7th Stand User: A Wonderful World

[TheNine]

Whatever is going on with Uno, if it's a Stand attack, you doubt there's any band-aid solution. The first priority is making sure that the others aren't in a worse situation that you are. Due's back in peak condition, so you send her through the wall, and like a lightbulb turning on, you're instantaneously in the crew cabin.

Just like you worried, if the captain's quarters were hazardous, the crew quarters are Hell. The room is suffused by smoke and is hotter than a sauna- you still don't see any flames, so they must be in the walls. The room is full of panicking sailors, and there seems to be some sort of pile-up in the doorway preventing people from getting out.

You open your mouth to call out for the others, but go into a coughing fit instead. Well, there's no point anyway. You don't see them in here, and it's not like you could bail them out- Flashdance can teleport you back and forth freely, but you can't play that trick with anyone else- if you wanted to teleport someone from down here up onto the deck, you'd need to trap someone else down here in their place.

After a few moments of glancing around, you notice a bit more- this room is dark just like the captain's quarters, but you can tell in what dim light filters through the smoke that the beds, the walls, and even the ceiling are coated in a strange substance- the same thing, if you had to guess, that's on Uno. Worse, you can now see two sailors in their cots, unmoving and covered in that same probably-Stand.

You grit your teeth as sensory imput filters into you from Uno. She's still stuck in the captain's quarters, unable to pass through the wall. Whatever it is that's on her is certainly a Stand. She can't phase through it, but she also can't drag it through the wall without tearing right through- and no doubt, ripping a hole in the wall would fill both the captain's quarters and the crew quarters in flames. Furthermore, what before only covered her hand and forearm has grown, crawling nearly to her elbow, and pinching and slicing as it does. To you, Uno's minor woulds translate into an almost unbearable itching up and down your arm, one which you can neither scratch nor otherwise relieve.

You don't have time to think about this. The room is suffused in smoke. People here need help, but either due to genuine impotence or mental fatigue, you can't think of a way to help them. You need to escape quickly or else you'll pass out from smoke inhalation and almost certainly die, but these sailors are in an even worse situation- if you abandon them now, they're doomed! To make matters worse, with Uno trapped in the captain's quarters, you're effectively on a leash- you or one of the other four Flashdances has to remain within 7 meters of that room at all times until Uno can somehow escape.

That substance is spreading across the ceiling, walls, and floor! Soon it'll reach you, and as though you weren't fucked enough, you realize that Flashdance can't pass though the substance, so the areas where you can teleport out through are shrinking by the second! There's no choice left, you have to abandon-

With a blinding flash of green light and a deafening crash, the one wall of this room that doesn't lead into an inferno, the outside wall facing into the sea, bursts open. Water instantly flows in up to your ankles, but mercifully, the smoke flows back out.

Standing on a spiderweb of green tendrils near the hole in the side of the boat is Kakyoin, who cries out to the sailors. "Come here! Jump out of the boat! You can't see it, but there's a net that will save you."

"K-Kakyoin!" You manage to sputter.

"Marta! There you are! Make sure you don't touch the barnacles!"

With the moonlight streaming in from the new window in the ship's wall, you can see what he's talking about- that substance, attached to Uno and which has been slowly infesting this room, is a thick coating of razor-sharp barnacles, like you'd find all over a dock or the hull of a boat- this is why man was never meant to travel by sea, god dammit.

"T-too late! Uno's trapped in the captain's quarters, she's got them on her arm!"

Kakyoin cringes, then leans back in his net and yells up towards the deck. "Jotaro! Break open the captain's quarters!"

As he says so, six of the sailors in the room have staggered from the doorway and tried to leap overboard, only to find themselves hanging, from their perspective, in thin air. Two of the other ten are lying unconscious or dead in their cots- the last two, though, are still trapped in the doorway, which you now realize is also suffused in barnacles!

One of them is covered nearly from head to toe, with only part of his neck, face and arm showing. You pity him, but unless the others have figured out a way to break through these barnacles, he's already finished. The other guy, though, is only trapped by his arm- he's desperately pulling away from the door, trying to get away from the painful, invisible trap. You only have one idea to try to get him out of it.

It's Tre who's impulsive enough to immediately take action, throwing a bicycle kick at the sailor's arm and instantly severing it, setting him free and staggering backwards into Hierophant's waiting net. You too leap in as you see through Uno's eyes that Jotaro has blown a hole in the captain's bedroom's roof. She leaps out through the hole and runs over the deck to your side, slipping you out of your metaphorical leash.

"Alright, going up!" Kakyoin yells as Hierophant's tentacles begin to contract, dragging you up onto the deck. The blood from that seventh sailor's severed arm drips down into the churning waters below you, staining them from black to a deep purple.

As you reach the deck, you notice two things at once. The first is that the boat is listing and quite badly- whether from the new hole in the crew cabin or some other reason you can only guess. The next is that it's fucking hot! The flames below the deck have turned the topside of the ship into a boilerplate, and you're immediately reflexively hopping from one foot to another.

"Up here!" Kakyoin calls, and you see he's spiriting everyone else up on top of the cockpit, the highest point on the boat. In a flash, you're up there too, and you can see the rest of your friends are also standing in the same now-cramped area.

They're all about as bad-off as you are. Polnareff stands next to Chariot, whose entire sword, sword arm, and much of its torso are coated in barnacles. Joseph is dripping in a concerning amount of blood, and Avdol is covered in burns. Both of Star Platinum's fists are covered in barnacles too, and Jotaro's clenched fists are pockmarked by dozens of small drooling cuts.

"Marta!" Avdol cries. "We'd worried you were trapped belowdecks! Have you touched the barnacles?"

In response, Uno shows her arm and Avdol mutters something under his breath. "They're no small matter to remove. I'm resistant to my flames, so I burned them off, and Mr. Joestar's Sendo helped him safely remove them from his flesh."

"Mostly safely," Joseph says with a bitter grin, showing off his wounds.

"Speaking of," Jotaro says, "do mine now, Avdol."

"Are you sure, Jotaro? The damage to you will be nothing like what happened to me."

"And that'll be nothing compared to it I let them grow more. Hurry!"

With a grimace, Avdol forms his hands into the sign of the horns and Magician's Red appears, bursting forth a gout of flames onto Star Platinum's fists. The heat is even more intense than back in the crew cabin, despite the open air, and you watch Jotaro's fists almost immediately bubble and scorch into third degree burns. Still, hopefully it was worth it- the barnacles drop off, his wounds are cauterized, and Star Platinum clenches its scorched hands into two fists with little more than a grimace and growl from Jotaro.

