JoJo's Bizarre Adventure - Red Rising Sun

by acidhousequeen

Summary:

In a future not too far away, an unremarkable young man named Johan finds himself in extraordinary circumstances.

Chapter 1: Johan Johansson

Ding.

“Your application has been submitted. Before we can confirm that you have submitted your application for the raffle, please agree to our terms and conditions.”

Johan put his hand to his face and sighed, as he lowered his head and stared at his desk. He reached into the desk drawer beside him, pulled out a large roll of tape out, and fiddled with it momentarily before finally managing to tear off two pieces. The first piece, he plastered onto the camera on top of his monitor. The second, onto the second camera at the bottom.
Even after having known about it for a few years, he couldn’t help but wonder if the second camera was even legal. It was practically hidden, and the only reason he even knew it was there in the first place is because of an obscure online forum he browsed. But that didn’t matter to him right then. He scrolled through the terms and conditions, disappointment surging through him when he noticed the agree button was greyed out.

“Please reread the terms and conditions.” Both he and the computer knew full damn well he didn’t read a word of it, but whether or not it would fall for his tricks was another matter. Even with the complete lack of tone in its voice, he could tell it wasn’t having it with him.

“I’m a fast reader.”

“Please reread the terms and conditions.”

Damn it.

“Fine, then. How long should it take?”

“The average human is able to read at a rate of-”

“Skip.”

“Approximately one hour. Your activity will be monitored to ensure that you read the full contract.”

“My camera doesn’t work. Is that alright?” The computer fell silent for a moment, presumably as it checked both of his cameras to make sure they were indeed off. Lucky for him, it couldn’t tell the difference between the cameras just being taped over or dead.

“That is acceptable.”

Johan rolled back to his seat and tapped his way through his phone, set a one-hour timer, and scrolled back up to the start of the page, letting autoscroll take care of the rest. With his gaze still glued to his phone, he brought up the phone app, headed out of his room, and speed dialed the only number on there- his best friend, Damon.
It took a few rings, but eventually, Damon answered, his raspy voice barely coming through on the shitty, decade-old cell phone Johan had.

“Yo, Damon.”

“Yeah?”

“I’ve got an hour or so to kill.”

“Lemme guess, you tried to submit an application to meet that scientist lady up in Fresno? Yeah, they really tried to make sure you read that shit. I tried, but I didn’t understand most of it, so I figured I wasn't the type of person they were looking for.”

“Didn’t know you were into that kind of stuff. I thought you didn’t like what you call ‘nerd stuff’.”

“I mean, yeah, but… dude… she’s hot.”

“Hm. Fair point. Is that seriously all you applied for?”

“Do I need another reason?”

“At least a little respect would be nice. You just wanna meet her cause she’s hot? Is that seriously all you’re after?”

“...Yeah?”

“You’re hopeless, dude.”

Johan listened to Damon’s chuckling on the other end of the line, and rolled his eyes.

“Okay, okay, so, when does this thing get announced? I didn’t actually check.”

“I’m… I think it’s a couple of days from now.”

“Yeah? ‘N when do ya get to go and actually meet her?”

“Uh… I think sometime in the next couple weeks? Why?”

“Oh, yknow, just…”

“I don’t think I can bring anyone with me.”

“Damn it.”

“Life’s tough like that, man.”

“Yeah, whatever. What do you got in mind for where we’re heading?”

“You feelin’ McDonald’s? I could go for some nuggets right about now.”

“I was hopin’ you’d suggest food. Meet me at my place.”

“Yeah, yeah. See you in a bit.”

There was a reason Johan had been willing to go to such lengths to fill out such a ludicrous application. Over the last decade or so, the scientist in question, one Ms. Vei Roseburg, had been the leading mind in some of the most revolutionary technologies of the last few centuries. To meet someone who had essentially reinvented the worlds of prosthetics, renewable energy production, and transportation would be the honor of a lifetime.
However, like any of the greatest modern minds, she came with her fair share of quirks. Most importantly, she was a total recluse. Having an actual opportunity to meet her would most definitely be a once in a lifetime opportunity, and it was not one Johan intended to waste. He didn’t know exactly what he was getting into by going to meet her, given her reclusiveness didn’t exactly lend itself to knowing what talking to her would be like, but it didn’t matter. Meeting a top world scientist is a top world scientist.

As Johan made his way down the stairs and to the door, a faint meow made itself heard from the kitchen. With a few clicks of his tongue, Johan was almost instantly greeted with the sight of a fluffy calico cat sprinting in his direction. With a graceful leap, the cat landed squarely on the railing beside him, as he meowed and purred his little lungs out. Johan gave him a plethora of kisses and scratches beneath the chin, resisting the urge to talk to him in a baby voice.

“Ok, Lelijk. I’m going out to meet with Damon. Don’t cause any trouble while I’m gone, alright?”

“Maow.”

“I know, I know, my sweet angel.”

“Maow.”

“I’ll be back in less than an hour. You have plenty of food in your bowl.”

“Maow.”

“Goodbye, Lelijk.”

“Maow.”

The walk to Damon’s was brisk, though the biting cold air made it seem far longer than usual. As he arrived on the doorstep, he checked his phone. 47 minutes left. Plenty of time to go get food and come back.

As he stepped up onto the messy concrete pathway leading from the sidewalk to Damon’s house, Johan couldn’t help but stare at the door handle. Or, rather, the lack thereof. It was flattened on the door, and a gentle hand rubbed over it revealed that it was indeed stuck there as a 2d object. Whatever.
Johan shook his head and pounded on the door, a knock he had practiced a thousand times before. Something to let Damon know it was him before he even came to the door. It was always something Damon had been annoyed by at first, but in time, he came to appreciate it.

“Alright, alright. I’m here. What do you want? I’m ordering ahead of time.”

“Uh… get me some fries, a McChicken, and a McFlurry. Oh, oh, uh… with Oreos. Cookies and cream is the shit, man. You gotta try it sometime.”

“You haven’t convinced me before, it’s not gonna happen today.”

“Pft. You’re missing out.”

“Yeah, yeah. Let’s go.”

The two set out through the chilly Stilton streets, hands in their pockets. Hardly anyone was out at the time, making the trek there a breeze. Not that it was ever particularly busy. Even with their relative proximity to a well-known city like Fresno, there wasn’t ever anything worth coming out to Stilton for, even for the most bored of tourists. Johan liked it that way, though. Living somewhere where the air hung heavy with the sound of blaring horns and permanent chatter was never quite his style, a taste acquired from back in the Netherlands.

It wasn’t long before the two stood across the street from their beloved golden arches. Pretty much the only place in all of Stilton to get some decent fries. The only thing between them and today’s lunch was a single crosswalk. Their intense fixation on the beacon was only broken by a hearty shove from behind, one that sent Johan stumbling into the street and causing his phone to drop from his grasp, sliding in between an unluckily placed grate down into the sewers.

“Shit-”

Johan dropped to the ground and reached after it, slipping his hand through the grate. Water poured from the gaps beneath his fingernails, chasing after the falling phone. Mere centimeters from the filthy sludge below, the water snapped around the phone like a vice grip, having stopped its descent just in time. Johan breathed a sigh of relief, and slowly but surely fished his phone from the sewer grate.
Back on his feet, he glared at the man who had shoved him. Tall, clearly muscular, and with his face obscured by his massive hood, the man didn’t even spare a glance for the person he had just knocked over, or any regard for the signal.

“Hey, hey! Pay attention next time, jackass! You nearly-”

A towering figure rose from behind Johan, a swirling mass of looming, shimmering, crystal clear water. As Johan pointed a finger and the figure moved to throw a punch, he felt a hand on his shoulder. Damon’s.

“It ain’t worth the trouble, man. Just leave it. Probably just wants some fries even more badly than we do.” Damon cackled to himself over his lame joke, and Johan couldn’t help but smile with him, eventually bursting out into laughter alongside him.

“WALK.” The mechanical voice of the HAWK beacon finally had let the pair make their way to the other side, laughing with each other the whole way across. The smell of frying oil and the constant buzz of activity emanated from the restaurant, a welcome smell and sight both Damon and Johan were familiar with and fond of.

"Hey." Damon stopped in front of the window as he walked, and Johan could hear him chuckling to himself under his breath.

He held out a singular, oversized chicken nugget, signature shitty grin on his face. "Wanna nugget?"

Johan stared in confusion and amazement. "We haven't even gone in... where the hell did you get that?"

"Oh, yknow... just... picked it up."

"I'm not eating some random nugget you picked up off the ground. That's super gross, dude."

"Your loss." Damon popped it in his mouth without a second thought, and looked back towards the entrance of the McDonald's. "You know what, man... we've been buddies for like a couple years now. I'm gonna trust you with a little... secret, I guess."

Walking up to an advertisement plastered onto the side of the store, Damon reached out to it, and with the flick of a wrist, peeled off one of the nuggets. He held this one out to Johan as well. It was huge, like the scaled up food in the ad.

Damon snorted. "See? Not any sorta ground chicken or any of that crap."

Johan's eyes widened. "How the... you can do that? Is it real?"

Damon scoffs. "Course it's real."

"But, but... it was painted on the side of the wall? So it can’t be… real. Right? I didn't know you could do that... just take whatever you want."

"I can't." Damon bared his yellow teeth in a smug grin.

"Who d'ya think put it there in the first place? I rang this place up and offered to help them with their advertisements for some cash... Been there for a few years now. And since while it's on the wall, it's paint... so it doesn't rot. You get it?"

“...Aren’t they gonna get suspicious that some pieces of their advertisements are missing?”

“Ah, c’mon. You worry too much. Besides, I think this is actually the first time I’ve ever bothered to take something off. You wanna go through the drive-thru again this time?”

“Pfft. Yeah, let’s do it… hey, how’d you even get a nugget that-”

“Shh. Gotta trigger the weight sensor.” Damon held a finger to his mouth as he unzipped his jacket. With one hand in the front pocket, he jostled it around, shaking it violently until cinder block after cinder block fell out of the inside, crashing down onto the asphalt. With enough shaking and enough bricks, finally, the speaker crackles on.

“Welcome to McDonald’s, what can I do for you?”

“Uh, I’ve got a… mobile order. Johan Johansson. Jo-”

A piercing scream through the speaker cut his order short.

“...Jo.”

Thundering crack after thundering crack rang out through the speaker, so loud that the two could even hear it coming from inside the restaurant itself.

“Hell was that?” Damon scooped up his cinder blocks back inside his jacket, mirroring a bewildered look with Johan.

“EVERYONE DOWN ON THE GROUND! NOW!”

It was a robbery. Johan sneered. “A goddamn robbery? What kind of scumbag robs a McDonald’s? You’d have to be some kind of freak to do that… they better not have touched the good fry cook…”

With a shared nod, Johan and Damon rushed out of the drive-thru and towards the main entrance, cinder blocks falling from the latter’s jacket in their hurry.

In the middle of the store, standing tall over all the kneeling and crying civilians, was a deranged man in a deep black hoodie. The man from earlier, the one who had nearly catapulted Johan’s Android to an early, shitty grave.

“I SAID EVERYONE ON THE GROUND! OR I’LL BLOW YOUR FUCKING HEAD OFF! YOU HEAR ME? NOW PUT THE SHIT IN THE BAG, OR THIS WHOLE PLACE GOES TO HELL!”

“...Hey. Asshole.”

“W- HUH?”

The lunatic whipped his disfigured head around to face Johan. He narrowed his eyes, and the robber did the same.

“DIDN’T YOU HEAR ME? I SAID-”

“I heard what you said. Shut the hell up… we’re going to kill you.”

The man falls silent for a moment, staring at Johan with wonder and confusion. His voice drops to a calm, even tone, and a mechanical beast rises from his side, flashing red and black, towering over the three of them.

“Then… try not to make a fool of yourself.”

| TO BE CONTINUED >

Notes:

STAND USER: JOHAN JOHANSSON
STAND NAME: PRESSURE
STAND STATS:
POWER: B
SPEED: B
RANGE: C
STAYING POWER: B
PRECISION: A

STAND USER: DAMON DAYS
STAND NAME: THE NOW NOW
STAND STATS:
POWER: D
SPEED: D
RANGE: A
STAYING POWER: D
PRECISION: D

STANDS: EXPLAINED
Stands are manifestations of the user’s fighting spirit, and are ranked on their statistics from E to A, worst to best respectively, with an E being extremely weak, like a child, and A being superhuman, like being able to lift a vehicle full of people with one hand, and C being about average for a human, though it’s more of a guideline than an exact science.

User and Stand cannot be separated, as they are summoned to your side. Damaging the user damages the Stand equally and vice versa. Stands are usually obtained by having Stand using parents, manifesting it through willpower or passion, or special phenomena like the Stand virus from a meteor. Most people are not aware Stands exist, so any Stand using criminals are usually kept secret and contained by the few officers with Stands, as only Stand users can see other Stands, and only Stands can harm Stands.

Johan and Damon are natural-born Stand users due to their outstanding latent willpower, having manifested their Stands a few years before the events of Red Rising Sun.

Chapter 2: Pressure Part 1

“Yo, Johan… what the fuck is this guy’s problem?” Damon whispered.

“Beats me. Guess we found out what had him in such a hurry, huh?”

“Yeah… don’t move a muscle. We don’t know what this guy’s Stand ability is.”

The disfigured man leers at the pair, Stand still floating motionless in the air beside him, waiting for orders. A massive mechanical hulk that easily dwarfed the whole lot of them. Even with its patterning being that of a ladybug, its helmet-like face made it look anything but friendly, a mere three irregular slits acting as the only semblance of facial features.

This guy… his Stand looks huge… it must be strong, which would explain why he hasn’t attacked us yet… a powerful Stand is very often limited by its short range. But his ability… what could it be? Johan thought to himself, staring intently at his opponent.

“...Well? You two fancy yourselves heroes, right…? Are you just going to stand there?” The man continued to scowl back at the two of them, a twisted gleam in his eye. “You’re both Stand users, I can tell… I was just about to rob this place and leave, but I think it would be more fun if I stayed here, don’t you think?”

Johan didn’t bother responding to him, and kept his voice low, making sure only Damon could hear him. “Something’s up. It’s like he-”

“It’s really rude to just keep whispering like that when someone’s trying to talk to you, you know. That’s alright, though. I won’t hold it against you or anything, because I’m feeling really nice today. In fact, I’m feeling so nice that I’ll make this easy for you.”

The man pointed at a nearby civilian, who was cowering in fear under the counter. The man’s Stand floated towards him and tapped him with its foot, which caused him to nearly jump out of his skin.

“You see, that’s what my ability needs me to do. I have to touch someone for them to be affected. I won’t tell you what happens after that, because that would make it too easy and it’d be very boring, so I’ll let you figure it out on your own. Oh, and while I'm explaining things, I think it should be worth mentioning that my name is Donegan, since it's polite to introduce yourself.”

Johan hesitated as he looked between the enemy Stand user, Damon, and the innocent civilian. Almost subconsciously, he slowly manifested his Stand. Water poured from his fingertips like a faucet and slowly coalesced into a slim humanoid form that floated behind him.

“Pressure…”

Johan took a cautious step towards Donegan, tensing his muscles and waiting to feel something. Nothing.

“Coming to approach me already? You’re very brave to do so, because you haven’t yet deciphered my abilities yet. It’s not a risk I would take, but it’s admirable. I should warn you, though, that-“

“God, just SHUT UP.” Johan yelled, exasperated.

Pressure reared back with its entire body and clenched its fist as it swung its entire body forward, putting all of its weight into the punch.

Donegan simply chuckled to himself, and returned Johan’s attack with a blow from his own Stand, intercepting it mid-swing. With their fists firmly pressed against the other’s, the two pushed against each other, fighting for dominance. Johan held his breath and gritted his teeth, unwilling to back down.

This hurts like hell… my knuckles feel like they’re on fire… but it’d hurt way more if I just let this guy win. Johan thought.

“Sloppy. Predictable.” Donegan murmured.

The contest came to an end as the larger Stand shifted its fist, slipping by Pressure’s defense. It slammed into Pressure’s chest, sending the Stand reeling backwards as Johan coughed up blood behind it. With that, Pressure retreated, visibly leaking a bit of water from its torso.

“I don’t think we’re getting around him that easily. You hold him off. I’ll go… ugh, call the cops. Try not to get anyone killed, especially yourself.” Damon points to the victim of Donegan's Stand ability and the group of about 3 other people that surrounded him. Presumably, his family.

“You… get as far away from this place as you can.”

“I… but… ok…”

He stood up and kept a wary eye laser focused on the enemy Stand user, though despite the clear danger in the air, he felt… protected. Those surrounding him soon followed, shaking and quivering as they were, reasonably, afraid.

The feeling didn’t last long, as as soon as the four moved to evacuate, the one furthest behind from the rest fell to the ground, grasping at his neck as his face turned blue as he gasped for air. Damon quickly knelt down beside him and tried his best to remember his CPR training.

Donegan smirked.

“I see you’ve found out why I had used my ability on that man. Maybe you haven’t figured it out just yet, but if you haven’t, that’s ok. Since you’ve seen it, I’ll explain it to you, because I think it’s more interesting if I do.”

The man affected by his ability rushed back to help Damon stabilize his companion, who almost immediately began breathing again.

“You see…

My ability is to ‘infect’ anyone touched by my Stand with a bacteria. This is a special kind of bacteria, though, because it wouldn’t be a very good ability if it was a regular bacteria. They don’t actually do anything to you if you’re infected, but they’re very contagious.

If you go close to someone infected…” He pointed at Damon.

“They’ll enter your lungs. Once they’re in your lungs, you can’t get them out, and you have to stay very close to whoever you got close to, otherwise… well, I think you can see what happens.”

“Wait…” Damon groaned. “Damn it!”

Their opponent’s smirk only grew in size.

“I would recommend sticking together with that man from now on.”

With a furious glare towards the disfigured man, Damon grabbed the infected man by the arm and motioned for the rest of his family to follow him outside, as they quickly did so.

He whipped out his cell phone and hastily dialed the police, disappearing behind the walls of the establishment and leaving Johan to fend for himself.

“I guess that just makes the two of us here. I don’t think that makes much of a difference, because he didn’t seem to be able to do much, but I think it’s nice to not worry about two people. I think if you were in my position, you’d agree.”

Johan just ignored Donegan for the moment and took a look around the restaurant. There were still tons of civilians scattered throughout the place. How many of them could he have possibly infected in the short time before the confrontation? It couldn’t have been many, but still, he had to be careful.

He slowly approached his enemy, watching his movements as he backpedaled in response. His path… was he keeping his distance from the crowd? Was he not immune to his own ability? Was he playing tricks on Johan, or had he simply forgotten exactly who he had infected?

Only one way to find out.

There.

Donegan had backed himself into an awkward position, stuck in the middle of three potential infected, with only a few ways to move out. Pressure twisted in place, and one of its arms detached from its body with a wet squelch.

“I already told you to shut the fuck up…” Johan mumbled with an almost blank expression in his eyes.

“Well, I chose to ignore that, since it was really rude of you and I thought it might have been an angry outburst.”

Pressure continued to split itself into pieces, detaching its other arm before it quickly returned to Johan. It had reduced itself to nothing more than two arms that floated free of their body.

The first of the two rocketed forward towards the enemy, though it was easily blocked by the man’s Stand. Johan barely gave the man the briefest of moments to process before the second arm leapt into position and forced another careful block from the enemy Stand.

“You’re a lot stronger than I thought, I’ll give you that much. I don’t think it’ll be quite enough, but I appreciate the challenge and the practice.” The disfigured man said as he caught a punch, and threw the fist away like a candy wrapper.

Johan merely growled and kept pressing forward, directing Pressure’s detached fists around to hound his enemy like buzzing insects. Donegan almost seemed to slowly grow worried as he flung jab after jab, hook after hook, uppercut after uppercut. It had hardly put a dent in him or his Stand, but this wasn’t something he could keep up forever. He opened his mouth for another snide remark, only to come up empty. Johan grinned to himself. He was starting to win.

He continued to inch backwards until inevitably, he backed straight into the vicinity of a few cowering civilians. They collectively whimpered in fear, but didn’t dare to move out of fear and confusion.

He has to be within range of the effects by now, unless he hasn’t infected any of those people. That’s not very likely, though… This is the only chance I’m getting to see if my theory is true.

“DAMA!” Johan yelled ferociously as he lined up another powerful punch, manifesting Pressure fully for a brief second to throw a furious haymaker at the enemy Stand. The force of the blow was enough to send Donegan stumbling backwards, where he tripped over one of the civilian’s outstretched legs, breaking his focus and causing his Stand to disappear.

“SHIT-“

He reached out an arm to catch his fall as he toppled over, and as he made contact with the tile, a loud ‘pop’ could be heard throughout the entire restaurant.

He laid there for a solid few seconds, groaning in pain and clutching his arm.

