Disclaimer: JoJo's Bizarre Adventure and all equally bizarre concepts and characters belong to Hirohiko Araki. Original characters and other concepts (as noted) are copyright of me.
Out in the streets of the city darkness a terrible power grew. Disturbed and his Stand, The Sickness, two whole beings merged madly together. The black collective entity coiled and wrapped itself around the human shell's skin many times, binding his arms and legs with thickly coiled wraps of impenetrable, mobile armor. His mask, worn out and starting to rip from the constant usage and fighting he'd just undergone, was sewn back together at its ripping seems and held fast with the black threads of the Stand's continuous body. He was wrapped in darkness before too long and stood up from his huddle in the shadows, so dark that the shadows and he seemed to merge in parts.
His eyes shone white from the holes of his mask and he took back to the streets by means of the building walls, crawling along them like a lizard, to get back to the rear entrance of the defiant police building.
Inside, the station was under authority of the counter-Stand police squadron and the people within were attended to by the trained medical staff of the department. Mostly the people who couldn't make it in time to any other shelter were offered to stay in the wider cells of the police station, which were left open for them, and the criminals all were taken into the same immediate area within the prison under heavy surveillance. Starski's ankle was wrapped and treated with a stint to keep it together and in place. As soon as he could, he took aside the police captain away from the civilians and began to talk to him about Stands.
"So you can't see them?" Starski asked. The captain shook his head. "Can any of your guys?"
"No" he replied "but we have technology that allows us to. We have light-wave technology, sort of like flashlights, that not only reveal but also can suppress Stand energy."
"Really?" Starski said. "That's....amazing. But, I don't think it'll be much help right now."
"How so?" the captain asked.
"This guy's Stand" Starski began "is a part of him. It's already a physical entity. You don't need any special lights to see it, it's plain as day. Well, actually, plain as night. It's a bunch of pitch-black tentacles that are under his skin that he can use at will, however he wants. He can pierce straight through concrete with them, grow super-strong muscles ins his arms with them, as far as I can tell he can do the same with his legs and run at the same speed as a speeding taxi without getting tired. They're like a part of him, but they're their own thing too."
"And what about durability?" the captain asked.
"Hard as steel" Starski said. "You can shoot through his skin, but if there's tentacles underneath, it won't do any good."
"But has be been shot?" the captain asked.
"Multiple times" Starski said.
"I see" the captain said. "Well, if it's a Stand, then we can still at least suppress it and see if that weakens it. We don't know much about Stands. Frankly, even the Stand user who taught us everything and equipped us to fight Stands didn't know everything. He admitted that to us first thing."
Sounds like a good teacher Starski thought sarcastically.
"...but at least now we know what we're dealing with" the captain continued. "Thank you for your cooperation, sir. If I may, I'd like to ask for your cooperation in apprehending this supernatural criminal. We'll give you all the equipment and training we can in this short period, but we won't ask you to do the impossible. A foot-chase is obviously out of the question for now."
"That's true" Starski said, looking down at his bum ankle, which he kept off of by hopping and balancing with his shoulder or back against a wall whenever he could and had to stand. "Well, I'd be glad to offer you whatever help I can, as a Stand user, but I'd like a small favor in return, if that's possible."
"For helping us" the captain said "I'll be sure that we do whatever we can."
"Then" Starski said, offering the captain no room to withdraw anything he had begun to say, "I need some protection while I skip the city after all this is over. There's a nasty guy I'm working for, named Dio Brando, a Stand user, who conned me into his gang. Now he's threatening to kill me and my only family, my aunt in the slums, if I don't comply with everything he tells me to do. I'm not asking you to go on any kind of man-hunt, I just need to get as far away from here as possible to make him think I died. Then I can return, get my aunt, and leave without anyone being any wiser." The captain was initially stunned by the rapid flow of information, but gathered and sorted it quickly.
"Understood" he said. "Sir, we'll do whatever we can to help you and your aunt...." He paused for a name. Starski paused as well, to think of a name, and suddenly blurted out the first one that came to him.
"Toni" he said.
".....her name is Toni?" the captain asked.
"Yeah, uh" Starski began, "like Toni Morrison, you know."