"Then do my sword next, Avdol!" Polnareff yells, bursting off Chariot's armor to free himself from most of the flames and tossing down his rapier. As Avdol obliges, you raise the obvious question.

"Do we know who the enemy is?"

"No," replies Joseph, "but that rat bastard captain's nowhere to be found, so he's suspect numero uno! I swear to god, if I get my hands on him, he'll wish it was Jotaro instead!"

"Well," you say miserably, "I'd be a bitch if I was the only one not to. Avdol! Do you mind?"

Uno holds up her hand and gives you The Look, but you're sure she'll understand.

"In all honesty, Marta, if I have to recommend something, I think it'd be less painful for Polnareff to remove it instead- Flashdance's durability is such that the result will be the same either way."

Polnareff balks at the suggestion, but you stare him down with what you hope is determination in your eyes, and he seems to be convinced. He takes up his now white-hot sword, wincing as he does, and before you can even see it, Uno's arm, along with the offending barnacles, is amputated. A feeling like radio static rockets up and down your own arm, like you'd slept on it all night. So this is what it feels like for a limb to be one-fifth amputated?

"Forgive me, Marta."

"Fuck forgiving you, I'll thank you after this! We just need to find that asshole Tennille and tear his-"

For what feels like the 530,000th time in the last few days, your train of thought is interrupted. This time, though, it's by the boat exploding! Hooray for novelty! A fiery shockwave erupts from below the deck and rises up, sending wooden shrapnel up in your direction. It flies as fast as a bullet, but thankfully, that's nothing. Before the shockwave hurls you into the sea, four of your five Flashdances, Star Platinum, and the fastest of all, the unarmored Silver Chariot, have punched, sliced, and deflected the shrapnel into sawdust, so that when you all fall into the churning waves with ruptured eardrums, at least you haven't also been turned into splinter-filled Swiss cheese.

The ocean is a chaotic mess of rough waters, chunks of the boat, surging limbs, barnacles, and the shredded pieces of the three sailors who were left below deck. Unluckily, you hit the water first, so you're shoved down deep- and there he is. Through the black and bloody waters you can spot Tennille, grinning smugly over his swollen lip, broken nose, and two black eyes. Beside him, his Stand lurks like a predator in the deep, its face flat and ringed with countless eyes and teeth. Through his Stand, he laughs.

"I could have killed you! For the record, if I'd set off the bomb right away, you'd be dead now! But I wanted you to cook a little! I wanted you to try and fail to save everyone! I'm going to watch you suffer miserably, until I've paid you back a thousand times over for my humiliation!"

That aquatic Stand rushes at you at high speed, but not fast enough. All five Flashdances are ready to defend you, and all put together, even with Uno's missing arm, they're able to defend you from the predator's razor sharp claws and fins- at least for long enough.

Like a thunderbolt from the heavens, Star Platinum's fist pierces through the churning bodies above you and crashes with train crash force into the enemy Stand's head, sending it (and Tennille, suffering the same impact) spiraling off into the deep.

You pull yourself up to the surface, taking a deep breath of much-needed air. "So Tennille really was the enemy! But he wasn't so tough!"

"I don't know what's going on, but I don't think that man is Tennille!" A nearly sobbing sailor yells. "I'm sorry, I didn't know it would go this way! When he hired me, he paid me extra to call him "Tennile" and pretend I'd known him for years! I'd never even met him! Please don't kick my ass, Jotaro!"

Jotaro growls, but shakes his head. "Getting out of this comes first- I'll kick your ass afterwards."

"Still," Kakyoin mutters, collecting pieces of wreckage with Hierophant and passing them to sailors to use for makeshift floatation devices. "He had the jump on us completely. It's lucky he was such a fool and a pushov-"

Before Kakyoin can finish his sentence, dramatic irony does its work and he's dragged in an instant into the deep. As he is, the waters around you begin churning more violently until a vortex has formed that has irresistibly dragged all six of you and all seven of the Stand-users into the dark depths.

As you fight to figure out which way is up, a voice bubbles from the blackened waters around you. "You fools! You fucking brainless idiots! Did you think I'd be easy!? My Stand, Dark Blue Moon, is an undersea predator! When it smells blood in the water, it goes into a frenzy, and its speed and power increase ten times over! And fifteen wounded future fish food… that's more than enough to make me the most dangerous thing in all seven seas! Not even DIO could match me right now!"

"Well," you hear Jotaro mumble through Star Platinum, "that's a relief."

You can almost hear Tennille's eyes bugging out in rage as he replies. "What!? What the hell is a relief to you, you arrogant son of a bitch!?"

"If DIO is even weaker than a puffed-up flounder like you… I've been worrying way too much all this time."

His reply is silence for a few moments, followed by uproarious laughter. "That's one big mouth, you smug bastard, but that's all you've got! Right about now, you're probably thinking about how long you have to stall till I'll come up to the surface, right? 'If Tennille runs out of air, he'll have to surface, and then we'll be able to too' is that it? I'll have you know my lung capacity is three times that of an average human! After a lifetime of training, my record for holding my breath is over seven minutes!"

Seven minutes? Seven minutes?

Unbelievable…

That's almost too good to be true.

For a moment, you try to hide your exuberant grin, but realize that in the darkness it doesn't matter. If this moron thinks he's impressing anyone with seven measly minutes of holding his breath, he's in for a despairingly rude awakening. You learned to hold your breath indefinitely in your bathtub before you went to second grade. Teleporting clean air from the surface down into your lungs and your friends' to replace the used-up air they're holding with their breath is literally easier than breathing normally.

That cinches it. This guy is fucked. And now, with him taking you all on at once, there's no more excuses to try to take him one-on-one. The only question left is

How are we gonna take him apart?

State of affairs: You, the Crusaders excepting Kakyoin, and seven mostly-innocent sailors are about 10 meters under the waters of the Pacific ocean. You're a decent swimmer, by the way. Kakyoin is nowhere to be seen or heard, locating him and delivering him oxygen is a top priority assuming he's still alive. Tennille (or should we call him "the imposter Tennille") is out of sight, but you can hear him, so you know which side he'll attack from.

