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“Hey, there’s a weird fight going on over there!”
Kakyoin sprints. There’s sand in his shoes, gritty between leather and fabric. He gathers Hierophant Green in the back of his mind as he runs, turns a corner down an alley and dashes out onto a wide avenue.
Polnareff, off to one side. Avdol, Magician’s Red rising like a phoenix above his shoulders. A man with a gun; the glint of sunlight on metal. Puddles of water on the ground. A bandaged shape, knife in hand, in the reflection at Avdol’s back. It all comes in flashes, too slow for him to do anything about, and the knife comes down and
Kakyoin does not blink.
He doesn’t, but he must, because between seconds between blinks between heartbeats, Jotaro is there, catching Avdol around the neck with one arm and throwing them both to the ground. A bullet buries itself in the ground behind them in the next instant, shattering the reflection. Kakyoin tastes ozone, and blinks hard like that will help him understand how the hell Jotaro just actually teleported in front of his eyes.
There’s some sort of expression on Jotaro’s face as he yanks Avdol to his feet— eyes wide, mouth tight. That in itself is pretty remarkable, because Jotaro’s face tends to look like it’s never expressed any sort of emotion in his life aside from, occasionally, irritation. There’s a long, ragged slash through the black fabric of his coat.
The gunman is gawping openly at Jotaro, mouth hanging open, cigarette forgotten in the dirt. “Ain’t no goddamn way.”
Kakyoin chooses the opportune moment to summon his own Stand and whirl on the gunman. The gunman seems to realize he’s suddenly up against four opponents with Stands rather than the two of moments ago, because he grins and throws both hands up in the air, gun vanishing.
“Hey, hey, look, I missed, right?” he says, the corner of his mouth twitching. “No harm, no foul.” He takes a few slow steps backwards, keeping his eyes fixed on Jotaro the whole time. “So if you don’t mind, I’m just gonna, uh—“
And then he cuts and runs.
It seems to startle Polnareff back to himself. “Hey, get back here— wait!” he yelps, making it two steps in pursuit before drawing up short. “The Hanged Man!”
“It was in the puddle,” Jotaro says, drawing back a step from the spill just in case, pulling his reflection out of view. “Going for Avdol.”
“I saw it, too,” Kakyoin agrees. “But I thought there was no way I could make it in time. Jotaro, how did you do that?”
Star Platinum is very fast— fast enough to catch bullets— but it was Jotaro who appeared as if from nowhere, not Star Platinum. Jotaro is fit in a way most boys their age could only dream of, but he’s not that fast. Kakyoin didn’t even see him move.
Jotaro still has that look on his face. If Kakyoin didn’t know better, he’d say Jotaro looked almost scared.
But why would he?
“The Hanged Man,” Jotaro says to them, ignoring Kakyoin’s question entirely. Well, fine, be like that. “How do we defeat it?”
Polnareff looks like he’s still got questions, too, but Kakyoin watches as he bites them back, familiar anger washing over his features instead. Avdol is studying Jotaro’s face, and Jotaro yanks his hat down to shield his eyes, turning away.
It’s not until later, tucked around a table in the hotel restaurant as they catch Mr. Joestar up on the fight over plates of rogan josh, that it comes up again.
“I shoved Polnareff out of the bullet’s path, then summoned Magician’s Red so I’d be prepared to melt any successive shots before they could reach us,” Avdol is explaining. “But I didn’t know the Hanged Man and the Emperor were working together. The Hanged Man made to attack me while I was focused on the Emperor. And then—“
He hesitates, and then looks at Jotaro. So do Kakyoin and Polnareff. He’s sitting silent, arms crossed, brim of his hat hiding his eyes from easy view.
Jotaro shoves a cigarette between his teeth and lights it, and doesn’t say anything.
Mr. Joestar frowns, brow crinkling. “Well? What happened next?”
“I think that’s for Jotaro to tell us,” Avdol says slowly. “None of the rest of us are sure what happened.”
Jotaro hunches a little deeper in his seat. “I got there in time and got Avdol out of the way,” he says, clipped.
