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.
Jojo sped, stomp after tread, across the fresh cut grass made moist by the humid night's air, for the flank stricken down by a boy named Sue. He remembered that enemy, and the horrors of his power. He remembered seeing him dead, moreover, and that his body was gone without a trace the very next morning. He remembered what he could do, and dreaded to see what he had already done.
"Hey!" REO called. "Wait up, man! We're not all athletes, dammit!" Jojo slowed down, just slight enough for REO to catch up, and they ran together to the small grove of trees. As soon as they broke through the brush they stopped themselves and became extremely cautious and defensive of their surroundings. REO took a step and heard something crush under his foot, like dried pottery. He knew what had happened already, and did not look down. Jojo flexed his muscles in defense and began breathing calmly. Past his rhythmic breaths he heard someone wheezing weakly and darted his head to a half-dried body.
"Help" he hissed.
"Holy shit" REO said. He fell down right beside him and carefully took a hand to his face. His skin flaked off with each slight movement that REO made. The man opened his mouth, which was dried and crusted almost to a dusty degree, and tried to speak. "Soldier....don't struggle. I failed you by not being able to help you. I'm sorry."
"Behind you!!!" he rasped. REO's eyes shot open, a second too late. A thick, winding arm was already speeding towards him. With a whining charge another fist came and punched the arm away, sending it into a tree where it disappeared with a wet splash. REO turned around and saw Jojo with his arm extended, and extended out from the end of his curled fist was another arm, slowly vanishing into the air, the arm of The World. It returned and Jojo continued his enlightened breathing with a snarl curling his lips.
"Come out!" Jojo demanded. Then, from the brush, a figure stepped out. Wearing a thick leather coat and baggy cargo pants was a pale-skinned and water-slicked man. His hair was long and draped, soaked with moisture like curtains over his face, like some perverse ghostly figure out of a well. He exuded the aura of a demon and a devil while projecting a solid sphere of Stand energy that was almost visible as the space around him bent and warped malignantly. He sighed and tilted his head up. His hair slid out of the way, and his face was revealed, just as tired and dead-standing as it was when he was first fought.
"I'm just a body" said Sue "without a soul. I'm an incomplete part of the whole. Tell me, what are you?"
"Vengeance" REO said, laying the soldier's head down. He stood up and coiled Trapt tightly around his forearm, but Jojo placed a hand to his shoulder.
"I am Johnathan Joestar" spoke Jojo. "You and I fought once before, if you remember. Back then, I didn't have a Stand, yet I still managed to defeat and seemingly kill you." Sue remained silent and shifted his weight with a stagger to the left. "How did you survive? Who are you working for?" Still, the bizarre young man remained quiet in the face of obvious force and danger. "Are you working with MUSE?" Jojo growled. Sue smiled and threw out an arm with open palm.
"Look out, Jojo!" REO shouted. An ethereal hand, thick and wide, came out with all fingers open and reaching forward. Jojo leaned away and let it reach for him, everything slowing as he controlled his fall backwards. Then, The World snapped out, caught the arm in a snaring grip, and squeezed out a cloud of water. It splashed through the ground, through Jojo and the trees and REO, but it hit the soldier's body and returned to him a slight amount of his sapped strength. He smacked his lips, his mouth still desperately dry, and shook up onto his hands and knees.
"Stay down" REO commanded. "This isn't a battle for humans anymore. From now on, this is a Stand fight!" The soldier let himself fall and started crawling weakly away. The arm was released by The World and returned, shrunken and thin, to the Stand that had thrown it as a fist. It was Cash, a sponge-armored Stand with exposed, rusted metal-ball joints connecting each leg, knee, elbow, shoulder, and its entire head to its torso. It was an unfriendly shade of yellow, though its wrung arm was darker and more shady. Its head was shaped up top like exposed brains and beneath them were two empty, round eyes with rounder metal-carved irises within, and beneath that was yet more sponge. Its entire body was an absorbent surface that sucked away moisture and made it into pure sustaining energy.
"You're just a boy, still" Jojo said. "I can tell, even without seeing that thing beforhand, that it hasn't improved a bit!" Jojo leaned his body back and stood with his legs straight, extending forward an arm with a fist turned thumb-down and his other hand with fingers extended and spread at the center of his chest. Then, rushing forward in the exact same stance, The World posed with a bright glare in its eyes and a powerfully sadistic grin. "Therefore, the result will be exactly the same! Prepare to lose, Sue!!!"