 

[TheNine]

Flashdance application: Anaerobic metabolism.
​

Flashdance usually isn't able to do much with gases, since they're difficult to "hold" and even more difficult to swap with anything other than other gases. However, a lungful of air provides the perfect container to swap with fresh air from outside. Marta can repeat this after that air, too, is used up and reduced to useless CO2, continuing the process indefinitely. This is very painful as the body isn't aware that it's still breathing, but Marta has at least gotten used to this. Don't exhale, though! Once your lungs are totally empty of gases, there's nothing left to swap!

Location: Waters below China's oceans
37 Days until Holly Kujo's death.

Team status-
Marta Scamorza: Fucking losing it. Numb and bleeding right arm, but not substantially affected by either. Ruptured eardrums. Estimated full recovery: 32 hours.
- Uno: Missing an arm.
- Due: Fine
- Tre: Fine
- Quattro: Fine, her hands are steady
- Cinque: Fine

Joseph Joestar: Shallow wounds all over from removing barnacles. Ruptured eardrums. Estimated full recovery: 24 hours. Less if he has time to take a breath.

Jotaro Kujo: Badly burned fists. Ruptured eardrums. Estimated full recovery: 24 hours.

Mohammad Avdol: First and second degree burns all over. Ruptured eardrums. Estimated full recovery: 24 hours.

Noriaki Kakyoin: Hopefully alive. Suffering from ruptured eardrums at a minimum.

Jean Pierre Polnareff: Ruptured eardrums, otherwise fine. Estimated full recovery: 24 hours.

 

[TheNine]

Alright, right now you have two priorities-

1: Locate Noriaki Kakyoin, and rescue him if he's still alive.

2: Murder that rat bastard that calls himself Tennile.

Step 1 is going to be tricky, but step 2 is easy. Aside from simply ganging up on him, if you swap his lungful of air (which will supposedly last him 7 minutes) with your lungs full of co2, he won't realize he's drowning until he passes out. The only tricky part is touching him.

You send Uno up to the surface and Cinque up behind her to complete the chain. Due, meanwhile, bounces back and forth to each of your allies and then the sailors, swapping their held breath with fresh air. Flashdance can't speak, so you can't tell them not to exhale, but surely that's obvious enough advice that they won't need to hear it?

Doing a round trip around everyone and then back to yourself only takes Due a second or two, and Joseph even nods to her as if he understands what's going on. With that, you turn to refocus your attention on where you last heard Tennille, but before your can even focus on where he was, his Dark Blue Moon has surged past you and crashed into Jotaro with torpedo speed. The shockwave of their first collision is forceful enough to send you tumbling head-over heels in the water, losing track of which way is up.

You hear a muffled "ora ora" as Star Platinum rains down its freakishly powerful blows against Dark Blue Moon, but when you gain your bearings enough to spot them again through Quattro's eyes, the fight isn't going quite how you hoped. Star Platinum's knuckles are covered in barnacles, and deep slashes run along its powerful arms, the marks of Blue Moon's vicious claws.

"Hahaha!" rings Tennille's voice from his Stand's unmoving mouth, "where's all that arrogance now, scum!?"

Faster than your eyes can properly track, Dark Blue Moon swims above and around Star Platinum, appearing behind Jotaro to attack him in the flesh. Before its claws can close in, though, Star Platinum's elbow meets its round face, sending it surging backwards with a trickle of blood.

"You've got more than enough for both of us, jackass."

You can't pay attention to that. Sending a Flashdance into that melee would basically be suicide, even for Quattro. So the best move has to be to look for Kakyoin, right?

You don't spend too long thinking about it, sending Due 7 meters deeper and then swapping with her, then doing the same with Tre, leaving yourself at basically the end of your chain, with only Quattro for protection. Down here it's nearly pitch black, and the salt water stinging your eyes makes looking even harder. You notice unexplained pain you didn't have before and notice single barnacles digging into you, no major threat for the moment, but a major danger of growing. You need to hurry.

Through Cinque's eyes, you see the fight between Jotaro and Dark Blue Moon going poorly- obviously, fighting underwater is slowing Star Platinum down, while Tennille is growing in strength every second.

You refill your lungs and redouble your efforts to find Kakyoin. At last, through the tiny bit of light that filters this deep at night, your eyes manage to pick out a trickle of red in the inky darkness. Swimming after that ghost of a red current, a dark shape in the water finally emerges, forms into a silhouette, and takes the shape of a bloody and unmoving Noriaki Kakyoin. You swim over and note one grievous wound after another. A terrible claw mark, like four sword slashes, travels from his left shoulder to right him. His right arm, too, is broken and mangled. He's got barnacles all over as well, though thankfully not yet nearly enough to fully cover him.

Your first thought is that he must be dead, but when you get close enough, you can make out the wispy-green form of Hierophant Green wrapping around his wounds, slowing his bleeding and proving his soul is still in his body. Quattro reaches out to fill his lungs with air, but it's too late- in his unconsciousness, he's inhaled gallons of seawater, which you can't swap for the much less dense air. His only hope is getting to the surface.

Since Uno up top has no human-shaped object to swap with Kakyoin, you have no choice but to swim him up. Quattro refills your lungs one last time, takes hold of some parts of his body free of barnacles, and begins forcing him up through the water. Just below them, you begin swimming up too.

You're 24 meters below the surface. Once you reach 7 meters down, Quattro can swap with you to leave you with Kakyoin so you can get the water out of his lungs and leave him safe on some debris. That 17 meter swim will take you 25 seconds.

During the length of that 25 seconds, through Cinque's eyes, you watch a cataclysm.

The fight between Star Platinum and Dark Blue Moon is still going poorly when you check back in. Each successful punch leaves more barnacles on Star Platinum's fists, which all at once hurt, cause more blood loss, and increase the water resistance on Star Platinum's fists, slowing him down yet further. Jotaro has gone nearly a minute without air, so that can't be helping either.

Meanwhile, each drop of its enemies' blood that Dark Blue Moon inhales sends it into a greater frenzy, its speed and strength increasing further. If Star Platinum didn't possess such godlike power normally, it would already be fish food, but as is, Jotaro is just barely able to hold out and protect his physical body.

Meanwhile, Polnareff and Joseph are swimming closer to join the fight. Joseph is faster, and reaches out with Hermit Purple to entangle Dark Blue Moon, but is instantly rebuffed- the moment his Stand makes contact with Tennille's, its razor-sharp fins and scales cut deep into the vines, like trying to capture a sword with knitting thread.

