Chapter One

Exiled

Humanity took to the stars. An alien race who called themselves the Magellanics contacted humans in the late twenty-first century. That race offered humans fantastic technological developments, on the condition that they not be used for violence or oppression, and those that settled among the stars be open-minded. Humanity accepted and thus began their exploration and expansion into the galaxy. Over the next few decades, humans created many new societies and learned how to terraform even the most uninhabitable locations. In the corner of the galaxy, a terraformed planet named Murakami gave rise to a divided society in the domed city of Nova Columbia. There was a strict division between the upper-class and the lower-class, with no middle between the two. People could move between the classes, sometimes by force. Outside the dome, the world was feared by even the poorest of the citizens. They were safe in their bubble.

Johnny Joestar would definitely have said he was born unlucky. A member off a once upper-class family in Nova Columbia, Johnny often thought that he had to have worse luck than anyone he knew. Their family had been relegated to lower-class status for years now, something his father had never really recovered from. The upper class often fought and pushed out families, and the Joestars were one such casualty. His father had always favored his brother, then his brother was exiled, assumed dead now.

He'd been young and naïve when he met a gorgeous older woman. She was an upper-class lady, and to have someone from the upper class pay attention to a person like Johnny was not unheard of. Johnny was good looking and had the right attitude that he could have moved up in the classes give the proper chance. He didn't think much of it. Johnny simply thought his luck might have changed.

He was never so wrong. He ended up in bed with the woman, and things were going splendidly. Then the door burst open and the gun report was like thunder. At first, he hadn't felt anything at all, just a sudden numbness as he fell to the floor, blood running down his back as he tried to get to his feet, but he couldn't. He would find out later that he'd been a victim of a couple who had a sort of fetish for that sort of thing. The wife would take a younger man as a lover, the husband would burst in and shoot the offending man, and then they would have heated sex while the victim of their games lay bleeding.

Johnny didn't die from his wounds, but again his cursed luck struck because he was struck paralyzed from the waist down. Now and then, he'd get painful tingles of something to his feet, but they were few and far between. He learned to live a completely different way over the next three years. He became able to take care of himself and make do with only his arms. He spent a lot of time in the bars and drinking himself into a stupor.

Then, everything changed again. This time he had been drunk and passed out. He remembered so very little of the night, that all he could remember was coming to consciousness and feeling someone's body on him. He was so hazy, though he couldn't tell if it was a woman or a man, but they were obviously using him for their own pleasure when he couldn't even think straight. He remembered weakly pushing at them and telling them to stop before passing out again. He awoke the next morning half dressed on the floor in his room. He had no idea who had been there and no idea what had actually happened. For a couple months, nothing came of it. He avoided the same bars he'd been going to and just did his work during the day at the office building. He couldn't shake the feeling of someone watching him. He just put it on the idea that he was incredibly unlucky.

Now, he was sure his luck had completely run out. He could hear the waves and sounds around him. He'd been exiled; why, they didn't tell him. His heart beat like a drum as he sat, bound and stripped of all his clothes with a blindfold covering his eyes. He couldn't get his hands free and he couldn't tell anything about where he was. All he knew is what they were told about what happened when a person was exiled to the islands outside the domed city of Nova Columbia. They were told that the islands were the most depraved place in all the world. They were told no one came back from it. They said that there were rape gangs that would chase you down within minutes of being left on the islands. They said the people there would have sex with anything, living or dead. They said they had massive gatherings and did horrible things. They said so many frightening things about this place that he was now in.

He heard splashing and voices nearby. He would have run if he could have, he knew that. The islands were full of terrible people. There was nothing there but a painful death; that's what he'd always heard. There were such horrors that made the worst of the slums look like beautiful places. That's what they were always told. To be sent to the islands, to be exiled, it was a slow waking death.

He heard the voices getting closer and tried to crawl away from them on the sand. He knew it was of no use, but he couldn't help but try.

"Dad, I don't think this one can walk," a higher pitched voice near his left side. He gasped and turned his head toward the sound.

"Smartass, I can see that," a second, gruffer voice from his right side. They were around him.

"Here," he heard a third voice and felt something drop around his shoulders that felt soft. A blanket? "We gonna keep him bound up 'til we get to there this time?"

