Some dusty ass road, like…four o'clock? And a half?
"…"
"…"
The silence lingering in the air is almost crushing in its weight. Not from tension, but from…
"So uh…" Hol Horse coughs a bit to clear his throat, the kicked up desert dust invading his mouth as he speaks. "You ever gonna tell 'em?"
"Nah." Joseph casually replies, eyes focused on the map in his hands. "That sounds like too much trouble. I'll tell them if you decide to run off, though." A sly grin curls on the man's face as he looks up as if to confirm his surroundings, then returns to the map.
Ah hell…I'll probably be the next one on the choppin' block if I press too much…Just one fight, Hol Horse. Just one.
"Y'know, I could help look if you told me what ta look fer."
"A dead village, probably some trenches. The drop point is supposedly a former hotspot for some war that just ended recently, a town called Shalamcheh."
"Trenches? Who the hell digs trenches?"
"Isn't that what they do? I've no idea myself, I missed all the big ones."
"Well I'll be damned…" Hol Horse pauses as he squints in the distance, having spotted some structures in the distance.
"What? I know, people keep talking about this World War II thing, and all I know is the Great War-"
"Oh shut up, ya imbecile. There's what we're lookin' fer." Hol Horse indicates a few hundred feet ahead: rows of shelled out structures and mortar holes lined with half collapsed trenches.
"Oh, nice eyes, Tex!"
"Just…Hol Horse, please."
"Let's get moving, our mystery Iggy's waiting!" Joseph swings his arm back and stows away his map in a small backpack, eager to head to the drop site. However, Hol Horse reaches out and grabs Joseph's shoulder, a worried look on his face.
"Hold on, now. If this place is recent…we should keep an eye out."
"Say again?
"Y'know. Unspent ammo. Half blown up shells. Landmines." Hol Horse heavily emphasizes the last word.
"Huh." Joseph scratches his chin a bit as he considers the thought, but only for the briefest of moments. "Guess I'll have to be extra cautious!" Taking off in a sprint, the only expression Hol Horse can see on Joseph's face as he dashes away is one of pure smugness. And completely closed eyes.
…Why do I have to babysit this fool…
Boooored on the side of the road, chilling with Jotaro
"Joootarooo."
"…"
"Jooo-"
"-What." Jotaro turns back and cocks an eyebrow at Anne, unmoving as he leans against the back of the convertible. Anne kicks her legs at the air above her as she continues to lie on her back on the trunk of the convertible.
"Why do we have to sit in the middle of nowhere for this?"
"It'll be much harder for a Stand user to ambush us when we're this far away from anything." Despite saying what was supposedly a comforting statement, Jotaro's expression hardens as he scans the area surrounding them.
Not that there's much to see.
Only vague sandy scrubland and a main road near them. Even then, the road seems mostly abandoned, save for a passing car every once and a while. From what she saw of the map earlier, there's a heavy country border ahead, with a convenient parking complex, probably some shade…
"We're gonna get ambushed anyway, we might as well have it happen somewhere cool."
"Yare yare daze…" Anne can almost feel the eye-roll baked into Jotaro's words. Unperturbed, she lazily rolls off of the trunk and onto her feet.
"Ugh."
"We told you this would be dangerous."
"Yeah, but I thought it was the fun type of dangerous. Not the 'exposure to the elements' type of dangerous."
"Tch."
"Can't we at least have the car on? There might something on the radio…and our drinks are gonna get hot if the cooler isn't-" Anne paces impatiently as she complains, her thoughts running separate from her mouth.
And I thought it would be fun hanging out with you, Jotaro…but we've barely even had a chance to fight beside each other…
Lost in her thoughts and complaining, she suddenly feels something cold thrust into her hands. A water bottle.
Looking up, her eyes meet Jotaro's cold gaze. Anne could feel the concern radiate from below his icy exterior. Then, words of utmost compassion work their way from Jotaro's lips:
"Shut up." And like that, Anne's hopes dash themselves against the rocks. She narrows her gaze at Jotaro, who quickly turns his back to her and rummages through the trunk. Something which he was probably doing when she was daydreaming.