Speaking of swords, though, Polnareff's Silver Chariot joins the battle soon afterwards, and it has a bit more luck. Its thin blade glides through the water with much greater ease than Star Platinum's fists, and Dark Blue Moon is forced to back up a bit as that flashing rapier cuts thin slices through its back and arms. Swiftly, though, it focuses on this new foe, and at that point, Polnareff's hope for a swift victory is immediately dashed.

The knight drives its blade down into Dark Blue Moon's chest, but it's blocked by a sudden growth of barnacles on the body of the aquatic Stand, and Blue Moon acts quickly, smashing the blade of the sword with such force that it's torn out of Chariot's hand. Suddenly woefully unequipped for this "sword fight," Chariot tries to dodge back, but is pounced upon by Blue Moon. Thankfully, the sharklike Stand seems to have a bit more trouble tearing through Chariot's metal form than it does flesh, but not much.

Avdol, meanwhile, watches with the furious expression on his face matched only by that on his Magician's Red. It seems he can't attack at the moment, and you can guess why- the flames of his Stand underwater either don't work, or will boil the water and turn his friends into lobsters. Distantly, you hope it's the latter and that Magician's Red will at least work as a last resort.

As Dark Blue Moon is distracted with Polnareff, Star Platinum grabs its ankle and drags it back into their fight, preparing what looks like a monstrous punch, but it falters as blood surges from its hand, sliced by the fins on Blue Moon's ankle. The punch still lands, but with less brutal force than you'd been hoping. Still, it seems to manage to make Dark Blue Moon at least temporarily retreat, slinking back into the darkness.

Its disappearance is momentary, though. As you spot moonlight above the waves, the Stand reemerges with terrible speed, tearing right through one of the sailors. As the others let out silent, gargled screams full of the last air in their lungs, Blue Moon slashes through them, chopping out pieces like a rampaging animal, inhaling their blood as it flows out into the water. Having swam closer to Jotaro, all your allies are too far to help, and one by one, the sailors are torn to shreds.

Blood blooms from their dismembered corpses, creating such a great red cloud that you completely lose sight of first Dark Blue Moon, then Polnareff, Joseph, and Jotaro as it continues to spread through the choppy currents.

As this last horrifying development is completed, Quattro finally reaches the surface with Kakyoin, and you swap places with her immediately, hauling Kakyoin onto a piece of floating wood and taking a deep breath of air. His lungs are full of seawater, and though you can't directly transport it out, you have a nice second option. Quattro's hands enter his chest and press gently down on his lungs, compressing them and forcing him to suddenly cough up one breath after another of water.

The shock to his system also sends his body into overdrive, and he suddenly regains consciousness and starts to take desperate inhalations even as with every other breath he vomits up more saltwater.

"Kakyoin!" you cry as soon as he's rolled over onto his unbroken arm and seems relatively lucid. "Look at me! Look at me!"

His eyes snap to you and look unfocused- it's no wonder, he just went without oxygen for about a minute and a half. You only hope he hasn't suffered any permanent damage. "M-Marta?"

"Kakyoin, you're hurt bad. Hierophant is already taking care of you, but stay here! Get as much water as possible out of your lungs, take deep breaths, and if something with fins comes out of the water, blast it before asking questions!"

You take one more breath, and before hearing his response, you dive back under. Swiftly swapping to Cinque, calling Quattro back to you, and then returning the other girls to their original spots, you're relieved that moving underwater is *much* easier when you don't have an unconscious body to drag around.

Unfortunately, what isn't easier is seeing what the hell is going on. The massive bloody blot in the ocean is leaving you- and worse, your allies inside it- completely blinded to Dark Blue Moon's location.

You realize you don't see Avdol anymore. You stopped paying attention for a moment to take care of Kakyoin, so what happened? Did the blood cloud expand to his location? Did he swim into it? Or did he get dragged into it or out into the depths?

You realize you don't have time to worry about this. Even if you didn't care about saving the lives of Jotaro and the others, the fact remains that if they die, you're a sitting duck and basically as good as dead down here. There's only one choice. Ignoring the increasing pain of the barnacles that are again spreading along your arm and now also your torso, you swim into the blood cloud.

Inside, your visibility is limited to five feet at best. Knowing that Dark Blue Moon probably has some ability letting it know where you are, you feel incredibly vulnerable, and have Tre, Quattro, and Due all watching your back as you search through the reddened waters. Suddenly, you feel the water getting much warmer. Suddenly hopeful, you swim in the direction of the increasingly jacuzzi-hot water until you catch sight of Avdol. Reflexively, he holds out Magician's Red's hand, but recognizes you and calms down, though he's obviously struggling from a lack of oxygen. You reach out with Quattro and refill his lungs, nodding and trying to gesture that he'll be OK.

"You've teleported fresh air into my lungs?" he asks through his Stand. You nod an affirmation.

"I still feel like I'm suffocating, but I'll take your word for it. The others must be in a similar state. Come on."

He swims away and you begin to follow, but you don't get far before Cinque screams a warning and almost immediately you're caught by a brutal tearing force. The last thing you see through Cinque's eyes is blue claws tearing her literally in half at the waist. You feel like you swallowed a handfull of razor blades, but that isn't the worst problem. It seems Tennille is dragging Cinque's body into the depths, and since Cinque is between you and Uno in the "chain," that means both of you are being dragged down with her as if tied to her by a leash.

Not only is your "snorkel" cut with Uno pulled below the surface, now you're being pulled deeper and deeper, away from Avdol and the others. As you're dragged down, though, Quattro catches sight of another figure in the dark between you and Cinque- Dark Blue Moon is pulling you right past the fake Tennille! As you're sucked by, Quattro and Tre grab him. He doesn't seem to have been expecting this as the two of you together get pulled past the last of the light, cast into a pitch darkness at the seafloor.

You're blind, but you can still feel the splashes Tennille is making in the water and Quattro strikes for them. You can feel her fingers dig deep into flesh and Tennille lets out a gurgling scream, followed by a terrifying screech from Dark Blue Moon, which is immediately distracted from Cinque's corpse, which it is brutalizing, to charging straight at you.

Just before it reaches you, it goes silent, and you do your best to time your dodge despite the darkness, swapping with Uno just before it makes contact. Its claws dig into her chest and tear up through her breasts and to her shoulder- if she hadn't already been missing her arm, it would certainly have been slashed off now. The water roils in your mouth as you try to resist screaming- it isn't enough.