Seriously? Is that all it took to do him in? Whatever. It’d probably be best to finish him off before he gets back up…

Johan slowly approached the downed man, and slowly reformed Pressure’s body beside him. Its arms flew back onto the stumps on its torso, reattaching themselves with an almost seamless ease. Pressure hovered over their foe, and raised its leg to stomp him into submission. Its kick came down like a sledgehammer, heel aimed straight for Donegan's heart…

Only to be stopped in its tracks.

“What the-”

He… had caught it? With blinding speed, the seemingly incapacitated Donegan had reached out and caught Pressure’s leg mid-kick, mere centimeters before it caved in his ribcage like paper.

He held it tightly in his grip, causing Johan to clutch his leg in pain. It felt like it was being crushed beneath a hydraulic press. Johan looked at the man, bewildered, as he slowly began to rise up from the ground.

“Oh… that’s much better. I feel really great now.”

How the hell? Only Stands can touch other Stands, and this guy just caught Pressure’s attack like it was nothing! What is this?

“Hm… you’re wondering how I managed to block your attack. I can see it in your eyes. I’m very good at determining things like that, you know. I guess I should be honest with you, because that would only be fair.”

The man summoned his hulking Stand to his side once more, and pointed at the civilian he had tripped over. Order received, the Stand picked up the quivering bystander, who yelped and struggled to no avail.

“You see… I’ll admit that I left something out when I told you about my ability. I know it was dishonorable about me, but I didn’t think it’d come up at all, since I figured that I’d beat you quicker. These bacteria… when anyone else breathes them in, it’s their first time. The bacteria haven’t gotten used to their body yet, so they don’t know quite what to do.

But on the other hand, I’ve been breathing them in for my entire life. They’re practically a part of my body, you see. Consider it like a symbiosis. You probably learned what that was in school. As long as I stay near anybody who’s infected, my body is enhanced, like a superhero. You probably know what a superhero is from comic books. You see how knowledge from school and knowledge from hobbies can intersect? It’s really cool, I think.”

As Donegan approached Johan, his Stand followed, carrying the unfortunate victim closely behind him.

Looks like he still needs to stay close to whoever’s infected to actually receive the benefits. If I can just get him away from that guy, he’ll go back to normal… I think I’d prefer having to deal with just his Stand. Either way… this definitely isn’t gonna be easy.

Notes:

STAND USER: Donegan Earle
STAND NAME: Down With The Sickness
STAND STATS:
POWER: A
SPEED: D
RANGE: D
STAYING POWER: A
PRECISION: E

Chapter 3: Pressure Part 2

This isn’t good… he can touch Stands, he’s fast, and he’s strong enough to block a kick from Pressure…  I’m willing to bet he’s also able to take a good few hits. I couldn’t hope to beat this guy without eating shit before this… now I don’t think I can fight him at all.

 

As Johan sweated bullets over Donegan’s newfound power, sirens began to blare in the distance. Sounded like Damon had managed to convince the police that this was urgent. He just needed to hold out for a little while longer, then the police would be able to take care of it, or at least help him out.

 

“You’re nervous. I can feel it. I guess it would be understandable to be nervous in front of someone so powerful, but since you almost defeated me already, I think it’s a bit more strange for you to be nervous, unless you weren’t confident in your abilities…?”

 

Donegan took a cautious step forward. He had the advantage in a straight brawl, but he had an easily exploited weak spot floating right behind him that couldn’t be ignored.

 

Johan tensed and readied Pressure, and matched Donegan’s approach with a step back. He could keep his distance using his Stand, an advantage that Donegan no longer had, but he couldn’t work out the man’s exact strength, and whether or not he could engage safely. That bruise on his chest didn’t exactly help his concentration, either.

 

An ice pack would be great right now… it can’t be too hard to get one… there. Behind the counter. Napkins and an ice machine.

 

“Excuse me…”

 

Johan carefully backpedaled away from Donegan, who kept pace, hovering just outside of Pressure’s most effective range. He stepped over a few of the civilians, nearly tripping over one or two on his way behind the counter, and snagged a couple of napkins along the way.

 

Donegan stopped in place, seemingly bewildered. “…What are you doing? I don’t think a napkin will help you very much, unless there’s something I don’t know about.”

 

“I’m just getting some ice…”

 

“You…” His brow furrowed. “Alright then, I suppose that makes sense.” 

 

He seemed to… wait patiently as Johan hastily dumped ice cubes into a napkin and loosely wrapped it up. He held it tightly against his chest, wary of spilling any of his precious ice onto the floor.

 

“...You’re done? Good. I can admire the boldness you have to just think about a simple ice pack during a situation like this.”

 

Johan rolled his eyes at Donegan’s strange behavior and readied Pressure once more.

 

“Are you ready to get back to it?”

 

“Yeah. Sure. Whatever.”

 

Donegan nodded and almost immediately threw out another jab aimed for Pressure’s center mass. Its response came out almost as fast, raising its leg and launching into a side kick, where it met Donegan’s strike midway through, knocking it off course and into the counter.

 

Seizing the opportunity, Pressure thrust its leg at Donegan’s chest like a spear. With a meaty whumph, it landed, though before he could form another thought, Johan felt a fierce tug at his leg, sending him toppling over. Pressure suffered the same fate as the shock broke his focus, letting Donegan close in on Johan’s position.

 

In his desperate hustle to scramble back onto his feet, Johan caught glimpses of only two things; Donegan winding back, and the blur of motion of him bringing his fist down onto his chest like a sledgehammer. 

 

…

 

Nothing.

 

The two men sat motionless for the briefest of moments as Donegan’s eyes widened and a smirk crept across Johan’s face. Donegan’s fist had merely sunk harmlessly into his chest. There was nothing there to impact in the first place. By summoning Pressure, he had completely dried out his body, leaving nothing but layers of skin, impossible to deal meaningful damage to with a mere punch. 

 

“Y-you… shit!”

 

Donegan whipped around, only to come face to face with a Pressure floating high above him, imbued with a newfound vigor. His nose pressed against its chest, and with a whimper, he craned his neck upwards, met with the sight of its cold, emotionless face.

 

What felt like the weight of an entire ocean crashed over him as Pressure enveloped him in a grapple. It twisted and coiled around him like a liquid snake , and he thrashed and grabbed at it in turn, getting an occasional hold on its form only for it to slip away from his grasp.

 

The distant sound of sirens continued to draw ever closer until the blinding flash of blue and red made itself known, and both Donegan and Johan knew their time was almost up.

 

Just a minute or so more!

 

Donegan thrashed and struggled with increasing ferocity, desperately attempting to loosen Pressure’s grip. He fell to the ground and against the counter to stabilize himself, and as the seconds passed, he became closer and closer to succeeding.

 

With his brief dose of adrenaline over now that Donegan was somewhat contained, Johan took a moment to breathe, and realized- Donegan’s struggle against Pressure all transferred to him, and it HURT.

 

There’s not much more I can do… wait a minute… his Stand is still active, isn’t it?

 

Johan nervously looked up from the struggle on the floor, and like Donegan with Pressure, was met with the sight of the man’s hulking Stand, Down With The Sickness. The Stand merely frowned back, still holding onto the long-resigned captive.

 

Johan only had a split second to observe the malicious smirk on its face.

 

Like a cannonball, the Stand barreled towards him, and the world went white.

 

The feeling of a white hot sledgehammer beating his body like a ragdoll was the first sign that he was still alive, and the blur of his returning vision the second.

 

Donegan smugly stood over him with his arms crossed and his distorted face twisted into a wide grin. Even half concussed, he could still tell the man was very, very pleased with himself.

 

“I’ll admit, that trick was pretty good. I didn’t know how I was going to beat you, but I guess it was actually pretty easy. I realized your Stand has a limited range, so I knocked you out of its range. And since the water was back in your body, well… I guess it wouldn’t do much good to explain what happened to you. This has been really fun so far, but you’re getting kind of annoying, so… I think I’l-”

 

BZZZZZZZZZZZT.

 

The door burst open before he could finish his sentence, and like a wayward thunderbolt, the darts of a taser connected to his back, sending tens of thousands of volts through his entire body. His body, in turn, was almost immediately sent to the ground, twitching and convulsing.

 

Johan’s expression of concern turned to surprise, and when he looked up, a new figure had taken Donegan’s place. They knelt down and extended a hand to him, helping him to his feet.

 

As his vision refocused again, Johan got a clear view of this new mystery person… a police officer, as expected. She gave him a strained smile and looked out towards the rest of the restaurant.

 

“Are you doing alright, kid?”

 

“U-uh, yeah…” Johan stammered.

 

“Good to hear. This isn’t something I’m really supposed to do, but, uh… thanks for keeping that guy busy for us. Makes my job easier, that’s for sure… I don’t know if I could’ve gotten a clean shot at him otherwise, what with his…” She trailed off, looking behind her to see who was in earshot.

 

“You’re a-“

 

“Yes.” She cut him off, hand visibly twitching as if to move it over his mouth. “Your friend on the phone narrated most of it, and you handled yourself well. But I’m pretty much obligated to tell you that that was really, really, really, really stupid and you should not ever do that again. Doesn’t matter how strong you think you are, there’s always someone better. You’re lucky you didn’t run into anyone tougher. Trust me on that one… I would know.”

 

“Er, sorry. And… thank you, officer.”

 

“Don’t mention it. It’s my job, after all. Now get along back to your friend over there and head home. I don’t think you want to be interviewed for being a witness as much as he has.” She laughed dryly, and motioned for Johan to get going.

 

He gladly took the opportunity, and scurried outside, where Damon was still in the process of being interviewed by one of the policemen.

 

“No, he didn’t have any weapons I know of, and no, I didn’t engage with him at all, that was- oh, hey, Johan. Can you tell this guy that whatever his name was wasn’t armed? He won’t believe me.”

A voice called out from inside the store, the woman who Johan had made acquaintance with earlier. “Leave ‘em alone, Orville, I think these kiddos have had enough for one day.” 

 

The two breathed a sigh of relief, and Johan flashed a thumbs up back to her, much to the annoyance of the one doing the interview.

 

As the two of them made their way back home, Johan yelped, and whipped out his phone, having almost forgotten about the timer he had set.

 

Five minutes. They could make it if they ran.

 

And run they did, sprinting back to Johan’s house as fast as their legs could carry them.

 

“ Huff… puff… Awful lot of effort just to meet one stupid nerd over in Fresno.” Damon gasped.

 

“Do you even know how- gasp- much she’s done for the world? Plus, if we’re late, it’ll probably figure out the trick.” Johan looked almost annoyed.

 

“Not really.”

 

“You didn’t even read the- well, she’s important, and that’s all you need to know… and you’re right, she IS pretty hot.” Johan muttered the last bit, though if the smile on Damon’s face was any indication, he had definitely heard.

 

Before long, his front door was within sight. Exhausted but motivated, they bolted up the steps and upwards to Johan’s room, where the computer sat patiently, still scrolling through the terms and conditions.

 

“Jesus. They expect people to read all of that crap?” Damon looked appalled as he took a seat on the edge of Johan’s bed.

 

“That’s not even the worst part. There are actually some people that do. ” Johan collapsed into his desk chair, spinning around and waiting for it to finish.

 

Three… two… one…

 

The alarm went off, and Johan rolled his chair over to the computer, clicking ‘agree’ as soon as the button was available.

 

“Thank you for confirming your submission to the raffle. Please check your associated email address regularly for any updates regarding the raffle.”

 

“Ugh… finally.” Johan put a hand to his face and sighed.

 

“Still would’ve rather fought that guy than read all that?”

 

“Pft. Yeah…”

 

Lelijk approached with a meow, and hopped up onto Johan’s lap as he stared at the computer screen and considered. 

 

“…Well, what now?” Johan mused.

 

“You tell me. I’m not the one who’s now gotta check their email every day for when they announce the winner.” Damon grinned.

 

“Ugh… you’re just the worst, you know that? It’s worth a little hassle.”

 

“Yeah. You got any idea how you’re gonna pass the time? Goes slower when you’re waiting for something.”

 

“Not McDonald’s, that’s for sure.”

 

“Aw, really? They might give us some coupons for saving the place.”

 

“…I’ll think of something. We still have that boss to beat in Sorcery Online, don’t we? Limited time only, and that staff would be amazing for your warlock…”

 

“Damn, you’re right… when’s it end.”

 

“Tomorrow, noon.”

 

“Son of a- we gotta get to it. This is gonna be another all-nighter, isn’t it?”

 

“Definitely. See you in the Howling Dungeon, meat shield!” Johan cackled as Damon bolted out back to his own home. As he heard the door slam, he rolled over back to his computer, and booted up the game with a sigh.

 

It was going to be a long wait.

|TO BE CONTINUED>

Chapter 4: The Heist Part 1

“Fuuuuuuuck…”

 

Johan put his head in his hands as he stared at his screen, blurry eyed and sleep deprived. A flurry of notifications scrolled across the bottom left of his screen, barely visible through the fuzz of exhaustion. The humid night weighed heavily on him, almost begging him to go to sleep.

 

“Are we… maxed now?” Damon groaned from his end of the call.

 

“I… I don’t know.”

 

Johan could hear a thud over the mic. It seemed like he wasn’t the only one at his limit.

 

“Johan… I think we should just call it here… I’m tired as fuck. It’s like… three in the morning. We can’t keep doing this.”

 

“Yeah… but hey… we’re safe from FOMO for now. Shouldn’t be another event for another few weeks.”

 

“Thank fuck… hey, speaking of, you ever get the email for the results?”

 

“Nope… why are you so interested? I dunno if you can even get in on this.”

 

“I’m coming along either way, dude, even if I have to stay behind when you actually go to meet her.”

 

“It’s that much of a tragedy not having me around?”

 

“Sssssshut up.”

 

Johan chuckled to himself. “You’ll probably have me around for a few more days. I don’t think sorting through however many people applied is a quick process. We’ve got plenty of time to kill.”

 

“Yeah, but we CANNOT keep doing this. We gotta find something else.”

 

“Can say that again…”

 

“We could stop by the theater, think that new movie is showing. You know, about the chips in people’s skull or whatever. I’ll buy tickets for both of us.”

 

“You’re not usually nice enough to go do that. I don’t even think I would do that. Is there some secret motive you’ve got going on here?”

 

“Whaaaat, what would make you think that? I, uh… wow, it’s three in the morning, I should be in bed, bye!”

Johan chuckled slightly to himself, and rolled away from his desk in his chair, taking a desparate look at the clock in the hopes that maybe he was just hallucinating the time. He wasn’t. It was actually a quarter past three now. Oh well. It wasn’t like he had work in the morning anyway. Even still, going to bed was definitely the right move.

 

With a tired yawn that almost cramped his jaw, Johan meandered over to his bed and flopped in, not bothering to wrap himself in the comforter. He had already prepared for bed, about… three hours ago. That was enough, right?

 

The harsh sound of his alarm clock was the only indication he got that he had ever actually fallen asleep. He rolled out of bed with all the enthusiasm of a sloth, and shambled his way over to his computer. Damon was online. He normally had a better sleep schedule than this, but Johan supposed the situation was extraordinary. Tapping through his phone…

 

Ring ring. Ring ring. Ring ring. R-

 

“Johan?”

 

“What, too early?”

 

“Nah, just figured you’d sleep through your alarm. You got a tendency to do that, man.”

 

“Only for so long. Lelijk doesn’t like to wait to be fed. We going to the movies today?”

 

“Yeah, yeah… lemme get something to eat.”

 

As the distinct sound of movement came in from the other end of the line, a small little silhouette wandered into Johan’s peripheral. Speak of the devil… He got up and pushed the food around in Lelijk’s bowl, moving it towards the center so he would actually eat it, phone held closely to his ear via his shoulder. As he brought out a bag of treats and began to give his personal mouser his morning delights, all movement paused on the other end.

 

“...Say, I’m outta milk.”

 

“Yeah? So?” Johan tossed a treat out onto the ground, watching as it was gobbled up in mere seconds.

 

“What do you say we go and get a… five finger discount on some more?” 

 

Johan froze in place.

 

“You’re not serious, right? Haven’t we had enough petty crime for a month? I mean, we just fought a guy robbing a McDonald’s a couple days ago. You really wanna sink down to his level?”

 

“Oh, c’mon, it’ll be from fuckin’... Walmart or something. I thought you hated ‘big corpos’ for always ‘trying to steal your information.’ Why not stick it to ‘em? Besides, I’m gettin’ rusty with The Now Now. Come on. It’ll be fun and easy. Pluuuuus… we can get some other stuff to sneak into the theater. It’s like saving money squared.”

 

“I can’t believe I’m letting you talk me into this.”

 

“So that’s a yes?” Johan was able to practically hear Damon’s signature wily grin through the phone.

 

“Yeah, yeah… we’re so gonna get in trouble, dude.”

 

“Didn’t I say not to worry so much? Let’s get going before too much of the security is on shift.”

 

With a groan, Johan put away the bag of treats, much to the dismay of Lelijk, gave the hungry cat a few kisses for the road, and made his way out to Damon’s house.

 

A short walk later…

 

The inside of the store was almost impressive, with a ceiling several stories high and a virtual labyrinth of shelves, tightly packed together and stuffed to the brim with products. It was borderline claustrophobic, yet still, neatly organized. It being this early on a weekday lent it to being emptier than usual, and the few other customers that were there were muffled, separated by layers upon layers of stock.

 

It was perfect.

 

“How exactly do you plan to get your hands on this stuff, exactly?” Johan looked to the ceiling, tracking the location of each and every camera keeping watch over them. 

 

Damon popped a gumball into his mouth and contemplated, matching Johan’s gaze and taking his own notes on the layout. He took the now chewed gum out of his mouth and held out his other hand, manifesting a can of spray paint within his grasp. After a hearty shake of the can, he set it down on the ground, where it quickly unfolded into the shape of a small rodent- a mechanical jerboa.

 

“The Now Now…”

 

He stuck the wad of gum onto the end of its tail, and set it loose with a shove. With a click, it hopped forward, and ascended up the nearby wall effortlessly. Damon put a hand to his temple as The Now Now approached the ceiling, turning upside down and walking along it with careful steps.

 

It advanced towards the camera slowly, steady on its feet, and as it reached its destination, it reached out with its gummed up tail and stuck it onto the lens of the camera, blasting it with a spray of paint from its mouth, which flattened it against the lens like a mural on a wall. The rodent then dropped from the ceiling, turning into a paint can on the way down before being expertly caught by Damon.

 

“Should be good enough to get us into the back. Let’s go.”

 

The two boys nonchalantly made their way to the double doors that led to the back of the store, where all their future loot was held. Suddenly, Damon held out a hand to stop Johan in his tracks, as the silhouette of an employee appeared through the glass pane of the door.

 

The figure stopped in place, cocking their head like they were peering through the window, before giving a shrug and moving on.

 

“That guy reminds me of a good point. If anyone asks why we’re back here, we’re just gonna grab a couple empty boxes of milk and be on our way.”

 

“Yeah, yeah. Like they’re gonna believe that one bit.”

 

“They don’t get paid enough to care if we’re lying. Come on. Through here.”

 

Damon put his hand on the door and stared back at Johan expectantly. His brow furrowed after a quiet few moments.

 

“W- come on, man, what are you waiting for?”

 

“You’re the one standing at the door, you obviously want to go first.”

 

“I already-“

 

Damon paused, and looked back at his hand in shock and confusion.  The door had indeed not budged, and he was still standing where he was just a moment ago.

 

“Whatever.”

 

Damon went to go push his way through the door again, only to fall flat on his face, landing on the other side of the doorway. The door was wide open, and swung back into position, stopped in its tracks by impacting Damon's head. Johan snickered, and held the door open again for Damon.

 

“Hehe… hey… weren’t you just complaining about not being able to get it open?”

 

“Y… yeah. But I didn’t open it yet! It was stuck or something. Fuckin’ wonder anyone can do their job if this thing acts up like this all the time.”

 

“Well, I guess it doesn’t matter now. Come on.”

 

The back of the store was empty and grey, and the air was practically suffocating. Before them laid a large grate that reeked of spoiled milk, to their right, a hallway lined with cans of soda that led to the main storeroom. And to their left, a hallway with sporadically placed heavy metal doors, presumably the walk in coolers. 

 

“Alright, what first. Milk or snacks.” Damon looked between the two halls, manifesting his Stand in his hand and giving it a light shake.

 

“Does it matter?” Johan rustled through a few cardboard boxes, looking for anything worth taking.

 

“Not really, I guess. Let’s see if anyone’s in here.”

 

Giving his Stand another shake, he placed his hand on the wall, aimed at his center of mass, and sprayed, flattening himself against the wall and slipping in between the cracks of the door.

 

It was the right place alright, with boxes upon boxes of milk stacked high upon rickety blue pallets, and shiny metal shelves that were stuffed full of miscellaneous dairy products. The room looked almost claustrophobic, the only light coming from a dim hanging lightbulb that barely illuminated the dreary concrete.

 

There was also someone in there. 

