Chapter 5: We Caught the Rainbow, Part 1
At around 10:30 PM, Eastern Standard Time on November 10, 2011, Jolyne, Emporio, Hermes, Anasui, and Weather were all in the car en route to the residence of the famous Jotaro Kujo.
Emporio, who was sleeping in the back of the car, was questioning the words that he chose when he was using Weather Report to kill Pucci.
"Walking the path of justice is true fate?", he thought. "That made NO SENSE! What the hell was I saying? If that were true, Pucci wouldn't have been able to kill any of us in the first place. Not that it matters now…"
Emporio wondered about the wording that he could have used instead. His mind was going along the lines of "All those who stand in the way of fate will lose, no matter how immune they think they are. By the way, this is for mom. I'll see you in hell."
Of course, this was just his still developing mind trying to sound cool, like Jotaro. Obviously, he rarely spoke to Jotaro, but Jolyne had told him about Jotaro back at GDSP. Part of Emporio had looked up to Jotaro and wanted to be like him.
In the front seat, Jolyne was re-experiencing part of her "past life". This time, Anasui was talking about proposing to Jolyne. This was just before the battle where she lost her life; the one that she would wake up after.
"Proposal…", she thought. And then, she remembered: Anasui had proposed to her a couple of days prior, and her father did not know. She needed to break it to him somehow…
"BINGO!", she thought. "I'll just hide the engagement ring with a Band-Aid® and say that I cut my finger!" This was an easy solution, seeing as the engagement ring was a simple gold ring with no out-standing aspects.
Quickly, she took out her phone and typed "pharmacy" into her maps app. She found a few results but chose a CVS on Conroy Road.
After consulting with Anasui, she made the announcement to everyone in the car.
"So, you know how we've been engaged?" she said briskly, but calmly. "I want to hide the engagement ring by putting a bandage over it and pulling it off when I want to reveal the news. Because of this, we need to stop at the drug store in order to get said bandages. Before I go in, does anyone want anything?"
Everyone shook their heads, meaning no. Hermes had to duplicate everything that everyone already got at the gas station back in Titusville, so everyone was content with what they had.
With that, Jolyne simply said "Ok" and Anasui pulled into the parking lot of CVS. Before leaving the car, Jolyne said that she was going alone, reassuring everyone that they would all be okay, since they were all stand users.
The time she spent inside the building was very short. All she did was find the bandages section, pick up the BAND AIDS®, pay with credit card, and leave.
However, upon leaving the building, she was met by a very suspicious looking man who looked her right in the eye.
This man was giving off a very menacing aura. His eyes were green, his hair and eyebrows were pitch black, and he looked as if he were a relatively well-built man. On top of this, he wore all black, with a leather robe that went all the way down to his ankles.
"Jolyne Cujoh…" he said quietly. "I must avenge DIO by killing your father's bloodline! That means you!"
Jolyne was so scared that she brought out her Stand. "Stone Free!" she yelled. After she said the words, Stone Free appeared by her side, ready to defend her.
In response to such a defensive gesture, the man said, "Want to turn into solid ice and break?" before bringing out his Stand. His stand was nothing special. It was a bald, androgenous figure that was blue with a white tint. It bore a blank expression on its face and wore a parka that said "VIVA LA VIDA" on it in all capitals. From here, the Stand fight began.
Jolyne shot out string from the tip of her right pointer finger in an attempt to ensnare the enemy Stand user within her string. However, his Stand grabbed onto her string with a quick motion.
Within seconds, ice started to travel along her string, coming close to her body.
Unfortunately, before the ice could reach her finger, the enemy Stand user heard a sound behind him.
"HEY BUDDY! OVER HERE!", yelled a mysterious voice. The enemy stand user withdrew his stand from Jolyne, reversing the effects of his ability before turning around to see, to his surprise, another Stand.
This Stand's skin was bleached completely in white, and it had stripes going horizontally around it. These stripes had lettering inside of them, but at this distance, he could not make out what they were. As for attire, it was sparsely clad in black.