"Heeeeeeeeeh" Sue laughed with a single long-drawn huff of noise. "You're really clueless. Stands don't need to be trained, dummy. You're just....WORTHLESS!!!" Cash attacked! Jojo slid back and straightened up, concentrating all his mental energy on controlling the blocks of The World. Cash, however, was painfully slow, and punched with the speed of an average human.
"You idiot" Jojo said, a slight sadisim leaking into his voice. "It's useless! USELESS!!!" Just then The World broke Cash's attack and powered forward with a storm of rapid, blinding-speed punches, crying out in a hollow voice the whole time with ORAORAORAORAORAORAORAORAORA!!!!
"REO!" Jojo shouted over the roar of his Stand. "Take that guy to safety, then get to MUSE and try to stop everyone from approaching her!"
"What!?" REO exclaimed. "Why!?"
"You want more bodies to pile up because of her?" Jojo growled. REO looked down at the dried and crushed husks of men strewn about on the grass and scowled. He picked the injured soldier up and carried him away.
"No!" Sue exclaimed. Cash ceased blocking with its arms and threw them out, splashing a dense field of water that forced The World and Jojo backwards. Jojo slid across the wet grass and braced himself from hitting a tree by grabbing it. Then he pushed his arm back and sprang from the tree's trunk to stop Sue, who was getting REO and the soldier in reach. The World came out and hit Sue right on the top of his chest, a blow so powerful his flesh ripple out from the point of impact all the way up to his forehead and down to where his belt tightened his pants to his hips. The boy was blown back into a tree, saved from back-breaking force by Cash's spongy body acting as a shield. Jojo stood with a powerful aura and The World beside him, both glaring Sue down with equal disdain but unequal sadism, for only the Stand itself was grinning at his pain.
"I see now" Sue said as he jumped back up to his feet. "You won't let me go....because you're scared of me, right?" Jojo cocked an eyebrow, not letting his face alter itself any further than that. "You're scared of my power...because it doesn't matter who I fight. As long as its someone like you, who can only fight up close, I'll win! Anything in my range gets drained completely dry!!!" Cash took its hands to the ground and, in an instant, turned the greed grass brown and sucked away all the moisture in the ground until nothing remained around them but the trees outside his reach and a rock-hard surface. "Hehehe! As long as I can stop you, I won't be such a useless boy! So come on, you! I'm challenging you now, hehe! Give me your best shot!!!" Jojo calmly sighed and drew The World back. Sue looked up at him confused, and angered by his act, seeing Jojo get more and more calm with each passing moment while he himself got more and more flustered and enraged.
"Why?" he said. "Come fight me! Come at me! JUST TRY PUNCHING ME AGAIN!!!" Jojo just scoffed and snapped his fingers at Sue, pointing with his index forward and thumb up at the boy.
"There's no need to fight" Jojo said "when I know I've already won." Sue's eyes sank back out of pure rage and he summoned up his Stand again, his face sinking back into the darkness of shadows as the curtains of his hair drew to a close around him. Cash came at Jojo, but Jojo smoothly looked ahead with no intent of war at all...
The standing clandestine army of the Frozen Nights did move with tumultuous wrath and unguided rage, all of them armored in the most graphic of displayed modern-Gothic armaments. Long black trench coats that hid clips and grenades and knives and other guns, thick-padded cargo pants loaded up with metal and explosives. On their faces were gasmasks made of military plastics and horrid black metal spikes and spines. They looked like demons wielding assault rifles unjustly gained from daring raids and thieving missions on some distant and nearby army bases, and all of them aimed to insight an Armageddon on only a single target. A tall and evil young woman who haughtily made her way through the park's main walk.
"Crypt, Open!" a man shouted. He and a troop of others popped up and started firing their weapons, spraying the ground around the girl with bullets. Ankle-high dust went up and they stopped, ducking back down and moving under the shadows to a new flank while the dust settled. MUSE was unharmed, her Stand protected her, and she calmly retaliated. A swath of solid ground was cut out from her surroundings and was picked up by her many-tentacled Stand with both its arms unwound into long and writhing reaching masses.
"What a messy tactic" she said, and she threw the ground at the brush where the soldiers had run from. It crashed without a scream of pain or panic, and she knew that no one was there at her attack. Another group silently rose up from more nearby brush and opened fire. MUSE smashed her Stand into the ground and kicked up a cloud of thick dirt and rock and broken sidewalk to defend her body temporarily. With that shield in place her Stand maneuvered its parts to better protect her body, and the bullets whizzed past and around her with none of them ever hitting.