"Yeah, don't need any sudden heroics on the Crosstown Traffic," the gruffer voice said. "That was a fiasco that time. Here, I'll get 'im."

Johnny felt his body being lifted and once again he was overcome with fear of the unknown. Where were these people taking him? Who were they? What did they intend to do with him? He felt he was sat down on something that was relatively soft and he tried to calm his breathing. He felt someone sit down beside him and start petting his head.

"We'll take care of you, what's yer name?" the first one said. "I'm L.A. and this here's my dad, Benjamin, and my brother Andre. We used to be outlaws you know. We used to raid travelers at the Devil's Palm, and…"

"L.A.!" the gruff voice said over the sound of a motor starting. "Don't tell him that stuff about what we did in the past, tell him about the island!"

Johnny had no idea what these people were about. L.A. started to pet his head again. "Okay, so we have a weekly sabbath, and we have this ceremonial fire and people throw in offerings. When they do, the flame changes color!"

Johnny swallowed as they began to move on some sort of boat if he didn't miss his guess. "We gonna get back in time for dinner, dad?" It was the other one, Andre it was.

"Why, you got a date?" the gruff voice of Benjamin said.

"Yeah, I'm seeing that girl again tonight."

"Boy, you're gonna get yourself killed with that choking you have them girls do," Benjamin's voice responded to him.

Johnny again wondered what type of people had just found him. He swallowed nervously as the one called L.A. kept up his chatter that Johnny only half listened to. He was too worried about what would come. They'd told him that he wouldn't last long at all considering he couldn't walk. These people didn't seem like they were going to harm him even as weird as they were. He jerked a bit as the boat came to a stop again.

"We're here!" L.A. announced, and Johnny felt his heartrate shoot up just thinking about the unknown.

Once again, he was lifted up and walked somewhere else. He heard noises around him and then was sat down on something that seemed soft. He flexed his hands in the plastic cuffs that had been put on him. He then heard the father talking to someone and he felt someone come closer to him.

"Hello, I'm a doctor here. My name is Gyro Zeppeli, and I'm going to uncover your eyes, so you can see and get these cuffs off your wrists."

Johnny nodded, taking a shaky breath as he felt someone moving the blanket to get to his hands and felt the cold metal slide against his skin. He blinked at the bright light as the blindfold was removed from his eyes. It was glaring and hurt his eyes a bit. He found himself looking at a blond-haired man in some sort of medical outfit. He had his long hair pulled back in a tail at his neck and was looking at him green eyes. His hands came free and he pulled them around in front to rub at the reddened skin of his wrists.

"Here," Gyro passed Johnny a bundle. "What's your name?"

Johnny saw that it was some sort of hospital gown and shrugged out of the blanket to pull it on over his head. "Um, J-Johnny Joestar," he stammered as he pulled the gown down over himself. He at least felt less exposed now.

"Johnny," Gyro said and gave him a crooked smile. "I'm going to check you over and then we'll go from there. You don't have the use of your legs?"

Johnny shook his head. "Not for the last three years," he said as he used his hands to move himself a little on the bed he was sitting on.

"Well, we have a wheelchair here that you can use. Now, tell me, what have you heard about our little islands?" he asked as he pulled on his stethoscope to listen to Johnny's chest.

"Um, mostly that it was depraved and horrible." Johnny was looking around and saw a black haired young man helping. He had a strange looking hairstyle. "Ah, that there were all sorts of rituals and orgies and stuff like that. The stories are that there are rapists and murderers and all sorts of terrible people on the islands. They said that I wouldn't last long because I couldn't walk…"

"Still the same stories," Gyro sighed and checked over Johnny's arms and then his legs. "I must apologize for the Boom-Boom family. Our regular people for picking up exiles were occupied. Benjamin and his boys are good at picking up people when we need it, but they tend to make people more nervous."

Gyro stepped back and looked him over with a smile. "I'd like you to stay here for at least a week until the adjustment sickness passes."

"Adjustment sickness?" Johnny asked with a frown.

"Yeah, for about a week, you'll feel generally bad as your body adjusted to the change from the sealed environment of Nova Columbia to the outside world. You'll adjust over that week to the new area you now live in." Gyro gestured at the younger dark-haired man that was helping him. "This is my intern, Josuke Higashikata. He'll be around if I'm not, and I'll have a regular nurse assigned to you."

