway was dull, and had little-to-no light on it. A perfect hiding spot for Joshua... but not for long.

He saw a trail of blood that led to the dark pathway, which Galen immediately knew was Joshua's blood from the crater he blew on his chest. Perfect.

As Gold Cobra reverted back to its humanoid form, he felt he needed to get some things off his chest as he recalled: 

"Y'know what? If you're gonna play this like a coward, I might as well take a breather and tell you a story..." He wiped sweat off his face. "It's about what you did to me. Because I had thought—before today—that you were just nothing. That you were washed, that you've practically sold yourself out to those fucking corpos who would—who would pay you a ton of money to get your image plastered across... e-every billboard, every commercial you could make a deal with the devil of. But today made me realize... just HOW MUCH... I despise you... You sick and annoying little brat...!"

'What the hell is he talking about?!' Joshua was confused as he continued applying pressure to the wound, thinking he had gone mad from both the chase and the tunnels' heat.

"I was a Tier One operator, stationed in Italy for some deep-cover Delta Force ops against drug rings like the one you used to work for," Galen explained with a disdainful snarl, "Out of all the drugs we cracked down, it was yours we destroyed the most... Vespertine. Because if it weren't for Vespertine, I wouldn't have been discharged. And if it weren't for YOU, I wouldn't have had one of your goddamn dealers make me shoot my men dead without knowing."

He mimicked the sound of a shotgun blasting. "He was a Stand user who controlled minds, and by using me as his own puppet? They all went down, bang, bang, bang... And guess what...?!"—a spiteful chuckle—"It's not the dealer I blame the most! It's you. Because if you HADN'T made that damn drug, I would've still been at Italy, giving my entire fucking country a service. If you and Vespertine didn't exist, my men would have still been alive. As do all those… t-those innocent people your drug killed last week! But no. I have NOTHING left to fight for, all thanks to you!"

Joshua felt greatly insulted by what he had said, clenching his fist. 'You piece of shit... You don't know anything about me, or what I had to lose...'

"But at least there's one thing about you I have to thank." Galen shook his head. "Before I could fully move on and do the work I've been given without any burdens left in my heart, I'm gonna kill you first. I'm gonna kill you dead, boy, so I may be vindicated for what I have done."

Galen directed Gold Cobra towards the dark pathway, aiming at it once again.

"So say your own goodbyes, Remy. And burn in Hell after you do."

Just as Gold Cobra was about to shoot its stingers out on the dark pathway's pipes, a loud whistle came from the crossway's entrance.

Both men in their respective places were startled.

"Who the...?!"

"You lookin' for me, hawk?! We're not finished yet!"

Galen turned to his back to see Jocelyn, who stood there with her bloodied jacket and undershirt tied up by her waist. She was now stripped to just her scarf, a black sports bra, and her belt & pants and boots. Losing her jacket also exposed her surprisingly toned and athletic physique, but her most notable features were third-degree-burn marks across her right arm... which had been there for many years.

"...I was wondering if you were still alive," Galen groaned at the sight of her.

"Believe me, I was asking myself that question too," Jocelyn blew hair off her face, "Given that you're, uh... wearing less Scottish stuff than last time."

"He doesn't have very long, y'know." Galen turned to the dark pathway, looking at a direction where he assumed Joshua was hiding. "At any second now, I'd have found where the trail follows, and only then, can I put down that wounded gazelle before he could bleed to death. But I'm no stranger to changing priorities in these trying times, so... I guess taking out the daughter of Passione with him first would kill two birds with one stone."

"Well, then... Come at me." She beckoned for him with a smile. "Know that I'm not letting you do that so easily."

Galen spat out saliva on the ground, before shouting, "Gold Cobra, throw her down an early grave!"

Gold Cobra roared and hissed, leaping towards Jocelyn as she summoned Blade Runner to defend herself.

The humanoid swarm of bees went in to tackle Blade Runner, but it blocked the attack with its katanas, taking two swings at it which Gold Cobra swiftly dodged.

Blade Runner went in for a tornado kick, but Gold Cobra also ducked before it could hit.

As it landed on its two feet, Gold Cobra seized the opportunity to attack Blade Runner by throwing two quick jabs at its shoulder and face, sending it over the graffiti wall.

Jocelyn echoed Blade Runner's falling motion by a quick head turn, darting to Galen afterwards and spitting out a bloodied gum of tooth on the floor. She wiped blood dripping off her mouth, smiling thirstily in spite of this.

"That's all you got, huh?" She laughed.

"Oh, you..." Galen glared at her.

Blade Runner and Gold Cobra exchanged blows and swings at each other, with Gold Cobra shooting stingers in-between each haymaker it threw, and Blade Runner deflecting each stinger in-between each swing of its blades. The fight was firmly on equal ground between them, neither of them having the advantage or disadvantage.

As he helplessly spectated the fight go down between them, Joshua, almost bleeding to death, couldn't resist thinking:

'Aww, shit... The more I see her go, the more I think... W-Wow. She's awesome. In ways even I couldn't have been years ago. But how...? She seems to be struggling. I need to figure out how to help her.'

It was at this point—as Gold Cobra rolled out of Blade Runner's sword barrage and threw its body across Jocelyn—that an idea formed itself in his head.

'Wait... If the tunnels here could release hot steam, then...'

Rebel Moon was summoned again, who was 'enthusiastically' chirping in tune with Joshua's blood-deprived thinking.

'Let's hope it works, so I can fry that living beehive out of our lives.'

Joshua ordered Rebel Moon towards the wall behind him, which had large pipes in it.

While Gold Cobra was busy trying to shoot stingers onto Blade Runner and its user, Rebel Moon cawed and hissed as it broke open one of the pipes in a swift chop, causing hot steam to be released into the crossway. It twisted the pipe into Galen and Jocelyn's direction, redirecting it like a large beam of immensely hot vapor.

The steam being released in their direction caused the two to stop fighting, as Galen bore the brunt of the steam and screamed in agonizing pain. 

Jocelyn managed to dodge out of the way and desummoned Blade Runner, her eyes widening with glee as she realized she could have the opportunity of a lifetime in her hands. She moved quickly towards the twisted pipe's direction, avoiding the steam in her way as Rebel Moon vanished quickly.

"Holy fuck... Joshua, you genius!” She muttered to herself. “If I can find something to steal heat from, I could theoretically light that steam on fire... and burn him out while I'm at it!" 

Just as she was about to break open a pipe on the other side for Blade Runner to siphon heat from, Joshua suddenly walked up to her, placing his hand on her shoulder softly.

"Jocelyn—"

"AAAAAAAAAAAHGK!" Jocelyn slapped him hard, startled violently. "Fucking hell, Josh! Where'd you come from, dammit?!"

"I was hiding here the entire time," Joshua coughed, weak from the blood loss. "N-Now, I don't wanna waste anymore time—"

"Jesus fucking Christ, your pec..." She pointed out, horrified.

"I-I know, I don't have time to explain," he coughed again, almost instinctively grabbing his wounded pec, "Nor do I have any more time to waste. But if you have something you could use on that motherfucker, use it NOW. Because even I don't know you long enough to understand how your Stand works... Also, I really need to get this checked out, quick."

"O-Okay..." Jocelyn sighed. "Okay... You look like shit, dummy."

"Y-You too." Joshua weakly smiled, letting go of her afterwards. "I think we... w-work... better that way."

Galen was thrashing about as he was trying to find something that could cover him from the steam blasting away. He could feel his flesh slowly melting away, as more and more sweat dripped out of his body while worsening the burn marks he received from the thermite contraption earlier.

"Blade Runner. Let's do what we do best."

Blade Runner was summoned again, standing by her side.

Laughing at the irony of the situation, Joshua used whatever strength he had left to shout, "Hey, Galen! You said I should burn in Hell, right?"

Galen could only respond with pained, labored grunts as he flailed.

"...Let's give you a taste of what it feels like."

Blade Runner slashed open a pipe on the other side of the pathway with its katanas, siphoning the steam's heat until it became a chunk of ice sealing the pipe. The orange lights on its tank glowed, signifying that it now had fuel stored inside. The fuel was then transferred to its blades; the blades glowing a bright pink color and leaving heat waves around it.

"MUDA!" Blade Runner shouted, as it swung both katanas on the twisted pipe's steam, redistributing its heat there.

In accordance with Jocelyn's theory, the heat redistributed onto the steam instantly caught fire, turning it from a blast of uncomfortably hot air into a concentrated ray of fire. 

As he took the bulk of the steam's impact, Galen was set ablaze.

The pain of having his flesh slowly burn from the steam paled in comparison to this; it was beyond excruciating what he felt. It was rather unimaginable, screaming in the worst pain he has ever felt, his voice comparable to that of an animal in a bear trap. Almost like he was turning into a pile of ash, but in a cruelly inhumane way. The smell of his body engulfed in searing flames was unforgettable; you could almost swear he was a huge chunk of fresh meat charring itself into a slab of steak.

Seeing Gold Cobra mimic the flailing motions of its user being immolated, Jocelyn could only say one thing: "And to quote an oooold, old friend... 'I'm gonna cut you like a pincushion', bitch!"

Blade Runner zoomed and skated towards Gold Cobra, unleashing a rapid volley of katana swings as it slashed and diced apart the swarm, the damage reflected on Galen causing him to spurt out blood amidst his own immolation.

"MUDA MUDA MUDA MUDA MUDA MUDA MUDA MUDA MUDA MUDA MUDA MUDA MUDA MUDA—" it shouted repeatedly.

Blade Runner then ceased its attack and rushed over Galen at high speeds, raising its swords upward as it cried one last "MUDA!" before striking him down.

It crossed its blood-soaked blades as it stood in front of Galen, who stopped as soon as the attack was performed on him. And then...

Not only did he collapse to his knees, but the attack had split him in half. Vertically.

Both halves of his body slumped down in different positions, now lifeless and free to burn to the ground without any semblance of pain to feel... Though obscured by the flames, you could almost make out bones and internal organs in each half, akin to human anatomy diagrams.

---

『 User 』 — Galen Crawford
『 Stand Name 』— Gold Cobra

Power: B   Speed: B   Durability: E   Precision: C   Range: E   Potential: E

『 Observations 』— Appears as a swarm of bees that form the shape of a humanoid with a cobra for its head. The humanoid form—its most common—bears extreme close-range combat capabilities, while its swarm form shoots out bullet-like stingers; something the humanoid form can also do (albeit limited to its fingers only). These stingers can burrow into surfaces/flesh and release an explosive charge, which can be activated at will.

『 User Status 』 —  D E C E A S E D
TERMINATED BY ANOTHER USER

---

"F-Fuck," Joshua sighed, with labored breathing. "It's over... I-It's over..."

"Yeah..." Jocelyn put her hand on his shoulder. "Your pec, though..."

"I know," he winced, "At this point, I might have to join him in the hospital"—a hic—"the longer I stay here."

Jocelyn stroked her chin, thinking of what she could do to solve that problem. "Well, about that..."

"What?"

She beckoned for Blade Runner to her side, and it complied. "I still have some leftover 'fuel' stored in its tank," she explained, "And I might be able to use it to, uh... It won't necessarily heal it, but cauterizing it should make it hurt less."

"Okay..." 

Without hesitation, Joshua removed half of his trenchcoat and varsity jacket, revealing the extent of his pectoral injury—it looked worse than it should've been, as she could make out bits of his ribcage sticking out.

"Ohhhh, Jesus," Jocelyn resisted the urge to gag and vomit. "This is bad..."

"How so?" Joshua coughed. "It can't be that bad..."

"I know... But I can fix it."

Blade Runner hovered its right katana over Joshua's blown-up pec, transferring its heat there.

Joshua let out a quick, sharp cry of pain, as Blade Runner began cauterizing his wounds. He could only moan and let tears in his eyes loose, as he held onto Jocelyn while the bleeding stopped.

"It's okay," she embraced him, ruffling his hair, "I know it hurts..."

"I-I know..." Joshua moaned. "Goddamn it... I really need to go to the hospital, right now."

"Yeah, yeah, we're going to... Just gotta wait a little longer." 

And then, Blade Runner was desummoned.

"All done," Jocelyn shrugged.

Joshua was left breathless, exhausted from both the blood loss and the physical torment he underwent through these past few minutes of his life. But somehow, in spite of all that—he was feeling much better.

"H-Hey..." He looked over her right arm, just as he wore his two jackets back on. "What's up with the scars?"

"The scars?" She looked down. "Well... Let's just say that I keep getting my ass kicked trying to get what I want..." Jocelyn pulled up her long left fringe, revealing burn marks on her left cheek reaching all the way to half of her temple.

"And that I paid a heavy price for it."

"Ouch..." Joshua sighed, treading the line between sympathy and unwarranted curiosity.

"Eh, whatever," she let go of her fringe, "I don't mind. Makes me look tougher than I should be. Anyways... we should go."

"Okay..." Joshua tried walking, but found himself struggling to do so. "Owww," he moaned, "What the fuck did that guy do to me? Jesus..."

"Want me to carry you?" Jocelyn offered.

"I-I don't know, I don't even think you can carry me—WHAT THE FUCK?!"

Shockingly enough, she swooped Joshua up his feet, carrying him out of the tunnels. She held him like he was made of feathers.

"See?" Jocelyn chuckled. "Don't underestimate me, dumbass."

Joshua sighed, wondering how she was doing this. "L-Look, how much do you weigh," he asked, "Surely you can't be a hundred pounds lighter than a guy who's reaching 210, right?"

"About a hundred-forty-nine."

"Seriously?!" He shook his head. "I thought you were lighter than that. Though you seem pretty toned..."

"I know... But I'm used to people thinking that way." She whistled gently as she continued walking down the tunnels.

"Now I understand what you said last week, though."

"What?"

"Something about how being carried away like this is... romantic." He recalled with a smiling blush.

"Don't think this changes anything between us," she likewise blushed, although embarrassed.

"Okay..."

The difficult task of putting Galen down before he could let loose a rampage beyond their control was now over. But a real challenge awaited them...

At the world above the rabbit hole.

Notes:

Remember to give kudos and (optionally) a comment! This helps in supporting this fic and its future endeavors.

 

Special thanks to PhantomDouglass for beta-reading this chapter in its current revision!

Chapter 11: Vol. 1 - Leave The Memories Alone

Summary:

In the aftermath of the tunnel fight against Galen, Joshua's livelihood as a model reaches a downward spiral following the exposure of his true identity as Remy Wanderlust; and the frame-up accusing him of orchestrating the chemical attack on UCLA campus last week.

With his arrest imminent, Joshua discovers a shocking revelation.

Notes:

Shout-out to one guest who left a kudos in the previous chapter!

UPDATE (2/6/23): Added a minor easter egg at the end referencing an extremely minor character from Chapter 5.

UPDATE: (10/28/23): Part 7 of an upcoming overhaul to Vol. 1

UPDATE: (8/29/24): Rewrote a couple of sections to align with character choices developed in the months following this chapter's release.

—|[ CHAPTER 11 ]|—

Leave The Memories Alone

 

 

Coming to the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center was like a blur.

Mere minutes passed since the incident at the tunnels. Joshua & Jocelyn were rushing Jeremiah down the emergency room, with nurses tending to his cauterized wounds as he was stretchered away. His consciousness was fading back and forth from shock and blood loss; and before they knew it, his life was all on the line.

They couldn't even understand a single word the nurses said. They mentioned something about 'emergency surgery', or something about his 'vitals' being dangerously low.

However, they were stopped by two nurses, just as they arrived.

Even that was enough to break Joshua out of his adrenaline rush-induced trance.

"S-Sir? Ma'am?" One nurse said, adamant. "Both of you are barred from entry. It's for patients who need utmost medical attention only."

"M-Medical attention—" Joshua scoffed. "What are you talking about?"

"Sir, ma'am, please sit in the waiting room until we can give an update—"

"Nurse, what the fuck?!" Jocelyn was trying to barge in. "We can't—We can't fucking leave him to die, dammit! Plus, look at him"—she pointed towards Joshua's pec—"LOOK. AT. HIM! Doesn't he get a pass? Or does that hole on his fucking chest not count?!"

A tense silence followed.

"...This way." The nurse showed them the way, opening the door.

"Okay..." Joshua sighed, and entered the emergency room.

Jocelyn was about to make her way in, but was stopped.

"What the f—" 

"She has broken ribs," Joshua raised his voice towards the nurse. "Trust me. I think she said so herself."

The nurse sighed, and also showed Jocelyn the way.

"Proceed."

Once the doors closed, the two JoJos were now together again, making their way down the emergency room.

They were greeted to the sight of sterile white architecture, with blue hues and nurses in bluish-green scrubs tending to nameless patients of varying ages and shapes. Some were crying children, others were adults who moaned in pain they couldn't think of. They could also hear a voice in the intercom calling out instructions, wheelchairs squeaking in the shiny ceramic floor, and the smell of blood, antiseptics, and bleach cleaners.

But they could care less about all that. They could care less about the taste of burnt coffee in the air, or the stench of disposed hospital food laying around...

As Joshua was taken to be treated for his wounds, all he could think about was an incredibly slim chance.

The chance that, miraculously, he could get away with everything. Get away from the controversies that could be aroused from the leak. That the general public wouldn't even give a damn about who he really was.

Whether he was Joshua Johnson or Remy Wanderlust, it did not matter.

He knew his past was going to catch up on him.

But this wasn't the way he wanted it to be. Not like being outed by some murder-happy cult who also framed him for the attack on UCLA just a week prior.

Suddenly, Joshua got a call on his phone, just as a nurse was about to start treating his wound.

"S-Sir?" The nurse said, confused.

"S-Sorry, nurse," Joshua coughed, "I've gotta take this, quick." 

"All good, sir," he answered, stepping away.

Joshua quickly answered the call. "U-Uh, hello? Dex?" He said.

"Holy shit, Josh! What the hell's going on with you?!" Dex was frantically flabbergasted. "You're trending everywhere, goddamn it! All for the wrong reasons!"

"L-Listen, Dex, I can explain—"

"Explain what? That you've been—"

"H-Hey, listen. I-I'm at the hospital right now, okay?" Joshua sighed.

"The hospital?! Fuck are you doing there—You better not tell me you're hurt or somethin'!"

"I am hurt."

"WHAT?! Where are you right now—"

"H-Hey, look look look, I know it's a lot to take in. But I went on a little trip with two friends of mine, and I had to get us rushed to the hospital, okay? One of us got shot and lost a lot of blood on the way here, t-the other—a girl—s-she broke her ribs beating him up, a-and—" Joshua felt more and more panicked, rushing through every word. "Honest to God, I'm really REALLY hurting, right now. But I'll tell you this once, and listen carefully."

"Tell me what?"

"I know about the emails, okay? But whatever you do, don't believe what it reads, okay? Because that's not me." He shook his head. "That's NOT me, I-I swear! You already know I was at Royce Hall, r-right? Right where the coughing started? Look, whoever that guy is in the camera, I'm a hundred-percent certain that it's a deepfake. Something made in two hours! By a delusional stan in their computer, no less!"

"...Josh, that's not it." He could hear Dex clicking on keys through the phone. "Look, is this what you were trying to hide from me last Friday? That you were Heisenberg-in' all those years before we met?! That the reason you're hiding so much from us is because you're a wanted fugitive of the law—"

"No, no, no, no, no, no," Joshua interjected, rubbing his head in impatient frustration, "That's not... Listen to me for one fucking second, okay? I'm not a drug cook. I'm not him. I'm not... HEISENBERG... or whoever the fuck that guy is. I'm NOT a wanted fugitive, and most of all, I'M NOT REMY FUCKING WANDERLUST!"

His voice cracked as he felt his innocence crumbling away.

"L-Look, sorry for yelling. I-It's been a long day... And to be frank, how people are believing this mess is just... I know people believe anything nowadays, but I-I didn't think they'd be THAT stupid to believe this. And it's already getting into my head. Your head, anyone else's..."

"Y-Yeah, yeah, Josh..." Dex sighed. "But I'm telling you right now. You have no idea what kind of hot water you're in, kid. This isn't like what happened between you and Patricia last April. This is... I don't even know how to describe it."

"P-Put Visa on the phone."

"What?"

"If there's someone who knows what to do, it's her." Joshua gulped. "Not trying to say I've lost faith in you, Dex, it's just... You and I know who we're working for."

A long pause.

Joshua could hear Dex's phone fidgeting, moving places. He could faintly hear him and Visa making conversation, until...

"Josh...? Is that really you?" Visa's voice came from the other end.

"H-Hey, Visa," Joshua weakly chuckled, "Look. I know you're gonna say something bad about me. Something about you thinking... all this... that's been circling around the internet is real. But trust me, it's not me. It's not me, I swear to God—"

"Josh, listen—"

"But Visa, I insist—"

"Joshua, STOP." She raised her voice. "Can you hear me out, please?"

"...Tell away."

"For the record, Dex put everything on speakerphone, meaning I heard exactly everything you've said."

Joshua could feel some kind of relief at this. But...

"I understand what you're saying, Josh. I understand there are some things about you that you don't want us to know of, and I don't wanna press or anything. And I'm sure that you're telling the truth about all this. But realistically speaking? This isn't something PR can fix. It's way worse than we had anticipated."

"W-What do you mean, Visa?" His lips quivered, his voice shaking.

"Look, I know you love your job," she continued, "And we love having you here. But if I let you keep this job while all those headlines about you pile up on each other, it's not gonna end well. For you and us both. So the best decision right now that we've come to agree with... is to terminate your contract until further notice."

When he heard this from Visa, his heart sank. Whatever hope he had for a miracle—that everything would go on as normal—had been squandered. He was speechless, blankly staring at the cold white walls and green curtains of the emergency room.

Swallowing whatever pride he had left, he replied, "O-Okay... I understand."

A single teardrop fell on his cheek, hitting the final nail in the coffin.

"Are you sure about this, Josh? Don't you want to rethink this?"

"...N-No." Joshua sniffed. "Do what you must. It's for the best."

"Okay... Goodbye, Josh."

And then, Visa hung up.

He sat there in deep thought, wondering where it all went wrong. Wondering how five years of his 23-year-long life—the years he was at his happiest—was ripped away from him as quickly as it did. And why he had to go through all this after everything he went through as Remy.

The satisfaction of a normal life...

The happiness of his job...

The peace and quiet over his past being buried in secrets thought to never be revealed...

All of them were now... gone.

Now, the whole world and everyone in association with him knew who he truly was. And worse of all, everyone was believing the lie that he caused the attack on Royce Hall. That he was the man behind the slaughter.

At this point, it was going to take more than simple therapy to himself, and misinformation by his superiors to deceive the public into loving him again.

And as fate dictated, Joshua Johnson's happiness... was no more.

 

–[ ★★★ ]–

 

Joshua closed his eyes in the showers of his mansion, resting his palm on the wall as he looked down. A warm, hot steam of water from above ran down his cold and bloodied skin; the wounds on his pec healed after Coniglio rushed to intervene on his behalf, merely two hours ago.

The blood that had been splattered on his face and body washed away on the floor, he felt powerless.

The warmth of the shower wasn't enough to rid himself of the chills everywhere. 

And he was powerless. Powerless to let go of the circumstances that led him here.

He could not get the memory of his doppelganger committing one of the vilest acts of terrorism he’d personally seen over a week ago.

His wicked, contorted smile was an image burnt deeply in his head. And to think that he possibly was laughing over Joshua’s misery... it really made him seethe. Whether he was angry about it or not, Joshua knew from five years back that his criminal activities would be revealed.

He didn't expect it to happen the way it did.

As the waters soaked him, Joshua felt tears in his eyes flowing down, masked by the shower raining down. But he didn't even feel like crying. No...

He couldn't feel like crying.

He felt dead. Or rather...

It was a death-like sensation. The feeling of being lifeless and weary. Being awake and alive, but motionless at the same time. His emotions were stiff as porcelain, but he desired a release from life at the hands of death. If he had just bled to death when Gold Cobra blew open a crater in his chest, he wouldn’t have to deal with this harrowing situation. But he had to just run away. 

There was something keeping him in this mortal coil, and he couldn’t even tell what that was.

Why was he still alive? Rather, what was keeping him alive? Why couldn't he have been the one to get shot by Galen instead of Jeremiah? Was it Jocelyn—as irritating and hostile as she was most of the time—or something else? He hadn't felt this since five years past, when he strove to give himself a second chance after wanting death's sweet release.

Whatever that reason may be... he hoped it was something he’d understand. 

Even he could take a complex, mystifying answer over nothing...

 

–[ ★★★ ]–

 

He kept thinking of that question, all the way to when he slept and woke to a new day.

It was now 10:00 AM. The morning was bright, a warm orange sunshine gracing him and his bedroom. But instead of feeling optimistic about everything, he felt dread. And pessimism for the future...

"We come to you LIVE this morning with some breaking news," one reporter said on his TV, "Earlier today, evidence from an anonymous source revealed the perpetrator behind the chemical disaster at last week's UCLA Foundation Day to be none other than Joshua Johnson. The 23-year-old model is now facing serious criminal charges filed by local police forces, with multiple counts of mass murder and domestic bioterrorism—"

Joshua changed the channel.

"—the email containing evidence suggesting Joshua Johnson's involvement in the attack, also claims that he is—in fact—Remy Wanderlust, a high-profile fugitive formerly working for the Glitter family drug syndicate, who is currently the list topper in the DEA's Most Wanted—"

He changed the channel again.

"—But the fact of the matter is, it's unprecedented that someone with as good of a reputation and personality as he is could turn out to be that kind of guy? I mean, c'mon. Even I'm certain his fans are expressing at least half the disgust I have—"

And again.

"—I don't... necessarily... think that he's malicious enough to be capable of what the leak suggests he did." Visa was now on his screen, being interviewed by a reporter over what happened last night. "But releasing him of his contract was a decision we both mutually agreed on."

"As for him, Ms. Mandelle. Do you think he has a chance of returning to the business after all this?"

Visa quivered. "I don't think I can comment on that."

As soon as she answered the question, Joshua turned off the TV. He sighed deeply, running fingers down his hair as he sat down on his bed. He had barely slept due to his mind and body being in rampant stress and contemplation, especially the fact that the news he received last night before sleeping—Jeremiah being in a more stable condition with Coniglio's aid—went by like an airplane in the sky.

And the thing he had been contemplating all night long was how he was going to survive all this.

'What am I gonna do about this...?' He was worried. He was not of sound mind, right now. 'Everyone's coming for me. The cops, the DEA, whoever's in charge of taking me out... I've lost everything, now. Right after I — I can't talk about this, not now... And yet, I keep thinking of how I'm gonna fix this. When I just can't. It's over, dammit! How am I gonna live with myself after this?'

He looked up at the ceiling, seeing the fan spin over and over; even with his astigmatism impairing his vision slightly.

'Sure enough, this shit'll be too much for Bernard and Coniglio to handle. I dunno about Jocelyn, either... seems more likely that, even if she does call Giorno for help, he'd be too busy to respond. Which leaves me with... ding ding. Nothing.'

Joshua could only feel anything but melancholy, as he went even deeper with his thoughts.

'God, I haven't been in good contact with you lately,' he pleaded, 'but just hear me out... please? I've prayed. And prayed. When I prayed so I could survive one more day in that shithole, You gave me a 'gift' to cope with it. When I prayed after the blood couldn't stop running out, You gave me another chance to live. But what else have I got to live for, if I have nothing left for it? Give me a reason why I'm not dead yet. Give me a reason to believe! Please, believe in me as I have believed in You. Because I have no idea why I'm still here unless I have something You want me to do. Some kind of, I don't know... Oh, poor Alison... She might've spewed some bullshit about all this fate and destiny and higher calling crap... but she wasn't bad. Just... Wait a minute...'

Something caught his mind.

'Oh, shit. I forgot.'

Joshua put on his glasses and scrambled to grab the letter given to him yesterday, lying by his pillow. Unfolding it, he read:

"Dear Joshua,

 

By the time you're reading this: I'm dead. I don't know why, but I'm certain it has something to do with many dying at once. We don't always see eye-to-eye, but I like you enough that I wrote two letters just for you. The other one's still being written as of this time, so I'll have to ask Grandma if she could give the other letter to you, after I'm gone. I want you to understand that, regardless of the consequences that tragedy brings, you'll make it out with no harm. Or at least... I think a part of you will die for it. But the way I see it is this: You're a man who lived in great agony, one who had to witness all these... horrible things happen to you, but in spite of all that—you're still here, happy! And that's good. You should be very, very proud of yourself for that.

I also wrote this letter as a guide, because I'm certain you'll ask yourself why you're still here after going through an unreasonable amount of suffering after I die. You won't believe me. I don't expect you to. But hear me out when I decided to foresee at least a few parts of the journey awaiting you, in the event of my untimely death:

You'll meet someone at a crossroads. Both of your first impressions will be sour, but understand that the two of you are special to each other. Yin and yang. Red string of fate, all that jazz. Might not exactly be like that, but it's a solid foundation as to why you two would even be intertwined with each others' destinies. And someday, you'll be grateful to have met each other.

Two men working for a malevolent force will be waiting to kill you. First her, and then you. At a highway, or a cul de sac... maybe a tunnel underground. I don't know.

And your past... There's nothing about it I know of other than what I wrote earlier, but I know that the whole world will denounce your name. They will hunt you. They will make you wish you were dead. But don't believe a single word they say. Follow the journey's steps—whatever they may be—and you'll get the chance to regain the life you've wanted to live... even if it costs something dear to you.

But understand that the journey will not be easy. You will have to return to places you thought you’d never go back to, struggle against dark forces seeking to hunt you down—both from those you know, and those who know you parasocially—but most of all…

That malevolent force is planning her next move. And her next move could very well spell your doom, if left unchecked.

Again, you won't believe me, and I understand. But I'm trying to help you in any way I can. I might be right, I might be wrong, and I can never tell which is which beyond this point. But regardless of your feelings towards me, I believe in you. And wherever your actions take you, be it a prison of your own or the warmth of nostalgia; you will always prosper nevertheless. Goodbye... I will miss this world, and you. And wherever I go, know that I rest in a paradise beyond my wildest dreams.

 

Safe journeys ahead, JoJo!

– Alison

When he fully grasped the letter's writings, he was shocked. Not just because of how Alison's grandmother spoke to Joshua about her believing in him, but how she knew exactly how all those things she mentioned happened as she said they would.

'Holy shit...' He pondered with his mouth ajar, surprised. 'How the fuck, Alison...? You predicted everything that happened last week!'

He recalled, 'Like... it baffles me how you knew about Jocelyn and I meeting on the road the way we did, how you knew you were gonna die because of Vespertine, how we'd end up fighting that Jack guy and the boomstick fuckhead back-to-back, and what happened to my career after last night...'

In realization, he could only determine one thing.

'God, if this is the answer you can give me? Then... I'll gladly take it. If this means getting everything back, then I'll do what I must. No matter the cost...'

Joshua faintly smiled at himself in the mirror, feeling a pristine sense of determination—or at least, a gleam of hope that everything would turn out just okay in the long-term. He sighed and got up from the bed, walking over to the mirror to get a closer look at himself.

The last time he gazed at his own reflection, he felt nothing but 'Remorse' and 'Guilt'.

Now, it was different.

He was looking at his old self—a younger Remy Wanderlust who was innocent, voraciously consuming knowledge in the art of chemistry, and most of all; he was happy. But at the same time, he was his current self—a jaded gentleman putting on a 'happy face', someone whose trauma matured him way too soon; the bliss of his glory days never to be reclaimed.

But he understood he needn't be either of those personas.

He had to be different. 

To ensure the prospect of his memory and legacy being saved, he needed to become someone new. Someone that embodied a combination of the best traits of both selves, and so much more. He needed to embody 'resolve', 'willpower', and 'purpose'—unwilling to let anyone prevent him from getting his life back, even if it risked losing an arm and a leg.

As he thought of what he needed to do, his eyes dashed towards a copy of his campus uniform, taking it without hesitation.

If he had to save himself...

He had to do it now.

 

–[ ★★★ ]–

 

From The Author: For the following scene, please please PLEASE play this track when you read this. This is to help immerse readers into the scene some more, and while much of the lyrics may not fit—the vibe of the song does. Expect more heads-up prompts like this in the future, or if there is an embedded link in some parts of future chapters.

By the time they learned of the warrant being filed, Bernard and Coniglio could only look at each other with dread. Disconcerted by the possibility that Joshua would end up in cuffs by government or DEA mooks, any second now. They knew it was going to happen inevitably when they took him into their custody all those years ago... But not like this.

Even though she knew The Cure was powerful enough to take down possibly a thirty-man team of them—should the amount of injuries, ailments and sufferings exceed its limit—Coniglio was afraid of losing control and taking the mansion with her.

As they rapidly changed channels to hopefully find a report proving that the leaks about him were nothing but false accusations...

"Stop." Joshua said aloud, standing by the stairs with his uniform, a large backpack, and two suitcases in hand. "There's nothing you can do. I'm sorry."

The two ran up to Joshua, embracing him and telling him things he wasn't too eager to hear about. He told them he was plotting to leave and hunt down the people responsible, which made them gasp.

Concerned about his wellbeing, they begged for him to stay and deal with the situation more appropriately, arguing that it was a suicide mission.

He refused.

He acknowledged that he had been 'rusty' with his Stand, and his experience navigating the dangers of the criminal underworld. But he claimed to know someone who could help. He also insisted he had made up his mind, that there was nothing they could do to stop him, and that he had nothing left to lose if he already lost it all.

Hesitantly, both of them bade their goodbyes and wished him luck.

With a poignant smile, Joshua fled to the garage and packed everything he had in his Lancer. He also gave someone a text in his phone, before entering the car and drove out of the mansion before the authorities had a chance.

Though he drove to an alternate route, he was still nervous about being caught.

But luckily—either due to negligence or divine fortune—several LAPD cars passed by the opposite road and did not notice him at all. It did not matter whether they would, however.

After all, Joshua had some things needed to be done. Things he hoped would lead to the ideal outcome he hoped to achieve in this journey. But despite all that, he couldn't stop contemplating everything that led him to this point.

Maybe it would've been better if he died. Or maybe it would've been better if he hadn't met Jocelyn; let alone leave her to die in Jack's hands.

But like his opinion on the cops from earlier…

It did not matter.

Minutes after Joshua left the mansion, local authorities—including two police & SWAT units, six FBI investigators, and a fifteen-man DEA response unit—raided the mansion. Bernard and Coniglio themselves were taken in for questioning amid the chaos, as the authorities relentlessly and extensively searched the mansion for his whereabouts. They obsessively inspected every item, furniture, memorabilia & rooms and corners—but found nothing.

Even Jocelyn was gone.

But like everything they found so far, there was nothing. He was gone.

Nothing of his own possession was left behind, except for a letter. Though they found copper instead of gold, the investigators had to stay for a longer while, if it meant fulfilling the slim chance of finally apprehending Remy Wanderlust after five long years. 

Yet instead of the letter giving out a clue as to where he had gone off to, all the letter read simply was one word:

"GOODBYE."

 

–[ ★★★ ]–

 

Amongst a warm and sunny day awaited Jocelyn, who leaned by her parked and upright LiveWire motorcycle.

It was now 12:00 PM in the middle of an oddly empty 1st St. Viaduct bridge, more than twelve hours after the incident at the tunnels. Commonly, the bridge would've been rife with Los Angeles' residents and cars minding about in the traffic. No one but her was there. She was all alone, enjoying the wind by herself while impatiently waiting for him.

Until now.

She was slightly caught off-guard by the distant sound of an electric car zooming towards the bridge. But she knew it was him.

Jocelyn waved as the Lancer arrived and pulled over in front of her. Out came Joshua, who fixed his trenchcoat and glasses, inspecting his surroundings carefully.

"There you fuckin' are," she whistled. "Where've ya been?"

"Running from the authorities," he replied, "You?"

"Same thing. Except they're not the ones looking for me, y'know." Jocelyn sighed, fixing her scarf. "It took a while, but I called up one of my colleagues and she happily gave me this"—pulling out one of Jack Ronson's baubles—"which should explain how and why we're all alone."

"How does that even work? It's just a ball—"

"—That can be used on the Spin," she retorted, "Besides... I'll explain how 'vanishing' works, later."

"Perhaps..." Joshua scoffed, pocketing his hands.

It took her a while, but eventually Jocelyn asked, "So... What now?"

"Hm?" He tilted his head in curiosity. 

"What are you gonna do? Where are you going?" She shrugged. "You lost everything in 12 hours. Your life, your job, everything that matters most to you... I don't even know why we're even here, but I don't think I wouldn't mind being stuck with your dumbass... for the next few months of my life, at least."

While finding words to answer, Joshua fiddled with Alison's letter in his pockets, contemplating whether to reveal it or not. Ultimately, he chose not to. So instead, he answered:

"I'm gonna get my life back. No matter the cost."

"Mhm?" Jocelyn raised her eyebrow.

"I'm gonna find him, Jocelyn. The fuckface who ruined everything. I'm gonna prove to the world that he exists, and that he won't ruin my life nor everyone else's... Never again." He sighed, rubbing his head. "I might not be at 100% here, but I'm damn sure I'll fight with everything I've got in me. After all, what have I got left to lose?"

Jocelyn was baffled. "H-Hey," she questioned, "You can't be serious, right? Dumbass, that'd be—"

"Suicide, I know," he interjected, "Bernard and Coniglio already said that—"

"Dude, I was gonna say that it'd be stupid if you were gonna do it alone!" Jocelyn frowned, ashamedly hiding her face. "Fucking dumbass, as usual..."

"Okay..."

"Besides, you might want a guide or somethin', so..." She pointed at herself. "Here I am. And regardless of your objections, I'm going with you either way. But I still need someone to help me with whoever that guy was. Y'know, the guy that's... split into two crispy halves."

Having an epiphany, Joshua proposed, "Why not help each other on that, too? That way, I think we could reach our goals faster and more efficiently."

"...I thought you didn't trust me."

"That's because I didn't know who you were, at first." Joshua crossed his arms. "But after knowing that you were actually Giorno's own flesh and blood; not to mention, what miraculous thing you pulled off last night? I think I can trust you somewhat more, now. Not that much, but enough."

Then came quiet. Jocelyn hesitated as she processed what he offered, stroking her chin as she did so.

Coming to a conclusion, she said, "S-Son of a bitch, you've just made me an offer I can't refuse."

"And?"

"Well... I'm in, Josh." She reached out with her gloved hand. "All in."

"Alright, then. I reckon a deal's a deal." Joshua shook hands with her.

Turning west, both of them took one last glance at Downtown Los Angeles' skyline one last time.

It was bittersweet seeing the city in all its glory—all the skyscrapers, the LED screens and construction cranes 'bandaging' how badly they were aging, as well as how its infrastructure and finances were collapsing under the weight of a rising crime rate—knowing it would be the last time they'd ever gaze at the one place they called 'home'... for a long while. A calm before the storm, they both observed.

"...We should get going," Joshua turned back to the car. "Can't waste anymore time here."

"Yeah, good call." Jocelyn sighed and went back to her LiveWire, dragging the bike over the Lancer's back door. "Mind if you get the door for me?"

"Yeah, yeah, I got it," Joshua rushed over to her side and opened the door, allowing her to load the bike into his backseat. He closed the door afterwards, and proceeded to the driver's seat.

Once Jocelyn got inside and rode shotgun, they felt they were ready.

"So... where to?" He asked.

"Let's say Shakedown Street should suffice." Jocelyn blew hair off her face, staring at where the bridge ends.

Joshua nodded in response as he started the car, but as he was adjusting the rear view mirror of the car, something quickly caught his eye. He saw what appeared to be a black-and-yellow umbrella in his mirror, standing by a lamppost far from the bridge. He wondered what it was doing there, but as he double-checked it; it was gone. But alas, who knew if someone was actually there; watching him about to take off and leave?

"Josh...?" Jocelyn noticed his slight agitation over the mirror. "What was that?"

"Nothing..." he sighed. "Just nothing."

Jocelyn felt a gulp coming down as Joshua started the Lancer up and drove east down the viaduct bridge, traveling uncharted territories as he began a dangerous trek towards reclaiming his life from the monsters who took it all away.

Whatever happened next wouldn't be an easy undertaking...

But in accordance with fate's calling: the ballad of 'Ziggy Stardust' has just begun.

 

 

Volume I - Rebel Moon Feedback

END

Notes:

Remember to give kudos and (optionally) a comment! This helps in supporting this fic and its future endeavors.

 

Special thanks to PhantomDouglass for beta-reading this chapter in its current revision!

Chapter 12: Vol. 2 - A Call to Arms

Summary:

A week after the harrowing ordeal in UCLA's tunnel network, Jeremiah returns to work... and things are not as they seem.

In the wake of Remy Wanderlust's escape, the Speedwagons and their allies begin to plot their next move. If only they knew how much they'd need to pay for an entire army of Stand users...

Notes:

Shout-out to seven guests who left a kudos in the previous chapter!

UPDATE (3/2/24): Part 1 of an upcoming overhaul to Vol. 2 has been published.

Volume II - Welcome To The Playground

BEGIN

 

 

—|[ CHAPTER 12 ]|—

A Call to Arms

WASHINGTON, D.C., SIX DAYS AFTER…

 

 

The week after Remy Wanderlust’s exposure haunted Jeremiah’s state of mind.

He couldn’t get the thought of him removed from the equation; that he, along with paperwork and internal affairs between his company, transmuted into a burden he couldn’t easily shrug off. Compressing what could’ve been weeks of recovery to merely three days of rest due to medical breakthroughs by the company, Jeremiah was eager to return to his waking life as ‘The Man In Charge’ of the Speedwagon Foundation.

Making it into an elevator of cold and sterile lights, Jeremiah reminisced about what ounce of reputation that poor boy had left:

He understood more than arguably anyone that he wasn’t the ‘hideous monster’ they called him now. Rather, he was just that one ‘humble’ young celebrity making his ranks through the upper echelon of the fashion business. Someone with the looks of an Adonis statue, but the humility of a common man. He struck Jeremiah as a man who loved the business, gave it his all, yet chose to remain genuine in spite of his popularity. Then everything was taken away so unjustly.

As the light bars in the elevator went down, he knew he needed to rescind those thoughts, for his intentions of blowing off steam would’ve been pointless if he resumed lamenting.

He was now in the bottom floor of the Foundation’s main building, home to the Superlab which he enjoyed visiting every now and then.

Going through the same decontamination-and-identification process needed to enter the lab, he went through large sliding doors and was greeted by the Superlab in all its glory: A large-scale underground laboratory spanning the size of a basketball arena, with two floors dedicated to a diverse variety of scientific research fields. The first floor was dedicated to robotics and weapons research for international military forces, while the second floor was dedicated to the arts of biology and chemistry.

For some, it was home to the company’s ‘pièce de résistance’—the ‘Protomen’ technology, built purely for the cybernetic benefit of enhancing lost limbs or complete bodily replacement. But others, like Jeremiah himself, knew too well just how dreadful the SPW-0987 project was; not just to himself, but for those involved.

Mainly the clever but reclusive Clifford Springsteen, one of his old professors at UCLA, and at least two of his trusted assistants.

One of whom he easily noticed despite the ‘noise pollution’ the lab generated so effortlessly.

“Come on, you,” a woman exasperated from the middle of the first floor. “What the hell did I tell you about fidgeting with this machine?!”

Jeremiah smiled to himself. ‘There you are,’ he thought, walking over to the voice’s direction.

Once he reached a walking distance where he wouldn’t be seeing a pair of black blobs for a person, he observed the scene as it was: an average-sized woman with black green-streaked medium hair, presumably a head scientist, chastised a gangly and timid lab tech in her office. She scolded him for fidgeting with a barebones coffee machine placed on the table between them.

“S-Sorry, Mrs. Wallace, I was just interested—”

“Interested?” She scoffed, wiggling her servo-clicking fingers. “Look, kid. If you wanna have your life spared for the rest of your career, I highly suggest not touching this masterclass of engineering ever again—”

“Annie!” Jeremiah snooped into the office in a jovial stride. “Do you, uh — mind if I stop by for a bit?”

Her face gleamed at the sight of him. “Jerry?” The scientist—Annabeth Wallace—couldn’t help but smile. “You’re back so early, you!”

“Believe me,” he replied, tipping his hat. “I didn’t think I’d come back here alive, either.”

She chuckled, before she piped to the lab tech, “Now, shoo! I don’t want you messing around with equipment you lack comprehensive understanding of.”

The lab tech scrammed off her office, grimacing.

Now, it was just the two of them. “Come in,” Annie invited, “I’ve got time, at least.”

“Much obliged,” Jeremiah chuckled.

He entered the office and gazed out at the plethora of paraphernalia that comprised the office itself: it was a tight, almost claustrophobic space. If there was a more accurate description of her office, it would be a workshop for Protomen technology. Dozens of robotic parts scattered all over the shelves, and desks in an ‘organized’ mess she created.

While motherboards and computer components were also found there, a picture of herself and a taller blond man in wedding attire stood out among the sea of utensils.

“Sooo~,” Annie wondered as she transferred cardboard boxes on the floor, combing her rumpled hair tidily. “How’s life, by the way? The wife and kid?”

“Life’s good,” he answered, “if I wanted to understate anything. Rosetta, she — God knows what ran inside her head after the whole... y’know.”

“Uh huh.”

“Liza was quick to understand, though. Somehow, she’s even less worried than her old lady ever was.”

“I heard about that,” she quavered slightly. “Must’ve been a scary situation, eh.”

“Yeah...” He looked at the picture next. “How’s you and Roy?”

“I’m fine,” Annie sighed, “but Roy... After all this time, he’s still a beacon of joy after the stupid mess the chemistry team was forced to clean up. Poor bud. And Cliff, too...” She shuddered. “Jerry, I don’t think we should be talking about this—”

“No no no no, it’s alright,” Jeremiah reassured her. “I already knew you were gonna ask about it.”

A pause came, as both made a glance at the elephant in the room.

“Ann?” He carefully approached the coffee machine, so as to not endure what that poor lab tech suffered. “What’s all this about...?”

“Pet project, is all.” Annie explained, sauntering over. “I asked Roy if he was interested in helping me brew the ‘best coffee’ humanity could ever taste. He was happy to solve some problems we had while in the drafting process. He had the tools to cook it up, and I had the skill to build it. Simple as that.”

“Who would’ve thought that Bruin meathead would amount to anything,” Jeremiah chuckled, mocking what one horrible professor he dealt with in his studies once said...

“It’s true,” she chortled back, “and I never thought we’d get married even after his career went down to shit.”

“Yeah...”

“Jeremiah Speedwagon and Clifford Springsteen, please report to the Chairman’s Office immediately. The Chairman is hosting an emergency meeting, stat.” A female voice in the Superlab’s PA system spoke.

Both Jeremiah and Annie tacitly understood the implications of that voice.

“...Goddamn it, Uncle.” If he could curse the Chairman into giving him time to play catch-up, he would do so with gladness.

“Really? He wants you now?” Annie fretted.

“It’s nice talking to you, Ann,” he apologized and turned to the door, “but Uncle Dave... ugh. As long as he doesn’t fuck up our response to the Foundation Day pandemonium, I’ll be golden. Uh — see you around, I guess?”

“Mhm. Roy was gonna come and fix the machine’s schematics before finalizing, so...” Annie adjusted the servos on her left arm with a faucet on her wrist, waving him goodbye. “Nice talking to you, Jerry!”

“You too,” he tipped his hat once more before leaving.

He left long enough to miss a blue flicker of light from her face.

 

–[ ★★★ ]–

 

By the time Jeremiah arrived with the aforementioned Clifford in the Chairman’s office, neither of them expected the scene to be... crowded with people.

It was an expansive office space, large enough to be converted into an emergency meeting room for urgent matters. It had the achievements and plaques of the Foundation’s Chairman—David A. Speedwagon—along with a few personal items of his scattered amid the bronze Art Deco-style walls and lamps. A large open window with intricately-designed frames in the style of the office allowed sunlight to light-up the room, as members of the board gathered themselves in the meeting. With a few special guests alongside.

Adjusting his hat, he turned to Clifford—denoted by a graying brunette beard and a loose lab coat—and whispered, “Cliff? Got any idea what’s going on?”

“Same as you,” he responded wearily, stroking his beard. “Dunno why everyone and their mother would be here, except it has something to do with that disaster.” Clifford sighed. “Again.”

“I just hope something good comes out of it,” Jeremiah chirped. “If this is anywhere close to what went down two weeks ago... outlook not so good.”

“I hope so.” Clifford left for a vacant chair afterwards.

Now alone, Jeremiah quickly peered into the audience like a voyeur from afar, biding his time to correctly identify those in attendance. His ‘Uncle Dave’ was there, seated at the head of the table. Daron Steel and Izahela Mena-Mena, the leaders of the Stand & Supernatural Divisions, moved themselves for maximum comfort. Shizuka Joestar, CEO of Joestar Enterprises, felt a smile break out seeing him by the room’s entrance. Informer Co.’s Brienne Williams had a focused hand on her pencil, and nameless executives or stockholders filled up the seats.

“Ladies and Gentlemen,” David boomed and caught everyone’s attention. “Please... let’s give my nephew Jeremiah a warm welcome back to the board.”

The members of the board clapped in applause; a notable exception being Brienne, who gave him but an inkling of a witch’s scowl. Jeremiah smiled, brimming in flatter somewhat, before moving for his seat opposite the head of the table.

“Merci,” he blushed, sitting down promptly as the plaudits died down, “merci... Now, I don’t know what we’re supposed to be discussing, but—”

“Remy Wanderlust,” Brienne hissed. “Didn’t you get the memo?”

“Ms. Williams, I’ve been on leave for six days. What memo?”

“Pardon my negligence, Jerry,” David quietly giggled, “you know me... I’m a bit of a forgetful man myself, these days...”

“Okay...” He bit his lip, whistling. He looked up at the office’s lamps, and by the time one flashed, an idea was born.

“About Remy Wanderlust...”

“What is it?” David tilted his head, eyebrow raised.

“I’ve... had at least a few things I wanted to bring to the board while I was away. Regarding Mr. Wanderlust himself, that is. Or perhaps, if you’d allow me referring to him as Mr. Johnson — given his opposition for being deadnamed.”

“Do enlighten us, please.” He showed Jeremiah the table.

“Of course,” he said, pulling out a small remote. “So, as you all know — the past two weeks have been, so as to not understate the impact, a disaster for all our departments. More specifically, how it took just about everybody in our Science and Stand & Supernatural departments to untangle the mess created by that disaster. I also want to take the moment to clarify—for the board in regards to Mr. Springsteen himself—that none of it is his fault.”

“Of course, it is,” Clifford frowned. “We didn’t know it was gonna happen.”

“As for the main 'bullet point’ of my forthcoming presentation...”

Within the press of his remote’s button, ‘fractal’ images of a teal color in the center of the table manifested before the board, whose eyes gave it maximum attention.

“If the board would feel so inclined to listen, my focus today is to propose a few ideas, to save Joshua Johnson from such horrible circumstances he had been so unfortunately thrust into — but first, we must take a look at who Remy Wanderlust is.”

He pressed another button, the fractals changing into case files from a police report decades ago.

“On August 1st, 2010,” Jeremiah articulated, “seven-year-old Edward Joestar was kidnapped by a group of unknown assailants — one of the victims also being a four-year-old child whose name is unknown.” He turned to Shizuka. “Ms. Joestar,” he asked. “I know how difficult it is to discuss Edward, but... Can you at least tell us what he was like?”

Everyone was silent. They exchanged looks with her.

“Yes, I...” With a vaguely-low voice, she lamented, “He was a distant relative — very distant, matter of fact. But he was a good kid, he... he had good grades, was a bright— dare I say prospect—but when he went missing... It just wasn’t the same for all of us. And neither of us thought he’d— Oh, God. The smell... Excuse me, I just need to... that god-awful smell.”

“It’s okay,” he comforted her, “I understand. Now...”

The fractals switched to classified reports and video evidence from a past investigation. “Ever since that incident, Edward and the child—given the name ‘Remy Wanderlust’ by his captors—were passed on from one slave trader to the next. And eventually, they were bought out by one James Glitter. Whom, you all know, is just sleeping behind bars at Green Dolphin St. Prison in Florida.” Jeremiah stroked his hat, further explaining, “And for the next decade-and-a-half, they were forced by Glitter’s hand to produce over $25,000,000 in profits for their biggest breakthrough — both were responsible, mostly Remy’s doing, for the creation of ‘Vespertine’, which I’m sure most of you are aware of.”

The majority of the board shared small nods with him...

But the moment the fractals switched to photographs of Vespertine’s effects on the normal human body, their faces suddenly distorted. Many gasped at the graphic imagery before them; others were gagged, while only some cared any less certain to it all.

“This makes me sick,” cringed one board member.

“Everything went so well for Vespertine — in particular, how much it succeeded in destroying the human body for that incredibly slim chance of awakening one’s dormant Stand power. So how is it that something as impossible to topple — fell apart as easily as it did?”

The fractals changed again, this time to case reports filed no more than five years ago...

“On May 25th, 2024: Remy decided he’s had enough of Glitter's domineering control of his custody—worsened by the fact Edward’s health was declining from drug addiction—so he solely carried out a plan three years in-the-making.”

Jeremiah further explained, “Under the guise of an anonymous source, he leaked evidence of Glitter’s crimes — and within two hours, staged a mass breakout of the syndicate’s slave labor on their Bronx facility. Not only did he bring systematic collapse to a criminal empire and rip a face off; but he paid the ultimate price losing Edward in the midst of this. Shows that sometimes, there will be unfair consequences... Even if your intentions are to put a monster where he rightfully belongs.”

He spun the remote around, reverting the fractals back to its default state. “Anyways... what happened after?”

The board was keen to learn more.

“This is Remy Wanderlust—or rather Joshua Johnson—now.” The fractals formed images featuring Joshua’s body of work. “Ever since he took Glitter down, he spent the last five years under a new name — and a new career path. Now under a much-healthier lifestyle, his image has been featured consistently across all parts of the world. Magazines, clothing brands, you name it. No thanks to him being sponsored by Mandelle Modeling Agencies either—one of our business fronts for Stand users, if you don’t mind the refresh. And yet... here we are.”

The fractals were fractals anew. Jeremiah turned his attention to the board, staring them down with a penetrating look in his eyes. “So riddle me this,” he quizzed them. “How on Earth did everyone and their mother start condemning his name and reputation?”

When he asked that question, nothing came up at first. But then came the memory of Royce Hall, which made him recoil extremely slightly; anyone who paid extreme attention could notice. He bit his lip, and thought, ‘Goddamn it... not now...’

“Jerry?” David was quick to fret about it.

“...Right.” Jeremiah muttered aside, rubbing his hat. “Apologies for the brief moment of hesitance. Now, it’s simple. Really...”

He presented to the board—through the fractals—the ‘biohazard pentagram’ shown by Jocelyn the week before. “This, right here,” he pointed to the pentagram, “is a symbol belonging to an organization of unknown origin. While some of their operations lead back to kidnapping incidents in Italy, we can’t know for certain what their home base is located. What I’m sure of, on the other hand”—he changed the fractals to Federal investigation photos with the symbol—“is that they are the monsters who stole SPW-0987. The monsters who killed all those four-thousand people at UCLA. And quite frankly — the root cause of 900-strong Stand users roaming Los Angeles, as of today.”

“Now, how does this relate to the subject of Remy Wanderlust,” Brienne inquired, pointing her pencil at him. “Rather — how does any of this... non-sequitur add up to the presentation?”

“I was about to answer why, Ms. Williams,” retorted Jeremiah. He presented two videos in the fractals before the board. “To bridge the gap between our group of mystery’s intent and Mr. Johnson’s role in the chaos, I chose these two videos to simplify my point. One,” he pointed to the ‘INCITING INCIDENT’ fractal, “is a video of a perp bearing a strong resemblance to Mr. Johnson himself. Same hairstyle, glasses, and face — taken moments after he used SPW-0987 on the campus’ air-conditioning apparatus. And another is footage of SPW-0987’s effects on Royce Hall. Heavy emphasis on the second footage, by the way. Because...”

Much of the board raised eyebrows at the Royce Hall video.

“It makes no fucking sense, pardon the language.” Like a madman high on caffeine, he chattered, “This, right here? There’s Mr. Johnson, screaming — at the same time the perp is laughing his ass off about the things he had done! If he’s the perp everyone and their mother believes to be, why on Christ almighty is he also there in front of the most traumatic moment in his life?! That is why I wanted to present this in the first place...”

Jeremiah slammed his hands gently on the table, turning off the fractals as he proposed: “I suggest that we find him. Not in the pretense of arresting him, but to prove to the world — he is innocent. Convince him that he can live the life he’s had for so long, again! After all, he deserves a second chance... why not give it to him?”

The board erupted into murmurs and considerations, almost as though no one could hear the sound of a coin drop. Most felt mixed about the proposal. Some were eager to agree and pour out resources for it. But only a few knew it was never meant to pass...

“...Everyone?” The boom of David’s voice quelled the gossip in one fell swoop.

Now, they looked at him; and Jeremiah. Doubtful.

“Are you sure this plan of yours will work, Jerry?” He coaxed, though not as gentle as the latter would’ve hoped.

“Adamantly so,” maintained Jeremiah.

But something in his gut told him he wouldn’t take ‘Yes’ for an answer...

“Uncle?” He was puzzled. “What happened while I was away?”

Shizuka was perplexed, too. She wasn’t as in-tune with the Foundation’s inner workings as everyone else, but even she knew from what he tried to infer—that something clearly was wrong...

“...The Chairman authorized us to apprehend Remy Wanderlust,” Daron admitted, tapping his hands. “Every Stand user we’ve made contact with for decades is in pursuit of him, as we speak.”

“The fuck...?!” Jeremiah bolted up from his chair, and next thing everyone saw was how fast he stamped through Daron’s side of the table.

“You folks... did ALL THIS...” he growled, hand pressing on Daron’s tablet. “And I didn’t get a memo?”

“We had to make the difficult decisions in your absence, nephew,” David explained.

“How many are hunting him down…?” He glared at Daron.

“Everyone,” shuddered Daron. “E-Everyone who was willing to cooperate... Uh — Mandelle Modeling Agencies, Steal Your Face, The Magnificent Seven... everyone at Informer Co. who’s still physically capable in the field...” He snuck in a glance at Brienne. “Students of Hybrid Theory, Kilroy & Annabeth Wallace—”

“But I just spoke to Annabeth Wallace, minutes ago!”

“My apologies once more, dear nephew,” David looked down and sighed. “We installed fractal duplicates of them last week — to give our staff the illusion they’re still working. It's a necessary protocol for an operation of this scale.”

“Where are they now,” croaked Jeremiah.

“Investigating sightings reported by our moles at Shakedown Street,” drawled one executive in a Transatlantic accent. “Said he returned to the area with two unidentified companions following a pile-up near Route 110.”

“What the f—”

Jeremiah stepped back, returning to his side of the table. The way everything told to him happened in his absence was enough to rattle the head of the Foundation. So close to ripping his hat to shreds, he made quick glances at everyone on the board. His Uncle—the Chairman who made the final vote on those decisions—looked at him with half-hearted sympathy... just the mere sight of it slithered under his skin...

“Wow, you people,” he hissed, pacing between his chair, “I can’t — I-I... can’t... believe you’ve outdone yourselves. In making this — this horrible decision, I — Do you have any goddamned idea what you’ve done to that boy? Think about it, for one second. You’ve given him such an unfair burden, that you’re forcing him to run across the whole country... because you people thought it was great to hunt him for sport.”

He slammed his hand upon the table.

“And for what,” Jeremiah barked, snapped, “because you believed in evidential inconsistencies? Because you had to act before you could THINK about it?!”

Several members of the board nearly jumped, the sound of his voice like gunshots firing across the room.

“I hope you didn’t forget after making the decision, that I am the GODDAMNED”—he slammed the desk again—“FUCKING”—and again—“CEO of this company! For Christ’s sakes...”

“Please calm yourself,” said Brienne, monotone. “Before you make things worse.”

“Make things worse? Tell that to everyone you’ve gotten your people involved with in 1993—”

“ENOUGH!” David yelled, silencing the room in an instant. “That is enough.”

Jeremiah stood away from his chair, tense. He was shaking from head-to-toe, removing his hat as he pierced the board’s eyes fresh. He said in proposal, “Fine. I’d like to call for a vote overturning the decision.”

“Jerry, please,” David insisted, “You can’t do such a thing if the majority—”

“If the majority declines the request, yes — but...” Try as he might, he barely contained the fury brimming inside. “I’d rather let the board decide now if they’re through with this or not. Because I’m not gonna let this — or other decisions made without my oversight pass through. So decide if you want this or not — and be unhesitant with it.”

Soon, the board erupted into deafening chatter. Debates raged on as murmurs and yakking flooded the office, with both sides divided over the matter. There were two possibilities they believed in: the opposing side was enticed by the proposition for an elaborate legal campaign to prove Joshua’s innocence of the crimes charged against him; but the defending side thought keeping the manhunt intact meant saving themselves from the contracted Stand users filing a lawsuit, citing employment fraud as a leading cause.

But the moment they were able to, the final votes had been cast.

“All those in favor of Jeremiah’s decision,” requested David, “please raise your right hand.”

With hesitance, Shizuka and Clifford raised their right hand; as did two board members.

Jeremiah was astounded. Yet he knew too well — they would rather favor the safest decision than gamble upon such a risky endeavor, even if it was the right thing to do.

“All those in favor of the emergency decision made the previous week, please raise your left hand.”

The rest of the board—including Daron, Izahela, Brienne, and even those initially convinced by Jeremiah’s proposal—raised their left hand. And everyone, including Jeremiah himself, conceded.

“I’m sorry, Jeremiah,” Shizuka apologized. “There’s nothing we can do. We must do as your uncle says.”

As he turned his attention to the rest of them, he felt dread. They’ve started a war with no beneficial outcome. And now, his allegiances to the Foundation and Joshua were split — right down the center. The coming days were bleak. He knew in his heart Joshua would not survive the manhunt... by any means necessary.

“It’s settled, then,” David declared, hitting the final nail on the coffin. “The meeting is adjourned. Return to whatever you were dealing with.”

Notes:

Remember to give kudos and (optionally) a comment! This helps in supporting this fic and its future endeavors.

Chapter 13: Vol. 2 - Brand New (and Unfamiliar) Status Quota

Summary:

En route to Shakedown Street, Joshua and Jocelyn educate themselves in the concept of 'vanishing', leading to moments they wish to forget.

Notes:

Shout-out to leafgilly who left a kudos in the previous chapter!

UPDATE (3/8/24): Part 2 of an upcoming overhaul to Vol. 2

—|[ CHAPTER 13 ]|—

Brand New (and Unfamiliar) Status Quota

 

 

THE WEEK BEFORE…

 

The arduous trek of Ziggy Stardust’s ballad started the moment Joshua drove east down the viaduct. And though an hour barely went past, Joshua’s life—he thought himself—had been thrown so utterly past his comfort zone.

He was silent the entire time he maneuvered the vehicle, not even a whisper spoken, nor sigh exhaled. And so was Jocelyn.

There was some manner of comparison to this situation and a similar one before: when they first interacted with each other that week ago. They struggled searching for words necessary to be said, that weren’t just butting heads over simple things. They came after each other’s throats, though unwilling to consider offending themselves. And now, they were stuck together — even if necessary, so as not to risk capture from authorities or enemy Stand users.

But yet, here they wondered.

They wondered how they would approach this... how long they were going to survive... the necessary cost to have their goals achieved.

Sighing, he steered down left of a street devoid of people, hands dead set on the wheel. As he did so, Jocelyn scrolled on her phone to no end.

“Hey,” she asked, breaking the silence between them. “You’ve seen the shit about you on Twitter already, right?”

“...Yeah,” Joshua said. “Like I care about it.”

“Yeah, uh — y’know,” Jocelyn giggled, continuing to scroll. “I dunno. It’s funny. They get a lot of stuff ‘bout ya so wrong, it’s — it’s amusing, that’s what.”

“Okay? There’s no need to say that.”

“Uh huh.” She pocketed her phone back on her purse.

“Okay...”

Joshua bit his lip, as he changed directions. He knew already the question needed to be asked; but some part of him shuddered at the possible answers. Whether or not he was bound to open Pandora’s box at that moment.

“H-Hey, uh... how does ‘vanishing’ work, exactly?” He inquired.

“Glad you asked,” she smiled, brimming in eagerness to teach.

Jocelyn took out one of Jack Ronson’s baubles from the purse, a different bauble from the one she showed him minutes ago, and began: “You know about the concept of ‘paper towns’, right?”

“Yeah... I saw a movie about it once. Too sappy for my tastes.”

“Finally, someone I can agree with,” she scoffed, “but it’s not like that.” Jocelyn twirled the bauble around, and explained, “Paper towns are settlements on a map that actually don’t exist. But they do, somehow. Think of them like ‘pocket dimensions’, y’know? But don’t consider them like actual dimension dimensions. For one reason: they’re so eaaa~~sy to access. Remember when we were the only ones on that crossroads by the City Hall, before Jack ambushed us?”

“Yeah...” The hairs on his nape ‘woke up’ at the thought of recalling that night. “I remember...”

“I’ll show ya what the other side of the crossroads looked like.”

Jocelyn twisted the bauble 90-degrees, a green light glinting at its surface. The light on its surface changed to a bleeding red color — and within the blink of an eye, the once empty road was now populated by drab cars and nameless people. It happened so quick, that—

“OH, SHIT!”

Joshua stomped on the brakes, as the Lancer’s tires shrieked down a split-second halt. Soon after, discordant car horns and jeering drivers blared around them.

“ARE YOU FUCKING CRAZY?! WATCH WHERE YOU’RE DRIVING, IDIOT!” barked one driver.

Catching his breath, he gasped, “Oh, Jesus. Oh, Jesus... jeez... us...”

“Well, whaddya know?” She whistled. “We’re back to the real world. That’s the difference between being in a paper town and—”

“Couldn’t you have just warned me before doing that?!”

“I did, dumbass!”

“Telling me you’d show the other side isn’t a fucking warning, Jocelyn!”

“Well, what did you expect,” Jocelyn crossed her arms, “something that sounds as stupid as ‘I’m gonna take us back home now’?!”

“A count to three would have sufficed!”

Jocelyn stopped, sighed, and slouched back onto her seat with the bauble still in hand. “Even if I did, that wouldn’t work,” she said, “because a ‘medium’ like this — takes five seconds to a minute to get anyone from real town to paper town, even if you hold onto it really hard, so—”

“Just count to a minute, then!”

“Good suggestion, pretend-smartass, but most times it’s random. So your argument is null. Anyways...”

“...Motherfucker,” he muttered.