Your choked off cry of pain alerted Dark Blue Moon to your new location, and it charges you completely silently this time, and when it slashes, it meets flesh. You swap with Uno halfway through the attack, but as you float in the water near Tennille, you can feel that Blue Moon's claws tore your face open completely, ripping from your cheek up to your eyebrow- and, you think, completely gouging out your left eye in the process. The pain is excruciating, nearly as much as the horrible feeling of knowing you're permanently injured is terrifying, but both of those experiences are forced to the back by a terrible blinding rage.

When you attack where you think Tennille is this time, it isn't only with Quattro, Duo, and Tre, you also dive out yourself, your fingers blindly grasping for anything vulnerable, his wounds, his eyes, his balls, or anything you can hurt with your bare hands.

You make contact, albeit not with any of those, but with what seems to be his legs. Dark Blue Moon senses danger and turns around again, tossing aside a ragdolled Uno in the process. The Stand throws you to the seafloor, and though you swap with Tre, you're losing too many of your girls. If if tears her up the way it has Cinque and Uno, you'll be more than halfway torn to pieces, which certainly sounds fatal to you. Due and Quattro try to attack Dark Blue Moon from behind, but if Chariot and Star Platinum couldn't hurt it together, they stand no chance.

As your shoulders begin to crack with the sensation of Dark Blue Moon bodily crushing Tre like an egg, another pain hits you- your already-damaged ears are cracked with a second shockwave traveling through the water, and though your hearing is in terrible shape, you can hear a violent scream of "ORA" along with the shockwave- and you realize that the damage you just took hurt Tennille too, blood spurting from Dark Blue Moon's tiny ear holes.

It seems in its frenzy, Dark Blue Moon focuses on hurting its current prey and takes a moment to react to its master being in danger. In that respect, you and it have something in common. Quattro snaps away from Dark Blue Moon, and aiming for where you estimate Tennille was last time, she throws out a knife-hand strike with all her strength.

"AN EYE FOR AN EYE!" you scream, though it comes out as a bubbling and halfhearted gurgle underwater.

As if guided by the hand of the Devil himself, Quattro's fingers find their mark, stabbing into Tennille's skull and then curling into a fist, dragging out everything important at once.

He dies so quickly that Dark Blue Moon doesn't seem to realize what happened for a moment, writing on top of Tre and crushing her shoulders before it crumples away and fades to nothing, along with all the barnacles covering your body.

The sense of relief sweeping over you is so great that you barely even notice that your cry of rage emptied all the air in your lungs, and as you black out, you barely even care.

---

For the second time in as many days, you awaken floating on a raft under the beating sun, though this time you somehow feel even worse. Your field of vision is definitively one-sided, and you reach out with a mercifully-numb arm to feel your left eye is wrapped in cloth.

"Sorry," you hear Joseph say, though his voice is muffled through abused eardrums and you haven't got the energy to turn to look at him, "it was basically torn right out. Short of supernatural healing powers, you'll… have to start getting used to no binocular vision. I'm… sorry I brought all of you into this."

"No. You didn't bring me into shit. This… all this… my fucking eye.." You feel yourself tearing up with impotent rage as you grip the bandages around your eye. "It's DIO… DIO brought us into this. All of us!"

You sit up, though the experience is a miserable one. At least you're not concussed this time. Due appears and opens her eyes, confirming what you already thought- both of her eyes are fine, and you can see through them without issue. You're different from other Stand-users. Damage to your Stand reflects to you in fifths, but not vise-versa.

"Joseph, you said Hamon hurts vampires, right? You're going to teach me Sendo, and I'm going to rip out DIO's fucking heart."

You hear movement from across the piece of wrecked ship you're all sitting on, and turn to see Polnareff. "A technique that can hurt vampires, monsieur Joestar? If you can teach something like that, then I think Marta has the right idea. Teach me too."

Joseph smiles bitterly. "I can't promise I'm a good teacher. But you're right. We can't afford to not use every advantage that we have. We'll start right away."

Sorry for the long break! This chapter's already long enough, so we'll continue with another update (this time with an actual choice for you guys) in a few days! Also expect the chapterly update with everybody's status then too- for now, the summary version is "fucked up," especially Marta and Kakyoin.

 

[TheNine]

Your name is Marta Scamorza. You are 19 years old, Italian, a stand-user, and unbound by the chains of fate.

A man named DIO has ruined your life. He cornered you, manipulated you, and stole away control of your mind. He made you his pawn, leading to the deaths of innocent people and the destruction of all your hopes for the future.

Your only hopes now are killing him. Absolutely, unequivocally, you must kill DIO.

To such ends, you have sided with those that DIO originally sent you to assassinate, Joseph Joestar, Jotaro Kujo, Mohammad Avdol, Noriaki Kakyoin, and another of DIO's former followers, Jean Pierre Polnareff. Your journey has as yet lasted barely three days, and already you and Kakyoin have suffered severe injuries, and those while fighting a useless loser you could easily have killed before he even attacked; the aquatic Stand-user who stole the identity of one Captain Tennille.

Something has to give. If you don't get stronger, this journey to Egypt is doomed. You, Joestar and his party, and Holly Kujo, who they're traveling to save, are all dead.

Your Stand is Flashdance. It comprises of five small Stands, who you call Uno, Due, Tre, Quattro, and Cinque. Each is a sliver of your own psyche, representing your strengths and weaknesses in their own ways despite being physically identical. Your ability is to swap places freely, instantaneously, and effortlessly between them. If, when you swap, the two Flashdances are holding objects of mostly-similar size, those objects will be swapped along with them. That's your power. "Swapping places." It has few violent applications and, for your entire life, has primarily been a tool of convenience. That changes now. You will get stronger. You will forge your abilities into a spear that can pierce the Devil himself.

As of now, you and Joestar's group are floating on pieces of wrecked and burned boat hull somewhere in the South China Sea, ambiguously between Hong Kong and Singapore. You and Polnareff have agreed to receive Hamon training from Joestar as soon as you're recovered enough to handle it, but out here in the middle of nowhere, with neither transportation nor communication, there's no telling if you'll even survive that long.

It's time for the second leg of your journey to begin.

Well lads, we're back! I know this is complex to keep up with, so a long hiatus will probably lead to everyone not knowing what's going on and thus having very few readers, let alone voters, but that's fine! I just wanna get back to writing this, so for the tine being I'll keep going even if no one interacts. For those who are returning or newly joining, hello, and thank you for being here. Feel free to ask questions if anything's confusing and provide criticism if anything sucks. The actual update will come just after this recap.