"Retreat!" one man shouted. The troop began moving away, but MUSE attacked sooner than before. From the writhing mass of tentacle shielding a single, long one shot forward and pierced into the back of a man's head, stopping him in mid-step.
"Come on!" one of the men called for him. They all ran away, leaving him to his death. He was lifted up by the force in the back of his head, swung around, and his body was whipped straight off, leaving his head suspended in the air by an invisible strand of energy. The others ignored it. It was simply a casualty in the path of war, another one bit the dust. MUSE took an enhanced offensive on them and returned her Stand to its whole, humanoid form. It reached down into the ground, wrist deep into the dirt, and its tentacles burrowed out like long roots.
"Is this it?" MUSE wondered. "All of this effort, and all they can do is blindly shoot at me?"
Far off, on a roof outside the park, a sniper in all black stood ready with a stolen U.S. Marine sniper rifle and extra clip of ammo. He aimed the far-seeing sight straight at the back of the villainous girl who stood out in the open, totally exposed.
"Easy kill" he said. Suddenly, somehow, MUSE turned her head his way and looked straight up at him. He didn't believe that she was looking at him, he couldn't. So, he fired, thinking nothing of the coincidence, but MUSE did not fall. Her Stand extended out its legs into masses of tentacles and caught the bullet in them. But no metal fell near her. The bullet had vanished, it seemed, from the realm of reality around her. Her shroud of absolute protection gave her an arrogant smirk, and in further protection she had the extended leg of her Stand coil around her head as a protective, thick mass of moving, living, ethereal tentacles which blurred her reviled face with a warping of space.
"Fucking bitch" the sniper cursed. "Alright, then. I'll be slow, if that's what you want!" He whispered when he talked, so unnerved by her defense that he unconsciously started to hide his already perfectly concealed presence. He aimed for her leg this time, lined the shot, and fired. He saw the bullet deflect and impact on the ground right next to her leg, and he started to panic. Why? Why am I missing? It must be her Stand, defending her! Now that she knows I'm here....no, she doesn't! I'll wait for more fire to mask my presence, then I'll shoot her right in her back!
Another group of soldiers was ready to move into position for another offense. "Wait" the group leader whispered. "She hasn't moved since the last attack. She's planning something. Switch to shock-and-awe tactics."
"Alright" the men agreed, most with silent nodes. The men therefore spread far out but kept their target in sight. They took from their coats new weapons, grenade launcher attachments, and armed them on the barrels of their assault rifles. They took a careful measure of trajectory, channeling the careful practice they had all undergone to hone their skills with such deadly weapons, and set their positions. MUSE stood still, perfectly so, and closed her eyes with a smirk building up into a full grin. She crossed her arms haughtily and snapped her fingers, calling her Stand to wrap her completely in protective tentacles.
"Fire!" the man shouted. The sniper, being acute of all senses, heard some call being made and the dull fire of many single guns. He took aim through his scope and saw MUSE's body, warped and wriggling in the air like it was surrounded by heatwaves off of a scorching pavement. Then he was blinded by the rapid succession of explosions that sounded out like thunder, all at once, and decimated the park grounds all around the woman. A huge cloud of smoke rose up and a wind blasted into all of the men, forcing some of them onto their backs for lack of balance.
"Graves, Close!" a man shouted as loud as he could. The men that heard him picked themselves up and retreated. The whole park was shaking like an earthquake for a few brief yet terrible moments, and then it was silent and static again. The ground stopped its tremors and all the forces stopped to wonder to themselves what their efforts would yield.
"Did we get her?" one of the Nights asked.
"It's not likely that she survived" the leading man said. "Even if she did, we're all still alive. Everyone reload! We're going to go in turn next time, one at a time, each lob a grenade and keep her on the move!"
"That won't be necessary" Rosalisa said. The men turned to see her, their deadly rose of war, and they bowed down onto their knees. "I shall occupy her until Lord Dio comes to take the fight."
"Of course, mistress" one of the men said. "We shall keep the other humans from interfering."
"Of course" the man said. "You heard her! Move out! Suppress the interlopers, but don't kill on sight!" The men moved out, those that could hear. Some were still stuck in that enormous cloud of smoke that continued to spread out with the billowing night breezes. They picked themselves up weakly and tried to crawl away, the shock of the explosion having shocked their bodies, making it difficult to move at all.