"Where will I go after the week?" Johnny asked, trying not to be nervous or worried, but he couldn't help it at this point.

"That, we'll figure out. We often put newcomers with someone who lives here for a while until they know the area, then we get them into a place of their own. You were lucky to have been picked up so quickly. We have a drone that keeps an eye on that island for when someone gets dropped off out there." Gyro seemed like a kind person, and Johnny was starting to feel a little better about his situation. "Do you have any questions for me?" he asked as he stepped back.

"I don't know, it's all so much right now. I just don't know how to accept all of this so quickly. It was all lies?" Johnny put his hand to his head and rubbed his temple. "But why would they tell us such horrible things about the Islands out here?"

"To keep people in line," Gyro explained with a sigh. "Remember where you came from, and what it was like. Were you upper or lower-class?"

"Well, we used to be upper class, but there was some plot to throw us out, so my family became lower-class. My father never really recovered from it," Johnny told him as he continued to look around him. He was still partially in disbelief of what had happened to him and where he was. Could everything this man was telling him be true? Had it all been a web of lies from the people that ran the city?

Johnny looked over to the door to the room they were in where a nurse had brought a wheelchair for him. Johnny thought it looked similar to most medical place he'd been to, but it was a little warmer and friendlier. It felt less sterile than the hospital in Nova Columbia. There, it was all white and blank everywhere around the place. Here, it was much more relaxed. The walls were soft colors, and there was a window looking outside.

"Here, I'll help you transfer," Gyro said as he took the chair from the nurse and pushed it over toward the bed.

"No, I'll do it," Johnny said as he carefully maneuvered himself from the exam bed to the chair. "I'm used to doing things on my own."

Gyro nodded, and the nurse came around and got behind him to push him where they were going. "We'll get you set up in a room for now and you can rest for today or you're free to move about the hospital if you like."

The room was a nice single occupant room with a window that faced the main street of the island. He wheeled over to it and looked out, seeing people milling about. Gyro smiled at him and put a hand on his shoulder.

"You can kind of get an idea how the place works from here, I think."

Johnny nodded and saw that there were people passing by.

"How do things work here?" Johnny asked. "I mean, I can't do a lot of things, and they said I'd never walk again…"

"They said that?" Gyro asked with an arched brow. "Would you allow me to try and see if we can't get some use of your legs back?"

Johnny looked up with wide eyes. "You think you could do that?"

"I think that you didn't get the best treatment in Nova Columbia, so who knows what your actual condition is. I think that after the first week is over, I'll run some tests on you and see where we are." Gyro placed a hand on Johnny's shoulder and squeezed. "Who knows, maybe some therapy may help you."

Johnny nodded, but he already needed a drink. He looked out the window at the people milling about their day and wondered if they even had alcohol here. If he didn't get a drink, he knew he'd start to get the shakes and that was no good. He chewed the inside of his cheek for a second and wondered what he was going to do. He needed a drink. He looked at Gyro and wanted to ask him, but he knew that he wasn't going to provide him something like alcohol in a hospital.

"I'll let you rest for the time being," Gyro said and headed back out the door.

Johnny went back to looking toward the window until he heard the door open again. He looked up as the nurse came back in. She was a pretty, petite young woman with short brown hair cut around her face in a bob and gray eyes.

"I'm Reimi Sugimoto, and I'll be your nurse while you're here, at least during the day," she said with a gentle smile.

"Hi, Reimi. Nice to meet you," he said and reached for her hand. She shook it lightly and went to turn down the covers on the bed.

"I hope you don't feel too poorly, but the malaise will set in and make you feel ill at first. It should only last a week, but we'll keep an eye on you," she told him as she filled a cup with water and sat it on the table.

Johnny wheeled over to her and took the water, thirsty beyond measure already. He gulped it down and sighed.

"Do you often pick up people exiled from Nova Columbia?" he wondered.

"We get some quite frequently," she responded, sitting down on the bed to look at him. "All types of people get sent out of the city. What happened to get you sent here?"