Ugh. Guess I'm just a nuisance…
Continuing her pacing, she tosses the water bottle up and down in her hands, rolling it as she catches it. A side eyed glance to Jotaro shows him swapping a deflated cold pack for a stiff one, then closing the cooler.
"Hey, so, why don't you wear something coole-" Suddenly, as Anne is speaking, a sense of almost panic overcomes Jotaro's movements. His hands dig through the trunk, desperately searching for something. "-What the hell are you looking for Jotaro?"
"Anne. Joseph took the map and the backpack we had in here, right?"
"Yeah?" Anne stops and faces Jotaro, about eight feet from the car. Dust swirls around in small tornados on the ground, the slight breeze strengthening with the tension around them.
"Did he take one of the bowls?"
"No?"
"…" Jotaro seems to freeze in place, before his eyes dart to Anne. Or more precisely, the item in Anne's hand that she's juggling…
"Jotar-" Air whips past her ear before she finishes speaking, as if a bullet were fired right next to her. The cold pack in Jotaro's hand had disappeared, and so did her water bottle.
Did he just-
Anne sees Jotaro take two decisive steps forward, and in an instant she feels herself pulled back towards the car by some unseen force. As she flies back, she twists to see some water from the busted water bottle disappear from the air.
And in the same flash of time, three large gashes form in the ground where she had been standing before presumably getting pulled back by Jotaro's Stand.
Shalamcheh, 1988
"That about sums it up!" Joseph plants his mechanical hand on a nearby beam of a half-caved in house, which responds in kind by creaking loudly. Joseph quickly returns his hand to his side and stands straight, a look of utter consternation on Hol Horse's face as he does so.
"…You can sense the vibrations in the ground around you as you ran, especially in the loose sand."
"Yep!"
"So you ran with your eyes closed through a potential minefield."
"Right so far!"
"…And you left me ta walk through it."
"If there were any mines on the way here I would have told you!"
"WELL MAYBE you shoulda thought ta tell me before I got a damn coronary from catchin' up to your ass!" Hol Horse stomps his foot down in frustration, sweat pouring down his face. Joseph simply puts his hands up to calm him, a look of slight embarrassment on his face.
"You should…"
"What, calm down?"
"Step back like three steps."
"Wh-" Without warning, Joseph plants a foot on Hol Horse's chest and kicks off of him, sending Joseph about six feet back and Hol Horse tumbling about…three steps back. Just as out of the blue, parts of the house beside them tumble heavily to the ground with a thud, right where Hol Horse was standing.
"Sorry! That one was absolutely my fault!" Flinging his legs up, Joseph kips up to standing and walks over to a shell-shocked Hol Horse. "Close one, right?"
"…You are probably the single greatest threat ta my damn life, ya know that?"
"Hah, not as much as-" As Joseph slaps Hol Horse on the shoulder, the sound of a passing plane of above them drowns out their words. Right on schedule, the two of them spot a billowing parachute left behind by the passing plane, the green tarp above them drifting lazily down to the ground.
"…Jojo, are you sure that's ours?"
"Why? Does he look funny? You have better eyes than me, so-"
"That's a damn crate, Jojo."
"Oooh, maybe he's tranquilized. Too dangerous to-"
"A goddamn dog crate, Jojo. Either they shipped us a real shorty, or a goddamn animal."
"I mean, I heard Jotaro fought a gorilla on a boat…"
"Yer not instillin' much confidence in me, Joseph. If that thing's an animal, I'm gonna clock both you and that old geezer in the jaw."
As Hol Horse continues to complain with steadily more profanities, Joseph can feel the wind around them pick up a bit, causing the dust and ash from the ruined village around them to drift in a low haze.
"Yeah yeah. Nothing to do but wait for it to land. For the record, I'm still betting on a really short guy with a grizzled voice, probably a prison sentence. A funny hat, maybe." Stretching his limbs, Joseph swings his backpack off and sets it down beside their feet, rotating his neck to crack it a bit.
