Chapter 27: Radiohead
While MC and JoJo split away to go to the gym, Sayori drudgingly made her way to class.
'Another day of pure boredom,' Sayori thought. 'Why can't they teach us something new instead?'
Following the same route as every time, she soon found herself in her classroom. Plopping herself onto her desk, she quickly put her head down, fearing the awfully boring day ahead of her. Gazing out of the window on her side, she could see the fields that the school always tended to.
'I hope MC will be alright,' she prayed. 'Ah, who am I kidding? He's super strong. JoJo too. Maybe if Take Me to Church could do more…'
She quickly dug her head with her arms, shutting off the world around her.
'No, don't think that!' she mentally scolded herself. 'That's just asking for the rainclouds to come back! Shut up, Sayori!'
However, right around then, their teacher walked into the class and presented herself. Sayori was glad that she was distracted from her negative thought process but had to suppress a groan at how familiar everyone was acting.
Until something new happened.
"Excuse me, Ma'am?' another student poked his head into the classroom looking at a slip in his hand. "Sorry to interrupt, but the Principal is asking for… Ms Sayori Yamashita?"
Ignoring the suspicious cooing of every other class member, Sayori slowly got up and made her way to the boy with a respectful nod to her teacher.
'What could this be about?' she thought to herself. Now that she was outside her class, she turned to the boy who called her.
"T-The Principal i-is asking y-you t-to go t-to your c-c-clubroom!" the boy barely stammered out, his face beet-red and his head bowed far too low. Sayori was unusually taken aback by the boy's behaviour, but soon worded her understanding and made her way to the clubroom.
'Why is the Principal calling us there?' Sayori could help but wonder on her way. 'Maybe… something about our fight against Adachi-sensei yesterday? Is there a dent somewhere?'
As Sayori took the normal curve in the hallway to find the clubroom, she paused as she noticed the entire class standing outside. Slowly stepping up to the group of seniors ahead of her, they quickly caught sight of her. Once they did, they immediately sent her an oddly dirty scowl.
"Sayori?" she heard a familiar voice ask.
"Natsuki! Yuri, too!" Sayori said as she turned around to face the other two girls. "What happened?"
"The hell if I know!" Natsuki yelled in reply. "I mean, sure, I don't have to sit through class again, but what's going on? Did this ever happen before?"
"Never," Sayori said, shaking her head. "This is the first time this is happening."
Yuri gently placed her hands on both girls' shoulders and brought them closer to her. "Can you both keep your voices down?" she whispered to them, looking over them to see the seniors still watching them. "We have company."
"Oh, right," Sayori whispered back in reply with a sheepish smile, gently rubbing the nape of her neck in embarrassment. "Sorry."
"You three!" another familiar voice made her way to them.
"Monika!" the three recognized as they turned to her as well.
"What's going on?" she asked, cautiously gazing at the seniors by their side. "Did they say anything?"
"We thought you'd know what's going on!" Natsuki exasperatedly replied.
Monika sighed. "That's a no, then." Nudging the others forward, they all walked to the front door, where the principal was standing.
"Ah, I see you're all here!" she said, twirling her long raven black hair in her hands. "Now, Ms Takeyama, you're the President of this club, yes?"
"Yes, I am, Mrs Kobayashi," Monika replied. "If I may ask, what's the matter?"
"Please," the principal gestured to the front door of their clubroom. "Take a look for yourself."
Opening the door, Monika immediately gasped once she saw what was inside.
The room was in complete disarray. The teacher's desk was toppled, and every student's desks were tossed to the centre in one great big heap. The billboards were taken down, the posters were thrown around here and there. The closet was completely raided, with everything stored inside tossed out. For some reason, Yuri's tea set remained fully intact on top of another toppled desk lying flat on the floor. Gladly, nothing had seemed broken, but whoever had disorganized the placed seemed to want to be thorough.
"Now, imagine the surprise of every student here once they walk in to find this," the principal spoke up from behind them, while the other members of the club gaped at the state of their clubroom. "I understand that one of your club members is in the gym at the moment, so I will be contacting him later. But since your club was the last one to use this room, could you please explain this… mess?"
"Mrs Kobayashi, I-I…" Monika faltered once she found herself stammering. Gulping at the sight of the wrecked clubroom and suppressing the odd shiver underneath her skin, she turned to the principal once again.
"We hadn't done this," Monika finally said, clasping her hands in front of her desperately. "I know how this looks, but we've always left the classroom in top condition, no matter what. We would never dream of doing… this, ever. I sincerely apologize, but we were not the ones to have done this."
Mrs Kobayashi sighed as she rubbed her temples. "Look, Monika, I want to believe you," she said. "You're a good student. You're close with the Student Council. I know that you have absolutely no reason to do this. But you must understand that the odds are stacked quite heavily against you here. After all, you have a spare set of keys to this room, yes?"
