Chapter Text
He knew the trip was absurd to begin with, but it was a rare mission that could be dual purpose—sate the Speedwagon Foundation’s nagging request for a Stand researcher to check in on this place of interest and study the luscious ecosystems surrounding the secluded outlet of the Amazon River. Often times, these places that the Foundation was too pussy to study themselves was nothing but a site of ghost stories and stupid rumor, but why not make the best of a stupid situation to further his own marine research? He was already making a professional name for himself fresh out of doctoral school as a quickly rising marine scientist amongst his mutuals, so why not take advantage?
He shouldn’t have. Dr. Jotaro Kujo should not have. When the local legend had “snake curse” as the subject, he should’ve left it there. A legend. See, myth is a little too mysterious, and rumor is bound to be unreliable, but legend tends to have more power behind it—old, looming power. Especially when it comes to the powers that be in the Amazon.
That legend lived up to its alleged claim.
Jotaro was there for maybe two hours, taking in the beauty of the river and staking things out before actually starting his investigation, when a huge, brightly colored snake that he’d never seen before slithered across his boots and bit him in the ankle. For no good reason. He didn’t kick the thing or even move when it appeared, he just watched and wondered about those bright blues and yellows and how it wasn’t like anything ever reported—even in the debriefing file. Thankfully, the agent with him was green enough to do a dance and jump back twenty feet while screaming into the radio for emergency evac, not that Jotaro remembered since he got dizzy and crumpled to the ground in two minutes. There wasn’t much to remember between that and waking up from a coma two months later. According to the medical and science records, Jotaro was critical for a solid week after the bite and then…
And then his life was turned inside out like he wanted that damned snake’s skin to be. Oh, the irony in that wish. When he finally woke up, he discovered that the trademark Joestar trait of long legs no longer applied to him and that his whole lower half was a snake. To add on to that bullshit, Star Platinum was unresponsive—gone in all but feeling—and his wife and daughter still thought he was out in the field doing research. The Speedwagon Foundation didn’t have the sense to make up a phony story that was remotely medical related to at least say that he was in the hospital or some shit. Nope. They left them in the dark without hardly a notion of what happened aside from “Dr. Kujo is still deep in his research and cannot respond but will as soon as he can!” Needless to say, the phone call to say that he was still alive was a long, emotional, and stressful one. Even though a lot came clean, they still couldn’t know about the scaly situation he was in… So he had to make it up to be an unfortunate accident that put him out for a while and that his research had turned long-term with no definite end in sight—his heart crumbled a little more with each lying word. He hated doing it, but what else was there? Jolyne and his wife couldn’t know about this. Nobody outside the Foundation could.
And that’s how it happened. How it stayed.
That was four years ago.