Rotating the bauble back 90-degrees, the light turned green once more; thus, all the cars and people vanished once more into a desolate road. Joshua pinched his nose, careful not to let his glasses fall off, and hurriedly resumed driving.

“So, that’s ‘Vanishing’?” Even he still wanted to learn after that.

“It is,” she answered, pocketing the bauble back. “It’s the only way you can get in and out of Shakedown, since it’s pretty much a paper town — matter of fact, I think it’s the biggest in America by far. Heard there were entire paper cities anywhere else, but I don’t think it’s worth taking a look into.”

“Hold on,” Joshua furrowed his eyebrows at something... “If these people have ‘mediums’ they can ‘Vanish’ into Shakedown with, and they can come or leave anytime, why are there people living in it?”

“It’s complicated,” she added, “some people are either born there, or — they just wanna live there. It’s difficult to explain — knowing how it’s run by criminals or straight-up terrorists, I’m half-sure that everyone in that shithole just wants to act out their power fantasies, which is why they stay. Or they’re trying to find a place to hide in. Or they’re being spoon fed folktales that say ‘Vanishing’ can kill you. I guess...”

“And here, I thought it was already terrible to live in...” Joshua sighed, steering over. “Not that it’s practically Hell on Earth.”

“I mean, it’s not that baaa~~d!” Jocelyn snickered, putting the bauble away. “My ex lives there with her gang, and she’s doing just fine.”

“She?” He raised an eyebrow.

“What? You got a problem?” She was ready to throw hands, should he say anything wrong.

“No, I-I didn’t — I didn’t think you were like that — y’know...” He chuckled, rubbing his head. “It’s cool with me, if anything. One of my friends is a trans woman, and... I’d rip anyone’s face off if they think otherwise.”

“Huh. I didn’t know that about you.”

She yawned, relaxed, and stretched her legs up the car’s desk.

“Hey, put your legs down,” he tried to wave them off.

“What? Can’t let a girl chill for a second?”

“Look, I don’t wanna be that guy,” he retorted, “but you can do that once we find some place to stay. Speaking of...” Joshua looked at the dashboard’s screen. “Great timing. I gotta recharge this, it’s 35-percent. Can’t let it run on zero if we get to Shakedown, y’know.”

“Okay...” She pointed somewhere. “There’s a gas station nearby.”

“Good eye.” Joshua winked.

The sooner he reached the gas station, he parked by a nearby charging outlet. Unbuckling his seatbelt, he opened the door and left as soon as he was able to, readying to charge the battery up at once.

“Wait a minute,” Joshua’s eyes widened, and went back. “Yo, how are we gonna find a place?”

“I’ll think about it,” Jocelyn reassured him. “Go do your thing.”

“Okay... I’ll see ya on the other side.”

Joshua shut the door and proceeded.

As he got out of her sight, Jocelyn looked down on her purse. “Right,” she mused, opening it. “I dunno if you’ll agree, but... Surely, you’ll have no choice. Ain’t that right, Coco Jumbo?”

A turtle’s head poked out of the purse and croaked. This was Coco Jumbo, her pet turtle. She knew right away that precious smile in its face, a captivating sight she grew up with.

“There you are,” she smiled, pulling Coco Jumbo out of the purse. “Who’s a good boooy~~y? Who’s a good boy?”

Coco Jumbo hissed back. Happy.

“I’m sure you are,” Jocelyn gave its head and shell a few pats. “Feed ya later? I’ve got a friend with me, so...”

It nodded.

“You cute motherf— AH!”

Joshua opened the door, bearing witness to the sight of a shivering Jocelyn holding Coco Jumbo tight and close.

“Um,” he asked with a frown, “Am I supposed to know what that is?”

“No?” She held the turtle far from his reach.

“Okay.”

Joshua gently came inside, shut the door, and adjusted his glasses. “Now, what the heck is a girl like you smuggling a turtle around for,” he questioned.

“Smuggle?” Jocelyn scoffed, petting its head. “First off, that’s bullshit. Second, this is my pet — name’s Coco Jumbo. Thinking I’ve kidnapped some poor zookeeper’s turtle is a load of crap, and you know it is, Josh!”

“I was just curious, is all!” He shrugged, slouching a bit.

“Yeah, well... so long as you don’t think of hurting him, I’ll be fine.”

“Okay... What’s up with the shell?” He pointed at it, inquisitive.

“Oh, you’re about to find out,” Jocelyn grinned, pointing to a golden key embedded at its shell’s center. “I won’t spoil it, but I think you’re gonna like what you’ll see.”

“B-But that’s just a key!”

“Not if I show you otherwise. Just press the red gem in the key, and WATCHHHHH—”

Within the blink of an eye, the key sucked Jocelyn inside, shrunken so quick he barely registered it happening. And he screamed, flinching.

“What the FUCK?!” The way he saw it, Joshua thought her dead.

“Heeee~~yyy!”

“W-Wha?”

“Stop fuckin’ hesitating and come down here,” Jocelyn shouted from inside the key. “It’s safe! There’s no sick monster who’s gonna maul you apart, dumbass!”

He was perplexed. “How are you—”

Joshua stopped himself from finishing that question. As he leaned close, he gave Coco Jumbo a pat in its head and shell—which it responded with purrs—coming close to reaching the key. He gulped, knowing what he was about to do...

“Tally-ho,” he said. He pressed the key, sinking in.

To a whole new world...

–[ ★★★ ]–

 

First, it was a shriek. Then echoes...

From his own ‘double-pair’ of eyes, Joshua saw a trail resembling a magenta tunnel slide; before he sagged down a couch near the center of the gem. He caught his breath, mumbled curses, and made himself comfortable on the couch. But what he saw wasn’t anything he’d seen before.

“Holy shii~~t,” he muttered, taking in what marvelous sight he was blessed with.

The room inside the marble gem was nothing he was used to seeing inside hotel rooms. It was closer to a ‘six-star’ room; grandiose in every sense, hitting all the right spots in terms of pleasant smells and architecture. It was home to a variety of expensively comfortable furniture, mainly armchairs and couches with soft cushions; three pathways to different rooms; a working flatscreen TV in a desk riddled with pictures of Jocelyn’s childhood; replicas of Goya and Frida Kahlo paintings; and a working mobile network to boot.

“There you are,” cajoled Jocelyn. She sat by an armchair adjacent to the couch, fixing her scarf and fringes.

“Look, I really like this place,” Joshua said, resisting to smile. “But — how the hell does a turtle have this?”

“Good question.” She introduced, “Welcome to『Mr.President』, the most extravagant 7-star hotel in the world! And yeah, this is a Stand, by the way.”

“Hold that thought,” he raised his palm, “I-I thought humans were—”

“—the only ones who could become Stand users? Silly. Animals can be Stand users too, but...” She, too, tried not to smile introducing it all. “Y’know, I totally get it. You were raised by a piece of shit to not know anything but what he spits at you. Enough with the history lessons...”

“I see what you’re telling me,” he nodded, loosening the sleeves of his coat. “By the way, what’s up with that?”

His eyes picked up a photograph by the edge of the desk: one with a half-Asian blond man holding a young redheaded girl close. Both were accompanied by a pinkette with a starry gaze in her eyes, and a tan rough-houser clad in purple Hawaiian and downward arrow-sleeves. They smiled for the camera, wearing all sorts of prizes and accessories.

“Yeah, uh...” explaining the photograph, Jocelyn said, “My folks and a godfather took me to Disney World, once. Took home a Mickey Mouse watch from that.”

“You still have that watch?”

“No. Had to sell it for a scrap of lunch money. I didn’t wanna be bogged down by my parents’ wealth in high school, y’know.”

“Okay...” He leaned forward to get a closer look.

“They tried to not interfere with Zia Jolyne’s business at Cape Canaveral,” she recalled, “Knowing it had something to do with good ‘ol Grandpa and his dirty dozen illegitimate children... but they relented. Papa got closure on his heritage, made sure three of the long-lost brothers he met got some well-rounded therapy, and helped Jolyne. Even though she went home with Protomen tech to replace her missing arm, they all went home okay.”

Though the picture was far away, he still made out the picture as it was. And it choked him up. His lips trembled as he absorbed how happy everyone was in that picture, that nothing would ever rip them apart. Unable to stop thinking what could’ve been...

If he had a childhood like hers.

If he still had parents.

If he wasn’t alone.

“Hey,” Jocelyn asked, noticing him, “are you okay?”

“...I’m fine,” Joshua sniveled.

She sat up from the armchair, sighing. “Want me to show you around?” She outstretched her arm to the three pathways.

“Yeah.” Joshua leapt up from the couch and followed her around. “Care to give this fellow stranger a ‘magical mystery tour’?”

“First off, you suck major ass at flirting — but yeah. I’ll show ya.” She sauntered behind the couch and pointed everywhere at the living room. “So here’s the obvious — TV, all my shitty photos, million-dollar furnitureee... By the way, did I forget about the kitchen behind us?”

An elaborate Romanesque-style kitchen and dining room stood behind an armchair next to the TV set. A fridge was also embedded between the kitchen’s stove and countertop closets.

”It’s got everything you need to cook any ‘Michelin restaurant’ quality food,” she added with a click in her tongue.

“Yeah, I see ‘em.”

“There’s also three pathways ‘round the kitchen that lead to different rooms,” Jocelyn moved to her right and approached it. “One’s a master bedroom, the other’s self-explanatory, and lastly; well, I try to keep in shape. And I bet you’ll like it, too.”

“Jeee~~sus,” Joshua muttered, “this place is staaa~~cked...”

“Wanna come inside?” She showed off a door reading “GIODESSA’S FASHION SUITE” in bold rainbow lettering. “I thought you’d admire it if I showed you what’s... y’know...” She smiled and opened the door.

“Oh, do show me,” he chuckled, following her inside.

The room beyond the sign resembled an oversized wardrobe closet room. Plastic boxes full of clothes and wigs were scattered around the surrounding spaces in a dump, the entrance to a dressing room in a corner behind them, and the main attraction: a wooden printing press the size of a human, held together by chains and gears that formed an ‘X’ pattern. Two sewing machines were linked to the press, a thick cable leading to a photo-scanner in between them.

“Oh, boy...” Joshua felt daunted by the printing press.

“This, my friend,” she grinned, “is my Super-Duper Ultimate Fashion Suite 9000! You can pretty much make any clothes you want, so long as you’ve got a sketch or a photograph. Maybe even a cutout from a fashion mag.”

When he heard that name uttered, nothing prepared him for the one-sided shame that followed. He covered his face, shifted his weight left-and-right and stepped back from her with indecipherable curses.

“Oh, my God...” Barely a whisper came out his mouth.

“What’s wrong?” Jocelyn glanced at his face.

“Can you tell me what the heck you were on, Joce,” he questioned, “naming that thing the way you did?”

“I was six, you dumbass.”

“Doesn’t help your case! It’s embarrassing, the shitty name you gave.”

“Dunno about you,” she just shrugged, “I like it. You hate it. It’s fair we think of it that way — anyways... Here's a demo.” Jocelyn took out a cutout from her pockets, taken from the Sept. 2028 Vogue Magazine issue.

“Oh?”

Jocelyn placed the cutout in the photo-scanner. The sewing machines activated, they went through the process of generating fabrics and clothing patterns based on the cutout’s specifications. The generated materials were fed to the printing press, finalizing and converting them into a photo-accurate replica of the clothes featured.

“Crazy,” Joshua marveled, plodding down the press to inspect the clothes further. “Imagine how much profit you could make with this...”

“Weee~~ll, I doubt they’d make much,” she sighed, folding her jacket down. “Considering they’re just glorified bootlegs of designer stuff made just for fashion shows... but y’never know. Could make millions... Billions, if I slaved away to make that business...”

“Oh, I know this,” Joshua laughed. He picked up the clothes himself, feeling the texture. “London Fashion Week. Bennie Bradelis. She’s the friend I mentioned, by the way — and stole the damn show, she did...”

“Yeah? Well, that’s someone who’s a marginally better human being than you.”

“Are we still doing this?” He dropped the clothes on top of the press.

“Perhaps...”

Jocelyn claimed the clothes back, grabbed a vacant plastic box and put them inside. “Wait a minute,” she gasped just as she was about to put them next to the dump... “Josh, you think you might be cool with this?”

“Cool with what?”

Dropping the box off to the dump, she walked back to Joshua. “Say uhh,” Jocelyn proposed, leaning her arm on his shoulder. “It would make sense after I explain why — so how ‘bout we ‘shed our skins’ and wear something a bit more... ‘freeing’, on the way to Shakedown?”

“Freeing?” He forced her arm off.

“Y’know... since every Stand user in the whole world’s probably coming for us, we’ve gotta wear something that allows more flexibility. More... freedom to move. Y’know?”

“Oookayy~~...” Joshua whistled, rubbing his head.

“One sec.”

Jocelyn whipped out a colored designer’s sketch from her pocket, and careened into the scanner. Lively, she inserted the sketch inside, and beckoned, “Josh, I need your fingerprints. Stat.”

“What for?”

“The scanner, obviously. I need your measurements and stuff.”

“Aight, gimme a sec,” Joshua raced her down the scanner.

Simultaneously, both of them placed their hands on a screen in the scanner’s interface, scanning their fingerprints. It accurately took into account their individual body measurements through a biometric ID database, and applied them instantly to the scanner. The sketch’s scan was fed to the sewing machines with the measurements, where two sets of clothing went through the usual process of generation.

Once they were finished, Joshua felt jittery; his eyes glued to the sets, hands shaking like leaves in a tree. Cold shivers ran down his spine, in an otherwise warm place.

“Um... Jocelyn?” He barely tried not to bite his nails. “What did you put in that scanner...?”

“My designs, obviously,” Jocelyn articulated, snappy. “Had to write in all the materials I wanted for them. Materials that maximized both flexibility and durability without compromise. Why’s that?”

“Hold the phone.” Joshua removed the sketch from the scanner. And when he laid his eyes on it, the sensation of a bullet piercing his skull struck him.

“Sooooo~~,” Jocelyn couldn’t stop grinning once she realized what he saw, leaning on the printing press. “What do you think?”

Startlingly, Joshua turned to her with a sight never to-be-seen again. It was uncanny; she couldn’t tell if it was human or alien. Only that she saw wrinkles upon wrinkles upon a dark shroud over his head; with faintly-lit blue & green eyes to boot.

“Your designs are the most embarrassing pieces of dogshit I’ve ever seen.”

 

–[ ★★★ ]–

 

‘Goddamn it...’ Joshua pondered over the set of clothes he was given. ‘I can’t believe this..’

He didn’t expect today that Jocelyn offered such scant mockery of clothes designed for him. And frankly, it was the last thing he expected to wear inside one of the dressing room’s booths.

The set of clothes was predominantly black-and-white, highly-flexible: characterized by a short-sleeved dark grey leather jacket with a light-up high collar and ‘sketchy’ checkerboard pattern, a black tank top cut at the same length as the jacket, black fingertip-less combat gloves, white pants with a black inlaid star symbol on its crotch, and dull blue laceless sneakers.

He was used to baring a hint of skin when it came to modeling... but this time, a line was crossed so thick there was barely anything left.

And it was due to that dreadful star in his pants.

But he was left with no choice; either he fought with constricting clothes such as the iconic ‘star trenchcoat’ he had right now, or he ran around with his bare skin.

Shedding himself of his old ‘skin’, he thought, ‘I really had to give in to wearing that, huh? If I have to do what I have to so I can get my life back, how will everyone take me seriously with this shit? They’ll just... look at my dick, and... Fuck.’

He grabbed the tank top on the floor, bit his lip, and wore it on. Never before was his face so flushed, nor steaming like a kettle.

‘God, I wanna ask you something before I sleep...’ Now he picked up the jacket and pants.

‘Was it fair?’

He put the pants on, tying it up with one of his belts from the ‘star trenchcoat’ attire, then the jacket.

‘Was it fair to pair me up with her? Like... I know through Alison’s words that — there’s some kind of destiny tied between us both, but...’ He sighed as he put on the gloves and sneakers. ‘Did she have to embarrass me like that, wearing the garbage she offered me? Okay...’

Finishing the process, he softened his face up—which stiffened into furrowed eyebrows, pouting lips and distant eyes—and emerged from the booths.

‘Now, what do I look like?’

He sighed heavily, lurching onto the mirror to witness himself. Before he entranced the idea of it, he thought he was going to stick out like a pathetic cosplayer with prejudice. But shockingly enough, his eyebrows shot up and he stumbled slightly backwards.

‘What the shit?’ He took the moment to stroke his collar and gloves, coaxing a brief smile. ‘That... doesn’t look bad at all.’

Then he scoffed, and he was back to that stiff frown he had earlier.

‘Just silly...’

But the moment Jocelyn walked out of her own booth, the atmosphere in the dressing room changed.

“Huh?” Joshua squinted to take a closer look.

She maintained the scarf, left glove, golden watch and boots from her previous outfit. But everything was different: blue-and-pink ‘blending’ keyhole tank top with gash-like openings on the bottom resembling straps, black Kinesio tapes of four arranged symmetrically on her biceps, and navy blue ripped jeans with a gold chain accessory on her right thigh.

When both their eyes met at the moment, lightning struck. Their breath almost escaped each other’s throats, time standing still like an otherworldly blur. The stars between them aligned as neither expected this moment to occur as it did. There was something about her designs being worn by him that made Jocelyn’s closed-mouth smile swell; but Joshua’s smile was different as he averted her gaze and whistled without reason.

“Um...” Joshua’s shoulders tensed up at the moment.

“Oh, uh,” she blew hair off her face. “Did I keep you waiting?”

“No, not at all. Got out the same time you did.”

“I see...”

“By the way,” he chuckled, rubbing his neck, “I thought your sketches were bad...”

“Hah!” Jocelyn laughed, bumping her fist upwards. “I knew you were gonna change your mind so quickly! Anyways, I didn’t expect you to rock what I cooked up like a glove. It fits ya.”

“Downplaying the fact how silly this is?” Joshua sighed. “I’m dreading the moment I get my balls caved in the first step I take inside Shakedown...”

“Okay? Why that — instead of mulling over the fact you’re America’s Most Wanted, right now?”

“I don’t know, I...” He turned over to the dressing room’s exit. “Hey, don’t you think we should get outta here? Search for clues and stuff?”

“Well, what options do we have?”

“The deepfaker,” he proposed, “or Galen Crawford.”

“Well, whaddaya think? Deepfaker, or that motherfucker?”

“That motherfucker will do. I think he’s an easier target to find out about.”

“Good timing,” she snickered, jogging out of the room. “I was about to mention that I found stuff about him!”

“Wait, what?” Joshua rushed to follow her out. “Care to explain?”

“Okay, so... I got this from a colleague of mine — name’s Eve, she’s got shelter for us if we need it.” Roaming around Mr.President’s living room, she spitballed, “Last week, while you and I were fighting for our lives against that blind asshole, Galen Crawford intercepted a drug deal in Shakedown — between a group of newbies with impossibly high-grade drugs to sell, and one of the town’s powerful gang leaders.”

“And? What did you find?”

“Just that... and that the newbies got massacred. And that one member of the gang got shot.”

“Uh huh.”

“Luckily, we don’t have to spend decades trying to find ‘em,” sang Jocelyn, “because I know who they are.”

“Who?”

“Y’know,” she shrugged. “My ex.”

Joshua was slack jawed. His lips quivered a tiny bit, but nothing to suggest he wanted to walk away from the idea of it. “...Huh,” he muttered.

“Not only that, but the rest of her merry gang? I’ve known them long enough to speak with them safely.” She adjusted her scarf and posed in the slightest sense. “But my ex? Leave her to me. You go ask her whatever questions you need, and I’ll put her in line if she tries to zigzag out of them. Are we clear on that?”

“Crystal.”

“Okay,” she smiled a bit, and whistled. “Reckon your battery might be full?”

“Yeah.” Joshua looked up at the ceiling’s gemstone, sensing that the blue noon sky marched closer to the ‘golden hours’. “It’s been a while.”

“Sweet... say, why don’t we go partying and, uh — go see about a girl?”

 

Notes:

Remember to give kudos and (optionally) a comment! This helps in supporting this fic and its future endeavors.

Chapter 14: Vol. 2 - Welcome To The Playground

Summary:

Arriving at the CBAT Club, both Joshua & Jocelyn hold a meeting with the California Girls. One of both intrigue... and the biggest bombshell the Girls has ever seen. Watch out for that girl in the glasses, you two!

Notes:

Shout-out to two guests who left a kudos in the previous chapter!

UPDATE (3/14/24): Part 3 of an upcoming overhaul to Vol. 2

—|[ CHAPTER 14 ]|—

Welcome To The Playground

 

 

From The Author: Heads-up prompt to listen to this track.

Off what he thought about Shakedown Street before arriving there skies of aurum flames, Joshua believed the entire town was Hell incarnate.

The fear of death was everywhere; in the air they breathe, in the slums they traveled to...

While Jocelyn was used to that kind of atmosphere, he felt like a stranger in a strange land navigating through a realm spoken of by tall tales.

Tall tales of how everyone in Shakedown cannibalized and ate each other alive to gain power, how depraved their ways of preying on the innocent were from how they could make bombs from scraps of nothing. But it wasn’t just that he dreaded: he knew how coming to Shakedown meant revisiting a ghost of the past.

How everyday was a struggle to put on a ‘brave face’, in hopes of convincing Glitter and his dangerous cabinet of associates not to bring him any harm.

He could blame her all he wanted, but between facing arrest and reclaiming the normal life he lost: the second option was better to pursue.

As he parked the Lancer down via Jocelyn’s direction, Joshua took his time to observe everyone in the streets around him. Worn-down one storey buildings, tattered signs and graffiti spreading gang propaganda, and the heart of the paper town itself: the people. Most of them—often sickly and dressed in rags—paced by the streetlights, while loud voices cried of ‘repentance’; signs that read “REPENT OR THE RESTLESS WILL DENOUNCE YOU” or “DO NOT BE DECEIVED, THEY RECOGNIZE YOUR SINS FROM AFAR” hanging by their necks.

He clutched his seatbelt, shifting in his seat. “H-Hey,” he asked Jocelyn, “you know about this stuff?”

“No,” she replied, “it must be new...”

“Repent, sinners against His Holiness!” One such voice shrilled. “Judgment Day for our repentance draws nearer to thee! Should one of you sin in vain — the restless spirits of this forsaken world will denounce you, with ten thousand voices! They will force you to beg for forgiveness, with ten thousand hands! And they will remember it to the bitter end, with twenty thousand eyes!”

“But it’s not unusual for guys in this place to go screaming about God’s wrath.” She unbuckled her seatbelt, fixed her hair, and hovered her hand over the car door’s handle. “Anyways, should we get going?”

“Umm...” Joshua gulped, and did the same. “You better be watching my back.”

“Will do, scaredy cat.”

Both Joshua & Jocelyn exited the car, heading for a point-of-interest in Shakedown that stood out amongst the sea of dirt and ruin plaguing it: the CBAT Club at the heart of the town.

Passing by a street sign that read “503 Shakedown St.”, the two of them saw the CBAT Club as it was — a retro-futuristic nightclub ripped straight from the city, a paradise surrounded by the worst case of ‘urban decay’ in the Greater Los Angeles area. It bore host to aspiring DJs who wished to break free and make it to the city. And it was everything any avid partygoer wanted... but beneath its surface lie the perfect façade for the settlement’s local crime syndicates. The home of many drug deals, prostitution rings, Mafia meetings; most of all, the California Girls considered it their home base.

Luckily for them both, one of them knew the gang well.

But that information did not stop everyone from training their eyes on the two. Joshua couldn’t stop gulping as he flinched everytime someone stared at him, especially considering the kind of clothes he wore on his body.

“Don’t look at them,” Jocelyn slightly jabbed him in the elbow.

“H-Hey!” He hissed, holding his elbow.

“We’re on business here, Josh,” she stressed with a fist, “there’s no excuse for any one of us to look scared. It’s gonna make us look incompetent, if anything.”

“Yeah, but... I haven’t been here before.”

“So what? I’ll teach ya how to fit in.”‘

“You better...”

As everyone’s gazes continued haunting them, they found themselves in the way of two brawny and skin-headed bouncers with angular sunglasses, who patrolled the entrance of the club — characterized by a ‘CBAT Club’ sign in red-and-green neon lettering. If there was anything to describe them both in simpler terms, it would be them passing off for twins.

“Hold your pace, kids,” shouted one bouncer with his shades hung on his head.

Both halted with gritty sighs and pressed lips.

“Excuse me?” Jocelyn raised her eyebrow at the bouncer. “Mind telling me what you’re stopping us for—”

“You,” the other bouncer boomed, pointing at Joshua. “You’re Remy Wanderlust, aren’t you?”

“Don’t call me that,” Joshua retorted.

“Leave us,” declared the first bouncer, “we don’t welcome liabilities like you into our club. Shoo.”

“What the f—”

“Are you fucking kidding me?!” Jocelyn growled, her face a sliver of crimson. “Who do you think we are, asshat? And isn’t this Shakedown Street, for fuck’s sake?! You guys let any piece of shit in regardless of their crime, but not this piece of shit!”

“Yes, we are aware,” enunciated the second bouncer, “but we cannot allow him inside — the risks of walking out of the club with a high body count are greater than the benefits he brings. And we’re also aware of your history as a disturbance to our patrons.”

Hearing that answer laid out made her scoff harder than anything Joshua said in the past nine days. Simply put, it was among the most ridiculous things a human being ever said to her. Quickly, she crouched down and detached one of the ladybug brooches on her left boot.

Eyes widened, the first bouncer yelled, “Fuck, she’s got a gun—”

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Joshua croaked, grabbing the bouncer’s wrist before he had the chance to tackle her.

“We’re really doing this, huh,” muttered Jocelyn, as she stood upright and showed off the brooch. “Tell me,” she asked the two, “you two know who I am, right?”

The first bouncer swiped his hand off his wrist, and tugged his shirt down. He gave her a glare as a ‘response’; as did the second bouncer.

“If you know what that is, I’ll tell ya.” She grinned, shoving the ladybug in his face. “You don’t let us in, I’ll make sure my Pops gets word of this — and not only will your club go bankrupt, it’s certain you’ll end up with shittier jobs than the ones you’re being paid scraps of money for. So? Are you willing to keep your jobs safe, or stall us and convince me to get him on speed dial?”

Both the bouncers looked at each other wordlessly, a twitch in their eyes.

“...Go on.”

They showed them the way to the club.

“Sweee~~t,” Jocelyn cajoled, bumping her fist in triumph. “C’mon, Josh,” she beckoned for him while holding the brooch tight. “Can’t keep those girls waiting!”

But the moment she called for his name, he stood there silently.

“...Josh?”

The world around him shut down—his sight narrow, and hearing deafened—as he had nothing but the same black-and-yellow umbrella from that morning in his sights, standing by a streetlight in a blackened alley. Only this time, a person held the umbrella. He barely made out what appeared to be shiny latex gloves the length of her elbow, yellow pantyhose, black skirt with a ‘magnifying glass’ symbol, and reflective eyes of sage — gazing back at him. He questioned such presence before him.

He wondered, with beads of sweat falling down, if God made His presence known through the woman’s manifestation. Or whether or not she happened to be part of a memory long repressed.

“Joshua Johnson,” the sound of Jocelyn’s voice broke through, snapping him back to reality. “Fuck are you looking at?! C’mon, we’ve gotta get going! Don’t keep everyone hanging with that non-existent staring contest of yours!”

“U-Uhhhhh... Okay! I’m going!”

Joshua staggered his way to Jocelyn through the door. But before he entered the CBAT Club for the first time, he snuck in a glance at the streetlight...

Only to see that the woman with the umbrella was gone.

‘The fuck?’ He could only think of such things before leaving. ‘That’s... something. I swear to Christ if I see that damn umbrella again...’

 

–[ ★★★ ]–

 

When they entered the lobby, strange and unfamiliar beats from inside the club resonated in its expansive gold-painted space. Joshua kept a close eye on everyone waiting there, the ones who sat and paced over to be admitted inside. Contrasting most of Shakedown’s denizens, the club’s patrons felt as if they belonged to the city; that they were well-dressed, groomed in either casual or formal wear, and possibly the richest of the rich in the paper town itself.

He whistled, pocketing his hands inside. ‘No turning back now,’ he thought on a whim, as he followed Jocelyn down the nightclub’s space.

At first, they were greeted by shadows...

Then a burst of rainbow light and sound.

Joshua squeezed his eyes and covered his ears shut, as a bright flash of disco lights and lasers formed a kaleidoscopic assault-in-the-senses that people on the dance floors swayed their feet and hips into. The DJs allowed their song of choice to play for the patrons to enjoy — the presentation of the club designed to target a patron’s sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch for an unforgettable experience.

Being in the CBAT Club was intoxicating for the average partygoer. It catered to their instinctual desire to find others that related to their pursuit of the joys and freedom the outside world did not allow them. But for Joshua, it was torture.

“Hey, Joce?!” He shouted with a feeble attempt to reach her. “You’re moving too fast!”

“What?!” She barely heard anything he said out of the speakers’ overbearing loudness. “Say it louder, dammit!”

“YOU’RE MOVING TOO FAST!”

Jocelyn chuckled. “Just take my hand, then!” She offered her hand afterwards.

‘Take her... hand?’ Before he knew it, the color of his face was vermillion as ever. ‘Okay... Just think of it like this — you’re taking her hand because it’s the only way you can make it through without getting lost. Not that you want to do it.’

He caught her hand, holding onto it as both of them passed through the dance floor. Many patrons who came their way either did not care to notice them, or slurred screams of their excitement.

“H-Hey, uh,” he inquired aloud, “mind telling me what you know about Galen Crawford last week?”

“Why, Josh?”

“Let’s just say I know a thing or two about negotiation!”

“O-Okay, here’s the thing.” She sighed, before explaining, “About nine days ago at late hours, some San Diegan imbecile named Draco Esparza struck a deal with Rooney Smith of the California Girls — she’s my ex, if you’re wondering! Draco wanted a cut out of Shakedown’s gang territories, and stuff — but Mr. Boomstick came along and intercepted the deal under his boss’ orders! I don’t give a shit whoever they are; boy, girl, trans, enby, agender? I dunno, he practically killed everyone but the Girls blowing up the drugs, and even one of her women got caught in the crossfire!”

“Is there more I should know about?” He kept his grip tight.

“First off, don’t squeeze my hand like that!”

“S-Sorry!” He nervously chuckled.

“But whatever you do, don’t listen to a word she says — if she tries to bullshit you out of negotiating and whatever! Let me work my magic, and we’ll be right as rain!”

“So, she’s uncooperative?”

“Not exactly,” she clarified. “She’s just so serious about getting a win on the board — she'd find a way to try digging deep and going personal!”

“I see...”

Both Joshua and Jocelyn resumed their advance down the club, to the point where they reached a shortcut directed by the latter.

“And how’d that work out? The whole shebang between you two?”

She stopped. Her head tilt was so slight; it was barely noticeable. There was something about his question that really got under her skin...

“Josh,” she hissed, before glaring at him. “Keep those questions to yourself until we get there, okay?”

“Alright,” he shrugged. “I’ll stop...”

Jocelyn blew hair off her face as she turned back. They finally made it to their shortcut after a while, and then she said, “Looks like this is it...”

“Where’s this lead to?”

“You’ll see...”

Once she opened the door, Joshua realized now the true nature of her chosen—and most UNEXPECTED—shortcut...

“EWW, WHAT THE FUCK?!”

The prostitutes of the CBAT Club’s dressing room darted their eyes at two strangers standing by their open door.

The dressing room, in particular, was bequeathed with the same golden light characteristic of the lobby before. A glass convex wall on the right side was its main attraction, showing off the dance floor in all its kaleidoscopic glory. And, unsurprisingly enough, home to nameless hookers and molls dressing themselves up. This was the best shortcut to the California Girls’ meeting room; but unfortunate enough, it was its most embarrassing.

“Get out, perverts!” One moll shouted.

“Jocelyn, what the hell?!” Joshua hissed, a vein or two popping out his temples. “Of all the shortcuts you took, this is the one?!”

“What do you think,” she retorted. “It’s the best way into their turf, dumbass! No freakin’ way you’re thinking there’s some kind of secret chute that perfectly gets us inside without interference!”

“Couldn't you have just chosen a better path than this?!”

“It was either this way, or the 'thousand-pounder bouncers blocking the path' way!”

“The fuck are you guys doin’ here? ‘Re ya lost or something?!” A dark blond prostitute in her early-20s shouted.

“Chill out, everyone,” she reassured them with stretched palms, “take it easy! We’re just here for the California Girls, and nothing more than that! Y’all got any of that, right?”

Everyone was silent.

“Umm... who?” The young prostitute questioned.

“What the f—” Nothing stopped her from growling and covering her face up. “Are you kidding me? How old are you to not know of K-pop looking bitches who are staying at the room next to yours?”

“I dunno,” answered the young prostitute, “I just started here.”

“My God,” she sighed, before muttering, “I can’t believe this... Now we’ve got newbies who barely know jack about anything.”

“Maybe we should’ve gone the ‘thousand-pounder bouncers’ way...” Joshua rubbed his head.

“Don’t act like I don’t know what I’m doing here,” Jocelyn hissed back, “We’d be in faaaar more trouble if we went that way, idiot!”

“Ay! What’s going on here?”

An older woman in her late-20s emerged from a dark corner in the room, whom the rest of the prostitutes bowed in reverence. From the way she carried herself with a cool smile and how they reacted, nothing questioned the fact she was the head escort of the club itself. Her bright auburn hair was long, the ends forming into thick, well-defined rings; she wore a loose pinkish-red jacket; camouflaged undergarments with a bright red belt on her waist; and similarly-camouflaged thigh-high boots with large, triangle serrations on the top edge.

“H-Hi, Boss!” The younger prostitute waved.

“Lassie,” she drawled in a ‘weird’ Boston accent, “mind telling me what’s going on here?”

“Uh,” Lassie shook her head. “These two, um — they say they wanna visit some people in... God, what’s the secret door about?”

“Don’t worry about that,” the head waved Lassie away, “I’ll take it from here.”

Lassie gulped, and lurched away for the head to approach the two JoJos herself.

“C’mon, everyone,” Jocelyn tapped her watch, “my colleague and I are running on borrowed time — so you’re gonna have to cut to the chase and let us pass!”

“I’m afraid we can’t do that,” the head escort stood in Jocelyn’s way. “California Girls said so. Oh, you New Yorkers like to be stubborn as they go, eh?”

“Bullshit!” She pinched her fingers in emphasis, barking. “I’ve met with them before, and had NO problem conducting business with the six of ‘em!”

“Sorry, miss. It is what it is.” The head hand-waved them away.

Hopelessly, Jocelyn looked down on herself — biting her lip and thinking it was a nightmare trying to pass through. Weighing her options, there was one idea she felt the need to pursue. But as she opened her mouth to speak, she stopped. Second thoughts filled her mind to no end, aware of the consequences.

“If you won’t leave, I’m sending the guards after you two.”

The moment the head spoke was the moment she had to pursue the hard decision now.

Taking a deep breath, Jocelyn lifted her chin up and towered over the head escort. Her eyes were dreamy — half-shut, but piercing enough that it narrowed the head’s focus solely on the self-perceived marvelous redhead.

“Hey there,” she cooed. “Got a name for me?”

“What?” The head was confuddled, in all the best ways...

“M’just askin’ for your name, bro,” mumbled Jocelyn once more, inching closer to the head prostitute.

The head herself was even more slack-jawed once she realized how she was a head taller than she was, high-heels aside. The pink makeup on her dolled-up face barely concealed a tinge of how red her face was. Alluring was the only word she could describe.

“...Valerie,” she answered.

“Valerie...” Jocelyn chuckled. She pulled her close and stroked her face with a finger. “I’ll admit — I think you’re nice. It’s not because of your makeup, or what you wear... I respect the hell out of women like you, the type who maintain integrity above all else.”

Valerie barely hid a gasp.

“Fact of the matter is, I admire people like you better than him”—she smirked at Joshua—“but... If you let us through that door, just this once... I’ll try to see if we can both work something out. Not that it’ll last beyond just a one night stand... but regardless? I’m shooting my shot. And I’ll leave it at that.”

Joshua slightly retreated to one side of the room, forcing himself to stare blankly at the wall. Even some prostitutes next to him did the same, bearing witness to second-hand embarrassment they didn’t want anything to do with.

After staring at her for a while, Valerie chuckled. “Okay... you got me.” She raised her hands up in ‘surrender’.

Jocelyn let go of her afterwards, tugging her scarf down.

“Now, you two,” she showed the way to the door beyond the dressing room, “I’ll let them know you wish to pay a visit. But... be very careful. There’s no guarantees they’ll let you in — and losing Rooney’s partnership is something I am not interested in.”

“Oh, thank God,” Joshua sighed, holding his head.

“Follow me.”

Soon, Joshua & Jocelyn followed Valerie down the door. All of the prostitutes never let go of their sight, observing them with frowns and pouting lips. Lassie, on the other hand, gave Joshua a wink and crossed fingers — which he responded with half a smile. He smacked his lips as he and the two women ambled down their destination.

It was a normal wooden door, though with reinforced locks and a microphone attached to the hinges. Graffiti on the door’s frame read “DON’T OPEN, BEAST INSIDE”.

“Hey, Valerie,” Joshua broke silence. “Is there anything about them I should know about?”

“I’m assuming you’re new here,” inferred Valerie.

“I am.”

“Well...” she sighed, fixing the rings on her hair. “Try not to screw up too badly, kid. They’d hate it if someone as good-looking as you turns out to be a pretend-grownup with a fragile edge.”

“Ouch...” He whistled, fixing his glasses.

Once they reached the door, the three stopped. And before he knew it — the rest of the world narrowed down only to himself. Not Jocelyn, nor Valerie, or the door that stood in front. His fingers twitching, he knew after this that there was no going back: the criminal underworld was a place he really wanted nothing to do with anymore... but if it meant saving face and regaining what sense of normalcy he enjoyed, then going back was the only logical option.

And in order to do that, he looked deep in his past.

And there it was: he visualized the silhouette of a man with a bird for his head, trapped behind a cage. He had it all; the tools required for the quest, the drive to make decisions most foul...

He closed his eyes, imagining himself breaking the man free of its cage.

And when he heard the doorbell ring, he opened his eyes. A rainbow shine flickered in his eyes, so much that it was nearly a void of white. Before everyone knew it...

The beast is set free.

 

–[ ★★★ ]–

 

“H-Hey, did I hear that right?” Rosa cajoled when she heard Clarity’s latest imports.

“Yeah! Wanna come check out the stash?” She directed her to a shack within the room, a sign barely hanging above the ceiling titled “SMUGGLER’S AREA”.

Rosa complied, skipping steps with an eagerness no one had seen aside from instances like these.

Contrary to most patrons’ perceptions of the ‘secret room’ beyond the club’s dressing suite, the room that—in truth—was the California Girls’ meeting space, anyone would express surprise; that the thought of it being mysterious and brutalist shattered, the moment they laid eyes.

Unusually enough, the space was more of a studio apartment-type than a private lounge for the rich to act out niche fantasies with as many hookers as they reeled. Beyond the wooden door — were two sets of comfortable-enough sofas, a decent-enough TV set for the news or binge-watching their favorite shows, the aforementioned ‘Smuggler’s Area’, and a kitchen area with refrigerator and leftover snacks.

The space, as it was, contrasted the power they held over the paper town’s surroundings. And anyone who didn’t know better thought it was just a second home.

Inspecting some of the goods, namely near-military grade rifles, Rosa asked with a smile, “Lemme guess, are they good? They look like they could put pendejos down with ease.”

“That’s right,” explained Clarity, her mouth clicking. “Had to deal with that hardass gun dealer ‘coz he was being his usual self. Luckily enough, you know how I roll around him. Easy to get into his head if he’s got that kind of power...”

“Oh, please have a decent substitute for my MAC-11...”

Meanwhile, Cyrus relaxed in one of the sofas. She groaned heavily, skim-reading through documents on her iPad. She certainly wasn’t enjoying what she saw...

“Just when I thought I’d have time for you guys,” she sighed, “the court pulls me back in like a fishing rod...”

“Oh?” Taylor shot up a question from the opposite couch, putting aside a wet cotton bud. “What’s up, Gem?”

“Public masturbator,” she answered flatly, “court in Pasadena wants me to defend. Y’know, stuff like that — I don’t get it. If he’s got 50 sites at home to wank his ass off to, why do it at a Starbucks where everyone and their kids is bound to watch?”

“I dunno,” Taylor shrugged, taking a roll of weed. “Some people just get off from being unnecessarily sexual in public. And that’s fucked up, if you’d ask me...” She lit up the roll and smoked it.

“Yeee~~~aahh...” Cyrus didn’t hesitate to hide a chuckle as she continued skimming through it. “Getting away with indecency isn’t as easy as getting away with smoking weed. And, as far as I’m concerned? 90% less legal than the latter! In California, no less.”

“You do realize where we are, right?” Taylor continued smoking.

“I know, pretty nerd,” she retorted. “I was just making examples.”

“Well, if that’s the case... Good luck.”

“Thanks...”

As she put the roll down, Taylor turned her focus on the masked Big Bertha. The latter slumped on the couch and took most of the space, scribbling things in her magic slate paper. She made moans as she adjusted her lying position — and even with the mask covering her face up, Taylor knew too well she hadn’t let her pain go. Yet.

“Antiseptic still hurting, bestie?” She frowned, tilting her head.

Bertha showed off her writing: “STILL HURTS, BESTIE.”

“It’s been days, Bertha,” she consoled her, “the pain should be gone by now. Christ, that doctor and his Bot should be sued ‘coz their treatment must be a sham to keep hurting. Right?”

Bertha gulped. She lifted the paper, erasing the words, and inscribed new ones into it. She showed her again, “METAPHORICALLY, BESTIE. IT’S BECAUSE I STILL REMEMBER THAT GAGO’S FACE.”

“Yeah, it sucks,” Taylor whistled and fixed her glasses, “but don’t worry too much!”

Sensing she started avoiding eye contact, Taylor caught her masked face and made her look. “Don’t think about his face,” she said, reassuring. “Look at me. Next time we find that — err, gah-goe? If that’s how you pronounce it? We’ll fucking rinse him when he least expects it. How’s that sound?”

Bertha nodded, giving her a thumbs up and a cheery laugh.

“And when he’s removed from our memories,” she resumed, “then we can do as much ice cream eating in bed as we can!”

Taylor gave her a giggle, and a smile Bertha knew too well when it came to ice cream eating...

Even with the mask, Taylor understood immediately the stare Bertha gave her.

It took a while for her to stutter, “Ah, putangina mo — m-malandi ka...”

Nothing stopped her from ‘transfiguring’ the mask into a crimson one.

“You said it,” Taylor laughed, “you said the line!”

“Don’t make me say it again, please?” Bertha switched focus to her slate paper afterwards. She ‘erased’ the previously-written words in place.

Meanwhile...

While the other Girls minded their own businesses in unique ways — Rooney, on the other hand, stood by a kitchen countertop and watched a tiny water spill dry. Even in close proximity to the rest of her gang, she was just alone in her little world of regret and rumination. Like Bertha before her, she hadn’t gone anywhere close to letting her pain go. It wasn’t physical like being shot by buckshot pellets, but it affected her enough that she almost felt she endured what she went through.

Not to mention, debating whether or not the swarm of bees she saw was Galen’ Crawfords Stand; or rather a hallucination from either stress or pheromones from Draco’s drugs stash that assimilated into the air.

Regardless, she knew for certain: nothing on God’s Earth would stop her from hunting him down. Her anger was enough to incur the wrath of ten thousand fists...

But before she continued mulling over her plans of revenge, the sound of their doorbell ringing woke her up.

“Hey, guys,” Valerie’s voice informed the Girls via the doorstep loudspeaker. “I don’t mean to intrude, but you’ve got visitors wanting to have a word with you!”

Rooney gasped in surprise, as did the other Girls.

"We got visitors?!" Clarity ran to hide her smuggled firearms with Rosa's aid.

“Valerie,” Rooney shouted back, “Didn’t I just tell you that we’re still closed after last week?”

“Look, I’m sorry!” She insisted. “But these people are adamant — they want a word now, or they would break me! Not that I won’t enjoy it...”

“Tell them to speak for themselves,” Rooney cursed, “or I’ll make sure they break you first.”

A pause.

Faint microphone feedback played on the loudspeaker, before a male voice with a disembodied whisper said, “Um... Hello. It’s Remy... Remy Wanderlust.”

“...What.” Rooney reacted blankly, but she was just as agape as everyone was.

“You think I don’t know about you, Ms. Smith,” he resumed, “believe me — word travels fast. And I intend to get the information I want, no matter what. You and I have a common enemy — so let’s cooperate and stop them together. Otherwise... I’ll have to rip that door open myself. And I’m sure my colleague wouldn’t appreciate it if I did so...”

Fully grasping his intent with a stroked chin, Rooney sauntered to the door to look at the peephole. There was Joshua standing there, who looked as if he was staring right through the door. It made her gasp. Her heart raced seeing how he was almost peering into her eyes, as impossible as it seemed.

“Okay,” she gulped, “I’ll let you in... and whoever your colleague is.”

Rooney opened the door, and there he was — Joshua himself, towering over her by nearly one feet. She furrowed her eyebrows at his expression; an oddly friendly smile, juxtaposed by eyes deprived of life and the tone of his voice from when he spoke at the door.

It rendered her speechless, so much that she barely missed the same rainbow flicker in his eyes from earlier.

“Pleasure to have you invite us both,” he chuckled, stepping out the door to reveal a face she hadn’t seen in days...

Though her reaction was subtle, nothing stopped her from a sprinkle of her mouth hinging ajar. That the last person she expected standing by her door, was Jocelyn — in all her fiery-headed glory.

“Hey, Roon.” Jocelyn half-heartedly smiled and waved.

“Jocelyn...” She came close to biting her lip, but stopped at the last second.

“Hold the phone,” Taylor exclaimed from her couch, “You can’t be serious, right? Joshua FUCKING Johnson?!”

Rooney turned to the others, waving them away. “Girls,” she ordered them, “move back to the kitchen — stat! Mr. Wanderlust and his colleague here wish to conduct business with me. And I need space to focus...”

“Yes, Rooney,” Rosa bowed, and retreated to the kitchen area — followed by the other Girls. There, they observed the meeting of a lifetime...

Now alone, Rooney splayed her hands around her waist, looking at the two carefully in the eye. “Boy,” she said to Jocelyn, “did I think no one was gonna be taller than you.”

“I thought the same thing,” doubted Jocelyn with a shrug.

“Now, to get straight to the point? Sit.” She darted fingers at the couch Bertha and Taylor once sat in.

Both Joshua and Jocelyn complied with her request, and took the time to simmer down and settle on the couch. Rooney did the same, but for the other couch adjacent to theirs.

“So, what do you want?” Rooney clasped her fingers together. “You can’t just force your way through the dressing room and convince my assistant to let you in. Especially considering the fact you’ve brought your newest boy toy with me...”

“I’m not her boy toy!”/“He’s not my boy toy!” They spluttered, in near-perfect stereo.

“Hm. I thought so.” She turned to Joshua next, still unsettled by his ‘all-too-friendly’ expression. “So what’s the deal with him? Anything he want?”

“Here’s the thing, Roon.” Jocelyn explained, “This dumbass here’s been dealing with a shitty can of worms since last night. Trying to find a shithead who deepfaked his face for a crime he didn’t commit, recovering from his pec imploding on itself... Mindless rambling aside — Joshua’s questions might seem... annoying. But let me assure you, he’s thought of them as carefully as possible. Now, Josh? Ask away.”

“Right,” Joshua scoffed, and asked, “the deal. You and Esparza. What happened?”

“You know about that, too?”

“I know my sources,” he gestured to Jocelyn, “and I want you to give me the full picture. All the minute details, how it all came to be, and how it all got to the point — where you left eighteen dead men and a gunshot wound as casualties.”

“Oh, boy — you know too much, huh?” Rooney scoffed, slouching down a bit. “Anyways... I met Esparza in one of the monthly meetings every Shakedown head hosts at a paper town in San Diego. An associate of mine said there was one promising rookie who wanted a ‘stake’ at our drug imports. He was a rat, but that didn’t stop me from accepting his offer.” She crossed her arms, rolling her eyes. “So I arranged for a deal precisely in Shakedown. What did we get? Oh, that’s right — Esparza just casually handed us the El Dorado of drugs, and we spent no wasted dime on it.”

“What about Galen Crawford? Is there anything in particular he wanted from both of you?”

“I’m sorry, who? I don’t know him.” Her lips tightened in remembrance.

“Roon, don’t bullshit us with that lie.” Jocelyn scowled at her.

“Yeah, what?” Rooney rubbed her head, ‘feigning’ confusion as she resumed, “Besides... whoever the assailant was? The fuckface who had my greatest asset writhing on the floor, burnt all of Esparza’s drugs, and killed him and the rest of his men? You should’ve seen everything — how he just destroyed practically every person in that street in cold blood. And even if you were there, especially with those God-awful pants you’re wearing? You wouldn’t last a second within his crosshairs.”

Joshua’s lips twitched, and so did his right eyebrow.

“You might not get it, Mr. Wanderlust,” she snapped with sour eyes, “but I’m gonna spell it out for you, quick. You’re washed! For five years, no less! And what have you been doing in those five years, doing nothing but playing ‘girls’ dress-up’ — and getting paid truck loads for it?!”

“What is the point of all this,” he croaked, barely forming clenched fists.

“My point is, you can blame yourself all you want. But understand this: you cook drugs that don’t even work anymore, Remy. And I’m sure it’s not enough to get your Eddie back.”

“Rooney, you—!” Jocelyn nearly launched herself off the couch, but stopped herself. She grabbed Joshua’s hands, hissing rapidly, “Josh, don’t listen to her. Alright? Remember what I told you when we first got here! Josh?”

Joshua didn’t respond. He just sat there, staring emptily into Rooney.

“She’s just so serious about getting a win on the board — she'd find a way to try digging deep and going personal!” Her words from before echoed in his mind.

“That’s...” He broke off the trance on his own accord. “Your strategies to convince me into calling off the meeting are impressive. But let me remind you — nothing’s working.”

“How so?”

“Let’s just say... I’ve spent years listening to words similar to yours. I’ve heard it from gangbangers. From people I once called ‘friends’. From horrible bosses like Glitter. Even people like you, Ms. Smith. And I’ve heard it so many times — they barely get under my skin, anymore.”

Rooney hid a gasp from him, maintaining a stone-cold expression.

“Now... I can show you a picture,” Joshua pulled out his phone, “And the reaction on your face is all I need to know about you.”

He showed Rooney a photograph of Galen’s face, taken from a record detailing his military service. His skin wasn’t the milky tan he was recognized for, and he still had middle-parted black hair than his signature small mohawk.

“T-That’s—”

“Well, that just proves it.” Joshua smirked. “Not only are you a liar, but a staller. And a great one at that. Now... to corroborate my claims.”

He showed the picture to the Girls in the kitchen — taking in the bulging reactions on their faces. Their gasps and mumbling were strong; but of everyone in that area, Bertha’s was the most intense of all.

“T-T-T-T—” she stuttered, jabbing fingers at the screen. “That putangina shot me! That’s him!”

“See? Further proof that you were holding me back.” Joshua leaned back with his chin up, glaring down at her. “Still think I’m washed, Rooney? Think again.”

“You slick bastard,” she muttered to herself, smiling bitterly.

“I’ve dealt with a fair share of people like you, Ms. Smith,” he said, steepling his fingers together. “People who think I just cook drugs and nothing else. You grossly underestimate who I am, let me tell you. I’m a ‘survivor’. I’ve fought through Hell and back to claim the one thing I’ve always sought most — a satisfactory life I can live with. Yet, you act like one of those people who stood against it. So I’ll show you how much thin ice you’re in...”

Joshua showed his phone again to Rooney, almost pushing it in her face as he swiped the pictures for a crime scene collage of Galen’s halved and immolated corpse.

Rooney gagged, recoiling further down the couch. She was used to seeing death on a personal level, given her dealings in Shakedown — but nothing compared to the collage itself. She swore she nearly expelled her soul out of her body. And before she knew it, her eyebrows curled down as sweat glistened the skin on her face.

“Rooney, what’s going on?!” Rosa sprang to defend her Boss, but the other Girls stopped her.

And by that point, she was no longer in control of the interview. The beast was.

“It’s true,” he said, “we killed him. And like you’ve said before, you haven’t seen what I’ve seen. If you were there when we tore him apart with our Stands... I reckon it would be like sniffing glue. Because there was so much blood, you could taste the metal and be intoxicated by it. And it didn’t help that it smelled like barbecues, either.”

Rooney sat there with an empty voice. Her fist trembled, eyes shifting between the floor and Joshua. Never before had anyone challenged the way she negotiated things—let alone figure out her tricks so easily and turn the tables on her. And he had done just that.

“What... in God’s name are you?” Rooney questioned, shivering.

“As I’ve said,” he answered indifferently, “I’m a survivor. And if you ever try doing this again, Ms. Smith? What we did to Galen was an appetizer. Imagine what I’d do to you and the rest of you people as the main course.”

He left the entire room to mull for themselves...

‘What the fuck, Josh...?’ For one, Jocelyn was surprised; she thought him inferior, not superior to her former flame in any way. ‘I thought you acting the way you did at the highway was just a one-and-done special. Jesus... Fuck kind of Satanic ritual did you do to be better?’

And the other, the Girls came close to biting their nails. He, ironically enough, ‘dug deep’ into her methods — when it should’ve been the other way around.

“Answer the question I’ll ask next truthfully, Ms. Smith,” Joshua bellowed, “what do you know about Galen Crawford?”

Rooney sighed, raising her palms. “Alright,” she conceded, “you want answers? I’ll give you some. Galen Crawford is a member of a gang deep within Shakedown’s hierarchy — crossing them means a guaranteed death sentence. If we’re ‘Number Two’, I’d say they’re well above and beyond ‘Number One’. Nobody knows who the hell they are outside of Mafia meetings, and even I don’t know a single thing about them. Besides him trying to kill us, that is.”

“...I doubt that.”

“Motherfucker, I told you everything! What more do you need?!” Rooney cried.

“His leader. And the rest of the gang. Who are they?”

“I’m telling you, I don’t know—”

“I ASKED YOU A QUESTION.”

“And I don’t want to answer it.”

“What are you so afraid of?”

“You.”

Rooney jabbed fingers at the door, panting. “Please get out the door while you still can, Remy. You’re not welcome here anymore — and neither is she.”

Joshua jolted up his seat, yelling, “You fucking COWARD—”

“Josh, don’t!” Jocelyn interjected, and held him back. “What the hell are you thinkin’? Let’s not try to start a war here, alright? We do as she says. We substantially got more than what we needed.”

“Okay... fucking hell.” Joshua sighed, and turned to the door.

Jocelyn did the same, and before everyone knew it, they approached the door in a pyrrhic victory. There, Joshua hovered his hand over the handle, biting his lip as he frowned over what transpired. Before he could open it—

“By the way,” Rooney stopped them. “If you do end up dealing with those people, Remy? Don’t hold back. They’d like it if you treat them unfairly — like how you treated those four-thousand kids you gassed up into an early grave.”

Joshua lunged—

“No, Josh.” She had to physically restrain him, lest the situation escalated to a point beyond return.

Rooney grinned, waving him goodbye. “Who’s grossly underestimating anyone now, ‘survivor’?”

A sigh only came. Jocelyn let him go, and the sooner they exited the room, the better it was for the Girls.

“Jesus fuck, Rooney,” Cyrus shrieked, “what was that?!”

“Yeah, what was that?” Clarity added.

“Don’t worry about them, Girls,” she reassured them, “they’re not coming back. I made sure of it.”

“Yeah, but — Boss, what did he show you?!” Rosa shouted from the back.

“Like I said, they’re not coming back! “The next time they try to come inside, I’ll make sure they both get ratted out to the cops—”

The flames of debate fanned, the Girls argued over potentially fighting Joshua & Jocelyn at some point in time. But instead of joining in the discussion, Taylor stood there in her isolated little world. A sense of longing filled her thoughts as she ogled at the door, smoking a puff of weed with a pout. But the more those thoughts intensified, the more she imagined a golden opportunity waiting to be seized.

Flicking the roll of weed onto the floor and stomping it, Taylor smiled. And muttered one last thing, buried in a sea of disagreements within her compatriots...

“See you soon.”

Notes:

Remember to give kudos and (optionally) a comment! This helps in supporting this fic and its future endeavors.

Chapter 15: Vol. 2 - My Name is Remy Wanderlust

Summary:

The backstory of Remy Wanderlust—known by the whole world as Joshua Johnson—is told by the man himself.

Notes:

Shout-out to two guests who left a kudos in the previous chapter!

UPDATE (3/23/23): Added a missing part that was overlooked in the final drafts.

UPDATE (3/21/24): Part 4 of an upcoming overhaul to Vol. 2

UPDATE (2/8/2025): Updated two lines of dialogue.

—|[ CHAPTER 15 ]|—

My Name is Remy Wanderlust

 

 

TEN YEARS AGO…

 

“Remy, what did I tell you about messing with the copper?!” A 17-year-old boy scolded a then 13-year-old Remy, many suns and moons before the world knew him as Joshua Johnson.

Before the incident at the crossroads that changed his life forever... and hers.

For over nine years, both Remy and his only friend Edward Joestar served under the slavery of drug kingpin James Glitter. He forced them, with an iron fist, to learn the art of chemistry to cook high-potency drugs he sold to the masses. And they did so — if it meant sleeping at night unharmed.

While it raked in millions of dollars, it was a thankless job.

No thanks to the unflinchingly Spartan levels of brutality others close to them suffered and died from. If there was a perfect way to describe it: it would be that of an abusive cycle that never stopped spinning.

And in order to survive: they had to live each passing day like they were going to die.

Remy had the same scruffy indigo hair, glasses, and star-marked trenchcoat he was known for. But frighteningly enough, he was gangly. He looked like he had never known of the concept of food, deprived of hunger... It was a miracle a bone or two did not snap.

But Eddie was different. He looked unusually normal for a teenager under such dire circumstances. Identified by blonde braided hair, succulent hazel eyes and a somewhat healthy and stockier physique. If someone was asked who the mysteriously intelligent Remy Wanderlust was, they’d always point at Eddie. But never the emaciated boy who actually was that Remy Wanderlust...

“What,” Remy scoffed, touching the copper, “it’s not like any of this is important anyways.”

His tenor vocalizations barely knew the line between a child’s and an adult’s voice.

“Oh, you don’t understand — don’t ya, Remy?” Eddie chuckled, swatting his hand away. He picked up the copper and placed it on a table with blueprints.

“What don’t I understand?”

“Y’know? How batteries work,” he boasted.

“I do. You pick up shit like mercuric oxide and graphite,” Remy answered, shaking his head, “mix them together for our cathode. You get a whole ass sheet of galvanized metal—”

“Forgetting the fact we stole it from Jimmy’s garage—”

“Eddie, please.” Remy retorted. “Let me finish, man.”

“Whatever you say, twig,” Eddie walked back with a smug smile.

“Okay. Spread the sheet and coins around, there’s the anode. I’m talkin’ — positives and negatives, alright? And how do we find a conductor for the current those two opposites create?”

“Let me guess, copper?”

“The power of bullshit,” Remy covered his face, growling. “Is this what this is all about, Eddie? Throwing random fuck-all together for no reason? I-I just can’t, I—”

“We need it, though,” argued Eddie.

“What for? It’s a ‘fool’s errand’, sweetie! It's like... like — we came for gold, but literally found copper instead!”

“C’mon, do you really wanna make a new batch for our cook — without the lights on our ceiling?” He jabbed fingers everywhere at their laboratory’s equipment. “Our generator’s dying, Remy. And until Clark comes in next week to fix it, we’re gonna have to make a backup battery ourselves.”

“Can’t you like — fix it yourself,” Remy snapped.

“Yeah? No. It’s more complicated than that.”

The lights on the laboratory flickered. Perfect timing.

“Wow, it’s like you made the lights flicker for some random reason,” Remy shrugged.

“Yeah, and?” Eddie beckoned for Remy and dragged the blueprint table with him. “C’mon, I need your help out here! Let’s get this backup up and running.”

“Fine,” he sighed, conceding. “Just you wait, Eddie — ‘coz I’m coming!”

Remy followed Eddie to the generator. But midway through, he stopped. He didn’t understand exactly why, but something ate away in his mind voraciously. So much that following orders was the least of his priorities...

Eddie noticed him, dropping the table off. “Remy,” he asked, placing a hand on his shoulder. “Are you okay?”

“Hey, uh...” Remy took his hand off him. “We’re getting out of this alive, right?”

“Why do you ask,” he questioned.

“I don’t know,” Remy shuddered, “it’s just one of those days...”

Eddie couldn’t find a word to say... yet. He knew deep down that — per Joshua’s words, it was one of ‘those days’. But he knew he couldn’t leave him without any assurance. So he patted Remy in the shoulders again, smiling.

“We’ll live, my man. No matter what happens.”

Remy did not resist a smile, either.

“Whether we get outta this mess and go home, or die trying? Fuck what these gangbangers and rapists think. We’re ‘survivors’, you and I. We’ll get outta this crackhouse. And if anyone thinks that’s impossible?”

Eddie chuckled.

“We’ll make ‘em believe...”

 

–[ ★★★ ]–

 

BACK IN THE PRESENT…

 

Looking back at that memory, nothing prepared Joshua from knowing how turbulent his life became after last week.

It started when he met Jocelyn at that pesky ‘crossroads’, and it snowballed from there. Even if barely a day ran past him, it still felt as if it happened long ago...

If he told himself in the memory he would be rechristened Joshua Johnson, that within ten years he would ascend close to the upper echelon of the modeling industry, he would’ve fallen victim to a thousand swears and insults. But they all happened as true. And so did the downfall and return to the seedy underworld he left behind.

And it had to be because of Jocelyn.

Yes, he knew they were entangled in an unfulfilled destiny. And he said it himself he was willing enough to work with her to solve the crime he was framed for. But he was a ticking time bomb: the negativity in his heart built up. A volcano soon to erupt... but a trigger wasn’t found yet. A grain of sand that—if left uncaught in an engine’s exhaust—would ruin the entire machine.

It wasn’t fair, either. It wasn’t fair he found someone beautiful like Jocelyn, only to end up losing the preciousness of life.

But he asked himself: was it karma?

Or was it ‘undeserved justice’, disregarding the good he did five years past?

Joshua and Jocelyn sat down in Mr.President’s hotel room, the night still young. They perched over a table in the living room, assessing pieces and photographs of information they took. Thanks to the California Girls, they now knew Galen Crawford was part of the most powerful gang in Shakedown.

Getting to learn who they were, however... was a different beast.

“So,” Jocelyn asked, placing a copy of Galen’s military ID on the table. “Based on what Rooney said, crossing the gang is a death wish — right?”

“Yeah.” Joshua scratched his hair.

She sighed. “Damn, if I didn’t wanna vomit with her too.” If there was anything about her feelings for Rooney that remained, it was her reaction to the collage.

“I had to do it,” shrugged Joshua. “If I gotta straighten them up with snuff photos of viscera and such, then I’ll do it gladly. The more leverage I have over uncooperative folks like her, the better.”

“I thought so... I didn’t think you’d have it in you.” Jocelyn chuckled, rearranging some of the photos used for the gory collage.

“I mean,” he scoffed and shifted his hips, “I am Remy Wanderlust after all. Matter of fact, I think doing stuff like this? I enjoy it more than trying to be someone I’m not anymore. Detective work and stuff.”

“Yeah?”

“We’re moving out here like Benson & Stabler in this joint. Minus the sex crimes...” He gave her the worst smile she had ever seen. “Riiii~~ght?”

“...No.”

“Okay?”

“I’m inclined to disagree,” sassed Jocelyn, “I don’t watch garbage like that, y’know. Besides, it ain’t gonna change my opinion of ya. Even when the day comes that we’re done with this ‘quest’ of ours, you’ll still be who I see in my eyes.”

“A dumbass?”

“Something like that.”

Joshua sighed. He got up his chair, yawning, and turned to the pathway to the master bedroom. “I-I think I gotta go,” he said hastily. “Thanks for letting me borrow those pictures, by the way!”

“Where the fuck are you going,” she inquired, eyebrow raised high.

“Can we go over this tomorrow,” he requested, walking down the pathway. “I need to go to bed. Staying up too long isn’t my strongest suit.”

“What the fuck?” She jolted up her seat, a fire igniting in her heart.

“You heard me,” Joshua shrugged, “do I have to say it again?”

“But we can still go over this stuff today, and go to bed by midnight! What the FUCK is wrong with ya, Josh?”

“What the fuck is wrong with—” he growled, frowning. “You’re the one suggesting I’m doing something wrong wanting to go to bed—”

“T-That’s not the only reason why, stupid!”

“Then what is, Jocelyn?!”

“I-I don’t know.”

Both of them did not speak for a little while.

“You’re uhm... pissed.”

“...Is that all?”

“No?” Jocelyn scoffed. “No, no, no, no, that’s not it... You wanna know what I saw, Josh?” She jabbed fingers at him. “You looked like a fuckin’ time bomb waiting to go off, that’s what I saw. And you’re using ‘going to bed’ as a lame excuse! I-I — Can you just... tell me what it is? I’d rather not deal with you going absolutely nuclear on me, tonight. Can you do that?”

Joshua sighed, turning his back on her. At last, he found the trigger. All the negativity brimming inside him was about to come down... barely speaking a whisper, as he said:

“Do you think it’s fair... that I met you?”

“What did you just say,” she frowned.

“You heard me,” he retorted. “I’m going to bed, one way or another—”

“Is this what this is all about? Me being the problem?”

“You fucking know you are the goddamn problem,” Joshua roared, jumping closer to him with heavy steps. “Always was, always has been! The shit-for-brains, you are — cost me everything. I could’ve been back at home, spending every second grateful I’m not back in Glitter’s crackhouse. But because you came into my life the way you did, it’s all gone! It’s all gone from nothing... but SHIT! Do you understand that?!”

“Oh, you piece of,” she muttered.

“Nah, you wouldn’t get it. You — you wouldn’t understand a scrap of what I’m saying. ‘Coz all you ever got in that tiny brain of yours, is ridiculously convoluted ways to call me a dumbass—”

“You’re not the only person in the world I call a ‘dumbass’, dumbass!”

“That’s irrelevant,” Joshua scoffed, “I’ve lost everything, damn you. And here you are — knocking me down twice than one peg with what — whatever the fuck you’ve been doing to me all the time! Forcing me to wear this crap, I—” He growled before he could get further. “I just — How much more do I have to fucking lose from you, Jocelyn?! HOW MUCH MORE?!?”