 

Just one person, but that was all that was needed for there to be a risk. They lazily moved containers full of old, expired milk from one end of the room to the other, luckily not paying much attention, and Damon slowly crept along the wall, crouched behind the stacks upon stacks of milk boxes.

 

Careful… careful… the shelf wouldn’t provide much cover if they turned around.

 

THUD.

 

As a precarious stack of boxes came crashing down onto the ground, Damon nearly yelped in surprise and fear. He reached out of the wall and made contact with the shelf in front of him, flattening against it like he had with the wall. 

 

The flabbergasted employee whipped around at the sudden noise, eyes wide with surprise and a hint of fear. He squinted, having caught just a sliver of movement behind the boxes.

 

“What the hell? It’s like 7 am… the only other guy here works the snack isle…”

Cautiously, the man pushed his way out of the cooler, into the hallway where Johan was standing. Shit- he had to act fast. Like breathing out a cloud of smoke, Pressure was summoned, wringing out all of the liquid from Johan’s body. Using Pressure to pick himself up like a wet rag, he squeezed into the drain, flattening himself against the edge so as to not be seen.

 

The man only caught a glimpse of movement, but it was still enough to rustle him quite a bit. He reached into his apron and pulled out a cracked-looking phone, dialing in a number and looking nervously around.

 

“Hey… boss?”

 

“Herschmann? You got the keys?”

 

“I… no, uhm… did you… hire anyone to work in the morning?”

 

“Uh… nnnnnno, doesn’t look like it. Why?”

 

“Well, it looks like there are people moving around back here, there’s… a bunch of stuff falling over, and these boxes I stacked earlier have all been knocked over.”

 

“Huh… I guess that is kinda weird.”

 

“Yeah… do you want me to do anything?”

 

“Sure, just uh… check it out, I guess… I think you got someone back there.”

 

| TO BE CONTINUED >

Chapter 5: The Heist Part 2

Fuck. They’re onto us.

 

Pressure poked its head out of the drain, watching Johnson’s moves carefully to see if he would notice its presence at all. Didn’t look like it. Projecting his voice through his Stand, Johan shouted out to Damon.

 

“Yo! Dude! They know we’re here!”

 

Damon responded in kind, forever grateful for the fact that Stands allowed for this.

 

“Yeah, I know, I know! Let’s just get the shit and get outta here!”

 

“Not before that guy’s outta here…”

 

It felt like an eternity, but after a quiet few minutes of pacing and clutching at his head, the employee left, muttering to himself. Johan and Damon both emerged from their hiding places, giving each other a disappointed look.

 

“...That drain’s probably disgusting, dude.”

 

“I wouldn’t have to- you were the one who knocked over all the boxes in there!”

 

“I didn’t do shit! Fell over on their own! Guy must be shit at stacking or something!”

 

“I… Ok. Sure, whatever.”

 

“Hey, wait. Think about it a bit. You remember the door, right?” 

 

“The one you were shit at opening?”

 

“I know how to open a door, dumbass. But I don’t remember ever even pushing against it. It did that on its own.”

 

“Yeah? Maybe there’s just something wrong with your head.”

 

“Just THINK! Weird shit happening on its own? Against us specifically? This is a Stand user, and they’re messing with us!”

 

“Well who the hell could it be? It’s not that guy, he would’ve heard or seen us, and no way a customer would give a shit about what we’re doing.”

 

“You heard what the guy’s boss said over the phone, right? There’s someone else in the store. Sully or whatever his name is. We find him, take him out, and we’re basically free to go.”

 

“How the hell are we supposed to fight against a Stand we don’t know the ability of? It’s clearly not close-range. Guy’s not even in earshot, or else that guy would’ve just yelled out.”

 

“I- alright, it’s not great, but I’m pretty sure it’s something that like… messes with our memory or perception or whatever. Just be careful.”

 

“Alright, well, then… What do we do against something we can’t see or think about? Even if we know about it, it might not even stand out.”

 

“You got a better idea?”

 

“...No.”

 

“Then let’s go find him.”

 

“He’s definitely already found us.”

 

“Yeah, I know, and that makes this ten times harder. But just… go with it, man.”

 

“Whatever.”

 

Johan gazes down the hallway, squinting and looking for any signs of movement. Nothing. 

 

“Hey… weren’t there more doors than that? There were… three, right? And now there’s only two.”

 

“Y… yeah, that’s… no. There’s only one.”

 

“But…” Johan rubbed his eyes, cleaned his glasses, and took another look. There was definitely only one door. Right. The ability to… do something and not be seen. Was it the ability to control doors?

 

“He’s probably just fuckin’ with us. Come on. Let’s move.”

 

Johan spared another befuddled glance at the hallway behind him before joining Damon in trudging through the one on the other side, looking and listening for any signs of trouble, or more importantly, the enemy Stand user.

 

“You know, we should probably hurry this up before anyone else gets here.”

 

“Ah, we’ll be fine, they only just opened. Pretty much the only people in at this time are the cashiers so they can actually sell stuff. Look.”

 

Damon pointed at a row of aprons and smocks hung up beside a door. They were all clearly undisturbed, and not a single spot was left empty.

 

“I guess you’re right… the drain was pretty empty.”

 

“Goes for the next room too, around the corner. See?”

 

He pointed at the next row, still undisturbed, and still completely full.

 

“And the next, and the next, and the…” Damon paused, and took a look at the nametags. “Frank, Mike, Marilyn, Jonathan…”

 

“...What are you doing?”

 

“Shut up. Let’s just go to the next one.”

 

Damon took Johan’s hand and practically dragged him around the bend and towards the next set of uniforms, with Johan protesting the entire way.

 

“Look at the nametags.”

 

With each glance at the names scrawled onto the tags with varying proficiencies in handwriting, his eyes widened. “Frank, Mike, Marilyn, Jonathan…”

 

“Damn it!”

 

The penny finally dropped for Johan. “Oh, you’ve…” He groaned, putting his hand to his temple.

 

“I knew it felt like a long ass walk! We’ve been going back to the start of this damn hallway each time we get to that door! See?” He grabbed Johan and turned him around, facing him towards the direction they had come from. 

 

They hadn’t made a lick of progress, the drain in which Johan had hid mere feet away. The entire area itself seemed to be smug about the situation, and Johan huffed in frustration.

 

“So it’s a power about doors. The entrance, the other hallway… we passed the door, and now we’re all the way back here.”

 

“That… damn it, that makes sense. We just gotta get around the door.”

 

Damon grabbed Johan’s hand and sprinted down the hall, manifesting his Stand in his other hand and giving it a good shake. In one clean motion, he slammed himself and Johan into the wall and sprayed them both to stick to it. In turn, Johan manifested Pressure, using it to pull himself and Damon over the area of the wall where the door was.

A grin on his face, Damon peeled himself off of the wall and onto the floor, looking backwards to proudly show to Johan they had made it past the door…

 

They were back at the drain.

 

“FUCK!” Damon clutched his head in his hands, growling as the frustration and exasperation mounted in his mind. “When I find this guy, I’m gonna kill him!”

 

“Dude, calm down. It’s just gotta be something else.”

 

“Hell else could it be?”

 

“It only set off when we touched the floor, right?”

 

“Yeah, I guess…”

 

“Ok, well, what’s the difference between the floor and the wall?”

 

“Uh… wall’s… to our sides?”

 

“No, stupid, look at what it’s made of.”

 

Johan gestured to the hallway in front of them, between the solid concrete wall and the equally drearily colored tiled floor.

 

“I… what?”

“It’s the tiles.”

 

“What about the tiles?”

 

“They’re… square.”

 

“Yeah? So?”

 

“This is the ability we’re dealing with. Power over squares and rectangles. The door, remember? A rectangle. The doors down the hall? Rectangles. It’s what he has power over, and with it, power over us. It’s the path we take.”

 

“…The whole floor is made of damn squares…” 

 

“Yeah. That’s what’s causing us to go back every time we reach the end. So…”

 

Johan manifested Pressure and brought down one of its legs onto the tiles in front of him, cracking several of them.

 

“We walk across the cracked tiles. They’re not squares anymore. That means… that he doesn’t have power over them. And if he doesn’t have power over them, he doesn’t have power over the path we take… so he has no power over us.”

 

“Alright, yeah, makes sense… keep breakin’ em.”

The two of them walked forward casually down the hallway, as Johan used Pressure to crack the tiles of the floor. The two of them winced as they reached the point past the door, looking behind them as they passed. 

 

“Holy shit, it actually worked…” Damon’s jaw nearly dropped.

 

“Yeah, well, we’ve still gotta search the storeroom and deal with the Stand user.”

 

The pair, confident in their escape, made their way to the main storeroom, where stacks of drinks and candy were laid, luckily on a non-tiled floor. Gleefully, Damon reached out to the nearest stack of boxes, before having his hand smacked away by Johan’s Pressure.

 

“Ow! Dude, what the-” He looked back at Johan in indignation, rubbing his hand. “Oh. Right.”

 

Damon looked back at the box, which had split open and unfolded perfectly. His hand was covered in paper cuts from the cardboard, causing him to recoil and nurse his hand.

 

“...We got back here and we can’t even do anything.” Johan groaned.

 

“Do you think he’s just messing with us?”

 

“Urgh… yeah, probably.” Johan sent Pressure upwards as an eye in the sky, looking over the entire storeroom for any signs of movement, anything that told them the enemy Stand user was there. Nothing.

 

“What do we even do?”

 

“...I think we just have to find this guy and take him out.”

 

“Well… he’s not here, is he? You see anything with Pressure?”

 

“Nah…” Johan grumbled, recalling his Stand back down to him.

 

“Where could this bastard be hiding?”

 

“We can’t go out into the main store.”

 

“Yeah… no way someone has that long range of a Stand.” Damon mused as he found himself a small piece of cloth to wrap his hand with. Blood almost completely stained the cloth within seconds. “You weren’t lyin’, cardboard cuts ain’t a joke…” He muttered.

 

“So it’s back here?”

 

“This is pretty much the end of the line. If he were anywhere back here, we’d know.”

 

“So it’s… hey. Wait. You remember the doors, right?”

 

“Mhm.” Damon nodded.

 

“Those disappeared… but why? We clearly already got what we wanted with the milk. It was obvious we’d go in the other direction. So why would he even bother making those disappear?”

 

“Well, it’s… huh.”

 

“...I think I know where he is.”

 

“God, don’t tell me he’s- fucckkk.”

 

“He’s definitely in one of those coolers. Why else would he block them off?”

 

“How- how are we even gonna get in there?”

 

“You ever worked as a stocker? The walk-in coolers, they need water to keep running. Water needs pipes. Drains also need pipes. It’s all… connected.”

 

“You ain’t sayin’...”

 

“We can get to him through the drain, yeah.”

 

“Ugh… fine.” Damon sighed.

 

The mischievous pair sprinted back down the hallway to where the drain was, preparing their Stands in advance. Johan almost completely drained himself of water to form Pressure while Damon vigorously shook the paint can in his hand, both of them careful not to step on an uncracked tile.

 

“Pick somewhere.”

 

“Back.”

“Got it.”

 

Damon reached out and laid a hand on Johan’s back before spraying himself with the can. He was noticeably shrank, but still, fit firmly on his back as a mural as Johan folded his loose, empty skin in on itself. As they reached the drain, Johan completely crumpled and dove in. 

 

“Pipe. There. Same direction as the coolers.” Damon barked.

 

Johan slid around in the cold, wet interior, and wormed his way into the nearby pipe, with Damon along for the ride. The inside of the pipes was even more dark and cramped, but with the pipes being almost entirely free of squares, the ride was quick and smooth. A few turns here, another turn there, and the two of them found themselves in the interior of a strange, loud machine, where the cold air bit and snapped at their skin. The clear tube they were in constantly drenched them in water that was colder still, but through it, they could see the outside- and their target.

 

“We’re here.”

 

A small fraction of Pressure manifested beside Johan, a single finger. It tapped against their see-through container, once, then twice, smashing itself against the tube until it finally broke under the force. Johan wiggled his dehydrated form out of the tube like a leaking liquid, slipping his way through the tiny slits in the machine, and landed on the floor.

 

He unfolded, Damon peeling himself off of his back alongside him, and faced their attacker. Before them stood a rather average looking teenager, wearing the standard apron and uniform alongside thick glasses and a surprised and terrified expression.

 

“You-”

 

Before he could utter another word, Damon reared back his fist and clocked him square in the face with a distinct crunch. The teen staggered backwards, clutching his nose, and fell back onto his rear, scooting away from Damon to rest against one of the identical metal shelves and holding up a hand in protest. On his nametag was a hastily scrawled ‘Tony.’

 

“Whoah, whoah, dude! Jesus! I was just messing with you!”

 

Damon gave him a nasty look, but backed off, met with an equally stern stare from Johan, who spoke up.  “Fuckin’ hell, Damon… sorry about that. You work here?”

 

“Y-yeah… like a year and a half.”

 

“Well… I guess that much was obvious. I’m surprised you cared enough to try and stop us.”

 

“I mean, thirteen dollars an hour right off the bat…”

 

“...Woah, yeah, that’s pretty good for retail.” Damon nodded.

 

“I… whatever man. Take what you want and go. I think you broke my nose… hey, wait… you broke my nose. I was only doing that because otherwise they’d think it’s me stealing. I… I can tell them someone came back here and did it… I can even get off from work. Damn. You did me a favor.”

 

“No… problem?” Johan shrugged.

 

“Yeah, but first we need to get out.” Damon muttered. “How’d you even-”

 

“Oh. That’s my Stand…” “I call it Tubthumping. It, uhm… rotates rectangles really fast. So fast that nobody ever… realizes it. Until after it’s happened. I, uh… they don’t really have to rotate in a traditional sense. I did it so that…” The door to the cooler suddenly springs back into view, tightly shut as if nothing had ever happened to it. “Well, I rotated it… out.”

 

“Out where?”

 

“Just… out. It’s gone until I put it back.”

 

“Weird… Well, uh… thanks.”

 

“Uh-huh.”

 

With peace made, the duo exited the cooler to greet the lifeless grey hallway again. And with no resistance, the two snagged what they were after, milk and a few giant bags of skittles, Damon stuffing them into the inside of his jacket to conceal them. 

 

As they walked out of the store, they waved goodbye to their former enemy, who was holding a bloody paper towel up to his nose and talking to the front desk, sparing the time to wave back. 

 

“Hey, not bad.” Damon chuckled. “Let’s just get back home so we have time to unwind before we go to the theat-”

 

Johan held out his hand in front of Damon, stopping him dead in his tracks, and his gaze fell onto what laid in front of the two of them. A police car parked right in front of the entrance, and its driver sitting on the hood. A policewoman, sipping tea from a bright pink cup, and her Stand, a hulking pink machine-like humanoid floating beside her. She looked up at Johan and Damon, and grinned.

 

“Hey, boys. Nice to see you again.”

STAND USER: Tony Herschmann

STAND NAME: Tubthumping

STAND STATS:

POWER: E

SPEED: A

RANGE: A

STAYING POWER: D

PRECISION: A

Chapter 6: Liquid Cool Part 1

Johan and Damon nervously stared down the officer sitting in front of them, who eyed them back knowingly, still sipping from her cup of tea. Her Stand dissipated as she set down her cup and leaned forward, resting her arm on her knee and grinning.

“Didn’t expect to see you two again so soon… and on the wrong side of the call at that.”

“What?” Damon laughed nervously. “What are you talking about?”

“Well, let’s see what we’ve got here… a photo, albeit taken from afar, and a description… one african-american male of slightly below average height with dark hair covering his eyes, a gold necklace, a dark shirt, and skinny jeans… check. And a slender-looking man in glasses with a, quote, ‘bad haircut’ wearing a white t-shirt with colored sleeves… check. Sounds like what I’m looking at right now.”

Johan and Damon looked at each other, frowning.

“Might I ask… WHY the two upstanding young men who helped detain an armed gunman have been sinking so low as to be stealing from a Walmart with no good reason?”

“Well, we-” Damon stammered.

“...We don’t have a good reason.”

The policewoman smiled. Almost as if on cue, the door to the store swung open behind them, revealing Tony, still covering his nose with a bloody napkin. His mouth hung open dumbly for a few moments as he stared at the trio.

“Oh… hi aunt Jasmine! I didn’t, uhm…” He glanced at Damon and Johan. “Oh, right… I guess Johnson must have called you before I could talk to him…”

“Yep. What, uh… what happened to your nose there? You fall or is this… related?” Jasmine rolled her gaze over to the pair.

Tony glanced over at Damon, who mouthed something he couldn’t make out in the slightest. He nodded slowly, causing Damon to sigh out loud in frustration.

“You two really are quite the pair of troublemakers, huh? You’re pretty lucky, too. Here, Tony. Drink up. It’s chai.” She resummoned her Stand back to her side and produced a small paper cup, pouring out enough to fill it to the brim and handing it to Tony. He mumbled a thanks and brought the cup up to his lips, drinking it all in just a few seconds. As he did so, the blood disappeared from his face and his nose righted itself back to how it was pre-breaking.

 

“Thanks Aunt Jasmine! I… don’t think I’ll be going back in today. I don’t think my manager will believe my nose healed this fast…”

“Now… you two. You’re coming back to the station with me. You’re not in trouble or anything, not just yet, but… you know, duty and all. Tony, you want me to drop you off at home afterwards?”

“Yes please. So… wait…” Tony turned towards Johan and Damon with wide eyes, a stupid grin spreading across his face. “She was telling me about, uhm… the two kids who went head to head with the robber a while ago… that’s you guys, isn’t it?”

“Yup.” Damon puffed out his chesthest, looking proud of himself. “That’s us. He was pretty tough, but… no big deal for a couple of Stand experts like us.”

Jasmine raised an eyebrow. “Weren’t you sitting outside the whole time? I mean, you did an admirable job keeping the kids distracted, but… from what I heard from the SOMEONE who relayed the entire story, it was Johan that did all the heavy lifting.”

Damon immediately faltered, looking down at the ground as his face turned red. “Well, that’s…”

Jasmine chuckled. “Anyway. Just get in the car and we’ll be done in like… twenty minutes. No hassle about it. Time for questioning’s long since over anyway.”

The two looked between each other, and shrugged. Better to just go and not risk pissing off an officer of the law if they could help it.

The four of them all clambored into the car, the two relatives up front and the daring criminals in the back. Jasmine leaned back with a half empty container of mint chewing gum, and shook it at the pair, popping one in her mouth for herself. Hesitantly, both took their own piece and stuck it in their mouths.

With that, she jammed her key into the car and, after a few turns, a handful of swears, and a kick, the engine roared to life, and the group pulled out of the parking lot and out into the sleepy Stilton roads.

It was a quiet few minutes before Tony eventually piped up, leaning back in the passenger’s seat to face Johan and Damon. “So what did you do to beat that robber guy up? Aunt Jasmine told me his Stand was just as strong and tough as hers, which is really strong. He wouldn’t tell me anything about you guy’s fight because he said that it wasn’t my business…”

Johan shrugged, secretly elated to be able to detail his heroism to someone who would actually understand what he meant. “Well you see, his ability was to infect people with a disease that meant anyone who got close to you couldn’t move away…”

Tony nodded excitedly, eyes lighting up like stars as he imagined the scene for himself. “So how did you manage to get around that?”

“I just didn’t get infected,” Johan bragged. “But he did. It pumped him up super hard, so he could touch Stands and was super strong and fast. But you see, Pressure is so fast that it was able to hold him off… and that’s when your auntie stepped in.”

Jasmine tittered to herself in the front. “Don’t get ahead of yourself, kiddo. You were pretty beat up when we got to you.”

“Well… “ Johan trailed off, face turning a little red as Damon laughed at his callout.

“But in the end, you did make our job a lot easier. We’ve got him locked up in one of our temporary holding cells while we figure out what the heck to do with him. I suppose if we’re going there we might as well say hi. Not that I can do much beyond just reminding you two not to go stealing from local stores. Ain’t exactly got the authority anymore.”

Tony’s face fell, and he sat back down in his seat, staring down at his lap and mumbling something to himself. Jasmine sighed, and glanced over at Tony, the warm smile on her lips barely masquerading the decades of exhaustion in her soul.

“It’s fine, Tony. Really. Not your fault, either.”

Johan looked confusedly at the two in the front seat. “What… happened? Did you have a-“

“I got fired.”

“YOU GOT FIRED?!” Damon and Johan echoed simultaneously, in disbelief at the fact. “How?”

Jasmine shrugged. “They weren’t all that happy with me for letting you two off the hook easy. Said they should have been able to get more info on the scene… normally something passable, if inconvenient, but… well, trying to be the cool cop so much lends to ending up in the boss’ office more times than can be ‘passable.”

“Y-you lost your job because of US?” Damon stammered.

“Yup.”

“So… you… how…”

“Well, it’s complicated. They gave me a few days to get everything in order and let me keep doing my work, just with the knowledge that once those few days were up… I was out of a job.”

