The witch was not difficult to find: her signal was so strong that it would be hard not to go towards it. Madoka walked behind him, keeping an eye out for any other unwelcome visitors – rival magical girls, perhaps. (They hadn't met anyone else so far. Perhaps there were only so many in the Stand at a time.)
The witch was really, really big. Unbelievably so. Bigger that the skyscrapers that decorated the centre of Mitakihara City, bigger than anything he had seen before – that he could remember, of course. It loomed over the city, cackling madly, just like it had looked in the picture on Homura's wall, all frilly skirts and – cogs? Some sort of weird construction, anyway. It wasn't even bothering to use a barrier. Jotaro wondered if any non-Stand users could see it.
"Let's get higher," he said, trying to figure out any sort of plan that could even fucking dent that massive motherfucker, and coming up blank. He hoped Madoka didn't notice how fucking terrified he was.
"Okay." (Damn, he wished he could read that facial expression.)
They ended up on the roof of a medium sized building, and had to pause for a moment because… shit. The witch was already beginning to wreak havoc; small chunks of building flew past, and metal girders and fucking buses, sometimes. And… fuck, those chunks of building weren't actually that small, they just looked that way against the massive witch. Fuck.
He shuddered and clutched his soul gem. If it had been some punk with a dumb attitude, or some asshole Stand user, sure, he could knock 'em down with no problem. But this… this was unbelievable. The most powerful Stand in existence would probably struggle against this.
He really hoped Star Platinum was powerful. He had felt the agility and precision of his transformation, for a brief time, and could sense a fair amount of potential in its muscles, but… he couldn't remember, didn't know if it was powerful enough to beat this. It wasn't going to be easy. He wished he'd had more time to prepare.
A flicker of movement down a side street facing the witch caught his eye and he squinted down, glad of the distraction. There was… something there, something that would blink into existence occasionally for a moment. If he had been closer, he might have been able to see more clearly; as it was, he could still see the pipe bombs and various other heavy artillery beginning to appear, filling half the street before Jotaro could blink.
"Hey, Madoka-chan…" He nudged her gently. "See that?"
"I see it. I think it's on our side, whatever it is."
"Okay."
A moment. Explosions began to speckle the body of the massive witch, shaking it to its core. (The pipe bombs, he noticed, were smoking despite not having been fired.) The witch turned, listed to one side, and explosions began to pepper her again. ('Pepper' was definitely the right word. Against her massive body those flickers were just seasoning.)
"I guess I should fight it, then."
"Yeah. It'll be easier if someone else is targeting it, as well."
He sighed, and transformed. Once more his clothes flew off to whatever alternate dimension they'd gone to before; his blush, brief as it was, turned purple and spread over his entire body. His hair flew up and grew.
(It must have been worse for Kyouko, he thought. Going from a little girl to a massive fire-breathing naked chicken man in the space of a minute couldn't have been easy. But perhaps she'd been used to it.)
The figure of the street below flickered again. He ignored it, and bunched up his fists. Behind him, Madoka made a comforting noise. Good luck.
He jumped up, towards the massive witch's head.
There should have been more then one person fighting this beast. They could all have attacked at once, or come up with a halfway decent strategy that made good use of each of their Stands. It shouldn't have been just him.
He landed on the side of the witch's face and pulled back a massive fist.
"Ora!"
A small dent. That wasn't a good sign. He tried again.
"Ora Ora Ora—" Left, right, left. Pieces began to break off, but the witch was still smiling. Her mouth opened and closed above him, a metallic, echoing cackle bursting out and ruffling his levitating hair.
He wished Star Platinum could have at least kept his hat on. It was weird enough that the hands and legs he caught sight of were purple rather than his normal olive complexion, but this…
He sighed, and got back to Ora Ora-ing.
A flicker. For a moment, he was frozen in place, just as his fist connected to the witch's face once again, and the next…
He blinked. He was clinging onto the lacy midriff of the witch, the entire city spread out below him and the wind blowing much harder than even the witch's maniacal laughter could manage.
What on earth? He closed his eyes, and tried to replay the memory of what he had seen. In his transformation, he was fast and accurate and better than any normal human being; that didn't mean it was easy for his normal human brain to keep up without practice.
He had seen… a vague flicker of something out of the corner of his eye, and his body had frozen; with the speed of a well-trained magical girl, Homura had jumped up to him, moved him out of the way (of what?) and jumped away again. How on earth had a tiny girl like that picked up a giant teenager in the form of a naked man like him, he had no idea. Come to think of it, she hadn't even been transformed, at least not much. Her clothes had been slightly different – a grey jacket with black skirt and tights – and she had been wearing the same grey disc as the first time he'd met her, but… nothing major, like a giant chicken man.
He frowned. Why would she help him, anyway? Wasn't DIO his enemy? Or maybe she had gone against her passenger somehow?
And that Stand… Whatever that was wasn't like the others. It must be different somehow, as if… perhaps it was her Stand, not DIO's. Was that possible? Could the two personalities have different Stands? What would DIO's Stand even look like?
Something shuddered below him, snapping him out of trying to think straight. Below him, the witch's smiling face and shoulders burst into dozens of splashes of light. Missiles – where did those come from? – flew in, above and below, rustling the lace on the giant witch's skirt: suddenly, the behemoth began to tip again.
Well, he wasn't going to miss an opportunity like this. With renewed vigour, he clenched his fists and –
"ORAORAORAORAORAORAORAORA-!"
This time, he actually made a lot of progress. Pieces of something, whatever it was witches were made of, broke off in chunks as big as his head, as big as his whole body at times. Maybe the explosions had started to weaken its structure; he thanked his lucky stars (no pun intended) that Homura had got him out of the way in time.
He tried not to think about all the possibly malicious ways she might use her powers. (Although, come to think of it, she was probably the one behind all the explosions. Maybe she really did try to resist the DIO in her brain.)
"Ora Ora Ora –"
(Somehow, he remembered another time something like that had happened, where DIO's control had been defeated. Hadn't he kind of obeyed Madoka's weird-ass life advice, long before? He couldn't remember where it had gotten him, but… well, it wasn't a real first date unless you tried to either kill or save one another. Or both. That was just how the world worked.)
"Ora Ora Ora –"
A piece of debris burst out of the side of the witch's corset, straight into Jotaro's face –
and he was falling, unable to react as quickly as he knew he could, the massive chunk of whatever-it-was weighing him down like a road roller –
and this time, he managed to catch the moment that everything froze.