"Well… yes," Monika admitted, looking down in shame. The other girls looked down in shame as well, even though it was not their fault.
"The only other people who have a copy is the class teacher and the janitor," the principal revealed, still glaring at them. "And they both have reliable alibis. It's only you left behind, so you see why I'm inclined to believe that you're the culprit."
"I see," Monika said with a solemn nod. "If it is of any use, I was at a friend's house after our club meeting yesterday."
"Hmm," Mrs Kobayashi let her alibi simmer for a moment. "Sadly, that isn't good enough. The others had more concrete evidence than yours, I'm afraid."
Monika chose to stay silent and hang her head low, not knowing what to say against the allocations.
"I do certainly believe that this is not your fault," Mrs Kobayashi continued, slightly frowning. "But that is only from my knowledge of you as a person, Ms Takeyama. Therefore, I have no choice but to dole out punishment for you and your clubmates."
"You will clean up this club as fast as you possibly can," she declared, making everyone in the room flinch and shudder. "You should be done by the end of the day, at least. And effective tomorrow onwards, everyone in your club will be on a three-day suspension. I hope you understand that I could do a lot worse than this."
"I understand, Ma'am," Monika nodded, now looking up to her. "I still stand by my statements from earlier, but I am willing to accept the punishment until we're proven innocent."
"Good," Mrs Kobayashi said, now turning to the actual seniors who were supposed to use that class at that moment. "The auditorium should be free right now, so you may use that as a temporary classroom," she declared. "I sincerely apologize on behalf of the culprits for your troubles."
Grumbling, the seniors quickly picked up their bags from the floor and made their way to the auditorium. Sending a nod back at Monika once again, Mrs Kobayashi left for her office as well.
Monika quickly let out a sigh of relief once the others left the room, leaving the four of them alone.
"What the hell?!" Natsuki yelled out, storming up to Monika. "You know we didn't do this! Why the hell did you accept that punishment?!"
Monika sighed as she gripped the shorter girl's shoulders. "We had no choice," she said. "Someone must have set us up. I have no idea who, or what their plan is supposed to be, but the only way we can find out is if we play along for now."
"Judging from past experiences, it is most definitely a Stand User," Yuri spoke up. "No other person would have any reason to do this."
"I believe so too," Monika nodded at her curtly. "Sayori, what about you?"
Sayori, however, was frowning at the mess of a room that they were in. "How… are we going to clean all this?"
Monika grimaced for a moment, but then started smiling a little. "I… do have an idea," Monika said. "Natsuki, can Sweet Victory handle the heavy lifting?"
"Of course!" Natsuki said with a cheer, now seeing what direction Monika is taking. "Leave it to me!"
Nodding in gratitude, Monika turned back to the others. "We can use our Stands to help ourselves," she said. "Think about it. Yuri can make portals to move objects freely. Sayori can quickly pull on anything with her rope and can even energize everyone. I will volunteer myself as a source of energy, mainly because Mess is Mine will not be able to do much here."
Sayori grinned. "That sounds like a plan!" she cheered as she playfully pumped her fist up. Monika curtly chuckled at Sayori's antics.
"But even then," Yuri looked at the pile before them. "Who would think of doing something like this?"
Monika slowly walked up to them, unknowingly setting them all in one line. "I have no clue."
Suddenly, Monika felt a hand gripping her shoulder.
She recognized that kind of hold. It wasn't placed on her shoulder. No clap or curl of the fingers that would normally come when someone simply puts their hand on your shoulder. No, this one just appeared on her shoulder, with an incredibly familiar pop sound. Almost like it had been there the whole time and had just chosen that moment to reveal itself.
The way that hand had gripped her shoulder, she had felt it many times before. And every single time, she felt something recoil in her gut, giving her a sense of unease and fear.
This time, however, the fear factor had doubled, no, tripled, because Monika knew why he was here.
"Hello, Monika," Wallace said, stepping over to her side. "Let's forego the pleasantries. You know exactly why I'm here, after all."
"Wallace, wait-"
"Radiohead."
MC, finding himself gradually move into consciousness, opened his eyes. He immediately had to squint and grimace from the light in the room, but once his eyes got used to the light, he was able to open them fully.
"Oh, you're awake? About time."
Pushing his head against the pillow beneath it to look at the source of the voice on his left, he found their school's nurse walking up to him.
"Geez, you took forever to recover," she said, MC still barely making her out. "Your friend woke up a few minutes ago as well."
"My… friend?" MC softly muttered, still dazed by what happened.
And then it all came back.
Jerking his eyes wide open and shooting up on his bed, he started gasping out loud. As MC hyperventilated, the nurse immediately dropped her grin and attended to the boy, holding him in place and making sure that he didn't strain himself.
