JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Every Breath You Take.
Chapter 1: Don't Fear the Reaper Part 1: The Menacing Map of Morioh!
"We'll be able to fly. Baby I'm your man."- Blue Oyster Cult, Don't Fear the Reaper.
My alarm goes off in a constant beep beep beeping noise and I slowly sit up. Checking the time and realizing it was time to wake up, I scooch to the edge of my bed and get on my undershirt and uniform jacket before wiggling on my underpants and uniform pants. Easing on my socks, I grab my plastic AFOs or Ankle Foot Orthosis braces. The ripping of velcro is a sign that I'm going to get moving soon. And well... it's got my brother shuffling out of his room.
"Mornin'..." he groans, "Seriously, you always have to get up so early?" his hair is a mess and his blue eyes are barely open. Not like me, well, aside from the energy and how my hair just kinda is a spiky mess.
"Morning, Josuke!" I exclaim, "I mean... yeah! Of course I have to get up early." I try my best to keep at least a little serious and less cheery. I amble over to me and my brother's bathroom with little less than eagerness in me. Just because I need to get up doesn't mean I'm happy about it.
I brush my teeth, brush my hair, and get on my uniform jacket. Josuke stops me.
"Hold it." he gets out some hairgel and starts to help me style it, "You aren't going out with your hair looking like that."
"Josuke..." I sigh, almost like I wanna push him away but Mom walks by with her hair also a little messy. She stops to watch us with a soft smile that-
My hair tugs with a yank of pain, "D'owww! Josuke!" I snap.
"Sorry! You turned your head..." he blurts and I look back in the mirror as it's all messy in its own way. Granddad already left for work and we're mostly just getting ready for the day like usual. Mom's already fixing our breakfast.
I scooch by and try to grab a banana, but she shoos me away. "I got it, honey. Go sit down." she gives me a smile and snaps at Josuke, "Hey, bastard! Come and help me with your brother's food!"
"Aw Mom!" Josuke huffs.
"Do it." she huffs before handing me my lunchbox, "Hang tight a minute, Jouji."
"Mom, I can do it!" I insist.
"And cut yourself? Fall and break my plates? Fat chance, chief." she shakes her head and makes me sit down. My cheeks burn with embarrassment and Mom also packs up my breakfast for me and also packs up my backpack.
She always does those kindsa things for me. Josuke hangs back because he always comes to school later than I do. Mom kisses me on the cheek.
"You stay outta trouble, okay hotshot?" she smiles and croons that like I'm five.
"Sure mom." I smile and step down with my walker giving me more support as I begin my march to school. I just hope I could have my own place someday where I could do what I wanted and not be in the way.
But I don't focus on that. All I can think about is how stuck I am. How everything kind of hinges on this kind of dependence. That's when the gathering of girls starts. They just see me wandering along and immediately start congregating.
"Hi, Jouji!"
"Good morning Jouji!"
"Hey Jouji, how are you feeling today?"
I wave at them and they keep going around almost like constant watchdogs trying to find things to get out of my way. It's weird but I let them do that. I won't look a gift horse in the mouth after all. The constant clicking of my wheels sounds out as I walk to school. My bag is draped over the side of my walker as the Morioh sunshine makes it gleam. The girls around me make sure that I'm not getting hurt or if there's anything in my way which... well, I guess I shouldn't look another gift horse in the mouth.
My friend Yukako Yamagishi glares at the crowd of girls like they personally offended her, "HEY! OUTTA MY WAY!" she snaps with her right eye twitching before they all scatter like scared birds. She fixes me with a bright smile and falling into step with me. She brushes her curly black hair back in order from how she was about to part them like the Red Sea.
"Good morning, Jouji!" she exclaims, "How're you?" her purple eyes glitter in the sunlight and all I can think about is how pretty she is. As a friend! As a friend!
"Uhh... I'm fine. I think I stayed up too late playing Starfox..." I scratch the back of my head as I trundle along. She looks a little concerned.
"Oh my. I'm sorry to hear that." she gets out a little book and writes something in it but I focus more on how she's walking really close to me. Like she's terrified of something happening to me. I mean it's not that weird but at the same time the way she basically shouted the other girls away from me almost made Don't Fear the Reaper come out swinging.