"I see" the captain said. "And, well, do you know where she lives? It might be easier to escort her out of town first, and then help you after."
"Uhh" Starski began, fishing his mind for a good follow up. He could see right away that this man wasn't easy to fool, and using him to escape from Dio would be more tricky than he wanted it to be. "Well, they have her. It's not necessarily a hostage situation, but they don't let her leave her house, they keep her inside all the time, always have somebody watching her. Basically, if I screw up at all, they call the guy over there and he does something, and I don't want to know what he does so I've never tried anything."
"So this man may be armed?" the captain said.
"I...don't....know" Starski said. He stared into the captain's eyes, feeling the concentrated weight of his nerves intensify as he grit his teeth inside his tightly-shut lips. It's a crime to lie to a police officer. It's only now that I remember that. The captain placed a steady hand on Starski's shoulder and had a shadowed, doubtless look on his face, one of great pride and sympathy.
"We'll arrange for you and your aunt" he began "to be placed on the witness protection program we operate nationwide. You'll be out of the state by tomorrow." Starski smiled and nodded with thanks, then shaking the man's hand with both of his in sheer joy. Just then, in the dark of the night, the power was cut off. The generators provided to help power the equipment of the medical officers were kicked on and temporary, minimal power was restored to the building's cell area, just in time to shy away a great, fiendish shadow that lurked outside the booking office windows.
"What was that!?" an officer exclaimed. Another one flicked on a blue flashlight attached to the bottom of a tactical police shotgun and cocked it.
"Hunting season's open" he said with a grin. The Stand hunt began as the unwitting prey moved around much like an animal, mad and wild...
The hour was midnight, or something somewhere past. Even the old and trained Starski was beginning to get tired. It was a night he'd never thought before of living, certainly never before he acquired his Stand's power, but now he regardless found himself with four blue lights upon him as his Stand was summoned behind him.
"So that's what one looks like" a rookie officer said. "It's kinda robotic, you know?"
"They mostly are" Starski said. He checked the pistol he'd been loaned, one with a regular flashlight and laser sight. A Glock .30 with recoil-dampener device built in, specifically designed for police and semi-military combat in urban areas. He checked the clip, twelve bullets full, and the two clips at his side on his belt. He sighed and cocked the gun back again, sliding the frame with a click. "It'd be better if I had a more open area. My Stand uses a kind of jet-intake power to draw in and then blast air, but I'll manage."
"We'll secure the civilians then" the captain of the team said. "Alright, enough gawking, get a perimeter!" His squad moved on the cue of his voice and locked down the cell block of the station where everyone was. Two on each side to cover the two doors and two to control the crowd and try to ease everyone's nerves despite the guns they carried in hand. The rest of the officers were stationed throughout the station with varying guns, shotguns and semi-automatic rifles all branded with the REO logo, in arms. Starski and the captain of the force remained near each other. Starski's leg was wrapped in more heavy-duty gauze and then cased inside a rigid boot to act as a cast. It was tight and stuffy but it let him walk with a limp instead of hop and drag his foot around.
"Mr. Starski" the captain began suddenly. "I'd just like to say, not only for myself, but on behalf of all the officers here, we thank you for being such an admirable man in helping us. I must admit, when I first heard of Stands I thought it was the ramblings of some mad man cultist. Now I'm proud to say that I have met you, an amazing individual with such power, and I am proud to fight by your side as a just man against the injustice that dares to dirty your unique powers."
"Thank you, sir" Starski said. He gave a quick salute and the captain nodded it down. They split apart just then, the captain taking Starski's back while he moved slowly and cautiously, staying light on his broken ankle, into the open corridor that led straight to an emergency fire exit. He looked, shining his flashlight, and saw the doors still closed. He examined them closely and approached silently. The wires were still attached that ran up and into the wall, which rang the alarms through the whole building once the door was used. Starski could see no penetration on the box containing the components that signaled said wire, nor could he see any possible breach in the doors. They were sealed completely shut and locked down from the outside.
