CHAPTER 7: I WANNA GIVE IT ALL TO YOU

While Polnareff and Kakyoin were desperately trying to escape J. Giel's reach, Hol Horse casually finished his cigarette before stomping out the embers of the dying butt.

"That's the way it goes, the weaker the man the farther they run…" he mused, glancing over at Belladonna who was pouting at the ground with a frustrated flick of his tail. "What's the matter Kitty? Pretty things shouldn't frown you know,"

The boy scoffed, sucking on his teeth. Hol Horse knew damn well what he was itchin' for, and judging by the smarmy way the cowboy pulled out a fresh cig from his pocket, balancing it between his teeth with his tongue, he was fully prepared to dangle it like a dam carrot until Bella begged him.

God he needed a cigarette right now.

The feline was more stubborn than Hol Horse or anyone else gave him credit for, so he just smiled and blinked his pretty little eyes. "I wouldn't frown so much if you bummed me one of those, come on, I'm dying over here!"

He just laughed, "Dio'd have my ass if he found out I'd fed your nasty little habit, sorry Baby but I'm not lookin' to die today…" he trailed off, chuckling to himself as he watched the feminine boy's pout get deeper, his cheeks puffing out slightly as he glared. "That is… unless you're willing to make it worth my wile…"

Bella watched Hol Horse's gaze fall lower until they settled on his top, the laces sinched so tight they gave the appearance of budding breasts.

He was about to tell him to fuck off, that he wasn't in the mood and probably wouldn't be until he'd soaked in a bath for a couple of days, but that was the thing about lust. It was set in stone until it wasn't, and the idea of a cigarette sounded like a pretty okay trade off…

Whatever… not like he had anything else to do…

Nose pissing blood and sight shaking from the brute force of his punch, Polnareff had been forgiven. "Take that as a sign that we've made up, and when we face those bastards again we'll face them together."

"M-merci Kakyoin…" he stammered, palms filling with bloods as he held them to his nose. Polnareff was quick to shrug off the pain, using a rag from the back seat of the truck to wipe his face. "You know, I was so sure that I stabbed him with my sword, but my strike never hit him… it was like he wasn't even there…"

Looking up and meeting his own eyes in the reflection, the man scowled and tore the rearview mirror from its socket, squeezing it in his grasp as though the action would draw out some sort of answer to his questions.

"Even breaking the mirror into pieces didn't stop him, the Hanged Man just attacked from the shards… how in the hell am I supposed to fight against that?!" Polnareff thought back to the bathroom in the restaurant, the way the hideous reflection of the Hanged Man stalked closer and closer within the mirror's reflection yet remained completely invisible once he turned around. "He attacks your reflection, but his knife sinks into your real flesh… and my Stand can't go inside mirrors… how are we supposed to attack him if he's in some kind of… mirror world?!"

The glass cracked beneath his grip so he tossed the useless mirror out the window, watching it break and scatter into pieces in the road.

"Polnareff," the redhead chimed. "You keep talking about inside the mirror and the mirror world, but there's no such thing as a world inside a mirror, remember, this is reality not fantasy."

He scoffed, "What are you talking about? You saw it too, didn't you? You can only see him in a mirror and when you turn around he's gone!"

"Yes, but anything you see in a mirror is only a reflection created by light."

"I'm not an idiot! You don't have to explain that to me!" he was getting frustrated. "Look I'm talking about what's happening now, if Stands exist in this world then maybe there's a mirror world too?"

"There isn't."

"Come on man!"

Kakyoin sighed, focusing on the road instead of arguing with Polnareff. The idea of a mirror world was just ridiculous, and besides, if the Hanged Man could somehow conjure such a thing then why not pull them into it? Why not utilize the supposed ability by catching them off guard and leaving no evidence of a battle on the physical plain? He firmly believed that backing strategies based on guesses and assumptions would get them nowhere, Stands are able to destroy other Stands, so there had to be something they were missing.

A flash of light cut off his next thought, Kakyoin blinking as he shifted his gaze to the steering wheel. The chrome coating must have reflected the bits of sun that shone through the sunroof. He almost sighed, annoyed, but something else caught his eye before he could.

The reflection wavered like a mirage before the image of the Hanged Man appeared in the steering wheel.

He growled like an animal as his image crawled into the trunk of the truck, only for Kakyoin to whip around and find nothing behind him, just as Polnareff had described. The Stand was still crawling closer when he looked back, a knife gripped in his hand poised to strike.