“Yeah, but how?” Polnareff asks, pressing both hands flat against the table and leaning forward. “I was looking right at him, and I didn’t even see— I mean, you weren’t there, and then you were! You saw it too, right, Kakyoin?”
“I did,” Kakyoin confirms. Jotaro glares at him sideways. Kakyoin honestly doesn’t understand why he’s so reticent about this. Getting Jotaro to talk about anything other than sharks and sumo wrestling is generally like pulling teeth, but this seems to go beyond that. “Is it a new power of Star Platinum?”
Jotaro scowls, sucks on his cigarette. “Maybe,” he concedes, eventually.
Polnareff frowns. “Oi, then why do you look like somebody killed your dog in front of you? That’s great news!”
“Mm,” Jotaro says, eyes fixed downwards.
Mr. Joestar leans back in his chair a little bit, tapping the fingers of his left hand against the table. It makes a faint clicking sound, muffled by the gloves. There’s an assessing look in his eyes, almost the same sea-green as Jotaro’s.
“Your Stand acted on its own again, didn’t it,” Mr. Joestar says, and when Jotaro bites down on his cigarette Kakyoin knows he’s hit the mark.
Far more than his Stand and that sparking sunlight martial art he displays on occasion, Mr. Joestar’s ability to watch someone for a few moments and suss out just what they’re thinking is easily his most dangerous skill, Kakyoin thinks. Sometimes it’s unsettling.
“Again?” Polnareff echoes, confused, and Kakyoin is glad to be saved from having to ask.
Avdol glances at the two of them. “Right, you weren’t there. When Mr. Joestar and I first arrived in Japan to find Jotaro and his mother, Jotaro’s Stand had just manifested, and since he didn’t understand what it was, it was not under his conscious control. He had turned himself in to the police in order to avoid hurting anyone.”
“Anyone else,” Jotaro corrects, voice toneless as ever. “It sent four people to the hospital first.”
Kakyoin remembers very well the impact of Star Platinum’s fists; tries to imagine that same power, entirely unleashed from Jotaro’s iron, intentional control. Flinches, before he can help it. Jotaro’s eyes flick over to him for a bare moment before he’s back to avoiding eye contact like his life depends on it.
“So whatever you did to reach me before the Hanged Man could,” Avdol says. “It wasn’t you. It was Star Platinum?”
“It wasn’t me,” Jotaro says, and seems disinclined to continue, eyes fixed down at the tablecloth. He drags on his cigarette again. Polnareff opens his mouth, presumably to press him for more detail, and one of Hermit Purple’s vines snaps out to flick him warningly on the arm.
After what feels like a very long silence, Jotaro says, “I didn’t think I was going to make it in time. I saw the Hanged Man and I saw that Avdol hadn’t seen it. Didn’t have the time to react. Polnareff and Kakyoin were both too far away. And then it stopped.”
“Stopped? What stopped? The Hanged Man?” Polnareff asks, face crumpled up in confusion.
“Everything,” Jotaro says. “Everything stopped. Except me.”
They all sit with that for a moment.
“Can you do it again?” Mr. Joestar asks.
“Don’t know.”
“Can you try?”
Jotaro works his jaw for a moment. “Don’t want to.” He looks angry, but he always looks kind of angry, so Kakyoin can’t tell if it’s aimed at Mr. Joestar, at himself, or if it’s just an amplified version of the general attitude of dissatisfaction Jotaro tends to project at the world at large.
“But that’s so cool,” Polnareff despairs. “And useful, too! Just think, if one of us is in mortal peril, voila, a knight in shining armor!”
“Thought that was your job,” Kakyoin says to him, keeping his eyes on Mr. Joestar. Polnareff kicks him under the table.
Mr. Joestar must know something the rest of them are missing, because he ignores Polnareff and says to Jotaro, “Your Stand doesn’t have any powers that you don’t.”
Jotaro’s face stays flat. Polnareff blinks, glancing between them. “Wait, what?”
Mr. Joestar continues, “You’re scared you won’t be able to do it, right? That Star Platinum is out of control and it’s got power you can’t use.”
“I’m not scared,” Jotaro says sharply. It’s the most seventeen years old he’s sounded since Kakyoin met him.