Looks like that's a bum idea Starski thought. If he came in this way, where would he go? There's nothing but a janitor closet and a solid windowpane in this hallway, and neither of those have been touched either. He hasn't come this way. I'd better check more towards the back of the building... Starski's instincts weren't wrong, but they were behind. Disturbed had already found a way in by means of the air conditioning ducts on the roof. The captain had anticipated it and intentionally stationed men to guard the hallways between the ducts. That way, if the fiend did use them, he would be heard by at least one man and promptly attacked through the wall. It was dead quiet. The sounds of people talking from the locked and sealed room even reached through the building where Starski was as soft and very distant murmurs.
In that area, tightly sealed from the rest of the building, the citizens still in shock and confusion over the pain and the suffering they were currently suppressed by. All of it unknown, totally arcane, and out of completely nowhere. Few were in a critical state, forced onto breathing machines gathered from the hospital's extra equipment found on the recently unlocked thirteenth floor, all of them strangely in fine-tuned condition. The volunteer medics assisting the people, some of whom had bandaged heads and arms in slings from car crashes following the incident, constantly moved from one complaint and groan to the next, trying to satiate everyone at once and sedate their aches and pains away.
"Doctor" a man weakly groaned, lying on a stretcher near the wall. "I have a sharp pain in my back all of a sudden."
"Can I have you turn over, please?" the medic asked. He turned the man over himself and let him groan. There was a bloody spot on the back of his shirt. The doctor lifted it up and saw a pin-prick of a wound that was dripping blood. "Looks like a tiny puncture wound. I'll get a bandage. Don't move."
"Thank you" the man groaned. He stayed on his side with his back open to the cold wall behind him, groaning and wincing at the burning pain, like something was picking at his wound and poking at it. Making it larger and wider, digging a deeper scar all the time. The doctor returned and, to his surprise, found the wound no longer the size of a pin but of a nail, like it had been scratched back open. "Ooowww...." the man weakly groaned. His breathing began to slow and the doctor quickly patched his back before turning him off his side again.
"I'm going to move you, sir" the medic said. "This ground isn't safe to be laying on." The doctor called for a police officer to help him and they moved the man from the ground on his stretcher onto a softer prison bed. The people who were sitting there moved away as the man was laid down with a loud wince of pain.
"Ahh!" he gasped. "Ah, it's getting worse! It feels like I'm being stabbed!"
"I'll need to sterilize it" the medic said. "I'll be back in a second." He went through the dim-lit room to a cart of supplies and searched quickly through the neatly cataloged, always organized arrangement of bottles, boxes and clear plastic bags, but despite his full search he found nothing. "That's odd. Where is it?"
"What's wrong?" an officer asked.
"I can't find any sterilizing agent" the medic said. "A man has a cut from the floor and I need to treat the wound. He's still bleeding and I already put a temporary bandage over it..."
"It's hard to think that those floors could cut" the officer said. "We clean them every day, without fail, so that there aren't any leftover bits of things for the prisoners to pick up or use. We made sure it was completely clean when we got word that we were being converted to a shelter."
"Well something cut him" the medic said. "If it wasn't the floor then it could have been someone else. Regardless, I need to treat that wound of his..." The medic went on looking through his cart for any kind of anti-bacterial agent at all, but to absolutely no avail.
"Ahhhh!!" the man groaned, now lively and full of pain. He turned to his side with a shaking body and suddenly gripped the sides of the bed he was on.
"What is it?" a man nearby asked, taking to the groaning man on the bed.
"It....'s killing me....." he said. He dropped down off of the bed and flat onto his stomach. Blood ran down the sides of his body. His spine was exposed, a huge gaping hole in his back.
"Good lord!" a woman shouted. The medic ran back over and stalled just in front of the cell door, looking on through the dark in unspeakable horror. Adults shielded the eyes of children and of themselves. A man had died so ghastly, and so vividly in front of them, and all they could do was blame the shadows.
"Mommy" a young boy quietly began, "I don't feel good...." The mother turned to her child and saw a sickly paleness to his face. He began to cough, silently, then wretch as if he was going to vomit.