A pause.

“...I get what this is, now.” Unusually enough, Jocelyn was calm. There was a quality of pity in her eyes that he did not expect.

Yet he doubted if what he saw was good as true.

“What the fuck are you talking about,” Joshua snarled, “I’ve said it already — you don’t get shit!”

“You’re right,” she shrugged, “maybe I don’t get it.” Then came a pensive sigh, as Jocelyn stared at the ground beneath her feet — before moving her gaze back at him. “God, I should’ve figured it out before telling you. Thank God I got ‘mind-reading’ from Papa, otherwise I wouldn’t have known what the fuck’s been up with ya. So listen carefully when I say...”

She stroked her chin. And explained...

“You’re trying to blame me for losing everything you’ve had, out of something that happened beyond our control.”

Joshua’s eyes shot up when she said that, shoulders tensing down. ‘How does she know...?’

“Y’know what? I totally get it,” she added, “you couldn’t eat or drink, sleep in bed, wake up the next day, and do your thing the same — when I came along. That doesn’t mean you get to believe I’m the cause of that, damn ya! I’ve been trying to help you with this, alright?! O-Okay, maybe I haven’t started on it yet — but you get the idea.”

“What makes you think I’ll believe you...?”

“Simple enough, you don’t. I don’t think I’m the right person for this, either.”

“Oh, stop,” he scoffed, looking away. “You don’t know what you’re talking about—”

“I don’t have the fucking patience for this—”

“—You don’t have the patience for anything—”

“Not in THIS case, Josh.” She raised her voice.

“Stop...”

“You’re clearly not fine, Josh. Listen to a single word you’ve just said! You’re not okay!”

“Stop this...”

“Just listen to me, for once! You’ve got so much negative energy stuck inside, and you need to get it out—”

“I said stop...”

“—FAST, because it’s gonna fuck you up so horribly if you keep it in, do you understand—”

“Stop it...”

“—Whatever it is you need to do to get it out, do it, and do it now—”

“I said STOP IT!” He had enough. He backhanded her in the cheek, watching her flop down on the chair.

Jocelyn winced, panting, as she touched her cheek. It stung, alright. And soon, she was tasting blood. She grinned — she didn’t expect Joshua to be that strong... but her chuckle became a sullen stare when she stood right up and looked at him.

“...I wouldn’t be in this situation without you,” he denounced, clutching his hand. “Hell... I think I would still have a life — had I left you to die at the crossroads.”

It took a blink for her ‘polychromatic’ eyes to turn darker than black. A line was crossed. And the next thing he saw on Jocelyn’s face was half-a-smile and grimace, eyes bordering the size of an insect, as she screamed and tried tackling him down the floor. He was too heavy to budge, both of them crashing down a wall next to the TV set. The wall cracked, Joshua trying his damndest to get her off him by clubbing her back; but she was too tough for him to fatigue.

So he kneed her in the abdomen, throwing her onto the floor and kicking her down. Joshua jumped down on her, hands reaching for the throat. She used whatever strength she had to get his hands off, capitalizing by biting his fingers.

Joshua shrieked, grabbing his bitten fingers as she pushed her away with a boot.

“You son of a...” he snarled, fighting through the pain as he ran for Mr.President’s key above. But she was too fast; she caught up so quickly, he barely registered being tackled off to the couch.

“That all you got,” she cackled, “dipshit?!”

Jocelyn grabbed him by the collar, and threw themselves unto a replica of Frida Kahlo’s masterpiece ‘The Two Fridas’, breaking the glass and textile before it. Joshua summoned Rebel Moon’s hand to punch her, but she ducked down; punching the replica instead. The impact was so strong, it split the replica’s contents right up the center — with both halves falling off the hanger it was attached to.

Joshua winced, waving his hand as though he punched it himself.

They marked like mad dogs, with hostility prevailing over reason. Dragging themselves to the floor once more, they hurled everything physical they had at each other: punches, kicks, and clubs to every weak spot they knew in the book. Sloppy, without technique — but victory was what mattered most to them. And certainly, Joshua claimed it once he threw a shot at her solar plexus and pressed down on her.

He jabbed her in the face, striking her as hard as he could.

He was winning.

But upon raising his hand for another jab, the adrenaline suddenly caught up to him. Even Jocelyn herself squinted at Joshua’s raging eyes, stretched out and clenched in ways he normally couldn’t have. And he was gasping desperately for air, barely forming a fist with his hand.

“Ggh,” she winced, growling, “what the fuck are you waiting for...?”

He panted, even if he was locked into position.

“Hit me, you fucking COWARD!”

But ironically enough... he refused to bend to her will. He stood up from his knees, gloved hands shaking and bruised, as he paced for a quick while or two before surrendering himself to the wall next to half of the painting.

She didn’t understand why she stopped, if he was so resolute with beating her down the ground. But only he alone knew why...

Joshua was startled by the image of his hands drenched in blood when he stopped, her face composed of nothing but ripped apart seams of flesh and viscera. Miraculously enough, he didn’t harm her that way. But such an image was so powerful enough he had to stop. He was loathsomely furious at her, but realized fast he was going too far.

It took him until Jocelyn speaking to shake that image off his head:

“Feel better, now?” she asked, panting.

“Yeah...” He shook his head, wiping blood off his mouth. “Least I finally got to punch you in your perfect teeth. Heh...”

“Oh, yeah?” Jocelyn sat up, spitting out a piece of broken gum off her mouth. “Your punches suck, by the way.”

Joshua ceased gasping. “What the f—” he chortled, before letting loose a horribly-timed fit of laughter. “Jesus Christ... A-Are you fucking with me, Joce?”

"I'm dead serious," frowned Jocelyn.

“Okay?” He stopped laughing.

Soon enough, Jocelyn limped down and sat next to Joshua by the other half of the painting. She curled her fingers down, feeling some kind of ‘pinching’ tear on her knuckles. “Fuck... Hairline.” she muttered, before moving on to him. “L-Look. If we’re gonna have to beat the hell out of people in our way, we’re gonna have to work on your punches. Hard.”

“Well...?” Joshua barely escaped a yawn from sounding off. “Not today, though.”

“I mean, we can do it next week — or...” Suddenly, an idea shot up at the top of her head. “Wait a minute. How about this, Josh? How ‘bout... a ‘quid pro quo’? T’was something Papa used to do with Mama when they were kids.”

“I know what it is,” he sighed. “What of it?”

“M'just saying, Josh," Jocelyn explained, "I could whip you into fighting shape and make sure you'll be as good as smashing bad guys as I am. Heck, maybe it could enhance your whole Stand-usin' business! But — here's the catch: the moment you accept this proposition, Josh? You're gonna have to exchange some personal problems you've got with me, so we can avoid having to bang up our bodies like we did. It's like free therapy, y'know?”

Then he waited. And waited. For an answer she would agree with.

And then he found himself nodding, “Okay... deal’s done.”

“Okay...” she smiled, fidgeting her watch.

“So... what do you want?” Joshua found a small piece of wood from the broken painting, fiddling with it. “What do you wanna talk about?”

"Uh," she expressed curiously, "I was wondering ‘bout this since yesterday, but... What was your life as Remy Wanderlust like? I'm not trying to hurt you or anything — I just need to know the true story for myself. Y'knooo~~w? I dunno. I guess I’d see things about ya much differently, if I knew.”

“Oh, you have no idea...” He took the longest-lasting sigh he ever sighed, dropping the piece of wood and staring out a far-away place that stretched beyond Mr.President’s confines. And he smiled at himself, but it wasn’t a happy smile; it was more of a pout than anything.

Removing his glasses to wipe them, Joshua recalled, “When I was four, my best friend and I were... taken. By some guys in a van selling cotton candies — whoever they are, I'm sure they're probably dead, rotting in a grave of their own making. That was almost twenty years ago, I think.”

"Mhm? Go on."

“I don't exactly remember when, though." He rolled his eyes. "Time flew by so fast. Next thing we know, Eddie and I were — he's a Joestar, by the way, good kid with high grades... came to me when I needed babysitting... W-We were bought off by Glitter, some son of a bitch I never knew was gonna be the worst thing that’s ever happened to my life, and the rest was history.”

“...Is that it?”

“No, not at all.” Joshua put his glasses back on, and whistled. “Glitter, he... took care of us when we were very young — kind of unsettling to look back on, knowing the kind of man he was. And he gave us a choice: he either took us to learn the craft of chemistry, to make drugs for his ailing empire... or he punished us like we wished we were dead. If we refused... We had no choice but to obey.”

“Jesus...” Jocelyn choked up thinking about it. “I can’t imagine how you lived through all that.”

“Neither did I,” he laughed in self-pity.

Sighing again, Joshua resumed, “It hurts me still... to think that man robbed so many childhoods and families — mine and Eddie’s included. And he still stands to this day, alive, but rotting slowly in a cage he deserved to be in. Anyways... about eleven years after the fact, Glitter took us to Arizona for a project he needed to make.”

“What kind?”

“Taking samples from a shitty place we didn’t know of,” he added, “some kind of... ‘pit of land’ in the desert that changed every breath we took. Trying to navigate through was hell ‘coz of that.”

“Wait a minute.” Jocelyn furrowed her eyebrows at that discrepancy. “I thought Vespertine was made from a Stand Arrow.”

“That’s the story Glitter told everyone,” Joshua precisely clarified, while imagining a starry night in the Arizona deserts. “He supplanted a bogus story about a breakthrough he had about the Arrow. But no. The ‘Devil’s Palm’ has similar properties—extremely similar properties, in fact—that he got away with that lie.”

Another pause...

“Glitter,” Joshua continued, “made us collect samples while dealing with how dangerous everything was. We lost water, we lost food, we ran out of everything to keep us sane. And the heat... I could barely survive jack, no thanks to that — and the fact the ground shifts and changes every now and then. I saw stories. Pictures of victims boiled alive by the heat... in my head... and I just thought — it’s over. Eddie and I were done. We’re gonna perish doing a job we could barely even finish, but... I didn’t want to. I wouldn’t let it. Because all our pep talks about being ‘survivors’ would be in vain, if we gave up like that. So I endured.”

"That's when Rebel Moon first came out, right?" Jocelyn observed.

“Correct.”

“And it was your 'fighting spirit', basically.”

“Pretty much it,” he replied. “It kept us alive. The courage to ‘survive’ this obstacle. Not only that, but on our way out, some weirdos thinking we were ‘desecrating’ the land — wanted us dead. Said all kinds of 'you fucking foreigners' type of speeches. They were Stand users, too. Loads of 'em.”

“Rock Humans...?”

“Yeah. If that's what they're called.” He only heard that term just now, but felt awed. “God, it's been so long since that happened... I think I was 15 at the time.”

“When was it?” she asked. “When that... y'know?”

“September 10th, 2021.”

“Oh...”

Some part of her gasped, hearing that date uttered by anyone other than her.

“You want me to keep going, or...?”

“Keep at it,” she answered, hiding it with a chuckle.

“Okay... so we fought back. Punched our way through those — Rock Humans, or whatever. Got back to the lab, presented the samples, and... Well, Glitter was impressed at what we pulled off. As for our Stands...”

“Let me guess. You couldn’t figure out shit?”

“Tell that to fuck-all Eddie,” Joshua bantered, “couldn’t figure out how to punch to save his life. But me? Well... I read my Stand like a book. It gave me so many ideas, to think how I could just extract elements from everyday items and use them into weapons... and things that weren't just for offensive applications.”

“That's when the idea of Vespertine came around, right?”

“Precisely...”

The more he told his story, the more he anticipated with sweat and trembling heartbeats. He didn’t know if he was strong enough to keep going; but for her curiosity’s sake, he sighed and clenched his fists.

“Glitter had ideas,” he explained, “but I had the foundation. So I cooked up a recipe with Eddie’s help — bringing into fruition his idea. The idea of a nerve agent dispersing the samples we collected into a mist carrying the biological agents they contained.”

He mimicked the motion of a deliveryman sending away a package.

“And the next thing I knew? Glitter picked me as his favorite.” He bit his lip. “He... took me to boring ass meetings and dinners. He... I just wanted to be with him. Talk bullshit with Eddie, so I could forget all the shit he did to me. And it stressed me out so much, I didn’t realize how things from that point would turn sour... and wrong. So, so wrong.”

“...What happened?”

Joshua bit his lip. “There was this one meeting,” he answered, “Glitter was eager to present his latest breakthrough to every big-wig drug kingpin he called for, and he brought me along with it. Wanted to introduce me as the genius behind it all. And then, he... got a tank full of Vespertine, and released it into the meeting. You shouldn't see what I've seen, Joce. It was basically my Royce Hall — only on a smaller scale... and only one survivor. The head big-wig who swore revenge... and ultimately failed.”

Hearing everything said to her made Jocelyn look closer. Every tightening of his lip, every tear nearly shed but never escaped... she was starting to question if being told the story of Remy Wanderlust was the right call.

“It took me until that day—of all the times he rambled about motherly shit—to realize…” He could almost feel the air suffocating itself, as he said, "Glitter was waiting for me to come into his life, so I could create his 'dream' world of a living Hell. What I did to survive, wasn't to survive... but to fall into the trap of creating the nightmare of a lifetime. Becoming a killer, tailor-made to snuff out the weak... if it meant finding the extraordinary out of a cloud of mist..."

“Motherly shit...?”

“Yes. And I shouldn’t have listened to him.” He said that with a strained hiss. And with every word that escaped his tongue, the more the urge to scratch his skin open and tear it off the flesh brimmed.

“I shouldn’t have let him do these things to me. He — he played me like a fucking chess piece. That man... was so evil, he made me do this without knowing the consequences. So I decided — enough was enough. I was gonna wash my hands clean off his desires and madness, and for the next three years: Eddie and I formulated a plan to flush everything he had down the drain. A ‘Great Escape’, if you will.”

His face quivered.

“Our plan was to rat out everything we knew about him on the news, break everyone free of his control, and destroy all supplies of Vespertine out there. But I got so into the plan that — I didn’t realize... Eddie was letting himself go. He took the drugs we made, reveled in how intoxicating they were, all because I made him feel inadequate. Feel I was better than him, with everything I’ve said or done. I really didn’t want that for him, but... God, I...”

Jocelyn turned away, closing her eyes shut. Her hands trembled, trying so hard to cover her ears and drown out everything but the sound of her heart. But even with that, some part of her began to understand what exactly he mentioned losing at yesterday’s wake...

"So I had to carry everything out alone." He sighed for the last time. "Saturday, May 25th. The day came. Freed everyone in the Bronx, caused a riot that took lives on both sides... then leaked everything as we planned to. All evidence of his crimes, all the horrible ‘motherly’ shit he forced onto me, Eddie, and everyone else we lost and cared about... And just like that — we toppled a criminal empire. I left Glitter to die at the end of it. He was a Stand user, yeah, but he wasn't good enough to save face."

“What about Eddie?” She turned back, mouth barely ajar it wasn’t noticeable right away. “I know he... y’know. But how?”

Nothing could prepare him from the massive lump in his throat from building towards a crescendo — tears falling like beads of sweat, as he said, “Eddie, he... c-came to me. No matter how hard I tried”—his voice cracked—“there was nothing I could do. His addiction was fatal. And there was an absolute zero-percent chance he could be saved. He insisted I do the unthinkable — that I have to put him down like a sick dog and kill him. So I did... I killed him.”

By that point, something in him broke.

“You get it now, don’t you?” he sobbed, wiping his tears. “Why I don't go by Remy, anymore...? I killed my best friend, damn it. When I should've... s-saved him... Why? Why did I have to kill him...?”

And he succumbed to his sobbing.

Jocelyn forced herself to look away, unable to bear him releasing five years of pain out of his system. His story tugged at her heartstrings, so much that she imagined being in his position. That she was the little boy whom Glitter wanted to make a ‘mother’ of, that she created Vespertine and permanently cut off the closest link she had to healthier expressions of love...

She reached her hand out, unconsciously thinking of giving him a pat on the shoulder. But at the last second, she stopped herself.

And now, she questioned herself, ‘Why would I do that? Why would I rob him of the pat in the back he desperately needs? He’s in so much pain, dammit! Letting him suffer would bring you nothing but— Goddamn it... Josh, I’m sorry. I really am sorry. I shouldn’t have — I took the coward's way out, and... no hard feelings, please...‘

Unable to bear his pain anymore, Jocelyn’s eyes drifted up to a place of shadow... and soon, she found herself dozing into a long night’s slumber.

Joshua followed her, too. Drowning himself in sorrow as he passed out, all he could think about is what life for him could’ve been; had Edward been still alive. If he was right there with them in Mr.President, sleeping in-between the two halves of the broken painting. He visualized how his braids would’ve touched his hair, how his head rested on his shoulders as he imparted soothing advice that helped him sleep better. Vividly enough, he smiled in his mind as he recalled what he said all those years back:

“We’re ‘survivors’, you and I.”

At least it was better than acknowledging the irony of it all.

Notes:

Remember to give kudos and (optionally) a comment! This helps in supporting this fic and its future endeavors.

Chapter 16: Vol. 2 - Viva Las Vegas, Part 1

Summary:

The day after the emotional tell-all of Joshua's past, both Joshua and Jocelyn encounter a new enemy; which brings them to their most dangerous fight yet.

Notes:

Shout-out to Junkblob who left a kudos in the previous chapter!

UPDATE (4/27/24): Part 5 of an upcoming overhaul to Vol. 2

—|[ CHAPTER 16 ]|—

Viva Las Vegas, Part 1

 

 

The sounds of tires screeching and flashing lights from above forced Joshua out of his nearly nine-hour long shuteye...

His ‘beauty rest’ interrupted, many things in his mind began to form possibilities and conclusions. Some outlandish, some so plausible they’re almost too good to be real. But he had no clue what was happening yet. He knew there were piercingly loud sounds and red flashes outside Mr.President’s gemstone. But all roads had led to a definitive conclusion, as each moment escaped his grasp:

That his Lancer—his precious Lancer—befell victim to theft.

He realized this as tires grinded on a surface not anything he recognized. And judging from the heat he felt surrounding the room, the car was moving to a place outside of Shakedown.

“Shit, shit, shit...!” Joshua hissed, scrambling off to Jocelyn’s side as he grabbed her shoulders. “Wake up,” he shook her, “wake up, dammit!”

A weak groan escaped her mouth as her eyes opened. “Nghhh,” she yawned, moving her hand at a sluggish pace. “Joshhhh, what the heee~~ll is it...?”

“Someone’s got my car,” he jabbered.

“Wait, wha—?”

“Someone has got my fucking car, and you’re too dazed to do a goddamn thing about it!”

Almost though it came on cue, the ground began to rumble violently, Joshua deducing that it was now driving on a bumpy surface. The furniture around them shook like an earthquake, portraits falling onto the carpet floor and appliances shattering. Jocelyn sprang to her feet, and came close to tripping onto an armchair nearby.

Keeping their balance was one thing: another was trying to break free of sleep-induced stupefaction.

“My fucking Gooood,” she screamed, grabbing onto a column. “What the fuck is going on here?!”

“I-I don’t know,” he grumbled, “you tell me!”

“What?! I can’t hear you!” Jocelyn waved her hand around her ear with one hand holding the column tight, hearing so muted amid tires rocking and glass shatters; that she barely heard him.

“What the fuck are you talking about,” he pinched his fingers with a snarl, “I can’t hear you either!”

“WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK IS HAPPENING?!”

“I don’t know,” Joshua shouted back, “but we can still get it back!”

“Get what back?!”

“Jesus Christ,” he scowled, “my fucking car! Do I have to say it again to get through your groggy ass?! Come on, let’s go find the jackass who stole it, and beat the crap out of him!”

“O-Okay, you go first!”

“What?!”

“You go first!”

“What the fuck do you mean—”

“It’s your FUCKING CAR, dumbass!”

“Okay, okay, okay!” Joshua ran up to the center of the room, hand reaching up for the top of the gemstone. “But you’re backing me up here!”

As Jocelyn nodded, the last thing she saw from him—as he navigated through the ‘dizzying’ sensation of the car driving through rocky roads or whatnot—was Joshua being absorbed into the stone, shooting up like a missile in tow...

 

–[ ★★★ ]–

 

Joshua’s arms and head poked out of the key’s gemstone, as he crawled up to glance at the perp behind this. He knew someone or something carjacked his Lancer, but the person who committed the crime was the last person he expected.

Silently, he said, “Son of a bitch...”

Taking the wheel was a man in his late-20s, with a stocky build & long locks of caramel-fuschia hair and hazel eyes. While he cared less about his pearly-white jumpsuit—consisting of cheap jewelry and small, jagged patterns of stars; alongside the initials ‘J.C.’ imprinted in gold wax across the sleeves and pants—the carjacker’s most defining trait was his face. A horse-like face, full of coarse cheeks, heavy eyebags, and a nose so long; it could be an arrowhead. Worsening his looks, however, was a permanently-affixed resting grin and a twirly mustache-goatee combo reminiscent of cartoons in a child’s heyday.

Outside the car window were mushroom-like rock pillars and dunes amidst flat terrain. A sea of heat drowned them in barely a pinch of fire’s flame, which Joshua recognized as the Mojave Desert. It led him to realize: the bastard of a carjacker drove them three hours from Shakedown... and the greater Los Angeles metropolitan area.

When he fathomed that, the carjacker gasped a miniscule seeing Joshua staring right at him, half his body still inside Mr.President.

Frozen, he barely moved his mouth as he uttered, “Oh, shit...”

The carjacker took a hard left swerve, leaving Joshua spinning as he nearly sunk back inside Mr.President. Jaw clenched and veins popping out, he released a war cry at the carjacker. He leapt out of Mr.President and lunged at him, dragging and pulling the carjacker’s hair to throw him off. But his grip on the steering wheel was tight; and ‘locked’ in place. He took the Lancer through twists and turns to knock Joshua off.

Joshua tried to reach for the car’s dashboard screen, but the carjacker elbowed him a few times.

He hoped it would constrict his breathing long enough to incapacitate him; but he underestimated his endurance greatly — in spite of the fact he was groggy from waking up too fast.

“Get off my car, asshat!” Joshua snarled, striking the carjacker in the neck.

It barely affected the carjacker at all, who still grabbed onto the wheel for dear life. “Oh, don’t mind if I do,” he piped, vocalizing an ear-grating tone.

“Asshole!”

Joshua summoned Rebel Moon’s hands to punch the carjacker’s grip off the wheel, reclaiming control of his car once and for all. But as a consequence, the car thrust itself into an uncontrollable spin. Miraculously enough, neither man was left dizzy from it. The struggle resumed, but the moment Joshua ordered the voice command “Engine, turn off!” to the car, it was over.

“No, no, no, no,” the carjacker pleaded as the car’s engines shut down, “Fuck, no!”

The shutdown forced Lancer to slow down in a screeching halt, sand blowing from the tires like dust and smoke.

The carjacker smashed the steering wheel with his hands, gasping for air with a scrunched up face neither crying nor angry, as Joshua smirked with one thing in mind...

Rebel Moon punted the carjacker off the Lancer, launching him a few meters off it; breaking the car door open from the impact. The sun shone bright like blinding diamonds, as he rolled like a barrel in the desert. The carjacker’s clothes were soaked and stained in grit and pebble with every spin, just as Joshua emerged from the car. He locked onto the carjacker with spiteful eyes, Jocelyn following him in a rigid fighting stance.

The sooner he recovered from the fall, the winded carjacker clutched his abdomen. Breathing in syncopated rhythms, he snapped, “W-What the hell, you guys?! I was... j-just taking it out for a joyride, damn you! Fucking—”

“Who the fuck are you,” Joshua barked, fixing his glasses.

“I don’t know,” the thief shrugged, trying not to blind himself with hands full of sand, “perhaps, if you let me get ahold of myself—”

“Don’t waste our time,” Jocelyn stomped with one foot. “Tell us what you want, or I swear to God — I’ll fucking kick your teeth down your throat!”

Somehow, whatever tinge of venom she spat out awakened something deep within him. No longer was he seemingly pleading for his life, with crocodile tears and a chill shivering every cell of his body. He was smiling, yes — but in a way that gave him... confidence. Not that he was pretending for the sake of covering up bitten fingernails; maybe he was. But neither of them were sure. Even an observant like Jocelyn knew a switch flipped in his brain.

“Keh,” he laughed, modulating his voice into that akin to a boxing announcer, “to answer that question of yours in a way too smart for you to understand...”

“The fuck are you talking about...?” Jocelyn muttered, squinting at him.

“You kids have HIT THE JAAA~~CKPOT,” the carjacker pointed at them both, “because the two of you are blessed to be standing in the same desert I stand, breathing the same air I breathe... for I’m Jimmy Crywank-k-k-k”—emphasizing the ‘k’ multiple times—”a man of prosperous calling~~!”

“Jesus, who is this guy,” Joshua huffed, palms nearly curling into a fist.

Crywank cackled, wheezing as he gave them the most shit-eating grin they’ve ever seen. If there was one thing the two of them agreed with, it was trying not to burst into vein-popping rage.

“Aaaa~~h, you two,” he joshed. “Lighten up! Otherwise, my explanation for finding this beauty—in terms of how ‘fate’ so preciously brought me, of all eight-billion humans in the world—would bore you to death. I wouldn’t want that now, would I~?”

“Cut the shit and get straight,” Jocelyn groaned, burying her face in her palms, “tell us what you want, and we’ll go our separate ways. Don’t make me repeat that, y’know.”

“Separate ways—”

Something in Crywank’s face was dejected — his head hung low with trembling lips... but in the blink of an eye, he reasserted a beaming smile so wrong for a man who was sad just a second ago. “Nah nah,” he protested with a bumped-up fist, “why would I ever leave you two alone in throwing your blessings away, when the ‘Best In The World’ is here to entertaaai~~in you?! How ungrateful are you to reject me, Ms. Freakishly-Tall-Bimbo, or... Tell me, what name does your partner go by nowadays? Remy...? Wanderlust? Is it really your name?”

“I’m not a bimbo,” she muttered.

Joshua did his best to hide popped-out eyes and a mouth hung ajar... but part of it leaked out either way. “Are you a cop...?”

“No!” Crywank was quick to retort, although his laugh put into question whether he took it seriously or not. “It’s simple, Remy! Just puuu~~re coincideee~~nce. Fate, as I said! Do you even listen?”

“Well, you’re talking nonsense—”

“TOO BAD! Keh keh keh kehhh~!” He struck a pose, snapping his fingers. “You’re gonna have to be stuck with me for a little while. At least, by the end of it — you and your pathetic little girlfriend will understand my presence is a blessing!”

“I’m not his girlfriend!”/“She’s not my girlfriend!” Joshua and Jocelyn’s voices synced once again, both in objection.

He scoffed. “Oh, you two are such a lovely couple alright”—a hic—“Now, I could go on and spread the gospel of ‘gravity’ or whatever, but I’m done playing with you both. Wanna look at how awesome I can be? Keh keh keh kehhh~...”

Soon after, an oppressive aura of amethyst flames and incoherent letters surrounded Crywank. It was as if an overwhelming gust of wind came, both trying their damndest to stay perfectly still.

“H-Hey,” Joshua yelled at her, “You’re seeing this, right?!”

“Yeah,” Jocelyn replied, “this isn’t good!”

The flames grew twice its size, characters mutating rapidly as they imploded onto itself. Once the flames disappeared, a ‘glittery’ disco ball hooked up to four 24-feet trusses like helicopter blades floated up in the air. Each truss had a set of seven mounted LED lights, the colors changing in the arrangement of a rainbow every second. And the way the trusses spun slowly, conveyed many things that Crywank’s swagger did not do justice.

“What the hell is that...?!” She slightly recoiled.

“That, my beautiful, is an ‘agent of fate’,” he eagerly explained, “feast your eyes and savor the freedom you have left, for I’m throwing you down paradise’s waaayy~~y, with muh-muh-myyyy~~...”

『Viva Las Vegas』

Crywank thrust his hand forward at Jocelyn, as Viva Las Vegas propelled at high velocities to his direction.

“Shit,” Jocelyn cried, “Blade Runner, force it back!”

Blade Runner sprang forth with sparkling trails and dashing stars, swinging at Viva Las Vegas’ trajectory with a signature “MUDA!”

The way she planned the attack, it would’ve shattered a few tiles and cut some of the wires holding the trusses. But Viva Las Vegas propelled 3-meters above, the blade missing contact by an inch.

“Jesus!” She went agape.

“Nuh uh, bitch,” Crywank chided, stroking fingers while maintaining a solid grin. “Any attempt to attack Viva Las Vegas is a feeble attempt! Because either way, y’all are already dead”—he laughed—“because my Stand is without flaw! Once its ability takes effect, there’s no going back: NONE of y’all will be the sa~~ame, ever agaaa~~~in! Keh keh keh keh~!”

He bent his back and struck a manic pose at them, howling laughter as Viva Las Vegas descended from behind, floating over his head like a massive halo. If they didn’t know any better, he would’ve been seen as a patient in a mental asylum.

Retreating to Jocelyn’s side, Blade Runner quickly absorbed heat from the Lancer’s tires, a pink-and-blue glow emitting from its blades.

“Are you ready?!”

Laughing at them for yet another time, the trusses atop the disco ball sped up, revolving with ferocious momentum. The LEDs cast blinding lights more intensely than when it was first summoned, as Joshua and Jocelyn squeezed their eyes shut and covered them. While they couldn’t see it, static ‘triangles’ appeared below the LEDs; soon transfiguring into a thick cloud of indigo mist. The spinning stopped, and the moment they pried their eyes open, they found themselves trapped in the darkness; save for the LEDs’ faint glow above their heads. They thought to themselves that Crywank—who was all but gone—virtually transported them in a seemingly endless fog of blackened azure.

And even if he was gone, they still imagined the strident sound of his laughter stalking them...

“Motherfucker,” she hissed, “where did he go...?!”

“You tell me,” he shrugged, bobbing left and right for any sign of Crywank. Joshua rushed to the Lancer, surrendering to the idea he was nowhere to be found. He sought paraphernalia in the car he thought useful.

Seeing him enter the car in an almost comedic fashion: the way he nearly tripped down his seat and missed a seatbelt from wrapping around his neck, Jocelyn stifled a chuckle and questioned, “Josh, what the hell are you doing?”

“Looking for anything I could use,” he explained so quickly; she almost missed him saying that. “In case he tries anything...”

“Bro, we only found out about its name and what it fuckin' looks like,” she gulped, her hands shivering, “how are we supposed to know how it attacks?!”

“Why do you think it looks like a disco ball, then?” Joshua retorted. “Always ‘think one step ahead of your enemy’, Eddie taught me. And my instinct tells me the Stand is practically a wrecking ball, that could fly around and run us over any second. Just that... finding out where it moves is hard 'coz of the goddamn mist.”

“Are you sure this is a mist, or a dream?”

“FINALLY, SOMEONE WHO’S SMART!”

The staggering boom of Crywank’s ‘heavenly’ voice startled them both, to the point of freezing. Like he spoke through the megaphone of God.

“Goddamn it,” she muttered.

“For that, Remy? I’ll give you a reward. But you, on the other hand... Keh, keh, keh, kehhh~... I can’t wait.”

“But I asked the fucking question—”

“Your opinion doesn’t matter! He’s my favorite! So he gets automatic immunity from what I’ll subject you to! But you will be... soon enough.”

“What the fuck are you talking about...?” Jocelyn gritted her teeth, fists shaking, as she glared above where Crywank’s voice projected. “You listen to me, piece of trash,” she snarled, “why don’t you come here—no Viva Las Vegas b-bullshit—and face me mano a mano?!”

“Keh... looks like you’re getting scaaa~~red.”

“Yeah, go on, fuckhead. Scared or not, I'm getting outta here and beating your fucking stupid mustache-twirling ass to the ground!”

Blade Runner dashed onto Jocelyn and stood in front of her, flourishing its glowing katanas together in an aggressive stance. Both feet bent and clenched on the ground, blades forming an ‘X’ symbol.

“Reaaaallyyy~~? You should think twice...”

Appearing from thin air hasted Viva Las Vegas, ramming Jocelyn down the sand with the precise velocity of a drone’s flyover. The impact whipped her down the ground so hard, she swore something inside her tore open. Coughing saliva, she clutched her abdomen, grains of sand sticking to the sweat of her skin like glue.

“Fuck,” she wheezed, wiping the saliva off her mouth, “you got me...”

“Of course I did.”

Jocelyn forced her way up on both feet, loosening a crumb of her scarf in-between bouts of smothering ragged breaths. Her abdomen pinched and closed up, like flesh separating itself. Blade Runner zoomed closer to her side, squinting her head at every hint of Viva Las Vegas’ whereabouts it could find.

“C-Come on, horse-faced motherfucker.” At this point, she was desperate for his presence — beckoning him with a smile so nonsensical she didn’t bother questioning. “You know you’re gonna come down and face me...”

"Then prove yourself worthy of the Best In The World's attention, woman! For Viva Las Vegas is undetectable, unbeatable, and UNDENIABLE! I am the unmovable object to your unstoppable force, and today — YOU HAVE MET YOUR MATCH!"

Without warning, Viva Las Vegas shot up from the darkness once more, this time running her down the shoulder like a bicycle. It was a miracle she was still standing, let alone not have every piece of clavicle or scapula shatter — but nonetheless, she knew for certain she was going to feel it for days... even weeks. Jocelyn’s breathing was controlled, but her control was slipping, like her body ideated towards exhaustion far too early.

Viva Las Vegas made its presence known again, only this time: she knew where it would come from.

Turning behind with both blades still in ‘X’ formation, Blade Runner raised its katanas, performing a feint swing at the disco ball with its left as a distraction, and then driving a long gash at it completely with its right.

“Muda-da!” it yelled, with a tiny smile over its mask.

The ‘heat’ from its right blade grazed the cables, but significantly hurt the ball itself. Its attack left the tiles around the gash melted or broken into a million pieces, faint puffs of smoke emitting from the heat.

Crywank snarled, leaving her unsure whether it was out of spite or genuine pain, screaming, “GAH— you bitch! Are you reaaaa~~lly that adamant to face me head on?”

“Look who’s scared now,” Jocelyn grinned, fighting through the pain and flaunting a ‘flexing’ pose. “I can hear it in your voice, dipshit...”

“What? Like the one that’s eating away at you inside, woman?”

“The fuck are you—”

She collapsed to her knees, a weight suddenly pulling her down. Her hands sunk down on the earth, fingers stained with sand, as sweat dripped down her face. Heartbeats triple their usual pace, and a chill so cold it overpowered arid temperatures left her petrified. It left her staring at her fingers, burying themselves further and further into the desert.

“Y-You,” she whimpered, “what did you do to me...?!”

“Keh keh keh kehhh~! We’re just getting started, you and I...”

The fear consuming every crevice of her feeling forced her down the Lancer’s side, so much that she was barely out of breath, sprinting at a quicker pace than she was consciously used to.

“Josh,” Jocelyn cried, banging on the door. “Where the fuck are you?! I need your help, for fuck’s sake...!”

“Just hold on for a moment,” Joshua replied, “I’m so close to— Oh, what the fuck?! I’m stuck!”

“On what?!”

“My ankle’s tangled over the fucking seatbelt!” He grunted, making noises that hinted at a great effort to untangle himself. “This is gonna set me back a while, dammit! Just keep doing your thing until I get myself unstuck, yeah?!”

“Dumbass, we don’t have time!” She forced herself to look anywhere for Viva Las Vegas, unable to discern its hot smoke from the hazy mist that left her tunnel-visioned. “He’s gonna run me over with that fucking disco ball over and over—”

“FRET NOT!” Crywank announced arrogantly. “Both of you... for the wait will be over soon. Viva Las Vegas’ ‘Phase One’ is now taking effect... You might start feeling a bit of fear in your heart. If not, you might’ve been feeling it already from the start... weren’t ya, redhead? Keh, keh, keh, kehhh~...”

As his ‘laughing’ tic dissipated into the void...

Something lying dormant snapped open like raw noodle strips. Millions of nerve signals screamed ‘flight’ in a helpless chorus, and echoes of that damned laugh made her bug-eyed. And then came a feeling, that the walls were closing in on her and Blade Runner, to the point where both Stand and User now stuck together like glue. And she was right: the mist—at least from her own eyes—was shrinking, engulfing the sandy ground until it was just herself and the Lancer from behind. Now rife with unshackled fear, she dropped down onto the Lancer’s door, curling up into a fetal position.

Hearing the thud, Joshua yelled, “Joce?! Are you okay?!”

Now free of that pesky seatbelt, he sprang out of the car and checked on her. What he saw upon finding her left him with half the horror paralyzing her. She was a stuttering mess, sweating heavily with rosy-hot skin and shudders like an ‘earthquake’.

Or perhaps, he felt that the moment he inhaled what the mist contained.

Seeing him collapse to his knees, Jocelyn screamed, “H-He— Josh?! Y-You—”

Viva Las Vegas emerged from the mist, drifting around them in circles like a bird of prey. The sight of it was enough for Jocelyn to scream and nearly jump so high, a part of her soul came out flying.

“J-Joce, what the hell happened?!” Joshua used all of his strength to project his voice to nearly a quarter of Crywank’s ‘mist speak’. And it cost a small price for his lungs.

“JOSH! Y-You have to— t-to get back to the car, d-dammit!”

“What?!”

“J-Josh—” she growled at herself, almost grabbing her hair by the roots as she began to lose her voice...

“Son of a — what is it?!”

“His Stand! It’s his fucking Stand! You have to—”

Jocelyn screamed again as Viva Las Vegas zoomed past her and the Lancer, shutting herself in as she was reduced to nothing but sobbing tears. Joshua tried to attack it by summoning Rebel Moon. But as the attack flew past, he turned too late to see the Lancer gone, completely enraptured by the shrunken mist.

It was only then, through her loss of rationality, that he realized too late what Viva Las Vegas’ ability was:

“Mass hysteria is no joke,” Crywank cooed in admiration. “So seeing you two survive as long as you have, even with the fact that no one usually survives through Viva Las Vegas this long? Hats off to you, but don’t you dare think your ‘one-versus-all’ is one and done! Because this next ‘Phase’ might just be your laaaa~~st...!”

“You son of a—” Joshua raised a tight fist in the air, unaware of where he was going. He was lost. He couldn’t see anything but himself inside the mist, with nothing in his thoughts but a ‘victory road’ about to escape his grasp.

But just as all hope escaped and dissipated in the mist, a ‘heavenly’ door appeared by his side, a relieving light in the darkness so seductive, that he felt... tempted. Wanting to escape through the door, into a world free of petrifying fear. But just as he moved his hand onto the door handle, he looked back. Water was wasted, the moisture in his eyes escaping, as he thought:

‘Wait a minute. What about... her? I can’t — Okay... I’ve done... unforgivable things... that is absolutely warranted, but… Do I have to leave her in the dark, crying like that? I can’t leave her, dammit — I-I can’t let my rage control me, because I need her! How else am I supposed to go on this journey and reclaim what I’ve lost without her—’

“Ohhh~, brotherr~~r, what are you waiting for?! Open it! NOW!”

Joshua found himself uncontrollably reaching for the door, the sound of Crywank's voice so profoundly compelling. And once he opened it, a thousand lights of rainbow static shrieking before his very eyes; before finding himself in a beautiful world...

Notes:

Remember to give kudos and (optionally) a comment! This helps in supporting this fic and its future endeavors.

 

Author's Notes coming soon.

Chapter 17: Vol. 2 - Viva Las Vegas, Part 2

Summary:

The two JoJos must work together in order to escape Viva Las Vegas' mist, even if it costs them their sanity in the process.

Notes:

Chapter originally written April 1st, 2024.

Part 6 of an upcoming overhaul to Vol. 2

—|[ CHAPTER 17 ]|—

Viva Las Vegas, Part 2

 

 

He did it.

By his most powerful command, Joshua Johnson—three hours away from the place he should be—set foot inside a world he didn’t know was promised to him by the door. It was dreamlike, but at the same time a very real place in the waking world. The once-draconian mist was now an easier sight to behold, the land populated with vibrant fungi soothing to touch and feel.

Surely enough, some tiny part of him itched to run back into the door. But the world before him practically bellowed a single word:

“Home...”

He was the first to enter this world, so it was right he took the first step.

Treading deep into the tranquil landscape, he took the moment to crouch and observe the otherworldly fungi before him. A smile beamed once he took in its beauty. And naturally, he was curious as to how it felt. How it smelled, touched, anything. There was no voice in his head to tell him it was wrong, so he felt free to lay fingers on a large piece of mushroom. He was startled to see it move meters away from its original position, under the belief they were alive and afraid of the stranger who touched them.

“Interesting,” Joshua chuckled, as he stood up.

Gazing further into the mist, he was sure it was still endless. But what once was an oppressive blight had become an alluringly satisfying Heaven. In fact, it allured him enough to forget Crywank still had control of everything.

“It’s beautiful,” he said, “isn’t it...?”

Joshua startled, feeling his chest pound at the sound of his voice. He admitted, “Yes... it is...”

“I’m glad you liked it.” Somehow, he spoke more calmly here than before. It was as if he changed along with the mist... “I worked hard enough to make improvements, and... to see it... succeed... I love it.”

Yet, there was still doubt.

“Just one thing, though. As something of a perfectionist myself, I think this world needs a little... improvement. So feel free to speak up, if you feel so inclined to critique. Not that I think you would, but I’d appreciate it if you say anything.”

“...I think there’s something missing.”

“What is missing?”

“I don’t know...” Joshua bit his lip, trying to think of something compelling. “It’s just— I... I-I... am alone.”

“And why is that?”

“You tell me.” He looked down the mushroom-ridden sand beneath his feet, trying not to step on anything slippery. “I don’t even know why I feel alone, in the first place.”

“Maybe because you’re supposed to.”

“But I’m not supposed to!” he snapped, frowning. A sigh came, and then... “I... I had a family. Alright? This doesn’t... make any sense, but... I saw this picture, y’know. It was a man, his wife, his best friend, and... God, what I would give to be that child in the picture. Smiling like she’s never suffered as I have. Smiling like she’s never... alone.”

He bit his lip... and choked, “I’ve been alone all my life... I had... friends. But they’re gone now. I had a best friend, too. But I killed him, because he begged me to. And even though I have g-good people as step parents, I — I don’t think they’re enough. You get what I mean? I am alone, and I always will be. Because it’s the price I must pay, for all the pain I’ve brought to this world. But I don’t want to be. I’m not supposed to be! I don’t want to die with nothing but regret, wandering into the desert... all because I left her alone to cry, the same way I did to myself all those years ago...”

“Perhaps it’s for the best.”

“W-What...? What are you talking about?”

“She deserved it.”

“Deserved what?”

“Y’know...” Crywank sighed, and snuck in a giggle. “She was such a pain in the ass, that reducing her to a puddle of tears satisfied me. I loved it, y’know? And I’m sure you do, too... She’ll die a horrible, lonely death. And I have you to thank... because she’s better off alone, than she is fucking you until she sleeps. Keh. Keh. Keh. Kehhh~...”

He couldn’t believe it. All this sweet talk Crywank gave him—asking him for feedback and listening to his lonely cries—only to squander them just like that. His face dyed itself bloody red, the rainbow flickering in his eyes turning stark white. He couldn’t stop gritting his teeth; Jocelyn was someone he didn’t see eye-to-eye with. But issues be damned! Joshua remembered now whose Stand he was under the spell of.

“You don’t need her, y’know? You only have me—”

“To hell with you, sicko!” No amount of vainglory spared Crywank from the poison spat at him. “I don’t care what I think of her, right now. I don’t even fucking care about last night anymore, for all I care about is this: she’s my ‘ticket’ outta here, horse! And I’m claiming it to burn this ‘nightmare’ of a ‘paradise’ down to the ground!”

“Is that so...?”

“Don’t be foolish,” Joshua declared, looking up to the direction of that horse-faced bastard’s voice. “Bring it!”

“You want to burn my ‘masterpiece’ to the fucking ground?” Crywank laughed. “Well, then... there should be a speeding car heading in your direction. Be warned: it’s not an Uber.”

“Wha—”

Joshua gasped. For a split-second, he was a deer in the headlights seeing nothing but white. And for the next, he dived out of the way, landing chest first on the sandy fungi. He saw the remains of a taxi car speeding past, vanishing deep into the mist. When he gathered himself back together, all he could think about was if the car was real. There were many things about Viva Las Vegas he still didn’t understand, how it ‘summoned’ cars from thin air being one of them.

“Having fun yet, Remy?! Haha!” He could’ve sworn Crywank munched on a bowl of popcorn, seeing it go down. “Remember what you’ve said? That you’re alone, and always will be? I’ve decided to give you some... Just not the one you’re expecting.”

A wolf howled within the great darkness, filling Joshua with dread he didn’t know was there. Now, he could ‘summon’ wolves?!

“Keh, keh, keh, kehhh~... Get him, boys!”

As he suspected, a wolfpack of eight ran at him with blitzing speeds, growls and drooling of saliva bouncing between them. Even if he questioned whether they were real or not, nothing stopped him from running in circles to avoid them. The wolves gave chase, frothing at their mouths for every bit of flesh he so bountifully offered.

“Shit, shit, shiiiit!” Joshua cried, sprinting for his damn life from the starving wolves. ‘What do I do? I can’t let them eat me for breakfast!’

In-between bouts of barking wolves and sweat trembling off his skin, he remembered with flashing lightbulbs the first thing he did. Joshua yelled, “Catch!” and by his command; Rebel Moon punched the ground, driving patches of fungi away from them. It was a master stroke of luck, too: before he knew it, the wolves’ fury from the distractions overcame their hunger, long enough that they diverted the chase from Joshua to the spores he moved.

He whooped triumphantly at that, bumping a fist as Rebel Moon was recalled back inside. ‘Thank Christ... they were going to eat me!’

“Oh, Reeeemyyyyy? Remember when I said I’d give you company—”

“Shut the fuck up, you sick bastard,” Joshua stopped. He barely held back the veins bulging in his temples. “I’m not listening to you anymore!”

“Why not? You’re going to miss out on my greatest piece of art yet.”

“What piece of—”

Joshua found himself tackled to the ground by an unknown force, grunting as his glasses fell. He moaned, uttering curses as he scrambled to find his specs. If he hadn’t been diagnosed with astigmatism years ago, he would’ve been just fine without them. But all he saw were fuzzy blurs of grainy azure and glaring streaks & halos of light. “Fuck... my glasses! Where are they...?”

“You don’t need them to see, y’know—”

“Fuck off!”

Before he could reach what seemed to be a vaguely-dark blob, he was kicked out of the way. Rolling down his left, he coughed up spit and held his abdomen, gasping desperately for air. “Oh, please tell me you found the balls to hit me,” he said, almost as if he was praying…

“It’s not me.”

“W-What?”

Getting back on his two feet, he saw a figure standing a meter before him that — weirdly enough, was clearer than the blurry images surrounding it. It took the form of a poorly-drawn children’s sketch: fuzzy red hair flowing like flames, skin made of sandpaper with an inked-out face & ‘glitching’ white eyes, clothes painted in thick blue & pink markers. He knew right away who the figure was: who else had red hair and dual-toned clothes?

“You...?!”

Jocelyn, under Viva Las Vegas’ illusion, snarled and bared her teeth. Her mouth resembled paper cutouts in the shape of shark teeth, glued into her papery face.

“Keh... rip him apart!”

Before he could speak, Jocelyn lunged at him. She roared like a child impersonating a monster, resolute with her attacks as he tried to shove her off. He did his damndest to hold her back, but she was getting close; even reaching for his face with ‘clawed’ fingers. Even if he tried to talk her out of it, Crywank’s influence on her was so strong that any plea fell on deaf ears. It was a struggle to keep her hands from grabbing his throat, flapping his arms around her face. But such strategy didn’t last — Joshua’s fingers got caught in her mouth, and the next thing he felt was a flash of pain.

He flinched, dashing away with a firm grip on his hand. There was a pricking sensation to it, as if he had been bitten. There was no questioning it. The bite was real. Otherwise, blood wouldn’t have leaked out from two holes in his glove.

‘Huh?’ he thought, and upon seeing Jocelyn, his suspicions were right. Even with vision overwhelmed with silky textures, he noticed right away bloody canines unusually larger than it should be. Wait... she wasn’t a sketchy mess anymore. She was, again, how he saw her before opening the damned door: an untidy emotional wreck, waterfalls raining down her eyes. She mouthed a letter he couldn’t discern, but after a hiccup, he understood exactly what she said.

“J-Josh...?” Her voice shook, jaw twitching without control.

“What are you two doing...?!” Crywank lost his patience, seeing them staring at each other with nothing but sweat and tears. “Why aren’t you fighting, why the hell are you— Oh... you’ve figured it all out, haven’t you?”

Before he had the chance to speak, Joshua noticed something glinting at his eye.

And there it was. His Lancer, which he left behind for the unspeakable heaven he was brought to, stood in the distance. ‘Triangle’ flickers surrounded it, sometimes changing in the form of a pseudo ‘3D-generated’ replica. He was unsure of it at first, given he couldn’t tell what it was from his limited vision... but he knew deep in heart it was his beloved car.

“Beat the fuck out of each other, dammit—”

“N-No,” Jocelyn refused, the only word she could blurt out.

“No...? No?!”

“Joce, don’t listen to him!” Before she knew it, Joshua was close to her, holding her shoulders. “Listen to me, okay?”

“W-Wha—”

“We’re gonna make a run for the car,” he pointed at the Lancer, “and we’re gonna do it as quickly as we can. Can you do that?”

Jocelyn simply nodded, wiping her tears away.

“Okay... grab my hand,” he offered.

“W-Wait! Your glasses,” she stopped, crouching down to grab his lost pair of specs. She shook the sand off its lenses, and handed it back to him.

Nothing prepared him for the ridiculous blush in his face soon after. Claiming them from her clutches, he wore them and said simply, “Thanks...” before looking back. “C’mon, Joce! We don’t have much time!”

“G-Got it...”

And grab his hand, she did. Joshua and Jocelyn, with hands interlocked, made their sprint for the Lancer, with nothing on their mind but the Lancer. Crywank, on the other hand, had different plans...

“Stop them, Viva Las Vegas!”

By his command, Viva Las Vegas launched itself back into the mist. Sparks came out of the damaged disco ball with one truss barely hanging on, as it hounded them again in circles. With the two of them in sight, it ‘shot’ itself like a wrecking ball; propelled to strike them down in a furious blitz.

Seeing it come for them, Joshua yelled, “Rebel Moon, keep it away!”

Rebel Moon emerged once more into the fray, squawking as it jabbed the ball off their trail. The ball bounced meters away, the impact so strong it dented half of it from the middle.

“You’re not getting away from me, damn you! I WON’T LET YOU!”

Yet, they were so close. Any minute now, the doors inviting them in vehicular respite would be in their reach. But their pursuit halted when the ground broke open, the sandy earth crumbling beneath their feet until they were a far distance from the Lancer’s reach. Both of them nearly lost their footing and sank down the hole, as the tides of the sea clashed like gladiators down below. Gulping, they stared at each other, with stamped feet and less greying of the skin to spare.

“A maelstrom is one way to keep you both with me,” Crywank exploded, “especially considering the fact you SOMEHOW still rejected this — after everything I gave you! The mushrooms, the sweet talk, everything! What do I have to do to keep you in line, huh?! TELL ME!”

“S-Shit...” Searching for answers wasn’t Jocelyn’s strongest suit; especially the state she was in. “What do we do...? We can’t g-get through this...”

“I-I don’t know,” fretted Joshua.

“THAT’S RIGHT! You don’t know! As long as that maelstrom’s in there, you’re never gonna burn my masterpiece to ruin! EVER! Keh keh keh kehhh~!”

It did not help with their uncertainty, that the sound of Viva Las Vegas’ spinning trusses preyed on them, silently prowling in the fog. Rebel Moon couldn’t help but hiss back, as if the bloody disco ball was capable of responding.

“W-What do we do,” she pleaded with desperation, shaking his arms. “W-We can’t just stop here! Come on, think of something! Put that brain of yours to work!”

“I’m sorry,” he sighed, “I’m not sure.”

“What? Is that it? Are you just gonna let him fuckin’ run us over—”

“Wait.”

Joshua crouched down, making sure not to get too close to the maelstrom. He put his bleeding hand above the oceanic waves, his thoughts drifting between likely and unlikely possibilities. He was astonished—with a quiet laugh and tiny smile—to see a drop of blood ‘floating’ above the maelstrom. It wasn’t necessarily floating, rather it stained a tinge of the sand that Viva Las Vegas’ mist hid.

It was proof. A definite one, that—

“It’s not real.” He looked as though he won a million dollars.

“W-What do you — what do you mean,” puzzled Jocelyn, trying to look where his hand was.

“See the blood over there?” Joshua pointed to the small puddle of scarlet sand. “If this maelstrom was real, then it would’ve fallen down the damn hole.”

“Meaning?”

“Viva Las Vegas’ hold on us grew to the point where he manifested hallucinations if he were to think of it,” he explained quickly. “I-I mean, think of it. I almost got run over by a car, had a wolfpack come feasting on my ass, and...” he knew what happened next, but bit his lip before he even spoke. “You know the rest— Shit!”

Joshua ducked to cover as Viva Las Vegas emerged from the sky, its trusses roaring like a creature released from Hell. Before Jocelyn had the chance to do something, she found herself yanked by him back to their pursuit of the Lancer. And the last thing she saw, just as she entered the car by subconscious thought alone, was Rebel Moon ramming the ball away with heavy strikes.

“ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA—” it screamed in a mechanized chorus, punching the ball at such forte that the untrained eye couldn’t see where its fists went. Rebel Moon yelled one last “ORA!” at it, before kicking it back into the mist’s depths like a soccer ball. The ‘maelstrom’ surrounding the Lancer also vanished, leaving it back as fungi-ridden sand.

And Crywank couldn’t believe what he just saw. “Oh, goddamn you,” he shrieked, “goddamn the two of you! Either way this goes for you, Remy — you and your pathetic crybaby of a girlfriend are dead! Do you hear me?! DEAD!”

He gasped for air, although they bordered between ceasing laughter and exhaustion.

“Just so you wait... I’ll make sure you won’t see the sun ever again, because there’s nothing in your deck of cards anymore! Nothing for you to stop me, nothing for you to fight with! For your fate... was DOOMED... from the start!”

 

–[ ★★★ ]–

 

“Jesus,” Joshua muttered with hands shaking by the steering wheel.

It had barely been a minute since they escaped into the Lancer, yet it was the best damn minute they ever had since... They never expected to wake up with the car being stolen, let alone endure all the hysterics Viva Las Vegas put them through. Sighing, he and Jocelyn glanced at each other, sweating bullets with a little less conversation to start off.

Both didn’t know how to start. Nothing prepared them for how a buffoon like Crywank brought unspeakable horrors to reality. At least, how they felt what the mist did to them.

“You okay?” Now it starts...

“Do I look okay,” she huffed, shifting her seatbelt.

“Should I assume you’re not?” he frowned.

“Well, I bit your frickin’ hand! How do you expect me to live with that?”

“I don’t know.” Joshua looked out the window, wary Viva Las Vegas would come out and ram their car to Hell and back. “Much as I’d ask about your fangs, I... think we...”

“Yeah...” Jocelyn wiped her eyes, trying her best to think. “Tell me, Josh. How are we supposed to beat that? A goddamn helicopter disco ball that could trap anyone in a nightmare?”

She was right. The defeat in her voice made him believe it was impossible. But in his own words: it wasn’t supposed to be. They didn’t know that the mist induced mass hysteria back then, but he knew two things. He knew the ‘beautiful world’ the door invited him to was Viva Las Vegas’ doing, and he knew Crywank could insert hallucinations into their minds; thanks to using a drop of blood to realize it. There had to be a way. Crywank had to be somewhere close enough to induce it to them. Crywank... had to be... somewhere.

Eureka!

“I know how to beat Viva Las Vegas.”

“How?”

“It’s simple,” he said. “Isolate the User.”

“What?”

“Isolate the User.”

“Wait a minute, y-you’re—” The suggestion shook her head more than it gave answers. “A-Are you insane? How the fuck are we gonna find him, when we can barely see in this bloody mist?!”

“Viva Las Vegas’ mist has to have some kind of range limit,” he explained, “say... 25-meters or so. And Crywank has to be within that range, otherwise he wouldn’t be able to use the mist’s effects on us. Y’know what I’m saying?”

She simply nodded with a half-shrug.

“You also remember the LED lights around those rotor things, right?”

“Yeah. Wasn’t one of them falling out?”

“If we cut off one of the rotors, then the mist would theoretically weaken. And if I’m right about this? Then—”

“Crywank gets forced off his hiding spot.”

“Exactly!”

“But that plan of yours is sketchy,” she cautioned. “Are you sure drifting in circles until we reel Viva Las Vegas like bait won’t wreck your car?”

“It’s our only shot,” he insisted, “if I have to crash it, even if we need it for Shakedown, then yes — I’m crazy. And we still got your bike on the back, no?”

“Yeah, but — I’m pretty sure we’re too heavy to fit in the damn thing!”

“Look,” Joshua raised his voice, “I’m sorry, Joce, but either he drives us fucking insane or we do something about it! We have to do this, and we have to do it now. I know it’s weird for me to take the initiative, but I’m not gonna pretend I won’t do it — and I won’t pretend to second-guess myself, either.”

He waited to hear something, but nothing came from her mouth. At least, nothing but a sigh of acceptance. Swallowing her doubts down, as she fixed her scarf.

“Alright,” she nodded, “let’s roll.”

A smile broke out of Joshua’s face. He looked back at the steering wheel, and spoke aloud, “Engine, turn on.”

And the Lancer came alive. A jingle played from the dashboard, and soon the lights and engines screamed open. A newfound tenacity in his eyes glinted out the window, as he stomped on the gas and propelled the car forward.

“Okay... what’s our game plan?” Jocelyn asked, amidst the engine roaring like a vulture.

“I’ll drive in circles to get Crywank’s attention,” he answered while shifting gears. “Once Viva Las Vegas is in our sights, we summon our Stands and cut the loose rotor off. The moment we spot that horse-faced fucker, we chase him until he’s run the fuck over. Y’get any of that?”

“Mhm. Sounds solid.”

A chuckle came out. “Let’s get this bastard removed from the equation.”

He did as he said: driving the car down in different trajectories and rhythms, like figure-eight paths or U-turns, hoping to gain a modicum of Crywank’s attention. Even with the headlights open, the mist wasn’t as bright as it was under its ‘paradise’ disguise. But it was marginally better than seeing shadows at that point.

“Is there any sign of him?” He tried to focus hard on the blackness within sight.

“Not that I’m aware of,” she replied. “How about you?”

“I barely see jack,” he grumbled, “I swear to God, I would’ve gotten his attention already—”

A turbulent rumble shook the car, though it did not stop its momentum. When he looked out his left, he saw Viva Las Vegas flying in tandem. The trusses span along, but he saw the weaker one dangling as clear as day.

“There it is,” he shouted. “Tell me you see it!”

“I see it!”

“Okay...” Joshua veered a hard left, moving the car closer to the disco ball. “Rebel Moon, tear the dance floor asunder!”

Rebel Moon phased through the car, launching itself back to the fray as it slugged the ball out of their way. Tiles fell and broke apart, but the weakened truss did not fall. It squawked, tightening its fists and muscles while the ball retreated. Viva Las Vegas approached the car from behind, while Rebel Moon slithered out and perched by the trunk, hissing.

“Christ, that thing won’t stop moving!” Jocelyn huffed.

“Don’t keep me hanging,” he ordered, “back me up here, Joce!”

“Okay, dumbass, I’m backing you up! Blade Runner,” she pointed at the ball, “chop-chop!”

Blade Runner leapt out of the car and perched beside Rebel Moon, blades crossed in an ‘X’. Viva Las Vegas ramped up its speed, intent on crashing the car. But Blade Runner, gritting its teeth, swung at the ball and eviscerated sections of it. Half of the ball was now a metal frame, wires leaking out like loose springs.

“MUDA-MUDA,” it cried.

But to the groan of Jocelyn, the weakened truss remained hanging there. “Fuck, I missed it!”

“Missed what?”

“I had that rotor dead to rights, but it was too high up for Blade Runner to cut off!”

“I’m sure we’ll get it next time— GAH!”

Viva Las Vegas suddenly changed trajectories and crashed itself down the Lancer’s left. It broke open the glass windows, malfunctioned a few LED strips on that side, and considerably dented the window frames around its body. Joshua maintained control of the wheel, even with the impact causing it to uncontrollably swerve. But he knew too well it meant Crywank was free to mess with their minds again — the mist was, again, the bright and ‘welcoming’ world they knew last time.

‘Shit,’ he thought, ‘c’mon Josh. You know it’s not real. You know it’s not real...’

“Missed me, shitheads?!” Crywank boomed, free to yell as he pleased. “Keh keh keh kehhh~!”

“Fuck off!” Jocelyn jabbed a middle finger at him through the broken window. “I won't let you mess with my head, horse!”

“Is that so? I’m not letting you go that easily, this time! And I’m making sure I’LL BE THE LAST THING YOU’LL EVER SEE! For the roar of the crowd will swathe you, as will the angels of the skies, and the wrath of God himself!”

And they came as he said. The seemingly endless fungi in the mist grew, metamorphosed into lost and confused human beings staring at the car without reason. And a flock of ‘birds’—who were more human transfused with bird wings and feet—hovered above, casting shadows that darkened the bright mist around them. Lightning and thunder spread around the misty skies, from which gigantic hands emerged from the earth. It wasn’t real or anything; but both of them had doubts.

“Shit, shit, shit, shit!” Joshua shifted gears and turned to the right, trying to avoid hitting the crowd.

“Josh, what the hell are you doing,” she snapped.

“What do you think I’m doing?!” He twisted the steering wheel around, desperate to keep an inch of his car away from them. “I can’t run over a goddamn crowd, dammit!”

“But you said they weren’t real, dumbass!!”

“They look real to me!” Joshua gasped for huffs of air, driving for his damn life.

“Josh, look out!”

“Woah—” Joshua narrowly dodged the car out of Viva Las Vegas’ way, which would’ve crushed them by the front bumper. It caused the car to slide unto the crowd, who—like the fungi they once were—moved meters out of its path. “Where did it go?!”

“You tell me!” She barely saw anything but the crowd and the ‘birds’ flying. “I can’t see jack with everyone around us—”

“FUCK!” Joshua shifted gears into reverse, seeing one of God’s hands moving their way. It made a gradual swipe to the Lancer’s direction, knocking a few humans from the crowd into the air.

Chunks of the earth moved from the swipe, the birds increasing in numbers, as Joshua reversed the car and backed out of the swipe’s way.

“Having fun yet, Remy?! I guarantee you, this next attack of mine will be your LAST!”

“It’s getting dark, dammit!” Jocelyn helplessly stared at the increasing number of birds flying in the sky. “At the rate they’re going, the birds will have us seeing black!”

“We still have to keep watch of that damned ball, too,” he added.

As soon as the hand stopped, it raised itself in the air. Clenching a fist, lightning struck—marking a nauseating afterimage in the duo’s eyes—and God’s wrath hammered down on the crumbling earth. Rocks shot up into the air like magma, sand and dust and birds flooding the car in boundless gloom... until nothing remained. They saw black, bore witness to it; and now they were wreathed in black. All was lost, but themselves alone, driving aimlessly in a once-blooming void.

“...Shit.” Even with the headlights on, there was nothing outside Joshua clearly saw but black.

“I-Is it over,” she grimaced, her fingers longing for the bite of her teeth.

“It can’t be... There’s no way he isn’t—”

“RUAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAIIIII!!!”

Viva Las Vegas flashed itself out of the blackness, moving in front of the car like a bullet train. Joshua stomped on the brakes the moment it entered his view. And at the speed it went, it was certain neither of them would survive the impact. They shut their eyes and imagined every bone, muscle, or artery implode from the weight of the ball; waiting for that sickening crunch to burst every fibre of their being open.

However, Rebel Moon vehemently rejected that fate.

In what should’ve been an impossible feat, Rebel Moon scurried off to the Lancer’s hood, and caught it at the last second. It squawked, hugging the ball with wide arms, pushing it back a nudge as loose wires scattered around its body.

“W-What the f—” Jocelyn turned to it, then Joshua. “Josh?!”

“I can’t h-hold it any longer,” he grunted, as though he was the one stopping it. “C-Cut it! Cut the rotor off the ball, NOW!”

“You betcha!” Following her orders, Blade Runner leapt up from the car, and swung at the loosening truss with its katanas. A violent spark shimmered, and within moments the truss fell, vanishing into the black.

Rebel Moon followed by letting the ball go, throwing itself backward as it cried “ORA!” It drove Viva Las Vegas away with a powerful kick that shattered every tile it had left, leaving nothing but wires swaying around a spherical frame.

Crywank’s pained scream echoed, and within a second, the blackness started ‘glitching’. As both Stands were recalled by their users, the static triangles returned, now faltering under the loss of that severed truss. Day-shifted-from-night and light-shifted-from-dark. They were like camera flashes; they could barely keep their eyes open from sudden bursts of warm yellow. But one thing was clear: the blur of a fuschia-haired narcissist stained with blood. He stood there in parted sands, his posture unstable on the verge of collapsing. Crywank.

“I see him,” Joshua shouted, “he’s right there!”

“What?”

“He’s right there,” he repeated with a finger pointed at the distant Crywank, “I may be blind from this, but it is him!”

“Let’s go, then—”

“Wait, wait, wait, wait!” He stopped her before she finished. “Hear me out, okay?”

“What,” she questioned.

“I’m gonna ask you to do this for me,” he explained, “I’m gonna drift a donut around him — and when there’s nothing left but a cloud of sand, have Blade Runner release everything. By that, I mean every ounce of fuel it’s got in the tank to turn that cloud into glass. And we’ll punch and slice the glass, shoot it out onto Viva Las Vegas, and run Crywank the fuck over. I don’t know if that works, but—”

“What the fuck? Are you straight up talking out your ass, right now,” she protested.

“Have you done it before?”

“Yeah, but—”

“That’s all I needed to know.” Shifting gears, he prepared to execute the idea, but Jocelyn stopped him before he stepped on the gas.

“Josh, stop!” She grabbed both of his hands, pleading. “You don’t understand!”

“What is it I don’t understand,” he frowned.

“I-If I have Blade Runner light it on fire by itself, then I won’t be able to help ya for a while. Doing such a thing would take a lot of energy, both from myself and Blade Runner, which means...”

“Either you’ve gone through a heat stroke, or you sleep like a baby.”

“Well... you’d be lucky if it was the ‘heat stroke’ way. At least I could talk…”

“But do you really wanna do this?”

She had no other choice. “...If it means breaking free of that bastard’s control,” she gulped, conceding, “then I’ll do it. The rest is up to you, ‘genius’.”