"Polnareff, the chrome of the steering wheel!" he shouted, letting go of the wheel. "The bastard's caught up to us!"

The Hanged Man broke through the back windshield, scattering shattered glass throughout the inside of the truck. Kakyoin slammed the steering wheel to the left as a result, the car swerving hard before crashing into the side of the road and toppling over upside-down in a heap of metal and glass.

The pair groaned as they painfully tried to pry themselves from the vehicle, glass having lodged in various points of their bodies and painting them with their own blood, but at least they were alive.

"Hey… talk to me… are you alright?" Polnareff called.

Kakyoin coughed at the dust stirred up by the accident. "I slammed my chest… but I'll be fine."

Before the redhead could pull himself up using the broken car door, something flashed in Polnareff's vision. It bounced like a laser pointer from the car window to the side rear-view mirror, and then to the metal bumper, and as he looked to see what the hell it was, he found the Hanged Man staring back at him with those beady, sunken-in eyes.

"CHARIOT!" he called, his armored Stand slicing the bumper to ribbons before the Hanged Man's knife could touch him. "Kakyoin! Avoid the reflection!"

Kakyoin followed him as he quickly ran from the car and ducked low behind some rocks, the two of them panting as they fought to catch their breath.

"Damn, I got it, I just saw him do it." He explained, "He's going from mirror to mirror, this guy moves by jumping around, one reflection to another! He traveled all this way by jumping over and over, that's the only explanation for how he caught up to us!"

They'd escaped so fast before, leaving Hol Horse and Belladona in the dust, but if the Hanged Man had bounced between mirrors, windows, and all reflective surfaces, he'd have no problem flagging them down.

The redhead gasped, "Reflecting? That means he's actually light! Are you saying that's the true nature of his Stand?"

He nodded, "I am, I just saw him in the car's bumper… he's going to reflect off that surface and onto something else, so stay clear of reflective stuff." The weight of his broken hearted earrings tapped against the side of his head, reminding him of their shiny, reflective presence. "Take anything shiny off your body! And your uniform buttons too…"

"Hey mister, you guys okay?" a little boy asked as he strolled casually up to the two injured foreigners. "Want me to bring you some medicine?"

Polnareff grit his teeth, thoroughly frustrated and this random kid was not helping. "We're fine! Look, it's dangerous, get out of here!"

The kid ignored his warning, eyes wide as he took in the sight of the flipped car. "Whoa, you guys totally messed up your car!" a blink of light shot out from the wreckage, something that did not go unnoticed by Kakyoin. "Hey, you're bleeding mister! Are you sure you're okay?"

It was then that they saw it, inside the iris of the kid's left eye, the walking corpse wrapped in rotting bandages that was the Hanged Man.

"That asshole!"

"He's reflected in the kid's eye!"

It was one thing to hunt them across the desert like dogs, but to drag innocent civilians into the fight was simply taking things too far, then again, Polnareff would never put it past a son of a bitch like J. Giel. He not only disregarded human lives but took pleasure in their suffering and enjoyed snuffing them out. He was truly scum of the earth.

"Listen kid, don't look at us!" Polnareff growled, he and Kakyoin diving in different directions to avoid the boy's view, but it did little to nothing as he followed them with his gaze everywhere they stepped, perplexed by them. "I just told you, don't look at us!"

"Huh? But you're hurt?"

"I'm fine! See?" he gestured wildly to himself, to his open wounds and forced smile, even flexing his arms to try and convince the kid of his upstanding health. "Perfectly fine! Now go look over there!"

"But… but you're bleeding…"

"You brat! I said look over there!" the boy cocked his head confusedly, the Hanged Man cackling all the while from the reflection of his iris. "Damn you J. Giel!"

"What are you going to do Polnareff?" the Stand mocked, grinning behind the bandages across his face. "You wouldn't poke out this cute little kid's eye with that sword of yours, would you…? Polnareff!?"

In the reflection J. Giel latched onto Polnareff's neck, his yellowed fingernails digging into his flesh as his invisible hand wrapped around his throat.

"Polnareff!" Kakyoin cried out, but it was useless, J. Giel had the Frenchman in his grasp and was thoroughly holding the pair by the balls until he decided to make his next move.

"And now I've finally caught you! You can't run boy… not unless you gouge the kid's eyes out!" the blade of his knife shimmered as it emerged from his wrist.

Seeing his companion trapped in the hold of a putrid Stand belonging to a soul just as repulsive had Kakyoin clenching his fists in rage. "You disgusting, cruel, son of a bitch! You're dead!"