“That’s fuckin’ stupid… no way you can get fired for something like that…” Johan murmured.

“Hey, look, it ain’t the 20’s anymore, kid. The reformations weren’t for nothin- they’re starting to expect a lot more from the forces keeping everyone safe… letting kids like you go unquestioned is a pretty big risk… I just didn’t think they’d really care enough.”

“So… what are you gonna do now?” Damon asked.

“Don’t know.” Jasmine said, almost casually and nonchalant. “Never really thought about what I’d do if I was out of a job.”

Tony’s eyes widened in surprise and shock, a tinge of horror creeping across his face and leaking into his voice, breathy and panicked. “You said you would be fine! You told me you would be able to work things out! Y- how are you gonna get a new job?!”

“Don’t know.” Jasmine just kept driving, like she hadn’t just revealed her situation was far worse than previously imagined.

The two in the back leaned forward in their seats with a sigh, staring at each other with their mouths hanging open, unsure of exactly what to say.

“We can’t just let her go homeless…” Johan whispered.

“She only saved us like a couple hours of time of easy questioning. She’s just a random cop, man, it’s not our problem if she can’t keep her stuff together.” Damon hissed.

“She saved our asses, you moron. That robber guy was about to fold me in half like an omelette.”

“That could have been any officer. What makes her so special?”

“I- I dunno! She’s a Stand user, isn’t she? We gotta help each other out when we can or some shit!”

“Hell are we even supposed to do about it? We’re both barely scraping by as is! Neither of us has the cash to support some random offhand cop just cause she’s a Stand user!”

“We’ve gotta do SOMETHING. We’ll figure something out.”

“We can’t just- ugh. Whatever.”

“We’re here.” Jasmine barked. “Everyone pile on out. Gonna have to figure out what to do with you two. Tony, you can just… stay in the car if you want to.”

“Y… yeah.”

Tony curled up in his seat and hesitantly pulled out his phone, watching Jasmine and the two hooliganis make their way into the station with a whimper.

“You first. Looks less like you’re in trouble if that’s the case.” Jasmine grinned and gestured inside, as Johan and Damon stepped forth into the station.

It was a fairly standard looking police station, blue rug, dim overhead lights, a great big wooden front desk, and a few smaller wooden cubicles at which officers in uniform typed away at computers, responded to calls, or simply chatted idly. Jasmine trotted over to her own desk in the corner, waving and saying hi to the various officers while the two following her skirted right past. She sat down at an empty looking desk, void of virtually everything but a computer.

A pudgy-looking man looked up from his station across from hers, squinting at the two young men with a suspicious eye. It was the same man who had been interviewing Damon at the McDonald’s.

“You find out who was behind the alleged thievery at the Walmart?” He snorted, and pointed at Johan and Damon. “It’s a bit too late to be bringing those two in for questioning now, I’m afraid. I wish it weren’t, but policy’s policy. Was nice working with you, miss.”

“You too, Orville. You’re looking at ‘em. Gave ‘em a stern talking to, just doing a couple formalities.”

Orville nodded and looked back to his computer. A sheepish smile spread across Johan’s face, his gaze flicking back and forth between the two as Jasmine typed something into a formal-looking sheet.

“Alright, that should be everything…”

“Hey, uh…” Damon piped up. “How’s that robber guy doing? You said he was in a cell, right?”

She tittered. “You wanna see him? I think this would be his first visitors.”

“I- uh- sure…” Damon stammered.

“Then let’s go!” Jasmine sprang out of her seat and motioned for the pair to follow her, speed walking down a nearby hallway. The two exchanged a brief look, and with all the hesitation in the world, followed.

As they rounded the corner in the hallway, a small collection of holding cells stood before them. Each one was covered by a thick layer of glass, with a small slot for food at the bottom. The interiors all looked rather cozy, with Johan taking in the sight with bright eyes and amazement. “This is better than even my room…”

Jasmine stood confidently in front of one of the cells, about halfway down the hall, rapping on the glass.

“Hey. You’ve got visitors.”

Deep within the cell, blankets rustled on the bottom of the bunk bed in the very corner, then paused. After a brief second, the covers came flying off, revealing a rather sleepy looking Donegan in full pajamas. He rubbed his eyes and grumbled in annoyance, blinking his eyes open until finally, he spotted Johan and Damon. His brow furrowed, and his Stand, Down With the Sickness, came into view behind his shoulder.

“Oh… it’s you two.”

TO BE CONTINUED >

STAND NAME: LIQUID COOL

STAND MASTER: JASMINE GARDNER

POWER: A

SPEED: E

RANGE: D

STAYING POWER: A

PRECISION: B

Chapter 7: Liquid Cool Part 2

“Oh… it’s you two.”

Donegan stood up, cracking his neck and stretching, letting out a relieved sigh as his joints crackled and popped, freeing him of his stress.

He stepped closer to the glass, Stand hovering menacingly beside him. Jasmine merely raised an eyebrow at him, not even bothering to summon her own Stand, in stark contrast to the two men behind her, who stumbled backwards, pooling bodily fluids into the form of Pressure and shaking a can of spray paint respectively.

Donegan laughed as Johan tripped over his own feet and fell flat on his rear, Pressure still mcoalesced into a fighting stance.

“Ha! I gotta say, that’s pretty funny. You seem to be under the impression that I hold resentment towards you for beating me in a Stand fight and getting me arrested. I guess that’s a pretty reasonable assumption, because I think a lot of people would be mad about that. I’m not mad about it at all, of course, because, well…”

Johan grunted in response as he got back up, dusting himself off with a glare towards Damon, who was holding in a laugh of his own.

“I’ll tell you the truth, though I suppose it wouldn’t matter if I didn’t, because I already told Jasmine, and she would just tell you instead. The truth is that I’m actually quite grateful that you got me arrested.”

Johan and Damon exchanged a bewildered glance between each other, opening their mouths to ask before Donegan cut them off.

“I don’t know what’s confusing about this. I don’t know how much thought you gave to the situation after it was over, but if it was any reasonable amount, then it should make sense. I wasn’t robbing a McDonald’s because I was well off, you see, in fact, I was actually quite poor, and about to lose my apartment. But now that I’ve been arrested, I don’t have to worry about food or rent. So you did me a big favor by doing that.” He giggled. “I gave you quite the scare though, didn’t I? Don’t worry about it at all, though.”

Jasmine nodded. “Yup. He’s telling the truth. Hasn’t been a lick of trouble, either. Get him McDonald’s sometimes.”

“Yeah, I chose McDonald’s to rob because I think their food is of the highest quality in the area. I guess there’s a Burger King around, but I think their food is just McDonald’s but slightly worse. It’s kind of like they buy their food from there and just leave it in the fridge for maybe a week, or two weeks… I guess it would be hard to tell how long they left it in there. Then they microwave it and it comes out as a Whopper or something.”

Jasmine shrugged. “Thought it would be a decent thing to do for good behavior.”

“This guy’s a fucking lunatic. People could have died. Why are you treating this like- some kind of game?”

Donegan strutted back over to his bed and sat down, kicking his legs like a schoolgirl. “Well, I think that’s quite the maligned idea of me, because I wouldn’t have killed anyone. That would just get me put in a very serious prison, which is far less comfortable than the situation I have right now. If you think about it logically, then it makes sense.”

Johan put a hand to his temple and sighed to himself, throwing a glance at Donegan and lowering his voice. “Wh- why are we talking to this guy again? I’m only just now remembering how exhausting it is just listening to him.”

Jasmine frowned, at least giving Johan the courtesy of matching his whisper so Donegan wouldn’t hear. “Thought it’d be a nice look into things and to show you that doing good in the world like you have has its real benefits. And he’s a nice conversationalist if you don’t mind how he talks.”

“Must be an acquired taste,” Damon growled under his breath.

Jasmine looked disappointedly at the two of them, and spoke back up, putting on her best smile. “Well, I think that just about concludes our little visit, wouldn’t you say? It’s been nice talking to you, Donegan.”

“It’s been nice talking to you too, officer. I guess it makes sense that these two don’t have much to say, though. I imagine they still hold resentment after I hit one in the chest and infected the other with my ability. I suppose I probably won’t be seeing you two anytime soon, but it would be nice if you dropped by, since I know you guys could easily slip into this place, given your Stand abilities.”

Johan mused to himself briefly, and turned to Jasmine. “Hey… you never told us about your Stand!”

“Hm… guess I didn’t. Well, I guess there’s not any harm in doing it.”

She closed her eyes and focused, a shimmering pink figure slowly phasing into view beside her. As it manifested, the pair could make out more and more details. It was huge, for one, almost as big as Down With the Sickness, Donegan’s Stand. Its body was a pastel pink, plastered with random shapes and designs either drawn on or in sticker form that were almost recognizable, but none of them matched anything the two could remember. The entire thing was armored with smooth plates, with wide shoulders, a thick torso, and bulky-looking limbs.

The most standout features, though, were its head and hands. Its head was a strange cylinder shape, two handles sticking out of the sides, and an eerily wide, unmoving smile slapped right in the middle of its face. It planted its feet on the ground and stood upright, looking to its master for orders.

“This… is Liquid Cool.”

Johan and Damon gazed in amazement, taking in the sheer size of the monstrous Stand before them. It could easily pick the both of them up in one hand each without any effort.

“Its ability… it’s to create tea, right? Like you did for Tony…” Johan stammered.

“That’s right. Pour it into things and it… well, it varies on what happens.” She chuckles. “It’s also any tea of my choice, prepared however I want.”

Damon scoffed. “What, lets you have a tea party on command?”

Jasmine just smiled and nodded, a sparkling in her eyes as she dismissed her Stand. “It’s more handy than you might think. Now, let’s get out of here before the chief starts asking where I am. Later, Donegan.”

Donegan nodded and climbed back into bed, falling asleep almost instantly, as Jasmine led the two youths back out to the main building of the police station, where Orville eyed them suspiciously.

“Well, I think that we’re about done here… I’ve let you off with a warning, confiscated everything stolen, and you met with an old… acquaintance. That seems like a fine little outing to me, don’tcha think?”

Damon opened his mouth to speak but was quickly shut up by Johan, who nodded enthusiastically, turning towards the door.

Jasmine chuckled at the sight and shooed them off, slipping them a small piece of paper with a hastily scrawled number on it.

“For if- well, let’s be honest, when you find yourselves in big trouble again.” She let out a small laugh. “Not like I’ll be having a job to worry about.”

Damon and Johan blinked at each other, unsure of what to make of the situation.

“Er… thanks, Ms…” Johan peered at her name tag. “Gardner.”

“Just call me Jasmine. Why don’t you boys scurry on back to the car so I can get you back home. I’ll be there in a minute or so. Got some things to work on.”

The two nodded slowly and speed walked their way out of the police station, avoiding eye contact with the cubicles full of curious and confused eyes from staff and officers alike. They practically burst out of the door, both breathing enormous sighs of relief and bending over to catch their breath, the sudden noise causing a loud thump to emanate from the car they had arrived in as Tony nearly jumped out of his skin in surprise.

“Oh… wow, I would have thought they would have arrested you two or something… I guess aunt Jasmine managed to get you off the hook?” Tony mused, tilting his head.

“I… genuinely don’t know what happened in there. Ugh, it felt more like having a babysitter than anything else… glad we… didn’t get in trouble, at least?” Johan breathed.

“Well, uhm… how did you… yknow…” He gestured in another direction, across the street. “I thought you came out a few minutes ago… I called out to you but you looked at me weird and ignored me…”

Johan stared at him, confused, looking over at where Tony was pointing.

“Nnnnno?”

“Well… then, that’s really weird… you don’t have like… a twin brother?”

“Not that I know of.” Johan’s eyes narrowed. “Did he have any stand out features?” Like… a marking under his right eye?”

Damon huffed. “God, please, don’t let it be him…”

“No…”

The two mutually breathed enormous sighs of relief, and looked out to where Tony gestured to. There was indeed a man sprawled out on the bench on the corner of the sidewalk, a mirror match of Johan, staring up into the sky and holding a guitar.

“…Dude. Let’s go talk to him.” Damon suggested.

Johan bristled, and growled under his breath, but nodded, secretly equally curious as to who and what this person might be like. Slowly and cautiously, they approached the bench, standing over Johan’s exact clone and staring confusedly as they got there. The man strummed his guitar absentmindedly, and rolled over slightly, looking up at Johan.

“Oh…” He smiled, a genuine expression of joy. “I’m sorry if I surprised you by showing up with your face… normally I don’t run into the people I’m mirroring, aha…”

“It’s alright. It was just a bit of a surprise. Er… you do this often?”

The man sat up on the bench, motioning for the two to sit on either side of him. Johan turned around and let himself practically fall backwards onto the bench as Damon took an awkward seat on the very edge, looking nervous.

“I do it all the time.” He proclaimed, staring off into the distance. “You see, at my age, I can’t do nearly as many things as I could when I was your age… but I’m lucky, because I never have to worry about getting too old…”

Damon sneered. “Dontcha think it’s pretty weird to be stealing other people’s bodies just to stay young forever?”

The man looked down and nodded solemnly. “People have always told me such a thing. That I should be ashamed of what I do.” He almost snaps back into a beaming expression, flashing irritatingly white teeth at Damon. “But that’s why I do what I can to give back to the world. Whenever I play my music, and people hear it… even if we’ve never met, we get closer together.”

“Whoah… how long have you been playing?” Johan asked.

“Eighty years, give or take. Would you like to hear it?”

Johan smiled and nodded, glowering at Damon as he rolled his eyes and scooted further away with a huff. As the man began to play, Damon stood up, looking between Johan and the stranger before letting out a sigh and going off with a huff.

“Dude…” Johan looked up at Damon with a mix of surprise and annoyance. “What’s your problem?”

“I’m just… not interested. The whole body snatcher thing is just weirding me out, and like… music? I don’t think that’s really an even exchange. I’m just gonna go… wait in the car for the cop.”

As Damon wandered off, Johan merely turned to the man with a shrug “...No idea what’s up with him. Oh, uh… I… never asked your name. My name’s… Johan.”

“Name’s Ringo.” Ringo stuck out his hand for a handshake, which Johan hesitantly accepted, taken back by the sudden force his hand was subjected to. “Nice to meet you, Johan. My name is…” He paused, and smiled softly again. “No, sorry… I already told you my name.”

“U-uh… yeah… ” Johan tilted his head in confusion.

This guy’s ancient… he’s gotta have some kind of memory problems…

“Hrm…” Ringo mused to himself for a moment, clicking his tongue thoughtfully. “He does have a point, you know… I’ve always had to wonder if my music is really enough to be giving back to the people of the world. Whether anyone even likes my music… it’s up in the air. But so is if anyone minds what I’m doing. It’s very strange, you know. People can’t ever decide.”

“Well… maybe it doesn’t matter. You’re not really hurting anyone… you keep to yourself, right? So even if only a few people like it… well… that’s still a positive.”

“Well, well… I’ve never quite thought of it that way. Say… you seem like the type of young man to enjoy stories. You have the time for one?”

“Oh, uh… sure.”

Ringo smiled and took a deep breath. It was going to be a long few minutes.

Meanwhile…

“Hoo… had me filling out more paperwork than I expected.” Jasmine smoothly slid her way into the driver’s seat of the car and slammed the door behind her with a thud, looking in the rear view mirror, eyebrow raised as she did so. “...Where’s your friend?”

“With that guy on the bench.” Damon huffed and gestured to the pair of duplicates, happily exchanging stories with each other on the bench.

“Am I…?”

“No. Exact copy. Stand user, probably…”

Jasmine narrowed her eyes, head tilting back and forth as she took in the sight, with even Tony looking up from his phone and taking his own look-see. “That’s… suspicious.”

Damon sighed as he nearly felt a weight lift off his shoulders with her agreement. “Yeah. Hey… you’re a cop. You got any tools to go… investigating, see if there’s anything more to this guy?”

Jasmine lowered her head in contemplation, blankly gazing into the floor of her car. “You make somewhat of a good point… I mean… better safe than sorry, right? Might as well make my last day a fun one.” She took a small device from her belt and twirled it around on her finger, tossing it up and catching it in midair, before she grinned at her two passengers.

“Let’s go.”

 

STAND USER: Ringo Alonow
STAND NAME: Buddy Holly
STAND STATS:
POWER: Null
SPEED: Null
RANGE: Null
STAYING POWER: A
PRECISION: C

Chapter 8: The Faker

“So how do you actually plan on sussing this guy out? Nobody’s stupid enough to be committing crimes in broad daylight even if they can shapeshift.” Damon asked Jasmine quietly.

She grimaced. “…I don’t know. My best guess… we get his fingerprints. Chances are, if he’s a troublemaker, we’ve got him on file.”

“So we’re getting the fingerprints of a guy who can change his body at will?”

“I still don’t know. We’ll find a way, though. He can’t just have his Stand active all the time. He’ll slip up at some point.”

“My biggest worry is Johan. He likes the guy. Smart enough to figure out we’ll be following him. How do you think we can get around him?”

“Separate them. Not exactly stuck together like glue like you two usually are.”

“They’re pretty engaged in their conversation. Don’t think they’ll end up too far apart from each other…”

Suddenly, Tony jumped up in his seat and reached over the headrest, pointing dramatically at the now mobile pair of mirror matches. “There! They’re heading into the library!”

“Huh… alright.” Jasmine nodded. “Chances are, they’ll end up getting their prints all over at least one of these books. All that’s left is to get the other one to drop the disguise, and get him to touch something. Easy. Now… quiet and discreet. Don’t want anyone to get suspicious.”

Nodding back, Damon and Tony clambered out of the car as Jasmine locked it up and tossed her cap inside, ditching the rest of her uniform with it. With a shared stare, the three sigh, and make their way into the library.

The library was about as quiet of a place as you’d expect, metal shelves lining the walls to the right, a cool, dark blue tile carpet coating the floor, and a few desks and computers scattered about to the left, where a couple people clicked away absentmindedly. Unfortunately, though, there was no sight of either Johan just yet.

As they passed through the doors, Damon stopped, and held up a hand. “...How are we gonna figure out which oine’s which?”

“Shit.” Jasmine spat quietly. “What kind of stuff does Johan read? Maybe we can pick it out that way.”

“Ah, he’ll read just about anything… We’re gonna need something more concrete. I think… we can check their pockets. Johan has a… unique phone case. It’s the easiest way to tell.”

“Why not send him a text?”

“Because then he’ll be looking for us.”

“Damn it. Fair enough. What’s your plan?” Jasmine scanned the library looking for either of the two doppelgängers.

“You two go and find one of them, and I’ll find the other.”

“Got it.” Jasmine nodded.

“Then let’s go.” Damon sighed, heading off into the depths of the library, leaving the other two to their own devices.

Stalking through the shelves, Damon grumbled to himself, muttering under his breath as he carefully turned corners and kept to the tight corridors between the rows upon rows of books. Gently, he took his spray paint out of his coat pocket, and shook it slightly, spraying the nearest shelf and flattening it against the floor, scouting out the area for a split second before tapping his foot against the flattened mural and springing it back into place.

He crept along the shelves, repeating this process, growing increasingly frustrated as he only managed to spot a whole handful of nothing. After about a dozen repeats, though, a quiet gasp stopped him in his tracks, and he froze in place. It was definitely Johan’s voice. He swore under his breath. He must have ended up seeing Damon messing with the shelves.

He glanced at The Now Now. Still shaken just enough for a quick escape. He aimed the canister at himself and placed his hand on the inner side of the nearest shelf, spraying himself onto the slick metal surface with ease. Just in time, too, as one of the two Johans leaned around the corner, looking bewilderedly around.

Damon eyed Johan carefully as he stepped out into the passageway, his eyes narrowed as he slowed down, looking around at all the books, keeping an eye out for any sort of movement.

“Disappeared right in front of me… hm… a Stand attack?”

Climbing his way up along the shelf, Damon rolled his eyes in annoyance. Just his luck he figured out it was Stand related that quickly. This level of paranoia over something he only saw for a split second… chances were it was the real Johan.

Wrapping himself around the very edge of the shelf, Damon positioned himself with just one eye fixed firmly on the Johan, watching his every movement and plotting out a way to run his pockets.

Mumbling quietly to himself, Damon snuck back over to the inside of the shelf and reached out of
the shelf over to the nearest book, peeling himself off of the metal surface and pressing his hand against it, causing it to fall over like a domino with a soft whumpf. Damon only had a quick moment to glance down at Johan, who had had his attention caught by the noise, and swear, slipping into the pages of the book.

The Johan narrowed his eyes and reached out towards the shelf, plucking the book out and skimming through the pages lazily, almost flipping through them, speed-reading anything that caught his eye… he shut the book with a huff. Nothing interesting.

Damon loosened the clutch on his heart with a shaky exhale as Johan slid the book back onto the bookshelf, rustling it around a bit to see what had made the noise. When he was finally finished, Damon slipped out of the space between the plastic cover and the hardcover, shrunken down and thanking his lucky stars he hadn’t been caught… and cursing himself for not taking the chance to pickpocket the clone.