“Alright, then.”

Joshua shot the Lancer off like a rocket, its path heading unto Crywank, the dramatic show-off who had been a severe annoyance for the past hour they’d been awake. He was 25-meters from him one second, and 15-meters the next. Even with the ‘day-and-night’ flashes, Joshua could tell Crywank was yelling at him... but Viva Las Vegas malfunctioning meant he and Jocelyn heard nothing beyond staggered and spiked bits of rah-rah words.

“Do you—*BZZT*—can keep me—Remy—*BZZT*—I told you—*BZZT*—know who you are—*BZZT*”

“Oh, yeah? I know who I am,” Joshua spontaneously said, as he pushed down the pedal and shifted gears. He diverged away from Crywank and went straight to executing what he set out to do.

“I am undetectable—*BZZT*—unstoppable—*BZZT*—fucking PSYCHO! I’LL KILL—*BZZT*”

Ignoring the rest of his words, he began to drift around him in a 5-meter circle. Trails of smoke mixed with sand particles accumulated from the rear tires, the friction heating up the tires as it went along. Crywank was befuddled, squinting as he barely comprehended what drove Joshua to just... drift around him. Was he showboating to compensate for insecurities exposed by Viva Las Vegas? It was the only possibility he could think of, as he jabbed a finger and yelled:

“Get them—*BZZT*—Las Vega—*BZZT*”

The derelict form of Viva Las Vegas launched itself to attack the Lancer, practically screaming in pain through deafening engines.

“Rebel Moon, keep it off our trail!”

Rebel Moon lunged at Viva Las Vegas once it got close, and grabbed onto the ball’s frame. It squawked as it bit into the wires, forcing it to dash off from its planned attack, flying erratically. It spat out the chewed-out wires and yanked a few on its left, ripping them off like pulling scalp.

Crywank tried to scream through the two, but his cries were cut off before they could be heard.

“Jocelyn,” Joshua yelled, “it’s time!”

“Y-Yeah,” she shivered, Blade Runner’s outline flickering before her. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”

Blade Runner zipped out of Jocelyn, mounting itself on the Lancer’s hood. It crouched as it thrust both katanas near the rear tires, pink aura enrapturing them. It absorbed every ounce of heat the friction of the drift generated, heat waves forming around its tank which brimmed with scorching fever. As it raised its swords up, Jocelyn shouted...

『Blade Runner: Tear Away』

And tear away at the sands, it did. Blade Runner crossed its blades, and upon swinging them with open arms, expelled all of its fuel in a burst of flames. The fuel transmuted the ‘cloud of sand’ into a near eight-foot crater of thick terrain made of glass, isolating Crywank. It left him with bug-eyes and an unhinged jaw, nearly dizzy from the blood he lost sharing wounds with Viva Las Vegas.

He was lucky a limb didn’t fall off when Blade Runner severed the weakened truss... but even he knew his luck was running out. The colossus of the glass crater meant a single clue of where the two foes he made were lost.

Shivering, he whispered, “Viva Las Vegas, guard me... whatever remains of you.”

And Viva Las Vegas came by his side, with nearly all of the wires gone. He tried to maintain a calm expression, but a part of his cheek twitched seeing his Stand ruined like that. Still, he tried to anticipate their next move, watching the glass crater intently. He heard a crackle come from behind, and jolted instantly as he ordered the ball to attack.

He gasped too late to see shards of glass launching straight at the ball, cutting through the ball’s frame and cables like flesh. Numerous cuts spurted out of Crywank’s body as he bled and screamed, chunks of his Stand falling apart. From the wires, down to the LEDs projecting the mist.

So many questions flooded his mind after that: How was this possible? What was shooting the damn glass at him?

Then came a voice, barking madly at the tempo of the shards. It was muffled at first, but every passing second he heard it clearer and clearer:

“ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA—” Rebel Moon shouted in a loop, unleashing a massive volley of jabs and strikes at the glass. It punched and punched and punched until a hole broke out, allowing the Lancer to enter the crater. Its engines revved, hungry for Crywank; like the wolves he manifested to feast on Joshua.

Now, there was no point resisting any further. The shards already did the damage; the mist was now gone, returning everything back to the barren desert it once was. And he was standing there with his own blood, painting the sands red with every drop lost.

Once the car drove onto his path, he closed his eyes. It hit his legs first in a repulsive crash, tearing a few hamstrings and causing tibia to crack. And he flew up into the hood, his head smashing into the windshield. Crywank’s brain whiplashed into the walls of his skull, and after that, blackness. Like the JoJos before; he saw black, and now his mind thought of nothing... black.

---

『 User 』 — Jimmy Crywank
『 Stand Name 』— Viva Las Vegas

Power: A Speed: A Durability: D Precision: E Range: B Potential: A

『 Observations 』— Projects ‘fake mist’ within an unspecified range that acts in two phases: ‘Phase One’ attacks targets with progressive mass hysteria, while ‘Phase Two’ traps them in a psychedelic mindscape with a diverse set of effects; mainly exacerbated mental issues (i.e. paranoia, anxiety attacks), and being verbally manipulated into experiencing ‘lifelike’ hallucinations by its User.

『 User Status 』 — D E A C T I V A T E D
TEMPORARILY DISAVOWED FROM COMBAT

Notes:

Remember to give kudos and (optionally) a comment! This helps in supporting this fic and its future endeavors.

Chapter 18: Vol. 2 - Papercut, Part 1

Summary:

Mere minutes after the ordeal with Crywank, Joshua begins stockpiling rations to keep himself and Jocelyn well-fed and hydrated during the journey. If only he took into account another Stand user coming their way.

Notes:

Shout-out to three guests who left a kudos in the previous chapter!

CONTENT WARNING // This chapter contains explicit descriptions of panic attacks and mutilated corpses. If you are at all uncomfortable with the subject matter (and the canon-typical gore), I advise not to read this chapter beyond the second scene.

UPDATE (5/12/24): Part 7 of an upcoming overhaul to Vol. 2

—|[ CHAPTER 18 ]|—

Papercut, Part 1

 

 

12:01... 12:02... 12:03...

Three hours passed. And yet, they couldn’t stop thinking how it took forever for Crywank to be dealt with. They drove around in their broken-down but still functioning Lancer, but no amount of repairs would make them forget the Hell they went through.

After Blade Runner ‘tore away’ at the glass, Jocelyn had been gasping for air non-stop, eyes drifting around with sweat covering her from head-to-toe. She was lucky to get away with a throbbing headache, as poor Joshua would’ve had to endure making decisions by himself while she slept. As for him, he couldn’t stop thinking about how Crywank went out. Not that he remembered much, but...

He swore he saw bent legs and a gaping wound on his head, exposing the bone. Even the crack from when his head smashed into the windshield was still there.

It was satisfying to finally beat him after an hour of being put up with his shit, but seeing his body like that was a memory that would never leave.

“Oh, my Goooood,” Joshua groaned, sweat falling down his face.

“I know,” yawned Jocelyn, “it’s hot... Why did that fuckface drive us all the way here?”

“I’m not buying the fact he took this on a joyride,” he kept driving straight with a sigh. “Seems like he was just bait for an even worse User to fight. Do you buy it?”

“Why would I...?”

“Thought so.” Something came back into his head, prompting him to ask, “Hey, uh... I hope you don’t mind — but what’s with the fangs?”

“My what...?”

“Remember when you bit me?”

“Oh, uh...” she coughed a bit. “My grandpa... the old man doesn’t... speak of him fondly. I got it from him. Said he was, uh... terrible. Had to be put down like a rabid dog. You should’ve heard what everyone called me at school...”—a deprecating chuckle—“Vampira... Vampira... Sorry, my head hurts a bit trying to remember.”

“I see.”

“Can’t you just... turn on the AC or somethin’...?” Another yawn came.

“I don’t think so,” he gulped, “as it turns out... running somebody over breaks ACs. Wish I knew that when I learned how to drive.”

“I thought they don’t work like that...”

“I was just joking, y’know. But seriously, the AC’s broken.”

“M-Motherfucker...”

Even her fatigue didn’t stop her from seething about it. “I don’t blame ya risking to wreck your car, but... I swear to God, this day would’ve gone a lot better if he didn’t bother fucking with us.”

“Yeah...”

Suddenly, a tinge of crimson flashed on the dashboard’s screen. Joshua turned to it and gasped, “Oh, Christ. The battery’s at 21-percent.”

“21-percent...?! Are you fucking kidding—”

“No, I wish I wasn’t.” He growled, thinking aloud, “How long has that fucker been driving the car to drain the battery like that? It should’ve been somewhere at 50-percent right now, if it weren’t for him!”

Before either of them spoke again, a gas station waited for them in the distance. They looked at each other, with beaming eyes like they found the lost city of El Dorado.

“Finally, something good happened,” Jocelyn blurted out.

Driving into the station, they made out a green sign reading “Folie à Deux”. It had a convenience store, gas pumps, and recharge stations in tow, but something about it was off. Even with the Mojave Desert being something of a hellscape itself, they would’ve expected a car or two hooked to these grimy pumps. Dust bunnies rolled, as disposed receipts and candy wrappers flew on the ground, adding a sense of pollution to it.

Joshua parked the Lancer past a sign listing discounts for kerosene and diesel pumps, where a recharge station was next to it. He fixed his glasses as he looked at the convenience store. It was empty, like the station before them.

“So, what now?” he asked.

“Go do your thing,” she answered, “I’ll just... go sink inside Mr.President. Least the AC works there...”

“Okay.” He stepped out of the car, and before closing the door, he shouted, “I’ll get us some snacks while we’re here!”

 

–[ ★★★ ]–

 

Now alone, Joshua hurled whatever loaves of bread, chips, water containers and cooking ingredients he could find in his shopping cart.

Judging by the fact nobody was inside with him, he deduced he and Jocelyn were still ‘Vanished’. So paying for everything was the least of his worries, especially in the most ordinary convenience store his eyes witnessed. Plain, generic, with ugly lights and architecture. Not to mention all the non-sequitur “FRESHNESS GUARANTEED” and “SHOP AND SAVE 20% OFF YOUR FIRST PURCHASE” banners draped across the ceiling, and the endless rows of products forming one big Droste effect. If he wanted to count sheep and doze off, they were perfect for the job.

He tried whistling to keep himself occupied, but it didn’t work. At all. Throwing everything not cheap nor lacking in quality was so tiresome, he felt a crumb of the drowsiness Jocelyn had.

‘Oh, boy,’ he thought, ‘I can’t wait to go back to the car, chow down on some of these snacks, and see if I can find a guy in Shakedown who can fix up the car. And uh... see what I can do to help Joce with her problem. Maybe ask her if she could help me learn to throw a punch or two, and—’

He dropped a can of pork-&-beans he would’ve put in the cart, a thud resounding like his stomach crumbled.

‘What the—’

He found himself collapsing on his knees, freezing, with his heart speeding up like a train heading down a dead end.

‘N-No, they’re... chasing me... But it’s not the wolves, isn’t it? It’s... Oh, God... they’re chasing me... they’re—’

Unable to hold it any longer, he ran up to the door and madly rushed into the station’s bathroom. It was like a blink of an eye; one blink he was out of the store, and the next he was leaning by the bathroom door.

By his next breath, he felt this: he sank into a deep abyss... heartbeats multiplying... aortic dilation... sweat raining down every ounce of skin... cops closing in on him... Death knocking on his door... every crevice of the axial skeleton in his body calcifying in everlasting chills... heartbeats multiplying again... aortic dilation... a fraying rationality in the belief he was losing all sense of reality and soon something terrible would befall him... every sense paralyzed… inevitably he would be found a psychotic wreck in a disgusting bathroom... heartbeats so fast he gripped his chest in aching... his astigmatism strengthening to the point where his glasses cast a strong blur... fever rising... the scent of blood in the air... the taste of metal in his lungs... a pathetic mess of a head comprised of nothing but flesh and half a jaw... guts and viscera wrapping around him like spaghetti... flesh burnt like barbecue... all split right down the center... he can’t take it anymore he has to get it out and get it out now now now—

Joshua ran up to a toilet stall and barged in.

He dove into the toilet, careful not to let his face nor glasses touch water, and released viscous sludge from his throat. An amalgam of the breads, salads, and meat he half-remembered eating intoxicated the water. And just when he was done, he retched another. And a third, until nothing was left.

Gasping for air, he wiped leftover crumbs scattered in his mouth and wiped away involuntary tears shed. He sat on the floor, his scatterbrained head laid against the lid... as he cried.

He squeezed his eyelids shut, trying to force his tears back in. But there was so much he could contain. All he could spit out were hiccups and sobbings.

‘W-What’s going on with me,’ he thought, ‘I know — I-I know I’ve had this coming. When everyone found out who I was... but why? Why the fuck would I feel like this...?’

“Hello? Is someone there?”

He was startled by the sound of a girl’s voice in the stall next to his. In the Men’s Bathroom of all places. ‘What the...?’ Recomposing himself, he took his glasses and rushed out of his stall. ‘Did someone walk into the wrong bathroom?’

“H-Hello,” he said aloud, running to the other stall with a knock. “Can you hear me?”

“Oh, thank God,” laughed the girl in relief, “I’ve been stuck in this for hours! Please help! They seriously need to fix the locks on this, I can’t break it open if my life depended on it!”

“Ma’am, are you okay? Are you hurt?”

“N-No, not at all,” she quavered, “but the door is the problem!”

“I’m gonna take a look, okay? See if I can break it open—”

A gasp escaped his mouth upon crouching to the floor. If it weren’t for those sneakers she wore, he would’ve generously helped her out. But the pink camouflage pattern draped around it he recognized right away. ‘N-No... that can’t be...’

“Helloooo~? Sir? Is there something wrong?”

The red outline of a fist formed itself next to the stall’s door. “Rebel Moon,” he whispered in nigh-silence, “take her out before she expects it.”

Rebel Moon sprang forth completely, squawking as it threw a left hook at the door. The punch was so strong, it created a dent nearly the size of its own torso.

“S-Sir,” she quavered, “what are you doing?! T-That shouldn’t be—”

“Shut up,” he snapped, and had Rebel Moon jab the door again.

But before it could utter a single “ORA”, the door was propelled off its hinges by an unknown force. The door struck Joshua, sending him flying down the wall with tiles cracking. The attack left him seeing doubles, but he was lucky he wasn’t knocked into seeing black like Crywank did.

“Jesus Christ.” He made out a silhouette sitting by a toilet. “What the hell just happened...?”

But the moment he saw her as she was—another Stand user—the urge to escape had never been higher. “Oh, fuck...”

The girl’s Stand took on the form of a matte-black latex bodysuit covering her entire body, broken up into detachable polygons glued to the fabric. The polygons’ material resembled ‘holographic’ clothing, each piece refracting a rainbow shine off it. It was completed by a hexagon-shaped helmet, its pink visor exposing the User’s bespectacled face; and a hole in the back let her tousled brunette bangs loose.

“You’re an interesting fellow, Joshua Johnson,” she cooed, leaning forward to reinforce eye contact. “Normally, I’d be flabbergasted when people figured out my ruse, but... good job on the sneakers! They were the ‘smoking gun’, after all..”

“What?”

“Name’s Charli Taylor, sweetie,” she said, “and this...”

She removed a polygon from her bosom and smashed it on the door. Many pieces fell like glass, but she armed the largest chunk into a shiv.

“This is『 Papercut 』, the ‘instrument’ of my greatest victory yet; going on a tango with you.”

“Going on a tango with me...?” He wiped saliva off his mouth, and rose from the ground with Rebel Moon firmly at his side. “Trust me,” he chuckled, “you’re biting off more than you can chew.”

“Really,” she laughed, “try me, bitch. Know that your bird isn’t that scary.”

Taylor jumped off the toilet and lunged at him with a feint swing, careful to not slice his flesh. Rebel Moon responded ‘in kind’, hurling a right jab she dodged. It threw another which again she dodged, accidentally punching another dent on the door.

“That all you got, sweetie?” she snarked, grinning from ear-to-ear. “You can do better than that!”

Rebel Moon lunged at her with a punch, only to miss.

Growling, it squawked at Taylor and the two went back-and-forth with offensive and defensive maneuvers. For the most part, it was an even fight: Rebel Moon brute-forced its way into dishing out clinical strikes and chops; but Taylor was so fast under Papercut’s suit, it barely ducked from one or two swings from her shiv. It was a struggle, so much that both Joshua and Rebel Moon resorted to the oldest trick in the book.

“ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA—” Rebel Moon yelled, throwing a bombardment of punches at top speeds. Hoping any single one of them would hit Taylor as collateral.

But she got out of the way, and kneed it in the abdomen. The attack sent both Stand and User to their knees, a viscous mix of blood and saliva leaking from the latter’s mouth.

“C’mon, Josh,” she groaned impatiently, “are you seriously not trying, or are you actually shit at this? I expected an actual fight from the likes of you!”

“Oh, yeah?” He wiped the liquids off his mouth, wheezing. “Why don’t you tell me what you want?”

“Well, consider this hypocritical and whatnot,” she crouched down and brandished her shiv. “But I’d rather not tell you, darling. I’d like to keep it a surprise while I cut you into total sashimi, hehe~...”

Taylor suddenly elbowed Rebel Moon in the neck, causing Joshua to choke on his saliva. She spontaneously chuckled as she grabbed it by the chest, hurling it down the dented door. Twisting the shiv into a reverse-grip, she slashed the back of its left forearm with a three-inch slit, spraying blood all over the door.

It left him screaming, wincing and pushing down the wound to contain the bleeding.

“I’m telling you right now, Josh,” she howled, gripping Rebel Moon’s shoulder tight, “there’s no point in resisting my allure! Given the fact this has been a one-sided tango between us...”

“What fucking allure,” he frowned, his forearm beginning to limp.

“Y’know... it should start any minute now.”

As she giggled at him, Joshua quickly glanced at his wounded forearm. The sight of crystals forming outwards the cut made him screech. Bright red crystals formed from his own blood, while a significant portion of his flesh was calcified. Before he knew it, he couldn’t move his hand, nor a single finger.

With bulging eyes and perspiring skin, he rasped, “What did you do to me...?”

“I won’t tell you, Josh,” she grinned, twirling her shiv. “You should figure that out yourself. Besides, it’s ill-advised for you to keep fighting in this state — but the fighting’s usually my favorite part, y’know?”

“What do you want from me...?”

“Oh?” With dreamy eyes, she explained, “I’ve been quite the fan for years... At least, much longer than the UCLA fiasco you got yourself into. But how do I begin with this...?”—a lipsmack—“Josh, I like you. No no no no— that’s not the right word. I love you. I’ve been in love with you for some time, and in love with the idea of you. Y’know? Being the monster the DEA writes bedtime stories about?”

“So you’re one of these people, huh?” The idea of it repulsed him.

“Unabashedly, yes. There’s no point in hiding my nature,” she turned to the bathroom door, “but who are you to say my feelings are exclusive?”

He was baffled. Joshua frowned trying to understand what she meant. Did she have someone else she also ‘loved’, or was she inciting jealousy? He couldn’t tell if either was the case... but as he took into mind her salacious glance at the door, something unexplainable drew his face into a volcanic glare. “...You bitch,” he growled.

Taylor couldn’t help but laugh. “Believe me, I didn’t wanna fight you. I just thought that I could resolve the issues we had — given you’re paired with her by association. But I just can’t help myself, y’know? Taking you both home with me is a greater victory than I could’ve hoped for.”

She roared and lunged at him for the kill.

With nothing left to lose, Joshua thought to himself, ‘S-Shit... what do I do? I’ve gotta get outta here, drive as far from this bitch as humanly possible... My God... the fact Jocelyn might be too tired to fight back? Come on, Josh. If you could beat Crywank for reducing her to tears, you could definitely beat this sex-crazed weirdo!’

Rebel Moon launched from Joshua’s body, It swung a right hook at Taylor’s face, sending her flying to a tiled wall on her left. The impact caused a few tiles to crack, the shiv falling close to his sneakers.

It left her on her knees, gasping for air as she felt a crack on the visor.

She hissed, “Stupid! You keep fighting like this?” She took another polygon from her elbow. “I’m gonna shatter your whole arm!”

“Try it,” he smirked, beckoning for her.

Taylor shoved the polygon onto the wall, taking the largest chunk as another shiv. “I won’t toy with you anymore,” she said as she flourished the shiv.

“As will I.”

Rebel Moon quickly noticed the fallen shiv, and armed itself with it. It hissed at her, as the crystallization of Joshua’s forearm left it one-handed. He knew he needed to be careful; one wrong move, and her threat of shattering his arm would come true.

“Is that right?” she tilted her head. “You’re using my instrument as your own?”

“If I can’t beat you with ‘Ol Reliable’, then using your tools to my advantage should do the trick.” He beckoned for her, with Rebel Moon assuming a defensive stance.

“So be it.”

Taylor jumped at Rebel Moon, and the two locked into their earlier back-and-forth once more. But under different circumstances: Taylor aggressively swung her shiv, resolute her enemy would hold no candle to her rash and nimble offense. But Joshua was trying to be careful, ensuring Rebel Moon caught and parried the dueling shiv before it tasted his flesh.

She targeted its head to slash it, but it kicked her arms away.

It squawked as it shoved her unto the dented door, jabbing her in the abdomen with its fist. It threw her right hand atop it, and pounded it to pry the shiv off.

But her grip was firm and unshaken, like an artist and her paintbrush.

Rebel Moon prepared to jab again, but she kneed it in the abdomen, staggering it. It forced Rebel Moon to drop the shiv, as she hurled it onto the door and pummeled it down. It was a moment that spelled déjà vu for them both... even if it happened recently.

“You did well with my toys, Josh,” she said, commenting on the ‘echo’. “But never forget. I know them better than you~.”

Joshua flinched as Taylor raised her shiv at Rebel Moon, screaming as if he was done for. But Rebel Moon dodged at the last second, causing her to strike the door instead. Furrowing her eyebrows, she growled and slashed at it again; only to hit the door a second time.

Observing it as it was, he muttered, “What the...?”

Seeing Rebel Moon vanish before her eyes, she snarled. “What did you do,” she screamed at Joshua, one eye twitching. “What did you do...?!”

“You tell me,” he shrugged. “You say you know your toys better than me. But what if... your toys can cut through flesh, but not metal?”

“You son of a—” Taylor gave chase as he retreated to another stall, rashly swaying her shiv so as to hit him astray.

But it distracted her from Rebel Moon, who resummoned and did not hesitate to grab the dented door. Though it struggled with one hand, it ripped the door of its hinges, dashing just in time to block an incoming attack onto Joshua.

She screeched as she attacked again, only for Rebel Moon to block a second time.

Winded, she wiped her visor and caught her breath. “What... the hell... are you doing... You son of a bitch...?!”

“Doing what I can to put you down,” he scoffed. “Seriously, all those years you’ve spent honing your craft, only for you to realize it can’t cut through metal? Jeez... that’s gotta hurt.”

His remarks left her incensed enough to thrust the shiv at him, but Rebel Moon parried, countering with a shield bash to her shoulder and head.

The impact knocked her back a few steps, cracking a few polygons and denting parts of the helmet. Rebel Moon battered her a second time, launching her to the edge of the bathroom; with most polygons on her torso shattered. And soon, it threw the door at such high speeds, lodging it between a door and a wall. It broke the visor open, pieces of polygon piercing her flesh inwards.

Taylor shrieked as blood poured out from the polygons. She fought through the pain long enough to yell, “Motherf... you... o-only have one arm!”

“And it’s all I ever need,” he retorted, desummoning Rebel Moon. “Unless you find some bullshit way out of this?”

He hovered his hand over the bathroom door’s handle.

“I’m obliged to file a ‘restraining order’ against you.”

“No no no no— wait!”

As her abdomen crystallized from Papercut’s Stand power, the last thing she saw—reaching out for a ‘plea’—was Joshua leaving the bathroom and shutting the door on her.

Notes:

Remember to give kudos and (optionally) a comment! This helps in supporting this fic and its future endeavors.

Chapter 19: Vol. 2 - Papercut, Part 2

Summary:

Joshua now finds himself in the midst of a deadly and dangerous rematch—against Taylor and her wanton desire to put both JoJos in her twisted fantasies...

Notes:

Shout-out to PhantomDouglass and eight guests who left a kudos in the previous chapter!

UPDATE (6/9/24): Part 8 of an upcoming overhaul to Vol. 2

UPDATE (2/8/25): Edited a few descriptions to be more subtle and implicit, and a lines of dialogue.

—|[ CHAPTER 19 ]|—

Papercut, Part 2

 

 

For the past minute-and-a-half, Joshua tried his damndest to push down on his wound and get the hell out of dodge. He cared less whether to get back to the store and pack his newly-stockipled rations inside, or to mull over how the crystallization in his arm miraculously disappeared. Only that the further away he and Jocelyn were from Taylor, the better.

Even if she didn’t explicitly show it, some part of him knew instantly how sick she was.

So sick that, if she were anywhere close to Jocelyn—especially considering the supposed ‘history’ they shared and how terribly exhausted she was after fighting Viva Las Vegas—he wouldn’t forgive himself if she got hurt. At any cost, he had to protect her. He couldn’t let Taylor come close to scratching her cheek, or cutting her throat. At any cost, she must be dispatched to save her life. At any cost, SHE MUST SUFFER.

As sweat rained down his skin and a lack of air left him gasping, Joshua managed to return to the broken-down Lancer. Opening the door, he yelled, “Joce? Joce!”

To his misfortune, she wasn’t anywhere to be found. But he did remember her saying she’d sink down Mr.President and stay there. And Coco Jumbo was sitting by her seat, the purse she carried with her leaning by its shell.

“Oh, my God,” he covered his eyes, sighing. ‘What am I gonna do...? I-I can’t just... go inside and tell her! I’ve gotta get the charger out of the car, and... Wait a minute...’

“Sorry, man,” he apologized, “but I gotta do this.” He grabbed Coco Jumbo and shook it once. And twice. And thrice, until...

“J-Josh, what the hell...?!” Jocelyn cried from inside Mr.President, although with a still tinge of grogginess in her tone. “I was—”

“Jocelyn, we have to go.”

“What the fuck are you talking about—”

“We have to go,” he insisted with haste, “there’s a Stand user who followed us here! Stand is named Papercut, has got a shitload of polygons that could crystallize anything it cuts, a-and—”

“W-Woah, slow down, dumbass! Are you straight up talking out your ass, right now?!”

“Look, just stay put, okay?! I’m gonna get the car started, and—”

Suddenly, a plastic garbage can launched itself next to the car, crashing into the road like a missile. Before he could twist the keys and start the Lancer’s engines, Joshua was met by a cloud of ‘dust particulates’ emitting a repulsive scent.

“Oh Jesus Chr—” He coughed and coughed from the smell.

The ‘particulates’ released into the air were an amalgam of the different scents the trash contained. Layers upon layers of disgusting aromas, composed of — disposed candy wrappers; used condoms; rotting meats and leftovers; and burnt cigarettes. At that point, he covered his nose to rid the smell, but constricting his breath worsened the situation.

“J-Josh, what the f— Did you just... fart...?!”

“N-No,” he retorted nasally. “W-What the fuck makes you think I farted—”

“Oh, sillyyyy~!”

Joshua was startled. Hearing that shrill, sultry voice left him shaking. As it confirmed the worst: that somehow and someway, Taylor escaped being pinned by the door Rebel Moon threw at her.

“J-Josh? W-Wha– Oh, God... I know that voice...”

Even if she wasn’t there with him, he instantly imagined—from the quavering of her voice—years of history between the two women. All the horrible things that creep wrought upon her—the obsession, the isolation from anyone she trusted, the half-hearted gestures she was forced upon...

He wasn’t Jocelyn, of course. But for as much they clearly disliked each other, some aspects of her life weren't something he was unfortunately stranger to.

When he forced himself out of the car, he saw Taylor slowly approaching him by the bathroom door. He was bug-eyed, almost praying to God this wasn’t real. While her face was bruised and hair untidy from the brawl, so many of the polygons broken were back in the suit. It led him to realize that she must’ve desummoned Papercut to undo the damage, let alone ‘revert’ the crystallization in his arm. He gave it his all to stop her from going after himself and Jocelyn, but it wasn’t enough. It broke his heart... beating her with one arm, only for her to come out of it mostly unscathed.

Yet it made him seethe more than he should've. That unexplainable desire to protect Jocelyn out of rage was brimming inside again. And God forbid if she took another step.

“Y-You...” It was the only thing he could rasp.

“You thought you could get away,” Taylor giggled, “didn’t you? Tee-hee~! No need to point out the obvious,”—she pointed down Papercut’s latex suit—“but I’m surprised! I had a hunch she was here, considering the two of you are closely associated nowadays, but... assuming what you were doing in that car when I threw that garbage away, that’s her, right?”

“Don’t come anywhere closer, bitch...”

“You still don’t know, don’t you?” Twirling two shivs in hand, she smiled. “What I want is what I get... and to have you and my beloved woman by my side? Talk about killing ‘two birds with one stone’... Keh keh keh kehhh~!”

Hearing that again left his skin blanched, eyes twisting in horror. How in God’s name did she know about that laugh? It couldn’t have been a coincidence. Perhaps Crywank lied about just taking it along for a joyride. Perhaps...

“T-That was you...?!” He sought an answer for that.

“Right as rain,” she laughed. “Paid him good, paid him well... Tracking people like you is the only thing he’s good at, y’know? By the way, judging by the look on your face — he must’ve been a massive pain in the ass, wasn’t he?”

Taylor rushed at Joshua with a scream, waving her shivs at him. Rebel Moon parried the blades and pushed back with a kick to the sides. She was knocked an inch or two, but was undeterred as she advanced with a thrust to its beak.

Rebel Moon squawked, chopping her in the shin. It pushed her back with its shoulder, sending her rolling a meter off its position.

As she recovered and stood her ground, Taylor growled. Flourishing her shivs, she hissed, “Now we’re back to fighting even, are we...?”

“Y’know what’s better than one arm?” he smirked.

He pointed at a lead pipe laid by the station’s recharging pump. Huffing, Rebel Moon zipped to the pipe and grabbed it, arming it like a sword. It beckoned for Taylor as Joshua said:

“A lead pipe.”

She roared and lunged at him again, swinging rashly. Rebel Moon blocked the shivs with the pipe, and swung at her helmet. The visor did not crack, nor did the rest of it dent. Their weapons clashed, metal sounds ringing like tubular bells, as both combatants contested for dominance.

Taylor used her speed and aggression with her shivs to force an opening, taking into mind her ability’s weakness.

But Rebel Moon—through Joshua—constantly guarded her advancing blows. He took note of the fact to keep his head, or any of his limbs, on a swivel; lest he be crystallized and impaired again.

“ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA—” it cried, waving the pipe on figure-eights to throw her off.

Taylor recoiled, putting her shivs up. “Are you sure that’s gonna work,” she snarled, spinning like a ballerina as she slid to Rebel Moon’s left.

She charged to strike its abdomen, but Rebel Moon caught wind of her plan, disrupting it with a dodge. It bashed her ribs with a backswing, and launched her onto the ground with an upward twirl.

Landing on her back, she gasped and gripped her sides. “Consider me surprised,” she huffed.

“I’m not just filing a restraining order for myself, anymore.” He crossed his arms, Rebel Moon assuming a defensive stance with the pipe. “I’m filing hers.”

“Really? Without her consent?” A laugh came as she hobbled her way into standing, her footing awkward and stilted. “Now you’re being a hypocrite, Josh.”

She leapt up to the air, arms raised high, as she slashed at Rebel Moon downwards. Rebel Moon dashed away from the left, pointing the pipe at her to keep distance. It held a guarding position as she beckoned for it to pursue the offensive. But...

Patience, patience...

Joshua knew he had to be careful with handling Papercut. Knowing it from the brief bouts of fighting he had with it, he knew how formidable it was with closing the gap.

“What are you waiting for, Josh? For your girlfriend to come rescue you?!” A sneer drew itself. “Matter of fact, where is she...?”

Joshua did not respond, staring at her coldly.

“You were talking to someone earlier, Josh,” she affirmed. “Don’t gaslight me into thinking the opposite! Wherever she is, know that catching her will be inevitable. Once I’m done playing with you, I’ll take my time to touch her next... and laugh at the look on your face when she—”

“HOLD ON A MINUTE, YEAH?!”

“The fuck?” Both Joshua and Taylor darted to the direction of a nasally Dutch voice.

By the gas prices’ sign, an emaciated homeless man in his late-twenties marched violently. His tainted maroon fabrics did not distract from the gun he held on his left hand; a 9mm Glock G19 pistol. “I wanna set the record straight,” he shrilled, “with you, Charli! I’m done with ye tryna con me out of our fuckin’ tryst!”

“...Great.” Taylor yawned. “Armin... get the fuck outta here. You’re not welcome anywhere.”

“Not welcome, ye bitch?!” He was livid, waving the gun at her. “Ye fuckin’ ingrate, ye wanna talk about what is and isn’t welcome?! I’ll tell ya right now — ‘less I get what is owed, I’m stayin’ here ‘till ye pay me up!”

Joshua looked back and forth between Taylor and Armin with a perplexed frown. How did their fight escalate from what it was to something bizarrely out-of-place?

“Oh, yeah? How’d you follow me here, anyways?”

Armin swiftly pulled out a heart locket from his pocket. “Flash yer ‘medium’ all ye want, bitch,” he explained. “But never forget. A ‘medium’ will always be drawn to another, if you haven’t learned that lesson already!”

Fed up, Joshua was prompted to blurt aloud, “What in the fuck are you two talking about—”

“SHUT UP—”

Armin shot his gun in the air. Its sound was like a cannonball firing into an empty field, reverberating through the desert with birds flying.

“—fuckin’ sul, shut up! This is between me and her, not a halvezool like ye! Now...” He aimed the gun at Taylor next. “Last chance, zakkenwasser... Pay up, or—”

Taylor hurled one of her shivs at Armin, piercing dead-center in the chest. He convulsed, crystallization spreading across his torso and shoulders, as he dropped both the gun and locket. He couldn’t utter a damn thing, but gurgled moans from the blood calcifying inside his lungs. And then, his whole world blackened into a void. His torso broke apart like Jenga pieces upon falling, bright red crystals from his blood and the rest a pale fuchsia dye.

Joshua whimpered at the sight of this, clenching his mouth so as to not scream.

“Boys will be boys,” she jested, “and you’re no different. I didn’t say it was ill-advised to fight me for nothing. Just look at him! I’ll make sure you’ll at least suffer the same way he has... and so will she—”

Roaring, Rebel Moon dived down and slugged her head down with its heel. The impact cracked her visor and some polygons on her left shoulder. And she tasted blood. The person she felt a strong ‘love’ with (second only to Jocelyn) made her bleed. And not just once. Twice. It left her seething in a way that her eyes bulged almost bloodshot, with one eye twitching.

She couldn’t scream insults at him nor give him bitter talk. Only yell out a guttural cry. Taylor sprinted at Joshua, waving her shiv to throw off his defenses, but Rebel Moon stood firmly prepared—holding the pipe tight.

As soon as she made the first move, it swung hard at her solar plexus. Saliva shot out of her mouth, seeping through the cracks, as Rebel Moon gave her a messy home run on her groin and left shin. She couldn’t tell what was in her mouth anymore. Either her spit or her blood. And the more it swung, both her visor and glasses fogged up into a blur she couldn’t wipe easily; she was breathless. She barely went a second without taking a huge gasp of air. And even that wasn’t enough to get her back in top condition.

Rebel Moon squawked. It chopped the tip of the pipe into a sharper end, the sunlight making it twinkle. It screamed “ORA!” as it carved slits on her back and bosom.

Though obscured by the steam, Taylor’s face was almost drained of its color. The concrete road was gradually paved in her own blood. A tiny creek, steadily streaming. And her heart was beating twice than her usual pace, the adrenaline escaping into the river her body produced.

“Haah... i-is that all you got... Josh...?!” Even if she mumbled, she still got the point across.

“So long as you’re down for the count,” he chided.

She coughed. “It’s... not... enough...!” She was weak. The vigor of her life was leaking out, yet... she laughed. As if nothing happened to her. “Can’t you see...?! You’ve turned me on... real, reeeaa~~l good. It’s time to pay back the favor.”

“What are you trying to—”

She launched off the ground like a panther, purring, as she threw an arcing shot down his right thigh. Joshua fell down on his knee, screaming. Between a cry of genuine hurt and a cry of refusal of defeat.

Before a word was spoken, Taylor swung the last shiv at Joshua’s face—but Rebel Moon jumped in and retaliated with the sharpened pipe. It pushed her back with overwhelming force, but Taylor used every ounce of her second wind to barely block the assault. She parried the next swing. And with a smile on her face, closed in behind Rebel Moon and cut its abdomen like sashimi. The satisfaction only grew seeing crystals growing in Joshua’s body where she cut his Stand in.

“N-No,” he protested, eyes welling.

“Why, I’m sure you meant ‘Yes’!” She giggled before walloping Rebel Moon down with a right boot. She held its beak down the ground, leaving it sadly chirping.

Before further damage was done, Joshua recalled Rebel Moon, dropping the pipe with it. He was sweating literal bullets, wheezing. He struggled to stand up as the crystallization spread to his thigh. He felt he could still try to win, but the risk was too damn high. She had him cornered. And what else could he do, but pray he wouldn’t die like Armin did—his entire torso shattered just like glass.

“I-It’s over, Josh...” She dictated weakly. “You should’ve known... to walk away... because you couldn’t... and wouldn’t... beat me.”

In one possibly final act of defiance, he retorted, “How are you so sure you’ve won...?!”

“What...? You think... just because I’ve lost a little blood... that it’d be a curbstomp victory for you...?!” She limped over to Armin’s corpse, crouching down. It took her rummaging through his pockets to find one lighter. One. Lighter.

“What are you doing,” he cried.

“The final remedy to our lover’s quarrels,” she answered, picking up a gasoline can by the store’s entrance. She sliced the can open. The petrol liquid leaked out, but in mid-air, it transmuted into crystal in quick succession. As did the rest of the can.

He realized right away what she was trying to do. ‘N-No,’ he thought frantically, ‘No, that can’t...! I-I don’t know if that’s how Papercut works... but... If she could turn a garbage can into crystal, and make a cloud that retains its fundamental properties — like that god-awful smell from it? Then she could throw that can into the gas pumps. Lighting it on fire to... Fuck, I don’t care if I die from this, I have to—’

Without any sense of self-preservation left, Joshua lurched as fast as he could to the Lancer. His eyes were locked not onto the car; but its passengers. Last he remembered, Coco Jumbo sat in the driver’s seat. And Jocelyn was inside Mr.President too.

He summoned Rebel Moon to break open the back door, wheeling Jocelyn’s LiveWire as far from the Lancer as possible. And he jumped to the driver’s seat, just in time to grab Coco Jumbo and Jocelyn’s purse... as Taylor ignited the lighter with a steamy grin.

“Goodbye,” she said, as she threw the lighter onto the gasoline particulates.

Holding both the turtle and purse close to his stomach, Joshua dove onto the road. He slid forward, keeping his grasp on the two tight, as a violent explosion enraptured behind him. The fuel surrounding Folie à Deux’s gas pumps discharged into a titanic fireball. Most of its dilapidated infrastructure—except for the convenience store—quickly razed onto the ground, a shockwave with the force of a thousand fists blasting through and shattering all the store’s windows. The Lancer also fell victim. Electric sparks surrounded the car’s body, as a cerulean fireball shot up to the sky.

Taylor stood as though the blast went past her. But Joshua, on the other hand...

If there was anything he could compare the shockwave to, it was being run over the way Crywank was. He opened his eyes to a blinding afterimage of the explosion, disorienting him. And the ringing, the wind, the crack of the flames, and fire alarms... he could barely hear them. Every sound, drowned by a lowly buzz, yet they were the least of his worries.

Of all the things he could hear, a hiss from Coco Jumbo came through. It chirped in a way he almost thought it a pat on the shoulder. A sign that it was okay, and so was its owner.

But he wasn’t. He could barely move. Not that every fiber in his being was sore. But when he gained the strength to roll on his back, he looked down on his lower half. Huge chunks of it were fractured off, but he was lucky his legs were hanging by a thread.

Yet nothing could prepare him for the worst. Seeing the Lancer destroyed in such violent fashion left his heart ruptured, collapsed into a million pieces no cry of anguish could ever shout. It ruined him. To see the first thing he bought for himself that wasn’t an ingredient Glitter needed, the first gift he earned after working some decently-paid gigs for a few startup magazines, and the first thing he truly loved... singed to rust and chrome.

“Oh, silly...” Taylor walked up to his side, towering over him.

She was the only one who bore witness to his mourning. He expected someone better to see him in tears. Someone like Jocelyn. A person he didn’t deserve, but a person he needed. Not someone like Taylor.

“How was it, Josh?” She asked. “Sacrificing your only method of transport... for a fucking turtle? Really? I didn’t strike you as an animal lover, yet here we are.”

“It’s not just a turtle,” he hissed, “you fucking degenerate...”

“Don’t be dramaa~~tic, Josh.” A shrug and a smile was all she responded with. “I may not know where she is, but... with you? I can find her. And you can’t do anything about it. Even considering the fact a male lion would protect his mate from threats to their habitat — much like what you tried to do for her. Don’t deny that desire, Josh. I even felt the same way... I just hated the way she left my habitat, though.”

He growled, not tolerating anything she said one bit.

“Besides, Josh...” she winced. “God... I’d like to go to the Clinic right now, get myself checked out. You made me bleed, y’know. But I know juuust the solution for it. Matter of fact, I’ll restore all the parts you’ve lost just so you could drive me there!”

“...What.”

“Didn’t you know?” She crouched closer, touching his cheek with her free hand. “If I want to, I can absolutely stop anything from turning to crystal. It’s how I got out. And it’ll be how you can survive this.”

He turned to Armin. “What about him,” he asked.

“He’s dead, silly~,” she laughed. “How can I revert the crystallization if the person affected by it is no longer with us?”

“Even if I want you to,” he said, “I won’t let you come anywhere near—”

“I’ll do it.”

When they heard her distinct Brooklyn hush through, they were surprised. Jocelyn sprang out of Mr.President with one hand pocketed, limping. She took a glance at the destroyed Lancer and her bike, before moving her gaze to Taylor. “I’ll do what you say,” she snivelled, “just... let him go. This is between you... and me...”

“J-Joce,” he babbled, “what are you doing...?! Don’t listen to that piece of shit!”

“Oh, please,” Taylor argued, “she gave her consent. There’s no need to be dissentient about her life’s choices, Josh.”

“I-I’m sorry about your car... by the way...” Jocelyn hastily said, before turning back to her. “And you... I can’t fucking believe you... Ten fucking days without you, and now you’re back to me... God... I hate being a Stand user sometimes...”

“Such is the nature of being one,” she smiled. “Now... let me do the thing.”

Within the snap of her finger, the crystallization affecting Joshua disappeared. True to her word, all the chunks of flesh he lost on his leg and stomach were restored. Even the parts of his clothes that were crystallized came back as if they weren’t gone. He felt free. Free to stand up and observe the ‘lover’s quarrel’ between them.

“Be a good girl for me and drive us all to the Clinic, will ya?”

“Excuse me...?” Jocelyn raised her eyebrow. “I-I told you to leave him out of it...!”

“Oh, please,” Taylor giggled at her, “Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten — what I want is what I get~...”

“You wanted me first, now him...?! What the hell is it about him that you like...?! H-He’s not even special...!”

“That doesn’t matter, you threw his life away the moment you consented to me.” She stood tall over Jocelyn, even if she wasn’t quite half the mountain she was.

“That wasn’t part of the deal!”

“Are you gonna get us to the Clinic or not, you fucking punk liar—”

As they screamed into each others’ faces, Joshua laughed. They turned to him. They looked confused at him. Believing he took a chuckle out of their situation, without rhyme or reason. But he laughed. Again. And again. Until it was clear to them both, that Taylor was the one he gave an uncontrollable smile.

“What the hell is so funny,” she hissed, flinching by a slight margin.

“Haaa~~h,” he bragged, “it’s funny, y’know... I should’ve known from the start, that the moment you said what you wanted is what you’d get — you’d fail to realize... you’re reaping way more than you can humanly sow. If one couldn’t beat you... two should do the trick.”

“Josh,” Jocelyn yelled, “what are you—”

“Now, Rebel Moon!” By its User’s command, Rebel Moon shot out of Joshua and roared at Taylor. It leapt upward and kicked her chest down with both feet, sending her flying two meters off them.

“Josh?!” She wanted to smile, yet she didn’t understand jack.

“I dunno if you’re 100-percent,” he ordered, “but I’m gonna need all the help I can get. Let’s file one last restraining order against her, shall we?”

“Restraining order...?” An eyebrow was raised.

“Never mind. Just one of my stupid gags I thought about on the fly.”

“O-Okay, what’s the plan...?”

“Uh...”

Joshua patiently observed his surroundings. He saw a spare gas can lying next to whatever was left of Armin, and the ration carts parked inside the store’s door. Armin had a gun and Joshua felt he could do something with it. But it didn’t click how he was going to use it. Until... the gas can gave him an idea.

He spitballed, “Joce, I’m gonna tell you to be careful — but I also need you to distract her!”

“W-What for,” she questioned.

“Ever heard of tracer rounds?” He gave her a pointing pose with a knowing grin. His genius was coming back into play.

And she smiled at that, too. “O-Okay... go do your thing...”

She pulled out what was in her pocket after that. A white-and-orange tube containing an epinephrine injection. “I’ll go do mine.” Injecting the shot into her arm, she growled and ran off, summoning Blade Runner.

Now alone, Joshua cracked his knuckles. He sprinted to Armin’s body, inspecting the Glock. He grabbed it, removed the magazine, and removed every bullet until it was just the round in the chamber. He proceeded to wheel the ration carts outside, and had Rebel Moon grab three things: a roll of aluminum foil, a bottle of pesticide, and the gasoline can. It injected three of its syringes into each object, extracting some elements and deflating all but one. The spare gas can, once a colorful red, was now rendered in ‘desaturated’ sepia.

He took out the round in the chamber, holding it long enough for Rebel Moon to inject the chemicals into the gunpowder.

“Get back here, you fucking con!”

Joshua nearly dropped the bullet hearing that, but caught it just in time to see Taylor lunging at him. Blade Runner came by his side to hurl her across the store’s entrance.

Catching her breath, she stared holes at Blade Runner. “Leave me be, you bitch,” she growled, “I’ll gut that bastard... and you can’t stop me!”

“Not if you get past me first,” snapped Jocelyn.

Taylor charged at her, and the two clashed blades. Hurling swords and daggers, each swing of the blade inching closer and closer to butting heads or chests. Though she advanced, her attacks considerably became rash and aimless, the blood loss affecting her combat prowess in endless variables. But Blade Runner maintained defense, the adrenaline shot working wonders for its User.

It parried a thrust of her shiv, smiling, as it bashed the butt of its katana’s handles against her bleeding back. Taylor screeched, uttering curses. She found herself grabbed by Blade Runner, and thrown onto the store’s entrance. The glass windows cracked, but ultimately did not shatter.

“Blade Runner,” Joshua yelled, “catch!‘

It whipped to see Rebel Moon throwing the ‘sepia’ gas can at it, which it caught with ease. A spin and dash followed, and now it cast a deep shadow over Taylor’s utterly vulnerable body.

She responded in malice with a shiv aimed at its mask, but Blade Runner parried. It raised its katana high, intent on hacking her torso from head to shoulder. But nothing came but a feint swing.

“What the f—” she muttered.

She reacted too late to stop Blade Runner from cutting open the gas can, who promptly poured all of its pungent sludge all over her. The fuel’s liquid seeped into her eyes, screaming and writhing away in blood and oil, as she stopped, ducked, and rolled.

“My eyes! My—” She lost it trying to wipe the gasoline off her face. “You... sick... fucking bastards! When I get this off my face, I’m going to—”

Taylor sprang onto her feet, squirming rapidly in a frantic mess. She was like a cat, pouncing around like a blinding laser pointer. But the sooner she got at least a pinch of the oil off her eyes, the agony blanched in her face—seeing Joshua training a gun at her—told the entire story.

“Come get some,” he muttered, as he pulled the trigger.

She felt a bullet go through her shoulder. But the flash wasn’t just a simple orange flash missed in the blink of an eye. It was an explosive green flash, a powerful blast that made the bullet’s path visible; even for just a slight bit. And soon enough, a cloud of fire shot up everywhere on her body. She roared like never before, dropping the shiv as she flailed aimlessly in circles.

She could smell herself being cooked into barbercue, layers of Papercut and her flesh falling off her body, merging until there was nothing separating them. And she couldn’t stop screaming. She couldn’t stop feeling the soot corrode her lungs, choking her until nothing was left.

“Get her, Rebel Moon!” Joshua thrust his arm forward, sending Rebel Moon to finish the job.

It caught the shiv, unleashing a blitz of cuts at her. “ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA—” it screamed in a mechanized chorus, ceasing the barrage. It spun and jumped into the air, yelling one last “ORA!” before dunking the shiv deep in her shoulder.

And after that... everything about her shut down. She stopped moving. She couldn’t acknowledge Rebel Moon’s abysmal eyes peering into her. She fell. Completely inanimate, as crystallization spread across her body and canceled out the flames. What remained of her now was swollen skin, with boiling holes and unkempt strands of hair smoking out of melted glass.

“W-Why...?” she weakly cried out. “I just... wanted... to be loved...”

She fainted.

Papercut’s suit dissipated right after, the crystallization undone. She was now a husk of pink clothes melding into leathery skin, melted glass smoking out of her neck.

Joshua took huge gasps of air as he stood above her body. He tossed the gun and spat at her face, hissing, “You deserve it... you sleazy fuck.”

Feeling the shot wear down, Jocelyn limped across to his side. “Jesus Christ,” she sighed, her eyes narrowed to his face. “How the fuck did you do that...?”

“What made me think of doing it?” Joshua chuckled in relief, and explained: “I went to a shooting range before carrying out the act that’d destroy Glitter. Had the clever idea of pouring gasoline all over a target, and then shooting it with tracer rounds lit everything on fire. But to be completely honest, it’s quite easy to do — I just needed one bullet, a tweak of aluminum and bromine, and—”

“Uh huh, uh huh.” she nodded and went along. ‘What the fuck is he saying sometimes? God, I... I...’

Jocelyn found herself tumbling on her feet, and when she blinked she found herself caught in Joshua’s arms. Her breaths were weak, and she couldn’t go a second without fighting to stay awake.

“J-Jocelyn?!” he yelled with concern. “Are you okay?”

“Y-Yeah, uh... it’s the... it’s wearing off, the... I-I took a shot, and...” She tried to force a growl, but it came off as a moan. “I-It’s getting harder to think... So just l-listen, okay...? Just...”

“W-What do you want me to do?”

“P-Put me... inside... Coco Jumbo... okay?” Her gaze went to Taylor’s body. “A-And... I know you’re gonna... fucking shit on me... f-for this, but... put her body in there, too.”

“What—”

“I-I know, I know,” she reassured, “yes, it sounds h-horrible, but... Whatever you d-do, just... use my bike, okay? S-Since your car got... blown up and all... a-and... When I wake up... we should... carry her body... a-and... tell... the truth...”

“What truth...?”

“Tell the truth,” she repeated, just as her eyes rolled upwards. The next blink, and all that remained was a snoring mess. If this were any other situation, he would’ve thought it sounded cute. But he was terrified. To think that she took an adrenaline shot to push her exhaustion to its limit, that she may have exerted too much of her remaining energy to just... die of fatigue. He couldn’t afford to lose someone now. Especially someone he felt he was closest to since Eddie—even with her general abrasiveness.

From The Author: Heads-up prompt to listen to this track.

“...Shit.” Joshua thought he was screwed. His mind was panicking with mountains of options to take. And as he weighed them all one-by-one, he shook his head and threw them all out. He caught sight of Coco Jumbo standing by Jocelyn’s body, and dragged her until her fingers touched its key. Within a split-second, she shrunk down until she was inside.

He was about to go back to the carts, when his mind drifted back to Taylor’s unconscious body. Even after he spat at her face, he knew Jocelyn wanted him to put her inside Mr.President.

But there were parts of him that screamed “No.” He questioned the purpose of that request; if Taylor was that horrible to her, then why would she— Perhaps... she concocted some kind of plan. Telling the truth was the last thing she said before fainting.

“Fuck it,” he muttered, as he dragged Taylor all the way to Coco Jumbo. He placed her hand on the key until she shrank.

All that was left now was the Livewire. He took up Jocelyn’s purse, placed Coco Jumbo inside, and lifted the bike up to the ground. He wore the purse over his shoulder, and twisted the keys. He revved it until the engines growled healthy enough to drive... but as he slowly moved past the wall of flames, he took a glance at his Lancer.

One last time…

He took it all in: the surge of pleasant memories he had driving it for the first time, the day he almost crashed it during he and Jocelyn’s first meeting, and the tragic fate befell upon it. It didn’t deserve to go like that. To join the fire razing Folie à Deux to the ground. He wanted to grieve, to lament, to risk burning alive just to feel the last of its warmth. But he knew he couldn’t. So he looked away, revved the bike twice, and zoomed all the way into the desert road.

He wished a tear escaped his eye, even if nothing really could. At least it was better than leaving it to suffer.

---

『 User 』 — Charli Taylor
『 Stand Name 』— Papercut

Power: B Speed: A Durability: B Precision: D Range: E Potential: B

『 Observations 』— Detaches any polygon from its suit, which are easily shattered into a shiv that can cut through human skin and most materials—save for metallic surfaces. When anything cut by Papercut, crystallization will spread outwards from the cut, transforming it into chunks of calcified crystals. Substances affected by crystallization retains their previous attributes save for their durability, and can form dust particles with those attributes when their container is destroyed; e.g. liquids, gasoline, etc.

『 User Status 』 — D E A C T I V A T E D
TEMPORARILY DISAVOWED FROM COMBAT

---

 

 

Volume II - Welcome To The Playground

END

Notes:

Remember to give kudos and (optionally) a comment! This helps in supporting this fic and its future endeavors.

Chapter 20: Interlude I: The Hierarchy's A-Changin'

Summary:

Hours after the fight against Papercut, Renata and the Disposable Heroes are invited to a meeting of America's infamous crime families sponsored by the Electra Heart syndicate, in the wake of Remy Wanderlust's 'return' from the shadows.

Notes:

Shout-out to ViziDoodle and seven guests who left a kudos in the previous chapter!

UPDATE (9/4/2025): Rewrote the chapter to be consistent with developments in future chapters (i.e. removing the High Court cameo and substituting it for expanding Common Sense and his criminal organization).

—|[ INTERLUDE I ]|—

The Hierarchy's A-Changin'

 

 

MEANWHILE, IN VETRA CITY...

 

Though the Disposable Heroes found themselves in unfamiliar territory, Vetra City had a distinct reputation amongst the country’s denizens.

To some, the ‘City of Glass’, as they called it, took them back to fictional metropolises ripped from film reels of Hollywood's Golden Age. For others, it was the ‘Working Man’s City’, thanks to high employment rates and an average of 1,918 working hours.

Despite the public’s rose-tinted adoration of the city, however, the 2.9 million who lived in Vetra objected to this misinformed perception.

Vetra City, over the past twenty years, found itself tainted by crime and gangsters taking control of the night scene. It grew to a point where many of the city’s denizens compared walking at night to “avoiding the Black Plague”. One full day living in the city equated to witnessing senseless acts of depravity, drug deals, robberies, and extortions among others.

And their case wasn’t helped by the fact the Electra Heart syndicate—most of whom carried dinosaur skulls and lightning bolt symbols—forced the city’s officials to submit to its de-facto rule.

Renata threw out her investment in those facts. Business alone was her game, and the clock ticked for everyone to play.

“Looks like we’re here, folks,” Dallas announced to the four members on board. Renata and the others—Zedd, Casey, and Bludworth—were stone-faced, yet relief washed over their faces. The exhausting trip to Vetra was over.

On the night of Joshua & Jocelyn’s encounter with Crywank and Charli Taylor, three of Shakedown’s elite gangs were selected by random to attend a secret meeting of America’s finest crime families. Vetra City’s own Common Sense, leader of Electra Heart and ‘Mayor’ of Vetra, served as host. The invitation surprised the Disposable Heroes, but they knelt to the ground in honor. To them, it meant the world that their selection added to their notoriety as Shakedown’s ‘Number One’.

Stepping out of the van, they stood in reverence of the Electra Heart’s compound, situated north of downtown Vetra. They marveled at the Renaissance-Brutalist construction beyond its titanic gate, domes and rhombuses laying the foundation of its facade. Its strange, doodle-shaped abstract windows and columns formed a gnarled pastiche of the Capitol Building — reflecting the impossible ambition Common sought and wished to obtain.

“Aaaa~~h,” Zedd cracked their neck, “finally...! My ass has been sore for two hours!”

“Uh huh,” Dallas retorted. “Blame the traffic.”

“Blame the traffic, eh?” Bludworth grabbed Dallas by the collar.

“H-Hey,” he screamed, “what’s your—”

“Oi, if you were a good driver, you wouldn’t have spent thirty minutes ogling that damn museum!”

“Hey, it ain’t my fault the traffic was bad—”

“Everyone, please!” Renata boomed, jolting everyone’s attention.

“This is no time to be joking around! We’re on business here. Business. Here.” She gesticulated. “We’re not home, we’re not in Shakedown either. We’re in real criminal territory. This is Vetra. Nobody here will play by our rules but theirs, so we have to be very careful. Got it?”

All four nodded.

“Understand that we can’t afford to screw this up, because if we do? All we’ll ever become are those ‘class clowns’ who pretended to be ‘somebody’ for a change, and fucked up trying to do so. Got it?”

“Y-Yes, Boss,” Bludworth gulped.

“Good.” She sighed. “Let’s proceed.”

The Disposable Heroes sauntered down the gate, eyes trained on the guards patrolling the area. With each step, the foreboding sense of being a laughing stock for the families grew. They dreaded it more than the trip to get there.

Upon reaching the gates, the guards raised their palms.

“Halt,” one guard with a gold tooth said, “this is a restricted area — members only.” Renata’s gargantuan figure dwarfed him, but he wasn’t anywhere near intimidated.

“Bullshit!” Zedd groaned. “We’ve got an invite, and you won’t let us through?!”

“Show identification, then.” The other guard donning a flashy beret beckoned.

“ID, huh...” Renata stroked her chin. A flash of amethyst glinted in her eyes, glaring at the first guard with a Joker card in hand. “Perhaps... this should let you know that we’re guests of honor.”

The guard swiped the card from her. He inspected it, noting that it was hand-carved from dinosaur fossils. As he shone a blacklight pen over the card, revealing an invisible painting of the Electra Heart’s symbol, his eyes widened.

The other guard nodded. “You may pass,” he said, opening the gate.

As the compound’s facade welcomed them, Casey stood there wiping her eyes. “How did you just do that...?” she asked Renata.

“Never underestimate the power of research,” she answered, taking the first step inside the compound. Zedd followed, and Dallas, until she and Bludworth remained.

“Shoulda knew you weren’t cut out for the business,” Bludworth said, bumping his fist against her elbow.

“Piss off, ‘Captain’,” she hissed as she followed the rest.

 

–[ ★★★ ]–

 

Upon first glance, the roaring behemoth of a tyrannosaurus fossil greeted anyone who set foot in the compound’s ‘war room’. It towered over the room by twelve feet — nearly touching the ceiling at its peak. The fossil’s skull watched over the room like a voyeur, observing the families and gangs who assembled across the roundtable with apprehension. Its blank stare overpowered them. Locking them deep in a broken pressure-cooker, waiting for its moment to explode.

Remy Wanderlust’s return was that moment, inciting pleas to whomever they worshipped that his return was a mere rumor.

Nameless faces, Irish, thick Italian-American voices — all formed a cacophony of murmurs and whispers who sang the condemnation of his name. One man, finding the chorus an annoyance, rang a bell that sent them in silence.

“Order, damn it,” a slick brunette man with a ‘heart’ scar in his face yelled. “Order in the roundtable, mind you!”

The Mafiosi sat in the war room gathered themselves, eyes and ears reserved for the man: Common Sense. He sprawled in his chair and sighed.

“We haven’t said jack,” he said. “Yet you’re sitting down, blathering about nonsense like children in a playground! All of you!”

“But our drug imports—”

“Signor Chitarra, PLEASE.” Common raised his palm. “Let me remind you what your purpose in this meeting is.” The man raised himself from the seat, circling the roundtable as he procured his cane.

The Electra Heart guards’ eyes tracked his limping gait like cameras.

“You are not here to complain, to worry over the news like some teenager dreading their first love. Ladies and Gentlemen, you are here to listen. To make suggestions with a clear mind,”—he pointed to his temple as he passed several Mafiosi—“to keep such grating chatter to yourselves. That... is your purpose. Now, you’ve all heard the news. Los Angeles in mourning, weeping over their losses — as if they even knew them personally in the first place. All while the real problem, the one they should be weeping over, is sitting right under their nose.

“Yes, I am referring to Remy Wanderlust.”

Whispers resounded across the war room, leaving Common pinching his nose.

“Now, I hope you understand,” he resumed, “that while the paranoia is justified... I believe you’re all blowing it out of proportion.”

“Does this mean James Glitter is making a comeback?” shuddered one Mafioso.

“No, that’s bullshit,” he retorted. “Glitter is serving his life sentence in Florida. And like the fossil he is, he barely knows anything.”

“What about our gambling exports,” shouted another, “Glitter targeted our casinos for profit, Christ’s sake!”

“Did you bother beefing your security?”

“We didn’t have the funds—”

“That’s your problem, not mine. Besides...” Common stopped as he passed the edge of the table, where one of the Shakedown gangs sat on. “You are all proving my point. And if you can’t keep any of that gossip to yourselves... the door is waiting for you to leave.” He pointed to the war room’s exit. “Now...”

He eyed the man in front of him, a cowboy with green braids adorned in the finest Navajo weave.

“Mr. Lowa,” he said, “mind if I... asked you some questions?”

The cowboy—Jackie Lowa of Made in America—was startled. “Why, yes, Mr. Common?” he drawled in deep Southern.

“You share history with Remy Wanderlust, yes?”

“Can’t say I don’t,” Jackie shrugged. “We were friends in captivity, to put it lightly. Nothin’ more. Just a kid made of sticks ‘n stones with nothin’ more than a noggin to rival Einsteen.” He hid a grin.

“It’s Einstein,” Common frowned, “but I can believe that. Did he ever mention plans for a comeback when you were with him?”

“No. I’d be surprised if he wanted back in, honestly.”

“How so?”

Jackie sighed. “He wanted out. Out of this business, out of... everythin’. Yer tellin’ me that the first time my partner and I hear from him in five years — this is what happens? Some kids at school get gassed, and the whole world just believes he did all that?”

Common glared at him.

“S-Sorry,” he gulped, rubbing his hat. “I just... can’t believe it. He’d never do that to those kids. Not the Remy I know, at least.”

His companion, a Protoman android dressed in pink, patted him in the shoulder.

“Very well.” Common made the trek back to his seat. “Anyways,” he said while walking there, “I want to cut it off. The threat you believe he is. Sever his legs, his arms, hang what remains of him as a trophy. To ensure that our business, as we know it, will carry on without him holding us down.” He hissed at the thought.

Jackie gulped, holding the hand of his companion tight.

“Now,” he cleared his throat, gripping the headboard of his chair. “I, Common Sense, sole representative of Electra Heart. President and sponsor of the meeting.”

He snuck a glance at the disheveled mime woman sitting behind him. The mime’s eyes bulged, sucking on her fingers.

He pointed at the others: “representatives Moroder and Capellini of the Cosa Nostra society... capo Chitarra and his soldatos of the Bonnanos... capos Andolino and Antonini of the Gambinos... boss Donagh Clayton and capos Arán & Ricin of the... Irish Mob... As for our esteemed guests from Shakedown...

“Marshall Jackie Lowa and Dame Barbara D’Angelo of Made In America,” he announced.

Jackie tipped his hat in response, as did Barbara.

“Wayne Hester and his... vampires... of the Bloodhounds.”

Wayne and his cabinet of six hissed and bared their fangs, pounding their chests adorned in Byzantine and Deathrock garments. Some of the Mafiosi gagged, taking their stares off their vicinity.

“And lastly... the Disposable Heroes.”

All at once, everyone laid their eyes upon the end of the table opposite his side, a blank row of seats which the Disposable Heroes were meant to sit. Their absence screamed at them like a night creature.

Common squinted at the seats, stroking his chin as he said, “That’s... strange.”

“I’m sorry,” Jackie raised his voice, “but with all due respect, I think they’re a no-show—”

The sudden visage of Renata and her crew flashed before the table. Their presence squashed everyone’s chatter in the room, silence so loud wood creaked with the guards’ steps. Not a single word escaped their mouths — Jackie clung into Barbara for dear life. Wayne and his Bloodhounds’ expressions were blank, not out of apathy, but petrifying agony. Standing next to them was Shakedown’s ‘Number One’ in crime, and God forbid they crossed them by mistake.

Common laughed. “Signora Clariss,” he said, “we ought to think your invitation was a fluke.”

“Pardon me, Signor Common,” she smiled.

Renata commanded the other Disposable Heroes to take a seat, and they followed suit. She took hers with the Joker card in hand. “I thought it best to ensure we make it here... safely.”

“Do you feel threatened?”

“No. We feel welcomed.” She winked at Jackie and Wayne. “It would be polite if you asked them the same question instead.”

Common chuckled, tugging on his tie. “A-Ah,” he said, “I see you have a calling card of ours.”

“I paid someone I trust, someone he knows he can trust, just to make sure this calling card is as authentic to Electra Heart’s beliefs as I could.” She showed the Joker card to him, hiding it in her pockets soon after. “Now that everyone’s here... what gives?”

“We were discussing the Remy Wanderlust situation, Signora.” He informed, sitting down on his chair.

“The Remy Wanderlust situation...?”

“Yes, yes, we were... figuring out how to rectify this growing problem. Ensure it won’t grow to a point it consumes us all.”

“Oh.” A faint smile of ingenuity flared in her face. “I believe... we may have played an insignificant part in it.”

Renata watched as murmurs rose across the table, jaws clattering onto the floor.

“Elaborate,” he boomed.

“Very well...” She explained with a firm head, “Well over a week ago, I sent two of my men to execute a hit. One of them died, and the other couldn’t join us due to... work-related circumstances.”

Casey sighed, rubbing her hood.

“The target herself? I’m afraid you’ll be surprised to know... she just so happens to be Giodessa Giovanna.”