The Hanged Man continued to laugh, that is until he was interrupted by the steady thrums of Polnareff's own laughter. The Frenchman chuckled lowly, a wolfish grin forming beneath the rivulets of blood on his face.

"Don't worry Kakyoin, mon frere, that's not what you say at a time like this!" he gave the redhead a bright thumbs-up. "You see, in times like these you've gotta say something fitting… before you get your revenge say something like this here: My name is Jean Pierre Polnareff, for the honor of my dear sister's soul, and so my good friend Avdol can rest peacefully in heaven above… I'm going to hurl you into the depths of despair… prepare yourself J. Giel!"

The rotting corpse said nothing, only glaring from the reflection of the boy's eye, but Polnareff was hardly discouraged, in fact he was downright giddy.

"Sorry kid, I'll buy you whatever candy you want after this…"

Without another word he kicked up a cloud of sand into the kid's eye, effectively blinding him as he shut his eyes out of reflex. He might have cried and called Polnareff a bastard, but it worked perfectly, as J. Giel was thrown from his iris and directly into the path of Silver Chariot's blade.

All Kakyoin had seen was another blink of light, and now he gasped as he saw the enemy's Stand in Polnareff's iris.

"Whoa! Polnareff, he's in your eye!"

He smiled smugly, "I don't really understand how, but he essentially moves at the speed of light, no one can normally see speed like that… but then I knew that if the kid closed his eyes, his next move would be to my eyes! There was no other place for him to go, and that's how we'll beat him!"

Kakyoin hummed, realizing that the nature of the Stand was in fact light, and he could only exist within one reflection at a time. Once one reflective surface was destroyed he instinctively moved on to the next. His speed and near invisibility was almost unbeatable, but they'd successfully used those strengths to trap him like the rodent he was.

"So…" he continued, "As long as I can pinpoint his trajectory, I can slice through him like butter!"

The Hanged Man's back exploded in a spray of blood, cut nearly in two by Chariot. A scream of pure agony wrang out from a building in the distance, and the pair knew they'd cornered their rat.

"There! His real body is over there!" they took off, wounds forgotten as adrenaline ran hot through their veins. "You bastard… finally!"

When they found him, his wound was pissing blood and he was panting like a dog in the sand, glaring up at them as they stood over him.

"At last we meet… J. Giel! My name is Jean Pierre Polnareff, and I have seen through your Stand's clever little trick!" in all honesty, the scum probably couldn't hear him over the choking of his own blood, but it mattered not to him. "If it hadn't been for Kakyoin and Avdol, your Stand of light would have killed me."

It was then that Kakyoin saw it, the pure confusion on this man's face, as if he truly had no idea what Polnareff was talking about. He raised both his hands, perhaps to beg for mercy, and Kakyoin gasped upon the sight of his perfectly in-tact left hand.

"No Polnareff! This isn't the man with the two right hands! That's not J. Giel!"

The flash of light had been too quick as the Stand of the real J. Giel plunged his knife into Polnareff's back.

"Polnareff!"

"Polnareff!" Kakyoin was by his side in moments, tearing the knife from his shoulder and tossing it away. The silver-haired man had fallen to his knees, clutching his wound as blood pooled from between his fingers and grinding his teeth in a mix of pain and fury.

A man then stepped out from the shadows, laughing as he ran the fingers of his second right hand over his own wound.

"I am J. Giel, you insignificant fools!" The pair's eyes widened, the redhead stepping in front of his friend as he gaped at the vile creature he'd spent half his life hunting down. J. Giel smirked as he pointed to the wounded man they'd thought was him, "That man is just some beggar who was in the wrong place at the wrong time! I just carved a small wound into him, the same wound you were so gracious to give me!"

The beggar cowered, clutching his chest as he tried to crawl away. J. Giel just laughed, grinning with his yellowed and pointed teeth, like those of a stray dog that had spent its life chewing on bones.

"You totally fell for it! Getting close to him without knowing what I looked like was a grave mistake, one you'll pay for with you lives!"

Kakyoin growled, summoning Hierophant with a crack of his long tentacles like those of a whip. "Bastard! Take this, Emerald…"

"Whoa there! Have you forgotten where you are?" the redhead froze, unable to unleash Emerald Splash as the vermin called out to the many beggars of the abandoned ruins. "Hey! Gather 'round! These two gentleman say they have a boatload of cash to share!"