"Calm down, you're okay now!" she kept yelling at him, but MC kept breathing hard.
'Sachiko!' his thoughts hammered within his head, loud enough to make him wonder if he was actually speaking aloud instead. 'She doesn't remember! Why doesn't she remember? Is there a Stand User we hadn't accounted for? Could it be that Wallace had already gotten to her, maybe? Why doesn't she remember, goddammit?!'
Suddenly, he was knocked out of his thoughts by a sudden smack on the back of his neck.
"Sorry, ma'am, but he needs that at times," JoJo's familiar voice spoke up from the right end of his bed.
"J-JoJo?" MC stammered out, finally looking back up at the tanned sandy-haired boy beside him while massaging the back of his head.
"Welcome back to reality, buddy," JoJo simpered at him. "I honestly can't believe that that chick forgetting about you made you clock out."
MC's expression quickly turned grim upon hearing JoJo's words. Still feeling nauseous from his discovery, he slowly turned to JoJo again.
"She… She's not safe," he explained. "She doesn't remember. Someone got to her. We haven't accounted for-!"
He was quickly shut up by JoJo clasping a hand on his mouth.
"Man, that chick hadn't seen you in weeks!" he said, laughing out loud as he did so. "Of course, she won't remember you! And she's perfectly fine! You guys were using protection, after all!"
"My, my," the nurse sauntered towards them with an amused expression. "Unrequited love after a one night stand. How scandalous of you…"
JoJo chuckled, drooping his head. "I've been trying to help this hopeless romantic for a while," he explained, smirking at the nurse. "He just doesn't get it. That's why I had him meet her today. Sure, he's gonna go through heartbreak, but I tried the easy way already."
MC suddenly blinked in surprise as he realized what they were talking about.
'An affair with Sachiko?! What the hell, no!' MC yelled in his head. 'Well, I know that JoJo is just making this up. I guess we do need to appease the nurse somehow.'
Deciding to play his part, MC slowly dragged his hands up to his face and covered it. After sniffling a little from behind his hands, he purposefully forced his back to jerk a few times as he let out loud fake sobs.
"There, there," JoJo soothingly said, gingerly rubbing his back. "You'll get over her."
"I'll leave you two alone," the nurse said as she slowly walked away from the seemingly depressed boy. "Sometimes talking things out is always the best solution. MC, I sincerely wish you the best. Also, you've both slept through most of the day, and you're both totally fine now, so you can just head back once the bell rings."
MC kept his face hidden while the nurse was walking away. The moment he heard the door close, he quickly dropped his hands and sighed, hanging his head back in relief.
"Thanks for the cover, JoJo," he softly spoke, still worried that the nurse could be hanging around.
"Don't mention it," JoJo said, quickly standing straight after drumming on MC's bed for a minute. "Hear what she said? Class is almost over. Are you good to go?"
MC slowly swung his legs away from the bed he was laying on and hopped to a stand. Testing out his joints by bending around for a bit, he was pleased to find out that he didn't get any headaches. The only thing was that he was still a little stiff from having laid down.
"Yep. I'm good," MC affirmed as he quickly stretched to get rid of the kinks in his limbs.
"Good," JoJo nodded, shifting his gaze to the front door. "Good thing we're the only ones in this room right now. School is almost over, right? We'll meet with everyone else in the club."
Right on cue, the bell started to ring. MC and JoJo flinched at the sudden sound, mainly because the alarm was always louder in the nurse's office than anywhere else, but relaxed once the blaring sound faded away.
"I guess that's our cue, then," MC said. "Did you contact any of the girls?"
"I fell unconscious soon after you did, man," JoJo admitted with a frown. "I haven't even opened my phone after waking up. I'm also pretty sure that it's best that we just go to the club and give them our report first-hand."
"Yeah, that sounds good," MC agreed. "Let's head there now, then."
Nodding, JoJo led them both out of the office and to the Literature Club once again.
Banging the door open, JoJo made his entrance into the club in stride. MC followed from behind in a much more mellow fashion.
However, upon seeing the state of the club, the two boys blinked in surprise.
The club was fine as a whole, but no one was there yet. It was just the both of them.
"Huh?" MC asked, stepping further into the room. "Are we the first ones here?"
"Well, it makes sense if we are," JoJo reasoned. "The nurse's office is way closer to this classroom than our classrooms. We probably made better time. The girls will probably be here at any moment now."
"Yeah," MC nodded, looking ahead with a frown. "They'll be here soon."
'I know that,' MC pondered, still grimacing as he spaced out while staring at the teacher's desk. 'So, why does this feel so wrong?'
"So… what are we gonna do in the meantime?" JoJo asked, hopping into one of the seats while hoisting his legs on top of the desk. MC, looking back to give him his attention, wondered how he could keep his head comfortably supported on the sharp edge of the chair's backrest.