I have to get him to pick up another book… if I can do that… then I have a free ticket right to his back pockets. I can just kick one from the inside to knock it off the shelves, but unless I’m in the middle pages, then I won’t be able to get it out easily. But being in the pages risks being caught… it’s a risk I gotta take.

Standing in the small hiding space he had fashioned, Damon gritted his teeth, held his breath, and took heavy steps towards the nearest heavy book he could find, pushing apart the pages and cleanly sticking himself to the inside. With a grunt of effort, he drove his foot right into the split between pages, sending the book hurting off the shelf… and right into the Johan instance’s dome., causing him to yelp in pain and clutch his head.

Storming over to where the book had fallen, Johan snatched it up with an irritated sigh, looking the book over and turning it around to glance at what kind of novella dared to knock him upside the head like that. He flipped through the pages angrily, scoffing as he went. Damon could only hope his legs could carry him fast enough to outrun Johan’s skimming.

“The Phantom Wave… young adult novel… New York Yimes bestseller… a teenager with special powers saves the world from a corporate menace… this is the most boring thing I can think of. Who even reads this crap? I could pick ten books off of the shelf and get six exactly like this.”

Come on… epilogue… I’m almost there… Damon’s legs ached as he raced to the end, breathing heavily.

Suddenly, Johan stopped, an air of confusion and disbelief in his voice. “Hey… that’s weird… it looks like…”

Pounding heart coming to a screeching stop, Damon froze as he took his last step into his hiding space. Did he… there’s no way… he had just made it…

“There’s not even an author…” Johan murmured, closing the book and kicking his friend’s heart back into gear as he readied himself for the next step.

Damon slipped out of the book’s cover, looking to Johan’s sleeves as his next path to his pockets. He tensed up as he slowly reached out, inching his hand towards his goal so as to not alert the Johan copy.

Few… more… inches…

Got it.

Laying his fingers against the fabric of his sleeve, Damon peeled himself off the book and onto the sleeve with one quick motion, nestled snugly inside.

This is weird… it’s like a tunnel in here… ugh… this is weird no matter what… but if I turned back now, it would be even weirder.

Damon crept carefully along, smushing his back against the “wall” and shuffling awkwardly sideways. All going just fine, up until the moment the Johan copy shook his arm vigorously, faceplanting Damon directly into his arm.

Barely clinging on to dear life, Damon clutched his chest, heaving.

“Bug in my shirt…”

Shit.

Johan at the very least knew something was a bit off, so he had to act fast. Squeezing his chest where his heart was, he turned sideways along the interior and began sprinting down, barely moving out of the way as Johan scratched himself furiously, reaching all around himself to quell his itching. Damon could only grit his teeth and keep going.

Out of nowhere, he was forced to come to an abrupt halt as the fabric caved in in front of him, rustling with vigor. He took a step back, only to be met with another dip, more scratching behind him. He whipped around and spotted a small wrinkle in the shirt, wiggling inside and folding in on himself to wait out the few seconds he’d need.

Or… he could drop down now and end up on the other side. Steeling his nerves and clenching his muscles, he pressed against the inside of the wrinkle and opening it wide. He didn’t have any time to rethink his choice as he plummeted down to the very bottom in a free fall.

By some miraculous stroke of luck, though, his gambit paid off. Sliding under the edge of the Johan’s shirt, he skidded to a stop smack dab in the middle of his back. Relieved he had made it, he squinted downward into the pockets, catching a brief glimpse of an obnoxiously bright pink color. Yep. That’s Johan’s phone, alright. Damon groaned quietly. What a waste of time.

Without anyone crawling around inside his shirt, Johan slowly settled down, though not without one final panicked look around the room to just maybe find some explanation as to what exactly that strange series of events was.

After a bewildered spin around was met with nothing appearing out of the ordinary, Johan hesitantly relaxed his muscles and shook himself free of worry, walking out of the array of books, brushing against the very edge of the shelf as he did so, an opportunity Damon took to quickly move between the two and escape.

As he took a moment to use his Stand to unflatten, return to his original size, and readjust, Damon leaned against the very end of the cold metal shelf with one arm, exhausted from the stress and tension.

“So if that one’s the real one, the other two have the fake… they better not have messed this up.”

An irritated grumble escaped his lips as he once again plastered himself against the nearest surface with his Stand, crawling up the side of the towering shelf and transitioned to the ceiling, walking along it until he finally spotted the pair he had left to their own devices.

Looked like they were just scouting out what the guy was doing before any actual moves got made… “Slowpokes,” he muttered to himself as he wiggled back onto the shelves, pressing his back against one side and his feet against the other, sliding all the way back down.

As he came up behind the pair of an ex-cop and her twiggy nephew, he stopped and signed a cross over his chest with a mouthed ‘lord have mercy’ and cleared his throat impatiently.

“Shhhhhit. Damon.” Jasmine whipped around, flinching at the sudden appearance and pouting slightly. “Don’t be creeping up on us like that. You find anything out?”

“Yeah. This one’s the fake. Real Johan is a few aisles down… might’ve spooked him a bit.”

“I…” Jasmine whined quietly and stole a look towards their target. “Well, we’re trying not to alert this guy in the slightest, so be a bit more careful next time.”

“…Yeah. What’s your plan?”

“Get him to drop the disguise.”

“By…” Damon raised an eyebrow.

“We’re working on it.” Jasmine hissed. “You even know how his Stand works?”

Damon lowered his head and huffed. “No… you even know how to figure it out?”

“Just start thinking of something or-“

“There he goes!” Tony whispered, pointing to Ringo as he ambled down the passageway. A strange mass covered his upper body.

“Hell is…” Damon stammered.

Jasmine cut him off. “It’s a cloak. And mask, by the looks of it.”

She was right. It was a cloak, bright blue in color and stitched together in pattern, with a cracked mask loosely wrapped around Ringo’s face by a strap connected to the hood. They watched as he stared upwards, and suddenly crouched down, wrapping the cloak around himself.

When he emerged a few precious seconds later, he was a completely different man, even taller and lankier than Johan, almost inhuman as he stood up tall. He was well over seven feet tall, and easily reached up to the high up book he had been eyeing prior.

“Guess that answers that. Now how do we get him to revert to his base to get his real fingerprints?” Damon asked.

Jasmine put a hand to her chin, watching Ringo’s movements carefully. “Good question.” She shrugged. “Guess we’ll just have to see.”

| TO BE CONTINUED >

Chapter 9: The Reveal

“Lot of ways something like this could go wrong, you know.” Damon sneered as he watched Ringo go obviously down the aisle. “And I already pulled my weight. So you two are gonna be fooling with catching Mr. Musician on your own.”

 

Jasmine glowered at Damon and huffed a little, gears turning in her head. “Well, I know how to get his prints.” She manifested Liquid Cool and pulled the three of them out of sight of Ringo, pouring a small bit of tea onto her finger. “Bit of tea will do the trick.”

 

Damon raised an eyebrow, only to be quickly shut down by another leer from the police officer. “Don’t give me that look. It’s not as stupid as you think it is.” She pressed her finger against the nearest shelf, peeling it off after just a second. Lo and behold, a fingerprint was left behind on it, clear as day.

 

“Sticks. So, we get a little tea on a book or two, get his attention with it, and have him get his fingers on it. Easy prints.” She pointed to Tony, her expression softening. “Tony, I might need your help with this… the floors here are tiled, so if you can rotate them and speed me around… it’ll be an easy job.” Tony nodded.

 

With a smile back to Tony, Jasmine stepped back out into the aisle, and almost immediately, her face fell. “He… he’s not here anymore.” She looked around, bewildered, but there was no trace of Ringo anywhere. “Damn it! Twenty seconds to talk over a plan and he disappears on us! Alright. Split up and search, don’t look too suspicious, you’re adults, you can handle it. And if you can keep the real one occupied… that’s even better.”

 

Silently and simultaneously nodding in acknowledgment, Damon, who left a bit reluctantly, and Tony move off in their own directions, leaving Jasmine all by her lonesome. 

 

“Now if I were an old man, where would I have wandered off to… hrm…” She mumbled to herself, looking around the aisles in a dim hope he would just pop up out of nowhere. Alas, to no avail. “Let’s see… he probably won’t be in the young adult or children’s section, so that’s two out.”

 

She pulled out a notebook from her pocket and took a pen from her ear, flipping past her lazy notes and doodles of various fantasy creatures to the last fresh page left in the whole thing. She leaned against the shelf to her right, the one Ringo was previously browsing, and scribbled down a list of the library’s sections, and crossed out two. 

 

“So that’s the part right behind me entirely ruled out… we would have seen him if he went down that way, so what’s to the left of me is also ruled out… now let’s see… shit, he’s probably still in the non-fiction section. Dunno why I bothered writing down all the-” 

 

“Damon did mention he was a musician… so that would mean he probably has an interest in related topics, and the closest thing to that would be the arts or biography section, which is, uh…”

She glanced at the row she was in. “Eight rows forward, about… three or so right. Yeah…” She stuffed her notebook back into her pocket and put the pen back on her ear, taking a cautious step out into the aisles, looking around just in case.

 

Nobody else was around. Perfect. Pulling her cap down over her eyes, she made her way through the few aisles between her and one of the many seating areas sprinkled throughout the shelves. A fairly small area, but just open enough to have easy viewing to all the nearby rows and the people in between them.

 

She squinted. Easy to get spotted herself out here, but it was the quickest way from point A to point B. He wasn’t anywhere within immediate sight, but if she was right, he had to be close… and considering this was an easily visible, central location within a short walk of her target area, it could be useful.

 

Pursing her lips, she took a small cup out of nowhere and summoned her Stand. Liquid Cool floated beside her, its teeth bared in something of a grimace. It held out a hand over the cup and poured in a helping of tea. Jasmine stared at the cup, a little hesitant, but let out a sigh after a mere few seconds. As she walked away, Liquid Cool moved to knock the cup off of the table, spilling the tea out onto the floor, and disappeared.

 

Frowning a little, Jasmine continued along her path, moving sideways towards the shelves. Finally reaching them, she nearly pressed her back flat against the metal, leaning over to her right in order to peek down the aisle. Not there. So chances were that he was at the other of the two possible locations.

 

She sighed, dashing past the next aisle so as to not be seen. Closing her eyes and taking a deep breath, she- briefly opened one eye to take a sip of tea from her Stand’s finger and closed her eye again- exhaled, relaxing her shoulders. He was in the next one. He had to be. Without an ounce of hesitation, she peeled her back off of the shelf and stepped sideways into the aisle.

 

There he was, back to his Johan form, still idly browsing the books until his eyes lit up. Grabbing a book to better blend in, Jasmine took a careful step towards Ringo. 

 

He doesn’t suspect a thing. I can make this a lot easier if I make sure it stays that way.

 

She took another step, clutching her book to her chest. And another. And another. And- she nearly jumped out of her skin as he suddenly turned around, with both simultaneously yelping in surprise, Jasmine’s book clattering to the floor. She laughed sheepishly as she bent down to pick it up, standing back up to see Ringo smiling warmly back at her.

 

“Ah… my deepest apologies, I didn’t expect you to be there.” He bowed politely.

 

“Oh, it’s fine. I didn’t expect you to turn around. What are you reading?”

 

“Oh, this? Ah, just an autobiography. Bob Dylan’s. Read it a few times. Seems like a decent enough man… though I think that’s what they’d want you to believe in an autobiography.”

 

“Yeah, it makes sense that you’d only wanna show your best side to others… uh… say, I know I nearly bumped into you and all, but could I… ask you for some quick help?”

 

“I’d be happy to. With what?”

 

Clutching her book a bit closer and relaxing her shoulders, Jasmine gestured to the seating area. “Nothing, just… spilled a bit of drink. Need an extra hand.”

 

Ringo nodded and pulled a small handkerchief from his shirt pocket as Jasmine did the same, a little surprised he had one. As they walked back the short distance, Ringo spoke up. “Ah… I apologize if this comes off the wrong way, but… your blue hair is very beautiful.”

 

“I, uh… th… thank you.” Jasmine stammered as she stopped in front of the table, tea still dripping off of the side of the table. “Lucky it was just a small cup… watch your- ah.” Jasmine stifled a little fist pump as she watched Ringo step halfway into the spilled tea.

 

Damn it! I was hoping he’d touch the table… at least I won’t be losing him anytime soon. Easier to take him by surprise if I can tell which corner he’ll be around.

 

“Sorry…” Jasmine rustled her own hair sheepishly, kneeling down to try and wipe up the small pool he had stepped in. “Guess that’s at least the place to start…” 

 

“Oh, it’s fine, just a little bit of tea. Let’s just get this all cleaned up… I’ll do the table. My knees aren’t what they used to be.” With a bit of wiggling his foot around, Ringo unstuck himself from the puddle of tea and moved to wipe off the table.

 

…

 

After just a couple minutes, everything seemed to have been perfectly clean. Jasmine stood up and stuffed her handkerchief back into her pocket, grabbing the culprit cup and pitching it into the nearest trash can.

 

“Phew… thanks for the help.” Jasmine nodded in Ringo’s direction, a little show of appreciation that he returned with his own nod. “I’ll let you get back to your book now… you have a good day, sir.”

 

And with that, she sat back down at the table, though naturally on the opposite side of the spill. She cracked open her book, and watched as Ringo wandered off back to where he was before… a distinct trail of faint tea footprints left behind with every other step he took.

 

“Alright… last step… now that I can’t lose him…”

As Ringo disappeared amongst the shelves, Jasmine narrowed her eyes, and slowly stood up, manifesting her Stand, which melded with her, allowing her to take a quick sip of tea from her thumb before she took her first step forward, a single bead of sweat dripping down her forehead.

 

She leaned down as she began to follow the trail of footsteps, the tea only having left the faintest trace of a print with how little had been applied. Slowly but methodically, though, she diligently followed the path, flashing the occasional glance up to make sure she hadn’t just bumbled right into the man again and ruined her whole plan.

 

Before long, the trail took a sharp turn, twisting around a corner and out of sight. Jasmine tensed up at the sight, ideas spinning through her head one after the other. “No…” she murmured, putting her hand on her forehead and running her fingers through her hair to clear out all the cluttered thoughts. “One way forward.”

 

Steeling her nerves, she peeked around the corner, side pushed up against the shelf as she carefully examined whatever was there… and there Ringo was. She pulled back in surprise with a soft gasp, putting one hand over her mouth.

 

A few moments passed by, Jasmine slowly lowering her hand to her chin to think. Her second stream of thoughts, however, was interrupted by Ringo’s voice ringing out from within the aisle.

 

“Is there something else you need, miss?”

 

Jasmine muttered a minced oath under her breath and peeled her back off of the shelf, stepping out from behind her cover with a wavering smile, her voice the slightest bit shaky.

 

“Oh, uh… no, sorry, just… happened to be in the same place at the same time again… hehe…”

 

Ringo smirked just a little. “Ah, I see… if I didn’t know any better, I would have thought you were trying to follow me…”

 

“N-not at all!” She stammered, Liquid Cool beginning to shimmer into view beside her.

 

Ringo’s smirk grew into a full blown grin, as he reached behind his neck and pulled the hood of his Stand over his head, quickly ducking down and wrapping the cloak around himself. Before Jasmine could say or do anything, he stood up. Jasmine watched as the cloak fell back to reveal a man of East Asian origin, noticeably taller than her with a thick build, clad in what she could only describe as some kind of gi.

 

“I’m certainly not a young man anymore, miss… but I’m not a fool.” He laughed softly.

 

W-who is that? He’s huge! Focus, Jasmine, focus! He isn’t standing any different, and now that I think about it, he carried himself totally differently than Johan does! So that means he probably doesn’t retain any skills from whatever martial artist that is… what else stays the same?

Liquid Cool quickly manifested properly at the sight of this new opponent, staring down at Ringo’s transformation as if it was comparing its own bulk to his. Nothing it couldn’t handle.

 

It clenched its gigantic fist and took a lumbering step forward, throwing an experimental punch aimed at the man’s chest. Even with how much it held back, it was still a monstrously powerful Stand. A solid hit from even a restrained Liquid Cool would still be enough to put the man out, and both of them knew that.

 

Ringo’s eyes shined as he quickly raised an arm and knocked the Stand’s blow away as casually as swatting a fly. As Liquid Cool pulled its arm back, it felt a strong tug, and looked down to see Ringo’s fingers curled around its forearm. Its mouth fell slightly agape as it processed the information before Ringo yanked it forward into a knee strike to its abdomen, still grabbing it by the arm.

 

Jasmine clutched her stomach in pain, putting a hand over her mouth to not lose her lunch.

 

Liquid Cool thrust its grappled arm forward into Ringo and raised up its forearm, then drove its elbow into his chest, sending him toppling to the ground, losing his grip in the process. He let out a soft gasp as he impacted the floor, followed by a quiet chuckle.

 

Ringo laid flat on his back on the ground as Jasmine’s Stand raised its leg to stomp him while he was down, missing as Ringo curled his knees up to his chest. He wrapped his legs around its calf in response and pulled in, sending it into the same position he was in. Staring up at the dull white ceiling through her Stand’s eyes, the pain in the back of her head almost made Jasmine feel like she had whited out.

 

Liquid Cool kicked at Ringo’s legs as they wrapped around its own, causing him to retract. Legs free, the Stand scrambled to its feet, using the shelf to help itself up, grabbing hold of a book as it did so, a bit of tea dripping onto the cover. 

 

On its feet, it loomed over the man, clutching the book tightly in one hand as it raised it up to bring down on him. Ringo, still struggling to get up, stopped in place and stared upwards at the Stand before him as its makeshift weapon reached its peak.

 

As the Stand finally swung down at him, Ringo instinctively closed his eyes and raised his arm up to protect his face and vitals, and felt both relief and a shooting pain in his arm as the book collided with his hand, stopping it in place. As he opened his eyes, he saw Jasmine standing alongside her Stand and looming over him, eyes narrowed. With a little effort, the Stand retracted, peeling the book from his hand like tape.

 

He shook the pain out of his hand, sitting in place and contemplating why she hadn’t bothered moving. His mind wandered to why she was even fighting him in the first place, and as he thought of being followed, his feet sticking to the floor, and how his hand had stuck to the book, it all clicked into place. He gasped quietly, and at that, Jasmine smiled.

“All I need to hear.” Taking a small bit of tea from her Stand and dismissing it, she walked away, leaving Ringo sitting on the floor, utterly confused.

 

Job done, she made her way out of the library, throwing the doors wide open to see Tony and Damon sitting on a bench outside, engaged in a passionate discussion about something she didn’t understand a lick of.

 

“No, the Staff of Auberon is better than the Permafrost and Oathkeeper, because it lets you survive longer even though you don’t have a shie- oh. Hey. How’d it go?” Damon looked up at Jasmine as she wiped her forehead of sweat. 

 

“Uh, yeah, got him.”

 

“Fight?” Damon raised an eyebrow. “You look sweaty.”

 

“Y… yeah. Fight.”

 

“And you still got his prints?”

 

“It’s… complicated.” She produced the book she had grabbed, showing off the back cover to the two. “I had… an idea, and it worked.” Damon squinted at the book, eyes widening as he spotted a whole set of five fingerprints faintly stained into the cover with a light brown liquid. 

 

“He ain’t throwing a punch untransformed. Could tell he was too damn old to be doing any fighting like that. You sure these’ll be his?”

 

“Sure.” Jasmine took out a small pack of mint gum and popped one in her mouth, opening her mouth as she formulated the sentence in her head. “I could tell that he knew I was trying to figure something out about him. And after he put his hand on the book… he got a little shocked. So I figured that that meant… that he knew he made a mistake and gave me what I was looking for. If his fingerprints changed with the rest of his body, he wouldn’t have cared at all.”

 

“Oh, uhm… yeah. That makes sense.” Damon stared at the ground. It didn’t really make all that much sense to him, and a quick glance at Tony told him that the feeling was mutual between them. “Well? What’s the dirt?”

 

“Haven’t checked yet. Let me see…” Jasmine fished a small device out of her pocket, tapped a passcode into it, and held it over the book. After just a few seconds, it emitted a small buzz, and she dug out the inbuilt cable and stuck it into her phone.

 

“Mmm… there. There he is. Let’s see…” Jasmine stared at her phone blankly, before letting out a long sigh and leaning back into the bench with a little growl of frustration.

 

“What?” Damon looked over at the phone in her hand and after parsing through all the irrelevant information, scowled and put his head in his hands. “He’s got… a goddamn speeding ticket. And that’s it. Ffffffff… ugh. This was such a waste of time.”

 

“Well… now what?” Jasmine sat back up, slipping her phone back into her pocket. “Wait for, uh… Johan, was it?”

 

“Don’t gotta wait.” Damon looked up and pointed his finger at the door, right as Johan pushed it open and stepped outside, book under his arm. Wordlessly, he approached the three, eyes locked on to Jasmine in particular.