 

[TheNine]

You know, before today, the worst you'd ever been injured was some cracked ribs, a skull fracture, and a concussion- you got that damage about three days ago, fighting Jotaro. Before that, the worst you'd ever been hurt was spraining your ankle when you were 11. You recovered so quickly (a consequence, you now know, of being a Stand-user,) that your dad had assumed you were only being dramatic when you first twisted it.

Now, you lie on your back on a large flat collection of half-broken planks, near enough to death that, were it not for that aforementioned well of vitality that is your soul and life spirit manifesting in physical form, you'd be certain to die without medical attention.

As is, it's still sketchy. It's difficult to even list all the ways in which your body is destroyed. Starting from the most extreme is the best way, perhaps.

A slash mark from three claws rakes across the left side of your face, ripping your left eye from its socket and leaving an open gash in your cheek such that food would fall out if you tried to chew. Your guts are all torn to shreds with damage you can't even begin to estimate from having Cinque torn in half. The side of your face that wasn't physically slashed wad nonetheless torn open by Dark Blue Moon following through and tearing Uno's face nearly off, and the massive cuts on the right side of your face are joined to shallower ones that continue on to the left.

Your right breast and arm are twisted and bruised within and without, and that right arm itself is numb and lowered in dexterity from how Uno's is missing. Both of your shoulders also audibly grind when you move them, hairline fractures all throughout them from Tre's being crushed. Your arms, flanks, and hands are all covered in small cuts that look like shallow knife slashes from the barnacles that grew on and in them, and your eardrums sing a horrible song of agony and tinnitus from being ruptured by two sequential shockwaves, the first in air and the latter in water.

As for Flashdance, they're collectively even worse off. Cinque and Uno are dead, the former torn in half and the latter with half her skull ripped from her head (and a missing right arm to boot.) Tre has no working arms, and both Duo and Quattro are, despite being mostly functional, covered in deep cuts from barnacles and Dark Blue Moon's fins and claws.

All up, you can barely move, and your face wound is likely to leave both gnarly scars and a permanently missing eye- just being a Stand-user or Sendo master won't fix that, and you aren't even the latter yet. All said, though, for all your injuries, Kakyoin might be even worse off.

His chest is cut open so badly that it's a miracle neither his heart nor lungs were fatally slashed. Almost every rib he has is broken, and he's been bleeding heavily enough you're almost shocked he's alive. His right arm is twisted like someone tried to weave a rope out of it, and while Avdol and Joestar say he'll eventually regain full functionality, they're both sure he needs professional medical attention so it doesn't heal into a useless lump. Aside from that, nearly every inch of him was covered in barnacles, so now he looks like he shoulder-charged through a hundred panes of broken glass. He's been conscious, but barely, his Hierophant wrapping itself around his wounds.

The others are much better off, but that's only relatively speaking. All their limbs work, but they're all anemic and cut badly, not to mention some of them being burned- and no one can hear properly, what with the explosive shockwave bursting a hole in every eardrum in the group.

Still, you can't complain too much, that'd be shameless- every one of the ten sailors who'd come with you (criminals in a minor sense, but ignorant of the disaster into which they'd signed up) had been brutally murdered by their fake Captain. You can't blame yourself for that, except that if you had simply executed Tennille when you had the chance, they'd all still be alive- alive and witnesses to a supernatural murder, but that's a problem that can be more easily solved than death.

The only bit of good news is that you probably don't have to worry about much legal trouble. The entire "crime scene" was a boat that was burned, blasted to pieces, and sunk, and all the sailors likely look like they were torn to bits by a shark, as they practically were. None of you are sailors, and your injuries are real- any investigator would assume you were the unlucky victims of an engine malfunction or perhaps some sort of terrorist attack. Compounded with Joestar's finances smoothing over the process, the law shouldn't get in your way.

That depends on which law you have to deal with, though. At the moment, all you know is you're somewhere in the South China Sea. You'd been too trusting of the captain and not kept a heading- your best guess is that the nearest landmass to you is probably either Vietnam or Borneo. Vietnam, hopefully, can be avoided. The Americans' war there is over, but the country is still experiencing severe economic hardships and would be a dangerous place for injured foreigners, especially considering every one of you is clearly and visibly from western bloc nations and Vietnam is staunchly politically affiliated with the eastern bloc.

Borneo would be better. If you landed there, it'd almost certainly be the northern edge, part of the nation of Malaysia. As far as you know, Malaysian Borneo is politically and economically stable, and can probably be trusted to take care of six wounded foreigners who wash up on their shores unless you get very lucky- and truth being told, even the worst case scenario of running into unsavory criminal elements isn't a big deal- Jotaro is still in mostly good health, and as far as you're concerned, no one without a Stand can threaten you when he's around.

Actually landing in Singapore is almost certainly out of the question. Aside from its distance (you're quite sure there would have been several days more sailing before you'd arrived), it was already your chartered destination, on a ship with an enemy Stand-user, likely in DIO's employ, as the captain. They'll know you're coming, and arriving there so badly wounded would be a disaster.

"Jotaro, you can probably propel our raft using Star Platinum, right? We should be moving southwest, aiming for Borneo. It's hard to look at the Sun with this concussion, but I'm pretty sure southwest from our perspective means-"

"Hey, Marta, don't bother yourself."

"Eh?"

You crane your neck painfully towards Jotaro (a painful endeavor,) and see him (and seemingly everyone else but the convalescent Kakyoin) staring off into the mist.

"No need to navigate ourselves. Somebody found us."

Instantly, Due rises from the recesses of your soul, using her much more functional eyes to follow their gazes.

"What!?"

In spite of your incredulity, a gigantic cargo freighter has essentially appeared out of thin air, emerging from the fog as silent as a ghost. It's not bearing down on you directly, but it's close.

"Hold on, don't assume somebody found us!" You push through the agony to force yourself off of your back and into a sitting position, "we're about three feet above the water and in fog! Odds are they're about to run us down! We'll get smasher to bits!"

"Wrong again, Marta," Joseph says, his voice one more of pensive concern than authority, "they're pulling up aside us."

Sure enough, to your near disbelief, the entire vessel is turning, a great staircase lowering from its deck into the water nearby you. The ship must have even laid anchor, as it's only a few moments before it grinds to a full halt, leaving your little raft to collide with its stairs and break a few planks.