"Just wait, I guess," MC said, taking a seat next to him but keeping his legs flat against the floor and slouching onto his desk, unlike his partner. "Maybe we should discuss our strategy against Wallace."
"How the hell are we gonna come up with a strategy against him?" JoJo asked in return. "We have no clue what his power is. We don't know what he's capable of. Hell, I'm half-convinced that we won't be able to beat him. Worst thing yet, no one we've met till now could tell us anything about his abilities. He covers up his tracks far too well."
"Yeah, let's not forget the possibility of another Stand User as well," MC said. "I mean, there's every chance that Wallace erased Sachiko's memory, but I honestly don't want to believe that. It's… easier for me to think that someone else did it with another Stand. Hell, even classic amnesia would work."
"Ya know," JoJo shifted in his seat, now setting his feet down and twirling his torso to face MC head-on. "Sometimes, it's not about things being easy. We shouldn't ignore the fact that Wallace can erase memories as well."
"I'm not… ignoring it!" MC whined back, placing his head in his palms. "It's just… everything about this guy seriously feels wrong. And… I think I'm getting scared of that. Scared that there's so much we don't know about him. And I still have this weird feeling that we're forgetting something…"
JoJo paused for a moment, gazing at MC, then dropped his head with a loud sigh. "It's alright to be scared, I guess," he said while slightly shaking his head and shrugging. "I mean, I'm not good with stuff like this, but I get where you're coming from. Honestly, if it weren't for the fact that my destiny was right in front of me right now, I would have run away with my tail between my legs literally ages ago."
MC chuckled at his response.
"You know…" JoJo continued, regaining his smile now that he had lightened the air of the room some. "I never understood why you do all this. I mean, you could have just easily left things as they were after your first rewind, right? Why did you bother joining this fight in the first place?"
MC paused as he took his time to process JoJo's question, quickly dropping his far-off gaze to the wooden desk beneath his head.
'Why did I keep going?' he echoed the question to himself once again.
"I guess…" MC started to speak with laboured breaths. "I wanted to save the Literature Club."
JoJo widened his eyes, confused by MC's statement. "What do you mean?"
"It's as I said," MC turned to JoJo with a smile, knowing that he found the right answer. "The girls… they're all precious to me. Sure, Sayori is my girlfriend. But even then, I care about every single member of our club equally. I love the other girls just as much as I love Sayori."
JoJo quickly winced at that remark. "Geez, you sound like you're cheating on her," he said.
MC quickly grimaced in shock. "Oh god, no," he said with mild horror. "I wouldn't dream of hurting her like that. I just…" MC looked ahead once more and smiled now that he was thinking about his clubmates. "I could have ended up with any of them, actually. I love them all that much. Sayori's everlasting cheerfulness. Yuri's timid preciousness. Natsuki's pretty tsundere nature. Hell, even Monika, despite everything she's done. I love all of it. All of them. And… I guess I knew all along that I wouldn't ever want to lose that love I feel for them."
JoJo couldn't help but smile at MC's views, so much that he had to turn his head away from him once the grin on his face started to grow out of hand.
"I think I see where you're coming from," JoJo replied, once he got his facial muscles under control. "Don't get me wrong, I'm not as paranoid about them as you are. But I can see you being like that."
MC nodded, not saying anything in return.
"Speaking of," JoJo continued, expression turning to a mild frown. "Where are those girls? It's been about five minutes!"
"Hmm… you're right," MC said, frowning as well. "Maybe we should look for them? Send them a text?"
"Yeah, we probably should text them," JoJo said, pulling out his phone.
"That's not going to work."
JoJo blinked in surprise and turned to MC. "What do you mean?" he asked, but then paused once he noticed MC's pale face.
"It's him," MC said.
The two quickly leapt away from their desks just as the front door to the club exploded open. As JoJo and MC stood at the opposite end of the room with their Stands at the ready, the dust settled near the door to reveal another Stand.
'It's purple,' MC made out first. A purple Stand whose entire body was studded with red twinkling stars. Lines were running vertically down the Stand's chest, seeming to flow from its other limbs and head. There were red gloves on its hands, with hands balled into fists after breaking open the door. Its legs were adorned with silver pants with what seemed like steel-capped boots on its feet. Its face was ellipsoidal with a flowing mane of dark brown hair, floating behind it like and shining in the light it was made of spirits. It had red beady eyes with a purple line running horizontally across it. Other than that, it had average-sized lobed ears, purple lips, and a large nose.
As the dust settled some more, another figure managed to step through the covering.
"Wallace," JoJo recognized, gritting his teeth in frustration.
The shorter doppelganger of MC smiled at the two of them. "Radiohead," he commanded. "Do it."