 

“So, you got what you were looking for from me?”

 

Jasmine took a moment, then nearly jumped out of his seat. “O-oh! You’re… uhm… yeah, sorry… I-I… we all thought that you might have been using that power of yours to… sorry for attacking you…”

 

Ringo laughed, a genuine smile on his face. “Oh, I suppose I can see how you’d get that notion. No, no, I don’t care for that kind of life. And you needn’t feel bad at all, I could feel that you didn’t really want to hurt me… it was a nice little spar. It’s the kind of experience that I use my Buddy Holly for. Do what I couldn't do in an old man’s body… I hope we can meet again soon. Maybe an intentional spar next time, hm?” Ringo laughed again, walking away with a smile and a wave towards the trio on the bench.

 

“Uh, aunt Jasmine, are you…” Tony leaned over, a look of concern on his face as Jasmine stared dumbfounded at the ground.

 

“This day’s just been weird, Tony. So where’s the real Johan?”

 

“Also right there.” Damon snorted a bit at the timing as the actual Johan made his way out of the building, a far larger stack of books in his hands.

 

“Thought you guys were waiting in the car.” He asked, a little confused, teetering around a slight bit under the weight.

 

“We… decided to wait out here for you. Get some sun.” Jasmine sighed. “Well? Are we all ready to go home?”

 

The group shared a collective nod, and with that, clambored back into Jasmine’s car, setting off to drop each off at home or work.

 

“Yo, Damon… you notice anything weird about the library recently? Could swear there was some kinda ghost in there…” Johan reached over to give his arm and back a firm scratch with a frustrated growl.

 

“I, uh… nah, man. I think you’re just paranoid.” Damon stammered out, facing the window as he did so.

 

Given the relatively small size of Stilton, the drive barely took 30 minutes, even with four different destinations. Tony got out first, then Damon, then Johan. As Johan clambored out with his pile of books, he turned back to the car, giving Jasmine an awkward smile. “Uh, ms… Jasmine. Have a nice day.”

 

“You too, Johan.” She returned the smile along with a little wave, and drove off, leaving Johan alone on his doorstep. Using Pressure to hold his books, he fished his phone out of his pocket, and was met with a single message;

 

“The winner of the raffle to meet Ms. Vei Roseburg will be announced in 30 minutes, at 6pm PST. Tune in to our live announcement to see the results.”

 

…Sent 28 minutes ago.

 

“Shit!” Johan stuffed his phone back into his pocket and practically sprinted inside, Pressure hovering behind him, bumping into walls and furniture as it went.

 

How has it been that long since I checked my phone? That was so important to pay attention to!

 

Lelijk waddled after him as he sprinted upstairs, meowing curiously before scampering away to hide at the sight of Johan’s stack of cargo.

 

Without a minute to spare, Johan sat down at his computer and practically slammed his keyboard to pieces as he typed in the URL to the livestream. He glanced at the clock. 5:59. He relaxed his muscles and leaned back in his chair, muttering “I made it…” to himself.

 

On the screen was a woman with strikingly sky blue hair, sitting at a desk empty aside from a single slip of paper under her fingers.

 

“-y Blue, and we will now be announcing the winner of our raffle- remember, everyone has a chance. Now, onto it.”

 

Johan crossed his fingers and closed his eyes, every instant feeling like an eternity as the woman lifted up the paper towards herself.

 

“And the winner is…”

 

| TO BE CONTINUED >

Chapter 10: Take a Breath

--Earlier…--

After quite a long day of being practically dragged around town without much direction, the quiet air of a Stilton afternoon was almost comforting, allowing Johan to snugly settle into his window seat.

He gazed out the window, watching the array of dreary brick storefronts lazily pass by, only brightened up by the occasional tree, shrub, or splash of paint from a particularly bold locale. Even the sky seemed to be almost a dull grey, dotted with faint wisps of clouds.

He breathed out, a tinge of melancholy almost palpable in his exhale. He had certainly grown to appreciate just how relaxed Stilton was, especially compared to the hellish light shows present in almost every other locale in the state.

…But he would be loath to say he didn’t sometimes wish there were a bit more to the area. Still, the faint chatter of shoppers and pedestrians proved to be a familiar, comforting sound he could almost fall asleep to.

“So… you guys hear about that raffle to meet Vei Roseburg?” Tony piped up amidst the quiet of the car ride, drawing another long, weary sigh from Johan. He leaned forward in his seat and ran his hand through his coiffed hair, which parted and almost immediately sprang back into place the moment he stopped.

“Heard of it is an understatement. Me and Damon spent nearly a whole damn day, uh…” Johan paused as he looked at Damon, who sat up from his relaxed position, stared daggers through his thick bangs, and gave a pointed glance towards Jasmine. “Reading the terms and conditions. You signed up?”

“Yeah, I… also spent a whole day reading the terms. I figured I might as well try… she’s pretty close, and I guess it would be cool…” Tony looked up from his place wedged somewhat tightly into the space between Damon and the door, not a particularly hard task given his borderline skeletal frame, and he seemed comfortable even in spite of his position.

“Well, I guess that makes us competing, huh?” Johan mused.

“Luckier man wins… or more likely we both lose. What are you, uhm… going to do when you meet her?”

Johan put a hand to his chin and mumbled under his breath. “Good question… I think really the best thing would be to just… ask her how she did it, you know?”

“How she did what?” Tony asked.

“Everything, honestly… it takes something special to revolutionize energy storage like that. Even this car’s running on one of those… what was it…” Johan reached back into his pocket and pulled out his phone, tapping into the search engine. “Vanometric batteries, that’s it. Which… you know, I’m pretty sure those are from Finder.”

“Didn’t that turn 30 last year? Nerd. Whatever. Never got how those worked. They sounded fake even before I found out where the name came from, honestly.” Damon grunted.

“I… well, me neither, honestly.” Johan admitted sheepishly, putting a hand on the back of his neck. “I think they’re really just fancily named quantum batteries. Article says something about the energy present in the quantum foam… but it’s not our job to understand ‘em or anything. All that really matters is that they work without blowing up or whatever.”

Damon snorted. “Yet.”

Johan glared at him. “Come on, man. I know it… doesn’t make much sense to you or whatever but she’s done a lot for the world.” He kept scrolling through the article, looking for whatever bits might be able to prove his point… there it was. How could he have forgotten?

He set his phone down in his lap and leaned back in his seat, where a deep breath helped him prepare to ramble. “I don’t really know how the whole world didn’t just erupt into a massive celebration when the first line of vanometric car batteries came out. It’s near perfect energy storage that lasts for years. Not to mention the other stuff that it’s allowed, like… just among the stuff she’s worked on, my dad got a prosthetic a few years back, and he got one with a vanometric battery a bit back, and-”

“Dude, breathe.” Damon sat up and gave a brief look of concern as Johan turned a bit red in the face.

Johan took a deep breath, his face returning to normal aside from the slight red of embarrassment. “Sorry. He said it felt better than anything he had had for years. I asked him about it the other day, and… he still hasn’t had to recharge it since he got it.”

Damon made a faint “Hm.” He looked off into the distance for a second before finally speaking again. “Revolutionizing two whole fields just like that’s pretty impressive. Guess I oughta give her more credit.”

He slid down a bit in his seat, hands on his stomach as he contemplated.

There was a period of silence as each continued their own means of passing time, Damon staring at the ceiling as Johan and Tony hunched over and stared at their phones, Tony resting his head against the back of the passenger seat.

This time, it was Johan who broke the silence.

“Oh, damn, they’re finally rereleasing Y’zora’s Lash in this update. Guess they finally got their last modeler to crank something out for Sorcery Online before he croaked.”

Damon groaned. “We really wanna go all the way back to his lair to farm for it? It was good, but I’m getting attached to the cape I already got, and I don’t care as much about playing dress-up as you do.”

Johan didn’t even look up from his phone. “Yeah, well, they buffed it. Gives some Pierce now on top of the 4% vitality awakening and 300 defense.”

Damon bolted upright in his seat. “That’s 50% more than it gave when they first released it! They crazy?”

“You know it’s gonna go for a pretty penny while it’s still not nerfed. Plus… I really like how it looks. You remember when I was telling you about how they got a picture of Vei Roseburg with a tail?”

“They put that all down as a rumor, you know.” Tony butted in.

“Yeah, but the photo also wasn’t edited at all. Plus… if she’s working on prosthetics, I think it makes sense,” Johan retorted.

“Oh… I guess that checks out. Hey, if you guys are gonna be farming the lash for money anyway, you mind sparing one for me? I could use it.” Tony’s eyes sparkled in excitement, a slight, hopeful smile creeping onto his glasses-adorned face.

“Whatcha play? Could squad up. Already got a warlock and a hedgemage.” Damon leaned back in his seat.

“Summoner. Trying out a vitality build ever since they gave some minions the ability to receive bonuses from your own stat modifiers.”

Damon’s jaw almost fell onto the floor. “You played summoner BEFORE that? How the hell did you even play the game? Felt like I was watching Summoner get kicked in the nuts every other patch before they finally figured out what they wanted to do with it.”

Tony shrugged. “Well… I just liked playing it. Always liked minion builds. Especially cause I usually don’t have any friend groups to play with… it feels nice having teammates I can predict and that’ll listen to me.”

“You know, Damon, you did always say you wished we had someone who could tank while you go full damage. Besides, I could say the same over here about the whole teammate thing. Just a duo hasn’t been cutting it for the latest areas. Hey Tony, what level are you at?”

“About 120 or so.” Tony adjusted his glasses.

“Eh, not too much grind to get where we’re at.” Johan extended a hand. “Welcome to the squad, Tony.” A bit of a limp grip on each, the two shook hands. “If we could get a fourth we’d have enough to do a lot more stuff… you know anyone else that plays?”

“Er… no,” Tony admitted sheepishly, running fingers through his unkempt hair. “I tried asking the guys at work, but they didn’t seem all that interested. They usually just yell my name at me whenever they see me and that’s all the interaction I can ever get out of them.”

“Ah, damn, guess we’ll-”

From the front seat, Jasmine cut in. “I could play.” She gave a brief side-eye to the three in the back, and Johan could almost see a sparkle in her eyes through her bright blue hair.

It was like a piece of glassware had shattered on the ground as all conversation stopped immediately. All three in the back shifted and shuffled in place, sitting up straight. Johan stared up at the front.

“W-what?” Tony stammered. “Aunt Jasmine, you… you said you had never even touched a video game before. Are you sure?”

She shrugged. “Might as well find a hobby while I’m back on the job search. I hear you talking about it all the time. It sounds fun being a wizard!”

“Are you… sure? It’s a pretty big time investment.” Johan sounded cautious, but he had to give it to her, he was impressed she would try. Looking in the rearview mirror, her soft smile had even brightened a bit. She meant it. “I mean, we’d be happy to teach you and help you along. Is there anything you… like doing in video games?”

“Ah, I’ll play just about anything. How do these classes work?”

The three in the back looked between each other.

“Well, you got 4 stats, Strength for martial arts, Vitality for having a lotta health, Handling for weapons and other stuff, and Intelligence for all your magic. Classes depend on how much you put in each, usually like… one or two stats for each class.”

Damon pointed to himself. “I’m runnin’ a warlock. Strength and Intelligence. Good close-up kinda class. Makes it easy to protect…” He pointed to Johan. “Him, cause he’s runnin’ a Hedgemage for some reason. Mix of all four stats.”

Johan huffed indignantly. “Just because you heard it was bad on a tier list doesn’t mean it’s the worst. Couple more levels and I’ll be able to stack Feint with Eyebite and Putrefaction. Hedgemage does just about everything.”

“There’s no way they allow that.” Damon snorted, and finally pointed to Tony as he settled back into a resting position. “You heard what he plays, Summoner. Good all-rounder if you’re the kinda genius that can keep track of all of the little buggers.”

“Everyone overrates how hard it is. Refresh at low percent, Frenzy off cooldown, keep a distance between them, Recall for protection, it’s basic tactics.” Tony objected.

A little taken aback by all of what she just heard, Jasmine hesitated. “So, uhm… what would be… easy?”

“Priest.” All three said in unison.

“If you know what a healthbar is and how to press number keys, you’ve done half the work required to play priest. Heal your party, press the more damage button, Smite whenever you feel like it.” Johan shrugged.

He brought up another article on his phone, ‘Priest For Dummies.’ “Just level up Vitality and Intelligence and you’ll be fine. We’ll talk you through the more complicated stuff when we get there. Just gonna have to get you and Tony into the squad with me and Damon.”

“Hah! I hope you’re ready to be teaching someone who’s never played a video game before. Still, sounds like a damn good time. Glad you all have something you’re interested in and passionate about. I’ll see about getting everything set up tonight… tomorrow sound good?”

Johan glanced at the two neighboring him, getting an affirmative nod from each. A relaxed, happy feeling washing over him, he grinned. “Tomorrow sounds good.”

Jasmine’s bright blue eyes lit up even further. “Great! See you all online tomorrow, then.”

| TO BE CONTINUED >

Chapter 11: The Big Day

Johan gritted his teeth as the world seemed to slow down to a crawl. He ever so slightly opened one eye as the woman opened her mouth to speak.

“…Johan Johansson of Stilton, California!” His name flashed on the screen, along with a picture of Stilton, taken directly from its Wikipedia page.

A second figure entered the frame behind the announcer, speaking out his name in unison with her. As the camera panned upwards, he realized that it was the one person this was all about- Vei Roseburg. She smiled sweetly to the camera and waved.

“Johan Johansson… please come down to the Masoko Tanga Building in Fresno within two weeks. You will receive an email with more details shortly. Thank you for your participation, and I’ll see you soon! Everyone else, thank you for coming to the stream! All donations will be put directly into our medical wing’s research fund.”

As the stream came to an end, Johan sat in his chair, unmoving and unblinking. In disbelief, he moved his hand up to his face, mouth slowly coming to hang open in shock.

“Holy shit… I…” He murmured to himself, thoroughly unable to even start to form a coherent sentence. “I… Damon. Yeah.”

Clumsily, Johan reached in his pockets for his smartphone, tapping in his passcode and into the phone app, where he practically slammed in Damon’s number. It didn’t even have the time to ring once before he picked up, a loud cheer immediately erupting from the other side.

“YOOOOOOO!”

“YOOOOOOOOOOOO!”

It was a solid few minutes of incomprehensible yelling before either calmed down. When they finally settled, there was a brief period where the only sound either could hear was the other’s breathing.

“So, uhm…” Damon finally broke the silence, awkward in his tone. “So… how are we gonna… get over there? Neither of us has a car.”

“We can get a rental or something. I’ve had some money saved up for an occasion like this, if I have to blow a few bucks on a two week car rental, I will.”

“I’ve seen you online at 3 AM, how the hell you manage to squirrel away enough money with that kinda sleep and your hours?”

“Pressure. Nobody else has a Stand… so for all they know, I’m just an extra efficient worker… paid accordingly. Same pay for less hours.”

“Ah… yeah, damn, lucky bastard.”

“They’re hiring, you know. The Now Now would probably be even better than Pressure is.”

Damon huffed. “Appreciate the offer and all, but I don’t think I can work in some stuffy warehouse like you do.”

“Awww. Would be nice having you there.” Johan put on a fake, cheery singsong voice.

“Sounds kinda gay, dude. Not happening. Let’s go pick out a car at the rental place. Something we’re actually gonna wanna drive for two weeks.”

“I’m actually gonna want to drive for two weeks,” Johan corrected. “You still never bothered to get a license, did you?”

“Town’s about three buildings away from being classified as a village. No use getting one when I could take a couple steps off my porch and be within eyesight of basically everything. I still know how to drive a car well enough to not get pulled over.”

“Not risking it. Now… let’s go pick something out. I don’t know anything about cars, so… I hope you do.”

Damon laughed. “Nope. What, you think it matters at all? Something with two seats that ain’t gonna blow up on the way there’s all we need.”

“Weren’t you talking about how you thought the vanometric batteries they’re putting in cars were gonna blow up any minute now?”

“Ah, well, it’s… it’s whatever for now, it’ll be worth the risk if we can actually get to Fresno.”

“Horny ass.”

“A-a-ah. I don’t wanna hear it from you, cause you agreed to what I said.”

Johan grumbled to himself, and stared at the ceiling, considering. “Well, whatever. Let’s just go to the rental place and pick out a car.”

“Yeah, yeah. Hope we ain’t subject to any of the kinda bullshit that’s been happening to us over the last little while. I’m this close to buying a gun.”

“Relax, man. It’s Stilton. Most dangerous guy here is probably that creep from Mcdonald’s, and he’s behind bars.” Johan leaned back in his chair and lazily spun around.

“There’s still-“ Damon protested.

“Let’s just go. You worry too much.”

Damon fell silent on the other end.

It was never a long walk to anywhere in Stilton, and the rental place was no exception, a fact Johan was thankful for. It would be open until 8, but he knew the feeling of a customer staying until the last minute.

As they stepped into the inside, the smell of motor oil and a metallic tang hit their noses. Serving as a half repair shop, half rental car dealership, the area where they did all the repairs was just a door beyond the counter where all the transactions actually occurred. Walking up to the counter, Johan could see the tired eyes of the woman behind it staring him down.

“Here to rent or get some work done?”

“Uh… rent.”

“And whose name will this be under?”

“Johan Johansson… JoJo.”

“Uh huh… interesting name… and what kind of car will you be renting?” She typed rapidly into the computer at her desk, staring up at Johan expectantly.

Johan froze. He didn’t actually know where to even begin with what he wanted to rent. He had expected to be able to have a chance to look at what they had in the lot. “U-uh,” he stammered. “Just looking for something for… two weeks. You got anything, like… cheap?”

The woman raised an eyebrow. “Cheapest we got is a… 2011 Lincoln town car.”

Johan had no idea what that was. “Works for me. I’ll take it.” He nodded confidently.

A smile crept across her face. She rolled back behind the desk, leaning behind her chair. “Hey, Mason! Someone’s renting the Lincoln!”

A man poked his head out of a door to the workshop, a great big smile on his face. “Really?! Ha! You have fun with her out there! Think this is gonna be her last ride… old girl’s getting real tired… take care of her for us, yeah?”

“Uh… yeah.” Johan said awkwardly.

“Hehe… just fill out this paperwork. Full tank or not, agreeing to the terms, official confirmation… you’ve signed paperwork before. Get it back to me and I can give you the keys.”

Taking the papers and giving them a quick look over, Johan nodded with a quiet “Thank you.”

Back at the seating area, Damon sat in a way that basically took up an entire couch by himself. He leaned his head back with a groan, only to see Johan walking over with a somewhat concerned look on his face. “Damn, they making you sign all that for a car they’re laughing and joking about?”

“It’s… dude, I don’t even know half this stuff. And what’s my place of birth have to do with renting a car?” Johan hunched over the papers, humming to himself.

“Legal mumbo jumbo, ‘s my guess. Make it quick, yeah? Gonna get something to eat once we’re finished testing it out.” Damon’s stomach growled as if on cue.

“I’m trying my best, dude. I hope you’re paying for my dinner too, cause I’m the one renting it out.” Johan froze in place, and the gears could almost be heard grinding in his head.

“I-“ Damon sat up, about to protest. “Ah, you know what, fair enough.”

“Hangon. Dude. I have an idea.” With only a little help from Pressure, Johan snapped his pen in half, peering into the broken halves.

“Decided we’re walking?” Damon snorted.

Without another word, Johan held both halves in one hand and… put his mouth on them, crossing his eyes as he sucked out all the ink. With a shimmer, Pressure manifested beside him, a distinct black blob floating within. Ink. The blob zipped downward, coalescing into its index finger.

Johan set the papers down and kicked back as Pressure grabbed the papers and sped through signing them, with immaculate handwriting on top of its speed. Just seconds later, it had read and signed every single piece of the paperwork.

Damon looked mildly impressed. “Neat trick. You read all of it?”

Johan puffed out his chest. “Yup.”

“And did it taste good?”

As Pressure dissipated, Johan made a sour face. “No.”

“Any ink left over?”

Johan’s face fell as he realized he had not, in fact, given mind to where the ink would end up. His face flushed red as Damon cackled, and he shamefully made his way over to the front desk to hand back the papers.

After a quick look over, the woman nodded to Johan. “All checks out. You take care of that car, now.” She reached into a drawer and tossed him the keys, which he gracefully caught, saving a small fraction of his ego. “You have a good day, sir. It’ll be in the third spot on the right.”

Johan nodded back and motioned for Damon to follow him, keys in hand. Stepping outside, their new car sat in its parking spot, its white paint job gleaming in the evening sun.

Damon whistled. “Not bad. Still, come on, 2011? Bet this thing doesn’t even have any of those vanometric batteries you were talking about.”

“They didn’t mention that it wasn’t, and I read somewhere that it’s something you have to be clear about.”