"What's with the closeness, Yukako?" I ask.
"Just ah... making sure I'm keeping pace with you!" she blushes slightly, "I mean everyone else outruns you and I don't think that's really fair, right?"
"I don't really care, but I appreciate it." I answer with a little smile and she grins.
"Yay!" she practically grabs onto me and almost steers me off the sidewalk.
"Whaaaaa!" I yell and she moves off and something pulls me upright again.
"Wha-?" I blink and I feel something soft just whisk off my uniform like nobody's business.
Her hair billows softly even though there's no wind and she looks really apologetic, "S-Sorry! I just needed to catch you." Since when did she have a Stand? Has she always had one? I mean Josuke and I couldn't be the only ones and well, in my research there was evidence of them even all the way back in ancient Egypt. So... I dunno if she's like us or not. Even so, I feel even more weirded out when I see out of the corner of my eye someone in the street pointing at me. The figure had a long white beard and hair dressed in old clothes. Like he was from the fifties soon after the war. Then he bursts apart in a fireball.
A kid gets sucked down a sewer grate and gets mulched by turbines down the pipeline. Every day I see things like that because of the Stand I have. Yukako is pretty much the one person who can make me not focus on them. It looms above me and swings its right arm down over me. Swing... swing... swing... it's mostly blue and black with an almost diamond shape to it. Yet it hovers just above me and it seems bound to my walker no matter what.
It's blue eyes shine from beneath a dark blue hood and the spirits keep congregating around me. Curiously dying over and over again but surprised I can even see them. They keep gathering with their curious deadeyes. Then their cold, hard hands close on me and I let out a scream of, "AAAAH! DON'T TOUCH MEEEE!" they keep reaching for me and keep trying to grab me and be wherever they want to be at. What the fuck is this?!
"Jouji, wait!" I barely hear Yukako over the constant noise and the screams. I stumble away from my walker and my normal school route. I had to get away! Get away from me! From here! From anywhere! Stop! Stop stop! My legs go out from under me and I slam into the pavement scraping my hands on the ground. Feeling their stinging as I lay there with Don't Fear the Reaper looming above me.
"Shinnnng..." it says, "Shinnng?"
"Leave me alone!" I yell at it, "Go away! Make it stop!" I scramble or at least try to scramble onto my feet passing through the freezing cold spirits as they try to speak with me. But I see them all die over and over. But there's one person I see cut through all of them like nothing.
Yukako hauls my walker and other stuff with her almost running herself if not for the fact she's weighed down. She ditches it and kneels, "Let me see."
"They're everywhere... they're dying everywhere..." I mumble, "Everywhere." she takes my wrists and I look away from her and back up towards my Stand. Its looking around. Yukako's too busy putting ointment on my scrapes and bandaids on them before looking me in the eyes.
"Jouji. It's alright." she states with her voice being soft and gentle, "Just look at me."
I look at her right in the eyes and she grins, "Breathe." she says. I breathe in and out. Smelling lilac and lavender. Sweet smells from her and her soft hands. The way she's so calm it makes her feel like a completely different person.
I breathe in and out with her. Calm and collected. Or as collected as I can be when the spirits and Don't Fear the Reaper finally go away. As much as I hate the fact that I can only turn it off by force... or rather...
"SHING! SHING! SHING! SHISHISHING!" Don't Fear The Reaper is slashing at them with its arms? The dance its doing is graceful and light. But the noise it makes is brutal and fast. Its legs are powerful, its arms even more so. Built like me, thin and ropey.
But...
So much freer than I could ever be. It never strayed far though, whirling its arms and sheathing the blades with a quick shik! Now its just the three of us in a part of town I don't know anything about. By the look of nervousness on Yukako's face she has no idea either. Waiting for us on the slice of pavement before us is a cutesy little map kiosk. A cartoony M is on the top that says, 'Morioh Maps! Charting since the Town's Founding!' on the top of it with reams of maps situated in little cubbies.
"Well..." I stand up and wobble a bit, but Don't Fear the Reaper grabs me as Yukako sets my walker back on its wheels, "Let's get going." But when I look around I totally realize we're completely lost. The maps seem to beckon to us. Almost begging us to take one out and follow it.