In an instant, the room erupted in mania. Voices upon voices cultivated into a clamor of protest — the bosses spoke over their capos, the capos to their subordinates, to the guards, until they suffocated the room with their incessant chatter. Common gritted his teeth, hissing, clawing at his ears like he wanted to rip them off. To unhear the hysterics growing beyond his control.

“That is preposterous!”

“Impossible!”

“Are you crazy, bitch?! Do you have any idea what you’re doing?!”

“No sane person would dare,” yelled Moroder, “are you attempting to start a war you can’t win?!”

“Everyone, please,” Renata raised her voice, “I understand your concerns, but there’s no need to scream them out.”

“And?” Common questioned. “Are you sure you attempted a hit with a sound mind?”

“As sound as yours,” she resumed. “Outrage aside, she survived. The attempt on her life failed, for reasons beyond our control. I reckoned that she’d survive all that. But not the fact she ran into Mr. Wanderlust himself by coincidence. That I didn’t account for at all.”

“Well, what of it?”

“What of it, Signor Common? They’re Stand Users. Like me, like the rest of my crew... It’s a thread of fate that connects our kind to one another, regardless of protest. But, if I might add...” She grinned. “I may have been displeased with the outcome at first: my associate failed to trigger the bomb that would’ve killed her, and my other one went down with his life fighting... but the more I thought of it, the more I realized the genius of my error.

“They’re so... perfect for each other. Fit like mismatched jigsaw pieces as they may, but it’s true.”

“Get on with it, Signora,” Common frowned, “where does all that tie into rectifying the problem?”

“That’s the easy part... I know for a fact they’re in Los Angeles right now,” she answered. “Whether they’ve run off or gone into hiding, it doesn’t matter. In fact, I doubt they’d stand a chance against half the police force — knowing they have such piss-poor cooperation, it makes you pity them.”

She leaned forward eagerly, splaying her palms against the table. “Matter of fact, one of my contacts from the Speedwagon Foundation just informed me that they’re hunting him down as we speak.”

“The Protoman manufacturer?!” A Mafioso yelled.

“That’s right. Their Board of Directors, to be specific, made the emergency decision to send out Stand users in their contacts to go after him. And frankly... I don’t see why we shouldn’t capitalize on that.”

“Oh?” Common fidgeted his ring, squinting at her. “You want us to capitalize on a country-wide manhunt? Is that your solution?”

“I believe so, Signor Common. I believe we have a golden opportunity in our hands.”

“Pardon the intrusion, Mr. Sense,” Donagh interjected. “But if you are to do such things, Ms. Clariss, how much are you asking?”

“Thirty-million dollars.”

The Mafiosis’ stifled fits of laughter left her blood boiling. She thought the money was a reasonable price for her aspirations, not a sad joke that everyone but herself, her gang, and the Electra Heart snickered out of pity. It was one thing for her to seethe at this. But another to see her comrades’ faces lose color, knowing that the mockery they feared would happen came to pass.

“Boss,” Zedd nudged, “we should—”

“No need.” Unfazed, Renata soldiered on. She elaborated, “I want thirty million dollars’ worth of your best Stand Users. Your best soldatos. Guns, if necessary. And all I ask of you is thirty million. Nothing more. But I prefer if you sponsor the funds off-shore — we wouldn’t want to leave such an obvious trail, yes?”

Donagh, who couldn’t believe her choice of words, rocked in his chair chuckling. “How are you sure something as asinine as your request would be worth it?!” he yelled.

“I’m simply giving you an opportunity.”

“What fucking opportunity?” His chuckle shot up into a grating laughter that enraptured their room. Renata sighed, as did Common, among others. They questioned the worth of his invitation.

“Mr. Clayton,” she hissed, “do we have a problem?”

“A problem? Why, yes!” Donagh couldn’t resist another chuckle, slicking his gel-laced auburn hair back. “Let me ask you this: what school did you go to? A school for grifters? Yes, I know I’m getting called out for my hypocrisy, but I’m not stupid enough to spout the false crap you’ve given us!”

“What...?” She feigned confusion.

“Brainless twat—”

“Donagh, please...” Ricin pleaded.

Renata launched from her chair, its legs scraping the floor as it fell. Zedd reached out, begging her not to go through with it. But she caressed their face. “Relax, Zedd,” she reassured.

She sauntered over Donagh’s seat with unusual grace, staring daggers at him and his men as she arrived.

“What, are ya pissed ‘coz I told the truth everyone is too scared to point out?” Donagh chuckled, hiding his fear enough for a quiver to go noticed. “Of course you wouldn’t understand. Lifting powder-kegs is your thing, after all. ”

Renata fixed a scowl at him, an amethyst shine flickering in her eyes. Her left cheek twitched.

“Really, now? A twitch?” He held back a smile. “Well, then...”

Donagh stood up from his chair, his chin up high as he squinted back at her. The difference in size was staggering; but she did not faze him.

“You listen to me very... very carefully,” he said, tightening his ascot tie while jabbing a finger at her bosom. “I’m not scared of you, Ms. Clariss. And I doubt you scare anyone, you super-sized roid freak bitch. See how everyone laughed at you, kid? Face it. You’re not on their level. You’re not on my level. You’re just a spokesperson for your lackeys, who didn’t make it obvious they wrote everything for you. And frankly, they did a piss-poor job—”

As the words escaped his mouth, Renata snatched her Joker card and twisted it in a 90-degree angle. She grabbed him by the shoulder as the card’s glint flashed ‘green’ — and both she and Donagh ‘Vanished’. The Irish Mob’s capos reared from their chairs, calling out to him.

“DONAGH!” Ricin screamed, looking in circles. He glared at the Disposable Heroes’ side of the table—his stare piercing Zedd’s skittish fidgeting—and marched onto them.

“Where did he go, lassie...?” His fist clenched.

“U-Uh,” they hastily snapped back, “I-I don’t know what you’re talking about—”

“WHERE DID HE GO?!”

A chair from behind Ricin screeched bloody murder, startling him. It was Donagh’s chair, beaten down and scratched by what appeared to be claws. Donagh was there, writhing on the floor, with Renata standing tall beneath him; her glove soaked in crimson. He bled from his nose and jaw, pieces of fractured bone giving the skin around them a slight dent.

“Y-You bitch...!” Ricin screamed, about to aim his gun—

“STAND,” Common yelled, “down... Put that gun away, dammit!”

As Ricin returned the gun to his holster, Donagh grabbed the undone ascot tie, loosening the wrap around it.

“C-Caille...” he moaned. “Cailleach... Cailleach...”

“As I was saying,” she resumed as she returned to her seat, “I’m giving you an opportunity to ‘kill two birds with one stone’. The Speedwagons will be busy sending their Users to get them, yes. But they’ll be distracted. They won’t even know the moment Passione decides to intervene — which they will. Because should they come to take them both back, we have a chance to take them out.”

Collective gasps swirled throughout the table, the bosses conversing with their capos regarding her. They wore regret on their sleeve from the lack of chances they gave her — but it sated her to know she got the reaction she wanted.

Zedd’s eyes widened, almost chuckling. “Girl,” they asked, “is this all...?”

“Not just that,” Renata nodded back. She gazed upon the rest of the families.

“To be frank with all of you... I expected this. The outrage, the initial... shock of it all. But never forget: Passione has been a complete blight in the business, especially Giorno Giovanna and the yes-men in his payroll who refuse to say no. It doesn’t help that his precious daughter is in the country, either — expanding the family business and taking no prisoners at that. Now, make no mistake. Interpret the opportunity all you want. Revenge... Profit... But I am providing you this golden opportunity so generously. Think about it: Dispatching Passione while they’re weak is one thing.

“But the power vacuum — yes, the power vacuum.” She bumped her fist, as though she crushed Passione. “I know you want a taste of that sweet Passione power. I do too. So let’s work together to take it from them. Wouldn’t you agree?”

The families soon scrambled in their seats to process it all. Indecipherable whispers, singsong praises, skepticism of the plan — a cacophony of voices circling the war room all the same. Renata sighed in relief, resting hands on her head. She hadn’t won everyone over in the end, but she earned valuable followers in the cause...

Only one potential follower remained, however...

“Very well, then,” Common said. “It seems we did right by inviting you to the meeting. You provided a solution — a great one, in fact. Now the money is something we’ll need to negotiate... but rest assured, those thirty million will live up to its worth.

“But...” He leaned close to the mime. “Say something, dearest Alice,” he whispered, “say something...”

The mime—Alice—gulped. “I-If... this Passione... threat... were to cross Electra Heart t-territory...” she said, her fingers shaking. “Whatever happens... we will h-handle... them. Without outside interference.”

“Yes, without outside interference.” He reiterated.

“That I completely understand,” Renata responded, “and you have my word. We won’t do anything that violates the agreement.”

“Now, Signora Clariss.” He leaned forward, caressing his heart scar. He hid a grin. “If any lesser mind were to provide us another solution, it’d certainly be... farcical. But I’m astounded, really. Tell me, this is your first time in a meeting like this, right?”

“Not exactly, Signor Common. I’ve met with the LA mob before. It was child’s play in comparison.”

“Fascinating... Now—”

Common rang the bell. “Signora Clariss has offered us this bountiful and compelling solution to the problem. Almost like she’s given us an offer we can’t refuse.”

A few of the Mafiosi nodded.

“All those in support of the Disposable Heroes’ proposition... please... say ‘Aye’.”

Most people in the war room unanimously voiced a passionate “Aye”.

“For those not in support of the proposition... say ‘Nay’.”

Only a few voices—those from the Irish Mob, Made in America, and the Bloodhounds—voiced a whelmed “Nay”.

“It’s settled, then...” Common proclaimed, “As of today, June 4th of the year of our Lord 2029—barring the refusal of the Irish Mob and the other gangs from Shakedown—Renata Clariss and the Disposable Heroes will receive full support for our... newest project. Ensuring that Remy Wanderlust and Passione will get the reckoning they deserve — and that we, once and for all, will bask in the glory of their power.

“Meeting's dismissed.” He rang the bell one last time.

Notes:

Remember to give kudos and (optionally) a comment! This helps in supporting this fic and its future endeavors.

Chapter 21: Interlude II: Theory of a Deadman

Summary:

Shortly after the meeting at Valencia Manor, Renata and the Disposable Heroes receive news of Galen's brutal demise. A day later, they mourn for their loss and ponder what comes after.

Notes:

Shout-out to two guests who left a kudos in the previous chapter!

—|[ INTERLUDE II ]|—

Theory of a Deadman

 

 

The irony of Vetra City’s streets was that—even though it was a healthy balance between Los Angeles’ openness and New York’s sprawling claustrophobia, driving in it was hell. Every road felt like they zig-zagged between narrow and wide roads, bumpy and smooth roads, or distractingly neon business districts which the towering Horizon Tower perched like a vulture. But luckily for them, Dallas’ driving was meticulous enough to get them through the toughest of roads.

Though he felt like bragging about his driving skills, Renata’s jaw-dropping proposal gagged him enough to stay silent across the ride. Casey, on the other hand...

“Jesus Christ, Boss,” she guffawed, “you went out there and got just about everybody to rally our cause! Wow!”

“Still didn’t get the High Court’s support, though,” retorted Bludworth.

“Shut up, ‘Captain’...” she practically hissed that last word. “You already know those fucks are hard enough to impress! Hell, I called how they’d say ‘no’ during the last Uno night we played!”

“I was tryin’ ta agree with ye,” he clarified.

“Still doesn’t change anything...”

“Least we got outta that mansion fackin’ alive, mate! Thought that dinosaur cunt would come alive ‘n eat us all. Ain’t I right, y’all?” A fidget of his pirate hat screamed all sorts of relief.

“Like they would think killing us on the spot would be a good idea,” Renata joined in with a relaxed chuckle. “I only told them the sweet little things they needed to hear. And let’s be honest, even we want Passione gone as much as the other person in the room, yeah?”

The rest of her gang cheered heartily in agreement.

“Damn right, Boss!” Zedd bumped their fist.

“So who’s gonna pay for drinks, this time?” asked Casey.

“Isn’t it obvious?” Bludworth pointed a finger at her, grinning. “Karma’s a bitch, and y’gotta pay the price for it.”

“Fuck you, man,” she flipped him off, “at least I don’t kill people with my pranks!”

“Bludworth. Casey.” Renata glared at them both.

“S-Sorry,” she frowned, draping her hood down over.

“My bad,” he whistled, “but ya gottah agree with me! It's only fackin' logical that Case pays fawr the bloody drinks, mate!”

“Y’know what? I disagree.” Reclining back on her chair, Renata proposed, “All drinks on me. No further expenses paid from all of you.”

“Boss, that’s ridiculous!” Zedd protested, adjusting the lapels on their jacket. “It’d be cheating if you keep this habit, y’know! Why not let someone else pay — hell, why don’t I pay? We’re celebrating the miracle you just pulled off, y’know? I was like... on edge! The fact you and that Irishman ‘Vanished’ and he cried bloody murder? And everyone shut their mouths from laughing when you reminded them how much hated Passione is everywhere? You deserve all the success, girl. Getting our own private army and all that.”

“W-Wow, Zedd,” Renata’s face was a faint red, a flattering smile leaking out. “You really know how to tug at my heartstrings, huh?”

“Uh huh,” they laughed, crossing their arms, “I wasn’t your first mate at our cause for a reason.”

Renata jumped when she heard buzzing in her coat’s pocket, opposite the one where she kept the Joker card. Her jaw was ajar and her eyes big. But her eyebrows were scrunched all the way down. She groaned, reaching down for the pocket that vibrated.

“Um, Boss...?” Zedd looked at her with concern.

“I gotta take this,” she sighed heavily, before pulling out her phone and answering... “Hello?”

“Is this Ms. Renata Clariss?” A male’s baritone voice boomed from the other end.

“Y-Yes,” she replied. “Who is this?”

“Ma’am, this is Officer Raymond Vertice of the Los Angeles Police Department,” he said. “Are you a relative of Galen Crawford’s?”

“R-Relative? No, no, I-I... I’m a business associate of Mr. Crawford’s. Matter of fact, he works as an employee at the garage business I run. One of our best, if I say so myself! What gives?”

All of them but Renata stopped the moment they heard his surname uttered. Even though no word was spoken, they immediately understood one thing. Their minds clawed away at the possibilities: telling them dreadful things, reassurances, and those in-between. Just how and why... someone in the middle of the night would call their Boss about him. Whether it spelled doom or not.

“I regret to inform you that Mr. Crawford has passed away,” Raymond announced.

She couldn’t believe it at first. No way a police officer in Los Angeles—hundreds of miles away from Vetra—would say such a thing. But as each moment flew away, she sought her feelings. And knew it to be true. Renata felt her stomach drop ten floors down, freezing in chills from head-to-toe. She was ghastly pale, but never before had her lackeys seen her so white. The blank stare stretching metaphorically straight to the garage, the lips neither open nor closed... She was a zombie. And everyone dreaded what she’d say next.

“I-I, wha...? How?”

“We found him dead on UCLA campus this morning,” he explained, shivering at the thought of his body. “I-I... I don’t know how to tell you, to be honest. He doesn’t... look right. He’s eviscera— Y’know what, I’d rather spare you the thought of seeing him how I did.”

She was left dumbstruck by the news, even her mind transcended beyond to not recognize where she was.

“But... I know he wouldn’t want you to worry. And tell you he’s in a much better state than he is now. Condolences to you—”

Renata hung up the phone before he could finish.

Though the others lacked the skillful observation their Boss had, they could tell she was going through it. Questions and answers to distract her from the pain, even if she already knew it as true. A chaotic mix of emotions. Of killings to melancholy, of Raymond being truthful or deceiving. An asset to her success was dead. And the second chance she gave him... squandered to nothing.

Stopping by a red light, Dallas broke his silence and asked what they had been asking themselves: “H-Hey, bawse...? What happened?”

His question was strong enough to break her ‘zombified’ state. Swallowing her grief down the pitfalls of her stomach, she informed: “Galen is dead.”

 

–[ ★★★ ]–

 

Under a stormy sky, lightning crackled. Under a violent outpouring of rain, a tent of grievers surrounded the closed casket of Galen Crawford. And everything outside were just tall trees, soaked in the rain, casting gloom over headstones of the dead and priests praying for a dead soul to pass through the pearly gates.

But instead of joining the grievers, they helplessly watched as his casket was being lowered. Adorned in black-and-white, umbrellas over their heads to keep them safe from the rain.

Galen was, by all means, an Army powerhouse whose reputation was doomed the moment he pursued Vespertine’s distribution. If only it didn’t end like this. If only he had just led his Delta Force team to victory without going after it, he would’ve been the recipient of a Medal of Valor. If only he shot that User dead, he wouldn’t have lost control and killed all of his men. Being honorably discharged to cover up the murders did not service him either; it only reminded him that he was cursed.

That working 9-to-5 jobs just to support his ailing family was punishment for something he was held hostage of. This was a belief he had, the moment he first awakened his Stand. And being stripped off his ranks only vindicated that belief.

But one hellish day at the retail store he worked at, Renata came to him. She pitied his story, and offered to give him a second chance. He dismissed it at first, yet somehow... she was an interesting fellow. Rarely did he meet a Stand user who wasn’t an enemy in battle, but a friend who understood his trauma well.

And it did not help that the contracts she offered paid well. As days turned into weeks, the contracts he fulfilled grew richer and richer, until he finally left his retail gig behind. He became one of the Disposable Heroes’ most loyal members. And with near-perfect synergy with the other members—in particular Casey herself—they became unstoppable. And it just got better and better. No thanks to the invitation to Valencia Manor generously offered by Common, that secured them an army backed by many of America’s crime families.

If only he knew his next contract was his last.

If only he knew that he would meet his end, by the man indirectly responsible for his downfall. With assistance from Passione’s heir, no less.

It was two nights ago when they last saw Galen. He, like the rest of the team, was unstoppable. His Special Forces training made him perfect for the job, yet... to think he would die to an unknown enemy left them astounded. He was gone... gone too soon.

“I-I don’t understand,” shivered Casey, holding an umbrella over her head. “Every hit he did alone, he did it perfectly! Even he took care of that deal with the California Girls like it was nothing! J-Just how... in the goddamn did he get killed in the first place?”

“I am baffled the same way you are...” Renata replied, likewise with an umbrella.

Observing the funeral from afar, Bludworth stood next to them. “Woever's the bloody muck that dealt the bloody killing blow,” he added, “mustah been one helluva tough cunt.”

“Two...?” Zedd squinted. “Weren’t they... three? If that Speedwagon fuck counts.”

“Ehh, he was just a bystandah,” he defended his omission. “A wounded one...”

After staring at it for an undisclosed time, Dallas blinked. He sighed, and after a long while, turned to the others and shuddered, “I don't know about yah mooks, but if those two killed them awf themselves? We can't undehestimate them. I mean, I'm not a Useh like tha rest ah yah... but just think ahf it.”

“Like we’re thinking about going after them,” Zedd snapped.

“I know, fella,” he shrugged, the grip on his umbrella shaking. “I-I’m just sayin’, y’all... Don't y'all gotta fuss about... dying... like that? If I was a ghost, I'd probably run awf and cry like a bitch if I seen myself crispy and cut in half like that.”

“Don’t you dare remind me of his dead body!” Casey lunged at him.

Dallas recoiled. “Casey, what the hell—”

“Casey, stop.” Renata held her back before she could touch him. “Let’s not do this, please. Especially since we could attract any unwanted attention from them.” She darted a finger at the tent. “Understand?”

She was left huffing out heavy sighs, turning away as her glare turned into profound emotion.

He was confused, yet his frown expressed more than what his words conveyed. “I-I don’t get it,” he said. “What’s up with her?”

“You really don’t know, do you...?” Zedd placed a hand on her shoulder. “I mean, I understand. We’ve barely had you for three weeks.”

“No, I...”

Letting out her last sigh, Casey looked back at him, tears in her eyes. She sniffled, “H-Hey, I... fuck me. I shouldn’t have yelled at you like that. S-Sorry... you being the new guy and... all.”

“N-No, I think I was being insensitive—”

“Look,” she interjected, “Just let me— explain, alright? Uh...” She wiped her tears. “I... wasn’t exactly worth shit. Back when I first started. But he was there, alright? Yes, he really didn’t trust us back then. Heck, he was worth more than I was. But he was the closest thing to a real Dad to me, dammit! I was a 20-somethin’ fuckup, but he swooped in like an angel, y’know? And he made 24-year-old me the best she’s ever been in her goddamn life! And to think...”

She couldn’t go another word without her voice cracking. “To think he just... gets killed like that...?! It’s unfair! It’s... I-I’m sorry, I just... I just... can’t... I can’t believe he’s gone.”

Tears weren’t the only thing she broke into, but sobs. She fell helplessly onto Zedd’s arms, face squeezed into their bosom as she sobbed. They responded with care, reciprocating the embrace and ruffling her hair as every ounce of grief leaked out. “It’s okay,” they said gently, “just let it out. It’s okay...”

After hearing all that, Dallas’ shoulders slumped down. He looked down and away from her, mouth straightened. It left him dejected, to think he carelessly expressed his fear of dying and triggered such an emotional response from her.

“S-Sorry about that,” he gulped, “I didn't think they wehe pretty close...”

“I understand,” Renata reassured him, “I would’ve said the same if I were you.”

Drowning out her wails with the rain, Bludworth gazed out the tent once more. The casket was out of their view, and trucks began dumping dirt on the hole. One by one, as each griever walked away with umbrellas in hand, he pondered how in the hell they ended up like this. How they went from celebrating the deal’s success last night, to grieving him the next day.

“What now...?” His question was enough to put them in the same track. “What do we do?”

“What do you mean by that?” asked Dallas.

“I just don't know weah we go from this. Galen's gone 'n kicked the bloody bucket, 'n we don't know weah ta stahrt. Weah ta recover, weah ta... facken' hell...”

“I don’t know, really...” He rubbed his head, whistling. “I don’t... wanna think about it. Not just 'coz he kicked tha bucket, as yah've said. I just don't know how tah deal with it. This... whole thing, this... I don't know.”

Latching onto his question, Renata did not hesitate to speak out: “We do as I say.”

“What will we do, Boss?” Bludworth raised his voice.

“Avenge him,” she answered, “no matter the cost...”

“What—” Zedd cursed, marching onto her in protest. Hand on heart, they argued, “Boss, you can’t be serious about this. We’re dealing with his funeral right now, and you’re asking us to hunt down his killers right away?!”

“Yeah, I don’t feel like doing it either,” added Bludworth.

“Think about what Casey’s going through, Ren!”

Renata’s eyes darted towards them, the moment she heard it. Confusingly enough, her eyes were wet, yet they twitched with loathsomeness. “Don’t call me that, Zedd. Not while we’re still mourning him.”

Zedd bit their lip. “Sorry,” they replied, “but still... this is unethical what you’re asking us to do.”

“Believe me, I understand your concerns,” she affirmed, “but think of this from his perspective. Would he want us to mourn so long we forget he was killed? Or would he want us to make the bastards regret picking a bone with all of us?”

Even with the rain, everyone by the tree they stood became debatably silent. They knew in their hearts she was right, that Galen would’ve wanted the latter option. It was, per Zedd’s words, unethical. They questioned if it was right, if it was morally correct to pursue them so soon. Sure enough, they were criminals. But choosing to waste time exacting revenge over getting through their grief... it wasn’t right.

“They must pay,” blazed Casey as she jumped into the conversation.

Everyone but Renata turned to her, yelling “No”, thinking her grief was taking control of her rationality. But Renata smiled, knowing there was at least one person who agreed.

“You got them together,” she growled, trying not to cry or overwhelm herself in rage. “And they took away the one thing I cared about. So it stands that you lead the way, help us hunt them down, make them feel what he felt. ‘Coz as long as they die like that—”

“Casey, please,” Zedd argued—

“—I’ll be sleeping like a baby, knowing they—”

“You’re not thinking straight—”

“BULLSHIT, Zedd!” She jumped straight into their face, yelling at her. “I am thinking straight, dammit! And all I want is for those two fucking red-blue blue-red pieces of shit to die! Do you get what I fucking mean?!”

“Case,” Bludworth intruded—

She roared at him before he said another word. He recoiled, aghast she had turned this way. He never liked her or anything, but... to see her fraught with anger left him sweating.

“N-No, mate. I...” he sighed in resignation. “I reckon the bloody Boss is right. We ‘ave ta move 'n make them suffah at the bloody eahrliest opportunity.”

Even Dallas solemnly nodded, and said to Renata, “I'm ahf nah good use, but... whateveh yah ask ahf me? I'll do it gladly.”

She smiled back at him, before giving Zedd a tiny glare that spelled ‘ultimatum’. It was certain they’d answer in complete argument against it, knowing their stance when she brought up the dispute that it’d be for Galen and not herself. Until...

“I guess I have no choice,” they surrendered. “Whatever you say goes... Boss.”

Dallas looked away from the tent. He turned behind him, umbrella in hand, as he peered out the endless trees and headstones in the distance. It was as if he was looking at the garage. “Well, what are we gonna do now?” he asked.

“We’ll rest for the day,” Renata answered. “Tomorrow, I’ll make a phone call. Then we hunt them down. I’d like it if we had the army straight away... but our skills will do. For now.”

Stepping out of the tree with her umbrella, she ordered, “Let’s go.”

Without further hesitations, they followed her lead, with umbrellas keeping them from being soaked in the rain. As they walked out into the cemetery, they shrank and shrank until they were dark blobs indistinguishable from the leaves that fell. But unbeknownst to most of them, something was left behind by the tree’s roots. A bouquet of white chrysanthemum flowers laid there, both it and an opened letter wet from rainwater.

Its contents read:

          “I’m sorry.”
                                      – Renata

Notes:

Remember to give kudos and (optionally) a comment! This helps in supporting this fic and its future endeavors.

 

Author's Notes coming soon.

Chapter 22: Vol. 3 - Wasting My Hate

Summary:

Returning to the present, Joshua & Jocelyn grapple with the consequences of fighting Taylor and her Papercut; as the former comes up with a 'genius' plan to prevent a terrible conflict from coming to pass.

Notes:

Shout-out to Leggoeggo, torch_dremuur, ExtraDipperton and five guests who left a kudos in the previous chapter!

UPDATE (6/29/24): Rewritten to fit the changes in Vol. 2

UPDATE (12/12/24): Edited a section that contributed to an erroneous plot point, and changed a few names to lessen gratuitous references to multiple fanparts.

Volume III - The Neverending Exes Story

BEGIN

 

 

—|[ CHAPTER 22 ]|—

Wasting My Hate

 

THE DAY BEFORE...

 

“I tell you now, NO car! No car you use! Okeh?!”

Joshua spent five hours alone, driving Jocelyn’s e-bike all the way to Shakedown... only for him and Jocelyn to agree: begging Alonzo’s Workshop for a car was a mistake. The impression it gave upon the first step was bad enough: garbage bags littered around the doors, flies sticking to any and every bit of exposed skin. The fact it was doing them a disservice—even after Jocelyn spent three grand to fix her bike last week—only added to the stress of fighting two Stand users in one bad day.

“What the f—” He scratched his head. “Really? In these trying times, sir?”

“I say before, and I say again: no car!” A humanoid-looking creature half his size insisted. He had graying blond hair, was dressed in Hawaiian, had shrunken limbs and a weirdly rectangular body. But his permanent goblin scowl; and ears so pointy they were almost devil horns, made him distinct.

This was Alonzo, owner of the garage workshop they found themselves in.

“Jesus Christ,” Joshua groaned, “you can’t be serious about this.”

“Me? Not serious?!” Alonzo laughed, slapping his thigh. “Me serious! No car, no worth! You are no worth!” He turned to Jocelyn, licking his tongue as he spoke in Italian... “<Pretty lady, you paid me enough for the bike last week. But can you tell your stupid partner that he’s asking more than I can afford?>”

“<Since when did the great Alonzo Melanzane get broke?>” Jocelyn argued, likewise in Italian.

“<Who fucking else?!>” He walked in half-circles, waving his hand in a rambly manner. “<It’s that Renata bitch and her garage services offering quality repairs for dirt cheap! She’s driving my customers away one by one, and if I have to compete with that, I’ll go shit broke—>”

“<I can understand you two, y'know,>” intruded Joshua... in Italian.

She and Alonzo looked at him with bug eyes and slacked jaws. So few things left her shaken enough to lose capable speech. And hearing him speak her mother tongue in near-perfect fluency was one of them. “<Since when the fuck can you speak Italian?>”

“<That’s the thing... I wish I hadn’t,>” he shrugged. “<But you can blame Glitter for that.>”

“What is white boy words?” Alonzo squinted hard at him.

“What the heck are you—”

“No, no car! Me refuse!” He shooed them off, turning behind to a car being customized extensively by his mechanics. “No begging! No money! Only shoo!”

“Oh, come the fuck on!” Jocelyn growled, keeping her hands from pulling her hair out. “We’re doing something fucking important here, and you’re gonna just leave us hanging—”

“Yo,” Joshua grabbed her shoulder, “I need High Jack’s ball.”

“W-What for?” She squinted at him, an eyebrow raised. “Don’t tell me you’re thinking of something stupid...”

“I know what I’m doing. Just hand it over.”

She sighed, and took out one of Jack Ronson’s baubles from her purse. “Fine...” she handed it over. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”

“Trust me.” He grabbed the bauble, and whistled aloud. “<Yo, Alonzo! Come check this out.>”

Alonzo, who would’ve loved it if that irritable ‘white boy’ left him alone, begrudgingly walked to him. He said, “Come again, white boy?”

The sooner he was close, he showed off the bauble. “<Now, this might not seem important,>” he pleaded, “<but hear me out. Just this once.>” 

“Mhm...”

“<You see this ball right here?>” He wiggled the ball, glinting green. “<This... is a ‘medium’. And not just any ‘medium’, Alonzo. This... belonged to the man they call 'High Jack'.>”

“ Ma che cazzo?! 'High Jack'?!” Alonzo perked up in recognition.

“<My partner and I killed him a while back, and as impossible as it may seem... he wasn't unbeatable.>” He offered the bauble. “<It may not be worth shit, right now... but let me tell you something. The more bragging rights this thing bears? The more money people will throw away for you. Because you never know the amount of worth this thing will have — when they find it out just how it all came to be.>”

A blink of his eyes passed. And after seeing ‘rainbow’ flash before that white boy’s glasses, something inside him ‘surrendered’. Whatever second thoughts he had dwelling in his mind drifted apart... “I give you car. Alright, white boy?”

Joshua chuckled, putting up his glasses. “Wise choice...”

But... as Alonzo grabbed the bauble, he put up two fingers right in his face. “Two hours,” he said, “two hours. Give us time. We get car prepared.” He turned to a mechanic leaning by a wall. “Lassie! Chop chop! Where is taxi from last week?!”

“Relax, ‘Lonzo,” she raised her palm up, “we’re not even halfway through with the tires yet!”

“Then fast up!” He waved to the other mechanics. “Fast, fast, fast! Chop chop! Chop chop!”

“Got it!” She wiped a weird mix of sweat and grease off her face. But before she got back to work, she beamed seeing Joshua & Jocelyn. “Oh, it’s you,” she smiled, waving at them.

“Yo,” he waved back.

“What’s this,” Jocelyn questioned, “you double-timing?”

“Yeah, I guess...” Lassie rubbed her head. “It’s just my day job, is all.”

“Uh huh...”

“Lassie, goddamn it! Chop chop! Help with taxi!” Alonzo yelled from the mechanics’ room.

“Got it!” She turned to them one last time. “You heard the man, we’ve only got two hours ‘till this thing is ready.” She left afterwards.

Now... they were left alone for themselves. For two hours, at least. They stepped out of the garage, waving flies off from them, and sighed seconds from each other. Pockets in their hands, they pondered about today’s events. How it escalated from dealing with Crywank’s bullshit, to confronting Taylor and excising her lust towards them, to losing the Lancer in an explosion because of her. She didn’t feel much, not having a clear emotional attachment to it. But Joshua felt he lost a friend. It wasn’t as painful as losing Eddie all those years ago... but it still stung hard. He bit his lip if it meant his thoughts now dwelled on the taxi Alonzo offered.

“What the fuck, man,” Jocelyn intruded his pensive state.

“What,” he frowned.

“You do know that giving the ball away means we have one less ‘medium’ to use, right?”

“It’s not like we’re running out of one—”

“It’s the last ‘medium’ we both have,” she snapped. “If we lose that, there won’t be any going back to reality! Fucking hell, Josh... even if it meant convincing Alonzo to give us a car, think of what that does to us in the long-term.”

“How long does it take for something to become a ‘medium’, then?”

“Not that I’m aware of...” she felt like a nervous wreck. “From what I heard, sometimes it takes an eternity for something to be branded as such. It usually ends up being something dear to whomever marks a ‘medium’. Like High Jack’s balls, for example. Or maybe it could be the brooches on my boots, I dunno.”

“Well...” he sighed, shrugging. “I guess I can say I’m sorry for being dumb like that.”

“Okay...”

“By the way,” he grabbed her hand before she stepped out, “one thing. What did you mean by ‘telling the truth’ before passing out?”

“What else?” She whistled. “The truth about Charli. What that bitch did to me, to that guy she killed in that gas station, and everyone else she might’ve treated like toys.”

“...You’re right.” He whistled as well. “I don’t know how the hell she’s still breathing after... y’know... but at least it’s way better than what it could’ve been.”

“Like what, her dying?”

“I mean, I would’ve liked it if she did. She’s a disgusting person, y’know...”

“Well, you’re right.” Jocelyn sighed, pulling down on her scarf. “But it's just... y’know? If she died, it would’ve complicated things between me and Rooney, right? Like... she’d absolutely hate my guts if she did.”

“Ehh, it’s not like she’d know if you don’t tell her.”

“Oookay, serial killer,” she snarked, “let’s roll with that strategy to break her heart in a million pieces.”

“I mean, it’s not like she’d miss her if she knew the truth. Speaking of...” Joshua felt a buzz in his back pocket. He pulled out a phone from it, which rang a ‘Barbie Girl’ ringtone around the garage’s entrance, and said, “Now might be the time to tell the truth?”

“...Fuck off,” Jocelyn hissed.

“What? I just—”

“It’s the goddamn ringtone,” she hastily explained, “of course she has a fucking ringtone like that... What a fucking weirdo.”

Joshua took a brief pause, squinting at the phone. “I-I don’t even know what this is,” he said as he tilted his head.

“What the fuck?” She tilted her head likewise.

“This ringtone, I mean. And this song, like—”

“Y’know what,” she groaned, “I’m not gonna question how you both don’t know shit about either. Guess you’ll throw it away as something Glitter kept out.”

“Okay, then. And...” he checked the phone’s notifications. There were over forty of them, but the first one he saw stood out. “A voicemail?”

“Voicemail?” She rushed to his side to check on it.

“Yeah. It’s from Rooney.”

“Well, if there’s anyone in 2029 who still does that instead of a simple fucking phone call, it’s her. Let’s hear it.”

“Aye.” Without further ado, Joshua opened the voicemail and played it. Rooney’s voice blared off, and from the tone of it; Taylor’s disappearance set off a level of distress neither of them felt since yesterday’s meeting.

“H-Hello? Is this on?” She shuddered to think she was gone. “Oh, Jesus Christ, Charli... Where the HELL are you?! You told us you were gonna visit your folks for an anniversary, but you haven’t answered my calls for two damn hours! I-I mean, I thought at first it was because you couldn’t use a ‘medium’ to get past shitty traffic. But I called your brother. He said the anniversary wasn’t until the 15th, and not only that: you’re not even in the house with them! Wherever you are, whatever you’re doing, if you don’t call within the next hour—”

“Boss, the pizza’s here!” Clarity intruded from the audio’s background.

“Oh, shoot...” Her voice grew a bit distant as she yelled back, “Leave it on the table! I just need to finish this!”

“Got it, Boss!” She left until there was nothing but a whisper.

“Right,” Rooney returned her attention to the voicemail, “Charli, if you don’t call or text within the next hour... Look, I know you think we’ll assume you’ve gone missing. But don’t worry — as long as Clarity’s with us, we’ll find you in no time. Stay safe.”

The voicemail abruptly cut. Though silent as to formulate their own views on the voicemail, Joshua and Jocelyn looked at each other strongly. They were of the same thought... that somehow, someway, the California Girls were going to find out about their fight with Taylor. Whether it meant doom or prosperity.

“Now might be the time... right?” Joshua rubbed his neck, anticipating an answer.

“I mean... yeah.”

“Luckily enough, the phone’s easy to get through,” he explained as he swiped the screen. “Fucker didn’t even apply fingerprints or a PIN code to it, how stupid. Anyways?” Rushing through her contacts, he began typing to Rooney. “With a carefully constructed message, and our genius minds working together... we’ll convince them of the truth as easily as 1-2-3!”

 

–[ ★★★ ]–

 

(C)
Charli

“46 McLaughlin Ave., Shakedown St.
Meet us there.” Sent 5:46 PM

Something about the message sent by her ‘bestie’ left a visceral reaction in her. Because it wasn’t right. It wasn’t her usual way of messaging, it wasn’t even remotely her. It was something thrown up by one of those ‘Bots’ or ‘Borgs’ rampant everywhere outside of town. She had never tightened her mask so hard, nor tapped her foot as furiously as she did. All because of the possibility she might’ve been taken.

Big Bertha’s time in the gang wasn’t particularly brief nor long-tenured. But a bright spot amongst feeling like she didn’t fit in was befriending Taylor.

It seemed like she was the only one who knew her struggles. The only one who made her feel okay to be herself. To not pretend to be someone else, talk like someone else, act like someone else. And yet... if she encouraged her to be as genuine to everyone as possible, why did she want her and the other Girls to return there?

To the one place where she felt she was going to die?

She dreaded every second the road went past a sign. She didn’t want to look at them and see ‘46 MCLAUGHLIN AVE.’ magically appear. So she resorted to isolating herself in her mute little world...

Scribbling graffiti letters on her magic slate paper, doodling unique sketches of the letter ‘S’, writing her own thoughts on the paper. Even if her face constantly frowned, she knew it was comforting. To channel those negative thoughts in the paper. To write down happy thoughts easing her these trying times. To write over and over:

“Everything’s gonna be okay. Everything’s gonna be okay. Everything’s gonna be okay. Everything’s gonna be okay.”

Everything’s gonna be okay.

Everything’s gonna be okay...

“We’re here,” announced Rooney as the Cadillac stopped.

Hearing that plummeted her stomach down an inescapable abyss. Hands shaking before she could write something down, Bertha gulped. She wanted to scream. To tell her confidants she didn’t want to go. That she wanted out. She genuinely didn’t want to return after nearly seeing the pearly gates just nine days back. And yet, here she was. Unable to speak out. Unable to cry out at them.

It was just so overwhelming. Happiness, sadness, bravery, cowardice, resolve, reluctance... She swallowed it all down, and after looking at them exit the car one-by-one, she followed last.

Bertha adjusted her mask, walking down the empty road with everyone else. Weirdly enough, she knew right away they all felt a shared sense of déjà vu. Maybe it was the sun setting, the orange sky turning into a bleak blue. Or the fact it was devoid of life. Yet it was the only good thing she felt out of this. It comforted her to know their collective feelings were the same, even if their minds were not equal.

It was like she let out a sigh after holding her breath too long.

So much that she now paid attention to whatever Rooney and Clarity were discussing. Palm splayed next to her ear, she eavesdropped and nodded as if she agreed.

“Alright, Clare. Give me eyes,” Rooney said, “all of it.”

“You gotcha, Boss.” Clarity released a drone into the air, which she operated with a remote-control tablet. She used the drone’s thermal camera to spot whatever she could see.

“Boss, I don’t think there’s anyone spying on us,” Cyrus advised. “If I may, I—”

“We have to stay on the lookout,” she insisted.

“Yeah, Boss, but... I wouldn’t say no to the possibility it’s a prank message.”

“But why would she do that?”

“I dunno. Maybe she thinks it’s funny.”

“Okay... Bertha, I need you quick.”

Hearing her name mentioned left her jumping. She yelped aloud, and as soon as she wiggled her arms to stop the shaking, replied, “Y-Yeah, bossing?”

“You know Charli the best out of us all,” she quizzed. “Tell me, why would she want to text us that message?”

“Uh... I...” She smacked her lips, trying to find the right words.

“Y’know what,” Cyrus interjected, “maybe it isn’t right to ask her if she’s—”

“No, no, no, I’m fine,” Bertha tittered as she tugged at her sleeve. “I-I don’t... think that’s her. D-Don’t get me wrong! Bestie, she... might be playing a joke on us. But I’m telling you — it’s not her! It’s...” She suggested, “Maybe she could’ve gotten her phone hacked?”

“Uh huh. Good possibility.” Rooney turned to Cyrus for counsel. “Do you think her phone got hacked?”

“I wouldn’t say no to that. I mean, out of us six, it’s weird she barely knows how to lock her damn phone—”

“Heads up, I’ve got something!”

The Girls ran up to Clarity and peeked the tablet. A car highlighted in white from the thermal camera drove up to the street, moving in fast.

“What is this...?” Rosa inquired.

“A car,” she hastily answered. “Looks like some kind of... taxi. Nothing I’m very familiar with.”

“A taxi...?” Rooney stroked her chin. “As far as I’m concerned, there’s only one person in Shakedown who has a taxi service...”

“What? You mean like... A&A Garage Services?” Clarity had a brief epiphany. “Does that mean that gremlin Alonzo’s paying someone to do all this?”

“If he is, I’ll be glad to shoot that pendejo.” Rosa cocked her MAC-11.

“But why—”

Bertha took a deep breath, letting the Girls’ voices die out, as she laid eyes on headlights from the other end of the street. With one blink, they were tiny ‘eyes’ in the dark. In the next, they were so close she could make out the taxi’s silhouette. Closer and closer it came, leaving her thinking about who was behind the wheel, how Taylor was doing, and why this all came to pass. It stopped within a meter’s reach of the Girls, the lights almost blinding them.

She barely saw the taxi’s door open, the shadow of a mountain of a man standing behind. Nothing about him stood out, but his eyes glinting a rainbow shine at them. He sauntered, saying something she could barely hear.

He waved his hand to the passenger behind him. The passenger, a woman with fiery-red hair about the same size as him, went to the trunk. She opened it, grabbed something, and came to the man’s side. Anticipation built up on Bertha’s mind as to what she was carrying. But... the last thing she expected was seeing her.

It felt like she grew tunnel-vision, all sights focused and isolated on her. Dear God, what did they do to her? Yesterday, she was just the weed-loving hippie who took good care of her, making her smile to lift up her spirits. Now, Charli Taylor was a somewhat unrecognizable mess. She lost her glasses. A chunk of her pink clothes melded into boiled flesh. And her hair was everywhere. Frazzled, burnt strands covering her eyes.

The woman pushed her close, holding her by the ropes restraining her. And just as she cried out for them, a phantom blade was raised.

“BESTIE!” Bertha reached out for her, just as the blade ran down on her restraints. Now cut loose, Taylor sprang as fast as she could to them. Just as everything went back to normal...

“Oh, thank you thank you thank you—” Taylor sobbed, moaning in pain. She embraced Rooney tight, as she said, “B-Boss, please! T-They were trying to kill me—”

“What did you two do to her?!” Rooney screamed, whipping out her pistol at them. The Girls but Bertha likewise followed.

“You’re asking the wrong questions,” said the woman.

As the two parties went into a screaming war with each other, Bertha grimaced. She held her magic slate tight, fidgeting it as sweat flooded her masked face. She felt she was suffocating under it. She wanted to break free, let the world see her become an absolute wreck. But every time she looked at the two—as much as the light obscured their faces—the more it made sense that she knew them.

Of course, it was those two from yesterday’s meeting. She screamed bloody murder when the man showed her a picture of Galen, and bore witness to her Boss gagged by his dead body.

Who else would it have been?

“—tell us, Girls, how do you justify the fact that your crispy little friend is a creepy bastard?” That question from the blue man came out of nowhere. Yet, as much as she feared them, her fist curled and shook at the notion.

“Bobo,” she jeered, “how... d-dare you think Bestie did something gross?!”

“Girl, I don’t blame you for saying that,” said the red woman, “she seems like your ‘bestie’, but you have to rethink your relationship with her.”

“What makes you think—” She stopped herself before she said the wrong thing. So much rage was brimming in her system. All the insults, the urge to beat them so violently, and yet... she just stopped. She couldn’t be like that, even if she felt it was justified. So she just listened. And listened, she would.

She found herself shoved out of the way by Rooney, who pointed her gun tightly at them. With a heavy sigh, she growled, “You’ve messed with the wrong people, motherfuckers. And no mistake here, ‘Jocelyn’, I will fucking kill you for what you’ve done.” She pointed the gun at her. “You think I’m playing? You know you can’t handle us six-to-two!”

“Really...?” The blue man furrowed his eyebrows. “If you wanna kill her, then... how could we tell you about that bitch’s true nature?”

“SHUT THE FUCK UP!” She jabbed the gun at him. “You don’t know shit!”

“You think so?” Rainbow flickered in his eyes. “Remember what I told you the other day. If you don’t put down that gun and listen to us now... Jocelyn and I? We’ll do you way worse than those photos of Galen Crawford. You think I’m playing? Look at your friend, see what we did to her.”

Almost as if she were enchanted by his voice, Rooney turned to Taylor. She stood with a fairly obvious limp, covering her hideous appearance with her arms.

“Fine, then...” Rooney sighed, and holstered her gun. “What fucking creepy shit my associate did are you clamoring about?”

“Good question.” He turned to the red woman—Jocelyn. “Hand me the locket.”

“You bet.” She handed over a heart locket. He took the locket for everyone to see.

“See this locket?” he asked aloud, waving it. “It belonged to someone associated with your friend. Someone she’s put up a tryst with. And frankly... so much debt racked up between them, that she had to kill him to make it stop.”

“What...?” Rooney darted to Taylor, eyebrow raised. “Charli?”

She only gave a displeased moan as a response.

“And he’s not the only one,” added Jocelyn. “Matter of fact? I can list off all the names we’ve found on her phone she’s formed trysts with.” She cleared her throat. “Armin Doucette, Christine Candor, Carlos Ferrera, Jaco Joplin, Isaac Raleigh, Michael Richter, Jackson Lowa, Lucinda Warner, Edna Loren, Victor Secratis... your friend has torn too many relationships apart. How long until she finds the next one to target?”

“Trysts...?” Rooney challenged, her breathing brisk and mouth twisted. “You can’t— Charli?”

“I-I don’t know what they’re talking about,” she sobbed, “I swear...”

“Believe her or not, you know she’s in serious shit,” the blue man affirmed. “I know what you must do. Punish her. You are criminals, I know that. But don’t you think being a homewrecker is a step too far? I know you think that way. Come on. Say the words. Tell her to ‘fuck off’ and leave.”

Rooney did not respond. She kept her mouth silent, her face cold as stone. But there was a speck of a frown. A look that said for Bertha that she sought her feelings and thought it true.

“If you’re not there yet, then let me decide for you...” The blue man flipped a coin, and glanced at it. “First option is... take your friend as far from Shakedown as possible. Tell her family to lock her up or something. And we can all pretend this never happened in the first place — she didn’t burn to a crisp or whatever. Or...”

“Or what?” Rooney glared.

“The second option is much less favorable...” He flipped a coin again, a smirk breaking out of his shadow. “When our business in Shakedown is done, I can tell the authorities all about you. What you and your merry band of masks have worked so hard to earn? You can kiss them goodbye.”

The sooner he pocketed that coin, the faster Bertha and the other Girls thought of the consequences. She shivered at the idea of losing everything. But not what they had to say of Taylor. How dare they do this after wounding her like that? It was sickening. He hurt her—the only friend who cared about her. And now he was threatening to rob them of their livelihood. She wanted to defend the Girls’ honor, shield them in case he and Jocelyn sought maltreatment. But she knew she couldn’t. It was unwise underestimating them, considering he of all people nearly made Rooney retch her soul that other day. That his words weren’t just words. But a prelude to the most sickening actions a smart man like him could commit.

Rooney spoke for herself and Bertha when she conceded, “Fine. We’ll do what you ask, even if it means pretending you never almost killed my friend.”

“That’s right,” he snapped.

“But I want you to know this...” Rooney stepped closer, unfazed by the difference in size between them, and bellowed, “Don’t think this ‘peace negotiation’ of yours is gonna last. We are all Stand users here, just so you know. We’re going to chew you alive, make you regret having said it all. And don’t think of them as ‘words’. Like yours, they’re ‘actions’. Think correctly before today ends... survivor.”

“I’m not surprised you’d say that.” He shrugged.

She turned to the Girls and ordered, “Girls, we’re leaving.”

The notion of leaving was enough to set Bertha off. “B-But Boss,” she protested, “we can’t just leave them—”

“I know,” she reassured her quietly. “But tomorrow... I’ll make sure they won’t get away with it.”

Defeated, Bertha sighed. In compliance with her orders, she and the other Girls retreated off to the Cadillac. They fled as far from the taxi as they could, but it did not stop Bertha from trapping herself in deep thought. She was paralyzed. She couldn’t move a finger to scribble in her magic slate. Because it was just too much to let out.

Her best friend almost died fighting them. Just looking at her gave her dread she never knew was there. And yet, they rambled on about names she barely cared about. Telling them things there wasn’t any complete proof of.

Why would they do this?

And if they went after the rest of them, how were they going to survive?

 

–[ ★★★ ]–

 

In his eyes, the Cadillac was parked in front of them. But in a moment’s notice, it left his sight until it blended into the darkness. Joshua whistled as he pocketed his hands. Sure enough, he did a good job. But there was something that ate away at his mind. Something about what Jocelyn said that—

“Jesus Christ,” she said, rubbing her head. “I ain’t ever seen her pissed like that.”

“Not even during your dates together?” he tilted his head.

“Not really, no... But I gotta tell you,” she scoffed, “it’s like you poked on a fucking beehive there.”

“But I did stop them, didn’t I?”

“Eh? Probably.” A shrug was enough to drive the point louder. “But judging by what she whispered to Ms. Angry Mask... I don’t think they’re accepting much either.”

“Oh, well...” Joshua walked back to the taxi door, hand gripping its handle. “Well, should we get going?” He pointed to his back. “I probably need to go out for... I dunno. You want a drink? I feel like going for some drinks.”

“Luckily for you, I know just the place,” she grinned.

“Sweeee~~t,” he laughed. But before he could open the door, a question spontaneously came up in his mind. There was no doubt that he found it—the something that he didn’t know he needed answers to. Because there was something she said that bothered him.

“Hey, um... about what happened earlier...”

“What about it?” She squinted.

“Why didn’t you tell them about your ‘tryst’ with her?”

The question was enough to pierce through her. He swore he saw her gulp. Trying to search for the right words. And when she did, she said, “Believe me, Josh... I don’t think either of us are ready for that.”

“Even if it meant lying about the truth?”

“Y’know what?” She sighed. “Forget about it. Let’s just go out for drinks... nothing else.”

Something about that did not feel right for him. He wanted to speak out, to insist, to learn from her what she was so afraid about. But instead, he just simply said, “Okay...” and opened the taxi for himself and Jocelyn to retreat to.

And just like the California Girls before them, off they went to the opposite road. Melding into the dark blue sky, like they were never even there...

Notes:

Remember to give kudos and (optionally) a comment! This helps in supporting this fic and its future endeavors.

 

Author's Notes coming soon.

Chapter 23: Vol. 3 - Dr. Strangelove (or How Taylor Lied About Her Captivity)

Summary:

While taking Taylor to a nearby clinic with the other California Girls, Rooney recounts the tragedy of her short-lived romance with Jocelyn; and ponders if she and Joshua were right about Taylor herself.

Notes:

Shout-out to Hypern_Nova and a *staggering* 20 guests who left a kudos in the previous chapter!

UPDATE (7/15/24): Rewritten to fit the changes in Vol. 2

—|[ CHAPTER 23 ]|—

Dr. Strangelove (or How Taylor Lied About Her Captivity)

 

 

For as artificially-made as he was, Trapt always saw music as the perfect ‘cure’ to his affliction... boredom. Especially considering he worked at a night-shift clinic somewhere in Shakedown. As patients racked up each day, seeking a taste of his owner’s ‘miracle cure’, the stress—or the ‘digital’ equivalent of it—was enough to drive his more unpleasant mannerisms. It did not help that he and his owner, save for three others on occasion, were the only ones maintaining constant duty.

As he carefully tended to the medicine cabinets with his clawed fingers, Trapt whistled aloud a melody.

Or at least, the closest he got to really doing it. Underneath his cerulean security camera-esque head, there were speakers for a ‘throat’. It blared Vivaldi’s “Spring”. Once the medications were arranged in tip-top order, he closed the cabinets, and moved on to a mop by his feet. Gently, he mopped the floor, doing everything to scrub the grime and oil left by footprints he barely cared for.

It was frustrating. All those starving patients, and they didn’t pay attention to wiping their feet on the “WELCOME” mat by the clinic’s lobby. He attributed them to faulty piping on the entrance. Hoping that, by the end of the week, the only person he liked outside of his owner: that oh-so-good plumber Perry, would fix the problem.

He called him not only once, but twice, and hoped by the time he made a third phone call; he’d answer.

At least, his thoughts dwelled on those damned pipes until a car parked loudly on the clinic’s lot. The music died, pitching down like it fell, as he groaned through the speakers, “Ugh... what are the odds? It seems I will be cleaning another set of footprints again. Fortunate me...”

He set the mop by a door next to the cabinets, and sauntered to the window. He peered through the blinds to see a familiar pink Cadillac... What were the odds, indeed?

Putting his hand over a red button by his shoulder, his speakers rang piercingly loud sounds. “Intruder alert,” he yelled in-between each ring, “intruder alert.”

“Trapt?!” shouted an otherwise soft-spoken tenor. “What is it?!”

“Intruders,” he responded, “as I’ve said.”

“We don’t call patients that, y’know! Let me take a look!” By the time Trapt turned, his owner passed by the cabinet room’s door. He was a clean-coated old man, thick silver hair in a mane, and green eyes shining through a pair of goggles. There were some rips in his overcoat’s sleeves and breast-pocket, like he worked for something and ran away from them...

This was Roman Buckcherry, head doctor of the RESCUE ME clinic and Trapt’s beloved owner... if he agreed with his suggestions.

“Well... I’ll be damned,” he said, “it’s them again.”

“Should we refuse and let them be, Father?” Trapt ran a finger down his head, making a squeaky sound. “Tell them we are closing early to make way for the plumbing?”

“...Trapt. We can’t refuse! Think of the ‘Hippocratic oath’, young ‘un.”

“In that case, we can bend the ‘Hippocratic oath’ to force them—”

“HEY! Get me some help over here!” Rooney shouted from outside, leaving Buckcherry a bit rattled.

A few gears grinded around Trapt’s throat which passed for a sigh, as he observed the scene. The Girls were all in their masks, but strangely enough, one of them wasn’t. If he had emotions, he would’ve gagged looking at the maskless Girl. But he was a ‘Bot’ programmed without most of them. So he stood silent.

“Dear God,” Buckcherry gasped as he loosened his tie.

“Multiple burns across her body of the second-degree,” Trapt analyzed, “blisters across her left temple and arms, clothes melding into her torso, legs, and feet. And cut marks... everywhere. I’m whelmed. They are injuries typical of a Stand user like her.”

“Did you really have to say that,” scolded Buckcherry.

“I am stating my unbiased opinion. Nothing more.”

Buckcherry sighed. Rubbing his head, he tightened the strap around his goggles. “C’mon, Trapt,” he ordered as he ran to the door. “Help me get the machine started!”

“...Yes, Father.” Rubbing his fingers, he followed Buckcherry on the way out.

 

–[ ★★★ ]–

 

Rooney watched... and watched... and watched... She saw in her own eyes that Taylor was hooked inside what she felt was a sarcophagus. Her friend, as those two called her, floated inside breathable water, cables hooked to her blistered body. Even though it was slow, she was careful to notice some of the blisters on her face tearing away. Dead skin ripped out, floating until they disintegrated into the water.

As she held a large towel in one hand, and her mask with the other; she glanced repeatedly between Trapt and Buckcherry. The two observed her vitals on a screen. She felt cold, hands shaking, lips quivering at the thought of her previous state.

But Taylor was healing, alright. Even if it wasn’t much, she looked to be in a more stable condition than before. Yet the question asked itself before she considered it: how did she get absolutely roughed up like that?

She twisted her tongue to see what made Jocelyn do her like that. That pesky Jocelyn. She didn’t believe a damn word that girl said that evening. And God knew what she felt about her. Leaving her after a smile and a half... Rooney broke her silence, clutching the towel as she asked, “How long is this going to take?”

“An hour,” Buckcherry said. “Maybe less, if the damage isn’t as severe as my companion observed...”

“I bet the treatment will finish in two hours,” snarked Trapt.

“Bucko,” he frowned.

“I am being honest, Father. Do not force me beliefs about ‘right and wrong’ which I am not accustomed to.”

Rooney rolled her eyes at them. If she didn’t like the back-and-forth between the doctor and his ‘Bot’ back then, she certainly wouldn’t now. She cleared her throat, and asked hastily, “Listen, I... am curious. How does this work on a dead person?”

“Hm?” Buckcherry raised his eyebrow.

“Not as well as you would expect,” Trapt answered.

“...I doubt that, ‘Bot’.” She frowned at him, bringing the towel closer to herself.

“I’m afraid this is a rare instance in which he’s objectively right,” Buckcherry adjusted his goggles, chuckling. “If you think our signature ‘Rescue Me’ machine works on a carcass, you’re wrong. The effects are disastrous, to say the least.”

“Why is that, doc?”

“Let’s just say...” he shivered to recall that memory, but he pushed through otherwise. “I ran tests when I first made a prototype for the formula. A cocktail of various ‘healing’ formulas I’ve concocted during my time working at the company, as I’ve told you on your last visit. Oh, poor me... I thought unwisely that it would work on a cadaver they’ve kept. His name was Santviento, I think. Perhaps it was something else, I don’t remember.”

“What happened to him?”

“Upon application of the formula, the cadaver...” He sighed, biting his lip. “Well, to say he went erratic is an understatement. All I could remember was the cracking. The growth of his limbs. Say, he rampaged through the laboratory like an animal. He was an apex predator... everything that moved, he mauled and killed. It took an army of your kind to kill him, and that was it. It was an ugly scene.”

“So he... turned into a zombie?”

“Precisely, miss!” He chuckled again. “Either way, I thought of it my complete and utter fault. If I went through with it, I would’ve been the cause of a global zombie epidemic, no less due to experimenting on... err, Pillar Men cadavers like his. So I remove that property from the equation. Made sure it wouldn’t make others like him again.” He fidgeted with the lapels of his coat. “Besides, miss... Death is a part of the ‘natural order’. And disrupting it always has dire consequences.”

“As are Stand users,” Trapt interjected, “but I believe they disrupt way more than resurrecting the dead would.”

“Bucko!”

“Again, do not force objective beliefs in what is ‘right and wrong’ for me. It is not of my expertise.” He rubbed his fingers and made a squeak.

“Either way, Doc, I...” Rooney shook her head, and smiled. “I can’t... thank you enough. If she were left to anyone else’s care, I... She’s... I don’t know. I don’t think I’d be okay with that. I don’t think they’d be okay with that, either.”

“Don’t mention it,” Buckcherry bowed, “I’ve been in this weird world of yours for long. And this isn’t even my first dance treating your kind with good health and spirits.”

Sighing, she checked her watch. “I have to go,” she said as she went for the door, “tell the others how she’s doing.”

“Feel free to.” He waved as she left.

 

–[ ★★★ ]–

 

Mask hung by the right side of her head, Bertha stared at a blackened sky full of ‘pixie dust’. She had been fraught with negative thoughts the moment she set foot in that street. And hearing her friends lose it in the clinic—screaming at each other without any direction or assurances—only made everything worse.

Much of her rounded-square face was exposed for the world to see. And contrary to her otherwise intimidating stature, she looked gentler than she should be. She had an intense dark auburn for a ponytail, naturally tan skin, an evidently Asian pair of eyes and plentiful lips. Yet when her face should’ve been a bright smile, it was a lamenting frown.

She couldn’t take it. Having to deal with moments where she felt buried under verbal quicksand, moments where her surroundings shrank and confined her until she couldn’t move...

So when she tasted the chilly air and gazed at twinkling stars scattered like a sea of space, it gave her a sense of calm.

A calm that left those words written in her magic slate: “EVERYTHING’S GONNA BE OKAY. YOU’LL BE OKAY. IT’S NOTHING TO WORRY ABOUT. BESTIE’S JUST MICROWAVED. THINK OF IT LIKE FOOD BEING MICROWAVED. DON’T LOOK AT THE BLISTERS. THEY’RE GROSS. IT’S GONNA BE OKAY. SHE’LL BE OKAY. YOU’LL BE OKAY. EVERYTHING’S GONNA BE OKAY.”

And when she wasn’t thinking about her writings, all she thought were childhood rhymes playing in her head. If she could whistle, she would whistle them in a heartbeat. But she couldn’t. She never learned how. Nor why she somehow had an inability to.

“The stars are beautiful, aren't they?”

Just like what happened at McLaughlin, Bertha jumped. Instead of yelping, she shrieked to see Rooney suddenly by her side. “B-Bo-Bossing...! W-When did you... come?!” She had no idea whether to laugh or shiver.

“Oh, I was just... The girls said you left after...” she sighed. “I understand, though. It’s not easy thinking about what happened to her.”

“Y-Yeah, b-b-but—” Grimacing her teeth, Bertha whipped out her magic slate and wrote so fast her hand barely moved. She rubbed her neck as she showed, “YOU SCARED ME, PAGINOONG HESUS.”

“Yeah, well... can’t say I’m not sorry about that.”

She lifted the paper and wrote again. This time, she bared a smile. “YOU’RE RIGHT, BOSSING. THEY ARE BEAUTIFUL.”

“What’s wrong, though? Why aren’t you...”

She frowned, like a sick puppy begging to be left alone. “IT’S SO HARD TO TALK RIGHT NOW.” Coughing a bit, she stuttered, “I-I’m really... s-s-sorry... I... insist.”

“It’s fine,” Rooney reassured, patting her on the shoulder. “I know how hard it is. Considering your... you already know. Not that I think it’s not a big deal. Just that it shouldn’t deter you from being who you are.”

Her eyes watered as she inscribed, “HOW IS SHE?”

What Rooney gave her was a comforting smile. “She’s... doing really great. Doctors said it’ll take her an hour to get back. Or less. I dunno.”

For once in this day, Bertha felt it okay to really smile. “THANK THE LORD. I THOUGHT SHE WAS GONNA DIE.”

“Me too...”

“B-By the way, um...” Bertha scoffed. She noted down what she wanted to say on the paper. “HAVE YOU EVER FELT HELPLESS AROUND THOSE TWO?”

Upon reading what she scribbled down, Rooney mouthed something and stopped. She knew that look. She knew she asked something personal. Her eyes darted around two places at once, lips bitten, the straps of her smiley mask fidgeted about. “I-I don’t know if I—”

Bertha shook the paper and smiled. She wanted to tell her it was okay. But she could only say so much.

Thank God for her, she took it that way. “Yes, I do,” she admitted. “Y’know what? I... feel betrayed. The fact I was together with her, and now she and her boy toy thrashed Charli like that? Can you imagine what it feels like? Of course, I feel helpless! I... feel... like I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how we’re gonna get through this, either.”

Bertha felt her lips quivering, shoulders drooping down. This was a side of her bossing she had never seen. And yet... she felt sorry for her. To think that the person she loved hurt her by nearly killing one of her friends. “IT DOESN’T SEEM FAIR, RIGHT?”

“You’re right. It’s not fair.” Rooney sighed, eyes on the ground beneath her. She swallowed down, musing over whatever lost memories Bertha imagined she had left. “I’m gonna be real with you, I... When she asked me out, I didn’t... like it at first... But I went through with it. Because if she thought it was fun to try it out, then I thought the same. Was she — w-was she an asshole? Yes, she was. Was she a bit too aggressive? Definitely. And was she too damn huge to reach for a kiss? God, yes she was! But... of all the girls I held hands and danced with, she was the best.”

She saw a tinge of water in her eyes. She didn’t know whether to pity her or fear what she’d say next.

“Yes, I did think she was a bit too much. But... goddamn it, she made me smile. She made me smile! Of all the times I’ve hooked up with people, it’s that redheaded bitch who gave me something I pushed away. I was... happy. She made me... happy. So when she broke up with me and ran, I... I was hurt. I cried. I swallowed down everything I wanted to say. Every chance I wanted to say ‘I love you’ to her, every ‘thanks’ I wanted to give for changing how I saw things...”

A tear came, but she wiped it away. “To think that... she’s the same person who... just hours ago, cooked our colleague into a fucking barbercue? I don’t know, I... I don’t know what to make of it.”

Bertha lost it. Just when she thought she forgot about it, what Rooney said made her remember. She was overflowing with rage, grip on the paper tightening. Yet... something about it was amiss. “I DON’T UNDERSTAND WHY THEY PICKED A FIGHT WITH HER. WHY WOULD THEY DO THAT?”

“That’s the thing, I...” She smacked her lips, eyes raised up to the starry skies. “I don’t know. I think I... understand you when it seems that... there’s something seriously wrong about the situation that I can’t seem to understand.”

“ARE YOU SAYING THEY’RE RIGHT ABOUT BESTIE?”

“That she’s up to no good?” Rooney sighed. “I hate to say this, but... whether they’re telling the truth or not, we have to prepare for the worst.”

 

–[ ★★★ ]–

 

“I-I swear to you, guys! They’re hostile! Look at what they did to me!”

She rambled as she felt her cries fall on deaf ears. Taylor was now free of the sarcophagus, and aside from being wrapped in the towel Rooney held for her, she looked mostly the same. Just that there were tiny bald spots on her head. And where the boils on her cheeks should’ve had, they were substituted by a crisp leathery texture.

The rest of the Girls surrounded her, convened by the sarcophagus’ room. Even after the amount of times she repeated herself, they couldn’t find it in themselves to listen. To listen to her lies... if they even knew.

“Like... they were trying to kill me! For fun! And they almost— Goddamn it, man, I can barely see jack. You guys got my other pair?”

“Where did your specs go, then?” Rooney tilted her head, an eyebrow almost raised.

“Where else? I genuinely think it melted into my face when I got cooked,” Taylor frowned.

“We can get it once we’re back. Until then... I want to know just one thing.” She took a step closer, leaning fairly close in her eyes. “Did you have some idea of how their Stands work?”

“Yes, um...” She shook her head, fidgeting with her fingers. “I at least had a decent idea of how they worked. Like... Joshua’s Stand, y’know. Uhhh, he... basically, it was a bird. Had these really weird needles that it — i-it injected. Like, he did something with a gun, and after Jocelyn poured gasoline all over me, he shot me. Even with Papercut all over me. And lit me completely on fire.”

