Chapter 5: Shizuka and the Vampire.
Shorter chapter this time around, but i feel it makes up for that in its importance to the plot.
Shizuka and Mello entered Joseph's apartment. A few cops were inspecting the mess that had followed in the wake of the fight. The full moon shining through the windows created a film noir-mood. Joseph was sitting on the sofa with heavy bags under his eyes. When they approached he stood up without a word and gave Shizuka a large hug. "Hi, dad." responded Shizuka awkwardly.
They sat down and explained what had happened. Some cops asked them questions and brought coffee. Shizuka desperately wanted to tell them what really had happened to show off, but Joseph gently put his hand on her back to signal that it wasn't the right time.
After that all was done Shizuka went up to the bathroom to brush her teeth. She was brimming with excitement. "Finally! This is the kind of chance I have been waiting for! A real, supernatural threat, at least on the scale of DIO! If i do this, i will have become a true member of the Joestars! An adventurer and a fighter just like my dad. My name and story will be passed down through the Joestar lineage for generations ! Shizuka Joestar…" She dropped out of the fantasies.
It began on a completely normal summer day when Shizuka was six. Shizuka was trying to play videogames with her very confused mom when the phone suddenly rang. Suzie went to answer. Shizuka would always remember how her mothers face during the conversation. First calm, then confusion and finally shock. With a tremble in her voice and a strained smile she turned to Shizuka. "My little girl, your mother just called. You're going home!"
Throughout the flight Shizuka was crying and screaming. Suzie and Joseph tried their best to calm her down.
She met her mother at the airport. She was much younger than Suzy. She ran up and gave Shizuka an enormous, warm hug. She was crying tears of happiness while Shizuka herself felt confused and lonely. They drove through the countryside for a few hours. Shizuka's mother wasn't talking and seemed nervous. The car trip was dead silent.
The house was a yellow villa on the outskirts of a small town. She went into her room and packed up. At the dinner table her stepdad kept looking at her with suspicion in his eyes while her mother made some small talk.
The days were long and boring. Her mother would try to fix the gap between them, while her stepdad ignored or scolded her. Her new parents never spoke to each other in front of her, like she was some curse that would be best ignored. The worst part was the nights. Where she could hear her stepfather attack her mother in a vicious haze.
After one year, on the night of her birthday, her mother came into her room. A huge bruise covered her right eye, and tears streamed down her face. From downstairs her stepfather could be heard ranting and shouting. Her mother hugged her tight for nearly an hour, the tears of her face dripping down on Shizuka, and whispered with slurred speech about how pathetic she was. Eventually she fell asleep. Shizuka could hear the loud steps of her stepdad coming up the stairs.
As she did whenever she had a panic attack, she turned invisible. She wrestled out of her mothers grip and snuck out of the room. From downstairs she could hear the sound of her mother being pushed to the floor.
That's when Shizuka decided. She would escape the house and never return. She grabbed her favorite teddy bear and ran out into the pitch black night. The pale green lights from the nearby city could be seen, and she was pulled towards them like a moth. Maybe someone could help her.
She tried communicating with people, but she barely understood Japanese. A group of women came up to her with worried looks in their eyes, and the attention stressed her out. She tried to escape into an alleyway, but a hunched shadow threw a beer can towards her. It hit her on the lip, and formed a small cut.
When she got out some cops stopped her and grabbed her hands to take her to the police station, but she turned invisible and ran away. She ran, tired and confused, through the city. To avoid people's gazes and questions she turned invisible.
Eventually she took a break on a park bench. The world seemed like hostile shadows, moving around her at impossible speed and sometimes reaching out with a cold, alien hand. Loneliness permeated her thoughts like a dark haze. She grabbed the teddy bear and used it to dry her tears.
She took a good look at it. It had been sewned by Suzie when she was a baby, and had a huge purple star on its belly. Through the year she had hugged it tight to comfort herself. Suddenly, a white clad hand reached through the star on the teddy bear.
For the first time Achtung Baby showed it's humanoid form to her. Like some kind of force was guiding it, it pointed towards a nearby bus station. Confused, she walked over to it, just as a late night bus stopped in front of her.
The forces of fate had been good on Shizuka. Stepping out of the bus was Joseph and some guy with incredibly silly hair. They were shocked to find her there, crying and bruised. The guy with the hair sent out his stand to heal her cut, and the sky above was filled with shining stars.
After many months she finally got home, and when she laid down in her bed she asked Joseph to tell her a bedtime story. He scratched his head, and then started. "Many years ago, I met three ancient warriors…"
Since that day, becoming a legendary Joestar had been her greatest aspiration.