Wallace's Stand, Radiohead, quickly moved back into the dust and bent down to touch the fallen rubble on the ground.
And then the world froze.
MC found that he couldn't move at all. Neither could JoJo nor could Wallace.
'Did I activate Rollback?' he pondered, pushing his eyes to his side to look back at his frozen Stand. He didn't feel any better once he noticed that his Stand's right hand wasn't projecting its clock, nor was it counting down.
'If it's not Rollback, then what's going on?'
Finally looking back ahead, he finally noticed that the only thing that was moving in the room was the rubble on the ground. MC watched, with mild trepidation, as each piece of the rubble slowly jumped back to its old position. In mere moments, it was as if Wallace hadn't broken the door down in the first place.
Suddenly, the world unfroze.
"Wha-What the hell?!" JoJo yelped as he jumped back. "How did… That door just fixed itself!"
"Dude," MC said, still keeping his eyes on Wallace. "He used his ability to fix it. Didn't you see the pieces go back in?"
"What are you talking about?" JoJo said, now having calmed down enough to step back next to MC. "I just blinked, and that door was back to normal."
"Huh?" MC said, genuinely surprised. "But… the world was frozen, and each piece was going back in during that time. That's what I saw."
Wallace chuckled, his Stand coming back to his side. "I applaud you, MC, for being able to see that," he said. "I wouldn't expect anything worse from someone like you." MC could clearly make out his suppressed snigger at that statement.
"Cut the crap, Wallace," JoJo stepped up, pointing at him. "Your time has come. I'm going to use everything in my power to defeat you!"
Wallace chuckled. "You don't even know what mypower is," he said, deadpanning at him. "How do you expect to be able to defeat me?"
"Then tell us!" MC said, stepping up as well. "Tell us what you can do!"
JoJo curtly groaned, visibly suppressing his frustration. "MC, he's obviously not going to just give away his-"
"No, he's going to," MC interrupted JoJo, still boring holes into the smirking form of Wallace with his eyes. "Something in me knows who he is. And it tells me that he actually wants to tell us his ability."
Wallace smiled and closed his eyes, his hands still clasped behind him. "Of course, MC, you were the only one who truly understood me," he said. "I will follow your request. I will disclose my ability to you, mainly because only then, will you understand why you won't stand a chance against me."
JoJo dropped his jaw in surprise. "Is this like… a villain monologue, then?"
Wallace chortled at the connection. "Well, I am certainly a villain to you, as much as you are villains to me," he said. "So yes, you may take it like that."
"As easy as that?" JoJo kept asking.
Wallace looked at JoJo with a blank expression on his face. "Do you not want me to share?"
"No, no, please, go ahead," JoJo quickly said, finally shutting up.
"Thank you," Wallace looked down to take a breath, hands still clasped behind his back. In a few moments, he looked back up at the two.
"Imagine a river. A high-current stream, flowing along its outlined path no matter what lies in it. Every person on earth and every object on earth is within that river, unable to fight against the current and move upstream. Having no choice but to submit to the flow, and the way it carries them."
"What truly matters about this river, however, is its forks. This river, at some point, will split off into a couple of smaller rivers. However, the objects and the people within can go down only one of these streams, with no way for them to move back or change their decision. The motion is oddly reminiscent of Robert Frost's Road Not Taken if that helps in any way. Each person or object can end up fighting across the current to move to another stream, but once they do, they cannot go back. And once they do, the new river they are in becomes the river they live in. Yet even then, the other rivers, the other choices, don't vanish. They all still exist regardless, even though they become invisible to us since we already are in our own river."
"This is the way how I observe the flow of time. Every person, and time itself, can make choices about which path a person can move towards. If you cannot make a choice, then fate, or time, will pick one for you. This is the true recipe of fate, of probability. This choice may not always be what you want, however. And even when you make a choice, or when fate makes a choice for you, that becomes your new reality. All the other possibilities still exist. However, they are all in their own relative timestreams, separate from ours. This is, in essence, the theory of the multiverse. The fact that time cannot erase any of these alternate choices gives rise to multiple variations of time where things are done differently in some way. The river analogy cannot be perfect, of course, but it is close enough to the truth of the matter."
"My Stand, Radiohead, grants me the ability to move to another such timestream, as long as I have an anchor to it. That is, if I touch someone or something, I will be able to change reality to make it so that a past choice affecting them would be modified. Aside from this, I can even move upstream as well, but to a limit of 12 seconds. And if I have an anchor, I will be able to travel back much further than my limit."
"If you were listening closely, you would notice that my latter two points sound suspiciously like Day One's abilities. There are far too many similarities between mine and Markie's Stands, but Markie's is still weaker. And that is because he can only move up against his own timestream, and not modify anyone else's like I can. In layman's terms, Markie only can travel back in time, while I can do that and the other ability that I have dubbed Timestream Manipulation."