Mr. Joestar raises his eyebrows, as if to say, well, what gives, then? Jotaro looks like he wants to say something else, maybe, but he sucks in another lungful of smoke instead, holds it for a long moment, and then exhales, looking out across the restaurant.
“It might not be a new power,” he says, not looking back at them.
“Meaning?” Mr. Joestar prompts.
The corner of Jotaro’s mouth tightens in a deeper frown. “When it first appeared,” he says, and it doesn’t escape Kakyoin that he hasn’t called Star Platinum by name once since the conversation began, “It did things that didn’t make sense. Made things appear out of nowhere, like presents for me. It’s fast, when it does what I tell it to, but I can’t— make it do that. I didn’t understand how it did that.”
“Your Stand doesn’t have a mind of its own,” Mr. Joestar says. “It’s just you.”
“Easy for you to say,” Jotaro says, finally turning back to the table and fishing out another cigarette to light off the stub end of the old one. “Your Stand is a bunch of vines.”
“For God’s sake, Jotaro, you’re not possessed,” Mr. Joestar says.
It sounds like a joke, if an exasperated one, and Kakyoin expects Jotaro to roll his eyes and brush it off, but Jotaro’s face stays still and serious, even a little pinched.
He switches to Japanese, for the sake of a measure of privacy. “Are you really worried about that?”
Quieter than he’s expecting, Jotaro replies, “Spirits protect you from harm, too, don’t they?”
“Hey, English at the table!” Mr. Joestar complains.
Jotaro takes a long drag off his fresh cigarette before addressing the table at large. “None of your Stands have ever acted on their own.”
It’s only half a question, more a statement, but Kakyoin still nods. It’s true; he’s had his whole body and self out of his own control, but even when it was carving its way through people’s insides, his Stand never felt like a separate entity to him. It’s only ever been an extension of himself, with all that implies.
Mr. Joestar starts, “Just because your Stand does something on reflex doesn’t mean—“
Jotaro says, very loudly, “Mom’s Stand is killing her.”
A few people at neighboring tables glance over at them at the sudden volume. Jotaro hunches his shoulders, ducks his head.
“So,” he says. “It can’t be her. So.”
Polnareff has a look on his face like he’s realized, on some delay, that this is a conversation he probably shouldn’t be privy to. Avdol says, slowly, “This has been weighing on you for awhile.”
“I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” Jotaro says flatly, shoving his chair back and moving to stand.
“No, hold on, we are not done—“ Mr. Joestar says hotly, also rising, and there’s a flash of something on Jotaro’s face, and then
Jotaro is gone.
“Fuck!” Mr. Joestar shouts, slamming his hand down on the back of his chair with such force that Avdol, sitting next to him, startles a little. Some customers at a neighboring table shoot them looks. “Damn brat. He better not do anything stupid.”
“Mon Dieu, that’s freaky,” Polnareff says, staring wide-eyed at Jotaro’s empty chair. There’s still cigarette smoke hanging in the air.
“He probably just needs some time to cool off,” Kakyoin says to Mr. Joestar.
Mr. Joestar scowls. “I don’t like him wandering off on his own when we’ve been getting attacked left and right.”
“Jotaro is very competent and alert to his surroundings,” Avdol says, pulling out his deck of tarot cards and beginning to shuffle them in one smooth motion. “I’m sure he will be fine.”
Polnareff doesn’t seem to notice the implied jab, leaning an elbow on Avdol’s shoulder to peer down at the cards while he shuffles. “What’re you up to?”
“Just a matter of curiosity,” Avdol says, offering the deck to Kakyoin to cut. “It’s somewhat impolite to do this without Jotaro here, but I wonder—"
He shuffles the deck once more, then pulls the top card. The one beneath it seems to stick to it momentarily, slipping onto the table as though of its own accord. Avdol blinks, flipping both over.
“Interesting,” he says. “I drew the Star, reversed, but the World came free as well.”
“Does that mean something?” Kakyoin asks, leaning over the table to look at the two cards. The Star, upside-down, is largely blue, spangled with yellow stars and accents, while the World looks like the inverse; a blue figure on a bright yellow background.
“It could,” Avdol says, an unreadable tone in his voice, as he gathers up the cards.