Shizuka waved away the memory and went to bed. Before she did, she quickly embraced her teddy bear before putting it on the bedside table.
She was woken by the sound of her door slamming into the wall. Suzie stood in the doorway distressed. "Shizuka, you need to come downstairs, quick!" Shizuka got up in her pyjamas and ran down the stairs.
When she entered the living room she saw a mysterious figure holding her father by the throat up in the air. Joseph was desperately struggling to summon hamon, while Mello was unsuccessfully trying to attack the figure with his Sundays.
The figure turned towards Shizuka, and in the dim moonlight she got a good look at him. He was slim, tall and muscular, with tanned skin and his hair was a mess of coal-black hair. He was dressed in incredibly expensive designer clothes, and had thousands of tattoos covering every inch of his body.
His otherworldly energy immediately alerted her to the fact that he was Hellstrom. He turned to her with a cold gaze. "Ah, the daughter of the Joestar house. She seems perfect!" He talked in a thick Spanish accent. "What do you mean, perfect?" asked Shizuka, trying to act ice cold even though she was shaking with fear and anticipation.
"For me to kill you, of course!" Shizuka tensed up. Hellstrom noticed. "Please, don't be worried. I will explain." He was surprisingly relaxed, treating the entire thing like an adult treats playing with children.
"Your dear old father here killed and exiled the masters Wammu, Esidisi and Kars. And while dying in the field of battle is the only way such supreme beings could have gone…" Hellstrom teared up "They died before their time, before they could achieve enlightenment and become supreme beings!" Waterfalls. of tears burst out of his eyes.
Suddenly, his demeanor changed. He started talking in a deep, growling voice and turned to Joseph. "And they were killed by a lowly, cheating human. I have spent many years since then training my abilities, all to return and kill Joseph Joestar!" Suddenly, his violent emotions shifted into a depressed mood. "But after all that time I found him a shadow of his former powers."
He did another swing and turned cheery and happy. "That's why I'm so excited by you, and all his descendants. You can fight for him, and I will fight for the will of my masters." Shizuka was getting whiplash from the different vibes Hellstrom was putting out, but she shared his excitement for the idea of a fated battle. She pointed triumphantly at him. "If I win, the Pillar Men will be gone once and for all!" Hellstrom mirrored her. "And if I win, the Joestar family will be dead once and for all!"
There was a quiet, tense moment, with the two of them staring each other down. Hellstrom then burst out laughing. "Jesus, that was so over the top! It felt like some action cartoon!"
When he stopped laughing and looked up, the room was seemingly empty, except for Joseph who was still desperately trying to escape his grip.
Shizuka turned visible in front of him and attacked him with Achtung. It got a perfect full force hit right on his jaw, but he didn't react, except for a small smile. "Bravo! This power might be something worth fighting against!" Hellstrom slowly placed his hand on Shizuka's forehead.
The next moment she was laying on the floor on the other side of the room. Mello had similarly crashed into the wall. Hellstrom looked at Shizuka, with anticipation in his eyes and a satisfied smile on his lips. "Shizuka Joestar! What an honor to meet the child of Joseph, and my destined rival! Let us meet to finish this destined battle in fifteen days! And to include a little extra motivation for you…" he added. "I will kill Joseph Joestar if you can not face me by then!"
Shizukas face turned pale. She screamed out "No!" and ran towards Hellstrom, but he wasn't fazed. He took a small jump out the window, falling out of view. When Shizuka got there and looked down, they had mysteriously disappeared.
She fell to her knees, shaking. Then she started throwing a violent temper tantrum, throwing her arms through the air and screaming. Fear and anger and despair flew through her. Her belief in her Joestar spirit disappeared in a sea of self loathing. She could not save Joseph! Joseph was a legendary warrior, and she was just a little girl that had her first fight three days ago!
In a haze of burning emotion she ran up to her room.
When Suzy and Mello tried to sleep the sound of aimless, frustrated destruction and screams infused with tears could be heard long into the night.
Shizuka eventually tired out, and fell onto her bed. After many hours of restless thinking, she fell into an uneasy sleep. When she woke up beyond tired the next day, she checked her phone. She had gotten two messages from Joseph. One was a picture of the entrance to Blue Oyster Elementary School, and a message saying "Mirino Elfman, stand user."
Josukes and Shizukas relationship largely consists of Shizuka making fun of his hairdo and Josuke making fun of her teddy bear. Shizuka and Jotaros relationship largely consists of her teasing him by calling him nephew and Jotaro not really caring.