They were suddenly swarmed by people, each of them wide-eyed and smiling, totally unaware that they'd practically doomed the two men to death. The reflection of the wrapped corpse bounced from person to person, from eye to eye, surrounding them on all sides all at once and trapping them, Polnareff and Kakyoin now becoming the mice and he the avaricious cat about to devour them.

"You say you've figured out my Stand?" he purred, "You fool! You think I don't know my own weakness?! I have no weakness! You can never know which reflection I'll jump to next!"

His blade cut Polnareff across his chest before he blinked to another reflection and slashed Kakyoin's wrists. They couldn't see him, but they could hear him as he laughed, mocking them with each spray of blood he ripped from them in a crisscross of steel and flesh.

"You can't run anymore! You sacrificed your entire youth just to hunt me down, and just when you're close you're going to fail to avenge your sister? How pathetic is that?! Meanwhile, I, J. Giel will continue a life surrounded by young beauties just like your sister… I can see it now… oh the pleasures!" J. Giel could feel his Stand's blade cut through them with every swipe and stab, the vibrations from their screams and struggling sending ecstasy right through his very bones. He giggled like a child, running his tongue along his lips. "Come to think of it, that sweet sister of yours was really good at sobbing…"

"B-bastard…"

The damn viper had truly bested him; all those years he could never regain, spent chasing this scum to the ends of the Earth, only to bring him here to his inevitable demise.

"Polnareff." His self-pity was sourly interrupted. Beside him, Kakyoin smirked, a broad contrast to his many wounds. "You can do better than that… B-bastard isn't what you say, when taking your revenge you have to be more refined."

The scarlet-haired boy cocked his hip and straightened his back, standing tall and not letting his quirked lips change, as if he knew something that he was waiting to reveal like a magician with a mind-bending flourish.

"This is what you say… My name is Noriaki Kakyoin, in order to avenge my dear friend Avdol, and that the soul of my friend Polnareff's sister can rest in peace for all eternity… I will have you pay with your life!" reaching into his pocket, Kakyoin pulled out a gold coin, sending shockwaves of gasps throughout the crowd of beggars.

A coin so perfect it shone like a mirror.

With a flick of his thumb, Kakyoin flipped the coin upwards, turning every head in the crowd toward it.

"Looks like all of their eyes are focused on one point now…" he mused, Polnareff grinning with the realization of where this was going.

"Yeah… merci Kakyoin!" finding the beggar's eye where the Hanged Man resides, the other man kicked up the sand and forced him to shut his eyes.

It worked perfectly as J. Giel was flung from his eye towards the next reflective surface, the very same gold coin Kakyoin had flicked into the air. Faster than light itself, Polnareff summoned his own Stand, the knight that would bring honor back to his sister's name as he cut the Hanged Man clean down the middle.

J. Giel shrieked hideously as blood spurted from his face, stumbling around blindly for a moment before turning and running like the slithering coward he was, but he wouldn't escape them again.

Not wasting another breath, the pair took off after him, chasing him until the little rat came to a locked gate. He was yanking on the bars trying to pry them open and escape, but they wouldn't budge. He wasn't going anywhere.

J. Giel would face his death just as he'd forced Sherry Polnareff and countless others to.

"Looks like you're the one who's good at sobbing, and you're about to plummet into hell, begging and crying the whole way down." Polnareff told him, fists clenched. "However, there's one thing I can't trust hell to do for me… I can't trust them to turn your body into a pincushion!"

Silver Chariot lunged, a wolf hungry for his prey, stabbing out J. Giel's eyes, then slashing off his nose and slicing open his jaw and forehead. Next he stabbed him clean through his tongue before ripping it clean out of his screaming mouth. Polnareff briefly thought of cutting off his ears, but didn't. No, he wanted the last thing that creature ever heard to be his own agonized wails echoing in his unmarred ears. He wanted that sound to follow him as he wallowed in the deepest bowels of hell forever.

Finally, after so many years, he was finished with the vermin, and Chariot threw him away like the trash he was, his body falling upon the spires of the iron gate and becoming pierced throughout his body.

J. Gile died like that, upside-down with an iron bar through his body, the very image of his own Stand… a corpse.

It was over.

I got my revenge.

Hol Horse curled his arm around Bella's waist when he saw them. Kakyoin and Polnareff looked like hell on a platter but they were very much alive as they walked back into town. Toying with the laces Hol Horse had ripped loose, the pair stepped out into the street.