“And Jocelyn’s?”

“I honestly don’t know. It had two swords, though. They looked more like glowsticks than swords. And it looked way bigger than Bertha.”

Bertha, underneath the mask, frowned.

Cyrus stroked her chin as she joined in. She inquired, “Don’t all bullets ignite something on fire?”

“I-I don’t know, his... his bullet, though... it looked fucking weird.” Taylor shook her head, almost trying to cover her face. “It was... green? He shot something green and—”

“Tracer rounds,” Rosa intruded.

“What?”

“Only tracer rounds can do that. The green stuff.”

“Oh... that makes sense.”

“Well, I’ll take it.” Cyrus splayed her hands on her waist, and mused aloud, “If you’re right, then... Remy—or Joshua as he refers to himself—injected something in the bullet that turns it into a... ‘tracer round’, as Rosa said. Which means it’s got something to do with chemistry. I mean, chemistry isn’t my strongest suit. I was more of a humanities gal in high school.”

“Those are some... ‘interesting’ facts, Girls.” Rooney rolled her eyes.

“I know, Boss,” shrugged Rosa.

“Let’s get back to business here,” she sighed, “in regards to what he said. Calling you a ‘creepy little bastard’ and all.”

“H-He was being a dick,” snapped Taylor.

“And what about those people Jocelyn talked about?”

“T-They just... went over their own contacts, and repeated their names over and over until they fabricated that lie so well! Trust me, guys. I may have tried my fucking best to fight back, but I certainly wasn’t the aggressor in that situation! If... that’s what you were going for, I guess.”

She wanted to smile. To laugh. To gloat over the fact they believed the lies she told without question. But what worth did it have, to give away her greatest secret with a greedy titter? So she kept her bug-eyed, jumpy expression, feigning a shiver colder than the sarcophagus’ liquid.

Rooney’s eyes went in circles, at times glancing and staring at the Girls. “Cyrus,” she said, “you’ll stay with me. Everyone else... wait by the lobby.”

“Right away, Boss,” whistled Clarity as she left the room first.

Rosa followed, and then Bertha who had to carry Taylor by the shoulder, until it was just Rooney and Cyrus. The Boss and the Consigliere, alone for themselves. The only ones who, out of everyone else, held a higher regard for trust in themselves than anyone.

“So...?” Cyrus ‘wiped’ her mask, tilting her head. “What’s cooking?”

“I don’t know, I... don’t think this feels right,” Rooney disclosed, hand hovering by her gun’s holster.

“You think? How you asked those questions to Charli told me everything.”

“Yeah...”

“What were you trying to do with it?”

“God knows,” she frowned, “whether I’m wrong or not. But I think... even after all the bullshit they’ve thrown at us, they’re right.”

“That she’s a weirdo degenerate?”

“It sounded like that.”

Cyrus paced around, adding, “I mean... when Jocelyn brought up those names, it... i-it sounded like she wasn’t lying. Not in the way she rehearsed it tons. But the names... They just... felt real, don’t you think?”

“That’s right.”

“And going back to Charli, just thinking about how she deflected all that ‘creepy bastard’ stuff, makes me think...” Rubbing her pixie raven hair as if she slicked it back, she gently slammed her hand on a table. “Her relationships frequently don’t last long, right?”

“Yeah,” Rooney thought, “and her current boyfriend’s name happened to be Armin, too...”

“And didn’t some of her exes complain about her being too touchy-feely?”

“Right on the money.”

“Well, shit,” Cyrus faltered, “this has got me at a crossroads. What are we gonna do if they’re right? That she’s a homewrecker?”

“And if she’s not?”

“Right...” delving into her options, she proposed, “If you’re right about this, then... Let me tell you. If you’re right, and it somehow pops up that it’s some kind of mental instability she has? Send her to a shrink right away. Root out the bad shit in her behavior. Leave her to the shrink until she gets better at their last session. If you’re wrong, then proceeding with the plan to attack could be the way to go. Which, I’ll admit, isn’t a good idea.”

“Why not?” Rooney questioned her, leaning close.

“Boss, if we rush through this, it’s not going to end well!” Cyrus tapped her foot. “We barely have a scrap of what their Stands do, and you’re asking us to fight them? Fat chance! Especially since they almost killed Charli, y’know! Numbers advantage be damned.”

“So? She won’t come. Let her rest.” She patted her shoulders, ruffling them. “I know we can’t underestimate them both. But the less they expect our attack, the better.”

“It just isn’t a good idea, y’know?”

“I understand.”

Both of them went radio silent. They peeped their left and right, questions and answers forming in their heads, thinking whether or not to proceed.

“Are we doing this or not?” Rooney hungered for war.

“Feels like we have to.”

“Well, then...” Tenacity in her eyes flared as she looked out the door, baring her teeth as she stared as if they were there. Standing out the door, hiding from her fury. And for the last time, she declared:

“Let’s go to war.”

Notes:

Remember to give kudos and (optionally) a comment! This helps in supporting this fic and its future endeavors.

 

This chapter was released without beta-read edits.

Chapter 24: Vol. 3 - Scary Stories To Tell in the Pub

Summary:

Joshua and Jocelyn exchange stories over a few drinks, leading to some unexpected moments of vulnerability between them.

Notes:

Shout-out to kingdrew67 and 9 guests who left a kudos in the previous chapter!

UPDATED (2/8/2025): Edited to portray a serious topic in a somewhat more sensitive light, and a few dialogues.

—|[ CHAPTER 24 ]|—

Scary Stories To Tell in the Pub

 

 

“When I said I wanted to go out for drinks, I didn’t expect this.”

“Well, what did you think was gonna happen?” Jocelyn grinned, taking a sip of her mug. “Some fancy bar like the CBAT Club was?”

“I’d take it over this fucking shithole,” Joshua looked around at the bar’s surroundings, holding his mug tight. “Christ, you could’ve picked a way better bar than this!”

“Ehh? That’s Shakedown for ya. It’s either the best or the worst. No in-betweens.”

“Yeah, it’s just...” He scoffed, as he sipped on his own mug. “I wish it was cleaner around here.”

“Watch your mouth, pretty boy!” jeered a patron from the back. “It’s the best we’ve got to offer, you ungrateful dickweed!”

“I didn’t say anything, asshat,” he snapped back.

The night was still young under Mayfield’s Bar, a place that defined the grimy wear-and-tear of Shakedown. Yet it was still a reverent place for those burdened by life outside the bar to go to and unwind, good reasons or bad. He rubbed his hands together at the notion of leaving it behind. Because he couldn’t look anywhere but the table for a minute.

The grease on the walls disgusted him. Tasty in a way he vehemently disliked. And even he saw better loitering in other bars than the load of trash scattered on the dusty floor. The smell he hated too. It reeked of a nightmarish mix of cigarettes in the patrons’ clothes, and the TV’s plugs leaking some kind of explosive electricity.

It was a nightmare. Every minute, he wanted to pinch himself and wake up. Yet he just kept sipping on his mug. He didn’t want to stay here, but he didn’t want to leave Jocelyn alone either. So he sighed, trying to calm himself.

“Hey,” Jocelyn patted his shoulder, “nothing bad’s gonna happen to ya. We’re safe here.”

“I know... I was just making sure.”

With every bit of alcohol downed and swallowed, a question was born. He wanted to ask her that, to know exactly what he needed to know. But he was rife with second thoughts. His chest burnt up, and his throat felt sore with emotion. Would she scream at him and leave? Would she not mind the question? But as he downed another crumb of the mug, he gave in and asked:

“So, what’s the drama between you and those two?”

“What?” Jocelyn was about to sample the merchandise when she heard him.

“You and uh,” he clarified, “what were their names? Rooney and... Charli.”

“What’s up with them?”

“Nothing, it’s just...” he took a sip. “I know you’ve had some bad history between each other. Just that I don’t know the exact specifics. I mean, I don’t think I want to know... but I do.”

“Oh,” she scoffed, “it’s a long story.”

“Tell away.”

Of course, she knew somehow he’d want to know about their history. And she was scared; at least, what she believed scared her. She was down to go out for drinks. To get the stress out of her system. But there it was again, one of many ghosts of her past, screaming to barge in and riddle her mind with horror. She held her breath, eyes closed.

Once she came to terms with confiding her ghosts to him, she let her breath go.

With open eyes, she spoke out, “Rooney was one of my better exes. She... She was someone I met the first time I went to Shakedown. I came there for business, to explore and weigh in my options... but I didn’t think I’d go home without thinking about her...”

“Okay,” he listened with his trusty good ears, “and?”

“I... thought she was cute.” She couldn’t help but smile and let her face melt. “I mean, I thought her mask and dye looked cool. But she was serious. And mature. And... Look, most times I have a fling with someone I think is hot. But someone with integrity and respect? That’s someone I love to end up with. Hence why I thought it was a good idea to have a fling with her... or attempt one.”

“That’s an interesting way of finding someone...”

“Well, if you’re thinking you’re a match for me, you’re dead wrong.” She laughed.

“Fuck’s got that to do with me?”

“I just like shitting on you, is all.” She gulped down a sliver of the mug.

“Ooookay...” He scratched his head. “Tell me more.”

“I’d say it unexpectedly worked out. In terms of the whole fling part. But I gotta admit... I didn’t think I’d fall for her. I just thought it’d be one of those relationships that fizzle out by the second week. But I...” she sighed. “Look, I’ll be real with you — I have piss-poor commitment with my relationships. But I wanted to try. For her. As much as I got a bit too rough with her...”

“Don’t worry about it,” he reassured, “you’re not perfect, you’re—”

“The irony coming from a dumbass like you,” she interjected, grinning.

“I mean... c’mon. I have my moments! Just let me get a chance and all. Anyways...” he smacked his lips. “What made you want to try?”

And she smiled at the memory of it. “It’s just... I fell in love with her smile. That goddamn smile... Don’t get me wrong, I love a good smile. But hers? I could tell you, from the bottom of my heart, that she’d become stone-cold for a good chunk of her adult life. And it hurt her. So for her to smile, laugh, take everything way less seriously? It was everything. I did everything to get her to crack, and when she did? I’ve never felt such bliss in a long time.”

“...And then, Charli came in. Didn’t she?”

“Yeeaaaaahhh... that bitch.” Thinking about her made Jocelyn down two sips worth of the mug; more than she ever consumed.

“It wasn’t that bad, right?” The growl she uttered told him more than asking further would’ve done.

“Oh, no. Bad completely understates what went down between us.”

“That can’t be good...”

“What? You don’t want to know more?” She raised an eyebrow.

“Not at all, it’s just... concerning. I mean, I’ve got the impression that it cuts a deep part of your soul. L-Like... it hurts. A lot.”

“Eh, I don’t mind. At least there’s someone other than myself who’ll know.”

“Okay... tell away. Again.”

She sighed one last time before explaining, “So I forgot this detail about our fling, alright? Rooney and I kept our dates a secret.”

“Why, though?”

“Y’know? Rooney and her cronies are adamant about selling drugs, while my folks have sworn completely off them. I understand why, considering Papa himself had... issues of his own, being an addict when he was a kid. But... somehow... that fucking hippie with the glasses... Smoking weed was one thing I knew. But she had be a fucking weirdo on top of being all that. She had to. And boy, did she give me an offer I wanted to refuse, but couldn’t.”

“Which was...?”

“If she let me cheat on Rooney with her, she wouldn’t dare spill the beans. Otherwise... I’m fucked. She’s fucked. We’re all fucked. Didn’t stop the Girls from knowing later on. But my God, she was so... adamant, she... She...”

“You accepted.”

“To put it bluntly, yeah. I did. Just to protect her. Because I know she would dare do something fucked to her friends, if I did something out-of-line. Or how she sees the lines.”

“What did she... make you do?” Just imagining a fraction of what Charli did made him shiver.

And so did she. Flashes of a vivid dream, a fiend roaming every corner of the room she felt safe in. All those tea parties she was forced into. A wicked smile. A thousand hands looming black shadows over her visage... threats of red-and-blue and nothing in her skin but that. A scratch. A bruise. She hid it well in public. But having to endure the pain as she slept alone...

No one but herself and that tormentor knew what went down, and it was the worst feeling she could ever let herself go through. Until now.

“She...” Her lips quivered, fingers shook and curled into a fist. “She was a freak, alright? I... I-I was... Okay. She kissed me. Touched me where she shouldn’t... What a sick little pig. She got off to it, I know that. Having to cancel so many dates because of her. And to think that I wasn’t the only one...”

“Oh, God... I... I’m sorry,” he said. “I thought I could handle it.”

“Handle what?”

“Knowing what she put you through...” He sighed. “I, um...”

"You're sorry?"

"Yeah. It's all I can say without trying to—"

"But you just said it." She frowned.

"I know, it's not what I was gonna say, it's— Yes, I'm sorry," he sighed, his hands shaking, "but that's not— Okay. What I was trying to say is... I don't want to make it seem like the loudest voice in the bar, by telling you that—unfortunately—I might've had an experience like yours. And sharing it might... I don't know... downplay whatever horrible shit you've been through."

"That I understand. But... are you— Okay. So you're telling me you also got...?"

"Something like that."

"I mean, do you want to tell me about it? Or do you think it'd be selfish if you did?"

"Mostly the latter."

"I mean, I'm a great listener. And you've been keeping up with me on that front, too. Just..." She took a sip. "You know you want to tell me, but... you're not really comfortable in telling it. Using selfishness as justification for that — trust me, I knew a few guys who did that when they didn't want to become a little vulnerable. But don't worry. If it makes you feel uneasy, then don't tell me."

"You got that just by my hands?"

"I could read people well, I guess. Gift from my Papa... and a curse, sometimes." 

"Okay." He drank two shots of the mug. "Maybe you're not so bad after all."

"I have my moments." She said it in a manner nearly similar to his.

“But honestly... hearing from you what she did...” He covered his face in utter disappointment. “I’m sorry... I should’ve killed her when I had the chance.”

“And I should’ve said my name among those folks she made trysts with,” she admitted. “But I’m a coward. I didn’t want to hurt Rooney way more than I did.”

“Hurt her how?”

“I-I don’t know, I just... had a violent... um... sort of brain death,” she sniffled, “I just couldn’t take it, y’know? Those goddamn stupid tea parties she always puts me through? I didn’t know what to do. It was the first time in years where I felt that way. And of course, all I did was just... run away. I left her, broke up with her, and ran from that degenerate little shit like a coward. Two birds with one stone... but not the way I wanted it. And then... next thing I knew...”

She sighed.

“Some asshole whose glasses fell off crashed into my bike, and then everything changed.”

He chuckled at first, taking it as another useless dig at him. But as his mouth reached for the mug, he realized... he and Jocelyn... met... on the same day she called it quits...

“What,” he coughed.

“I know, I know what you’re thinking,” she hastily clarified, “that it’s a weird coincidence. I mean, I thought that too! But you never know what’s a coincidence or not, knowing... the kind of people we are. And the weird fucks who beef with us.”

“Such is the struggle of being a Stand user,” he mused, again sipping on the mug.

“Yeah...”

Fixing his glasses, Joshua downed the mug. Downed, and downed, and downed... until it was half-empty. He let out a sigh, knowing in his heart he needed to say this. To let this now lingering question out of his system. Even if he’d be laughed at and spat on. “Hey, can I ask you something? Real quick?” It was better than keeping it in, at least.

“What’s up?” Jocelyn tilted her head, a speck of her mouth ajar.

“I know you’re gonna rag on me and everything,” he said. “But... if confession’s good for the soul, then it’s best I confess.”

“Are you asking me out...?” Even in the dim tungsten lights of the bar, some faint part of her cheeks flushed a pinkish red.

And he couldn’t tell. “Me? Asking you out? Fuck no. Not every confession is a romantic one, this — this is different.”

“Oh.” She wanted to laugh in much-needed relief, but it cut through a deep string in her heart.

“Anyways... let me tell you something.” He waved his hand. “There’s this... picture, alright? In Mr.President’s TV set?”

“What about it?”

“It’s hard to say without being dunked on...” He closed his eyes in lament, head bobbed down on the floor beneath him. “When Crywank put me through that shroom door, I told him about the picture. I can’t say I remember what it was, just that... it had you. As a kid, I guess.”

“Oh, you mean when I went to Disney World?”

“Yeah, that one...”

“Oh, yeah... I was wondering what got you worked up about it.” She leaned a bit closer to him. “Is there anything... you want to confess about it?”

“Yeah...” He admitted weakly, “When I saw that picture, I was... God, is jealous the right word for it? It’s you, your Dad, your Mom, and the other guy. And you’re all just... smiling. Like you weren’t remotely close to having a target on your back. Like... nothing wrong will ever happen. Of course, I’m jealous. Because I never had that — growing up! Of course, thank God for Bernard and Coniglio, but it just isn’t the same as having a family, y’know. A real family. A real childhood, a real... life.”

She didn’t say anything. She couldn’t say anything. So she just listened, heard the pitiful inflections in every word he spoke out.

He grew up knowing pain, and learned to live with it. But each time he tried to get over it, he knew it was inevitable the pain would stick. He thought of it like an old piece of gum that would never leave. No matter how hard he tried to remove it.

“And even if I had one, I don’t know how well it’d turn out. I mean... look at the ‘deepfaker’ running around the news. You can’t convince me, for some God-forsaken reason, that he couldn’t possibly turn out to be my brother.”

His breath quickened with every second. “I don’t know if it’s the alcohol speaking, or I’m losing my mind — all I know is that... I don’t know! Even if it’s just him who’s the bad guy, what will stop the rest from breaking bad?! What if my father, or mother, or whoever the hell I came from — what if they’re all pieces of shit?! Is this the reason why I’ve been put through Hell and back? Because I have to pay for the sins of my family that I’ve had no part with?”

Tears rained down his eyes, tapping his head on the mug. “I-I’m sorry,” he slurred, “I just don’t know anymore. I’m... getting... it’s so hard to think. I... Wow, it’s... I can’t believe I just said that...”

Jocelyn let out a hard sigh, gulping down her half-empty mug until nothing was left. She drooped down, looking at him with ‘puppy eyes’. She didn’t want to say it... but she pitied him greatly. Even under the influence. He had gone on about what he thought about families. How he wished to grow up with a real family, like she did. How he feared the man who ruined his life was kin.

It reminded her of when he broke into tears, recalling his past the night before. She wanted to reach out, pat him on the shoulder, tell him it wasn’t his fault. But she stopped herself. She couldn’t figure out why. Whether she didn’t because she was supposed to dislike and insult him, or she was a coward.

Here it was, an opportunity to finally give him that pat. But...

‘I can’t do this,’ she thought to herself, ‘I can’t... just stop myself from ending his suffering. Not when I’ve drunk my mug empty! Oh, well... He won’t remember it, and I won’t anyways. I’m sorry if I was a coward then, but I’m way more sorry if I’m selfish now.’

So she reached out for his shoulder, and patted it. She ruffled it around, seeing his miserable face instantly beam up. His wide eyes were moist from the tears, but she knew they spelled aloud that he needed it. He needed it, and where she once robbed him before, she gave back.

“Joce...?” he froze.

“We won’t remember this conversation anyways,” she said, “but I want you to know... it’s gonna be okay.”

He wanted to say something. He knew he should’ve. But he didn’t. So he kept silent, and after choking up, he held her hand. And as he leaned on her shoulder, he sobbed. Like a child stripped away from his family, his home, and choosing to live his own life.

“It’s gonna be okay.” She tapped her head against his. “It’s gonna be okay...”

Notes:

Remember to give kudos and (optionally) a comment! This helps in supporting this fic and its future endeavors.

Chapter 25: Vol. 3 - The Cooper's Cove Affair

Summary:

Joshua and Jocelyn plan their next move after yesterday's tumultuous string of events — but a chance detour leads them to an unforgettable experience they never knew deserved.

Notes:

Shout-out to BruhMoment4 and a guest who left a kudos in the previous chapter!

—|[ CHAPTER 25 ]|—

The Cooper's Cove Affair

 

 

“Please, Ms. Giovanna. Sit.”

A headmaster she didn’t particularly like showed her the way. Gulping down her pride, a 17-something Jocelyn—once addressed by her real name Giodessa—sighed and sat down, her shoulders slumped.

She found herself in the headmaster’s office of Barrichello Academy, a place present-day Jocelyn refused to fondly remember. Most people ending up there would’ve done something career-killing to sit next to her. And she was one of those unfortunate souls. If only the headmaster knew...

She blew her asymmetrically-cut hair off her face, fidgeting with her scarf as she observed the office with her own eyes:

It was cold. Plain white colors dominated the space, resembling more a mental institution than a warm and colorful place. Metallic architecture, bookshelves with nameless Bibles and books geriatric people would shill as the best piece of literature... all those trophies she won for the academy and her parents’ diplomas put on display she cared way more.

At least, imagining the names “GIORNO GIOVANNA” and “BEATRICE R. SALVATORE” on the headmaster’s nameplate was better than the actual one. She thought of it as a crown too small for that bitch’s ego.

But she knew she was on business.

So she had to get her act together. Oh, well... she knew she was in for a crucifixion regardless. She sighed heavily, making herself comfortable in the hard cushion, and let the conversation play out.

The headmaster was middle-aged, a long-haired blond dressed in business clothes, tanned skin and a permanently-wrinkled scowl in her Greek-nosed expression. She couldn’t tell if her clothes were baggy. Or if she had let herself loose with her weight.

“If I may,” the headmaster flatly asked, “I would like to round up the complaints and let you verify them with a ‘Yes’ or ‘No’. Do you concur, Ms. Giovanna?”

“Yes, I do,” growled Giodessa.

“You are seen as a model student,” said the headmaster. “All the freshmen look up to you as a role model. Stellar performances for the volleyball team... exceptional grades in spite of those commitments. Is that true?”

“Yes.”

“Yet your grades have steadily declined from the last two years. Is that true?”

“Yes.”

“Because you’ve prioritized your commitments more than your education.” She double-checked a folder she held. “Is that true?”

“No.” Her eyes flared with venom, for every question she boringly asked.

“Because the stress of your academics have left you burnt out. Your professors complain you have either been turning over your homework late or not doing them at all. Is that true?”

“No.”

“Because you’ve begun participating in recreational violence. Engaging in ‘random’ acts of violence and behaving hostile and toxic to others, for petty or otherwise minor reasons. Is that true?”

“Yes,” she begrudgingly admitted.

“That’s what bothers me, Ms. Giovanna,” the headmaster roared, striking her palm on the table. “You have been doing so well with your academic and athletic commitments. Even moreso than your parents.” She pointed to their diplomas behind her. “And yet... even after I thought you’d surpass them, you’re stooping down to these — these violent students who threaten to defame our reputation! Have you ever thought you’re but a step closer to complete expulsion?!”

She sighed, nearly pulling her hair. “You know, you... I thought when you had resolved those issues with Ms. Rosticciana, let alone start dating her, I... I would’ve thought this was your only offense. Nothing more. But it sickens me that it’s only gotten worse. Why? What made you the way you are these days?”

Giodessa felt gagged.

She wasn’t above saying “Yes” or “No” for an answer, but there was something viscerally loathsome as that bitch bringing up her parents’ reputation. She wanted to growl at her, punch her in her perfect teeth. But the last question...

Ever since that day, she felt haunted.

Every second of her waking life, every dream she experienced, the day she became a Stand user never bothered to leave her alone. It was a downward spiral yet to reach its absolute depth. A life-changer that effectively killed her dream. An unwanted memory carved deep inside her brain. No matter how hard she tried to cut it off, it just wouldn’t go away.

“YOU BITCH!”

“You bitch...”

                          “YOU BITCH!”

“You bitch...”                                                      

                                       “You and your friend!”

“YOU AND YOU FRIEND...”

                     “YOU UGLY BITCHES!”

“You deserve the streets!”                                             

                                                                          “YOU DESERVE THE STREETS...”

                                                              “You deserve the streets!”

“YOU AND YOUR GIRLFRIEND DESERVE THE STREETS!”

She couldn’t stand that voice echoing in her head. That sleazy bastard, whose voice sounded like it ripped itself apart constantly. What compelled such a dastardly person to target her and her friend, she would never know.

But it led her to do something unforgivable.

So she, at least from her memory of this conversation, choked up. Once she had something to say, she sniffled in a brittle tone:

“I killed a man... and I liked it.”

 

–[ ★★★ ]–

 

Flashing onto that memory alone, Jocelyn sat by Mr.President’s kitchen, rubbing her tousled-up hair. Her eyes could barely keep themselves open. Her arms ached. And she felt her head tighten, like fists trying to crush it apart.

But it did not deter herself from cooking up five dishes, all laid by the dining table. She finished them five minutes ago, but they were still simmering hot.

Even after she had a good night’s sleep, ruined by Joshua’s drunken ramblings and excessive adjustments of his sleeping position, she still felt like her mind was a hamster wheel. Running endlessly, with nigh-infinite thoughts and perceptions. All to determine a complex amount of outcomes, regardless of the likelihood. And confiding her history with Rooney and Charli to him triggered that.

She stared at her phone, scrolling down an album aptly named “A SERIES OF MISSED OPPORTUNITIES”. Subfolders upon subfolders of people she once dated populated the album. Some boys, some girls, others standing in-between.

She found the name “Starla Rosticciana” as a subfolder. She barely reacted at first. But as she stared at that folder, it felt like a hole in her heart ripped open. Her breaths fastened in triplets, a bead of sweat falling in her face, as she scrolled away to another subfolder.

It was that of “Rooney Smith”. The most-recent girl she left behind.

The subfolder contained photos telling a story spanning three weeks. How Rooney was overly serious at first, not bothering to look at the camera and express something beyond a scowl. But after twenty or so pictures, there it was. A tiny smile. And for the next twenty, she finally smiled for the first genuine time. The smile that made her fall for Rooney.

The smile she was robbed of by that monster in the glasses...

Just when she thought; by running away, she had forgotten all about the nightmare of being her ‘property’... the death of Joshua’s career spiraled to the point where she fought for her life to take her down.

If only she killed her then, when he ignited her completely ablaze.

‘If I ever... see that piece of human garbage... ever again...’ she thought with poison in mind. ‘I don’t care what happens. I’m gonna rip her fucking head off—’

Before she could finish, a yawn resounded from the back. Joshua lurched his way to the dining table, and appropriately enough—he looked like human garbage. He had gotten so wasted last night, his hair nearly covered his eyes, even his glasses. And he moaned weakly every passing second.

“I feel like shit,” he groaned, slumping down onto a chair. “Can’t even see without looking down... man, I drank too much... U-Uh, morning to you.” He smiled and waved.

“Morning to you,” she responded, eyes half-shut. “Hangover’s got us all fucked up.”

“Yeah...”

“Didn’t stop me from cooking all of this, though.” She proudly showed off her dishes, as lethargic as she was. “Figured we could all use some help.”

“What is it?” He tried opening his eyes, but the lights were so bright; it hurt. “I’ve got a bit of a problem, right now. Not to mention... the headaches... gah.”

“Uh, let’s see,” Jocelyn took a close inspection of the food on the table. “A veggie-stuffed omelet,” she listed one-by-one, “some jelly sandwiches, a couple of coconut water glasses and a cup of coffee each for us both. I put a lot of thought into this, y’know...” 

“That’s great,” he chuckled, “I’ve been too damn thirsty since I woke up... Thanks, by the way.” 

“Ehh... I’m just feeding you enough so I can kick your ass again.”

“Really? Beating down a man going through the ringer?”

“You know how I got you to agree to that ‘quid pro quo’?” She laughed, fingers splayed against each other. “Trust me. I’m gonna train you into a killer. But that doesn’t mean I’m gonna shit all over you first.”

“...Fair enough,” Joshua scoffed, smelling the breakfast prepared before him. “Oh, uh... Can I say something? It’s been bugging me out since I woke up.”

“What is it?” 

“Oddly enough, I remember what happened while I was drunk,” he confessed, “when I usually would’ve completely forgotten about it. Didn’t you like... put your hand on my shoulder as I cried?”

She reacted blankly, but a sprinkle of herself was left slack-jawed. ‘What the fuck...? How does he— Y’know what? Let’s just... not... let him think it was an act of goodwill. I can’t out myself as a selfish bitch like that.’ So she said, “It was just the alcohol... nothing special.”

“Eh? I doubt that.”

“Like I said, it was just the alcohol!” She insisted, nearly pulling at her hair. “Look, can we just set this aside and eat ASAP? Y’know we can’t just sit in Mr.President all day... as much as I wanna lay down in that sweet ass bed.”

“Huh... Okay.” Joshua blew hair off his face, trying to pry his eyes open. “Hey, uh... I can’t really see, so... Can you pass over the coconut water for me?”

“Sure...” a nod. She passed a glass of the coconut water over.

By instinct, he caught the glass and drank it all at once. He felt like a shot of adrenaline entered his system. What was once a miserable thirst was quenched. And the soft but harsh headaches, the hypersensitive sight leaving his eyes shut... all that roughed him up so now were very minor nuisances.

And for the first time, his eyes were wide open.

“Wow...” Joshua beamed, an awe in his being he hadn’t felt in a while. “You really thought of everything, huh...”

“I mean... fighting hangovers is way easier than fighting Stand users,” she took a bite of the jelly sandwich with a big grin.

“Fair point. At least you don’t have to cheat death all the time.”

“Yeah...”

He took a fork, and spiked a piece of the omelet. Somehow, after taking a bite, the omelet was miles better than the coconut water. It was a one-two punch. A missing piece of the puzzle he never knew he wanted. “Christ, even the omelet too?” He couldn’t help but laugh. “Another bite of this, and I’m back in no time.”

“Well, um... how do I do this?” She smacked her lips with another bite of the sandwich. “Y’know it’s our turn to do your part of the deal, right?”

“Yeah?” He raised his eyebrow.

“How do we, um... How do you think should we, um... do this? I mean... first off, we’ve gotta find that guy, right? This guy, this... deepfaker. That’s what I’m calling this sick fuck. The ‘Deepfaker’.”

“The heck are you calling him like a supervillain for,” he scoffed.

“Nothing. My brain’s half-baked.”

“So is mine.”

“It always is, dumbass...” She drank a glass of coconut water. And with it, her eyes widened, a sense of clarity waking her up. “Wait a minute. I think I’ve got something — you think we should go back to the city, get a taste of that sweet and sour California Love?”

“You want us to talk to that nutjob?!” Joshua grimaced. “Listen, that guy’s like a car crash waiting to happen, something you can’t help but look at... or listen to, in his case.”

“But he did get what happened at UCLA right, didn’t he?”

“I mean, sure... his guest or whatever— What do you mean?” Joshua nearly spat out the water, an eyebrow raised.

“What do you mean by what?”

“Are you... listening to that right nut?”

“Fuck are you insinuating about? That I’m leaning hard right just because I listen to that shit— Dude. I only listen to that guy just to poke fun at his shit. Nothing else. Okay?!” she whistled, leaning back. “Of all the stupid shit you pull off, the one thing you got right? Using his podcast as a metaphor for a car crash.”

Hearing her say that left him slack-jawed. “Holy shit, she’s just like me,” he mouthed without a sound going off.

“Josh?” Even she felt surprised at what he silently said.

“Oh, right...” He chuckled, rubbing his head. “It’s a bit fair to say we got sidetracked, didn’t we?”

“Yeah, where was I?”

“You suggested we go to J.R. Castor to find out more about our Deepfaker.”

“Yes.”

“Which means...” His eyes moved both directions. “We’ll have to get inside. But how, is the question.”

“We could just ‘Vanish’,” she shrugged.

“You’re right,” he snapped back. “But in the grave possibility that we can’t... what do you reckon we should do?”

“Well, if by some God-awful chance that I lose the last of High Jack’s baubles... I think we’re screwed.” She stood up after finishing the last crumb of the sandwich. “Y’know what,” she said, “let’s think about it later. We’ve got time to kill and shit.”

“Wait, what do you mean time to kill?”

“Time to kill until we do it tonight, y’know? He usually starts up his podcasts by 9—”

“Yeah, I know, but... wouldn’t visiting him tonight be considered... rushing?”

“Look, dumbass,” she argued, “I’m a big fan of getting shit done the day it’s planned. Used to do that for homework, and I got home with straight As for that. It’s unhealthy for some, I get it. But it’s efficient. Y’know what I mean?”

“Um... you’re right.” He raised his hands up in surrender. “My bad. Shouldn’t have spoken too soon.”

“Anyways, I know this is supposed to be your thing,” she proposed with a smile. “But doing it my way? It’d be nice. ‘Coz getting it done today means we could spend more time planning my side and your side of the deal. And the quicker we do it, the better. You do understand that, right?”

“Mhm,” he nodded, “Just not really used to a hectic working pace like this...”

“Okay, so... Now that we’ve got that sorted out,” she suggested, “Any idea what we should do to kill time?”

He didn’t know what to do at first. Of course, she brought the idea up. And what he pictured of the idea, he didn’t like. The idea of sitting in Mr.President for hours, passing the time in incredulously boring ways. He’d rather play games than throw rocks at a wall and fail to catch them. Play... games.

And with a single grin, Joshua quickly figured out what they needed. “Oh, I knoo~~w exactly how to kill time.”

 

–[ ★★★ ]–

 

“...You son of a fucking bitch. What the hell is this?!”

“That...” Joshua proudly showed off the disgustingly dilapidated mess of a place, his grin as wide as his jaw. “Is the best goddamn time-killer... that money can buy.”

And the place he showed off, the aptly-abandoned Cooper’s Cove, south of Lakewood, was something he waited five years to show to anyone else. Even though he was giddy to show her around, Jocelyn’s inherited traits from her mother’s side kicked in hard. Just seeing a tiny bit of moss growing on the exterior’s crevice, the occasional rat popping out from the cracked windows... she wasn’t sweating bullets, but she swore she was.

Graffiti painted on the walls, safety seal flyers and bankruptcy notices plastered on the doors, a sign so withered it was unreadable. It was every mysophobe’s nightmare.

“I-I don’t understand,” she frowned, recoiling a bit. “If you think this is some kind of Heaven, I’m not going—”

“C’mon, just hear me out,” he pleaded, “just because it looks like crap, doesn’t mean it is crap! This... is Cooper’s Cove. It doesn’t read like it from the sign, but it’s what the place is called.”

“Yeah, and?”

“Think of it like a book with an ugly cover. It turns you off from reading the book, yeah? But once you open the pages? It pops. It pops suuuuper hard. Once you look at the machines, you’ll absolutely regret thinking it’s bad.” He held back a nostalgic smile. “Friend of mine leased it to me before we went our separate ways. And trust me... I don’t regret taking it. Not one bit.”

“Are you giving reassurances,” she spat out, “so you could fuck with me thinking I’m scared of this shithole?” ‘Of course, dammit! I... Motherfucker, did you see the rat on the window? Oh, my God... I think I’m gonna have a miserable time here.’

“Haha, no. I’m not messing with you. If you want proof this works, then curse me if I’m lying.” He pointed to the Cove’s door. “Last time I played was four weeks ago, right before a shoot with Vogue. Least I can say I liked it way more than cursing out money-grubbing idiots..”

She rolled her eyes, and said, “Alright. Fair enough...”

“Now, shall I do the honors?” He smiled. With a moment’s notice, he sauntered onto the Cove’s door, eagerly placing his hand on the door handle.

Jocelyn gulped, swallowing down the fact hundreds of rats and bugs could await her first step inside. “God help me lots,” she muttered, before following him.

The moment its door opened, the two of them basked in the sight of what once was a children’s ‘escape’ into paradise. Walls painted with pastiches of popular game characters, patches of grease stains and moss lined on the porcelain floors, sunlight leaking from worn-out ceilings and wires strewn from above... Yet the arcade machines itself were as pristine as they could be. The average Pac-Man’s, Pongs, Marios, Space Invaders, every arcade game known to man was there. Free for themselves to play with, without the need of paying a dime.

Jocelyn’s eyes beamed wide, bulging, her mouth more ajar than it had ever been. As if her childhood came back to life, warmly inviting her with open arms. “No fucking way,” she said under her breath, almost holding her head in pleasant disbelief.

“What’d I tell you?” Joshua laughed, patting her in the back. “Ugly cover, great book.”

“Well, that’s one way to make me eat my words,” she nervously chuckled, rubbing her head. But her already-wide eyes grew even bigger, as her gaze shot up to one machine in the distance... “No shot having Time Crisis in this joint, dummy!”

As she ran up to the machine, Joshua put his hand up. “Wait,” he shouted, “I haven’t—”

“Haven’t what?! Time Crisis is the best fucking game ever! What do you mean you haven’t— A-Are you, a-are you telling me this fucking sucks?!” She stamped her feet, jabbing fingers at the Namco cabinet labeled “TIME CRISIS 3”.

“...I need to turn the power on first.”

She was left gagged. “Oh. Okay...” she whistled. “Go on. Do the honors or something.”

With a single nod, Joshua carefully walked past the Sega and Nintendo cabinets, avoiding the ceiling’s wires getting in his way. Between the cabinets was a large power switch mounted on the wall, yellow paint outlining the outlet. “Time to resurrect this place for the umpteenth time,” he whispered, pulling the lever down.

Sparks shot out of the switch, Joshua recoiling as he and Jocelyn watched the Cove come alive.

Neon lights surrounding the walls gave it a confusingly pleasing aesthetic. In one row of cabinets, they painted the Cove with candlelights warming up the night sky. In another, blue-and-purple lights contrasted the candlelights like sunset. And if it weren’t for the cabinets’ screens emitting rainbow lights, the two sets would’ve clashed against each other.

If there was one way to describe how the Cove felt, it was walking into a fairytale land.

“How’s Time Crisis holding up,” he hollered. “Is it good?!”

“Yeah, it’s good!‘

“What?!”

“IT’S GOOD!” she piped harshly. “It’s doing this weird ass blue screen, though!”

“That’s perfectly normal,” he clarified, “it does that while booting up! Let me get back to ya.” Joshua walked out of the switch’s row, fixing his glasses as he came to her side. Together, they watched as the cabinet played a cutscene before their eyes.

She smiled gently at what the cabinet offered. The cerulean beaches in the Mediterranean, tanks ramming through cars as paratroopers landed in the city, a voyeur’s binocular surveying the army for two to march in guns blazing... Her stare sent her back many years, when she was but eleven duking it out with her friends in the arcade. “It’s beautiful,” she mouthed, “even to this day...”

“Like what you see?” He gently tapped her with his elbow.

“Oh, yeah...”

“So do I... it’s one of my favorites.” He shared the smile and gaze she had to the cabinet’s contents.

“Yeah... just one thing.” Just like that, her smile turned into a glistened frown. “How the hell are we gonna play this without coins?”

“Don’t you worry, Joce... I’ve got us covered.”

 

–[ ★★★ ]–

 

From The Author: Here goes another song prompt. I think it absolutely fits, no matter how corny.

Once the first of many coins in a bucket was inserted in the machine, Joshua and Jocelyn called it dibs on who would get the highest score. GunCon controllers in hand, the two competed as if Time Crisis wasn’t a team game. By the first stage, they were on equal ground. But as they progressed through the game, it was clear that Joshua was falling apart, each shot he missed widening the gap between his and Jocelyn's scores. In fact, she accurately shot enemies before they appeared on screen.

As they reached the end of the game, Jocelyn gloated over carrying him to victory with a hard laugh. And he did not appreciate it. All the things she said about his horrible accuracy, how she called him a ‘conscientious objector’ again and again...

By the time they got to the Ms. Pac-Man cabinet, he dominated. And dominated, even if they both lost lives in the process. She contemplated having Blade Runner hack the machine apart watching him reach 10,000 points—the reward being an ‘extra life’.

And it made her seethe. Seeing him shrug off his victory like it was nothing. It wasn’t the fact he won that pissed her off, it was how he treated it like a walk in the park while she clearly wasn’t as good at Pac-Man as Time Crisis.

Luckily for her, depending on the cabinet; some games she was victorious, and some games he was. They were on equal ground for Street Fighter II, as an exception. For reasons they couldn’t explain without a degree in psychology, it was the only game where they never felt like boasting how good they were. A ‘bizarre’ irony.

The hardest she ever took a loss with was the Cove’s trademark claw machine. She barely got two out of the machine, and yet Joshua used every trick he learned over the years to get six. All with an amount of precision she never knew he had. She grumbled expletives, under the belief the machine was rigged against her favor. But to her surprise, Joshua handed two of the six he collected to her. She knew he did it to ‘perfectly balance’ the rewards. But deep down, it made her smile. She always lost to the machine, but he gave her a win she would never forget.

Rather, as they emptied chunks of the coins until nothing was left, playing in the Cove was a win. A respite she never knew needed.

Eleven days... eleven days, she endured. If any other person were to experience what she bore witness to—a breakup, a near-death experience against the Spin, the UCLA incident, dealing with three consecutive Stand users within the last three days—they would’ve broken down, lost to the depths of insanity. But she didn’t. Even though it took a toll on her psyche, being able to let go of everything weighing her down: it gave her happiness.

And happiness he also received. He didn’t expect to see her laughing for minutes, almost crying nonetheless. But he relished the sight of it. He didn’t know why, but... If he thought getting that MMA modeling contract was the happiest day of his life, his time with Jocelyn together had it beat.

 

–[ ★★★ ]–

 

Maybe the ecstasy wasn’t everlasting as they had hoped.

By the time the coins were empty, the rays of sunlight leaking through the ceiling had dimmed. It couldn’t have been more than an hour, they thought collectively. But as they threw out the bucket and exited the Cove... reality hit them like a train.

Sundown had come, the skies a nigh-blackened amethyst painting.

But it didn’t matter. The ecstasy might’ve been everlasting, after all...

“Fuck, I don’t know how long we’ve been down there,” whistled Jocelyn as she leaned by the taxi’s door. “I swear to God, I think we were playing for an hour.”

“It’s a good thing, though...” Joshua chuckled. He stood by a parking sign, watching the last of the sunset fade down. All the lights from every worn-out building in Shakedown came alive. And it was a pretty sight, like an artist brushing the warmest colors throughout their canvas... at least for him.

“Yeah, I don’t know about that,” she frowned, “it seems like we’ve lost quite a bit of time.”

“You’re telling me that after laughing for hours playing The House Of The Dead? Psh...” he gibed, tightening his loosened gloves.

“I’m just saying, Josh! We can’t be all ‘happy-go-lucky’ around here! Who knows if that Castor guy’s locked the whole studio down? Or hell, maybe he’s got some guys from Shakedown to guard whoever trespasses through ‘Vanishing’—”

“Joce. What are you even saying?”

“I-I don’t know,” she shrugged.

“You don’t know...?”

“I don’t know, for fuck’s sakes!” She wanted to rip her scarf into pieces. “I-I’m just making up excuses at this point. L-Like — I-I’m just saying shit to cover up how confusing my feelings are! Like— Oh, shit.” She covered her mouth, realizing what she just yapped about.

“So you’re confused?”

“Maaaaaybe...” She looked down on her feet, trying to think.

He walked back to the taxi, leaning beside her. It was obvious by this point, but he could tell. “Did you enjoy it,” he coaxed her.

“Enjoy what?”

“Y’know... messing around in the Cove,” he explained, “seeing you go back to when you were a kid. I mean... I never really had a childhood or something. I loved playing here a lot, but... I never... got to understand that childhood feeling, y’know. And through you? I think I... No, I... actually understand now.” He weakly laughed at himself. “Sorry, I just... am probably... being weird and all that.”

“No, actually... I enjoyed it.” It was so easy for her to admit that. But something about it was... freeing. She hid it well, but her eyes had gotten moist.

“How much?”

“Probably the most fun I’ve had in a long time,” she answered, “a long... looong... time.”

He took a moment to process her answer. And when he was satisfied with his thoughts of it, he smiled. “That’s nice to hear,” he said. “I was worried for a hot minute you were gonna shit on the Cove.”

“Boy, you proved me wrong,” she chuckled back.

“R-Really?” He rubbed his head. “I-I was just... showing off one of my hobbies, is all! Nothing too special about that.”

She tilted her head. ‘Nothing too special...?’

“I mean, if you think of it like— MMMMMPPPHHH?!”

Jocelyn sprang up, grabbed him, and locked both their faces into a sealed kiss. It happened so fast for him to react, but somehow... this was warmer than the sun itself. Their hearts raced between each other, trying not to think of how they tasted incomprehensibly horrific. The coconut water, the omelet, the sandwich... But none of it mattered. So many words they couldn’t use to describe the experience, but amazing.

She had kissed a lot of people before him, but this was different. The taste of his lips felt like reassurance. Much-needed reassurance...

He didn’t know what kissing felt like. He never considered dating seriously. Either because of the demanding body of his work, his ongoing education, or trying his damndest not to invite the trauma of his past encounters back in. But, to his surprise, it felt really good. Rather, it was the best feeling in the world.

But for as quick as it was, there was a pain that cut deep when she pulled out. “Don’t think this changes anything,” she said, entering the taxi soon after.

Joshua tried to get a word out, but nothing came. It felt like his heartstrings were tugged and ripped away with one kiss. And it didn’t help that he couldn't stop thinking about it. Part of him wanted it to last longer — if not he himself wanted that. But he knew she wanted it as nothing more than transactional.

Oh, what he would give to chase that feeling again.

Notes:

Remember to give kudos and (optionally) a comment! This helps in supporting this fic and its future endeavors.

Chapter 26: Vol. 3 - The Whistleblower

Summary:

Hours after their unexpected kiss, Joshua and Jocelyn head back to the main city to garner an audience with J.R. Castor, only to come out of it with a stunning revelation that threatens to irreparably change his life.

Notes:

Shout-out to funky_flutist and two guests who left a kudos in the previous chapter!

CONTENT WARNING // This chapter contains a brief xenophobic insult, which can be uncomfortable.

—|[ CHAPTER 26 ]|—

The Whistleblower

 

 

Jet Set Radio FM’s headquarters was a monolith.

If the massive radio tower by the station’s heart was daunting enough to visitors, the mostly windowless Brutalist rhombuses and trapezoids of five buildings ‘attached’ to each other did wonders. By day, it was a hard concrete shell. By night, it peered over the oblivious like an eye in the sky. The only source of light, save for the radio tower ‘blinking’ at odd moments, was the glass entrance to the headquarters’ lobby.

“We’re here,” said Joshua as he pulled over JSRFM’s parking lot.

To their surprise, it was empty. Aside from a few cars—an Oldsmobile Delta 88 and a flashy red Dodge Challenger among them—nothing stood between them but themselves and the doors.

“No guards,” Jocelyn said as she squinted out the window. “That’s weird. I thought it’d be... y’know... filled to the brim.”

“Even if it’s not closing hours yet? What time do we have?”

“Hm...” She got out her phone. “7:48. They don’t close ‘till eleven.”

“So we got two hours tops ‘till Castor starts up.”

“If we’re lucky. Sometimes he comes in late, sometimes he starts it up so early it becomes... unpredictable, to say the least. I dunno. It’s to be expected for a fuckface parroting harmful shit to people who fall for his grift. You get what I mean about this, don’t you?”

“If I could, I’d knock his head off.”

“Getting violent at the idea of Castor, huh?” Jocelyn laughed, unbuckling her seatbelt. “I like the sound of that.”

“He is a walking car crash, after all. Just that I wanna be the other car.”

“Huh...” Even she, of all people, felt gagged. “First off, you’ve been something of a dumbass. Now you’re telling me you’d commit vehicular manslaughter... I guess being in Shakedown’s awakened somethin’ in ya, ain’t that right Josh? Oh, well...” She opened the car door and stepped out. “Now, let’s go catch some California Love, yeah—”

“Wait, wait, wait,” Joshua grabbed her hand, still taking the wheel. “Can you stay for a bit?”

“Whaddaya want? We can’t stay here forever!”

“Listen, it’s just gonna take a bit. I just need to, um... convince you to listen to me or something. What the heck did you kiss me for? I-I mean... I know it felt good, but... Why?”

Before she knew it, she was red as a balloon. “Are we seriously talking about this—”

“I’m not trying to annoy you, I just want to know. I’m confused about it, is all. Not that I hate the kiss or anything. I just... Did you do it because you felt like it, or did you do it because you wanted to?”

“What kind of question is th— Oh, my God... Yes, I felt like it.”

“Felt like it...?”

“Christ, Josh, I JUST—” She stopped before she could yell at him. “L-Look... I needed something to distract myself with, okay? Was it right to give you a kiss? I don’t know, I just don’t think it’s right or wrong! But I needed that, because...” A heavy sigh released into the air, before she unloaded...

“Can you imagine being me for the past two weeks? Having to— H-Having to break up with your girl, escaping that bitch who got so close to ruining your life?! God, I don’t know how the fuck I survived that one night. I-I mean, everyone was there for one moment, and the next they were just gone. Then there were a buncha fucking headlights, and then I crashed. I fucking crashed. And after that crash, I— we almost got blown up! For fuck’s sake... And then I used excuses to cover up how stressed I was — heck, I didn’t know I could spit out that I hated celebrities and shit and make you believe a goddamn word!”

“...What.”

“Okay, I know that sounds stupid, but please, just... Think of it this way. Think of it like... I don’t know, screw whatever it is you want to think, I’ll just say this straight the fuck up: I almost DIED THRICE! Okay?! All within ten days of each other! So it was nice that you took me to the Cove, because I could forget all about it and be happy for once! Even if I didn’t... F-Fuck...”

She sniffed, eyes shining from moist. “Fucking hell... I’m sorry about that, Josh. I... Man, I... Okay. I just thought kissing you was enough. Simple as that. Doesn’t mean I like you already, though.”

“Well, that I understand.” He did nothing but give her a smile, even if some part of him felt pensive. “Maybe it was your way of saying ‘thank you’ or something.”

“That’s basically it.”

“Now...” He got his seatbelt out of the way, eyes locked at the headquarters’ entrance. “Shall we ‘vanish’?”

Wiping her eyes, she grinned. “Yes, we do.”

 

–[ ★★★ ]–

 

“GOOO~~D EVENING, everybody! And ‘welcome’ to California Love, your #1 radio podcast on 101.9 Jet Set Radio FM! I’m your host, DJ J.R. Castor, and tonight... Well, it wouldn’t hurt for some solo action, wouldn’t it?”

With the touch of five buttons, Castor hammered down his audience with discordant airhorns and false sounds of applause.

Despite his reputation being anything less than pleasant, the man the world knew as J.R. Castor was a surprisingly charming person. A lesser mind would’ve believed him a fat slop of a man, parroting beliefs exacerbating the toxicity of bootlickers leaning down the far right end. But no one could’ve expected he was conventionally attractive for what he was. Slicked-back blond bun, cleft chin, a garish crimson bucket hat and tuxedo and rainbow-plaid rainboots.

And his studio was just as polished as he was. Two monitors situated by a desk, a microphone hung from the ceiling by his lap, and a multipurpose studio console for accepting calls and mashing in egregious sounds.

“Now, now,” he spoke into the studio’s microphone, “I know what you’re thinking. Why go solo? Simply because I've had a lot of guests this past week — and I think taking a break to answer some questions from our listeners would be a good idea! Helps with the viewer engagement, freshens up my work, and uh... don’t tell those sycophants buried in ‘wokesand’ to—”

A dial rang by the console in his desk. “What’s this,” he said, “our first caller? What a pleasant surprise, haha! Let’s go answer some questions.” He pressed a green button in the console. “Hello, who is this?”

“'Ello, is there a California Love dial number?” answered a brittle woman with a thick Brooklyn accent.

“Ah, a fellow New Yorker,” he laughed. “I don’t technically live there anymore, given that they’re buried in ‘wokesand’ as I’ve said. But it’s nice to talk to one! Anyways, how goes the question?”

“Yeah, um... I dunno if you’sa interested in awl da end-all be-all drama last week. But do ya fancy telling us mare about da Speedwagon ting? About da gas fawt those poar kids breathed in? Since you’s were da foist ta repart it?”

“No, no, no, I think your question’s a load of shit. Let’s move on. Out!” He hung up pressing a red button.

“Well, that was an uncomfortable question,” he chuckled and rubbed his head. “Next!”

“Sorry about that, but can you please give us a look at your car insurance?” A man with a nasal voice spoke.

“Next!”

“Do you like big Brazilian ladies with huuuuuge tracts of—”

“Next...”

“Can I ask you’se about da Speedwagon thing again—”

“NEXT! GODDAMN IT, NEXT!” He nearly smashed the red button hard, reclining in his chair. “Oh, well... Our solo session is not going as planned, but hopefully — by the time we answer this next call, our session will go smoothly from now on!”

By pressing the green button once more, he eagerly asked with a silly smile, “Helloooo~?”

“J.R. Castor, you and I are gonna have a little chat.” This man’s voice was different. He knew it. He hadn’t heard someone with this kind of voice before. Something so artificial, yet so ‘detachably’ human. It was barely without a noticeable register, yet it was lower than his grating cries. “Because of the fact you’ve been declining our calls before we could succinctly answer.”

“Sorry, who the fuck is this?” He squinted, barely hiding a tinge of facial sweat. “I get calls like this every day, and you’re no different! You’re out, NEXT!”

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” added another voice, a youthful but evidently Brooklyn female one.

“Really? I could decline this call and you wouldn’t—”

“Worry?” the man chuckled. “You think of us as wasting your time. How stupid of you. Would declining the call even work?”

Castor pressed the button at once. He saw that it didn’t decline their call. “That’s weird,” he mouthed as he pressed again. And pressed again. And pressed, until there was nothing more he could do. If his jaw were loose, it would’ve touched a sprinkling of the floor beneath him.

“You’sa stupid,” the first caller joined in, “but I didn’t believe you’sa be dat stupid.”

“Oh, you again—”

“And that we made it so obvious we’re making voices as we come along,” said the second caller. “I mean, you’re already neck-deep in the grift that you’ve become one of them—”

“What are you people?!” Castor yelled into the microphone, peaking it with shrill feedback. “What is it you both want with me, huh?! If it’s about the Speedwagon thing, it was just a source! An anonymous one, you dumbfucks—”

“Take a look behind you.”

“Like I think there’d be people behind me—” When he turned to see Joshua and Jocelyn sitting behind him, he yelped. His first instinct was to say something weird about how they were dressed. Seriously, why was there a man wearing a crop top and those God-forsaken pants? And why did she have those—

He didn’t want to question it. At all. “Dear God... it’s you.” He pierced a hard gaze at Joshua. “Y-You’re the... you’re the silly fuck in the camera! And you... you’re his partner-in-crime, aren’t you?!”

“I prefer ‘collaborator’,” snapped Jocelyn, sighing. “Even if I don’t take well with working alongside this idiot.”

“What do you two want from me?! Money?! I can give you money! If it means making bail for your shit—”

“Do we look like we want any of your money,” said Jocelyn.

“I don’t know, you slant-eyed dickwhore, you get paid to gold-dig us grinders with the way you’re dressed!”

“Honey, it’s called fashion,” she scoffed. “It’s a bit hypocritical to judge, considering... um... who wears a shitty hat like that in 2029?”

“It’s better than having your jugger-nogs out!”

“So how about this?” Leaning forward, Joshua’s eyes struck Castor harder than he did, feeling as if he wanted to grab the soul from his eyes. “Let’s have a chat about him. The so-called source who called you.”

“What do you mean by chat?”

“I know deep down you wouldn’t get a damn thing we say. So I’ll hand over the CliffsNotes for this: find your source from the May 25th episode. And stream the call on live video. Live video. No audio-call bullshit. Otherwise—”

“I can’t do that!”

“Why not?” He tilted his head.

“W-Well... first off... I don’t know who that guy is!” Castor rubbed his hat. “He sounded like some kind of Black man parsed through AI, a-and... Boy, if everyone sees this, you’re so screwed! You have the whole country looking for you, glasses! The DEA, FBI, everyone! I mean, of course it was you who was the druglord the DEA’s been looking for. And it didn’t help that you did that to those kids last week!”

“It wasn’t me.”

“Really?! Your face was in there!”

“It was someone else. God, my collaborator already said you were stupid, but I didn’t think your stupidity would stoop down beyond what she thinks my stupidity is.” Joshua groaned, his hands curling into a fist. “Did you even see the footage at Royce Hall? I was there, dammit! SCREAMING! How can I be there screaming and be at that tunnels— Fucking hell...”

“Respectfully, glasses, what in the shit are you even talking about?!”

“Just find the guy and call him, it’s a done deal, we don’t have to get anyone hurt,” Jocelyn shouted. “I mean... our mere existence hurts you already. We’re everything shitfaces like you wanna fuck and kill, and so much more.”

“...Okay.” Castor panted, his eyes turned towards his desk’s monitors. “I’ll do what you ask. Just give me... I don’t know.”

In compliance with their request, Castor clacked down keys and searched intently for the source. For as much of a monster as he was with the venom he spread, he, like the clothes he wore, was complex. Because he was valuable. In the sense that he tapped into the memories of that date. The sound of that voice. That ‘Borg’ voice with human-like cadence. Echoes of a voice phasing through space and time. An unspoken truth from the voice of a liar.

Joshua and Jocelyn wanted to hate him. Make excuses that he was stalling. But he was efficient in his search, and that surprised them. What compelled such a piece of shit to obey their request?

Joshua was sure the beast’s charms weren’t working on him. He didn’t attempt to reach out to him, let the rainbow flicker in his eyes do the work. Castor was just strangely compelling for a voice of the unreasonable. An enigma of a man who had just found the contact they were looking for.

“There,” Castor said, “I found him.”

“That quick...?” Joshua furrowed his eyebrows.

“Yes. I know a voice, and I will never forget a voice. Even if he’s pretending to be a smartass.” He highlighted a name in his contacts list. “There. This is the guy who called me on the 25th.”

The two laid their eyes on the first monitor, which briefly contained the contact’s profile: its name was odd, simply referred to as “TRoglodyte_UTH” with nothing but an empty “T” for an icon. But as they looked closer, something in the contact’s description instilled a feeling that sucked the heat off them.

“THE TRUTH SHALL SET ME FREE”

“No shit,” Jocelyn muttered, her eyes vast and frowning. “That can’t be a coincidence.”

“I’m thinking the same thing,” replied Joshua.

“What the fuck are you two troglodytes talking about? You know this fuck or something?”

“Call it,” he dismissed Castor’s questions. “Fast.”

“Okay...” Castor was about to touch another green button by his right—

“Start the stream before you do,” Joshua grabbed his hand, “just to make sure you’re not fooling us by being that efficient...”

Seeing Castor swallow whatever sprinkling of his pride was left made him want to smile. And he was sure it wasn’t the beast in him thinking that. He watched as he set up the webcam, clicked a few keys, and smoothly got over the necessary preparations. He was about to revisit the call that forever changed his life... only this time, he was in the same room as that bastard.

Castor’s hands shook as he waved, his teeth bared and eyebrows forming an ‘arrow’ as he said to the camera, “H-Hello, everyone... Remember when I said this was meant to be a solo session? It turns out... we have a few unexpected guests. And that we... are going to invite an old guest of ours back on the show.”

He moved out of the way with his chair, letting the viewers get a glance at the guests themselves—Joshua and Jocelyn. The two of them looked at each other, as though they conversed without speech.

This was his moment, as he believed. He thought it a miracle he broke into JSRFM’s offices without outside interference, let alone stand in the very room that preached his downfall. A stepping stone towards reaching the goal he sought the day he started this journey. But a part of him felt great conflict. He was well aware of Castor preaching such violent gospel, feeling guilty for the fact he was about to use his platform to tell the truth.

Was he about to sink his reputation down the drain?

Was he carrying out a plan doomed to fail?

Joshua hesitantly took the microphone, crouching down to ensure his face was front-and-center in the monitor. He gulped and said, “U-Um... hi. In case you have the faintest idea of who I am, well...

“My name is Joshua Johnson... or at least, how the world thought my name was. Matter of fact, my real name... is Remy Wanderlust. I have made peace with that fact. But I don’t go by that name anymore, due to... personal reasons. I... do hope you respect that, in spite of the things you believe about me. What I cannot respect, however... is the fact that everyone thinks the bastard in that maintenance tunnel was me. I’m going to be adamant about this, so you’ll have to listen to me, no matter what happens. That man... is not... ME.

“Believe me, I was at Royce Hall when it happened.” He got his phone and showed camera footage of his screams at the auditorium, pointing a harsh finger at it.

“Yes, I am responsible for Vespertine. And I know for certain that I’ll live the rest of my days guilty for it. But the man you saw in the tunnel was not me. If you see anyone who remotely looks like me, acts like me, wears a pair of glasses like me: DO NOT TRUST HIM! He’s not me, and I’m not him either. It might sound dumb to you, but as I’ve said, I am adamant about it, whether you like it or not.”

Jocelyn did not do anything but listen. ‘I don’t know what the hell you’re doing,’ she thought, ‘but... go off. Pop off, or whatever.’

“You may be wondering why I went to J.R. Castor for this. I could’ve picked any other podcaster to do this — much less a good person. But that call he had on May 25th is the reason why all this shit has gone down. Something from the Speedwagon Foundation was stolen from their laboratories. And I know for certain my imposter stole it. He wouldn’t have — h-have killed those poor kids without it! So I implore you people to start there. Find clues, find whatever you need to—”

Before he could resume, the monitor sparkled in red static. “W-What the—” he shook the monitor. “Hello? Can you all hear me?”

Seeing the monitor malfunction led Castor to hiss. “You maniacs,” he leapt from his chair in a rage, “what did you do to it...?! What the FUCK did you do—”

“Sit down, shithead,” Jocelyn shoved him back down.

“I didn’t do anything,” Joshua explained. “Swear to God, this isn’t me!”

“If this isn’t you,” Castor jabbed a finger at the monitor, “then who—”

A dissonantly loud dial-up tone blared from the console’s speakers, leaving everyone with their ears held down. The monitors smoldered an oppressive red, a ‘biohazard pentagram’ forming in pieces. Castor did not hide the poisonous impulse to jeer, but both Joshua and Jocelyn knew tacitly what was about to breach through the studio monitors.

And as the screens hard-cutted to the grainy image of a silhouetted man, they knew instantly they had poked a beehive and provoked the queen.

He stood there with pocketed hands, a banner bearing the pentagram symbol hung by the wall in front of him. The dial-up sound vanished, everyone in the studio free to let their ears go, as there was nothing but the sound of wind gusts... and him.

“Were you looking for me, percha~~nce,” the man said, not facing the camera. “Or were you... busy? Staring at the screen, watching me ‘scream’ into ‘making contact’ with the likes of you?”

“Who the fuck are you...?” Joshua croaked.

“Me? Well... let me take you through a verbal journey into the wonders of ‘plastic surgery’.” He chuckled as if he had fun toying with him. “A man like you, with all this... money... You could afford plenty of procedures to fix whatever is wrong with you. Let those doctors put you under for hours, and hours, aaa~~~nd hours... until whatever issues you possess have been rectified. Say, for example, your arms. Inconsistent in length, so what do you do? Extend the bones. Or...

“Rhinoplasty, for example. Got a bad nose? Let them fix it for you. 90% of the time, you’ll look... ugly. But you’d eventually feel better at yourself, knowing... nothing can be worse than...”

“Show yourself, dammit!” Joshua was about to punch the monitors, when the man turned around. Revealing himself from the shadow he once was...

“Well... I reckon ‘facial reconstruction surgery’ is way worse,” the man said. “Hello, brother. The name’s Redmond Wanderlust. Pleasure to meet you.”

Joshua recoiled back upon seeing the man in all of his ‘copycat’ glory. He knew it. This was the bastard who killed everyone at UCLA that week ago. But some part of him broke, knowing... in a cruel turn of events, he was right. Redmond was of the same flesh and blood he was born into. He wanted to jump onto the screen, somehow break into his place and pummel him for what he had done. But nothing left him more perplexed than his name... Redmond... Wanderlust...?

“Wait a minute... Wanderlust?!” he spluttered.

“What is it, brother? You think Remy Wanderlust was just the name they gave you? You’re wrong. Or perhaps, I should clarify... we’re just twins, you and I. Just raised by different people in comparison to the man and woman we call our... geh... parents...” He said that as if he loathed them.

“I don’t give a fuck who you are... It’s you, dammit! You’re the piece of shit who killed them!”

“Playing the ‘revisionist’ card now, are we?” Redmond laughed. “Oh, brother... no one is to blame for the tragedy more than you. You did come up with Vespertine for the masses to consume, remember? And who helped you pave the road for that? Well... it’s certainly not the topic I want to discuss—”

“Then what is, asshole?”

“Your future, Remy. And whatever it holds.”

“Don’t call me that.”

“And yet you’re calling me expletives. I like your fire, brother. But I’d rather be left cool and clear of any negativity, if it means explaining our plans with you properly.”

“What the hell is going on, right now...?” Castor buried his head deep in his palms. “This is... a lot to take in.”

“Much as I hate to say this, shithead,” Jocelyn replied, “I feel the same way.”

“Fine, then...” Joshua squinted at the screen. “What does my future hold?”

“I can list off a few things,” Redmond grinned as he took out a folder. “Say... I can tell you that your suffering wasn’t without purpose. We didn’t sell you to Glitter without a reason, let alone what enjoyment he got out of using you. We didn’t let you become famous without a reason either. And certainly, you might not like it, but I know for a fact your girlfriend is gonna be really happy you two met.”

“You motherfucker,” Jocelyn yelled, her face ‘bleeding’ red. “Even you?!”

“I can’t say the specifics, Ms. Giovanna. But trust me. You’re gonna have a looo~~ng and prosperous future with my brother. Matter of fact, I’m rooting for you both, actually. But for the big bombshell: everything that’s happened in your life is one of many parts constituting our plan, brother. A trial, to say the least.”

“A trial...?” Joshua was so close to the screen that his eyes almost touched it.

“Yes, brother. Specifically the first ‘phase’. Because as far as I’m concerned, it all started when you met her. And when the first ‘phase’ comes to a close, it’ll end with her. And the next will end with her, the next will also end with her, it’ll even end the same way as the others. With her! She does have a trial of her own to overcome. Just that... like yours, I won’t disclose what it is. You’ll have to figure them out yourselves.”

“Don’t bring her into this, you son of a bitch!”

“Ehh, she already did it herself when you both killed... What's his name again? Rafael, yes. Jacob, maybe. Spanish naming customs aren’t my strongest suit. He was a good Subject. Hated his humor in regards to his nickname of choice. Anyways... It’s sad that our little chat is about to end.”

He wistfully frowned. “But best wishes to the two of you, for enduring your respective trials will not be an easy task. But... I do hope, by the end of it, you’ll grow a stronger appreciation for each other than what you both are now. Bye-byeeee~!”