"I've gotta move" one man said. He picked himself up with gun slung over shoulder and began speeding away, unaware of which way was which. Then, following a distant blast, his helmet was blown apart with a scattering of blood and skull fragments. The sniper on the roof wasn't giving up. He switched his sight to thermal vision and shot at anything vaguely human-looking within the yellow-shaded cloud of dust and smoke.
"I'll kill her!" he growled. "This whole battle is to kill her! And only her! And the man to kill her will be me! ME!!!" He fired, cocked the gun and fired again as rapidly as he dared. Each shot either missed a supposed target or felled an ally as the idiot sniper blindly fought through the thick veil that surrounded his true target. In his madness, and under the loud cover of his rapid firing, the sniper failed to hear someone behind him until the very last second. He took his hand to a knife sheathed near his armored shoulder and turned around with a slash, headless half the way into it. The man behind him wielded a sharp, long sword that was at the end of a powerful slash attack. He swung it again as the man's body fell to get the blood off of it and sheathed it in the scabbard hanging off his waist.
"This mission was too easy" said the man as he stole the sniper rifle and held it up against his shoulder. His whole body was concealed in green and blue belts, from his head to his feet. It was Trip! "Someone's screwing with me...." He looked off into the distant battlefield and disappeared with his power. "Looks like it's going to be a fun night for some unlucky bastards...." Once he vanished he stayed so and left the roof with the rifle in hand. Where he was going, and why he had come were questions that he only knew as answers to his current mission. Why was a different matter....
Jojo continued his powerhouse offensive against the aggravated and confused boy Sue by doing nothing but dodging. Cash attacked, slowed to the speed of an ordinary human, while Sue stood back with his eyes half-rolled up in pure anger, and Jojo just calmly dodged with a smile always visible on his face.
"Hey, come one!" Jojo said. "You want to prove yourself, don't you?"
"You shut the fuck up!" Sue exclaimed angrily. "I've had it up to here" he motioned, holding a flat palm up to his chin "with you, so if you don't shut up...!" Jojo just grinned at him while Cash continued swinging and jabbing. "I-If you don't shut up...." Jojo juked around the Stand and got up closer to Sue. Cash faded away as Sue's will to fight left and he fell back against a tree. "If you don't shut up now.....then....what can I do?"
"Nothing" Jojo said. Sue looked up at him, his face drained of all knowledge in expression, and a fearful unknown paleness covering him. "Simply do nothing. You don't have to be swayed by the influence of someone else. You have to make your own decision..."
"Haaaa" Sue madly sighed. "I already did! I made the decision to let all my decisions be made for me, so it's alright!!!" Jojo sensed danger. He jumped away just as Cash stepped forward with a quick jab. "WHAT YOU SAY WON'T MATTER!!! YOU'RE ALREADY DEEAAAAAD!!!!"
He's gotten faster Jojo thought. Then he noticed that Cash's body had also become slightly thinner. Its porous yellow skin had faded in color to a more dull than obnoxious yellow and it seemed to be dryer, just as Sue had become from standing out in the open air. The moisture must be draining from him somehow. Of course! The air! When he absorbed all the moisture from the ground, the air was naturally drawn to it to try and replace it! He's an idiot. By making the ground dry when it was already past a soaking point with moisture, he's sealed his own fate. Jojo summoned The World again and sent it forward to block. Now Cash was faster than a human, but still not so fast as to beat The World in a close fight.
"I'm going to kill you" lowed Sue "and then I'll drink you up in one big GULP!"
"Who told you to do this?" Jojo demanded. The World caught Cash's fist in mid-punch, but the Stand didn't tear away. Instead it grabbed The World's arm with its other hand and held it there. Jojo sensed something terrible and tore the sleeve of his shirt to see his forearm better. It was had the finger imprints of Cash pressing on it, a direct reaction that his Stand shared, but the skin itself was under another effect. Jojo took a careful finger and rubbed across his flesh, which he found leathery and, shockingly, dry.
"I gave up my life" Sue began "because I was worthless, and she gave it back to me! So it's her life now, not mine!"
"So you are under MUSE's influence" Jojo said. The World punched Cash's hand flat against its own forearm, pressing Sue's own hand with the force of a punch that sent his arm numbly swinging up.