Johnny swallowed and shook his head. "Th-they never said. Just picked me up at my workplace and told me I was going to come with them. I don't know that I did anything…" he trailed off, the hazy night that he had been drunk came back to him. It was the only explanation for his exile he could think of. Someone thought he might talk. He jerked when Reimi put her hand on his shoulder. "Sorry," he whispered and shook his head.

"It's okay," she told him and patted his shoulder. "If you need to talk about anything, that's what we're all here for."

"Yes, thank you. Um, one thing, I ah, was a pretty heavy drinker before I got exiled, and I get shaky if I don't drink, y'know," he stammered, not wanting to ask this of Gyro.

She gave him that gentle smile again. "You won't find much alcohol on the islands, so it is best that you get used to not having it these days. We'll take care of you if you have trouble without it."

"Okay," he answered, swallowing a thick ball in his throat. He didn't know how he'd go without drinking. It was the only thing that dulled the loneliness he felt. But maybe here he wouldn't be lonely.

By the next morning, he found himself wanting a drink a lot more than he had ever wanted one in his life. Knowing he couldn't have one made it so much worse.

He turned his head toward the window and wondered about these islands and their people. To distract himself, he wheeled to the window and watched outside. There were lots of people and animals, he realized. There were dogs and what looked like some kind of deer that just wandered around the square and even into the buildings. There were cats and other feline creatures that would go from person to person and snuggle. He even saw fowl wandering about.

He already felt sick. He didn't know what it was from exactly, but it was already annoying to him. He blinked and rubbed his eyes because he swore that person was wearing a thong and nothing else that went by. And those two women looked like they were topless? He had no idea what to think of it. He wondered if he was seeing things. He knew that could happen without the alcohol, but he hadn't expected it so quickly.

"Morning, Johnny," he heard and turned to see Gyro standing in the doorway leaning against it.

"Good morning," he responded with a wan smile. "I was just watching outside."

"See anything interesting?" Gyro asked, coming into the room and standing beside him.

"People are a little bit, uh, freer with their dress, aren't they? Unless I'm seeing things," he muttered.

Gyro chuckled. "Yeah, clothing is something that is somewhat optional for a lot of people around here. We have nice weather and lots of sun, so people can go around with minimal dress."

Johnny nodded. "I see…" he wondered what else he would see in this new and very strange space he found himself in.

The next two days, he spent much the same way, just watching the world outside the window. He began to get shaky and swore something was crawling on his skin. He didn't know whether he should tell Gyro or not, but he began scratching at his arms to get the feeling to go away.

"Reimi said you used to drink a lot. It's called delirium tremens. DTs for short. You'll be going through it for a few days until your body gets used to not having alcohol. I imagine it is going to be difficult to go through both that and the adjustment sickness but at least you'll have both out of the way," Gyro said from the doorway again.

Johnny looked at him and tried to stop scratching at his skin. It was hard to do though because it felt like there were live bugs under it. "Is there anything you can give me to help with it? I'm gonna go mad with this feeling of bugs on me."

Gyro sighed and nodded. "I have some meds that might help, but they'll make you sleepy. It might be for the best that you sleep off the rest of this week."

"You're right, there," Johnny said and sighed, rubbing his arms with his hands so he didn't scratch them.

Gyro disappeared out of the doorway and came back a few minutes later with a couple of pills and some water. "Try these," he said as he handed them over.

Johnny didn't ask what they were, he just took them. Anything that would make this crawling sensation go away, he thought. He hoped it worked quickly.

"Tell me about what you did in the city," Gyro said as he came and sat down on the bed.

Johnny knew that he was trying to distract him from the sensations. He smiled. "Well, after I got shot and couldn't walk, I did data entry and that was really it. Before that, I used to work with the horses on our farm. After I lost the use of my legs, there wasn't a lot that I could do." Johnny sighed and ran a hand over his head, mind starting to wander as a wave off tiredness swept over him. The crawling sensation seemed to have abated a bit.

"I think I'll sleep for a while, Gyro," Johnny said as he wheeled over to the bed.

"Alright, call Reimi if you need anything," Gyro said with a small smile as he left the room.

Johnny transferred himself into the bed and fell into a fitful sleep. He had to wonder exactly what was going to happen to him over the next few days and weeks. All the lies, he wondered if anything they had been told about the world was true?