“YOU MOTHERFUCKER—”

With a childlike giggle and the snap of a finger, Redmond vanished. The crimson screen was gone, back to the folder of contacts it displayed the moment before. With everything he told them both, Joshua and Jocelyn knew—from the moment he revealed himself and his plans for them—that they had gotten into more trouble than what they bargained for.

Notes:

Remember to give kudos and (optionally) a comment! This helps in supporting this fic and its future endeavors.

Chapter 27: Vol. 3 - Dreams of Californication, Part 1

Summary:

Immediately after Redmond's revelation, Joshua and Jocelyn find themselves ambushed by a blood feud they've never seen coming...

Notes:

No kudos were given in the previous chapter. Sad...

—|[ CHAPTER 27 ]|—

Dreams of Californication, Part 1

 

 

THREE HOURS AGO…

 

Gemma Cyrus watched as she and two others looked at a casino dealer. She sat in the middle, the dealer relaxed opposite at the head of the table, tapping her fingers as the dealer arranged a set of sixteen poker cards. He passed two of them to the players in a swipe-like motion, and all the players but Cyrus took the cards with giddy.

In contrast, her face barely moved. ‘My God, read the room,’ she thought. ‘Being all smiley-smiley isn’t gonna get you a win...’

She and the other players found themselves in a moody casino somewhere in Inglewood. Anyone who didn’t know better would’ve thought it cost a lot of money — but it was nothing more than a glorified garage. Behind the dealer was a trolley holding a vase containing $5000 in cash, and the TV screen on his far left played footage of a boxing match. It was that of Jean Wrangler and Roman “Jazzy Lips” Acheson in the former’s first match of his 2029 retirement tour.

“Three-hundred dollars on the pot,” the dealer announced, putting a chip on his side. “call it or check. Your move.”

The players peeked the cards in hand. Cyrus didn’t bother seeing them, only focusing on her own hand. A three of clubs and two of spades.

“I’ll call,” said a nicely-suited young man, who put a chip on his side.

“Calling,” repeated a woman with pouting lips, who did the same.

“I check,” declared Cyrus, also putting her own chip.

“Very well... Call it.” The dealer put down three cards in the middle. A king, a three of diamonds, and a joker. “Your move.”

“I’ll check it.”

“Checking.”

“I check.”

The dealer sighed. He stacked a chip on top of the one he previously had. “I’m raising the pot to three-hundred and twelve. Fold, check, call... your move. Just don’t cheat, will you?”

“I’ll fold it.”

“Folding...”

“I call.”

The other players turned to Cyrus once she made the decision. All their eyebrows furrowed at once, as if she battered their lovely possessions into grimy pulp.

Cyrus did not mind. She wanted to smile, but refused to break any inkling of her poker face. “Can we just move on,” she said.

“She’s right. She only did the bare minimum, and you all think of her that way. Anyways...” he added a two of hearts to the middle set. “Check it.”

The players leaned in at the middle set, eyes glued to the numbers on the even cards. They said nothing, spoke of nothing, and only thought to themselves. At least, until the well-suited player thought to speak out his mind...

“Hey,” he nudged Cyrus with a raised eyebrow. “Do I know you from somewhere...?”

“Probably not,” she answered.

“I guess I do... weren’t you, uh... tsk.” He loosened his tie and unbuttoned his cuffs. “January 2nd. Public defender case. Slam-dunk after the prosecution made up the evidence.”

“Huh.”

“I was the defendant,” he said, wiping sweat off his tanned skin. “Darius Molyneux. Remember?”

“Ah... that guy.” Her poker face was strong, but there was something Darius couldn’t tell: she saw him as nothing but an afterthought.

“I kid you not, miss, you saved my ass.” He laughed. “I mean, they passed off my driving under the influence as some kind of stupid cold murder case. Fuck were they thinking?! Even some dumbfuck could see from a mile away they framed me. And you got me out! Just like nothing happened!

“Seriously, you saved my life... there’s no way I can’t be grateful for that.”

“Yeah, well... I do it all the time.” And she thought, ‘He’s just another Tuesday for me... plus he’s not even that good-looking.’

“Thanks again, though...”

She didn’t say another word. And she remained that way, even as her phone buzzed. Taking it out of her pockets, she saw a notification. It was a message from Rooney, and when she opened it, it read:

(R)
Rooney

“JOSHUA AND JOCELYN FOUND
JET SET RADIO FM, 4601 LIMAN ST.
INTERCEPT AT ONCE” Sent 9:01 PM

Cyrus sighed once she read it, pocketing her phone back inside. She shot up from her seat and said, “I have to go.” The dealer—who had just put a two of hearts on the middle set—and the other players looked as she walked out into the casino’s exit. Their faces were red, steam blowing off.

“Where the hell are you going,” yelled the dealer. “We’re not even done with the game yet!”

“I’ve already won,” she grinned, showing off four hundred-dollar bills on her hand. “Take a look at my cards... if you feel so inclined.”

She shot the cards out from her other hand, landing precisely onto the dealer’s hands. It took a moment for the dealer to realize she was right. When he put her cards onto the middle set, it formed a “two pairs” hand: two pairs of a two of hearts and three of diamonds next to a king.

“Holy shit...” Darius mused to himself, smiling at the dealer’s bewildered expression. “She did win...”

The excitement everyone at the table had brimmed so much... That they missed the last two cards—the other two of hearts and three of diamonds—flickering in red and gold colors.

 

–[ ★★★ ]–

 

BACK TO THE PRESENT…

 

“I can’t believe this shit," yelled Joshua, who looked as if he kicked rocks every step he took. “All this talk, only for that Redmond hack to make me look like an old man yelling at ghosts?! Goddamn it, man...”

“Easy there,” Jocelyn intruded, “I thought you were gonna say something about beating that Castor fuck ‘till he saw stars.”

“Which I would, if it wasn’t for him!” He sighed, walking back to the taxi in the parking lot. “Seeing him bloody and stuff made me smile, don’t get me wrong. But you gotta bear with me on this. We know who he is now, but what happened after that? He set my side of the deal back to square one. Square one! For fuck’s sakes, he took away the most solid proof we have that I didn’t do it! I mean... I just wish we had something else in our pocket. Like a phone, or... fuck... do we even have phones?”

“I do, but—”

“You had one?!”

“It was low on battery, doofus! Not to mention, it’s on its last legs — considering how it got so bloated it nearly shat itself.”

“Fuuuuuck,” Joshua nearly ripped the roots of his hair. “I think I’m going insane...”

“About what?” Even if she didn’t share the same mind, Jocelyn swore she could read them beyond her observational capabilities...

“God, there’s no way. There’s just no way, y’know. I told you about it last night, remember? How I was scared that my family would turn out to be pieces of shit? Well, there you have it. My brother, let alone a fucking twin, killed four-thousand people and framed me for the crime.

“And it’s not just that! It’s... this... fucking trial... what did he mean by all that?”

“You’re overthinking this, Josh,” she reached out for his hand—

“W-Why shouldn’t I?! Why shouldn’t I— Do you have any idea what he just said?! He said, h-he — He fucking said it himself, everything bad that’s happened to me happened for a reason! That I’m in some kind of stupid trial, that I— What did he mean by all this? Did he mean to tell me that, ‘Hey, bro! I just wanna tell you, that you weren’t kidnapped by an ice cream truck for nothing! That you were the victim of a kiddie-fucker who made you cook drugs because we wanted you to! That you didn’t become a fashion model out of your own free will—’ WAS MY WHOLE LIFE PLANNED TO TURN OUT THIS WAY?!”

Joshua paced around, catching whatever excess air escaped his lungs. So many thoughts, so many possibilities... Of his parents willing to throw him away for money, of Redmond spying on him and laughing at his suffering... “Can we just pretend today didn’t happen? That it all ended when we—”

Something caused a sharp wince in his forearm, yelping. “What the fuck?”

“Josh!” She ran up to his side, only for her eyes to widen. “Holy fuck... you’re bleeding.”

“I’m what?” As soon as he looked, his forearm as he knew it leaked ruby ichor. He pushed it down with his left hand, feeling the blood moisten his touch, painting his glove red as rain... “Oh, God... do you feel that?”

“Feel what?”

Just as the words escaped her mouth, a glint caught her eye from the left. She whipped her head to check it, only to see a red light shining back at her from a distant lamppost. The silhouette of a woman stood by it, and what seemed to be an aura of red-and-gold by her head. “Oh, shit... is that a—”

“WATCH OUT!”

Joshua threw himself and Jocelyn out of a small flurry of red poker cards. They hit the ground, clutching each other. As the two of them nodded, healthy despite the bleeding in his forearm, they glanced at the silhouette. There, the woman stepped into the light. It was Cyrus, draped in her California Girls-signature ‘pink camouflage’ and ‘poker face’ mask. A set of eight gold poker cards hovered in her wrist, the aura standing out in the night sky.

“You’re one tough bitch to find, Jocelyn Johannssen,” she chuckled. “Or... dare I say... Giodessa Giovanna.”

Cyrus waved her hands, the ‘wrist’ cards dancing around them. “Like what I brought with me?”

“Seriously...?” she growled.

“What did you think? That we’d leave you both alone after what you did? Heh...” Cyrus turned to Joshua. “Sorry, Remy... but I can confidently say you’re bad at diplomatic solutions. Hence... our need for aggressive negotiations.”

She shot her arm out as a set of gold cards flew onto them.

“Run,” Joshua yelled as he and Jocelyn split apart, sprinting as far from them as they could.

The gold cards were heavy, moving noticeably slower than the red cards. But what it lacked in speed, it made up for in power: all eight of the cards made contact with the Oldsmobile in the lot, and exploded. The windows were blasted open, holes bursting out of the doors, the car’s frame crumpled into a misshapen form.

“Holy fuck,” Jocelyn struggled to contain her grimace, hiding by a monotone car two rows away from the destroyed Oldsmobile. “What the fuck did you do to that car?!”

“『IV of Spades』, my friend!” Cyrus stretched her arms wide. “Gets the job done with no spared expenses. Now might be a good time to start fighting, but... I wouldn’t advise you to do that without a lawyer.”

Now card-less in every sense of the word, she took out a red card from the aura, and swiped at a car window next to her. It cut the window into a ‘rectangle’, as she grabbed it before it fell. The rectangle transmuted into a set of twelve cards, alternating in red and gold.

“Twelve,” she hissed, the cards dancing in her wrists a bit sluggish and heavy. “But that’ll do.”

Cyrus raised her left hand and shot the red cards out, flying somewhat slower than the previous ones she had. Each of them raced towards Jocelyn, who called out Blade Runner. As soon as they surfed around her, it swung its blades at the cards, shattering them. It grunted “MUDA!” with each swing, killer intent to protect its User flaring in its eyeless roars.

Cyrus hissed, retreating off to a black car next to the collapsed lamppost.

“Is that it?” Jocelyn grinned, Blade Runner crossing its blades. “All that talk, just for your shit to break that quick?”

“You think throwing cards like that is all I can do?” She feigned confidence, but the thought of such a formidable Stand like Blade Runner ate whatever was left of it. “Don’t forget what I did to that car!”

“First off, it’s an Oldsmobile. Second— Oh, shit!”

Cyrus rolled out of cover and thrust the gold cards onto Jocelyn, Blade Runner moving to cover her. It braced for the cards, all six of them moving like cardboard boxes on a conveyor, and readied to break them like glass.

But as it cried “MUDA” and grazed but a single scratch on the first gold card, it blasted Blade Runner off its feet, staggered as the blade wobbled.

“What the fuck...?!” Jocelyn exclaimed, as she braced for the next five.

Blade Runner attempted to break the second gold card, but the force of the blast was so strong it dropped the blade, dangling by the cable attached to its tank. And the rest of the cards followed, each of them concussing its armor pads and limbs. Jocelyn felt as though everything decelerated into a screeching slow-motion. She felt helpless as she watched the armor shatter into bits, its skin breaking into deep lacerations.

And she shared the damage as blood spurted off her own Stand’s wounds, leaving her down on her knees. “FUCK!” she hissed, gasping as she felt like a thousand bees stung her flesh.

Even if she didn’t see it clearly, Cyrus bumped her fist and cackled. Jocelyn could tell from her actions that she quickly figured out a strategy. That she used the red cards as bait—albeit unintentionally—and used the gold cards to dish out proper damage onto her. And it worked.

“What’s the matter,” Cyrus tittered, “can’t keep going? Boy, you’ve got a mouth for someone who likes to bleed...”

“Shut the fuck up,” roared Jocelyn.

“And write off my counsel before realizing you need it? Girl, you’re a funny creature. With funny fangs, if I might add. I know you feel like you should die like this. Trust me, I wanna kill you so badly — and so does everyone else! But unfortunately, we have to keep you freshly prepared. So I’m just gonna hurt you badly without killing you, and when ‘Lover Boy’ comes to your rescue... I’ll take him out, too. Speaking of...

“Where is he? Where the f— Where did he go?” She looked all over the lot, preying on every corner like a hawk.

“Right here.”

“Wha—”

Once she turned to the voice’s direction, Cyrus was met by the downward swing of needles. She fell on her ass, and when she felt her face, her mask was gone. The needles must’ve swiped it off, she thought, but then something seeped out from her left cheek that stung badly. Once she looked at her hand, it was soaked in blood. Her eyes bulged out of its sockets, breaths ramped up, as she saw a bird-like visage with horrible white eyes staring back at her.

“W-What the fuck is that...?!” She could only say so much before crawling out of its way.

“If I can’t find anything useful for Rebel Moon,” Joshua emerged behind his Stand. “Then I’ll apply the necessary ‘brute force’ to solve this escalating situation.”

Rebel Moon squawked, and leapt furiously at Cyrus, swinging its fingers at her. Cyrus ducked out and ran off to a car opposite them. It growled and pounced on the car, its weight crushing the roof, as it jumped onto the next to follow her.

“Jesus,” Cyrus shrieked, as she took out a pendant from her pockets and dashed behind a black van.

By the time Rebel Moon pounced from car-to-car to the black van’s direction, she was gone. It uttered noises, shaking its head as its growls of slime grinding against the pipes resounded. It started sniffing for any sign of her, letting the blood do the work. But the source was scrambled—one moment she was right behind it, and the next she was by a lamppost. It grumbled, fists clenching as it contemplated pounding the van until it was a half-baked copy of the Oldsmobile.

“Where did she go...?” Joshua mused, looking at where Rebel Moon sniffed. Certainly, they followed her as best as they could. But with his Stand erratically searching for muddled clues, and how she suddenly disappeared, it led him to think:

“She ‘vanished’... didn’t she?”

Once he had assumed this, Rebel Moon dashed and bore witness to a flurry of eighteen red cards zooming onto Joshua from behind. It roared as it jabbed all but three cards off him, shattering them into a million pieces. But Cyrus quickly waved the last three to cleave Rebel Moon’s body into a spiral.

Joshua screamed as he leaked crimson, clutching his chest as he fell on his knees. Like Jocelyn before, he was now vulnerable; a searing sensation pricking at his wounded flesh left him immobilized.

“Brute force is never the correct solution, shitface!” Cyrus hurled two gold cards at Rebel Moon.

Rebel Moon’s eyes locked onto the cards, and prepared to deflect it. It swung a right hook at the first, expecting it to break like the red cards. Within the mere touch of its fist, however, the card burst into concussive sparks. Joshua saw as his holes in his right hand ripped open, clutching it, screaming in delirium. The flesh was so swollen it barely hinted at the burns, bits of bone poking through. It was as though he were a child, playing with firecrackers where he shouldn’t have, and agony beyond comprehension it incited.

He had gone through so much the past week—a crater in his chest blown open, bruising and soreness all over from his fight with Jocelyn, and back-to-back encounters with Crywank and Charli Taylor that nearly drove him insane.

Having his hand explode before his very eyes was somehow worse.

The second card hit Rebel Moon between its sternum, and the blast caused muscles to tear open, ribs to crack, and his maroon essence to splatter the concrete red. He found himself completely locked in position, the pain so unbearable he couldn’t move anything.

“I got you now,” Cyrus said, her laughs being of exhilarating relief.

In her mind, Rebel Moon was no Stand like she had ever seen. She had no succinct word to describe it but a monster—the epitome of her hardest challenges brought to life. Like it had been ripped directly from folklore that would’ve terrified her as a child. But seeing it writhe in defeat, let alone watch as its User was left nigh catatonic from IV of Spades’ attacks, aroused an ecstatic high within her. As though she was David facing her own Goliath.

“What’s the matter, you piece of shit?!” Cyrus walked closer, pointing a harsh finger at him. “Too busy bleeding to move a wrinkle?! I won, goddamn it! If you’re gonna try and fight me, I suggest you don’t! Unless you’ve got more blood left to lose...”

Joshua did not respond. So much pain riddled his insides to even let out any noise—be it a moan or grunt.

“What...? You can’t talk?!” She snapped fingers at his face, frowning. “Say something—”

A hiss from Rebel Moon left her yelping, recoiling two steps back.

“What the f...?!”

Rebel Moon twitched, jerking itself towards her. As sweat began mixing with her blood until she couldn’t tell which was which, she realized too late she wasn’t David. Nor was it Goliath. It was beyond that. Goliath was a powerful and fearsome warrior—but not once was he an ‘apex predator’ like Rebel Moon, whose white eyes flashed rainbow, red smoke flaring off its pipes, as intoxicating tar brimmed from its mouth and fingers.

Something about IV of Spades awakened something deep in it.

And it relished that something as it squawked in a mad prance towards her, Joshua still as stone in contrast. The ‘beast’ he had consulted these past few days slithered into his Stand’s mind. Giving it a crazed adrenaline rush neither would’ve gotten by themselves. A blackened spell of rage that unbound its shackles, free to crave eviscerating its prey to no end.

Closer and closer it ran, swinging a blind hook if it meant flaying her face off. But as it reached to the point its beak was so close to pecking her head, it saw too late a phone she got from her pocket. In the phone’s case was a charm that glinted red—the same glint its User saw when she first came to them in shadow. And within the blink of an eye, it flashed green.

Before he knew it, she was gone. ‘Vanished’ from the face of this earth.

Rebel Moon growled, eager to catch a body and rip it apart. Joshua was in stupor, but even his ajar mouth told how terribly in disbelief he was. A green light came from Cyrus, but not once did he figure out she had a ‘medium’ of her own...

“Josh?!” Jocelyn yelled from behind. “Oh, good Jesus... Josh!”

And there she was, having hid in a yellow car meters from the action. Much of her limbs were soaked in blood, but she cauterized the bleeding as much as she could. Rebel Moon dissipated, leaving them two to look after each other.

“Holy shit, Josh... are you okay?” She held his face, hoping to get answers.

He didn’t give any. He just moaned.

“Oh, no... y-your... your hand. What the fuck did she do to your hand...?”

“I tried punching it off,” he coughed at long last.

“Oh, my God, I thought you were— Wait, what?” Never had she furrowed her eyebrows that quick.

“I tried punching it off,” he repeated.

“You fucking dumbass, of course you’d try that!” She lightly punched him in the arm, but he cried in return. “Fuck. Sorry.”

“L-Let’s not... do this right now,” he said, desperately reaching for air. “I-I... I don’t know how long I’ve got. I’m gonna pass out, and... Holy Christ... we have to get outta here... we have to get outta here...”

“I know, I know...” her hand reached out to his face, but she stopped. She felt she was gonna hurt him even more. “Oh, God... you look really bad...”

“Yeah... blame me all you want when we’re out... I shouldn’t have punched it.”

“We are not doing this right now, Josh,” she snarled, “NOT NOW. Okay? Last thing I wanna see tonight is you blaming yourself for shit you didn’t do, much less bleed out on me. What we’re gonna do, is that we’re gonna ‘vanish’,”—she took out High Jack’s ball—“and we’re gonna get you to a doctor right away. Are we clear on that?”

“Crystal...” he coughed.

“O-Okay, I just gotta... um...” Jocelyn was about to carry him in her shoulders—

“Wait.”

“What?”

“W-Who’s gonna drive, though?” He showed his blown-up hand and winced. “I-I can’t... move a fucking finger without hurting.”

“Don’t worry about me,” she smiled. “I can drive.”

---

『 User 』 — Gemma Cyrus
『 Stand Name 』— IV of Spades

Power: D Speed: B Durability: E Precision: A Range: B Potential: C

『 Observations 』— By the User’s touch, it converts objects into a flurry of poker cards that the she can freely manipulate and shoot out, with up to 20 cards per object. Red cards move fast and can cut through surfaces, while Gold cards move slow and deal explosive damage on contact. The lesser the amount of cards converted, the heavier and more damaging they are.

『 User Status 』 — A C T I V E
USER CURRENTLY DOES NOT POSE A THREAT

---

“Come on, dammit! Come on!” Jocelyn screamed as she helplessly felt trapped in dire straits. Her foot pedaled tightly on the gas, but not once did she think she was getting closer to ‘the doctor’. She and Joshua needed medical attention, and they needed it badly. If not for the taxi’s acceleration not being fast enough...

“O-Oh, God no...” Joshua found himself grasping at straws for air. Everything was starting to dim.

“S-Stay with me, Josh!” she pleaded. “Just... hold on for a bit longer. We’re almost there! I can feel it!”

Even if he couldn’t speak out, it was clear this was the closest he’d ever come to dying. Not once did he feel that way in the nineteen years he spent a slave. Not even when he thought driving a dirty razor in his flesh would kill him. Even with Blade Runner cauterizing every cut and burn tearing his skin, he lost so much blood he couldn’t fathom surviving miraculously.

And Jocelyn thought she had no choice as well. ‘Come on, goddamn it...! Drive... faster! Come on, baby, come on. Just a little more speed. Just a little more speed, and we’ll reach the Clinic... I can see it... next sign should read Veritas Dr. any minute now—’

“D-Drive... faster...” Joshua croaked, using the last of his strength to even talk.

“I’m trying to!” Her composure was fraying with every second she heard his breaths. There was a quaint rattle to it that disturbed her. A feeling of uselessness that, if completely given into, could wind up beat up the steering wheel more than years of disrepair had done.

‘P-Please, Josh... just hang on for a bit, will ya? Oh, God...’ She turned to him and said, “O-Okay, Josh... I’m gonna want you to listen, okay?”

He simply nodded.

“J-Just... speak out what comes into your mind. And repeat it for me, okay?”

He nodded again.

“Good... we’re almost there, just hang on for me. Okay?”

“U-Uh huh... ugh...” he moaned, the life in his hands limping. “Okay, okay, what to... repeat... beautiful sky, beautiful... paradise... hair of fire... rainbow eyes... flashing eyes... beach waves...”

'J-Josh, whatever the fuck happens to the two of us tonight, you have to make out of this alive,’ she panicked through every turn. ‘YOU HAVE TO! I can't go on with this stupid quest if you give up on me like that! I need you, dumbass. No shot I'm gonna live with myself if you... Ugh... O-Okay, GioGio. Think. Think positively, think happy thoughts, think... Oh, shit—'

Jocelyn stomped on the breaks, halting the taxi to a screeching halt. A Cadillac blocked the road before her, and if this were any other Cadillac—she wouldn’t have growled bloody murder and had steam puffing off her ears.

“No, no, no, no, NO!” She hit the steering while with her fists. “FUCK! NO!!! O-Oh, God no...”

The headlights mounted on the Cadillac’s roof went shut, as the Califronia Girls stepped out one by one. This was a trap beyond dire straits now. This was between life and death. And with Joshua’s survival on the line, Jocelyn knew straight away her fight was over.

The Girls walked onto the taxi, armed with low-caliber guns, missing two of them...

Until Cyrus sauntered over, holding her cracked poker face mask over her clawed face. And they were joined by Taylor, who hid the smarmiest grin underneath the mask she wore.

“As I’ve said to my Girls before,” Rooney boomed, unholstering her gun. “You got away then... but not anymore. This time... you’re getting the short end of the stick, Jocelyn.”

Cornered between an empty road of nothing and a gang of six clamoring for violence, Jocelyn was suffocating. There was nowhere left for her to run. And as the possibilities of escaping plummeted and plummeted until nothing remained...

She fervently wished today ended with a kiss.

To the man she fell for.

Notes:

Remember to give kudos and (optionally) a comment! This helps in supporting this fic and its future endeavors.

Chapter 28: Vol. 3 - Dreams of Californication, Part 2

Summary:

Jocelyn makes a dangerous escape to find herself and Joshua medical treatment, but the California Girls plot to chase them across the city until they give up.

Notes:

No kudos were given in the previous chapter. Sad...

—|[ CHAPTER 28 ]|—

Dreams of Californication, Part 2

 

 

‘What... the... fuck...?!’

Cyrus couldn’t believe she easily escaped Rebel Moon still. If she were a moment late, her face would’ve been swiped off the bone. A minute late, her head would’ve been completely decapitated. Like Goliath, it fell victim to pride and irrationality, as it couldn’t have foreseen her wits using her phone to transport herself between worlds. Yet... how on Earth could such a Stand exist?

Taylor’s account of her defeat spelled vague ideas as to how it functioned. But not how it personified the nightmare in her sleep.

‘Holy fuck,’ she thought amid her heart pounding, ‘I-I don’t— I don’t believe it. How did I... Christ. Least I can do is worry about the fact it was leaking tar of all things. I gotta get back to the Girls... Tell them about—’

Just as she thought of them, the Girls suddenly ‘Vanished’ into the parking lot, the Cadillac parked directly behind. She shrieked as though Rebel Moon caught her by the neck.

“What the fuck, you guys?!” she yelled.

“What, Gem? You really didn’t think we’d— Oh, my God.” Rooney gasped once she saw what clawed her poor friend’s face. “Y-Your—”

“Remy Wanderlust,” she explained hastily, “h-he was... Okay, I don’t wanna talk about it, no big deal.”

“Que cojones?! You’re ugly, hija!” Rosa intruded.

“Never looked better.”

“W-Was it a bear? Did a bear do this to you?” Clarity sated her curiosity, an eyebrow raised.

“Um... a bird...?” Never in her life with the California Girls did Cyrus smile so wrongly.

“A bird did this to you?!”

“For fuck’s sake, YES IT DID! A bird did that to my face!” She pointed a hard finger at her clawed cheek. “Shit, have you seen its fingers? They were needles! Fucking needles, my worst enemy! A-And like... Look, I don’t know, I just wanna get it out of my head, maybe sleep like a baby and—” Her ears perked up and twitched. “The fuck? Y’all hear that, right?”

“Hear what...?”

A motorcycle growled from afar, its sound growing louder and louder. To their misfortune, it wasn’t the grating stutter of engines puffing out toxicating smoke, but a feline’s purr; its sleekness contrasting the quaint and cheap manufacturing of lesser motorcycles. To think she would disobey orders was a travesty...

“Um... guys?” Bertha rubbed her wrists against each other, her mask concealing her horror. “Didn’t she... get the text?”

“No, I don’t think she did,” Rooney said, her lips twitching.

The purring increased in volume and tempo, until parked before the Girls was a completely-masked Taylor. In the same state as before, but arguably in better shape. The dead skin on her neck suggested the opposite, however...

“Hey, Girls!” she laughed, as she snapped a pair of prescription glasses onto her mask. “Think I can lend a hand?”

“I told you to stay home and rest,” frowned Rooney.

“Yeah, about that...” she shrugged as if nothing else mattered. “M’sorry, Boss. I get it.”

“B-Bestie, do you have a death wish?!” Bertha dashed between them, sweating under the mask. “Y-You’re gonna— Y-You’re— A— Aie— e— e— er-e-ee—”

“Maybe I have one, maybe I don’t, who cares?” Even her mask couldn’t hide how her eyes bulged. “Holy fuck, Gem, look at your face!”

“Eh... it’s nothing my beauty ain’t used to.”

“Charli, please.” Rooney sprang up and held her shoulders. “Think about this for one... second. Go home.”

“Boss, I—”

“Go HOME.” She insisted. “You almost died of shock on the way to the Clinic, girl! Are you seriously risking your life just to get back at the shitfaces who put you in that tank?! Are you crazy enough to be willing to do that?!”

“Boss, please! I’ll be more careful.” Taylor chortled.

“Oh, my God, girl...” Rooney scoffed. “Are you serious...?!”

“Dead serious.”

“Oh, my God—”

“God-fucking-dammit, you guys! Just hear me out, please?!” Taylor feigned a rant to the best of her degree. “Y’all are babying me around, thinking I don’t understand what y’all are so worried about! Okay?!”

“...I’m listening.”

“Okay... Um... Just because I almost died, doesn’t mean you have the right to start babying me like I have no free will! I want this. Okay? I want this! I want to not miss out and join up, because the last thing I want is for all of you to not let me get my get-back! Don’t pretend I’m not fine and that I need a day off, because I’m only getting one — once they’re down on the ground, begging for their fucking lives!

“Besides... five plus one means we have better odds at winning, don’t we?” She hid a grin. “Right? Riiiight, Girls?”

The Girls looked at each other in silence; and in tacit understanding, sought counsel from Rooney. The decision to let her in weighed down on her. And after gazing at herself and the ground beneath her, she conceded:

“Fair enough... Don’t get yourself killed, okay?”

Taylor giggled. “Well... who says I’m dying?”

 

–[ ★★★ ]–

 

“No, no, no, no, NO!” Jocelyn felt a catastrophe coming her way, as she smashed her fists on the steering wheel. “FUCK! NO!!! O-Oh, God no...”

She would’ve been ambivalent had this encounter been from any other situation. But her control over everything slipped past her fingers with each passing second. Joshua getting the medical attention he needed was her priority. But now, a roadblock forced itself on her path. The fear of failing had never been more alive...

‘This isn’t happening,’ she repeated in her mind. ‘This isn’t happening, I’m not here, this isn’t happening this isn’t happening this ISN’T— Oh, God... Someone tell me, please... what did I do? To deserve this? To— Ugh... fuck...’

With three quick breaths, she peered at Joshua. He had done nothing but mutter words with what little power he grasped. It wasn’t seeing the life escape his eyes that haunted her, but the fact this was her own fault.

‘I’m sorry, Josh... I wish it didn’t turn out this way.’

Rooney whistled as she lurched onto the car door. “Well?” she said, knocking on the window. “Didn’t expect all of us, didn’t ya?”

Jocelyn sighed, and slid the window open. She frowned as she replied, “I knew this was gonna happen either way, Roon.”

“You think so?” Her glare pierced through the mask, a cocktail of venomous malice dripping with every moment she stared. “Step out of the car with your hands up. Do not move until I tell you to.”

“Good God, Roon, who do you think you are?! A cop?!”

“We might as well be,” she snapped.

“Bitch, he’s dying back there,” Jocelyn darted fingers at Joshua. “You want a fight? Go ahead, be my guest, ‘coz I’ll give ya one. But leave him out of this! The last thing he wants to happen now, is if he gets the shit kicked out of him once again.”

“The more that bastardo rattles, the better,” joined Rosa.

“You FUCKING—”

“Don’t... even... think about it.” Rooney raised her gun, pointing the barrel between her eyes.

Jocelyn gasped for air, her hands shivering as though she had been through a frozen tundra. “It’s all come down to this,” she lamented. “Hasn’t it...?”

“Yep... Like the fact you look like your life’s flashing before your eyes?”

She knew that look. The eyes of the girl she once trusted and loved as true wandered an endless path. Up-and-down it aimlessly jittered, unclear whether to watch their left of right. That girl wanted to open her mouth to speak. But there were too many wrong words for her to choose. Too many wrong things to speak out her mind and hurt with.

“What happened to that smile of yours,” she spat out.

“What...?”

“That... smile of yours... what happened to it?”

“Do you really wanna know?”

“If that... helps you, I guess...”

Even though she sought to retort with a sappy gibe, there was a truth to her answer she couldn’t ignore. Rooney knew that day would come. The day where she could just let go and unleash one bad days’ worth of immeasurable heartbreak to the one who gave and took her smile away. It was so easy for her to be cruel, and yet what should’ve been an easy attempt at cruelty grew complex. If Jocelyn had gone out of her way to break her heart, why couldn’t she do the same?

“Would it soothe you in knowing you took it from me?” she said at last.

“Bros before bitch!” Taylor intruded.

It seethed Jocelyn to hear that voice again. Knowing the torment she had been through... “Oh, you promiscuous piece of shit—”

“SHUT THE FUCK UP and get out of the car, now!” Rooney smashed her fist on the door, and pressed the gun against Jocelyn’s forehead. “Do it! Or else... I’ll rip you outta there myself. Believe me — I won’t be gentle about it.”

A sigh came from her as she took her hands off the steering wheel. Taking one last look at Joshua—her eyes dim and averting of his pitiful state writhing in lost blood—she opened the door and raised her hands. Rooney pressed the gun on her arm and waist, and the two stepped back from the taxi.

“Okay,” she said. “Then what?”

“We’re gonna take a nice, looo~~ng walk,” Rooney explained. “I’m not gonna force you and your boy-toy to walk fifty miles back to the CBAT Club. We’re just gonna leave everything here... Walk, and walk, and walk until... Well, do you remember what I said about ghosts during curfew hours?”

“You’re gonna feed me to them...?!”

“Silly, it’s not just you they want.” She pointed her gun at the taxi. “But yeah. If they want to, which they will... they’re going to.”

“Jesus Christ... I almost forgot how sick you are. You do care for me still, huh?” Jocelyn chuckled weakly.

“Long enough to leave you both fresh meat. Walk.” She shoved the gun’s barrel onto her back, forcing her to step forward. “We’re not stopping until one of them smells the horrible shit you’ve done. Ain’t that right, Girls?”

“Yes, Boss,” they all said in unison. And with each step down the dark road they strode, they followed.

Jocelyn found herself at the mercy of what she thought was a ‘death march’—and the Girls treated it as nothing more than an amble. Her face dripped with sweat washing out her bloodstains, fingers trembling as the direction she looked scattered itself between opposite directions. Compliance was king, as people say. But neither of the Girls truly understood what her eyes spoke of...

‘Okay... Okay... Think of something, GioGio. Deep breaths. They won’t notice a damn thing if you just walk along, like they aren’t holding you at gunpoint.’ She felt the last of High Jack’s baubles in her pockets. ‘It’s gonna be hard to pull this off, yes. But they don’t know you’ve got an ace up your sleeve, so...

‘Better put it to good use, will you?’

“U-Um,” she hastily said, breaking off from her internal soliloquy. “Do you mind if I... g-get back to the taxi...?”

“We’re already walking,” retorted Rooney, “why would you want to go back?”

“Please, please, pleaaaase? I need to get something. It’ll only last a sec.” She feigned a squeal of anticipation, the trembling in her hands exaggerated.

“What’re ya trying to get from that piece of junk, stupid?!” Rosa toted her MAC-11 at her.

“I, uh... Heh... I need my pads.”

Everyone else’s minds shut down the moment she spat it out.

“Oh, my God, you bitch...” Rosa’s grip on the MAC-11 destabilized. “What the fuck are you getting your pads for?!”

“Asshole,” Jocelyn bellowed, “I need it! For fuck’s sake, it’s that time of the month! Hello?! You do understand the necessity of pads when you’re unexpectedly pissing blood anytime now, right?! I-I mean, c’mon! You’re all girls here, even me!” She pointed at herself. “Surely, you wouldn’t mind me copping some before our long walk to ghost town, right? Right?!?”

“Ugh... go get them,” Rooney pointed to the taxi with a heavy sigh.

“Sweet!” Jocelyn made her way to the taxi—

“Be quick.” She stopped her with the gun. “Do something out of line—”

“What are you gonna do? Shoot me for getting some pads?”

“Yeah. Preferably between your eyes.”

“Ooookay, you buzzkill...” Jocelyn shook her head and jogged briskly onto the taxi. “I won’t take long, y’all! Go talk to Jesus or whatever!”

‘Okay... she can’t be serious about that, right?’ she thought in panic. ‘Putting a bullet between my eyes? What the fuck, Roon?! I... Shit. I hurt her real bad, didn’t I? I’m sorry, but... that’s not... Ugh. I know I’ve got one shot at this. And I better take it now. For my sake... and his.’

With every second wasted, Rooney’s anticipation ramped. Her teeth gritted, fuming in fire and tense shoulders, as it brimmed up until she couldn’t contain it. She took aim, pointing the gun right at Jocelyn. And with quick breaths that both rose and fell, she yelled:

“What the hell is taking you so long?! Get back, dammit!”

Yet somehow, the yelling did not faze her. It was, to simply put it, a signal to move forward. ‘Now’s my chance,’ she thought, as she released High Jack’s bauble from her pockets.

Their jaws collectively plummeted to the floor, a red light glinting at the bauble, as Jocelyn grinned and waved, “See ya around, Girls!”

“Oh, you BITCH—”

Within the blink of an eye, the bauble was twisted 90-degrees, its glint flashing green, as Jocelyn vanished effectively from the face of their Earth...

 

–[ ★★★ ]–

 

Heartbeats raced as Jocelyn pushed her driving to the absolute limit. At the speed she went, everything around her became smeared paintings. The cars blended into each other like brushstrokes, a pattern resembling the visible spectrum. And the lampposts’ light added splotches of blinding white in the night sky.

Not once did she care about the drivers who cursed her, threw junk, or spewed superstitious curses.

Her resolve—her ‘obsession’—everything came down to Joshua’s survival.

It got to the point where the tires smoked, the engines rattling an animalistic breath echoing his dying whimpers. She wouldn’t have been treating the taxi harshly had the situation been any different. But there was nothing she could do. The life of her love, no matter her repeated denial, was hanging by a loose thread. And before she knew it, the roadblock standing between her and the Clinic was just one car away from reaching her...

“Come on, dammit,” she screamed as she stomped her foot onto the gas pedal. “Come on...! COME ON!”

There was nothing standing between her and the Clinic yet, but... the lingering feeling Joshua wasn’t breathing anymore—but a completely frigid figure that reeked of maggots and acid...

“H-Hang in there, Josh... you’re gonna make it.”

Even the simple moan he gave her wasn’t enough to soothe her. The unease followed all the way to the highway bridge which she swerved to. Even though she went fast, she knew the other cars on the bridge moved unnaturally stiff. Like something blocked their way...

Squinting her eyes, she raised her foot to slow its frantic pace. ‘What the hell?’ she thought upon seeing purple lights flicker from the end. Closer and closer she drove, and as soon as the bigger picture came into play, nothing made her stomach crumble harder in a long while.

She begged, with her twitching whines, that what she saw was just a horrible fever dream from a fugue state.

Yet... the Los Angeles Police Department, in what was possibly the worst case of inconvenient timing for her, had set up a roadblock on Interstate 110.

“No...” Her voice broke as she slapped the steering wheel. “No, no, no, NO! Not now, you fuckers No! N-No... God, no...”

Two cops were situated by a tent that formed the roadblock, three traffic cones arranged from one end of a bar gate to another. A police car barely outside of the tent was parked next to them with a door open. The older cop was rotund, bearing a grey skullet, holding his cap under his bicep. The younger cop bore an emerald sparkle in his eyes, thin and fuzzy-haired with a bump in the middle of his nose. She could care less if they confided in their personal problems, for she knew hers were of grave importance.

She long thought the California Girls stood in her way in her pursuit for his survival. But now, the police who had spent the last two days hunting his whereabouts—were about to make the same mistake of jeopardizing it.

Sighing, she said, “Forgive me, Josh...”

She stopped the car and opened the door. Jocelyn felt she would rather be arrested by two unassuming cops, than fall victim to what horrible atrocity the California Girls had promised for her.

 

–[ ★★★ ]–

 

William Atkinson stroked his well-groomed beard as he leaned against one of the tent’s support poles. Despite having thirty years of service to his name, the feeling that some horrible event would come to pass never ceased to leave him in shivers. But what he found in fear, he found a partner in Vertice.

Vertice felt impressionable at first sight. Raymond Vertice, thirty-odd and ten years on the job, yet he excelled in every task he was given. Every case he tackled, a slam-dunk for himself and the prosecution. Every murderer or gangbanger he collared, put behind bars with appropriate punishment. In fact, it was too good to be true—that his ‘too-perfect’ record as a cop was as squeaky clean as can be. This naturally incited concerns of his involvement in police corruption; no thanks to LAPD’s history with such matters, in particular the Rampart scandal between the 90s and 2000s.

However, in spite of his naysayers’ insistence he was a ‘dirty cop’, Vertice did his job with a pleasant smile. And that smile led to five years’ bonding between him and his elder.

And that very same smile became a frown.

“You doin’ alright, Ray?” Atkinson said. “Seems like you’re, uh...”

“I’m fine,” answered Vertice.

“It must be the dead body you found, right?”

“More or less...” Vertice sighed. Two nights ago, he found himself face-to-face with the corpse of Galen Crawford. Unusually enough, he was—or whatever was left of him—found dead in UCLA’s underground tunnel maintenance. But it wasn’t that bizarre fact which troubled him so; but what he saw, felt, and smelled.

“It’s the worst thing I’ve had to look at...”

“Go on.”

“I felt... disgusted with myself,” Vertice said. “Disgusted at how... I found it... tasty.”

“The fuck?” Atkinson squinted.

“No, no, no, just... hear me out... okay?” Vertice gulped, his hands shaking at the thought. “It smelled like... Okay, you do understand the tasty feeling I get when you take me to your BBQ cookouts? I had that feeling with the body. It — I-It smelled like... raw, overcooked Argentine beef. Like if some cannibal or whatever cut him apart, wanted to fry him in a furnace to feed his strays some... fucked-up... jerky.”

“And the murder weapon?”

“A knife couldn’t have done the trick. Must’ve been a buzzsaw. No idea how a buzzsaw would end up in a university’s tunnels, but... it could be the culprit. That... or the pipe that got frozen—”

“FUCKS'S GOING ON OUT HERE, BOYS?!”

“The hell...?” Vertice reached for his gun, seeing a redheaded woman in what he thought were scant clothes. She emerged from a black-and-white taxi with bloodstains over her arms and clothes. Like she had murdered some poor stray—

“Leave it,” Atkinson stopped him, “I betcha with 20-bucks we can handle this peacefully…”

“Look, if you fuckers don't explain why there's a blockade in the bridge,” the redhead yelled, “I’m running a goddamn monorail over it!”

“Ma'am,” Atkinson raised up his hand. “Stop where you are.”

“Stop where I am…? Stop where I am?!”

“Ma'am, are you okay?” joined Vertice.

“Huh...?”

“Are you okay? Are you hurt? Broken?”

“Are you being serious, right now? Just because I’ve got blood all over me, doesn’t mean I’m hurt!”

“Listen, I want you to stay where you are and cooperate. Because we don’t want you to do something you’ll regret—”

“Do something I regret, huh?”

“Is the blood yours? Someone else’s?” Atkinson intruded.

“For fuck’s sake, officer,” she pointed to the taxi behind her, “someone is dying back there, dammit! If you’re not gonna let me through, you might as well have killed him already!”

“Will,” Vertice hissed, “I’m not liking this.”

“Neither am I.” Something caught his eye, distantly behind Jocelyn. “Wait... where did that come from?”

A Cadillac was parked just two cars behind the taxi, and standing by an open door was an all-pink girl in a mask. He couldn't tell what she had in her hands. He swore with his life there was nothing. Nothing on her hands but some make-believe gun—a hunting rifle with a bipod, from the way she ‘mounted’ it upon the door.

‘What the hell…? Does she have a… gun?’ Atkinson had the instinct to get his gun out and fire at the masked girl. But before he felt the touch of his gun's plastic grip, something hit him. As though he were a poorly-trained matador at the mercy of a raging bull.

Before he knew it, the horrible event he awfully foreseen had come to pass. And as his eyes closed, the life in his ‘soul’ had already gone the road not taken…

 

–[ ★★★ ]–

 

“Gotcha,” said Rooney as she stopped the Cadillac about two cars away from the taxi.

“Boss...?” Clarity raised her eyebrow. “Don’t tell me she—”

“Was taking the path I gave her to the Clinic? Fortunately for us, she is. As much as she claims to be smart, well... Who would’ve thought she’d take the most predictable path?”

“Barring the fact she didn’t know about the roadblock?”

“That’s what ‘mediums’ are for, y’know...”

“Yeah, but it’s curfew hours.”

“So?” Rooney smirked. “Rosa, you’re up. Show her that she should’ve just walked with us instead.”

“Hehe… I’ve been waiting to dust my babygirl off for a long time...”

Rosa shook off two pairs of three iron rings on her forearms each, the rings decorated in pink-and-yellow graffiti. She removed them, and grabbed a ring with her left hand. Upon putting her right hand through, the ring transmuted into ‘cartoonish’ shapes that formed a crude copy of an Accuracy International AWM sniper rifle. She grabbed another and placed it on the rifle, which magnetically attached itself on the receiver. It assumed the shape of the rifle’s bolt, effectively turning it into a bolt-action rifle. And she wore a third ring on her right wrist, imbuing the rifle’s barrel with orange smoke.

“U-Um... Okay, uh...” Bertha finished scribbling in her magic slate, once Rosa had assembled her rifle. “Do you mind if I... s-suggest something?”

“Sure thing, hija,” Rosa smiled.

“Would you mind if you... try to shoot there?” She pointed out at the tent.

“Where?”

“T-The column thingy? Behind the cop?”

“Oh, so we could cause enough chaos to force that maldita to drive off?”

“Yeah!” Bertha giggled, making herself comfortable around riding shotgun.

“Ooh... I like that.” Just as Rosa began to step out of the Cadillac—

“Are you sure that’s gonna work?” Cyrus inquired, tightening the strap on her mask.

“I-I mean... there’s a lot of people around here, and even if you don’t think I’m onto something… well... Not to brag, but... all of my um... plans... work... Don’t they?” Bertha nervously chuckled.

“Well, they do, but—”

“Just let her do what she wants, Gem,” Taylor said. “Besides, it’s a brilliant idea. Cause enough chaos—”

“Alright, Girls, that’s enough.” Rooney waved them off. “Rosa?”

“Si. I’m on it.”

Rosa stepped out of the car at long last, and mounted the rifle on the door. By the time she took aim, Jocelyn had argued with Atkinson and Vertice long enough for them to notice the Cadillac. She kept it steady, one eye closed and the other focused on what the rifle’s scope showed. She had her instructions. Shoot the column, incite panic on the road to force Jocelyn back on the road. Yet, the prospect of shooting Atkinson felt more exciting.

She put her finger on the trigger, waiting for the right moment to shoot. She heard muffled voices come out from the Girls, but she was so focused on her aim that she drowned them. Steady, steady...

Once Atkinson took notice and drew his gun, she knew right away that was her ‘kill shot’. So she pulled the trigger.

A gaping hole on his left shoulder blew wide open, goring chunks of flesh into a ruby semicircle. The shock pulsating in every cell was so great; he had lost consciousness right before his body flung onto the police car’s door, a sickening crunch bending his waist like jagged paper.

She heard Vertice call for his name, as a few passengers got out and screamed their way out of the scene.

“Rosa, what the hell?!” shouted Rooney.

Rosa cycled the bolt, and fired again. She shot out one of the tent’s support columns—as initially suggested by Bertha, which caused a chain reaction that destabilized the tent’s structure. After a short while, it completely gave way, crushing the hood of the police car and shattering the lights.

As all drivers and passengers 20-meters within them fled in a smother, she cycled again. Just as she took aim, Rooney grabbed her by the arm, which startled her.

“Rosa, goddamn it, why did you shoot him?!” she questioned.

“What?”

“You were supposed to shoot the column like Bertha asked!”

“Don’t blame me for wanting to shoot a fucking cop! They’re the shitheads who drove us out of the city! Besides, they wouldn’t find us knowing we’re from Shakedown, right?!”

“That wouldn’t stop the Foundation, though.” Rooney sighed exasperatedly.

“But the— Ugh... fine...”

“Just get back inside, okay? We’re in pursuit.” She watched as Jocelyn sped off with the taxi, Blade Runner kicking the gate’s barrier open with tremendous forte.

Once Rosa sat back inside, she was greeted by Bertha’s writing in her magic slate. “THAT WASN’T NICE.” it read.

“Yeah, well... get used to it,” Rosa retorted.

Rooney shifted gears and stepped on the gas, shooting the Cadillac up to give chase. She pushed ninety-miles an hour to match the taxi’s eighty, yet it didn’t stop her from being two cars behind. Cars around them began to meld into khaki and maroon colors, the street names streaked upon each other to form riddles. But her pursuit did not stop at just seeing the world around her distort from the speed. She would rather relive the extinction of the El Dragóns than let the one that got away escape.

Yet the course of action she took blurred the line between heartbreak and rage.

“Come on, come oooon…” Rooney said as she pressed further down the gas. “Slow down, you bitch… So we can swoop in and beat you…”

She had focused so much on the window, that Bertha noticed it had gone to another route.

“Bossing, turn left!” she yelled. “Turn left!”

“W-Wha—”

“She’s headed for the left!”

“S-Shit… Thanks, Bertha!” Coughing, she swerved to the other route. After what seemed to be a while, she finally caught up with the taxi. Instead of being two cars behind, they were now evenly matched.

As lampposts became white stripes and grey cars splotched onto oversized concrete barriers, Rooney announced, “Alright, Girls! You know the drill! Get your guns out — reload if you're empty or whatever. When I tell you to shoot, I want y’all to open the windows to shoot the taxi! Shoot the taxi! Leave no bullet wasted, understand?!”

“Si!” Rosa shouted, in the middle of generating a new firearm with the rings.

“I didn't smuggle this bad boy out of Guetta's stash for nothing!” Clarity took out a Galil assault rifle and disabled the safety.

Taylor and Cyrus simply nodded as they possessed only pink-plated Glocks in their hand. But Bertha, on the other hand…

“U-Uh, I don't have a gun,” she said, “so I'll just… keep my eyes on the taxi. Ah, pukiginang gago ka, Lex…”

The Cadillac was now a turn away from crashing into the taxi, but it kept its distance. Rooney herself pulled her gun out while she ensured no other car would stand in her way. This was it. This was her last chance to make her pay. Even if her heart protested any kind of harm to Jocelyn, her mind drooled at the thought of it. Either way, she had come to a decision.

“Steady,” she muttered as the taxi swayed a little off its path. “Steady…”

Once the taxi drove perfectly straight, the Girls tacitly understood to open their windows, pressing down the window switches to lower them. They waited until Rooney commanded:

“SHOOT IT DOWN, GIRLS!”

The California Girls struck the taxi’s side with a hail of bullets, causing the car to veer off its left to throw the remaining shots off. They stopped firing the moment the taxi was out of their aim.

“Got any hits?” Rooney asked aloud.

“Nope!” Clarity said.

“I’ve got nothing!” Taylor said.

“Putangina, the gago's unharmed!” Bertha pointed out, seeing Jocelyn drive the taxi as if nothing happened.

“Well, shit. Reload!”

Following her instruction, the Girls released the magazines of their guns and inserted fresh ones. By the time they finished, Rosa cocked the bolt of her new weapon: a malformed copy of an automatic AR-15 assault rifle, with an ACOG scope attached to the receiver.

“Rosa?” Rooney raised her eyebrow.

“Ready when y’all are.”

“Alright... on my mark!”

The Girls set aim at the taxi once more, waiting until its driving was steady. When it did, they opened fire. Windows blew up in a million pieces and bright orange rings smoked out from the holes Rosa shot.

“Eat this, pendejo!” she yelled.

However, like their initial shootout before, the taxi did not stop—and neither Joshua nor Jocelyn were hurt. But the now-windowless left side of the taxi left Jocelyn free to make contact.

“Finally, you pieces of shit,” she yelled. “What took you so long?!”

“Find that out yourself, bitch!” Rooney shot back.

“Are you lot fucking crazy?! YOU COULD’VE SHOT HIM!”

“I don’t care! You dragged him into this mess!” Rooney shot three rounds at Jocelyn, only for her to duck down and dodge them. “How does it feel,” she said, “to make me feel what I felt?!”

Jocelyn did not respond, even after she jumped back from cover.

“Not gonna say anything, huh?! You really are the type to run away from a relationship you’ve destroyed! I bet you’re gonna destroy his if you two bother even fucking each other!”

She did not respond to that either.

The Girls looked at each other, mouths agape, telling themselves without words that the fallout of their Boss’ fling had crossed a line. Neither of them fully knew the extent of how much that breakup hurt her.

Gulping, Cyrus reached out for Rooney. “Boss—”

“What?!”

“I—”

“You know what, I’ve had enough,” she hissed.

Rooney procured a ‘medium’—a bracelet with her name and Jocelyn’s in it—and turned back. “By the way, Jocelyn! You should be excited for the ghosts as much as I am! Because they’re gonna have a fantastic time feasting on you!”

She twisted the bracelet, and within a green flash, ‘Vanished’ the Girls and the two JoJos into another world...

 

–[ ★★★ ]–

 

‘What the fuck?!’ Jocelyn exclaimed as she saw the crowded bridge turn into dead air. ‘Don’t tell me she— Great. I’ve got six of them shooting bullets at me, and now? I’ve got these ghosts or whatever on my tail. I mean, they can’t be real, can they—’

A hiss echoed between both sides of the empty road, trailing in the blackness like gusts of wind. Chills ran down Jocelyn’s skin, the hairs on her neck shooting up high; knowing that no matter how hard she tried to deny it...

Ghosts are real.

“...Holy fuck,” she mouthed as a laugh wandered amongst the echoes.

Not once did she think it was a joyous laughter. Its cackle craved what she described as slaughter. A ravenous desire to rid the famine it suffered, no matter the brutality it left in its wake. One by one, the laughter grew, joined by what she felt were voices of women and children and vicious men; all bound to the same starvation it sought to quench.

And before she knew it, they were here.

Three fists punched the glass out of the taxi’s right side window, unrelenting guffaws resounding amidst the shatter and Jocelyn’s shrieks. An unholy choir sang praises of their bountiful feast, as three heads poked out of the window and bared their teeth in a smile. Their mop-like silver hair floated as though it were underwater, and their eyes were... empty. Yet they saw her. They drooled at the sensations of her trembling. And in three voices, they spoke:

“GIODESSA GIOVANNA!” the higher voice said. “Trespassing the dead of night of this realm, for someone of your Judgment, is FORBIDDEN!”

“FORBIDDE~~~~N!” the child voice giggled.

“Forbiddennnn...” the wolf’s voice rasped.

“Face the consequences of your actions,” the higher voice resumed, “ungrateful brat!”

“O-Oh, God...” Jocelyn whimpered, desperately trying to straighten her driving out. “What are you people...?!”

“You don’t know?!” the higher voice giggled. “You poor summer child, you don’t know who we are?! Allow us to introduce ourselves: WE are the Condemned!”

“We consume trespassers who have committed atrocitiee~~~s unto themselves and otheee~~rsss!”

“And we find you... GUILTYYYYY...”

“Guilty...?! Of what?!”

“Apathy!”

“Apaaaa~~thy!”

“Apathy...”

“You are guilty as charged, for the ‘Sin of Apathy’!” The higher voice clutched Jocelyn’s forehead, its grip inducing a lulling headache. “And for the crimes charged upon you... we are more than elated...”

“To feaa~~st...!”

“ON YOUR SOULLLLL!”

Once the wolf howled, the higher voice pressed its palm deeper onto her head, Jocelyn screaming as smoke fumed from its deathly grip. It felt as though the ghosts found a staff of scalding metal, and branded their mark onto her. For the other Condemned to cackle, jeer, and even grab a bite out of her. For the world around the ‘paper towns’ to know a sinner by her brand and shame her for it.

As the ghosts bared their jaws—opening wide to sate their famish—Jocelyn thought, ‘O-Oh, God... they’re real...! I-Is this... is this why they have that fucking curfew set up? Shit... what do I do? They’re gonna eat me for fuckall! All because I uh— Wait. By ‘Apathy’, did they mean...?!

‘Y’know what, I’d rather not.’ She shook her head. ‘I have to get him outta here, no matter what. And what better way to do this than—’

“B-Blade Runner...” she grimaced, the ghosts’ saliva touching her face. “C-Cut the... c-cancer...!”

From a burst of violet stars came Blade Runner, who forced the ghosts’ grip out of Jocelyn. It growled as its blades crossed, the ghosts thirsting in reverence.

“A-Ah, you’re a Stand user!” the higher voice exclaimed.

“Staaa~~nd user!”

“We take deliiiight in consuming Stand useeeerrrsss...”

“Yeah?!” she laughed. “You haven’t met a Stand user like me.”

“Wise choice of words, for a woman whose ‘Apathy’ of her own life we won’t let go unpunished.” The higher voice pointed a mad finger. “Rip her apart!”

The ghosts lunged at her as Blade Runner waved her swords. One by one, she cleaved and sawed through them; chunks of mop hair and ghastly flesh turning into a serrated mockery of their forms, tar and charcoal smoke dripping in the taxi’s floor.

Deafening shrieks crackled in the taxi, but the ghosts marched on, spiting her even after what they had lost. It was a tug of war. Blade Runner reaped at their mobility; but the ghosts, like her father before, had ‘resolve’.

But that ‘resolve’ served their foul intent well.

And they weren’t stopping until the taste of her blood and skin lay succulent on their slithering tongues...

The ghosts began to tire. “Cease your assault, Giodessa Giovanna,” the higher voice warned. “This is a fight you cannot possibly hope to win!”

“Oh, yeah?!” Jocelyn reached out for her pocket—

“SHE HAS A MEDIU~~~M!” cried the child.

“A meeeeediuummm...” repeated the wolf.

“A medium, huh?! Stolen from a blind and harmless soul you’ve unfairly taken from the world?! You are not only guilty of ‘Apathy’, but RAPACITY!”

“Rapacity~~~y!”

“Rapaaaaacityyyyyyyy...”

“I don’t know what the fuck you lot are talking about,” Jocelyn snarked, “but I’d rather be guilty than be eaten by cannibals who can’t chew shit!”

The ghosts snarled and sprang themselves to Jocelyn. But before they clawed at her face, Jocelyn whipped out High Jack’s bauble, and as it flashed red, she found herself back into the real world.

‘O-Oh, thank God— WHAT THE FUCK?!’

She found herself right behind a camper van, but in the nick of time, she swerved out of a disastrous car crash. Even though she dodged a bullet, she knew the driver of the van was not happy about it.

“Are you high?! You steer like a fucking drunk!” yelled the driver.

“Okay, okay... Josh, are you okay?” She gently nudged him.

He only responded with a moan.

“Okay... We’re getting close... just push through, okay? Push through— Get down!”

The California Girls rained bullets at the taxi from behind, etching bullet holes on the trunk and spoiler. Other cars nearby scrambled to get out of their mess, as stray bullets struck sideviews and hoods.

Jocelyn pushed herself and Joshua down for cover once more, not letting a single bullet graze nor pierce their flesh. As the firing ceased, she bobbed herself up and saw the same orange rings pierced onto the taxi a while back.

‘What the fuck are they shooting me with...? Death rays...?’ She shook her head, eyes drifting down the floor. ‘Shit... I can’t keep running away like this... they’re not gonna stop. They’re not gonna stop. Not unless they got me shot or anything...’

She turned to Josh. ‘I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve said sorry to you, but... please... bear with me. I’m done running.’

Then she turned to her side mirror, watching the Cadillac tail her. ‘This time... I’ll make them run.’

Jocelyn shifted gears and stomped on the brake pedal, causing the taxi’s momentum to decelerate backwards. At the same time, she procured the bauble and twisted it 90-degrees, flashing green onto the paper town world. She was back in the realm the Condemned lavished haunting, but they were in her thoughts no longer.

“J-Josh,” she nudged him gently, “I’m gonna want you to bear with me on this one, okay?”

He moaned.

“I-I’m gonna do something reaa~~lly stupid... I’m gonna wedge the Cadillac. Okay? I’m gonna wedge it, freeze it so we’re stuck driving down the highway together. And... Better pray Blade Runner fucking knocks their socks out, yeah?”

He nodded.

Once she heard the Condemned’s shrill laughter echo, Blade Runner phased out of the taxi and mounted itself onto the roof. It plunged its blades near the back tires; the cables and tank glowing a fiery-hot orange, as the blades absorbed the heat the friction produced. It did so until the amount absorbed into the tank was satisfactory enough.

Blade Runner phased back inside, floating next to Jocelyn, as she shifted gears and pushed forward.

‘Now, what do I use to wedge it...? Oh, no. I don’t think I have some kind of stick to do it. Oh, God, GioGio...! Fuck! Just when you need it the most, it’s not there! It’s not even—’

She felt something touch her sole. ‘Wait a minute...’

Upon checking the floor, she found an eight-inch long crowbar on the floor. ‘Oh, well... That’ll do.’

Upon taking the crowbar, Jocelyn said, “Let’s roll.”

She twisted the bauble back into a red flash, returning to the real world after a brief moment’s respite. The Cadillac hunted her all-night long; but now, she was the one hunting them. She tailed them from behind, and passed down the crowbar to Blade Runner. Once she had caught up to them, she whistled at them from the other side.

“Hey! HEYYY!!!”

The Girls, startled by her cries, raised up their guns to aim at her stupid grin.

“Y’all mind dancing with a crowbar in the moonlight?”

 

–[ ★★★ ]–

 

“What do you mean dancing with a— Shit!” Rooney shot two rounds at the backseat, as the Girls were rumbled by something of considerable force piercing their backdoor. It was, just as she said, a crowbar—only that it brimmed with sizzling heat.

Then they were met by a heavy object pouncing on the roof, denting it to the point where it almost touched their heads.

“Bossing?!” Bertha squealed. “W-What was that?!”

“The maldita is forcing her way in!” Rosa dropped the assault rifle, quickly changing it back into iron rings. “Come on, come on...”

“Do s-something about it, besties!”

“O-Okay... Can someone take whatever the hell is stuck in our car off?!” Rooney shouted.

“I can’t, Boss!” replied Taylor.

“Why not?!”

“I-It’s... uh... frozen?”

“What do you mean frozen?”

Just as Taylor said, the crowbar wedged between the taxi’s and Cadillac’s back doors was frozen into place, leaving them both stuck together.

“Shit.” Rooney aimed the gun at Jocelyn. “What the hell did you do?!”

“I told you, Roon!” she waved back with a cheeky smile. “If you don’t wanna dance a ‘Crowbar Tango’ with me tonight? I’ll make sure your Girls have no choice but to dance along!”

“Oh, you piece of— GAH!” Rooney whipped out her pistol as Blade Runner’s head poked over from the windshield. She shot it three times, but not once did a bullet graze her.

“Shoot the roof!”

“What?!” Cyrus questioned.

“Shoot the roof, goddamn it! NOW!”

“You betcha I’ve been waiting to light her up,” Taylor smirked, as the Girls—except for Rosa—fired their guns at the roof. They riddled the poor roof with holes until their magazines ran dry of ammunition. Unfortunately for them, nothing of substance was hit. Not even a single drop of blood spilled down the car’s floor.

“Did you get her?!”

“Nope!” Clarity answered.

“Nada, Boss!” As did Taylor.

“Oh, boy...” Rooney gulped as she pressed further down the road, despite the fact both cars were now at the exact same pace.

But as soon as they Girls performed the arduous process of reloading, a pink-and-blue blade pierced through the roof. The Girls screamed and rushed to fire a bullet there, but it was too late. Blade Runner tore open a hole to enter the Cadillac, and hopped down with both blades sparked against each other.

“Shoot her,” Rooney screamed, “shoot her down!”

Before the Girls could pull the trigger, Blade Runner swang its katanas as though it were a blink of an eye. It cut the firearms in half, rendering them useless.

It left the Girls with helpless squeals as they retreated to every corner in the backseats to avoid it.

Blade Runner hacked and slashed away, turning the seats into crude shapes of their older forms. Even as the Girls evaded constantly, it reacted much faster than their movement.

With one swing, it grazed Rosa’s arms; and in another, it made three-quick punctures on Clarity’s shoulders before slashing a long slit on her forearm. Very little blood spilled as the heat cauterized the cuts, but the sensation of their flesh cut and burning left them in sickening tears.

“She’s too fast!” cried Clarity as she attempted kicking Blade Runner out.

“Ohhh, no, I almost forgot how batshit scared I am of this!” Taylor shrieked, backing off to a corner too far from it to reach. “Christ...! Papercut and I could barely keep up with it!”

“It’s not that scary, y’know!” Cyrus chuckled. “You should’ve seen what IV of Spades did to the damn thing!”

“You blew it up or somethin’, Gem?”

“Y’know what? Just get Papercut out. I’ll make something work.” Cyrus’ wrists glowed red and gold, a similarly-colored halo of cards floating on her head.

“Bet.”

Taylor outstretched her arms and allowed a black liquid to assimilate her entire body, forming Papercut’s latex suit and polygons. Before she could grab one and smash it, she dashed out of Rosa’s gunfire, who had finished generated a pair of automatic dual pistols amid the chaos.

“Eat mierda, cabron!” She screamed, firing the pistols at Blade Runner.

Three bullets struck her in the arm and back, but it didn't faze Blade Runner. In response, it lunged at Rosa and grabbed hold of her hands. It attempted to redirect the gunfire to the Girls, but she swayed her arms enough to help them avoid it.

When she ran out of ammo, she raised her heel to kick it off her, but Blade Runner grabbed her leg and snuck a chop to her throat. It left her choking on her spit.

Blade Runner grabbed Rosa by her jacket and threw her onto the sliced-up seats. It raised its left katana to strike her down, but Taylor lunged and kicked it away from Rosa. Before it could react, she swiped one of the polygons off Papercut’s suit, smashed it onto the floor, and used the shiv it created to slice Blade Runner on its stomach.

She grinned, knowing that any minute now, Jocelyn would feel the effects of Papercut’s crystallization.

“C’mon, you bitch,” Taylor beckoned, “don’t quit now!”

Blade Runner roared and jumped to swing its blades at Taylor, but she parried one and pushed out the other. It was an ironic echo of yesterday’s situation: whereas Taylor was the aggressor against Blade Runner’s defense at Folie à Deux, the positions for them both were now swapped. A duet of swords and daggers, only that the daggers were advancing forward.

Blade Runner bashed the left katana’s hilt against Papercut’s helmet, incapacitating Taylor for a brief moment.

As it swung to cut the helmet’s visor, Taylor yelled, “Gem, go get her!”

IV of Spades’ red cards swooped in and slashed an ‘X’ on its left leg, saving the visor. Cyrus sat behind Taylor, her mask concealing a cackle.

“Hope I wasn’t too late.”

She waved four red cards around Blade Runner, the first two opening lacerations across its back and bosom, while the rest shattered upon the swing of its katanas. Four gold cards were launched onto Blade Runner, but only one made contact with its blades, before the rest missed and hit what remained of the roof.

As the Cadillac shook from the gold card’s impact, Rooney turned back and warned, “Cyrus, goddammit! No gold cards inside the Caddy!”

“Sorry!” Cyrus hastily apologized. She grabbed one of the headrests cut off by Blade Runner, converting them into another set of eight cards.