“Aaaalright, fine… stackin’ the risk of blowing up with this thing breakin’ down from being from the mesozoic era. Mcdonald’s?”

“Where else?” Johan fiddled with the keys and sat himself down into the driver’s seat, settling into the leather with a relaxed breath. “Comfy, I’ll give it that.”

“‘d think it’d have worn down by now. Impressive.” Damon leaned back into his seat, tapping their usual orders into the app.

“…Still got the taste of ink on my tongue. Let’s just go straight there. I don’t care enough to draw out the time for a joyride.”

“Yeeeaaaahhh!” Damon cheered as Johan fumbled with the controls and, eventually, started up the car with a roar.

It was a short walk to anywhere in Stilton, and an even shorter drive. It was hardly three minutes before the two were pulling into the parking lot.

“Controls about how you’d expect for how it looks. Dunno what else I expected.” Johan murmured to himself as they climbed out of the car, stomachs rumbling.

“…Whaddya mean?” Damon cocked his head.

“Like a brick on wheels, dude.”

“You got what you paid for, man. Let’s sit down this time. See if anyone recognizes us after our heroic deeds.” Damon grinned and pushed open the door and scoured the restaurant for a free table. “Heyyy, best spot is open.” Damon pointed excitedly and sped over to his favorite table, plopping himself down into the chair and beckoning Johan over.

“They’re coming to our table?”

“Yup.”

“Think we’re gonna hear anything about these so called heroic deeds while we’re here?” Johan asked.

“Plan on keeping an ear out.” Damon smiled.

“So… we have two weeks before we actually have to be there… could probably take a few stops along the way. See the sights, have new experiences, meet new people.” Johan mused.

“It’s California, how much is there to really see? You got LA and Disneyland and nothing else. I don’t think either of us have the money to stop at either of those.”

“Well, I’m sure there’s SOMETHING you’d wanna see along the way to Fresno. Lemme look up a route.” Johan opened his phone and began scrolling through the list of nearby locations. Minutes passed, their food arrived, and Johan continued to plot out a route.

“Hey. Shshsh.” Damon tapped Johan on the shoulder, pointing towards the front of the restaurant, where several people stood in line.”I think I heard your name.”

“Really?” Johan snapped out of his trance and looked upright, looking to where Damon was pointing.

“-der, no, for… like JoJo, just with a-“

Johan stared, listening intently. He was right. He had heard the name right. Were they really talking about him?

“Oh shit, they’re coming this way.” Damon whispered urgently.

And lo and behold, they were indeed, carrying a tray of food with them. As the person passed by their table, they stopped in place. “Saw you fellas looking at me. Something wrong?”

Johan stuttered. “Uh… n-no, just thought we heard you say my name.”

“Oh, interesting.” They pulled over a loose chair, sitting down and placing their tray on the two’s table alongside them. They were scrawny, and it was almost a miracle they could lift up their food at all. “It’s a possibility. What’s your name.”

“Oh, it’s, uh…” Johan looked down at their order. Burger upon burger with patty upon patty. It was just… meat. All meat. How could someone so small eat so much? He looked down a bit further, the receipt catching his eye, their name specifically. GoGo. “Jo… Joooohhh fuck.”

Johan looked up, met with the sight of a grim expression on Damon’s face and a worse expression on the recent arrival’s, a downright evil toothy grin.

Their face twisted and warped in front of them, muscle fibers unraveling until a much larger woman than the twiggy teenager sat before them.

She laughed. “Ah, mate. I already know. Real familiar, that one.” She leaned in closer, stuffing an entire burger into her mouth and swallowing without chewing or even pausing. “Whaaaat, not happy to see your old pal?”

Damon gritted his teeth and turned away as Johan spoke slowly with a quiet anger. “Goseia. Hell do you want? We’re just trying to eat.”

She mock frowned at Damon. “Aww, you don’t want to talk? Just wanted to congratulate my best pal for winning that there raffle.” Goseia extended a hand as if for a handshake, only to suddenly grab Johan’s hand and squeeze it as hard as she could. It deflated limply, and Johan pulled his hand out of her grasp.

Goseia scoffed. “Never been a bloke for any fun. You or your boyfriend. You know, I was looking to win that raffle too.”

Johan smirked, satisfied with himself. “Well, it’s just luck. Better luck next time, you know.”

Goseia chuckled. “Oh, yeah, I’m not pressed. Seemed like a good excuse to get outta this shithole.”

“Shouldn’t you be in prison or something?” Johan grunted, turning back to his meal as Goseia absorbed another two burgers.

“Ah, I got out cause I was good. Had a lot of time to reflect on myself. Really, appreciative of the opportunity.” Goseia’s smile melted off her face, and she leaned in close to Johan, voice lowering. As she spoke, her fingers unraveled into individual fibers, curling around Johan’s neck and lifting him up to her eye level. The various patrons of the restaurant began to turn their heads as she rose to full height, Johan’s face inches from hers.

“Look… that little smile you’ve got on your runt face,” a statement punctuated with a flick upside Johan’s head and a tug on Damon’s hair, “tells me you didn’t exactly play fair with that raffle. I don’t know how you did it, but I wouldn’t be smug about it, yeah? I’ll find out, and you and him’ll be right sorry you fucked over my one chance to get out of this nothingville village.”

She stood up, her wide grin back on her face as she let Johan go. He fell onto the floor on his knees, clutching his throat and taking deep, panicked breaths as the scattered patrons yelped and moved away.

“So, I suppose that I’ll be seeing you sometime. Good luck with your little trip to Fresno… be seeing you there, JoJo.” She stuffed her remaining burgers directly into her stomach, and stomped her way out of the store, chortling to herself as people nervously shuffled out of her way.

Johan coughed, and pushed himself to his feet. “God… damn it.”

| TO BE CONTINUED >

Chapter 12: The Trip

Johan stared at the screen, exhausted, as he watched Jasmine’s sorcerer do a wave emote and disconnect. It had barely been a day, but a part of him started regretting inviting her to Sorcery Online. How could he have possibly guessed that a thirty year old woman would have so much time and energy?

He groaned and put his head in his hands after she disappeared, looking around his room, remarkably empty aside from the necessities. It was about as neat as he could stand to keep it, which wasn’t very, given the unmade bed, several drawers full of random clothes shoved in without rhyme or reason, and array of unfinished plastic brick robotics kits, the model of the bionic tail Roseburg invented standing tall and staring at him judgingly.

He glanced at his alarm clock before staring down at the desk, a space far neater than anything else in his room. Free of dust and grime, with a spotless monitor and polished casing emanating a soft purple light. He glanced at his alarm clock. 3 AM. “We can’t keep going like this, man.”

“It’s… how the hell does someone nearly twice our age play like that? Give her a dose of adderall or SOMETHING. We took like twice this long to get to this level, and even then, we barely understood how to play.” Damon groaned, and Johan could hear him equally exhausted on the other end.

Johan looked back up and the state of his keyboard. Dirtied. He manifested a miniscule amount of Pressure, scooping up all the debris he could find, depositing it into the trash. “We’ve, like… GOT to find something else to occupy her time. I don’t think the human mind is meant to operate like hers is.”

“Can say that again, man… we’re going to be disappearing for two weeks to go visit that lady in Fresno, though, so…”

“If we leave her alone for that long, I don’t think she would have any hopes of employment. I… we… could take her with us, or something. Like…”

“Take a near stranger with us for two weeks on a road trip?” Damon asked, sounding almost cautious.

“I… I just don’t have the heart to leave her alone so suddenly.” Johan admitted.

Damon sighed, and from what Johan could hear over call, slammed his head into his desk. “…Me neither, man.”

“Alright… guess we’re dragging her along. Whether she likes it or not, before she spirals into… god, remember right after we were actually free from school for a bit?”

“Eckh. Dark times, man.”

“Maybe this is just all… 3 am talk and we’re gonna forget this in the morning. I’m hopping off. Good night, dude.”

“Night, man.”

The next waking memory Johan had was watching his alarm clock tick by, all the way to 9AM, which is when it began its routine shriek. He groaned. With more than a little regret, he dismissed his alarm, climbed out of bed and into his seat in front of his computer, and booted up a call, and could practically taste the feeling being mutual in Damon as he near-instantly responded.

“Give her a call?” Johan asked without a second of pause.

Damon took a second to process. “I… Yeaaaah… see if she’s online.”

Switching to Invisible Mode, Johan launched Sorcery Online, and sure enough, there she was, fighting her way through a dungeon… solo. “Jesus christ. Did she even sleep?” Browsing through his friends list, he stared at the screen for a brief second. With a sigh, he added her to the call.

“Oh, hey! I was just, uhm… grinding a bit before you guys got on, I didn’t… think you’d be on this… soon, uh- early!”

Johan took a deep breath. “Oh, uh… we weren’t planning on hopping on just yet. Actually wanted to ask you something. You know about the raffle we mentioned in the car? With Tony?”

“Y… yeah?”

“Well, I won! And, uh… me and Damon were gonna go together, and wondered if you wanted to come along. Would be for about two weeks. Planning to leave in a few hours, so uh… sorry for it being a bit abrupt.”

“Like… wait, the one to meet the… her?” A growing excitement crept up in her voice.

“Yeah. That one.”

“And would I get to like…”

Johan trailed off awkwardly. “Ehhhhh… not sure if you can actually come along, but… Damon’s coming along in the hopes, so, figured you… might… want to, I guess.”

“Oh, I, uh… no, sure! Someone’s gotta keep you two from getting into trouble again, hehe…” She sent a smug-looking emoticon over text.

“Guess we’ll be seeing you then, yeah?” Damon asked.

“Yeah, uh… thank you, bye!” And with that, she disconnected from the call, leaving Johan and Damon in silence as they each sat at their desks.

Damon was the first to break the silence. “We better not regret inviting her along.”

“Ah, we’re all responsible adults, how bad could it really be?”

“I dunno, man. We don’t really know her, plus she’s a cop.”

“Ex-cop. Fired ‘cause she let us off the hook, remember?” Johan spun around in his chair, staring at the arrangement of various anime figures he kept on a shelf next to his desk. He furrowed his brow, and reached out to rearrange a few of their limbs and ensure everything was in its place. He scoffed at his own amateur work. The Titan Gun System mechas weren’t even able to move their limbs like that.

“...Yeah, alright, that’s fair enough. By the way, you have a cat, yeah? You really think it’s gonna be able to care for itself over two weeks?”

“Oh, shit, you’re right… I’ll contact Tony about it. Didn’t seem like he lived too far when we all got a ride home.” Whipping up a message, he shot it over to Tony, pausing and squinting his eyes as he noticed for the first time that he had a blurry picture of Tubthumping as his profile picture. Huh.

It took a few minutes to get a response, minutes which Johan spent rearranging the non-functional bathroom Lelijk had as his own personal room, whilst the cat observed from his perch on top of the counter, looking confused at what was happening as always.

Toilet lid securely sealed so that little rascal couldn’t get in again… check. Clean litter box… check. Making sure his bowls were full… check. Satisfied, he scooped up scattered bits of kibble Lelijk had pushed out of his bowl and hand-fed them to him, giving him a small kiss on the head and checking back in with his computer.

It took only a few minutes of googling how much a cat sitter should realistically be paid, making sure Tony knew all the steps, and assuring him that he would ask Ms. Roseburg the questions Tony had prepared, for everything to be complete.

He sighed. Two weeks away from home to talk to the person he looked up to most in the world? The weight pressed down on him as he considered everything. He shook his head. Better to just get on with it. He re-joined Damon on call, taking a long exhale.

“So… we ever figure out any plans for where we’re gonna stop?” Johan asked.

“Uhhhhhh… no, but… like I said, hell else are we gonna go? Ain’t nothing around here. Stop at a gas station for snacks or something, but otherwise… mostly desert.”

“Yeeaaaaah, I guess. See you when it’s time to go, I guess.”

“Yup. See ya.” With that, Damon disconnected from the call, leaving Johan to the silence of his room, wondering how he was going to spend the few hours until it was time to leave. He glanced at his computer. He did still have a hell of a backlog to claw through…

He found himself staring at his alarm clock again what felt like an eternity later. An anecdote on two nickels crossed his mind as he set his headphones on the back of his chair, standing up and stretching his aching muscles. Shaking off the fuzz, he got properly dressed and threw a few necessities and personal belongings into a suitcase.

With one last kiss administered to Lelijk’s head, he hurried down the stairs, suitcase in tow, sending Jasmine her notification that the time to leave was just about here. As he swung the door open, he took one more look over his shoulder, making sure everything was clean…

He didn’t have much furniture, so aside from the various empty hallways painted a refreshing pastel blue, a quick inspection of the makeshift living room consisting of an armchair and a mounted TV pretty much confirmed everything was spotless.

Courtesy of the repetitive suburban housing, finding Damon’s house would be almost impossible if he wasn’t literally right next to him. Johan pounded on the door with his fist, cursing Damon for keeping his doorknob flattened with his Stand.

It was only when Damon finally opened his door that Johan stopped knocking. “Alright, alright, Johan, I’m ready, I’m ready.” Damon hefted his bag over his shoulder and hurried over to Johan’s driveway. Making their way into the car, Damon chuckled and claimed ‘first,’ receiving a stuck-out tongue for his troubles. Johan looked at his phone. A fresh text message indicated Jasmine was at Mcdonald’s to be picked up. Perfect.

After he settled into his seat, Johan took a moment to really take in his ride’s interior. Cushy leather seats, a polished wood dashboard, all colored a pleasant beige and lined with soft fabric. It really was a cozy feeling.

They sped off with haste, out of the endless suburban landscape and into a more colorful part of town… barely. Still mostly brick and concrete, with that distinctive Stilton grey hanging over the town like a blanket as always.

As they pulled in, they were almost immediately greeted by the sight of Jasmine, bright turquoise hair easy to pick out among the dull browns and greys. She held a happy meal in one hand, fiddling with the complementary cheap plastic toy in the other. As they pulled in, she barely budged, still utterly fascinated by her toy. It took a honk of the horn to finally get her attention, startling her into dropping the plastic figure on the pavement. She looked up, alarmed, but smiled broadly at the sight of them.

“Ehe… sorry. I, uh… don’t think I really thanked you two enough for inviting me along…” She climbed into the back seat, making sure she retrieved her dropped item. “I did some research while we were waiting for the time to leave, and… no wonder you all were talking about her like that. Her mind’s gotta be something else to use stuff like entanglement and… super absorption to store energy so efficiently.”

“Yup.” Johan chuckled. “Surprised you came along even before doing all that research.”

“I heard enough from when you three were talking that I knew she was cool. Just didn’t know just how much.”

Johan cracked his knuckles and stretched, looking in the mirror. “Hoo… everyone ready for a road trip?”

Damon snorted. “Sound like a middle aged dad with that one.”

Johan elbowed him. “Not hearing anyone forgetting anything. Let’s ride.”

With a small cheer from the rest of the group, Johan shifted to reverse and pulled out of the parking lot, on track for the road out of Stilton.

Damon put in a pair of earbuds and laid back in his seat while Jasmine tapped through her phone as Johan drove, weaving through the streets in relative silence until the sign indicating they had left blew past.

It was nothing but the Mojave for miles, and even for Stilton standards, the road was sparsely populated, the only signs of life being the endless shrubbery and the odd building along the roadside.

A long silence passed, until inevitably, Jasmine piped up, after a good while of fidgeting in the back. “Hey… is this thing able to play any music? The silence is, uhm…” She trailed off.

“Uh… think so. Just pass your phone up front, we’ll put it on the speakers.” Johan absentmindedly promised, taking the phone Jasmine passed up and tapping through it until he had all of her music on and shuffled, passing it back to her right after.

As the first song played, Johan found himself muttering along to it under his breath, as opposed to Jasmine, who sang along with enthusiasm… much to the faint annoyance of Damon, Johan noticed, who shrank in his seat and turned his own music up louder, to the point Johan could almost hear it through Damon’s earbuds.

Her playlist slowly ran its course, song by song, and Johan couldn’t help but note that they were all strikingly similar; bouncy, girlish pop music. He shrugged. Everyone has their own tastes, he supposed.

After not too much longer, everything had quieted down, aside from the music still playing. Even through the various top 50 pop songs, though, a single sound rang out- the rumbling of stomachs. It HAD been a while since most of them had had a meal.

“So, that gas station visit I was talking about…” Damon sat up in his seat, peering out the window in search of a place to stop. “Oh- hey- speak of the devil. Over there.” Damon gestured to the right. Sure enough, in the distance, only just enough to make out, was the shape of Stilton’s local brand of gas station- Barcam’s.

“Oh, hell yeah…” Johan grinned. “Think we should probably get some stuff for the rest of the trip… and, uh… maybe plan out our route a bit better. See if there’s anywhere else we wanna stop… and god damn, I could go for a piss.”

The tiny prick in the distance slowly became closer and closer, minute after minute, until they arrived with a collective sigh of relief, pulling up next to one of the pumps. With another stretch, Johan clambored out of his car, attention caught by the presence of an exceedingly old-looking car while the other two got out.

“Yo, Damon… you seeing this thing?”

Damon whistled. “Damn, didn’t think any of those things were even still operable. Bet it doesn’t even have one of them vanometric batteries installed, neither… anyway. Gas, food, uh… let’s plan a better route.”

As Damon worked out the pricing for gas, marveling at how high prices had climbed, Johan brought up his phone, peering at the map and working the route out in his head. “Never driven in heavy traffic before… should we stay on the road through the Mojave?”

“If you don’t wanna stop anywhere and think we can make it with a full tank, sure.” Damon crossed his arms and leaned against the side of the car, still staring at the car sitting on the other end of the lot.

“I mean… yeah, I think we could?” Johan shrugged.

“Eh… you remember how old this thing is? Miles per gallon’s probably shit.”

“True… I… I can’t hardly make anything out on this map.”

“All desert. Nothin’ to make out.”

“Ugh… I’ll get the maps voice to plot something out. Ask it to maybe give us a few places to stop at, eh? Got plenty of time before we get there.”

Damon fell silent for a moment. “...Whatever. Works for me. Let’s go get food and pay for gas.” He knocked on the car window, causing Jasmine to nearly jump out of her skin, snapping her back to reality. “Yo, we’re gonna go get some shit to eat on the way there. You comin’ to pick something out?”

Jasmine’s face changed from shock to excitement, climbing out of the car with a slight bounce in her step. “Sure!”

Johan nodded. “Let’s go, then.”

The automatic doors slid open for the trio, and… yup, Johan thought. Definitely a Barcam’s. The fluorescent lights hummed softly, the various posters on the wall advertised sales on generic brands of snacks and drinks, and a bored-looking cashier sat behind the counter, staring them down as they entered the store.

“Alright… let’s get some stuff actually worth eating on the way there. Nuts, jerky, bottled water, maybe some granola bars… just, uh… actual food. Yeah?”

Jasmine snapped her gaze from the other side of the store back to Johan, putting her hands on her hips and nodding. “Uh-huh. Got it.” She wandered off in the direction of the snack aisle, and Johan and Damon shared a look between each other.

“You think she-”

“Yeah.”

They shared a sigh. Oh well.

| TO BE CONTINUED >

Chapter 13: The Judge

Johan stared down the neatly stocked aisles of the gas station, squinting and trying to pick out anything he had missed. It was hard to tell amidst all the brightly colored packaging, and the maddening hum of the fluorescent lights wasn’t helping. “Right, so… jerky.” He pointed at Damon.

“Check.” Damon nodded.

 

“Granola bars.”

 

“Check.”

 

“Nuts and shit.”

 

“Check.”

 

“And… just for fun, snacks.”

 

Jasmine leaned over with a few bags of sweets. It had certainly been a little embarrassing getting lectured by two men a decade younger about money management, but she eventually had relented. “…Check.”

 

“Alright, I think we’ve got everything we’ll need,” Johan said. “As long as our car doesn’t break down or anything, it’ll be a smooth ride from here to Fresno… I’ll, uh, pay this time.”

 

The trio wandered through the aisles and up to the gas station counter, where a man they hadn’t seen stood, with long black hair flowing down to his waist, equally black vest and pants, and a downright egregiously large belt with a bright shining buckle. He crossed his arms and tapped his foot as he argued with the cashier over prices, growing increasingly frustrated by the minute.

 

“This was clearly marked, I will pay for the price listed, and not a penny more.” He leaned forward over the counter angrily..

 

“Like, I dunno, man.” the cashier raised his hands defensively. “That’s just what it was scanned in as, I don’t like, control that.”

 

“It feels as if I’m being stolen from… yes, stealing. Stealing. That’s the sin you’ve committed.”

 

 As he spoke those words, he held his arm up as if holding something, and after just two seconds, a chime rang out through the store. 

 

Instantly, Jasmine stumbled backwards, a bit unsteady. She felt like she had a weight around her neck, and the mere acts of moving her feet and raising her head proved difficult. Still, she managed to remain standing, taking a deep, painful breath as her arms hung limply by her sides, too heavy to move.