"W-well, I admit it- we're saved." You concede, still flabbergasted by this sudden turn of events. No one was able to send out a distress signal before Tennille's vessel burned and burst, so no one should be looking for you- not even DIO's allies should know the ship sank yet. Furthermore, how did this gigantic vessel notice your tiny makeshift raft in the dense fog?

"it doesn't matter," Jotaro grunts as he stands, as though answering your thoughts, "this is suspicious, but they might have medical supplies, and Marta and Kakyoin need somewhere safer to recover."

Well, you won't argue with that.

"May I?" Polnareff asks, kneeling by your side. You hiss through your teeth, but nod.

"Thanks."

Polnareff lifts you carefully into his arms with Silver Chariot, holding you so as to avoid leaving any pressure on your shoulders or neck. It still hurts like hell, but he's doing his best- and he's one strong son of a bitch, too.

Likewise, Jotaro picks up Kakyoin, whose Hierophant, via autonomy or Kakyoin's barely-conscious commands you can't say, wraps itself about Jotaro like a harness, holding Kakyoin up while minimally harming his right arm and ribs.
"Wait," Avdol says, as the two of you make for the stairs. "If this ship came to our side, noticed we were in need of help, and even lowered its stairs, where are its sailors? The odds seem high we're walking into some sort of trap."

"What sort of trap could matter, old man?" Polnareff cries, indignantly. "Out here seems increasingly more certain death. One day of bad weather and leave aside Marta and Kakyoin, we're all dead! I don't care if every man on that ship is a Stand-user, I'll skewer them all! At least then we'll have a fighting chance!"

"Not to mention," Joseph adds, "we're in a tiny, helpless raft. Wouldn't an enemy just run us down?"

Avdol nods. "I voiced my objections out of a sense of full disclosure, but rest assured that I agree with your conclusions. The ship is dangerous, I am sure, but no more than the open sea."

"Good," you groan, "then we're all in agreement. I wish we had this conversation before someone picked me up…"

"Pardonnez-moi, Madame! Let us get you to relatively solid ground as soon as it can be done!"

With that, Avdol and Joseph begin up the stairs, with Jotaro and Polnareff, carrying Kakyoin and yourself, following behind.

As they scale the tall, metal staircase, you notice the name of your ship- the Big Daddy. How tasteless. And for that matter, there's no identifying prefix- no SS, USS, MN, RMS- therefore no hints as to its port of call. Unfortunately, you aren't familiar enough with shipping to guess at how mundane or suspicious it is for a cargo freighter like this to have no prefix. Suffice it to say it calls somewhere English-speaking its home. Convenient.

Before long, the group has made it to the deck, where the silence and lack of life becomes even more suspicious.

"There's nobody in sight," Jotaro mumbles, Star Platinum scanning like an automatic camera. Offhandledly, you send Due down below the floor, peeking into some cargo area, which is quiet and empty.

"The ship stopped for us," Polnareff says, obviously deeply disquieted. "It's impossible that no one would be around to take us aboard, right?"

"So it must be an enemy," Joseph says, finishing his obvious train of thought. "Not that I doubted your judgement, Avdol, but you were right on the money."

"The question is how many there are," Jotaro continues. "If it's just one, it's no problem- but that DIO bastard could have sent a whole gaggle of losers to ambush us here."

"Nonetheless," Avdol adds, "this is still an opportunity. Their choice not to run us down was surely a mistake they'll come to regret. It may be that they wish to kill us with their own hands, or they want to take us alive. Either way, if we can clear this vessel of enemies, it'll be a powerful boon to us."

"Yeah," you concur. "This thing is huge, surely it's got all kinds of facilities. For a start," you swap places with Quattro and move onto a standing position on the flat deck, "at the very least they should have first aid equipment. I mean at the very least they should have running water to clean all our wounds. Let's find that stuff. If we're all moving as a group, ambushing us is easier said than done. I can walk, and you can probably carry Kakyoin pretty easily with Hermit Purple, right, Joestar?"

Joseph nods, and he and Jotaro make the transfer.

"Good- and to make sure we're on the same page, we're assuming anyone we find on this ship is an enemy, right?"

"I won't attack somebody who looks like a scared woman or kid," Jotaro says, "but if I see a grown man or anybody who looks like they know what's goin' on, I'm kicking their ass at least unless they have a real good explanation ready real fast."

"I concur," Avdol nods. "We cannot write off mundane explanations out of hand, but we can all agree that they aren't likely. Even the most innocent should be considered suspicious."

"I was already going to do that," Polnareff says with certainty, a partially-manifested Chariot's sword appearing in his grasp. "Let's get moving."

Sure enough, you do. The ship is eerily silent, moreso than you'd even generally expect from an abandoned ghost ship. Every room is empty. No crew, no cargo, no sign of struggle. If it weren't for the fact that the Big Daddy stopped for you, you'd assume it was just an abandoned hulk floating listlessly in the ocean for some reason.

The total absence of life continues until you wander your way into one room that should have been crew quarters, at which point it comes to an end in one of the strangest ways possible.

At the center of the room, stripped of all other furnishings, sits a cage. It's large, solid metal, sturdy-looking with a great big padlock keeping it shut. And all with a single occupant- reclining upon a bed of straw, some sort of man-sized ape.

"A monkey!" Polnareff gasps.

"Err, technically-" Joseph begins-

"It's some kind of ape," you finish. "No tail, see? I don't know what kind. But who cares? If it's alive in a locked cage, somebody must be feeding it, which means there's definitely somebody aboard this ship- unless the ape itself is-"

You blink, realizing the insanity of what you're about to say. "Avdol, can animals be stand-users? DIO had a falcon and a parrot, but I don't know if they had any abilities."

"I've never heard of such a case, but it may hypothetically be possible? Animals do, I believe, possess souls."

"Well damn. That's a strange thought," Joseph frowns.

[] You're tired of moving around, and in spite of your limited combat ability right now, you're still great at running away if you sense danger. You'll stay here and keep an eye on this fuzzball till the others get back.

[] Forget the simian, even if it had a Stand power, it's just an animal that can't plan higher strategy, and it's locked up. Let's leave it and move on.

[] Not to sound like a psychopath, but either this thing is an enemy, a pet of the enemy, or the most innocent case scenario just the enemy's poor captive ape. This might sound fucked up, but just being safe and killing it quickly and painlessly is probably the safest for all of us. Killing one animal isn't gonna keep me up at night if it means reducing our chances of all dying and leaving DIO to rule the world. Better safe and sorry than dead and sorry.