As the interplay between IV of Spades & Papercut and Blade Runner raged on, Bertha stuck to herself writing entire paragraphs on the magic slate. She drowned out the clashing of blades and splatters of blood, not paying attention to the chaos in the back but what she saw outside. The fighting had escalated to the point both cars now drove in a tunnel.

And they were not alone, either.

What seemed like millions of cars drove in herds across the tunnel. All of them—either bland or colorful cars—were either ignoring the fact two cars were stuck together by a crowbar, or avoiding them to not become collateral.

“Everything’s gonna be okay,” she wrote repeatedly on the magic slate. “You’re gonna be okay. Everything’s gonna be okay. The monster’s just losing steam. They’ll take care of it now. Everything’s gonna be okay. Everything’s gonna be okay. You’re gonna be okay.”

But instead of finding comfort in her writings like she always would, her heartbeats ramped up. Sweat moistened the mask she wore, and her grip on the magic slate’s pencil slippened with each second.

“How are they going to beat it?” she wrote. “It’s unstoppable. Everything’s going to not be okay. It will not be okay. It will not be okay. I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to be here. I’m sick. I’m scared. They won’t win if you won’t help. But I’m scared. I’m scared. I’m—”

“BESTIE, WE NEED YOU!” Taylor’s voice broke her out of the shell she made for herself.

When she turned to observe them, IV of Spades and Papercut had considerably exhausted Blade Runner enough where it would blindly swing at them. Just as she had written, the monster had lost steam—a miracle to behold upon.

“Come on, Bertha!” Cyrus beckoned for her. “Work your magic!”

Hiding a smile beneath her mask, Bertha dropped the magic slate onto her seat. Now was the time for them to win, and it all weighed down on her to do so. If everything wasn’t going to be okay, she was now sure she would do anything to change that.

『Space Oddity』

“Pin that aswang down!” Bertha shouted, pointing at it.

A chalk outline jumped out of Bertha, forming the body of her Stand: Space Oddity. It assumed the form of an astronaut clad in red, white, and blue; with gold accents, Grey alien graffiti on visor and backpack, and chalks for fingers in its hands.

“Move back!” Cyrus ordered, as she and the rest (Rosa, Taylor, and Clarity) retreated behind the front row seats.

Blade Runner, whose limbs flailed from the exhaustion, swung its left katana at Space Oddity. Space Oddity ducked out and shoved it deep in the backseats. Finger-chalks in hand, it drew a line across the floor where Blade Runner’s foot touched, and traced it all the way to half of the car’s doors and what remained of the hole-ridden roof.

It dashed off to the Girls, the chalk lines glowing, as Blade Runner growled and jumped to attack.

Space Oddity flicked its fingers up, the geometry within the chalk space rotating upside down. Blade Runner fell upwards to the floor, pinned down by the altered gravity around the flipped geometry.

“That’s my bestie!” laughed Taylor.

It flicked its fingers to the left, rotating the geometry 90-degrees. The gravity pushed Blade Runner to the space’s floor, unable to move from the gravity weighing it down. Space Oddity flicked to the right, with the same effect as before. It flicked down, reverting the space to normal.

Blade Runner was left lethargic from the experience, the heat from its blades dissipating.

“S’what I’m talking about, Girls! Take it down!” Rooney said.

“Got it,” Clarity nodded. “『Doperide』, surf’s up!”

Doperide surfed into the car with a rainbow trail, its form that of a lithe yet athletic humanoid with green rubber skin and gunmetal grey padding around its limbs; pink accents around the skin forming a damascus pattern. It jumped up and grabbed its neon pink surfboard, battering Blade Runner in the head with it.

Taylor dashed in as well, wielding two of Papercut’s shivs. She carved an ‘X’ on it’s star-shaped bosom, and pushed her onto Rosa’s gunfire.

Rosa’s bullets struck Blade Runner in the bosom and shoulders, cracking the armor around it. She dropped the pistols and took out a taser from her jacket, shoving it down its neck.

“Have a safe trip to Hell, maldita!” She pulled the trigger, incapacitating Blade Runner with its electrocutions. With a single shove, she threw it into direct contact with four of IV of Spades’ gold cards, blowing open its tank and shattering what remained of its armor pads.

“Hook, line, and sinker, Girls!” Rooney whooped, the Girls following suit.

“Yeah!” Taylor giggled, bumping her fists in the air. “Take that, you piece of shit!”

 

–[ ★★★ ]–

 

‘Haaah... shit...’ Jocelyn huffed, as she struggled to keep a tight and steady hand on the wheel. ‘I should’ve done better than that... better... than... that...’

To say she was a disgusting mess was an understatement. Her entire abdomen was assimilated by Papercut’s crystallization, and if that wasn’t enough; small chunks of crystals were chipped off from Rosa’s pistols. She was bleeding from head to toe from the cuts sustained from IV of Spades’ red cards. And the surfboard used to bash Blade Runner in the head left half her face swelling. She had been thoroughly banged up before, during all the brawls she partook in back in Italy. But not to the point where she felt half of what Joshua was going through.

She was aimless. She tried having Blade Runner ambush them, thinking she could just hack-and-slash until they were all down for the count. But it wasn’t enough. She wasn’t enough.

“HEY! Are you just gonna drive like nothing’s happened or not?!” Rooney woke her from her lament, forcing her to watch as Rosa held a gun to Blade Runner’s head.

She couldn’t speak back or anything. The pain could only let her do so much...

“You wanna know what happens when you break my heart, Jocelyn?!” She pointed to the backseat. “This is what happens!”

‘You’re right... You’re right...’ A single tear fell from her swollen eye.

“Now... I know you’re not gonna say anything... but...”

Her eyes widened when she saw a frown etch itself across Rooney’s face.

“I wish things turned out differently.”

Jocelyn turned back, watching Joshua lay next to her. He was stiff... and looked as though he wasn’t breathing anymore. ‘I’m sorry... I’m so sorry... I’m so sorry I dragged you into my mess... you... You were right. It’s all my fault. It’s all my fault... None of us would be here if it wasn’t for me, right now. None of us would be like this when I... just... didn’t... run away from her.

‘Thank God, you’re not listening.’ She closed her eyes, watching as the past ten days they spent together flashed like a home video montage. ‘Even if we die here... at least that... I’m glad... that I— What the...?!’

When she opened her eyes, she turned back and saw Rebel Moon mounted atop the Cadillac’s roof. Her mouth came ajar from a soundless gasp, jaw twitching.

“Josh?!” she questioned, looking at him deep in the eye. “W-What are you—”

“I’ll light you all the fuck up,” he rasped, as Rebel Moon smashed its fist on the Cadillac’s back tires.

The tires completely deflated, with Rooney losing control of the car. The Girls shrieked, crying out for dear life. Rebel Moon severed the crowbar chaining the two cars together, as it and Blade Runner were desummoned back to their respective Users.

Jocelyn watched from the rear mirror as the Cadillac’s momentum decelerated, crashing onto an oil tanker from behind. The tanker’s truck likewise lost control, and caused other unsuspecting cars to smash the fuel tank. A pile-up with the tanker, the Cadillac, and the traffic behind it came leveling the tunnel road, the fuel tank bursting into flames. A huge fireball ensued, razing the pile-up into hellfire and brimstone.

The shockwave rumbled the taxi, but it did not halt its trajectory. She reacted blankly at first, but after a while, the emotionlessness turned into a smile. Then a hearty laugh.

“H-Hah,” she guffawed. “Holy... HAHA~! Suck on that, shitheads!”

---

『 User 』 — Rosa Lopez
『 Stand Name 』— Sevendust

Power: A   Speed: A   Durability: E   Precision: B   Range: A   Potential: C

『 Observations 』—  Takes on the form of six ‘iron rings’ attached to its User’s arms, all of which can be stacked into three-ring combinations, creating unique ‘cartoonesque’ firearms depending on the rings used. All currently known combinations are as follows: dual full-auto Machine Pistols, bolt-action Sniper Rifle with explosive rounds, scoped Assault Rifle with incendiary rounds.

『 User Status 』 —  A C T I V E
USER CURRENTLY DOES NOT POSE A THREAT

Notes:

Remember to give kudos and (optionally) a comment! This helps in supporting this fic and its future endeavors.

Chapter 29: Vol. 3 - Dreams of Californication, Part 3

Summary:

After reaching the RESCUE ME clinic, Jocelyn takes a last stand against the California Girls...

Notes:

No kudos were given in the last chapter. Sad...

—|[ CHAPTER 29 ]|—

Dreams of Californication, Part 3

 

 

“Okay, let’s get back to basics.” Buckcherry said as he and Trapt went over a folder in their clinic’s private quarters. The folder read “PATIENT DOCS. 06-04-2029”.

“Yes, Father,” Trapt said.

“It says right here that L. Warner came in for a check-up around 4:30 PM, right?”

“Of course.”

“Right...” Buckcherry stroked his beard. “When was the last time Ms. Warner checked in?”

“About six days ago.”

“Almost a week, then.”

“Yes.”

“Anything troubling her since?”

“Nothing out of the ordinary.”

“So she’s fine.”

“I did not mean ‘ordinary’ by her feeling fine. I meant it by the supposed symptoms she feels persisting to this day.”

“Diagnosis?”

“Complicated.”

“Elaborate.” Buckcherry nodded.

“Per my observations about Patient Warner, the symptoms she claims to suffer from are consistent with female patients affected by gonorrhea. Unusually yellow vaginal discharge, a burning sensation while urinating, apparent bleeding after sexual contact with a significant other. But she also claims to have had a debilitating fever for three days. Headaches, swollen lymph nodes. Those symptoms suggest—”

“Herpes in the genitalia.”

“That is correct, Father. But I digress.”

“What for?”

Trapt’s singular eye blinked, the gears in his arms grinding. “I believe Patient Warner is exaggerating symptoms to compensate for trauma.”

“Trapt, you aren’t a psychiatrist.” Buckcherry sighed.

“You are correct, Father. It is not of my expertise. But I am certain she has had a relationship that has turned sour, forcing her to believe she is sick to cope with the trauma. She exhibits behaviors consistent with—”

A knock at the entrance door interrupted both men.

“I thought this was closing hours,” Buckcherry raised an eyebrow.

“We are not expecting guests tonight, Father.”

“Well... Can’t say no to a late-night patient, can we?”

“Being alone is a well-suited preference.”

Buckcherry and Trapt fled their private quarters for the clinic’s lobby, swooping down at a brisk pace. They hadn’t expected another patient by now. It was about 12 in the morning. By the next six hours, the sun would rise and birth anew a lavender sky. By the following three after that, the clinic would open anew to patients in need. But now, someone in need of the clinic’s services checked in a little too early.

And they were right: opening the door, a pair of two bloodied ‘patients’ twice as large as Trapt hobbled by the doorstep. A girl with fiery red hair and blue-pink streetwear, looking as though tears welled in her eyes, carried a blue-haired boy whose life was leaving him.

Trapt did not react other than a sigh from his throat gears. But there was a look registered in Buckcherry’s eyes that weren’t there in years. The two were young. Too young to be thrust into a life-or-death situation.

“H-Hi,” the girl wheezed. “Do you mind if I... we...?”

“No, come in. We’re not expecting until eight.” Buckcherry beckoned.

“We were not expecting any until your arrival,” Trapt added.

“Thank you,” the girl sighed. She was careful not to drop the boy as she entered. Even though her grip on him was tight, the fatigue was kicking in. Sore joints, erratic concentration...

“What happened to you, miss?” Buckcherry inquired.

“We got into a bad fight,” the girl answered.

“A fight...?”

“If you want the CliffsNotes for this: my ex-girlfriend chased us all the way from Shakedown to I-110. We got away. They didn’t.”

“This does not explain the injuries the boy has suffered.” Trapt rubbed his fingers.

“They forced him to fuck around with Piccolos until they cooked his hand,” she said. “Cut him like a potato peeler, did the same to me... It was fucked-up, I know. But at least we’re still here.”

“But the boy is unresponsive.”

“I know. That’s where you both come in.” The girl gently set the boy down in a chair, who only gave them a moan.

Buckcherry scratched his head. “What do you need us to do?”

“Everything,” the girl yelled. “Do whatever you gotta do to make sure he’s fine.”

“B-But your—”

“I’ll be okay, Doc! Just make him your priority!”

“We cannot make him a priority. Nor can we treat him at this time. Our clinic’s services are not to be used until eight.”

“Until eight...?!” The girl dashed all the way to Trapt’s head.

“Madam, we are closing—”

“Listen to me, you shit-for-brains cyclops-looking Bot,” she jabbed a finger at his security camera-esque ‘eye’. “I’ve had a long day. And you really don’t wanna piss me off, right now. So just do your job and treat him for everything. And by everything, I mean keep him alive. Unless, I rip out all the wires in your body and install a less intelligent AI in your system. And by that, I mean—”

“I will comply with your request.”

“Thank you! Now, just go help him out!”

“Alright, Bucko. We’re up.” Buckcherry and Trapt went over to the boy’s seat, and readied to carry him down to the clinic’s machine room. Suddenly flat tires screamed to a halt from outside the clinic, startling everyone but the boy.

Buckcherry watched as the girl ran back to the door and cracked it ajar. She looked like a ghost returned to haunt her, even if she didn’t turn for him to read her expression.

“Miss...?” his question trailed.

“Get him inside.” She boomed.

“Miss—”

“Get him inside and go!”

“U-Uh... Okay?” Buckcherry turned to Trapt. “Hurry, Bucko!”

“The girl is exhibiting abnormal levels of stress, perhaps we should—”

“Not now, Bucko!”

As both doctor and android grabbed the boy off his seat and carried him to the machine room, the last thing Buckcherry saw of the girl was her reading the clinic’s floor plan...

 

–[ ★★★ ]–

 

The California Girls found the sight of the RESCUE ME clinic shrouded in a bitter fog perturbing. Like someone cranked the aircon units past its limit. Chills engulfed every joint of their bodies; they weren’t able to tell if it was the fog or their own selves urging them to escape.

Shoulders stooped and heads bent low, the pile-up at the tunnel left them miserable. Bertha was a miracle worker; had she not flipped the Cadillac’s spaces as an unconventional escape method, the fuel truck’s blaze of terror would’ve left them as charred remains. But their survival did not come without repercussion. They lost their masks (everyone but Bertha), their guns, their Cadillac... and most of all, their dignity.

They refused to surrender, even if their aching bodies screamed not to engage in a losing battle.

No matter if they deserved it or otherwise, defeat meant everything, especially as one of Shakedown’s infamous crime rings. And nothing, even if they foresaw it, equipped them with the means of preparing for their reputation’s decline. Word of their Galen Crawford shooting Bertha down spread amongst town, humbling them then. Two strangers humbling them they couldn’t afford now.

“Search them,” Rooney said, her voice flat as a board.

“B-Boss, are you sure?” Cyrus appealed. “I-I mean... We spent a lot of energy trying to get another—”

“Cy, don’t.” She mustered up the last of her strength in a glare.

“S-Sure... right away...”

“Let’s move.”

The Girls entered the clinic’s lobby one-by-one, brushing their arms and palms. The lights in the clinic shone bright as a morning sun, yet the fog blinded them. As if Everest’s climate had come there. All the Girls looked in multiple directions, sticking shoulder-to-shoulder, teeth grinding amidst the cold. All but Rooney.

Rooney glided around the lobby like she wasn’t there. Calling her a ‘ghost’ would insult the Condemned, or any other ghost who roamed Shakedown.

She shut down her emotions if it meant giving herself a fighting chance. Every memory of her time with Jocelyn together, erased. Every moment she smiled, obliterated. She gazed hard into the fog, hoping to find a silhouette moving underneath the light. But she did not find any; and the only emotion she allowed herself to feel was frustration.

Frustration that made her bite a lip, knowing she might’ve evaded yet again. Frustration that, as long as she wasn’t in her sight, tossed fuel into the flames that fanned a wish to drag her out of hiding and end her.

‘The moment I see you with my own eyes, I’m gonna— What?!’

Something from behind crashed. Glass and pipes from the other side burst and crumbled all over, echoing throughout the clinic in a screech. But it wasn’t the deafening crackle that disturbed her.

The Girls who followed her were but echoes of thin air. She was now alone.

 

–[ ★★★ ]–

 

‘Great... that’s just... great.’ Cyrus felt like hissing, but bringing superfluous attention wasn’t something she pursued.

‘So there’s that, huh? God, she’s not taking it easy. Rooney’s not taking things easy. Christ. How bad was that break-up, to reach a point where she’s forced us to go along with— Okay… Stay calm, stay focused. The sooner you find her ex, the better it is for everyone. After all... I can’t imagine not finding her. It’s not that she’s a needle in a haystack — she’s a fucking mountain, for God’s sake.’

She treaded alone in the clinic’s medicine room, where the fog was at its greatest. Her steps were soft, meticulous in maintaining unwanted noise to a minimum.

‘Come out of your cage, little girl...’ IV of Spades manifested above her head like a halo, her wrists flaring red and gold. ‘Your boy toy marked my face, but... when I get my hands on you two, you’re in for a world of—’

A strange force flung her onto a row of cabinets, dropping a hill of bottles smashing down on the floor. She gritted her teeth, sensing the liquids pool down and brush her legs.

‘What the hell...?!’ She scowled at the fog.

“Come out, bitch! Don’t run and punch me like a coward would!” she yelled.

She swiped a bottle from an open cabinet, transmuting it into a singular red-and-gold card set. The cards fluttered on her wrists as she sought any silhouette moving within the mist’s light. When she noticed one move, she thrust her right hand forward, shooting a red card there.

Midway through, the red card split in half, rendering it useless.

‘I’ve got you now,’ she pondered, as she fired a gold card at the same spot, only to blast the windows of another cabinet open.

‘Dammit! She can’t be far! She has to be—’

Something flashed at her eye, from which Blade Runner tackled her onto the ground. It curved its left katana at her, but she booted it off her and rolled out of the way. It appeared much like it did before they pinned it down—a pink-and-blue figure with katanas smoldering in heat.

“Perfect... least I can see what the fuck I’m fighting now.” She buckled her hands into fists. “You do realize I beat you in that parking lot, right?!”

Blade Runner hissed back.

“I can beat you again... Hehe...”

Cyrus dove to a nearby cabinet and transmuted the door into sixteen cards, all of which drifted on both of her wrists. Blade Runner lunged to sway its katanas at her, but she dashed sideways and launched two red cards at it.

Blade Runner diverted both red cards and eluded a gold card, which concussed one of the torn cabinets into a scrunched wreck of plastic.

“Give up already, dammit!” Cyrus said.

She whipped out two red cards and shot them back at Blade Runner. “I don’t wanna make this harder than it should! You know our Boss! You two had a fucked-up breakup that makes her want to kill you, y’know?!”

Blade Runner answered by bending the cards in figure eights, which slit Cyrus’ clavicle area. She wheezed, fluttering her hand near her neck.

“I ain’t got time to bleed!” She slung three gold cards at Blade Runner.

Blade Runner glided towards her with its blades spread out, diving out of the gold cards’ path. It slithered down and etched an ‘L’-shaped gash on her back. Cyrus shrieked, sensing her body shut down as she bled.

She rattled upon dropping to her knees, hissing, whispering obscenities.

‘How... did she... fucking beat me...?!’ she pondered. ‘S-She— Her Stand... was lit up... like a FUCKING Christmas tree! How did I lose to a distractingly blatant Stand?! Wait... was it meant to be blatant? Oh, God... What is she gonna do to me...? Oh, man... I’m sooo fucked. The only job I have left is my public defender gig! And that doesn’t pay me as much as Rooney does!’

“O-Oh, God,” she spoke out, “what are you gonna do to me...?”

Blade Runner did not acknowledge it. It only flew its blade near her cheek.

“Y-You’re not gonna... make me ugly... uglier than I am now... r-right...?!” She weakly smiled. “Please don’t do this... I’m just... caught in the crossfire, a-and—”

She yelped as it raised the blade high, but halfway through its swing, it ceased.

“W-Wha—”

“Stay down and don’t think about helping them,” Jocelyn rasped from behind.

“I-I wasn’t... going to… at least... not after you... fucked m-me u—”

“Eh... you’re the type to lie about it.”

“Wait wait wait WAIT—”

The last thing Cyrus saw was a straight boot to her face.

 

–[ ★★★ ]–

 

The Girl dubbed “Big Bertha”—or referred to otherwise as Lexi—felt her heart pulsing with every step. Even if Clarity and Rosa were by her side, their presence did not help assuage her lingering fears. If only she had the magic slate with her. If only she could find an outlet to scream her fraying thoughts into. Taylor being here would’ve soothed her, but she was nowhere in the clinic.

To assume they were all lost trembled her. Rooney was gone, so were Cyrus and Taylor. The three of them were the only ones left who remained close. Yet they dreaded who among them would vanish…

Rosa swallowed her fear down, and Clarity couldn’t help but gobble her spit over and over... but Bertha took the situation harder than them.

‘Think happy thoughts,’ she mused.

‘THINK happy thoughts.’

‘You’re not alone.’

‘You are not alone.’

‘She’s waiting. Biding her time.’

‘If only we could see past this damn fog.’

‘The monster must be excised.’

‘Think happy thoughts.’

‘Think happy thoughts...’

‘Any minute now, your Bestie will congratulate you for slaying the beast. So will your Boss. Don’t be afraid.’

‘Any minute now, we’ll regroup.’

‘Any minute now... we’ll show the monster that it’s US she should be afraid of.’

‘Any minute now...’

‘Any minute... any second...’

‘We’ll show her...’

‘We’ll show her...’

She departed her thoughts to snoop on the other two. Though she didn’t place her hand near her ear, there was no doubt she picked up what either of them said.

“What’s the matter, Clare?” asked Rosa.

“I-I don’t know... is it me or am I not feeling that cold?”

“Duh. The AC’s cranked up to high heaven!”

“No, that’s not what I meant.”

“Are you having chills?”

“Yeah!”

“About what?”

Even if she didn’t see her, she truly heard in her brittle voice what horrors Clarity spoke of. “Rosa, I think we’re frauds,” she said. “She did every single one of us dirty, man! Her and that other dude! I mean... I thought I could’ve shot that bitch’s Stand down with my Galil, but... It cut my Galil in half! With one blink of my fuckin’ eyes! How the fuck do you fight that without dying?!”

“Rosa, you’ve got Doperide—”

“Yeah?! Didn’t stop that bird Cy talked about from wrecking our Caddy until it was gone!”

The further she observed them, the further she slipped. Bertha jerked her fingers, enough to not close them into a fist, burying herself under stress that weighed more than a dozen dumbbells piled together. For as competent as she was with Space Oddity, nothing disputed the fearsome power of the red woman’s Stand.

She practically forgot her name: Jocelyn or whatever her Bossing called her.

As long as she had control of the environment, nothing was gonna stop Space Oddity from prevailing. But what good was it if they couldn’t look beyond their own flesh?

And how could they get rid of the damn fog?

Bertha kept sauntering down until she paused. Rosa and Clarity squinted at her, puzzled by this.

“Bertha?” Rosa lifted her eyebrow.

“T-There’s... something... in the fog...” Bertha said.

“W-What is it? What do you see?” Clarity joined.

“I-I... I don’t know! Is that... a person...? I mean, it can’t be! A person should be as big as us. Not as big as... that.” She gulped.

With parted mouths, the Girls realized that the ‘something’ breaking out was a woman. The red woman. Rosa and Clarity choked, their stares stiff, as they peered in respectable awe of her mountainous size — a bare three inches higher than their friend. But Bertha recognized this instant what monster she sought to invite...

‘She’s here.’

‘She’s HERE.’

‘We won’t stand a chance.’

‘The monster is here.’

‘We won’t stand a chance.’

‘We won’t stand a FUCKING chance.’

‘We won’t—’

Before she concluded that grim thought, the woman backhanded Bertha onto a ceramic cabinet next to her. The impact left her upper joints inflamed, eyelids shut amidst smeared vision, heavy was the brain that wore her head; the last thing she saw was Doperide surfing in.

She remembered her name now.

It was Jocelyn.

And then it started...

Twice her mind slept... twice her head weighed more than it could... aortic dilation... every cell stiffening as though immobilized... the feeling her friends will fail without her... a monster was there... she couldn’t see it for what it really was... all she saw as two slabs of raw and rotten flesh stitched together with bones for limbs and cleavers for blades... the cleavers... once you’re hacked you’ll feel the blood burn... dead stimuli... aortic dilation... the smell of gasoline burning... in the end you’re nothing but food to that monster... she’ll take away your friends... what will you do to stop it... resurrected stimuli... control of the axial skeleton slowly regained... newfound strength... resolve... determination... aortic dilation... the time has come your moment to shine is come you have to win and you have to vanquish the demon you are the hero you will slay the aswang you will show your kababayan never to fear aswang ever again.

With her fists buckled down, Bertha rose from her senseless state. Even with the fog shrouding every surrounding, she could tell the red woman’s onslaught with her ‘monster’ left Rosa and Clarity weary. Its actions hasty yet elegant, theirs ragged and sloppy. Smoke emanated from their limbs and chests as well.

With one simple shout, she cast out the die.

With one summon, she ordered:

“Space Oddity! Baliin natin yung halimaw!”

 

–[ ★★★ ]–

 

Upon backhanding their presumed ‘best asset’, Jocelyn rose face-to-face with the others. Not bothering to learn their names, she studied their faces. Some part of them expressed wonder with swollen eyes, occasionally a forced smile, but the rest was nothing but veins popping and a widened posture.

They judged her as a terrible creature—a gigantic beast with sharpened fangs and eyes like kaleidoscopes. And they were right.

What chance did they hold against the heiress of Passione, the mob who slayed the fearsome ‘Il Diavolo’ thirty years ago? Myths across Italy’s decrepit underworld told how two youngsters took it upon themselves to end his tyranny, no matter how young or broken it left them. From that loss came a booming rule of the underworld under their authority. And from that reign came her. And the two California Girls were about to learn what she inherited from them...

“You maldita,” the pony-tailed Girl once sad-face masked glared. “Look what you did to her!”

“And?” Jocelyn smirked.

“Hija de tu puta madre, I’m going to—”

“Rosa, leave this to me,” said the googly-eyed Girl once winky-face masked. “Just get Sevendust ready.”

‘Sevendust...?’ Jocelyn mused. ‘I mean, I didn’t see much of the action, but... it’s the one where it can make different guns, isn’t it?’

“Just so you wait, bitch,” the googly-eyed said, “I’m gonna surf in circles around you ‘till you can’t see where I’m going!”

“Dumbass, you can’t see where the hell we are!” Jocelyn retorted.

“Like that’s gonna stop you and me!”

Something from behind pounced in and slammed her onto the floor. She coughed up spit, wiping her mouth. When she recovered, the googly-eyed Girl’s Stand perched by a countertop next to her. She couldn’t see enough of its body save for the surfboard beneath its feet.

‘What in the fuck...?’

“Meet my Doperide, bitch.”

The googly-eyed Girl directed her Stand—referred to as Doperide—to surf across a countertop onto Jocelyn. It twirled a right hook at her face, smacking her down the ceramic floor. Jocelyn spat saliva from her mouth and observed Doperide’s next move. Doperide surfed from behind and jumped to crush her head in, but Blade Runner shot out to guard her, cutting off Doperide’s attack with its katanas.

Blade Runner shoved Doperide away with a boot to its surfboard, but Doperide soared up and whacked its head with it.

It took a few steps back, rattling its head until the fuzziness ceased.

“Rosa, you’re up!” The googly-eyed Girl said, just as the pony-tailed Girl—Rosa—stepped out of the mist armed with a ‘shotgun’.

Jocelyn yelped and leaped out of the shotgun’s fire, which blew open sparks on the countertops Doperide once stood on. Rosa pumped the shotgun and shot where she watched Jocelyn dive to. She pumped and fired again, only to crack the countertop tiles.

‘She can make a shotgun...?!’ Jocelyn frowned. ‘Shit... I’ve got to be careful here. Moment she gets a hit on me, who knows if my guts will spill completely on the floor? Worse... if I—’

“Are you gonna hide like a little girl or come out?!” Rosa yelled, enticing her as she pumped the shotgun. “I’ve spent three shells on your ass, maldita — I can afford to spend three more!”

“Damn straight, Ros,” the googly-eyed Girl said in kind.

“Just because there’s a shitty fog blocking my aim, doesn’t mean I won’t use my goods to my advantage!”

Just as Rosa readied to fire again, a stove next to her opened. “Puta—” she shouted, watching the blaze alternate between a serene blue and intense orange. She aimed the shotgun at the stove and fired, only to hit nothing.

“Ros...? Did you get any?”

“I don’t think I— PUTA MADRE!”

Blade Runner pitched its blade at the stove, and launched a heat ring onto Rosa, who lifted her arms to block. The impact did not light her on fire, but it left her writhing. As though searingly hot steam blasted her, the skin on her arms and face reddened with blisters. She dumped the shotgun, howling and cursing in her mother tongue.

“Clare! It burns! It burns!”

“Shit, what do I do?! I don’t see any tap water or— OH, SHIT!”

Blade Runner launched another heat ring onto the googly-eyed Girl—Clare. It threw her onto the wall like a car ramming her over, and she fell on her ass with a smoking bosom. Parts of her jacket rendered black from the heat, and the skin on her torso was swollen as an allergic reaction.

“Oh, G-God! Someone help!” Clare cried.

‘Yes! I should’ve known heat rings would do the trick,’ Jocelyn pondered as she got out of cover. ‘Now... All I gotta do is put them down and— Shit. I need to catch my breath, quick.’

Three swift gasps were all it took. As she peeped at the two writhing Girls, she pointed them to Blade Runner. It obeyed and drifted above them to attack—

“Space Oddity! Baliin natin yung halimaw!”

—but as she stepped forward, a chalk line glittered cerulean beneath her foot. Her eyes grew as she said:

“Oh, shit...”

–[ ★★★ ]–

 

‘DO IT.’

‘Do it, Alexis. DO IT.’

“Space Oddity! Baliin natin yung halimaw!”

With Bertha’s command, Space Oddity snapped its fingers skyward, flipping the space and gravity around Jocelyn right-side up. She sank onto the ceiling, groaning. Space Oddity flicked to the right and flipped the space, flinging her onto a row of metal cabinets. From what Bertha saw, the doors dented from Jocelyn’s weight. She sprawled on the floor, her back arching.

And Bertha — for the first time in this dreadful night — stifled a laugh under the mask.

‘You did it,’ she surmised.

‘You did IT.’

‘You did it.’

‘The aswang is fractured.’

‘You did it.’

‘You saved your friends.’

‘You did it.’

‘You did it...’

‘But what about them?’

‘You saw them. You saw their pain.’

‘If you don’t help them, the burns will eat them alive.’

‘Do something about it.’

‘You’re the only one who knows.’

‘You’re the only one who knows where we are.’

‘You’re the only one who knows.’

‘You’re the only one...’

Jolting her head, Bertha ran to a refrigerator next to Clarity and Rosa. She opened the door and grabbed two pitchers of cold water.

“G-Guys, are you okay?” she said.

“Do we look okay?!” Rosa hissed, her arms locked in a cross. “I feel like some bitch spilled kettle water all over...”

“W-What are you... holding...?” Clarity squinted.

“Here. This’ll help, I hope.” Bertha threw the pitchers all over them. Even if it helped relieve the heat rings’ blow to their skin, the clash of hot and cold hurt. It left her to second-guess herself.

“You could’ve warned us, dammit!” Rosa yelled.

“S-Sorry!” Bertha’s shoulders drooped.

“Y-Yeah, um... Is she...?” Clarity tried to get on her feet, but the pain weighed her down.

“Yeah... I took care of her.” Bertha smiled.

“Shit...” she grumbled. “Uh... Mind if you lend a hand, Lex?”

“You got it.” Bertha caught Clarity’s hand and boosted her up. The latter shook around her swollen skin, as Bertha peered at where she left Jocelyn. Rosa followed, and the three stared at Bertha’s direction.

“How long is she gonna be out for...?” Clarity said.

“I-I don’t know...” Bertha said. “We’re in the kitchen, by the way.”

“The kitchen...? How’d you know?”

“I-I guess I figured it out — when she knocked me over...”

“Okay. Since you know where we are, what’ve you got cooking in there?” Rosa knocked a bit on Bertha’s head.

“Ow,” Bertha hissed, “knock it off! That hurts, y’know.”

“Geez, stop acting like I hit you with a bat—”

“Girls?” Clarity raised her voice.

“Sorry.”

“Yeah, um... I was thinking...” Bertha mused. “Maybe I can have Space Oddity flip her around... If you can grab anything in the kitchen you can find—anything blunt or sharp and whatever—and throw it at her, Ros? That’d be... um... swell.”

“You still say ‘swell’ in Big ‘29?”

“Eh... I just like saying it.” Bertha forced a chuckle. “And Clare? About the throwing bit, it’d also be swell if you have Doperide help out on that bit.”

“You mean like... the danger zone?” Clarity’s eyes beamed.

“Yeah. Bring it.”

–[ ★★★ ]–

‘God... I’m gonna feel that in the morning...’ Jocelyn felt she snapped something from the impact, even if there was none. ‘I need to, uh... catch my breath for a bit... and then I’m back to ripping them a— SHIT!’

She rolled out of a frying pan being hurled at her, denting the door she smashed onto.

‘Jesus... What the hell is going— Huh? Where’d they get that?’

She watched as Doperide surfed circles across the Girls, who had a tray of kitchen appliances in tow. Yelping, she bounced off as Rosa slung two knives across the circle, each one flying at lightning speed. The first knife cut a part of her scarf’s textile, while the second missed. Clare lifted two coins and threw it at the circle. The coins’ momentum rose to bullet-like velocity upon crossing the circle, which struck Jocelyn on the left shoulder.

“Agh, fuck!” She squealed as blood oozed out of the coin holes. “What did she shoot me with—”

“Catch this, cabron!” Rosa heaved another frying pan, this time to the left.

‘Ha, she missed!’ Jocelyn thought. Until...

The frying pan passed through a chalk-lined corner. Space Oddity flipped the corner to the right, launching the pan through the circle.

‘Oh.’

She evaded the frying pan, which broke open a hole on the cabinet door. Jocelyn glided to a stove out of the Girls’ sight, squeezing down on her bleeding shoulder, as she thought, ‘Damn... these Girls are giving me a shit time... they’re like cockroaches, huh? Throw everything that could kill them, and they always come back. What do I do?’

“Blade Runner,” she said to herself, “make ‘em dance.”

Blade Runner charged out of Jocelyn and adopted a defensive stance. The Girls chucked everything they had onto the circle, focusing Blade Runner. It flapped its katanas at them, deflecting a few knives, splitting several coins in half, and crushing two frying pans. A few stray knives scraped its arms, but it kept its pace.

Rosa constructed a pseudo-grenade launcher in between each throw with Sevendust and took aim. As Blade Runner bent a knife, she shot out a large-caliber projectile onto the flipped corner, and observed the projectile changing directions onto Blade Runner.

It ricocheted off a column and burst near Jocelyn, producing a loud “bang”. The bang shot her eyes into a stained afterimage, followed by a ringing noise that left her tasting bile on her throat. Or whatever was closest to it.

‘What the…?’

She shook her head once and found herself mostly back to before the projectile hit. ‘Man... As soon as I’m back to 100%, they’re fucking toast. I’ll make sure of that. Wait... is that...?’

Before she could decide what she saw, she fell high up the ceiling. Thrust onto the chalk-lined corner space in mid-air, and blasted onto the circle. What she thought was a simple fall wrought more pain than ever. The wooden frame of a wall broke against her back, puffs of dirt barging through and marrying the fog.

She tumbled onto the ground, seeing now she crashed outwards into the lobby. If something in her back hadn’t broken, it cracked now.

‘Agh, shit...’ She coughed. ‘I’m done... I don’t think I’m getting up from that. A bone or two must’ve chipped... what am I gonna do? Any minute now, they’re gonna kill me. And him. Oh, God... he can’t do anything while those doctors fix him...’

As she dwelled on those concerns, the Girls who threw her out arrived through the broken wall. Too fixated in her contemplations to hear them speak, she saw their mouths form egregious smiles, knowing immediately how fearless they grew.

‘Don’t count me out yet... Just because you broke my back throwing me out of the kitchen, doesn’t mean I haven’t got an ace up my sleeve. I just... need to— O-Oh, God...’

She coughed just as her eyes bulged, a lightbulb in her head shattered. ‘Wait... I think I left that propane tank I took from the kitchen in here. I just need to’—she reached out for the desk—‘get it... Ngh...’

“Not so fast,” Rosa said as she stepped on her forearm, locking it down. “What do you think you’re doing, eh...?”

Jocelyn grunted, struggling to break free.

“Whatever it is you’ve got cooking up in there,” she pointed to her temple, “don’t. Only reason you got beat, barring our numbers, is that you got tired real quick. Whatever you did to the others, I don’t care. They’ll come back just fine. And you won’t. What, you think that blowing up our Caddy would kill us? Explain how we’re all standing on our two feet, then.

“Besides... I could just cap you now. Hell, Bertha here would like to flip your head backwards; and Clare would love to spin you ‘till you’re a puddle of flesh. But no. We need you alive. Because our Boss... well...”

She gripped her MAC-11 and aimed it at Jocelyn’s head.

“Whatever she does to you? It’s not gonna be pretty.”

“Oh, yeah...?” Jocelyn wheezed. “Just because I-I’m... tired... doesn’t mean... I haven’t got one trick left... up my...”

Rosa gasped as Blade Runner’s outline flashed next to her.

“Sleeve.”

“Bertha, Clare,” Rosa yelled, “STOP HER—”

“Blade Runner, throw that tank and blow it up!” Jocelyn commanded.

As Bertha and Clare summoned Space Oddity and Doperide, Blade Runner rushed to the receptionist’s desk area, and found a red propane tank situated there. It cut the tank open; the fuel leaking out of the hole. Just as the two Stands rushed in to stop it, Blade Runner lobbed the tank at their Users.

“MUDA!” it cried, as it launched a heat ring at the tank.

Rosa squealed, diving in to cover them, as it flared up into a human-sized fireball. Plates on the roof collapsed from the shockwave, sparks from the lights flashing. The blast flung all three of the Girls into the edge of the lobby, fragments of tiny shrapnel piercing their skin.

Jocelyn gasped for air, shaken. It took a tumble or two until she stood on her two feet.

‘That... oughta do it...’ she snuck in a chuckle. ‘I don’t know where the others are, but... Much as I don’t like the idea of fighting Roon... I’d give my left cheek to shit on Charli—’

A clap. And another clap. And another...

The onlooker’s likeness she couldn’t see, but she knew right away it was her.

“Bravo.” Taylor clapped again. “Such a good girl, aren’t you? You made pancakes out of my best friend, her other best friend, and the poor soul caught in the crossfire. To be honest, I thought they won when you crashed through the wall. But here we are...”

She stepped out of the fog with a grin reaching up to her cheeks. “You and your boyfriend might’ve filed your restraining orders against me... but I can assure you...”

Papercut’s black liquid wrapped Taylor’s body until it had formed its visage.

“They’re just useless papers.”

Everything came back to her as Taylor marched forward. Every moment she cancelled her plans with Rooney under knifepoint, every second she spent in the Hell she made for themselves, every regret she made accepting her deal... The substances, the ‘tea parties’ she presented, the burning ambition to hurt her at any cost... She had her mind set on rectifying the mistake of not killing her. And now was her chance. Jocelyn huffed as she took out an epinephrine tube, injecting it to her arm.

Taylor watched as the epinephrine took control of her, molding her into some hideous being. The fights left Jocelyn a ragged mess, yet a shroud between her eyes left Taylor unsettled. Blue ‘candlelights’ danced between her eyes, dragging her closer as though possessed.

“Attagirl,” Taylor cajoled.

Jocelyn let out a guttural scream as she rushed Blade Runner to attack, driven only by an ‘obsession’ to kill... kill... kill...

Blade Runner and Papercut fought in a battle of song and dance.

The shivs and katana in hand were their instruments, but their performance mattered most. Taylor strung swift and sharp chords at Blade Runner, intent on crushing its guard. But Blade Runner bolstered its defense with dissonant counterpoints, fluttering its blade in figure-eights to throw her off.

It soared for a swing to the neck, but Taylor punted it off, reaching for a two-pronged assault at its waist. As their tools collided against each other, their battle melodies resounded in impassioned fury.

Jocelyn’s obsession rose with each blow dealt, building up to a crescendo of vengeance against her tormentor. As Taylor went for a left hook to the jaw, Blade Runner grabbed her hand and smacked the shiv off her grip. This was it, she thought. The undeniable momentum firing her sonata to its climax was one beat away. Tar began streaming out of its mask and mouth as it roared and slashed Taylor’s shoulder.

Grinning at her enemy’s cries, Jocelyn stole Taylor’s anguished harmonies and reworked it to her sonata’s finale; arranging it from a soloist’s piece to a grand symphony. Letting her obsession push her performance, she conducted her magnum opus with devastating forte: Blade Runner rammed its head against Papercut’s helmet, leaving Taylor to wince two steps back. She introduced percussive beats by smashing every polygon in Papercut’s suit from head-to-toe. And once she had nothing left to fight with, Blade Runner took off and kicked her to the wall, pinning her into an unarmed state. It pounded her down, leaving her sore with five blows to her upper and lower extremities. With mental violins screeching, trumpets and horns bellowing its wrathful chorus across the stage, Jocelyn lifted her hand—Blade Runner syncing with its right katana—to bring forth her masterpiece’s denouement.

“nylecoJ, ¡ԀO┴S Sʇɐʎ poʍu' ǝsɐelp!” She glared at the voice’s direction, growling. As though it were a cough in the audience, a weak performer, and a microphone’s feedback loop altogether.

The candlelights flashed at the voice, booming more words than she ever could.

“t'noD ɯɐʞǝ ɯǝ op sᴉɥʇ¡”

The faceless voice, who assumed her ex’s skin and clothes, released her Stand to push Blade Runner away. It was that of a headless humanoid clad in dark purple robes, ‘plus’ and ‘minus’ signs patterned all over in maroon and cyan colors.

The voice’s Stand sought to hold Blade Runner back, but it yelled curses and jabbed the former out of the way. As the timpani rolled, the symphony reached a final crescendo as Blade Runner cleaved the voice’s forearm out, its putrid screams enough to yank Jocelyn out of her mania.

Seeing tears in the once-faceless woman’s eyes, she realized too late that her obsession hurt the one person she couldn’t. Rooney grimaced, pushing down on the spurting blood vessels.

‘Oh, God... what have I done...?!’ Panic raced between Jocelyn’s thoughts, her only instinct to help her former love overcome her misery.

But a punch from Rooney’s Stand left her falling to the ground. She kissed her mouth and stood up to check on her. But to her surprise, veins and arteries extended from where her forearm was severed. Muscle, bone and tissues formed; until the missing forearm morphed back.

‘W-What the fuck…? Did I see that right?’ She thought to sigh in relief, but no noise came out.

‘W-What the? Hold on... How the fuck am I not talking? What just—’

She reached to touch her lips, but there were none. Only a blank sheet of her skin remained. Trembling with bulging eyes, she formed only one thought:

‘I can’t talk... I... can’t scream.’

---

『 User 』 — Clarity Reid
『 Stand Name 』— Doperide

Power: C Speed: A Durability: E Precision: C Range: B Potential: A

『 Observations 』— Creates a ‘danger zone’ by surfing in circles, where the velocity of every moving object within the zone are significantly increased. When thrown into the zone, a small coin can be shot out like a bullet, and a soccer ball likewise can deal crushing blows to the human body.

『 User Status 』 — A C T I V E
USER CURRENTLY DOES NOT POSE A THREAT

 

『 User 』 — Rooney Smith
『 Stand Name 』— California Dreamin’

Power: C Speed: C Durability: D Precision: A Range: E Potential: C

『 Observations 』— Operates with the ability of ‘addition’ and ‘subtraction’, adding and negating values on the basis of the number ‘one’. It can add a singular ‘value’ to its User (i.e. missing/additional limbs, organs, etc.) in exchange of subtracting a value from its target (i.e. fingers, strands of hair, blood vessels, etc.), limited to only one target per ability usage.

『 User Status 』 — A C T I V E
USER CURRENTLY DOES NOT POSE A THREAT

Notes:

Remember to give kudos and (optionally) a comment! This helps in supporting this fic and its future endeavors.

Chapter 30: Vol. 3 - Coda to a Lost Love

Summary:

The battle against the California Girls reaches its denouement, and the truth about Charli Taylor is about to emerge...

Notes:

Special thanks to two guests who left a kudos in the previous chapter!

—|[ CHAPTER 30 ]|—

Coda to a Lost Love

 

 

“Jocelyn, can’t we just talk about this?”

“I can’t...”

“Tell me what I did wrong. Please, just tell me what I did wrong.”

“I’m not doing this right now—”

“You’ve given me everything I didn’t know I wanted! You gave me my joy back, you’ve made me smile in times where I couldn’t, you— Now you’re saying you wanna call it quits when I need you the most?!”

“Roon, please...”

“Please what?! You give and you take! Is that what you’re trying to tell me?!”

“No, that’s not—”

“WHAT IS IT, then?!”

“I’m sorry, Roon... I have to go...”

                                                “Go, you coward.”

“I’m sorry—”

“Go and run away.”                             

“Roon—”

                            “Leave her like you leave everyone you ever loved!”

“I have—”

“YOU ONLY BELONG TO ME!”

“—to go...”

“Tell anyone of this and I’ll hurt her, I swear to God! I’M THE ONLY ONE YOU’LL EVER LOVE! NOT THAT INFERIOR BITCH YOU GAVE BACK A SMILE! ME!”

Jocelyn screamed as she sped down the 1st Viaduct Bridge with her LiveWire, ignoring the other cars and bystanders crossing there. She sobbed as tears flew out to the air. Barely any time passed since she severed her romantic ties to Rooney; and while it was for her own safety, it was a pyrrhic victory that scarred her now unrecognizable heart.

She murmured apologies under her breath as she arrived downtown, watching its screens blur into each other until she found a bus stop by 201 N Spring St. Parking there, she sighed, watching the palm trees blow and advertisements change by the LEDs.

One such advertisement promoted a forthcoming interview with Joshua Johnson for Vogue magazine, but she was too focused on the trees to notice.

She sighed, removing her helmet. Her tears dried up, leaving behind a muted trail around her eyes, as she took out her phone. There were many notifications scattered, totaling about fifty text messages. A recent one popped in, that of a voicemail. She opened it, propped a pair of earbuds onto her ears, and listened.

“You listen to me, little shit,” Taylor growled from the voicemail. “Just because you’ve broken off our little fling and run away, doesn’t mean you’re free from me. Do you understand that?! We’ll cross paths again... I’m sure of it. And when we do, I want you to know that you’re gonna pay the price of betraying me. Got it?! You’re nothing without me. NOTHING! YOU AMOUNT TO NOTHING BUT A ZERO SUM, A WORTHLESS PIECE OF—”

She released a strained sigh, deleting the voicemail midway through. ‘Shut up, you bitch,’ she thought. Returning her phone to the purse, she waited until the traffic lights glinted green.

A “go” signal.

Fastening her helmet on, she put up the kickstand and revved the LiveWire out of the bus stop.

She had nowhere to go. No route, no set destination. Every time she cut ties from a breakup, a self-cannibalizing cycle of déjà vu trapped her. She would find someone, fall in love, and run away when it got overwhelming. Only that, in the current cycle, she ran away to protect her last someone.

But regardless, the cycle remained the same:

She ran away with nowhere to go.

A blink of an eye came. Everyone and everything ‘Vanished’…

All but a Mitsubishi Lancer’s headlights.

 

–[ ★★★ ]–

 

‘I can’t talk. I... can’t scream. I can’t scream!’

Jocelyn’s legs turned to jelly, dwelling on the fact her mouth disappeared. Recoiling two steps back, she felt helpless, watching Rooney retrieve her gun and move to Taylor’s side. Her eyes swelled the moment they scowled at her.

“Pick ‘em up,” Rooney hissed to Taylor.

Taylor bowed and assisted the three girls incapacitated by the tank’s explosion. Though they squirmed from the shrapnel embedded in their skin, they shrugged the pain off. Cyrus, not being with them, left them initially panicked. But the sooner she came, they got to her aid and rejoined Rooney.

‘I was right,’ Jocelyn thought, ‘they really are cockroaches... Roon’s Stand, it... I don’t know what that did, but... I have to stop them. What do I do here? The adrenaline’s wearing off, and I don’t know if I can push myself even further. C’mon, Gio... think of something...’

“That’s it, huh?” Rooney tied up her watch, glaring at her. “Not gonna do something? Well... You’re gonna run out of breath faster if you fight me, but I won’t stop you. After all... it’s what you do best, right?”

Jocelyn did not react.

“Let me help you with stopping that.”

Rooney took out her gun and aimed straight for the head. Jocelyn raised her hands, twisting her head in refusal.

‘Shit! She’s gonna shoot me! And she means it! What do I do...?’

“You know, we really had something good.” She sighed. “And I was afraid it’d get to this point. Why is that? Blame me, blame yourself, do whatever you think you have to do to justify this... but one thing remains the same: I have to kill you.”

Tears fell from Jocelyn’s eyes, shutting them tight. ‘Do something, dammit!’

“I’m sorry, Jocelyn. I really am. But you hurt her,”—she pointed to Taylor—“so...

“You’ve had this coming.”

She put her finger on the trigger and began pulling—

“STOP!”

“Who the f—” The Girls jerked to the yelling, only to gasp when Blade Runner raised its hands, ‘gasping’ for air.

“Stop,” it said. “Don’t... pull... the fucking trigger.”

“What the hell?!” Cyrus grimaced. “You—”

“You could talk the whole time?!” Rosa raised her eyebrow.

“No. Blade Runner can’t talk.” It pointed to Jocelyn, who rubbed the blank skin where her mouth was. “I am using my Stand to talk. I know this because one of my cousins tried it underwater, and I did the same.”

The Girls nodded at each other, stunned.

“Just because you can talk again, doesn’t mean I’m gonna stop,” Rooney said. “Besides... What the hell are you going on about?! You’ve gambled everything to put us down, and you’re thinking sweet talk will get you a ‘get out of jail free’ card.”

“I am not trying to sweet talk.”

“What are you doing, then?!” She pointed the gun at Jocelyn.

“I am trying to explain.”

“Explain what?! Trying to justify all this?! Trying to justify why you blew up a gas tank at my friends, let alone frying one of my best assets in hand-to-hand combat—”

“I WAS A VICTIM!” Blade Runner darted a finger at Taylor. “Of her!”

Silence enraptured the air, the Girls feeling a sense of suffocation. They squinted at Blade Runner in disbelief of the claims. Taylor initially reacted blankly, but feigned a frown.

“What are you...?!” Bertha joined in, her breaths quick. “You’re... You’re not bringing up what you said yesterday—”

“I am bringing up what I said yesterday. About your ‘bestie’, about all the poor people she forced a tryst with.” Blade Runner sighed. “Believe whatever you want to. Say the words, scream it, whatever. Say it. I’m a liar. I’m a liar for not saying this yesterday, or the weeks before. But the pain... It was so much. I broke up with you, Roon. To protect you. Alright?” It’s voice broke.

“I didn’t say my name amongst the Armin Doucettes or Lucinda Warners because I didn’t want to go through it again. But now... since you’re all stuck with me, him, and those doctors fighting to save him?

“I had to say it. I...”

‘I can’t say it. I can’t say that I’ve been running away...’ Jocelyn pondered. ‘What do I do? I can’t... say it... I mustn’t... say... it.’

“You have two options. Kill me, and she gets away with hurting us both. Or...” Blade Runner glared at Taylor. “You have the power. I won’t make you decide for yourself.”

Rooney’s grip on the gun shook, processing all Jocelyn—through Blade Runner—had said. Her lips quivered, eyebrows twitching, as she turned to Taylor.

“Boss...?” Taylor feigned a pleading expression.

“Tell me, bestie...” Bertha stepped in. “Tell me that’s not true...”

“Bestie, I—”

“Tell me she’s lying.” She jabbed a harsh finger at Jocelyn. “You didn’t... do all that... right?! Tell me, bestie. Tell me.”

“N-No, I—”

“Lexi, please...” Rooney gently pushed her out, aiming the gun at Taylor.

She raised her hands, feigning a gasp. “Boss, don’t!”

“Tell us,” she choked, “about what you did to those poor boys and girls... Did you make them cheat on you, Charli? Did you do it?”

Taylor’s jaw went slack, her eyes blazing with a fake sense of ‘dread’. But knowing she had nowhere else to run, a mental switch flipped inside her mind. Carmine flushed faintly down her cheeks, a grin wrinkling itself onto her face. Her chuckles were airy, tiny whistles cracking with each guffaw.

“She’s right... I did it.”

The Girls distanced themselves, eyes shimmering with tears from their final realization...

“You...” Rooney nearly dropped the gun, but tightened her grip.

“I forced your girlfriend into a tryst. And did the same... Heh... To so many more...”

“Bestie...” Bertha took a few steps back.

“Do what you want with me,” Taylor grinned, “put a bullet between my eyes, or grow another heart for my own using California Dreamia’. That won’t stop me from doing it more.

“You think I wouldn’t? Believe me. This... All this which I put you both through... You’ll think I’m crazy. But it’s necessary. It’s the only way of expressing love. ‘True love’. And if I have to do it over again, believe me. I will do it. Because I never understood ‘true love’ until the first tryst I made six years ago. And since then, I’ve been trying to reach that high. I’ve gotten close. Armin was a greedy bastard, but toying with him was fun. Lucinda couldn’t shut up about getting sick from the slightest touch. But Jocelyn? Heh... who would’ve thought? A strong woman, yet she gets scared too easily.”

Taylor chortled, recalling what she put Jocelyn through.

“You’re sick.” Rooney’s eyes gleamed with tears.

“Bold of you to say that, when we’ve been bangers buying drugs and capping people! Fucking hypocrite.”

She did not respond further.

“Matter of fact is, I don’t care. If people get hurt from what I’ve done, if they file for divorce or otherwise, I don’t care. What I want… is love.” The pupils in her eyes grew. “I need... love. I need ‘true love’, dammit! It would suck if I did what you idiots consider the ‘right way’ to get it: building friendships, going on dates, marrying them and raising families of their own. But trysts... that’s the real deal. I need Joshua. And Jocelyn. I need them. I want them both.”

Jocelyn furrowed her eyebrows, letting her tears fall down.

“If you’re gonna shoot me, boss, then do it. Shoot me. SHOOT ME, I fucking dare you! But you won’t. You won’t pull the trigger.

“Because I’m the best combatant that you — and you people’s sycophantic obsession with ‘vanilla love’ — have!” The pace of her speech quickened as her smile grew manic. “You’re not gonna shoot me because you need me, dammit! You need me, because you’re nothing without me. YOU. NEED. ME—”

Rooney shot her.

Between her eyes, the bullet went through her head, splattering fleshy bits of brain on the floor. She collapsed into a pool of her own blood, the life in her eyes dried into a void. Her smile, though faded, remained etched into the corpse.

Rooney shed a tear and nothing more. The Girls recoiled further from the scene and howled. But Bertha let out a weak whimper. Their first thought was to blame Jocelyn, believing a scapegoat would be easier than processing how sudden all this was. But they watched the cadaver lay still instead; its last expression of lucid euphoria. They did not truly understand the depravity she believed in, and refused to fathom that any further.

“Boss...” Cyrus clutched her head. “B-Boss, what did you do?”

“What I should’ve done when we rescued her...”

They took a step forward, staring at the body; all except Bertha. She stood there, blank, being there and nowhere simultaneously.

‘Christ... she shot her...’ Jocelyn thought. ‘She shot her...’

Their stares remained still, some part of them shattered by the loss. It wasn’t until Bertha let out two quick whimpers that they turned back. Her mask concealed her expression, but deep down, emotion overpowered her.

“Lexi,” Rooney approached her—

“Don’t,” Bertha sobbed, “go... n-near me...”

“Lexi, she—”

“I said don’t!”

Rooney holstered the gun back in, stepping away.

“Don’t go near me...” Bertha grabbed the mask’s traps behind her head, and untied them with rash fingers. “I can’t... I can’t take this anymore, I can’t... I can’t do this.”

“Do what?”

“I can’t... I... I can’t do this, I... quit.”

Bertha took off the mask and chucked it to the ground. Her eyes were red with tears; lips and nose quivering into a crumpled, trembling mess. None of the Girls expected this. And neither of them knew if she mourned for her ‘bestie’ as she knew her, or the monster she was all along.

“I quit... I can’t do this anymore...” Bertha ran off from the lobby and wailed.

“Bertha, wait!” Rosa chased after her, but Clarity held her back. “Bertha!”

“Ros, don’t,” Clarity argued.

“Bertha, we can talk about this! BERTHA!”

“Rosa...” Rooney joined in, placing her hand on Rosa’s shoulder.

“B-Boss, she can’t—” She choked up. “She can’t leave us...!”

“Let her be,” Rooney said, “maybe spread her wings... I don’t know... I don’t know what to say...”

The Girls wrapped their heads around the abrupt turn of events, either in tears or whimpering. Jocelyn observed them, watching them sob and hug each other by her corpse. She got what she wanted. Revenge. Justice served for a future destroyed by Taylor’s pursuit of ‘true love’, yet she pondered... Was it worth it? Ripping apart a family the Girls made for themselves, just because of one bad egg?

‘I did it... at what cost?’

 

–[ ★★★ ]–

 

Author’s Note: Please play this track for the latter half of this chapter. It’s worth it, I promise.

By the time it reached five, the clinic’s only staff—Dr. Buckcherry and Trapt—wrapped the corpse in a body bag. They made plans to perform an autopsy beforehand. But they argued on what ultimately killed her. The bullet to her head, or something else entirely. It went on and on until they settled on the autopsy, intent on using it to further research of Stand user anatomy.

But they made preparations to release Joshua from the sarcophagus first.

Meanwhile, the grime and bruise-riddled Jocelyn sat on the lobby chairs, wiping off sweat with her scarf. Closing her eyes, she whistled a tune while pondering over—

“Your uh... friend’s out of the machine, by the way.”

Jocelyn gasped from the sound of Rooney’s voice. “Huh?” she said.

“Y’know... that ‘boy toy’ of yours...”

“He’s not my ‘boy toy’,” she faintly blushed, “but... thanks for letting me know, I guess...”

“No problem.”

Blowing her hair, Rooney sat two chairs away, loosening her collar. “How are you, um... doing?”

“Other than my back probably being blown, I’m doing fine...” A hic. “What about you? How’s your, uh... the one with the angry mask?”

“We couldn’t find her, sadly.” She frowned. “Spent half an hour searching for her. Nope. Not a single sign of her.” Rooney caressed the handle of her gun a bit. “I understand why she ran off, but... What did I do wrong to make her freak out? Was it—”

“Whatever you’re thinking, she deserved it. For what she did to us both.”

“I know that, it’s just...” She hung her head low. “They were just... so close. Charli and... Ugh... even I thought they had the hots for each other, but... I guess she was just too ‘vanilla’ for that bitch’s taste.”

“She’s a degenerate, Roon. Don’t take her word as fact.”

“I know, I know... I just can’t believe she said all that like it was pure gospel. But it was just... justification. For doing all this... fucked-up shit she put people like us through, and...” A sigh of relief. “I’m glad it wasn’t you I put a bullet between the eyes.”

“Yeah...” Jocelyn smiled.

Rooney rubbed her eyes, staring blankly at the wall. “You think we would’ve still been together?” she said. “If I knew what she was...”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know...?”

“I’m not the best person to answer that kinda stuff.” Jocelyn tugged with her scarf.

“I mean... I said fighting was your strongest suit,” Rooney chuckled.

“Shut the fuck up,” she huffed.

“But um... I don’t know. I don’t know how I can answer that... Uh... What could’ve been...”

“It wouldn’t work.”

“What?”

“It wouldn’t work out,” Jocelyn frowned. “You’re gonna think I’m crazy, but... we would’ve broken up either way.” She rubbed her palms against each other. “I mean, we would’ve lasted longer if that little shit never ruined everything. But we wouldn’t have lasted. It’s just the unfortunate truth.”

“Why?” She tilted her head.

“Because...”

‘I can’t tell her. Goddamn it, I can’t tell her...’

“Because what?”

“Because of what you and I come from. I mean... my Dad... he would fucking kill you for what you do. And I...”

“That’s not it,” Rooney frowned.

“Believe me or not, I insist. We’re just not compatible. We’re just...” Jocelyn let a single tear from her eye fall. “I’m just a stepping stone. For you. Just because I’ve said to you all those weeks ago that I have experience, doesn’t mean— Ugh. Forget it.”

“Go on...”

“No, just... forget about it. I’m not the best person to talk about this.”

Rooney went to reach out, but stopped herself. She knew deep down this wasn’t the right answer. Jocelyn hid something from her she wouldn’t let out. Not even to the ones closest to her... She loved her for who she was, but Jocelyn’s true self was a treasure lost to the forgotten sands. She knew that. And she couldn’t accept her dishonesty.

But her mind soon came back to what she originally asked.

To what could’ve been...

 

–[ ★★★ ]–

 

“Yo! The taxi’s good to go!” Joshua said from inside the taxi car, having twisted the keys. “If you’re gonna hop in now, then hop in! Joce?”

Jocelyn pocketed her hands, focused on the California Girls. Nearly all of them but Bertha received sarcophagus treatment, and they were more or less back in fresh condition. It was now nine-in-the-morning, warm rays of sunlight showering everyone in the parking lot. They discussed matters she lacked interest in, hearing the occasional worry of their reputation tanking and such. As much as she wished for their success, some cruel part of her thought they deserved to plummet down Shakedown’s hierarchy. But it was the part of her who loathed Taylor and cursed the Girls for inaction.

She was dead now, her corpse undergoing autopsy as she last heard. And yet… there was no satisfaction. No closure. Her death sated her craving for justice, but she couldn’t put into words what she—

“Joce.” Joshua boomed, startling Jocelyn from her soliloquy.

“Motherfuck—” She jerked her head behind. “Couldn’t you have just given me a pat on the shoulder?!”

“The taxi’s ready.”

“Sweet...”

“Just one thing...” Joshua put up his glasses, dressed back in his ‘crotch-star’ getup. “How are they all doing?”

“They’re a little shaken about the big girl going missing, but... they’ll manage. Roon said something about shelling out cash for a coverup, and… Oh, man. You should’ve been there. My mouth was like... gone.”

“Shit, really?”

“Yeah. I had to like... Okay, are you aware that Users can use their Stand to talk underwater?”

“Wait, they can do that?” His eyes widened, laughing. “You’re kidding me. That’s made up.”

“I’m not making this up, dumbass!” She jabbed a finger at his chest. “I mean, it’s a little hard to do ‘coz you have to focus your mind on—”

“Jocelyn!” Rooney yelled from the other side.

The two watched her approach them. She was close, but far enough to maintain distance. Jocelyn focused her eyes on her, letting go of her pockets.

“I just wanted to say,” she said aloud. “Before we...”

“You’re going now, right?”

“Yeah...” Rooney briefly turned to the Girls. “We haven’t gotten home since we jacked up this clinic. And, to be frank, I think we might’ve gotten all our folks worried. So...”

“Are you gonna tell them?” Jocelyn crossed her arms. “The uh... Are you gonna tell all these people I mentioned about what happened?”

“Oh, I’m so going to.” Rooney rubbed her neck. “Just to give them closure. Oh, and... speaking of closure...”

When she smiled, Jocelyn beamed. She knew they were no longer together. That she couldn’t enjoy it as happily as she did then. But it took her back to happy times. Times when all they worried about was making it to their dates.

“Thanks,” she said, “for letting me smile again.”

Every moment they shared, every kiss, every smile... She had nothing to say, her mouth agape. It wasn’t fair. It shouldn’t have ended the way it did. Though Jocelyn believed it wouldn’t last long, it was arguably the closest she got to ‘true love’ than whatever warped vision of it Taylor chased. Perhaps in a long time...

“I, uh... I have to go.” Rooney waved. “Um... whatever you two are planning over the next few — I dunno... Good luck. I don’t think I can help, but... good luck.”

“You too.”

With one last wave, Rooney walked off and returned to the Girls’ side. Joshua and Jocelyn watched as the California Girls entered their car—a beat-up 2021 Toyota Corolla, damaged by the pile-up—and drove away from the clinic. Their journey was far from over. She knew in her heart she didn’t deserve closure for this. Yet, as her heart fluttered, she believed that:

Maybe... she could finally stop running away.

—

‘I’m not here.’

‘I’m NOT here.’

‘I’m somewhere else...’

‘I got away.’

‘I got away from them...’

‘They couldn’t find me...’

‘I should’ve done it better. I should’ve said goodbye better.’

‘But I can’t. I won’t.’

‘I WON’T SAY GOODBYE.’

‘Not now, at least...’

‘I am hurting.’

‘Real bad.’

‘But I can manage.’

‘This isn’t like when that shitface with the shades shot me...’

‘I’ve hid long enough.’

‘Time to go. Go somewhere. Go where neither of them would expect me to be.’

‘I’m in the taxi.’

‘I find the taxi.’

‘I’m in the taxi.’

‘The door’s locked.’

‘I’m in the taxi.’

‘I use Space Oddity to unlock the door.’

‘I’m in the taxi.’

‘I get inside the taxi.’

‘I’m in the taxi.’

‘Where do I go?’

‘I’m in the taxi.’

‘I don’t know where to go.’

‘I’m in the taxi.’

‘I can’t make myself obvious.’

‘I’m in the taxi.’

‘They see me in the driver’s seat, they’ll force me to revoke my decision.’

‘I’m in the taxi.’

‘So I hide.’

‘I’m in the taxi.’

‘The bike’s too fucking heavy.’

‘I’m in the taxi.’

‘But I manage.’

‘I’m in the taxi.’

‘I am now in a position where the bike is still there, but I am seated comfortably behind them.’

‘I’m in the taxi.’

‘I have no magic slate.’

‘I’m in the taxi.’

‘I miss my magic slate.’

‘I’m in the taxi.’

‘But there’s a notepad with a pen attached to it.’

‘I’m in the taxi.’

‘It’s not the same.’

‘I’m in the taxi.’

‘But it’s close.’

‘I’m in the taxi.’

‘I use the notepad to write it all down. Write everything I can. My mind can’t process what happened without blaming myself. But why? Why do I do this? Bossing had no choice. And bestie... What were you trying to do, bestie? How many people did you hurt?’

‘I’m in the taxi.’

‘I’m in the taxi...’

 

 

Volume III - The Neverending Exes Story

END

Notes:

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