"I told her that my life was hers to control" he said "and she called me worthless. 'A man with no will to live for himself is worthless!' And then she tried to kill me! But then, suddenly, she decided that I wasn't worthless, and she let me live! So I owe this to her. No, I don't owe anything anymore! I've given myself to her, because she deserves to use me however she wants. And if I'm useless to her, then I simply won't live anymore!"
"Why did you call out Dio back then?" Jojo demanded. "How long has this been going on!?" Sue was no longer listening. The World pulled its arm away and looked at it. The armor that was its skin had started to crack and peel away slowly, revealing underneath a bright blue glowing shine. Jojo's skin, likewise, had cracked and ripped open where it was especially dried, and his Ripple breathing was slowed by the painful dryness of the air.
"This war" Sue said "won't end until we're all that's left. That's what she wants, so that's what she gets, even if a boy as useless as me has to do it all HIMSELF!!!" In his rage, Sue ran forward, aiming to face Jojo head-to-head. He drew out a knife from the long and draping sleeve of his jacket and held it tight in his hand. Jojo shrank back, planning simply to take his arm when he stabbed forward and toss him by it, but when his mind parted from the battle already at hand, The World stepped in and stopped Sue cold like a steel wall.
Wha!? Sue silently exclaimed. A Stand...stopped me? But....I'm human! I should be able....to pass right through it! Only Stands can harm Stands, right? The World took Sue by his knife-wielding wrist and snapped it with only one hand. In its vice grip the Stand also rose Sue's arm up to rise his body up and, with its other arm drawn back, delivered a humungous punch straight to Sue's gut. Once it connected, The World let go of his arm, and he smashed into the dried trunk of the tree, lying frozen and embedded halfway inside the tree.
"The World!" Jojo exclaimed. "I...I know I didn't think to do that!" The World glared back at him with red eyes and a patronizing smile. "Could it be...have I lost control again?" The World crossed its arms and slowly drew back into Jojo, combining with his inner mind and flashing rage into his eyes. "I see....The World...this is my hidden power. It's a power that can barely be controlled, but when it is, it's for the sake of good. When I lose control, it turns to evil. In that case, isn't it just basic power? Pure, raw, plainly defined power?" Sue coughed and fell down to the hardened dirt. His wrist was shattered and a trail of blood was starting up his throat and out of his mouth. His stomach had been punched so hard that it had nearly buckled and ripped against the force. Jojo gripped his hands tight and looked down on his crippled enemy. The power of his aura moved his hair and brought light to his eyes that pierced through the darkness.
Not yet Sue thought. He dug the fingers of his unbroken hand into the dirt, and through them he continued to absorb moisture. I'm not done...not yet....!
"Sue" Jojo began, "you're not living your life the right way. A man, woman, and even a child must be able to decide for themselves. 'Is it right' and 'is it wrong' have to be up to you, not someone else! If someone tells you to kill, you have to ask yourself if you can! If you should! What any alternative may be! Just blindly following someone's commands, with no regard for yourself as a living being, makes no sense! You have a gift that can be used for the better, but you insist on using it for someone else's wishes! Isn't that just throwing your life away!?"
"No" Sue groaned. "Because...you see, for her, my gifts give me permission...to do anything with my life....that I like." Jojo glared down at him. He shifted his weight to step forward and, suddenly, fell straight through the drained earth. Cash had reached even further down into the dirt through Sue's fingers and made a discrete, hollow hole beneath Jojo deep enough to trap and surround him up to his chest in sand and dirt.
"Ah!" Jojo exclaimed. He fell to the bottom of the pit and became quickly covered in finely-grained dirt and sand that had the moisture sucked from each and every grain. Sue carefully pulled himself forward along the ground and held his hand over Jojo's head. The swollen hand of Cash descended from it and a deluge of water suddenly struck Jojo's face.
"People like us" Sue continued from above, "who have these powers, or find these powers, are generally stronger and better off than those who don't. We are advanced, enlightened. The others are weak and ignorant of the greater reality hiding from them in plain sight. Those others must be destroyed, so that the world may become a place for the truly powerful!"
"Are you insane!?" Jojo shouted, spitting out the water and mud that engulfed him. "That sounds like a genocide!!!" And Sue smiled.
"They're all just worthless boys and girls....." he lowed. "What's the point of keeping them around.....?" A genocide against humanity. Is this Sue's own delusion, or the true evil of MUSE?