"Hold it right there!" he called out, making the other duo pause and turn back. "Looks like we finally caught up with you,"

Summoning his Emperor, he twirled it between his skilled fingers, but his targets didn't seem to give a shit. Belladonna's feline tail flicked as he watched them, wondering why they weren't attacking or even reacting to them. The blond cowboy didn't share his suspicion, only giving the boy's ass a tap before smirking and inching closer to his enemies.

"Why're you walking so slow?!" he demanded. "if you're gonna run, run like your lives depend on it! It's way more fun… isn't that right Mr. J. Giel?"

He fired off a round, a bottle of booze exploding nearby, but not even that made Kakyoin or Polnareff flinch.

"Better say your prayers boys, this is where your lives come to an end. Come at us with everything you've got! It's so boring if you just stand there and die… isn't that right Mr. J. Giel?!" he shot out the windows of a nearby building, glass scattering around them in the sand.

Polnareff scoffed stomping one of the shards into pieces and sending Hol Horse into stunned silence. Bella's ears pressed back against his head, Noir's threads curling defensively around his wrists. What were they planning?

"I don't think he can hear you, cowboy." Polnareff said, glaring icily into his hardened steel eyes. "He's quite busy serving out his sentence in hell."

His Stand appeared behind him, making Bella feel even more on edge. That couldn't be true right? Did these losers really off that fugly son of a bitch?

Hol Horse laughed, thinking he was calling their bluff. "Hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey! Don't try to pull the wool over my eyes fellas, there's no way you could have beaten him! Even I wouldn't try my luck against that mother… your sense of humor is really shit Polnareff!"

"That fucker's corpse is two or three thousand meters back that way if you wanna take a look."

The pink-hared boy flinched, realizing that they really weren't shitting them. He stepped closer to Hol Horse, thinking maybe at least he'd come up with a way to get them out of this mess…

"Hm… okay I will!"

Or maybe not.

The grizzled cowboy grasped Belladonna by his shoulders and threw him to the ground, pulling a startled mew from his mouth and startling the pair enough to give him a head start as he frickin ran away!

"Nya! What the hell?!"

Kakyoin pulled the boy to his feet and he was honestly too pissed and confused to tell him to fuck off as he was yanked along after the hat-wearing asshole. He knew Hol Horse was a god damned cock-sucking coward at his core, but he was still his only ticket away from these Joestar idiots, so he grit his teeth and ran after him next to the stupid ginger boy.

The cowboy rounded a corner only to be thrown back out, sporting a bloody nose that secretly made Belladonna smirk. Jotaro Kujo and Joseph Joestar stepped out, standing over Hol Horse as he tried to scurry away.

"The one who stabbed Mr. Avdol in the back was J. Giel… he's dead." Kakyoin explained, Joseph nodding solemnly. "But it was Hol Horse's bullet that killed him."

Polnareff spat in his direction, "Let me give him his sentence." He stepped forward, Silver Chariot brandishing his blade. "Die!"

Really though, if it hadn't been for that bitch in the cheap sari Belladonna would have stopped him from running Hol Horse through, but she screamed annoyingly as she threw her whole body against the Frenchman. She moaned and cried for him to run, and that's exactly what he did.

He'd grabbed a nearby horse and laughed triumphantly as he made his escape, leaving Belladonna, who'd been the one to save his ass in the first place, in the dust with his captors.

"What the fuck?! Get your ass back here!" Bella and Polnareff both shouted, for different reasons.

Hol Horse didn't give a damn. "Sorry Kitten! But you know how it is! I'm only running away because I love you! I gotta keep on living, see you 'round!"

"You motherfucker! What about me damnit!?" he screamed and struggled, scratching and kicking at Kakyoin's arm, but Hierophant Green had already coiled itself tightly around his hand. He was trapped like an animal once again, and Hol Horse was already too long gone to hear the boy's vicious cursing of his name.

Joseph sighed, annoyed but knowing they didn't have time to catch up to him. It was better to just let him go and continue on their way. He offered a hand to Belladonna, "Looks like you're still our stray for the time being."

The feline slapped his hand away, hard, spitting at his shoes and hissing.

"Choke on a sandpaper cock old man!"

Damn! This chapter was almost double my normal word count! So i guess enjoy this long chapter as a treat, even if most of it didn't involve Bella. Also, i wanted to clear something up going forward, Bella has slept with Hol Horse and Dio but no anyone else of Tarot Stands, though there is another Stand user he's close with, but more on that later hehehe. Ciao!