When Jolyne first saw this Stand, she first thought "Uh oh", as this was the stand of the priest that she had seen in her dream that she had tried in vain to stop. But then, she remembered the truth: help had just arrived.
Pissed off by this other Stand's interference, the ally of DIO charged for it and used his Stand to successfully turn it into ice before turning back for Jolyne. At this point, usually, one would assume that all hope was lost.
Of course, it wasn't, as the interfering Stand melted away into a white goo before the real Stand appeared behind the man in black and asked, "Do you know what you are, Mr. Clearwater?"
"A follower of the one true path to salvation?"
"No, you're a bitch."
The White Stand proceeded to extract two discs from Mr. Clearwater's head and insert one. Clearwater collapsed to the ground as the user revealed himself.
Hearing the commotion, Anasui got out of the car. Jolyne then came out from under the awning and approached her savior.
This man was not black, but extremely tan. He had white hair that made him appear almost bald if you looked at him from the front. If you looked at him from the back, however, you would see that his hair was, in fact, very long, as he had three ponytails. As for attire, he wore Ray-Ban sunglasses, jeans, black loafers, and a white coat that had a wheel-like emblem and the word "SPEEDWAGON" across the back.
Emporio shuddered at the image of the man whose blood was on his hands. Sure, this was a different soul, and Enrico Pucci's soul had been replaced at every point in time when Emporio killed him, but the resemblance was still there. Keep in mind that Emporio has suffered about three lifetimes worth of trauma at this point. He shudders to think about the words that Pucci said to him, even in death.
However, for everyone else, this was no man to be feared.
"Is that you, Domenico?", asked the man.
"You bet it is, my good brother. I guess there is a god that controls fate after all!", replied Weather.
"As a Ph.D in Genetics and as a philosopher, I don't believe that fate is set in stone, at least, not anymore."
"Oh, you!" As the two approached each other for a hug of reunion, Emporio ran back towards the car in extreme confusion. For as long as he had known, Weather had hated his twin brother, but here, they seemed to like each other a lot.
Domenico and Marco Pucci were born in 1972 to the wealthy and influential Pucci family in Windermere. At the time that they were born, a random woman switched out her dead baby, named Wes Bluemarine, with Domenico. The young Marco was simply told that Domenico was the dead child at the age of five.
Wanting to investigate how he could live while his brother died, Marco became a Genetic Scientist, suspecting a hereditary disease to be responsible.
During a retreat to Egypt while studying for his Ph.D. at age 14, Pucci first encountered DIO while cleaning up after a late-night experiment.
On his way out the door, Pucci tripped and fell over DIO's foot. Ever the charismatic being, DIO, who was hiding in the Egyptian laboratory for the night, grasped onto Pucci's disfigured left foot and healed it. For clarification, what DIO did was transfer a tiny bit of his own blood into Pucci.
Pucci, who was scared of DIO, pretended to be enticed by DIO's words and walked back to his hotel room.
The next day, Marco was examining the DNA samples of his younger sister, Pearla, and her boyfriend, Wes Bluemarine, for his thesis. This day was when he had discovered the truth: their chromosomes were unremarkably similar, and thus, he deduced that Wes Bluemarine was his long-lost brother, Domenico Pucci.
After completing most of his work, Marco rushed back to America to inform both of them of his discovery. Both were shocked, but the two long lost brothers quickly reconciled as Domenico broke up with Pearla.
Marco also declared that he would meet with DIO to sabotage his entire legacy, knowing that he was up to no good. With that, Marco spent the majority of the summer of 1986 with DIO, learning every intricate detail of his plans and pretending to sympathize with them. Also, he got stabbed with one of the Stand arrows, awakening his Stand, Whitesnake, which was born out of his newfound desire to explore the world of Stands and his long-term desire to destroy DIO's legacy.