"Goddammit…" Hol Horse goes to sit down, but gets knocked off balance a bit as he's leaning down as the wind picks up a bit into a sudden gust. "-sonuva-"
"Shit!" Joseph interrupts Hol Horse's grumbling by pointing at the descending crate above them.
The gust seems to have pushed it off course. Significantly.
"Get the hell up, you lazy cowboy, our mystery box is floating to the middle of nowhere!" Grabbing Hol Horse's arm, Joseph yanks the blond cowboy to his feet before slinging his backpack to his shoulders again.
Huh, feels a lot lighter…that's urgency for you!
"Hey, don't leave me behind, I don't like havin' ta walk 'round this place myself." Before Joseph can respond, however, he starts out into a sprint.
Starts.
Before he gets two strides in, an extremely sharp and massive pain pushes through Joseph's left foot, causing him to fall and faceplant into the dirt. He twists on the ground to get a good look at the source of the intense pain: a thick flechette impaled straight through the center of his foot. Joseph closes his eyes and breathes deeply, Hamon pouring through his body. Slowly, the pain numbs enough for him to ball up his mechanical fist and, like a lightning flash, reach for the spike tipped metal rod to pull it out.
But it slips away right before he grasps it. It shoots its way back out of his foot, landing straight up on the sandy dirt between him and Hol Horse.
"The hell-"
"I didn't sense that thing at all!" Joseph grabs his foot to staunch the bleeding, examining the bloody rod before him. Before his eyes, the flechette morphs into a small head swaddled in dense, iron filing-like hair, two protruding arms digging into the earth below it. The pale white face is marked like a ritual mask with a small semblance of a topknot and a pointed beard. Its clenched teeth exude menace, and its wide, soulless eyes stare emptily at Joseph.
Without any words, Hol Horse quickly summons his Stand into his bandaged right hand and immediately fires at the small head with arms on the ground between the two of them.
CLANG
The bullet ricochets off into a nearby building. All Joseph can see is the creature slowly morphing back into a head, after transforming into what appeared to be a slab of metal before. It turns from Joseph to look at Hol Horse.
"Guuu-NYA!" Unintelligible shrieks pour from its mouth as it leaps at the cowboy, the tiny creature's body morphing once more into a bayonet. A panicked flail from Hol Horse blocks the attempted stab with his own Stand, filling the empty village with the sound of scraping metal.
"Shit! Jojo, a Stand!"
"Tell me something I don't know!" Reaching his hand out, Joseph sends out a purple vine to grab the lunging bayonet. "Trickster Purple! Let's give this thing the shock of its lifetime!" The vine wraps itself around the bayonet and, with a relaxed breath, Joseph sends a large charge of Hamon through it. Before it can reach the enemy Stand, however, it morphs into what appears be a heavy stone. The Hamon crashes against its surface, but ultimately fails to conduct through the stone's surface.
"Well, that thing's probably High Priestess, and we should probably get the hell outta here!" Hol Horse makes a large leap over Joseph, running full speed away.
"Hey, that's usually my- oh what the hell I can beat this damn thing!" Pulling hard with his Stand, the entangled stone ball goes flinging towards Joseph. Recalling Trickster Purple, he summons the vine on his other hand, which wraps itself around his metallic knuckles. "Try to withstand this! Overdri-"
CRUNCH
It takes Joseph almost a full second to notice what happened. The ball had morphed into what appeared to be long, sharp crystals, and is currently embedded a few inches deep into his metal prosthetic.
It slipped through the vines…
"Well…" Joseph sweats a bit, then slams his mechanical hand on the building beside him, breaking off his prosthetic hand halfway and leaving his oil covered fingers alongside High Priestess on the desert sand below him. He springs to his uninjured foot and leaps a few feet back, his eye on the enemy Stand as it morphs back to its base form.
"Guuuuu-NYA!" Once again, it leaps towards Joseph. Before it can get there, however, Joseph has already cartwheeled back and flipped around. Steadying himself on his uninjured foot, he goes down on what would be all fours if not for his mangled mechanical hand and his impaled foot, and takes off in the most awkward run imaginable, alternating between a single hand and foot.
"Hol Horse! Wait for me!"
END of Chapter 25