Jotaro shows up again just after dusk, letting himself into the hotel room he and Kakyoin are sharing without so much as a knock.
“Welcome back,” Kakyoin says in Japanese without looking up.
The door clicks closed. “Is that my Shonen Jump?”
“I’m borrowing it,” Kakyoin says, turning a page.
“I didn’t know you read manga.” Jotaro is both chattier and just generally less of an asshole when speaking Japanese, which is funny for a guy who’s half British. Kakyoin’s best guess is that he and his mom didn’t speak English much when he was growing up. Holly seems like the type of person to worry about her son fitting in.
“I usually don’t. I’m trying to figure out what’s going on in all the series from just this issue. Do you follow any?”
In the corner of Kakyoin’s eye, Jotaro sits down on one of the beds, shrugs with one shoulder. “I like Fist of the North Star.”
“Of course you do,” Kakyoin says, and Jotaro snorts a little.
There’s silence for a bit, while Kakyoin tries to decipher the plot of Saint Seiya from context clues and Jotaro lies on the bed and stares at the ceiling, hands propped behind his head.
Kakyoin has made it through Saint Seiya and into Captain Tsubasa by the time Jotaro says, “Your Stand’s never done anything you didn’t want it to.”
The same not-really-a-question from earlier. Kakyoin nods. Waits for a moment to see if Jotaro will continue whatever thought he’s clearly having, but he doesn’t, so Kakyoin says, “My body’s done things I didn’t want it to, though.”
“Right,” Jotaro says. A more expressive person would probably display some emotion at the reminder that they met because Jotaro beat the shit out of Kakyoin when he was under mind control. Jotaro doesn’t even twitch.
“That’s sort of the same.”
“Is it?” Jotaro asks.
Kakyoin shrugs. “Your Stand is part of your body.”
“Hm.”
Jotaro doesn’t say anything else, so Kakyoin goes back to reading. When Kakyoin glances over at him, he’s sitting again, hands are fisted in the bedclothes, staring intently out the window at the lights of Calcutta.
Eventually, Jotaro says, “This is stupid.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. If my Stand is strong and punches things, that makes sense. Been punching things my whole life. It makes sense. For that to be my—“ Jotaro twists his mouth around the word soul, doesn’t quite get it out. “That’s just how I am already.”
“But this is different.”
“It’s not me,” Jotaro says.
“You mean you don’t want it to be you,” Kakyoin corrects.
“Shut the fuck up,” Jotaro says. The warning tone that generally forecasts several broken bones in the immediate vicinity is loud and clear in his voice. Kakyoin ignores it.
“My Stand can go inside people and make them hurt themselves or other people,” Kakyoin says, all in one long rush so he doesn’t choke on it. It’s not like Jotaro doesn’t know this, of course, but Kakyoin doesn’t know if he’s ever thought about the fact that everything Kakyoin had done at his worst, he could still do at his best.
Jotaro stares at him. Doesn’t say anything.
“That doesn’t make it not part of me, though,” Kakyoin says. “It just makes it kind of a shitty part.”
Jotaro keeps staring at him, and for a second, he thinks he’s going to get punched anyways. And then
Jotaro is sitting cross-legged in the middle of the bed, flipping back through Shonen Jump. It takes Kakyoin an additional moment to realize his hands are empty, and to register the taste of ozone at the back of his throat.
Kakyoin laughs. “Shit, that’s scary.”
A little huff of breath. “Yeah,” Jotaro says.
“What’s it like?” Kakyoin asks, curious. Now deprived of anything to do with his hands, he pushes himself out of the chair and crosses the room to peer over Jotaro’s shoulder at the confiscated magazine. He’s skipped ahead to the first page of Fist of the North Star, of course.
“It’s like the world gets darker,” Jotaro says after a moment, eyes fixed down at the page, Kenshirou staring out across the barren wasteland. “Everything just freezes.” He pauses again. “It’s like being the only person in the world.”
The Star reversed, and the World clinging to it like oil or blood. “What, not a fan of being the last man alive?” Kakyoin asks lightly, elbowing him.
“Not even a little,” Jotaro says, entirely serious, and moves over to make room on the bedspread.