-oooooo-OOOOOO-oooooo-

Steven Steel and his adopted daughter Lucy came to the entrance of Nova Columbia. Lucy was somewhat excited to come to the domed city for the first time. This was a city they had never been to on their travels across the planet of Murakami. They had been to most the major cities but they had yet to visit the impressive dome encased city where the most affluent people on the planet took up residence. They came to the entrance and were met with the gate guards that stood outside the dome.

Lucy watched as the dome entrance was opened for them to enter with their trade goods. They came into the city into a clean looking area where the common folks of the city milled around as they walked by with their cart and horses. They were headed toward the walled "upper city" as it was called, where they would do their trading.

She waved at someone and they gasped and ducked their head, turning away from her immediately. She frowned, curious as to why someone would do something like that. She was just being nice, which was something she always tried to do. She often talked to people in the cities they went to and made new friends among the common folks of the towns. This was different, though. The people of lower city kept from directly looking at them as much as they could, and they stayed well away from the guards that were escorting them through the city streets.

For a place that was known as lower city, it wasn't a bad looking area. The houses were in rows and all looked the same as they passed them by, but they were clean and seemed well maintained. There were office buildings off in the distance, probably where most the lower city residents worked. Lucy had noted a couple of small farms as they came into the city but nothing too large. They had hardly been worth noting at all, to be honest. They came to the wall that separated the lower city from the upper city and their escorts talked to the gate guards. After a few minutes, they were escorted through the gate into the upper city.

Lucy was surprised as the difference between upper and lower city was extreme. Here, there were opulent estates and large houses. There were parks and gardens set up frequently as well as large halls that took up great spaces of land. It was beautiful, and the people here stared openly at the newcomers as if sizing them up. Lucy felt somewhat uncomfortable with the leering stare of more than one person. She had to wonder why they were looking so hard at her.

"This is an odd city," she said to Steven as they walked slowly along the route they were taking to the trading hub of the upper city.

"Yeah, I'd heard before that the city was divided between the upper and lower classes, but I didn't expect it to be so… blatant." Steven put an arm around Lucy protectively and pulled her closer in to the cart as they walked.

"Those poor people down in the other part wouldn't even look at us," she complained, feeling extremely bothered by this fact.

"I noticed," Steven said as he ran a hand over his blond hair. He was just wanting to get to the trading hub and get this trip over with quickly, so they could move on to another city.

Lucy straightened her pink skirt and realized she was being stared at rather lewdly by a nobleman as they passed them in the street. She shivered at the look and was glad that their visit to this place would be short. At least, it was supposed to be short.

They arrived at the trading depot and were shown to a stall where they could set up their wares. Attached to each stall was a room for the merchants and traders to stay in. It was a simple but nicely put together little room that was big enough for two people easily. Lucy thought it looked like it was bigger than some of the houses they had seen in the lower city.

As they set up their wares, Lucy sat down inside the small apartment and thought about this strange place. She was used to seeing new and strange places, but this one was one of the first that she'd not felt like she could walk up to people and start a conversation. She wasn't sure what was going on with these people, but the common folks almost seemed afraid of them when they walked through lower city. She had to wonder what kind of life led these people to act like that around someone that came into the city from the outside.

Lucy wasn't sure what she thought of this place. She had been taken in by Steven Steel as a teenager and had spent the last few years being his ward. He took care of her in place of her family, who had been poor and unable to care for all their children. Steven had been kind and generous with her and she was glad of it. She enjoyed traveling from town to town.

She heard a bird call and looked up and saw one of the giant birds that worked alongside horses here. She jumped up and ran to the front of the stall and looked at it closer.

"They're so beautiful," she said as she watched the merchant walk the bird which was pulling his cart by them.

"But testy creatures," Steven said as he put out something else on the stall. "I'd rather keep with the horses, myself," he told her as he gave her a smile.

Lucy nodded, brushing her blonde hair out of her face and looking around as the other merchants set up for the day.

"I hope that this is profitable," she commented as she turned and went back into the small apartment to sit down again.

"I think it will be. If not, we'll set off for the next town," Steven explained. He knew his wares were good and attractive to the upper class in this city. He expected to turn quite a profit off these people since they loved to flaunt their wealth and show off. Many of his items were flashy and what some would consider garish and too much, but here it would do just fine, he thought.