 

In front of her, Johan and Damon fell far harder, ending up on their backs on the floor, struggling to even move.They seemed as if they had an elephant each sitting right on top of them.

 

The cashier, however, remained standing perfectly still, and the man who had been arguing with him gasped, looking away at the floor. “O… oh… I suppose you’re right, then. My apologies.”

 

Face flushed red, the man waited patiently for his items to be bagged before grabbing them, paying, and scurrying out of the store. As he did so, the pressure pressing down on them suddenly lifted. The cashier stared down at them, eyebrow raised. “Been a while since we mopped the floors. Can’t be that slippery.”

 

“You didn’t feel that?” Johan asked as he clambered to his feet and set down all his items.

 

“Felt a little weird when he was talking about sin and stuff, man, but, like… I dunno.” He shrugged.

 

“Right, well… god, I hope he doesn’t show up again. Uh, four dollars on pump six, please.” Johan squinted out the window, watching the man wander over to and disappear behind his car. Shaking his head, Johan slammed down the required cash, giving the cashier a nod and making Jasmine carry everything she picked out.

 

After a bit of stumbling under the weight of everything she was saddled with, Jasmine took her place sitting down in the back of the car, watching the other two out the window. Johan unloaded everything into its dedicated space in the car while whistling a familiar tune, while Damon pumped gas.

 

Damon leaned over. “Yo, Johan. Look who that car belongs to.”

 

Johan looked up, and there was the long black-haired man, staring back at them with equal curiosity. “Yeah, figures. Hell does he want?”

 

“Dunno, might just be some weirdo.” Damon turned to the man. “Hey! Jackass! Nice car!” 

“…Thank you.” He spoke up, forcing out a smile and screwing the cap back on his gas tank. “My name is Yuno. It’s a pleasure to meet you.” He approached their vehicle, running his hand over it. “You have a nice car as well. Johan and Damon, was it?”

 

“Y… yeah, that’s our names.” Johan mumbled, shifting uncomfortably.

 

“They’re wonderful names… you know… I couldn’t help but notice you two in the store just now. I’m sure you felt that strange, collapsing feeling. Like a weight on your shoulders, aching and pressing down on you.”

 

Damon snorted. “Yeah, cause you were showing off your Stand to some cashier who didn’t do nothing.”

 

“He indeed was guilt free.” Yuno crossed his arms.

 

“Yeah, and you can’t just go around lording over-“

 

Yuno looked up at Damon, cutting him off. “It is you three who are the sinners.”

 

Jasmine put her hand on the door handle, watching him carefully.

 

“Look, we’re not looking for any trouble. Besides, the officer in the car there was there to make sure we ultimately didn’t get away with anything.” Johan huffed.

 

“I cannot simply let such a thing go.”

 

The man raised his arm, holding the pose of the lady of justice- Jasmine gasped quietly as she recognized the pose he had made inside the store, warning of his ability.

 

There it was. His Stand. A floating mass of cloth, what could only be described as its arms were jabbed through its neck, tilted like a scale. Even through its face covering, she could feel the piercing gaze staring straight through her soul.

 

A chime rang out. Immediately, the two boys collapsed under the pressure, and she herself sank deep into her seat.

 

“Asshole, what did I just say?” Johan growled. “I’ll…” Water flowed from his fingers, only to splat wetly against the asphalt.

 

With Damon and Johan both buckling under their own weight, Jasmine narrowed her eyes. She opened the car door and placed a foot on the pavement, which cracked under the weight granted to her by the enemy Stand.

 

“Come on now…” She grunted, wobbling onto her feet. It took all the effort in her body just to stand up, but she leaned over the roof of the car, staring daggers at Yuno. “Leave… leave those kiddos alone.”

 

He looked at her, a mix of surprise and amusement creeping into a smile. “You can barely stand, officer. Don’t you worry. I will be done shortly.”

 

“Liquid Cool…” Jasmine took a deep breath, crossing her arms and summoning Liquid Cool beside her, where it shimmered into being, unfolding into standing, where it towered over the car. She stepped forward, circling around the car, a loud thud echoing out with each step. Yuno easily outpaced her, looping around almost casually.

 

She growled, putting out one foot and practically flinging her whole body weight forward, sending her sloppily careening around the front of the car, Liquid Cool being the only thing between her and hitting the ground. Even with this, Yuno was still far out of reach, smirking confidently.

 

This went on for the better part of a minute, up until the moment Jasmine clenched her fists and had Liquid Cool spring over the top of the car for a wild, desperate grab at the man. 

 

He merely laughed, stepping back out of reach and raising his arm again. “You deal with the weight I put on you quite well, but you must know that this is not everything I can do… Have you committed the sin of… hatred?”

 

“N-noaaaaah! Whoah!” Jasmine’s huffy retort was cut short as another chime rang out. She felt her stomach almost jump out of her throat as her gravity inverted, taking her from barely able to stand under her own weight to gently floating upwards.

 

“You asshole! Put me down!” She flailed wildly with her Stand, throwing punch after punch, only stopping once it became clear she had to make an effort in keeping her lunch down.

 

Yuno put a hand to his chin. “So you’re completely innocent regarding hatred… interesting.” He pointed at her. “We’ll just have to find something else to get you on. But for now…”

 

He produced several knives from his back pocket, carefully checking over each one. Satisfied, he reared back, tossing one with all his might at the floating Jasmine.

 

Liquid Cool sprang into action almost reflexively, raising its arm up into the path of the knife and allowing it to clink off of its thick armor ineffectively. 

 

Yuno merely frowned, tossing another knife in her direction, deflected just as easily as the first. Another and another, again and again, faster or at different angles. The first was easy. The second was less so. 

 

By the time of the fifth, Jasmine and by extension Liquid Cool were certainly feeling the effects of being hovering in the air, helped a lot less by having nearly turned sideways in the air, less blocking and more swatting away any incoming projectiles.

 

Finally, though, Yuno relented. Letting Jasmine float higher up into the air with a haughty chuckle, he turned around, producing and counting out a new set of knives. Liquid Cool leapt forth, poised for a punch, only to bump against the edge of its range and hover back ineffectively. 

 

With her Stand now firmly outranged, Jasmine paused for a moment, unsure of what to actually do. But as she floated uselessly in the air, an idea struck her. Liquid Cool curled its hand into a fist and flicked its thumb upwards, popping off the tip, from which it poured tea all over its own arm.

 

Having finished his counting, Yuno smirked. “I think we both are aware you can’t keep this up forever. Please, just take the easy route.” Picking out his favorite, he hurled another knife in her direction, a smug look on his face.

 

Up until the moment Liquid Cool slammed the side of its arm into the oncoming projectile, leaving it stuck to its forearm instead. It was a lot less effort than trying to deflect or block it, and now that it had it, it peeled the knife off of its arm.

 

With all of its own might, Liquid Cool hurled it back to sender, sending Yuno jumping backwards in shock and surprise. He grimaced. “Oh, very interesting… it seems we’re going to have to do this the hard way. Tell me, how many people have you… neglected in a time of need?”

 

A chime rang out. Jasmine chuckled to herself. It wouldn’t make a difference. She was innocent, she thought, as she fell to the ground with a thud, feeling the effects of gravity once more.

 

What? What the hell could I have done? I’ve done the right thing every time, I… damn it, at least I tried!

 

“Oh, yes, I see… you have a background as a police officer. So many criminals just let go… you’ve let your department down many times. Oh, and even worse… someone innocent went to prison because of you…” Yuno put his hand to his chin and laughed at her as he detailed her mistakes.

 

“Bullshit! I-” Jasmine protested, only to be cut off.

 

“Five years and three months ago, 101 Telegraph Road. You-”

 

“No, that… that couldn’t have…”

 

“Oh, yes, indeed.”

 

“But… but I…”

 

“Failed, yes.”

 

Jasmine fell silent, staring down at the ground as Yuno chortled loudly and mockingly. 

 

“Is it really that easy to break your heart? I’m surprised you never noticed. You must be quite oblivious. They’re still in prison, you know.” He teased, not even bothering with an attack anymore.

 

Jasmine, however, felt quite different. Sweat beaded down her forehead and a single tear welled in her eye. Deep, labored breaths, agonizing under the immense pressure, were all that she could muster. It was like being crushed under a thousand feet of seawater. The only thing worse was the guilt racking her body, almost feeling as if it was adding to the weight.

 

She bit her cheek, put her hands to her knees, and began to rise up. Slowly but surely, and most certainly painfully, she stood tall, staring down Yuno with a gleam in her eyes. She cracked her knuckles as Liquid Cool readied itself beside her, Yuno stepping back with a slight look of shock on his face.

 

She smiled weakly, filled with a new determination. “I’ve had it up to here with you. Let’s dance.”

Chapter 14: The Station

The sun came down hot and heavy as Jasmine stood tall in the middle of the parking lot, sharing a staredown with the man standing across from her. They studied each other, tilting their heads in trying to make out what the other was thinking.

“Hm… so I can see that you’re very confident in your abilities. I applaud you for that.”

Jasmine didn’t humor a response, merely taking a step forward, leaving her thoughts running instead.

So, he’s been keeping his distance from me… even with a decently powerful physical Stand, he could fight me under this gravity. So he probably can’t defend himself up close. I just have to get in.

She took another step closer, and Yuno matched her movement, keeping well out of range. Each step forward was another step back from Yuno, a mirrored dance of cat and mouse. He easily outpaced her, circling in a figure eight through the pair of vacant gas pumps.

As he made a sharp turn around the second, Jasmine took her chance, and, using Liquid Cool, launched a kick at Yuno as he rounded the corner. It only truly accomplished making a dent in the side, but it was enough to send Yuno into a bit of a panic, speeding up the process at which he backed away.

Stumbling forward after her miss, Jasmine glared up at her opposition, hands on her knees as she regained her breath. It was clear that just brute forcing the situation wasn’t going to work.

Even as the hot sun beat down on both of them, he still bounded ahead of her. She licked her parched lips, as Yuno coolly paced in the shade of the gas station canopy. At this rate, if fatigue and exhaustion didn't do her in, then a knife to the heart eventually would.

Standing back up, she popped off the tip of Liquid Cool’s finger once again, pouring herself a cup of tea and downing it with a single gulp.

Yuno raised an eyebrow at the audacious maneuver, until he realized she had never stopped pouring, filling her cup up a second time, holding it in her shaking hands and making direct eye contact with him.

With a quick motion, she tilted the cup downwards and thrust it towards him, splashing a whole cupful of tea all over both him and the pavement.

He yelped in surprise and outrage, immediately trying to wring it out of his shirt and hair. “What was that for?! Have you lost your mind?”

Again, Jasmine didn’t dignify him with a response, merely tossing around another splash of tea in another direction. She laughed under her breath as she continued tossing cup after cup around, advancing towards Yuno and hurling cups towards him as well.

The barrage died down as Jasmine began to tire, and Yuno indignantly began trying to squeeze every last drop of tea out of his clothes with a harrumph. “Crazy bitch, you-“ His hand twitched as it attempted to release its grip on his shirt, only to remain firmly stuck in place. “Oh… I see what you’ve done.”

He sighed, looking down at his hand, shaking it vigorously as if it had any hope of clearing his hand of Liquid Cool’s effect. He glanced around the gas station, mentally counting out the array of near-invisible puddles of tea.

As he grimaced, Jasmine grinned, hands on her hips, looking very proud of herself. “Nice dodging, I’ll give you that. But I’m getting really tired of dancing around with you. So, uh… watch your step, yeah?”

Yuno snarled. “Very nice, very nice.” He continued trying to free his hand, growling in frustration, so focused he nearly failed to notice Jasmine’s rapid advance.

With a whimper, he scampered back, barely avoiding a heavy handed punch from Liquid Cool. Jasmine found it almost comical how much less confident he was when just minutes before he had been looping her around the station smugly.

Renewed enthusiasm fueled her chase as she reached out, trying her best to grab at Yuno as he skittered around in a panic, desperately trying to free his hand from his shirt. He nearly stumbled over himself as he made a sharp turn to avoid stepping directly in a puddle of tea, grunting in pain as his collection of knives jabbed into his legs.

It had only been a minute, maybe thirty seconds of this, but even still, Jasmine could hear how labored his breathing was and see the shaking in his legs. Even if he never ended up getting himself stuck, the stress of trying to avoid just that was wearing him out faster than she ever could before.

With each stride, the distance between the two grew smaller and smaller. The tips of Liquid Cool’s fingers could almost touch his shirt, and she knew she was close.

A triumphant “A-ha!” and the sound of ripping cloth signaled that Yuno had finally managed to separate his arm from his top, and with a haughty guffaw, he raised his arm high into the air.

The adrenaline coursing through her veins reached its peak as the world almost seemed to move in slow motion. Plans raced through her head as she watched the slow rise of Yuno activating his ability, the distinct chime echoing faintly in her ears like a false alarm as she anticipated the real thing.

One plan stuck. Even under all the crushing pressure of gravity, she forced herself to stumble forward, shifting her body to tumble towards her opponent before he even knew what she was doing. She only had to make it out from under the gas station roof.

One step, two steps, the impact of her feet against the ground sounded out like thunder. She hunched over, staring at the ground and trying to shake off the pain of straining herself this hard.

Yuno recoiled, but for once, he wasn’t her target for the moment. The soft chime of his ability resonated out into the air, and he found his eyes drifting downwards as he noticed the glaring fact that Jasmine… wasn’t actually floating upwards like he had imagined.

His face fell as he realized the reality of Jasmine's feet still being planted firmly on the ground, held to earth by the very tea she had tossed around earlier as the sun bore down on the both of them, now free from the overhead shadow cast by the roof.

“You… you stuck yourself to the ground…” Yuno murmured, looking her up and down as it dawned on her, too, the exact position she had put herself in. “You…” His frown washed away into a wide grin. “You idiot! You stepped into your own trap!” He erupted into laughter as Jasmine began trying to wiggle herself free from the sticky coating she had laid herself.

“Some officer you are! All I try, all I try, is to enact justice on the lot of you who can’t even hold yourselves to be above petty thieves.” He strode over to the still-incapacitated Johan and Damon, looking down on them with contempt. “Come now, you all, you must think it’s appropriate for a criminal to be punished!”

Damon weakly raised his middle finger towards Yuno, who merely began laughing even harder at the sight. “I suppose not! Well, why don’t we all take a lesson in what happens to the worthless scum who…” He trailed off, a sadistic look in his eye as he raised his boot high, bringing it down onto Damon’s face, rubbing the sole of his foot against his cheek.

He drove the toe of his boot into Damon’s nose as one final middle finger, turning his attention and head back to Jasmine as he chortled to himself.

Jasmine growled in frustration at the lack of success in her efforts, foot still firmly stuck to the ground. Not at all something helped by Yuno’s mocking return.

“Awww, still being foiled by the consequences of your own actions? It’s downright embarrassing that I was even close to losing to you… oh, don’t look at me like that.” Yuno faked a pout while he dug through his pockets for more knives. “Hmmhmm, let’s see here.”

Jasmine narrowed her eyes and huffed at the sight of him so casually ignoring her just as a taunt. He was distracted. Good.

Quietly, carefully, she slipped her back foot out of her shoe, balancing carefully on her remaining foot. It was near impossible to stay like this under the effects of Yuno’s Stand, and though she would never admit it, she was this close to throwing up.

Yuno yelped and pulled his hands out of his pockets, sucking one one of his fingers to stifle the blood now leaking from his hand. “Shoddy make, should have just spent ten dollars more for the folded Japanese steel.. Wait… ah, here we are!” He triumphantly produced a bouquet of knives from the inside of his coat, spreading his arms wide as a cocky taunt. “Now, let’s go ahead and wrap this- URK-”

The crunch of Liquid Cool’s fist against his smug face was the best feeling Jasmine had felt all week. His haughty smile practically caved in on itself, teeth flew out of his mouth, and he flew backwards from the sheer force, smashing against the exterior wall of the gas station with a heavy thud.

Vision blurry and eyes watering, he looked up at Jasmine, one leg in the air, one foot still in her shoe, and her whole body awkwardly leaning forward as far as it could. “How did you…” He gasped, a dribble of blood leaking out of his mouth. “You were-”

“Stuck? Yeah, I was.” She beamed. “But you were worse. You were distracted.” She gestured down to her foot where one shoe sat, still stuck to the pavement like it was glue. “Think you’re smart enough to be the judge and the jury, and yet not even smart enough to think I wouldn’t just immobilize myself like an idiot. Pretty good, don’t-”

“Q-Quiet! You insolent bitch! Do you know who I work for? I’ll have you killed!” Blood spattering his body, he sat up, clutching the one knife he had managed to keep a hold on during everything. With all the might he had left, he hurled it towards her, the blade sailing towards the one foot she had in a shoe to keep her grounded.

Jasmine had opened her mouth to snark back, but the threat of having a foot taken off startled her into flinching, a movement just strong enough for the reverse gravity she was under to yank her free from her footwear.

“Shit!” She cried as she floated upwards, drawing a cough almost resembling a cackle from Yuno.

With her rapid rise upwards into the sky, she had only seconds to react. With what limited movement she had, she whipped her head around, searching for something, anything to hold onto to prevent her from just ascending into the atmosphere and being burnt to a crisp. The first thing to catch her eye was probably the best she could have asked for- the roof over the gas pumps.

Desperately, she reached outwards with Liquid Cool, just barely managing a grip on the very edge. With its remaining free hand, it yanked her alongside it as she scrabbled to get a hold on the one thing stopping her from floating away.

“I’ll flatten you into a pancake!” Yuno roared as he raised his arm once more.

Deep breaths, Jasmine.

Deep…

Breaths.

Hooking her leg under the canopy with a graceful thrust, she flipped herself around, desperately trying to align herself in a way that she could even tell where she was. With a panicked motion, she fumbled and flailed, reaching out to herself with her Stand’s arm and trying not to dislodge herself from her position.

As she felt the very tip of her Stand’s fingers rub against her cheek, and almost cried with relief. Just like she had done a million times, she popped off the tip of Liquid Cool’s thumb, catching it between the very tip of her front teeth and sucking as hard as she could.

Hot tea flooded into her mouth, and she swallowed desperately, all the tension in her muscles releasing as she felt it go down her throat. She had never realized just how good her Stand’s tea tasted before this very moment.

The chime of Yuno’s Stand barely registered to her. Casually, she released her leg’s hold on the canopy above the pumps, pressing her foot against the edge and pushing off of it.

Yuno could only stare up in bewilderment as, instead of coming crashing down against the asphalt, Jasmine merely hovered over to him, twisting herself over as if laying on her side. “You should be…” He gasped.

“Falling, yes.” Jasmine nodded. She let out a long, relieved sigh, and smiled down at Yuno, flipping down the tip to her Stand’s thumb back down into position.

Yuno barely had time to argue with her sheer audacity before she fell back down on top of him with all the gravity he had tried to put her under. A loud snap echoed into the desert sky as Yuno practically folded in on himself from the thousands of pounds dropping squarely on his head, sending clouds of dust and debris into the air.

As the dust settled, Jasmine’s eyes slowly blinked open. She looked down. Below her was the rather unfortunate-looking form of the man she had just crushed, bent into all sorts of odd angles and bleeding quite heavily. She groaned, not feeling all that great herself. “Uuugh… that’s gonna hurt tomorrow.”

With a grunt of effort, she pushed herself to her knees, head spinning and mind scrambled by the feeling of actually being under normal gravity again. She looked over to where Johan and Damon were, smiling weakly as she watched them get onto their feet and stumble over to where she was.

Damon merely kicked the man beneath her, staring down grimly. “Yo, uh… is he… dead?”

“Uh…” She felt a knot in her stomach as she hurriedly pressed fingers against his neck, stilling her breath and praying for a pulse. Luckily, he still had one. “...Holy… Uh… no. Well… hangon.” A lone arm from her Stand manifested beside her, pouring a few drops of tea into Yuno’s slack-jawed mouth and forcing him to swallow. With a series of disgusting noises, his body twisted back into shape, looking shockingly good for someone who had been a bit of origami not ten seconds ago.

“I think that’ll fix him right up…” She let out a nervous titter as she leaned back and rose to her feet, unsteady but still standing as normal. “Hey, maybe it’ll, uh… teach him a lesson.”

“Crazy asshole.” Johan spat on Yuno’s unconscious body as he leaned against the car for stability. “Sorry we couldn’t, uh… help at all. Cause of, yknow… not living up to his standards or whatever. Say… he mentioned something during all that. Neglecting someone in their time of need… what was all that about?”

Jasmine’s heart sank into her stomach at the mention of it, and she only gave Johan a timid chuckle in response. “I…” She sighed. “Just get in the car. I’ll tell you on the way.”

Johan merely shrugged, giving a glance to Damon, who did the same. “If you say so.”

Massaging her back, Jasmine staggered over to her side of the car, opening it up and giving an exhausted, faux smile to the other two. “Let’s just get going, yeah?”

| TO BE CONTINUED >