"So, you see, you stand absolutely no chance against me," Wallace finally concluded, leaving the other two gaping in surprise. "You may try all you want. But no matter how hard you try you will always lose. That is a fact because I am more powerful."
MC had absolutely no idea what to say. Wallace was right. He was, truly, far more powerful than they were. If he could change a person's past choice with a single touch, he could do so much.
"W-Wait, l-let me get this straight," JoJo stammered out, clearly flustered by, and worried about the description he was forced to endure. "Y-You can t-touch someone, a-and c-change their past choices?"
"Not only theirs, but anything connected to them as well," Wallace appended. "Deletion? I simply change their parents' minds to not wanting to have children. Or make either parent impotent. Or kill the mother before the child is born. Maybe even force relationship troubles. Or if I'm lazy, I just put the kid in a childhood accident that sadly, claims their life."
"W-What…?" JoJo muttered, gingerly stepping away from him in fear.
MC still couldn't find it in himself to say anything. If there were any true gauge for strength, then it would always say that MC would be weaker than Wallace. Wallace could literally do everything he could do and so much more. He even had much more experience than MC had, despite the runs that he had gone through.
'I don't stand a chance against him, no matter what,' he thought.
"Seriously, where are the others?!" JoJo yelled out. "We… Sayori! We need her! She's the perfect counter against MC, so she'd be the one to use against this guy! Why are they taking so much time?"
MC, upon hearing JoJo say that, suddenly felt his blood run cold.
'I… I felt like something was wrong moments ago,' he collected his thoughts. 'Sachiko forgot about us. When I mentioned Natsuki, she hadn't even reacted to her name.'
"They're not going to make it," Wallace said, with a small smirk. "Have you even checked if you still have their contact info?"
Hearing Wallace's words, MC and JoJo widened their eyes, and both rushed to pull out their phones from their pockets and open them up. Quickly skimming through his contacts, MC kept looking for the names in question.
'Where… Where are they?!'
Finally moving to his messaging app, he kept looking through it for their names.
'They're not here!' he realized, his heart hammering in his chest in fear. 'Not even our 'Stand Club' group is here anymore!'
"You…" MC growled in a tone unlike him, setting his phone down and slowly glaring at Wallace, feeling his blood boiling at the sight of him. "What… did you do…?"
"I deleted them already," Wallace abruptly responded. "I did it this morning, actually. Before you two concluded your fight against Haku. He did very well, distracting you both."
"I fulfilled my purpose… I won… not you…" MC briefly recalled him saying.
'Haku was right,' MC realized. 'His goal was only to distract us so that Wallace could delete them all at the same time. The Literature Club… everyone is…'
MC couldn't hold back the bile building up in him. Quickly dropping to his knees, he retched on the floor, not trusting himself to make it to the bathroom in time. Especially not when their killer was right in front of them.
"You…" MC slowly wiped the residual vomit from his lips and watched him, his gaze holding an intensity that he had never held before. "I'm going to kill you."
Wallace chuckled. "I'd like to see you try," he said, bringing Radiohead in front of him once again.
With a wild roar, MC ran over his puddle of vomit and manifested Day One, winding up a punch to attack him. Wallace simply brought his Stand around his legs and used the added strength to jump away from MC's attack.
"Rollback!"
Reversing time once again, MC watched Wallace drift back to his original position while MC himself remained in the air in front of him, Day One mere inches away from his chest. Radiohead stood far enough from him to render it unable to protect its user.
Ending the time reversal, MC quickly thrust his Stand's fist through Wallace's chest with a loud "KIAI!", making the boy cough out blood from the injury. However, the boy was still smiling.
"R-Rollback."
And the world froze once again.
MC felt his own body pull away from Wallace's, long enough for him to stand back where he had vomited. Now seeing the enemy Stand, he noticed that Wallace kept a blood-red Stand aura around him, and his Stand had its right hand exposed, projecting a hologram red clock that was counting down by the second.
As the rogue Rollback came to a stop, MC didn't let up. He ran up to Wallace once again. However, since Wallace had chosen his then-current position while reversing the injury he had, he stood much further away than MC. Far enough to use his Stand to intercept his incoming punch instead.
"KIAI!"
"SAKU!"
While both Day One and Radiohead connected fists, however, MC ran past the Stands and tried to attack Wallace directly. Wallace immediately widened his eyes at the approach and smirked as he took the opportunity to use his Stand's free fist to punch Day One's face.
MC could feel his face break up from the lone punch. Being sent back once again, he quickly spat out the blood and the broken teeth while ignoring the pain and the gushing blood from his squashed nose.
Wallace ran up to MC once again, Radiohead at the ready, but all of a sudden, he tripped. As Wallace collapsed onto the floor, he craned his head back to see a red fist sink into the floor beneath him.
