[nine]

strength - part one

Bobbing on the ocean in a lifeboat was precisely what I had not wanted to happen when we first boarded the ship to Singapore. But there had been another Stand, one that had pulled Jotaro overboard and almost shredded him to pieces with scales before Jotaro had finished him off.

All it had done was make me fret about Stands that could easily separate me from the team. After all, I was essentially useless to them if I couldn't touch them. Could I ever extend my Stand further than my fingertips? Kakyoin had a far better range. How could I learn?

"Anne," Mr. Joestar called. "Would you like some water?"

He looked to the newest addition of our makeshift group, sitting sullenly at the other end of the lifeboat.

With each wave lapping against the lifeboat, the girl had grown more and more wary of us. She had been found on the ship shortly before the Captain had been discovered as a Stand-user. But Anne could not see Stands, and now her eyes smouldered with distrust.

For a girl so young, she carried a pocketknife and lashed out often, promising she could fight us all at once. Yet I caught the fear that flashed across her face each time one of us came close, too close. She swore that she was travelling to meet with her father. But I doubted her, and figured she was growing more scared by the minute.

So I let her sit beside me and offered her as much space as possible on this small little lifeboat, drifting aimlessly away from the wreckage of our first ship, which had long since exploded into planks and groaning metal.

"Anne?" Mr. Joestar prompted again.

He held out a flask. She was staring at it. Sweat collected at her hairline. No doubt she believed the water had been poisoned.

Then again, how could I blame her for being so paranoid? She had seen invisible fists pummelling a shark, and watched a whirlpool of metallic scales swallow Jotaro.

"May I please have a sip, Mr. Joestar?" I asked.

He offered it to me. I took a quick swig, holding it out to Anne afterward. She still hesitated.

But the heat had made her cheeks red, and I could bet the itch in her throat was fast becoming unbearable. Her lips were chapped. A little ripple ran over her eyebrows, like she was fighting herself in her own brain, battling between fear and thirst.

Finally she snatched the flask from me, shooting me the meanest glare a little runaway could manage.

Anne swallowed a gulp. Then she took another small gulp - and spat it all out again, splattering my dress.

I groaned at the sight, grumbling to myself as I checked each spot. She had dropped the flask.

Mr. Joestar hurried to catch it and fix the cap so the precious water we had left wouldn't spill out.

"Hey! Don't waste the water!" he scolded. "What kind of person spits it out?"

Anne's face had grown ashen, her eyes wide. "L-Look!"

Looming behind us was a freighter, criss-crossed on its deck with massive cranes and ropes. From its bow rolled a thick mist, blending ocean and clouds. The sailors, sitting on the other lifeboat tied to ours, stood, and marvelled at the sheer size of this freighter.

One sailor cried out, "It just appeared out of nowhere!"

With those words the mist seemed to curl around us. It became ominous; the rust of the freighter made it seem so ghostly and abandoned, which only added to the silence which accompanied a ship so mammoth in size.

Yet there were no shouts from the deck and no sign of crewmen.

"Jotaro," Mr. Joestar murmured. "Something's bothering you, isn't it? Are you worried another Stand user is on this thing too?"

Twisting around in my seat, I glimpsed the preoccupied expression Jotaro wore. His eyebrows were drawn tightly, darkening the cool sheen of his eyes.

"Not quite, he said. "Strange they lowered the stairs but there's not a single soul to be seen anywhere."

The stairs were metal, offering a cold clang as Polnareff leaped from the lifeboat and grabbed hold of them.

"The ship came all this way to rescue us," he called back to us. "Some sort of crew has to be onboard! Well, I don't care if they're all Stand users. I'm getting on this boat."

With that, we were somewhat forced to follow. I was last to leave the lifeboat, because Anne was in front of me and she was so short and small that she couldn't fully reach to grab onto the railings of the staircase. Though she huffed at me for it, I boosted her onto the rim of the lifeboat, and I hoped she could make it.

But she was still an inch away.

Mr. Joestar and Joseph waited. Jotaro held out his hand.

"Take my hand, kid," he said. "I'll help you up."

Anne hesitated, then pressed her foot against the edge of the lifeboat and threw herself forward. She had enough momentum to grab onto Mr. Joestar and settle in his arms, offering Jotaro a wiggle of her tongue to mock him. That brought out a now-familiar laugh from Mr. Joestar as he turned and carried her to the deck, his shoulders shaking.

Jotaro straightened.

"Good grief," he muttered. "Come on, Juniper."

There was a delicious thrill in taking his hand, if only for a brief moment, because I could have reached for the rail myself. I suspected that Jotaro was aware of that, too.

Yet I still took his hand and let him hoist me up, until the metal step was sound beneath my shoes. He motioned for me to walk ahead of him.

His hand remained at the small of my back, as if guiding me along the staircase to the deck. It made my heart sing; I wondered how I had ever been so blind about a crush.

Because that was what it was, and I hated it. I wasn't stupid. I just wasn't sure when it had happened, exactly, that I had begun to like Jotaro in a different way.

Crushes left me embarrassed, sizzling red from the sheer vulnerability of liking someone else. I had had plenty of them, spotting a boy in one of the new schools that I attended and losing myself in a daydream of our life, writing it like a story, full of soft tender gestures and hints of a bond between souls, that sort of stuff. I had never finished one of those stories; never made it past the first page, really, before those boys turned their heads, looked at me, and looked away again.