"Oh, dear" she began. "Please, if you can, hold it in. I know it's very distressing but-" she stopped. Even she, an ordinary person, could see it. The snake-like thing in her son's ear, a tangible shadow crawling up his shoulder and into his head. The boy's eyes suddenly rolled back and he opened his mouth wide. A black tentacle wriggled out and started lashing, his neck and small head following it's movement, limp and dead. The mother was so horrified that she couldn't speak. The tentacle pierced into her throat, silencing her for good, and then retreated back into the shadows, through a crack burrowed in the solid concrete walls that led outside, and both mother and son fell dead.
"Oh shit!" an officer called. "Everyone, get away from the walls! We're under attack!!!" A panic broke out. The officers armed their weapons and engaged the blue lights as many people sped away from the walls of the cells for the apparent, crowded safety of the hallway. The officer's moved through the crowd of people, helped the medics cart out those too weak or in critical condition out of the cells, and held themselves fast to their guns, aiming at the wall with their Stand lights shining out the enemy. The medic was still in the cell, his body hunched in horror over the corpse of the man he failed to help.
"Get out of here!" the officer shouted.
"This can't be...." the man said. "It was just a tiny prick....nothing but a scratch. And now, suddenly, it's turned out like this?"
"Get back!" the officer demanded. "There's an enemy in there! You could die!"
"Oh, let me" the man said, shaking his head. He turned to the armed guard with four lithe black tendrils already slithering across his cheek. "A man like me, incapable of helping anyone, I don't deserve-" The tentacles suddenly latched across his face, dug in, and tore off his face with a vicious rip. The guard was frozen in disgust but managed to shoot his shotgun at the wall, casting sparks to brighten the dark corners. The wall stayed black in most places. The Sickness had already wormed its way through and covered the bare wall with its reaching, deadly tentacles.
Disturbed held an arm half-buried into the wall, all his body limp and supported only by that one thick arm which his Stand tunneled through. His body was a pale and weak, bony husk without The Sickness hoarded within it. Even his neck couldn't support the weight of his heavy, guarded mask, and so he leaned his forehead against the wall with painful and labored breaths.
"Die" he whispered. "Everyone die! Everyone must die...!!!"
"Mr. Starski!" the captain called. "Everyone! The enemy is in the main cell area! Move it now! Get the doors open and evacuate the citizens at once!"
"Hold him off for me!" Starski called. Suddenly his voice was not high enough to reach around a single corner without being drowned out by the tactical shouting and loud movements of all the officers already ahead of him and heading the same way. He couldn't run, and barely managed walking, with his gun propped at his shoulder like a soldier rushing into line formation. Shit. I hope nobody got hurt.
"It's still locked down!" a guard shouted.
"Override it!" the captain said. "That door can't be shot open, but there is more than one way to open it!" The guard at the door opened a hidden panel, secretly built into the wall and hidden behind a sliding door colored and textured exactly like the brick around it. He hit a button inside it and the door unlocked. He and another guard pushed and opened the door with guns up and lights on.
Everyone was dead. It was a visceral, vivid scene of absolute bloodshed, sparing none. The officers were dead and their weapons either bent and useless or completely gone. Necks were broken, insides were splattered out from deep, cutting wounds, whole heads and limbs ripped from bodies and thrown around randomly. To top it all off, the obvious source was in the middle of that hall: a gaping hole in a cell wall leading outside.
"Unbelievable" a female officer said in disgust.
"He blasted straight through the wall" the captain said. "He may already be inside this building."
"To think he killed them all so quickly" a rookie officer said, awing in terror at the carnage, "is just.....it's fucking crazy! This is ridiculous!"
"Ain't anything ridiculous about it" Starski said, having finally made it there. "This guy...is really powerful. His Stand isn't normal, even by Stand standards. He's more dangerous than probably anyone I've ever met. And now, he's most likely already hunting each of us down."
"What do we do!?" an officer shouted.
"Please, sir" the captain began in all proud modesty, "any help you can give us will be appreciated."
"I already gave you my word to help" Starski said. He summoned Run DMC and drew in enough air to begin winding the turbine arm. The air was compressed and super-heated into a searing-hot point of visible fire, a floating blue light that Starski guided with his mind and was only seen by the others as a dim bulb of florescence around him. Starski turned from the bloody mess of the room and looked down the hall. It was still pitch black, but not for too long. Gathering up a massive amount of air and creating a tunnel of it from the hole leading outside, Starski fired a ball of fire down the dark hall and pushed it with a stream of fire as a tail.