"JoJo," he chuckled, turning to the other boy who had his hand flush against the floor, with tears running down his face. "You do realize that touching your cells count as touching you, right?"
"I know," JoJo said, voice sounding as grim as MC's. "That's why I'm taking measures against that happening."
Quickly, JoJo willed the skin net on the floor back into his hand while Wallace stood back up. Standing back up himself now that he was sure that he had no skin samples left anywhere, he summoned Renegades yet again.
"Maybe you have mastery over time and choices," JoJo said with a sneer as he took off his shoes and socks. "But how good are you with space?"
Quickly charging his Stand's aura on its fist, he fired a punch ahead of him. As space expanded between the two to keep them apart, Wallace simply sneered as he ran up to him regardless.
Only to be met with a punch from right underneath him followed up by a loud "DORA!".
Feeling his face literally compress in half from the full power attack, Wallace stumbled back, yelling out in frustration. Having to squint to watch JoJo on the other end of the room, he quickly took a bearing on his situation.
'How did he send out his Stand here? He hadn't put his hands on the floor,' he pondered, looking at the floor. 'Oh, that's it. He's left his feet exposed. He's doing this from his feet instead. Simple move, but intelligent regardless.'
"I see you've figured it out," JoJo sneered at him as he recalled his cells back into his feet. "So, do you really think you can face my unpredictability?"
Wallace ended up sneering back, even though the expression could not be made out from his heavily disfigured and bleeding face.
"Rollback."
Reversing time back to when Wallace was standing over Renegades after the space expansion and before he got injured, Wallace ended up catching the Stand's fist with his own.
"W-What?!" JoJo yelled. Frantically, he had Renegades use its spare hand to continue attacking him.
Wallace, however, already expected him to do something like this, which is why he chose to drive a fist through his Stand instead.
"SAKU!"
"AAAAGGHH!" JoJo yelled out as a large hole appeared on the centre of his chest, a storm of blood erupting from the ripped flesh.
Pulling his Stand's fist back, Wallace straightened his blazer and walked up to the bleeding out form of JoJo.
"YOU'RE NOT TAKING HIM TOO!"
Wallace widened his eyes as he saw MC run up from behind him, now firmly holding on to his nose as he kept his Stand out, ready to attack.
'He won't attack himself this time,' Wallace quickly deduced. 'He will focus attacks with his Stand alone.'
"KIAIAIAIAIAIAIAIAIA!"
"SAKUSAKUSAKUSAKUSAKUSAKU!"
With a yell, MC had his Stand rain a barrage of fists on the still unharmed form of Wallace and Radiohead. Wallace met him with a similar flurry, matching every attack of his in time.
MC grit his teeth at the lack of progress he was making. Every attack he would send, Wallace would simply intercept in time. Their Stands… they were evenly matched.
No, Wallace was stronger in terms of overall ability.
MC decided to start attacking differently, not seeing results with his current method. He quickly had Day One use its legs to attack instead. MC grinned as he noticed that he was finally pushing Wallace back. He was doubly thrilled once he saw Wallace gritting his teeth in frustration.
'I'm winning this!'
Giving out one more mental command, he made his Stand aim one last kick straight through Radiohead's chest, hoping to rip through it as he had done to JoJo.
However, Wallace finally morphed his grimace to an amused chuckle and had Radiohead bend to the side to avoid the heavily projected kick and counter with another punch. Right to the cavity between the Stand's legs.
"SAKU!"
MC screamed as he felt his family jewels get crushed into oblivion. While this would have been funny at any other point, MC could feel no humour from this seeing everything that Wallace had done before.
This one moment of weakness, however, was all that Wallace needed.
Radiohead wasted no time and gripped Day One's head, locking it in a choke with one arm. With its free arm, Radiohead started bashing Day One's face in, reflecting all the damage back on to MC's face before anyone could activate a Rollback.
"SAKUSAKUSAKUSAKU! SAKUJO!"
Once Wallace was satisfied with the damage to MC's face and determined that he was too out of it to properly operate his Stand's abilities, he finally threw him back by landing one last punch on his face. Sighing once again, he straightened his blazer, glad to see that he hadn't gotten a single drop of blood on his clothes after brutally defeating his two opponents.
Lightly humming, Wallace walked over to JoJo's body. Grimacing at the blood all over the floor, he was surprised to see that JoJo still had his eyes open. The man was still alive.
"Not gonna lie, I'm impressed," Wallace said with a nod as JoJo slowly turned his head up to him. "I'm pretty sure I ripped out your stomach and half of your lungs. Being alive even after that… that's some real determination there."
"You're… not… going…" JoJo wheezed out for a while but was quickly interrupted by an influx of blood into his mouth, gurgling the rest of his already hazy words.