After DIO died, Dr. Pucci met Jotaro Kujo. Admiring the Joestar family for opposing DIO, Pucci and Jotaro formed a partnership which involved Pucci joining the Speedwagon Foundation and fighting DIO's allies around the world so that Jotaro could spend more time with his daughter.
"Well, what were the chances, Dr. Pucci?", said Jolyne with relief and happiness.
"I'd say about…four out of five, Ms. Cujoh, but I'm not the one to judge."
"Annie, Hermes, this is Dr. Marco Pucci, a close acquaintance of my father.", announced Jolyne to her friends and companions that didn't know about him. "He's the reason I got to spend so much time with him. My father, that is."
"It's very nice to meet both of you.", replied the good doctor, shaking their hands. "Now, I'm just wondering; I know he's your boyfriend, but who is she?"
"Oh, this is Hermes Costello, I met her on the highway after some bus driver kicked her off. At least they had the courtesy to give her back her luggage." Jolyne trusted Dr. Pucci more than anything, having been someone that her father had introduced her to in youth.
As they were talking, and Marco questioned what the hell was going on with Weather deciding to take a stroll in the rain, Emporio was struggling to convince himself that Enrico Pucci had not come back, and that this was a man allied with the Joestar bloodline.
After wiping his tears away and getting out of the car, he figured that it was best to talk to Jolyne privately.
"Jolyne, can I talk to you privately?" he yelled.
Following his request, Jolyne ran over to Emporio after asking everyone to excuse her.
"Are you upset about losing your friends again?", asked Jolyne, crouching down to meet Emporio eye to eye. "If it makes you feel better, I came to a realization on the way here. I lived through all that crap too, and even though I technically died, I got through it, and never had to have really experienced it."
"…"
"It's me, Emporio. I survived, thanks to you. That 'dream' was the time that we spent in prison. That was our bizarre adventure, and we all survived."
At this moment, Emporio hugged Jolyne as hard as he could. Jolyne felt no other option but to hug back.
"Thank you, Jolyne.", sobbed Emporio, the most that he ever had since the previous day. "By the way, I wasn't calling you about that; I was calling you about-"
"Oh, him? I know, his stand worried me a little too for a split second, but you can feel safe around Dr. Pucci. He's not the same person as that priest that screwed us over all of our lives. I've known him since childhood, and to put it lightly, I don't think he likes DIO at all."
As the conversations wrapped up and everyone got back in the car, Pucci sat in the back while Jolyne decided to have Emporio on her lap for the duration of the ride to Jotaro's Mansion.
The "it's really me" moment was just what Emporio needed. For all of what he had perceived as twenty-four hours, there was a shred of doubt in his mind that his friends would ever be the same again. But now, he knew without a doubt in his mind that his friends never died in the first place.
Thinking the best thoughts that he ever had since before his mother died, Emporio took a sip of his KISS-duplicated chocolate milk.
Within five minutes, Anasui had parked his grey 2010 Nissan Maxima just outside the mansion. It was a large mansion, with a mini-square complete with fountain out-front and a red roof. Everyone waited by the fountain as Jolyne went to knock on the door.
Inside the mansion, one could hear three distinct knocks. That is, contact from finger joint to wood.
"What's the password?", asked a voice from inside.
Jolyne knew that her friends would be confused by what she was about to do, but she did it anyway.
"SHUT UP! YOU'RE AN ANNOYING BITCH!"
Jolyne screamed the password loud enough to hear for about twenty meters, but quiet enough as to not disturb too many people in the area.
Contrary to what everyone thought would happen, the man behind the door actually opened it, as the password was correct.
The man behind the door was well built, seemingly a twenty-year old from one's first impression, although he was actually forty-two. He wore a long purple coat, and a white T-shirt with a green star in the middle. He also had a gold chain on the left side of his collar. As for his hat…it's hard to explain. It's almost as if his hat was always part of his hair and grew from it. Make no mistake, this man was Jotaro Kujo.
-TO BE CONTINUED|\|