It stopped not too far away and hit a wall of sheer black. Starski stopped it and regathered his Stand's fists into fighting form. From that sheer wall of blackness, Disturbed peeked out, parting a small vertical gap to glare out of as he stood behind his protective shield. Starski stepped away from the doorway and fell his back into a wall, intentionally sliding down with his gun aimed forward. The door was immediately crowded with officers, six in standing and kneeling in the metal door frame, and all seven started firing at the wall. Despite the incredible density of the Stand, The Sickness took damage from being too widely spread and gathered up inside Disturbed's body as he fled into the air ducts.
"Shoot them down!" the captain exclaimed. The officers aimed up and started spraying fire through the ceiling and into the vents. Their bullets tore through the thin sheet metal even after piercing through the average-strength walling up above. "Hold fire!" the captain shouted. All was silent. The wall crumbled a bit and the metal they had shot groaned just out of earshot, but nothing else occurred. "Is he dead?"
"He's still moving" Starski said as he got back up with his good foot and a hand sliding on the wall. "Believe me, he won't die too easily, but those tentacles were his Stand and they seemed to be getting hurt."
"Looks like there's blood over there" the rookie said, pointing the light of his gun to a splash of liquid where the tentacles had stood.
"That means we're at least hitting him for something" Starski said. "If we stay together too close, we'll probably end up like the people who were in that room. If we're too far apart, he'll just kill us one-by-one and we won't even know it. We need to stay close enough together to watch each-other's backs while leaving some fair distance between us."
"Understood" the captain said. "Everyone, listen to Mr. Starski. He has the most solid grasp of the situation right now."
"Follow me" Starski said. "I should be able to tell where he is somehow, or at least give him more of a reason to come out of hiding at will." The officers nodded and followed after him in a loose formation. Many of them were still traumatized by the bloody room and what they'd seen, but they pressed on with eyes vacant, minds blank and fingers on triggers, all while the fiend in the shadows watched them through the holes that they'd made in the darkened ceiling overhead. His Stand, to adapt to silent movement, came through all the cracked openings of skin on his belly and undulated silently to move him forward, like the muscles of a snake as it slithers across the dirt.
Starski stopped the officers just outside the main office corridor, each door locked but leading to an empty room with desks and supplies meant for filling and filing paperwork brought by the bureaucracy day in and out. He was wary to advance. He summoned his Stand and a breeze swept through the hall of the station, chilling the backs of all the officers as Run DMC sucked in enough air to once again hold a welding fire in the air.
"Captain" one of the officers whispered to his superior, "didn't we get reports about a power like that?"
"Like what?" the captain asked.
"From what I see" the man said, having eyes capable of seeing the light near Starski not as an ethereal orb but as a solid and steady fire of intense heat and power, "he seems to be able to weld. At least, it looks like a welding torch flame."
"And?" the captain asked.
"All those unexplained robberies in the past" the man continued, "all caused by some kind of super-powerful torch, and all the simultaneous damage? We thought it was from some kind of blasting mechanism, but this man seems to be generating an awful lot of wind to keep that flame up. I wonder, if he cut into something, would that wind get more powerful?" Now the captain saw where his officer was heading, but he outright denied it.
"Oh, come off it" the captain said. "Over two dozen people dead and you're thinking about something that far back!?"
"All this is just too convenient" the man said. "We meet a Stand user at total random, and he happens to be fighting an even more powerful, murderous Stand user, right near us, and gets us wrapped up in the conflict as well."
"You watch it!" the captain said, maintaining a low volume. "This man is being kind enough to assist us in a fight we would obviously otherwise fail at!"
"Hey" Starski called, "I think I've got a plan. I need you guys to hide while I draw him out, then try and attack him. We can route him back to the suppressant devices you guys have if we can get him to move how we want."
"Those are nearby" the captain said. "Three of us are already equipped with them."