"Fine, I'll make this quick," he said, summoning Radiohead as he bent down to touch JoJo's head. JoJo kept growling under his hold, but he couldn't move the rest of his body to actually fight back.
"N-No…" MC muttered despite his destroyed face, turning to look at what was happening. He was glad to see that he was actually within arm's reach of him, however. Struggling the whole while, MC lifted up an arm and plopped it onto JoJo's back.
'I can't let JoJo get deleted!' he thought. 'He's the only one I have left!'
MC looked deep into himself and was glad to find that he still had some energy left behind. Enough energy to save them both.
As Wallace saw MC summon Day One, he chuckled. "Do you really think that going back in time can solve anything?"
MC chose not to say anything, only placing his other hand on the first slot on his Stand with his Stand holding it up as well.
'I need to do this. I will save him, at least.'
Chuckling still, Wallace exposed his Stand's left forearm, which contained six pale red diagonal bars across it like MC's save slots. Placing his hand on one, he prepared himself for the time jump.
And they both called it at the same time.
"Load Save!"
Now that he was in the Breach, MC found that his bodily injuries were immaterial. So, he could operate freely in the area despite how damaged his body once was.
"Interesting," a voice spoke up. "This is the first time I'm seeing another person conscious in this place."
Looking ahead, MC finally noticed Wallace standing there, surrounded by a blood red aura. And between them remained JoJo's pinkish-red drastically waning form, still wrapped lightly by MC's green strands.
Remembering the strands again, MC quickly looked down at his hand. And to his surprise, he found that he had all five strands.
"Yes!" MC yelled, still looking at the strands in his hands. "You lied!"
"You might want to follow those back," Wallace said.
Freezing in his place at Wallace's offhanded comment, MC decided to follow his recommendation. Following each strand that wasn't connected to JoJo, he looked for the other end of the connection.
And what he found was that his strands were chipped away, rather close from where he held them.
"N-No," MC said, still holding on to those strands as tightly as he could. "T-They can't have…"
"Seriously, weak wrapping like this isn't going to cut it at all," Wallace said, quickly summoning Radiohead to easily cut through the green strands around JoJo, replacing them with his own red ones, enough to mummify JoJo's body. MC paled as he saw his very last connection get severed by the same man.
'I won't let that happen,' he vowed in his head. 'I'm going to save him.'
Summoning Day One once again, he quickly started hacking through the red strands around JoJo with his green ones. Only to be quickly replaced with a new set every single time.
"You can't make anything easy, can't you?" Wallace shook his head. "No matter. I am far more experienced in this than you. You can only use these leashes to drag people with you. I use them to control people's choices no matter where they are as well, once again, something you cannot do no matter what. And at this point, you're just a hindrance."
Suddenly, the remaining aura within JoJo's form started to get sucked away by Wallace. MC paled, recognizing the motion from when he had seen Natsuki and her father.
'He's deleting him.'
Acting quick, MC started to hack through the red leashes with everything he had. However, he couldn't get JoJo to summon the same resistance to the leashes as everyone else had.
"Come on!" he yelled out. "JoJo! Fight back! Do something! I can't do this alone!"
However, no matter how much MC yelled, no matter how much MC cut off Wallace's leashes, he could never get JoJo free from him.
"Mark Caulfield," Wallace spoke up, now that Geoff Joster was almost completely destroyed from time. "I want you to know this. I only did all this because you were fighting me. Because you were getting in my way. Because I'm forced to see your face every single day. I would have deleted you ages ago, but I can't. I would jump at an opportunity to do so, but no matter what I do, I cannot delete you. That's because I was born from you. If I delete you, I will unwillingly delete myself as well, and I cannot have that. So, here's what you will do."
"Move away," Wallace commanded, with an air of finality. "Go somewhere else. Attend school somewhere else. Run away from me, and pray that I never see you again, even by accident. Because once I do, I will delete whatever life you've built up just as I have now."
MC could barely feel the tears flowing down from his eyes, watching the last friend he had left slowly get eaten away by this monster.
'I… can't,' MC realized. 'He's far too strong. I cannot defeat him, no matter what.'
And as a last cry for his friend, he mourned him.
"JOOOOJJOOOO!"
… But he didn't respond. He was still getting sucked away, while MC couldn't stop it.
"N-No…" MC muttered, still holding on to whatever was left of him, blocked by the red leashes that he couldn't break through. "Please. Come back. I can't lose you too."
And as if in response, something thrummed from beneath the thick multitude of red bandage.
Suddenly, a wrapped hand rose up and grabbed MC's. As JoJo made the leashes in front of his head burst away, he quickly pushed MC's hand into the gap, making him touch the white spark of his memory.
And everything went white.
A/N: Know that there is a reason for what I just did. But for what it's worth, I'm sorry.