Yukako takes one and grins, "See? We can find our way out!"
I roll on over, "Yukako..." I warn, "I don't think we-"
"We have no idea where we are, Jouji. It can't hurt, can it?"
The map started out leading us to weird places. Like a back alley or some weird hole in the wall place. Yukako kept shifting the map and here I am doing nothing but following my friend around. Something about this feels off. We were walking through so many streets with the same signs, paths that go nowhere. Stuff like that. Again and again we wander through the streets trying to find our way but the map seems to ripple and shift to fit where we're going but...
It almost acts like I should know what this all is. But when I look at the map myself it seems to have just shifted the lines out of nowhere, "Look, let's just find our way back out without the map." I say but something makes it stick. I wiggle my hands and it flutters on them like it's glued on. The way opens in front of us and I suddenly (almost instinctively) dart towards it until it spits me out right into oncoming traffic! Yukako's hair lashes out and yanks me back before I could fall any further. She groans and rubs the back of her neck.
"You're really heavy..." she sighs.
"Seriously?! What's with this map?" I yell, "It almost threw us right onto the highway outta town!" Don't Fear the Reaper pops out and a blade almost cuts the map. But rather than letting that happen it rips out of my hands and the other papers gather and swirl into something oddly humanoid.
Roads like veins, signs like pimples or freckles or beauty marks, and train lines like muscle fibers. A paper-made man stands before us with eyes made of the proud Morioh Ms. Or rather the cartoony ones.
It's mouth flutters open.
"Don't you rip me, kid!" the weird humanoid map-thing snarls, "I'm older than both of you crotch-goblins combined! I AM SEND ME ON MY WAYYYY!" It wobbles to its feet and the street goes into a slant.
But something stops both Yukako and I from falling. Fireball Man?! Why was he- then I realize that Don't Fear the Reaper's blades contain whatever spirits it cuts with them. It's almost like I barely think but it does end up making things somewhat easier as the road flattens out. Fireball Man smiles and poofs out of existence only to reform again.
"What the..." Yukako breathes, "I don't get it." The Stand appears again right behind her and a map length goes near her neck.
"One more dragging step and this broad gets i-" that's when her hair nails it to the wall.
"HOW DARE YOU CALL ME A BROAD YOU PIECE OF TRASH?!" she yells, "AND LET US GO! WE'RE LATE FOR SCHOOL!"
"No can do, psychochick!" it reforms around her length but goes right into range of Don't Fear the Reaper. But even then an extending shot of its arm slashes right into my chest. All I can say is that while it was just a graze, it felt like being beaned in the chest by a pitching machine torqued up to huck fastballs.
My breath leaves me and all I can do is cough and wheeze on the ground. Before it can continue beating down on me it flies towards a wall with black strands of hair sticking it there but the wall split into yet another alleyway. I pant and wheeze trying to get my breath back as Yukako lets me lean on her. Her hair whips out rocks at the map thing and it weaves and twists through it all.
"Why are you doing this?" I cough.
Send Me On My Way settles down before us, "Because you took my map! I'd been wanting to fuck with someone for a LONG time!"
"Next you'll say you're a dickhead." I huff, pointing at it and my Stand wraps its arms around me, leaning against me almost like how I'm leaning against Yukako.
"I'm a dickhead- HEY!" it runs right for us, "YOU UPPITY LITTLE SHIT!" Right into the waiting blades of my Stand. Ripping most of it apart, Send Me On My Way is back to a normal map that reshuffles the area back to where it was.
"Okay! Okay, you win! Uncle! Uncle!" it cries, "Just let me go! I'll go back to leading people right! Just don't rip me up anymore!" Yukako's right eye twitches but I pick it up and refold it. It shudders in my hands.
"Hey, do you still work outside of your kiosk?" I ask with a devilish smile, getting out a marker.
"Well, no- Hey wait, what are you-?!" I scribble the words 'Bad Guide' on it.
Yukako chuffs a little and seems a little proud as I slip it right into the cubby with it facing outward. A little warning for the next poor bastard who comes by being lost. Don't Fear the Reaper appears and I smile.
Maybe my stand isn't so bad.