"Well hot damn then" Starski said. "Use those, then. And don't worry about me. As long as we can move him around and get him disabled, then do what you can. Just go for body-blows, too. Don't bother with his legs. I'm pretty sure they're armored under that weird black leather shit." Suddenly, everyone took a leaping step back and the three with the proper arms stood out in front, aiming at Starski, the captain among them. Starski blinked in confusion, then turned with a start and let Run DMC blast him backward off his feet. Disturbed fell down with his arms both in mid-swing, tentacles static outside his flesh like black maces, devious and full of destructive power.
"Man, you're getting on my last fucking NERVE!!!" Run DMC slashed its welding spark through the air and a blast of wind swept in from behind the officers. They were crowded together so tightly that their combined proximity created a wall that the intake nearly blew over. Disturbed retreated a step and hit the wall, breathing heavily, as his own mask started to split from eye to jaw. "Not so tough now, are you?" Starski retreated back with a few timid hops, keeping off his bad foot, and let the officer's take care of the rest. Disturbed punched the a hole in the wall out of frustration and summoned his Stand out of his chest as a moving cloud of powerful, dense darkness.
"Now!" the captain exclaimed. The green lights went on and the energy stopped The Sickness dead in the air. It moved in the shadows, but once the light hit it, nothing worked and nothing moved.
"Now shoot it!" Starski commanded, aiming his shotgun between the steadfast men standing in the way. The bullets blasted straight through the Stand and splattered thick red blood all over the floor. Disturbed just winced, as he knew what was happening, and he tried to retreat, pulling with him what he could of his Stand. It was dead, though. Numbed and useless to him, just a mass of extra weight that slowed him down. So much of it was out of his body besides that he was physically weakened and could barely retreat before the female officer managed to flank him through the offices and hammered his steel-guarded face with the butt of her gun.
"You fucking monster!" she exclaimed. Disturbed glowered at her and returned with a mighty backhand to her chin. She was knocked out against the wall, but in his reduced state of power he had failed to completely kill her. Just as he moved to finish her off with his heavy boots, one of the three armed with the green light came his way, following the female officer through the office, and shone it down on Disturbed. Suddenly, his whole body was paralyzed, but in that sickening frozen state he felt an incomprehensibly full pain. Every part of him that was still his screamed in endless pain. His shriveled organs, his narrow blood vessels, his paper skin and all of his atrophied muscles echoed with that all too human weakness that The Sickness had always filled. Instantly, he passed out, and instinctively his Stand returned to his body, dragging itself weakly in like a shadow gathering onto a single point.
"Hold him down" the captain said. "This man has abused his powers, and in terms with the REO Speedwagon Foundation for Paranormal Military Research, he is to be detained until appropriate conditions can be prepared for him to be either held or executed within."
"Let's hope they get a nice, green noose for this sick fuck" the rookie officer holding the light on him said. The captain turned to Starski, who looked down at Disturbed with a distant pity. He then turned up his head and scoffed pitilessly.
If you were the only thing standing between me and freedom Starski thought then you can consider yourself a pitiful damn thing for ever having met me! I'm a man who just has to be free!
"Escuse me, Mr. Starski" the captain said, offering a defeated sigh as he gave in to his own inner suspicions, "but may I ask you a question regarding this Dio you are affiliated with?"
"Uh, sure" Starski said. "I mean, I wouldn't say affiliated, that is, without 'forcibly'."
"Is he the same young man" the captain began "who has been reported to be the cause of the recent city-wide power outage and the destruction of a major power station, along with the killing of most of its staff?"
"Yeah, that's him!" Starski said. "If you've got the tools to do it, I bet you could take his ass, too!"
"And is he the same one" continued the captain with an accusing glare "that stole your gang from you?"
"Yeah!" Starski said, full of prideful anger. SHIT! WHAT THE FUCK!? DAMN MIND-GAMES!!! HE TRICKED ME INTO ADMITTING MY PAST OF CRIME!!!
"So then" the captain said, shining the light now on Starski and dissipating the arcane force around him, "you are the infamous 'Lovebug' of the gang world...." Starski shielded his eyes and curled up a snarl.
Looks like I'm caught...nowhere to fly to now...
"You're under arrest, sir!" the captain said, his face twisted as he tried hard to hold back all the rage he truly had. "You and this creature here.....for abuse of unorthodox power!" Starski glowered under the shade of his arm. Not at his capture, but at being compared to such an incomparably depraved man as that.....