And Jotaro was the first boy for whom I had never even begun writing a story. I had really wanted a friend.

I had really needed a friend.

On a ship so far from Japan, so far from my father, so far from school and normal life, I found I could admit it more easily. I had been lonely. It had been a crippling kind of loneliness, too. Jotaro had come along and chased it off, even with his gruff attitude and silence. It was his presence that soothed me. It was knowing he had my back.

So I cursed myself for ruining it all and finding him cute, admiring the strand of hair falling from underneath his hat, and the warmth of his hand bleeding through my dress.

I didn't need a crush. But I needed a friend.

So I scrunched up a story, half-written, barely-begun.

On the deck there was ample space for me to wander. It was a fine distraction from those dim, unpleasant feelings stirring in me. The freighter held a thick odour of rust and rot. The cranes groaned at the bolts, as if straining simply to exist. The chains of the hooks screeched as a faint gust of wind ran by and caused them to swing like malformed windchimes.

Jotaro touched my shoulder. I flinched, unsettled by the moaning grind of metal, the agonising yawn of steel as it expanded. He had been following a few paces behind me, looking around. His expression was even more troubled.

He asked, "What do you think? Stand user?"

"One that could overpower all the crewmen and control a ship this size on their own? I'm not sure. What if there are a few of them here, working together?"

His eyebrows furrowed again. "But where could they be hiding?"

"Jotaro," Mr. Joestar shouted.

The presence of a human voice sliced through the cold, mechanical rumblings of the freighter. Even its hooks fell silent and its metal quietened, as if the ship itself listened. A shudder rippled along my spine, running quickly, like the lithe limbs of a spider sprinting up my skin.

"Let's look at the control room," Mr. Joestar finished.

Jotaro asked, "Are you coming?"

"Yeah," I said. "This whole place is creeping me out."

The control room was a cluster of dials and knobs. From the radio room was closeby; the transmitter worked, but there were no messages, no method of calling anyone else. It simply burbled with static. It seemed odd to me that a small notebook lay open in front of the transmitter, and three dots had been pencilled close together with a longer dash at the end. It was Morse code.

"S-T," Mr. Joestar said, glancing over my shoulder. "You ought to learn Morse code. It's useful."

"Initials?" I suggested.

"Possibly. But how the Hell is all this stuff working with no-one here?"

From another room, Jotaro summoned us. There was no urgency in his voice and still I approached the doorway in a sweat, worsened by the sight of an ape inside a cage; its mouth smacked wetly as it looked at me, a furred hand on a bar of its cage as it leaned forward. It hooted, and its feet pounded once at the ground.

I had seen apes in zoos, and none had ever done more than lazily chew mangoes, their eyes ghosting right by me.

Polnareff, Kakyoin, Jotaro and Anne were already in the room, watching this ape. Anne was frightened and pale, standing slightly behind Jotaro and Kakyoin, her hands clenched at her sides.

"An orangutan," Kakyoin noted.

"Who cares about a friggin' ape?" Mr. Joestar grumbled.

Yet the ape stared and stared at us.

With another huff, Mr. Joestar added, "Let's split up and find whoever's been feeding this thing."

Slowly the others filed out of the room, heading back to the deck. I stood a moment longer, alone.

Because the ape cocked its head. Drool leaked out from its parted lips as it smiled, and hooted softly again, taking the railings in its hands. The pipes around us shuddered. I stepped backward, though my sole seemed to stick to the ground and hold me in place for a moment.

A scream rang out.

The ape was forgotten.

I sprinted for the deck, knowing that it was Anne who had screamed.

Relief knocked me to a standstill at the bottom of the stairs leading down to the deck. Jotaro was with her. She was unharmed. I saw no Stand user around, and almost called out to Jotaro to ask what had happened.

A creaking chain sounded. I looked up.

A sailor had been impaled by a hook, and swung weakly from side to side.

Blood pooled beneath him. There was no chance that I could even reach him and attempt to heal what was left. It was clear that the hook had crushed through his skull and killed him immediately. Mr. Joestar shouted orders to the crew, sending them off to the cabins.

All the while, the corpse twisted on a hook.

Fear coiled around my stomach. It was another example of the limitations of my Stand. Even if the hook had not killed him, what could be done from this distance? There was no ladder that I could climb, not close enough to him that I could make it in time. I could not extend myself like Kakyoin could. It plagued me more and more.

Until, at least, a small hand hesitantly curled in mine.

Anne stared up at me. Though her own gaze was watery, rimmed in confusion, she was offering me comfort. There was no more defiance in her small frame, no more heated anger. She was a kid. A little girl, so far from home.

So I squeezed her hand, gently.

"Go ahead," I told her. "Stay close to the sailors. Don't go off on your own. Okay?"

Her lips pressed together. She nodded, running toward the sailors still idling at the doorway to the cabins. She did not trust us fully. But the death of this sailor had rattled us both, and she was able to show it even better than I could.

I stepped into place beside Jotaro, glancing back at her.

"Sweet kid," I murmured.

He was silent.

"She'll warm to you," I added. "It takes a while."

His face was unreadable.

"Oh, yeah? And how long did it take you?"

"Still waiting," I said. "I'll let you know when it happens."

Jotaro dipped his head; the rim of his hat hid his face as a huff of laughter slipped out. It was rare for him to let out a chuckle or a smile, to show that anything amused him.

And my heart hammered hard in my chest because of it.

A friend, I told myself. Not a crush. A friend.

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