[] Write-in

 

[TheNine]

Sorry for my long hiatus! When I was last writing this, a lot of stuff was coming together on my plate, and so I had to quit for a while, and getting knocked out of my groove tends to strangle my motivation unfortunately. That said, I reread it recently (because I was considering using Marta as my character in an unrelated JoJo RP, lol) and realized I was really cooking with gas on some of this stuff, and I wanna continue. Welcome back to changing fate.

Team status-

Marta Scamorza: Missing her left eye and badly maimed face. Injured breast and collar, fractures in both shoulders, unknown injury to digestive tract, ruptured eardrums, skull fracture, concussed, many other more minor wounds causing pain and inconvenience. Suffering from early stages of dehydration, fever (perhaps from infection), and hunger. Estimated full recovery (eyeball and scars withstanding): 7 days. Less if she can get good food, water, medical attention, and rest.
Uno: Incapacitated due to face and brain injury, plus torn up chest and missing right arm.
Due: Injured but capable.
Tre: Both arms nonfunctional due to smashed shoulders. Otherwise mostly fine.
Quattro: Injured but capable.
Cinque: Incapacitated by bring ripped apart at the guts and having her corpse mangled.

Joseph Joestar: Shallow barnacle wounds all over. Ruptured eardrums. Mostly-minor slashes from fins and claws on arms and torso. Unknown internal damage from having Hermit Purple frayed. Resisting the effects of dehydration with the help of Hamon, for now. Estimated full recovery: 12 hours.

Jotaro Kujo: Burned fists. Riptured eardrums. Barnacle wounds all over, especially up and down the arms. Pretty major slashing wounds to arms, hands, and torso. Suffering early stages of dehydration. Estimated full recovery: 36 hours.

Mohammad Avdol: 1st and 2nd degree burns all over. Ruptured eardrums. Barnacle wounds everywhere. Suffering early signs of dehydration. Probably the best off of anyone, if you ask him. Estimated full recovery: 16 hours.

Noriaki Kakyoin: Severe lacerations to torso, smashed open ribcage, severely broken right arm, severe barnacle wounds to almost everywhere. Feverish, semiconscious, suffering pretty concerning dehydration. Estimated full recovery: If he makes it out of this alive without medical attention, maybe 15 days. With it, hopefully much less, but his situation looks bad.

Jean Pierre Polnareff: Ruptured eardrums, relatively minor barnacle wounds, hairline fractures to various bones, suffering from the early stages of dehydration. Probably the best off of anyone, if you ask him. Estimated full recovery: 16 hours.

 

[TheNine]

You know, as a meat eater, you'd never really directly grappled with the ethics of killing animals for your own convenience before. It was always kind of a passive thing, you know, "it is how it is."

Well, now you're staring into the eyes of a frighteningly human-like creature, and you're feeling discomfortingly unconflicted about killing it in cold blood on the very off-chance that it's somehow a threat.

Whatever. Feeling guilty or being conflicted about not feeling guilty can be a problem for a version of you who isn't dying.

"I say we kill the ape."

The rest of the group (the insensate Kakyoin included only by virtue of being strapped to Joseph's back) turns to look at you.

"Just in case," you elaborate. "If there's even a 1% chance it's an enemy or a part of the enemy's plan, wouldn't it be better to just get it over with? And besides, it's locked in a cage on a ghost ship- what're we gonna do, sail the ship to Singapore and donate the ape to a zoo?"

"Well, we might!" Joseph, obviously the most upset by this idea, exclaims, "I can see where you're coming from, but even if it's just an animal, look at it! It's a great ape! Isn't that basically just a step away from being human?"

You do follow his pointing finger and meet the gaze of the ape, which regards you cooly. Its eyes are glassy, and its mouth hangs slack. A step away from scum like Grey Fly, maybe.

"It's an uncomfortable thought, but she may be right, Joseph," Avdol said after a moment. "At this point, one unexpected attack could spell death for one of us."

"I won't stand for it," interjects Jotaro. "Killing some random animal for no good reason is evil. If it's really an enemy, we can wait for it to show itself."

"But that may be too late!" Polnareff shouts, the last conscious party to throw his hat into the ring. "Like it or not, it seems to be the only living thing on this ship! Either it can feed itself, and is somehow in charge of this ship-"

"And is therefore our enemy," you interject.

"- or wherever the enemy is, they've been feeding it, which means it's at least their pet or maybe even some kind of weapon."

"Even if it were a Stand-user or somehow controlling this ship some other way," begins Joseph, "I know from personal experience that something isn't evil just because it's a supernatural phenomena. I mean, we've been assuming there's an enemy, but so far all this ship has done is picked us up and saved us! Who says the monkey's working for DIO!"

"We're talking about this too much," Jotaro adds with a sense or finality, "we're not murdering the orangutan because killing first and asking questions never is evil- not to mention pathetic."

As this argument began and now continues, Quattro slipped silently out from the recesses of your soul, stepping on air as she gradually moves towards the cage.

This conversation is pointless. These four are good people, but none of them are the ones on the verge of death or permanently maimed. If they don't want to get their hands dirty, that's fine. I killed Tennille too. Quattro, do what you're best at.

Without a whisper to betray her movements, Quattro slips up to the cage. Her hands ready to swiftly sever the ape's vitals, she moves into the bars and passes clean-

CLANG!

Everyone snaps to look at Quattro, who floats with a bewildered expression matching yours a few centimeters from the cage, which she just- bounced off of? Huh? What?

"Hey, Marta-" Jotaro begins with both indignation and confusion, "what just-"

He's cut off by a strange screech from the cage. The ape's (Jotaro called it an orangutan earlier- you guess he must have been right?) expression has changed to one that you'd swear looks twistedly amused as he continues a screeching that gradually changes into a deep whooping that sounds to you like a hysterical laugh.

"Marta, were you trying to-"

Jotaro is interrupted by Avdol's more urgent shout. "Did your Flashdance just bounce off of that cage!? That's only possible if the cage itself is a-"

Before he has a time to reach the obvious conclusion of his statement, the cage's bars begin to twist and deform all on their own, before launching outward like snakes at Quattro. She reacts quickly, kicking off of the cage to backflip away just in time to avoid the strange attack.

"She was right!" Polnareff shouts, "the ape is the enemy Stand-user! Chariot!!"

Silver Chariot emerges with a flash and a glint of metal, thrusting forwards at supersonic speeds, aiming to skewer the primate through the bars of the cage. The ape follows Quattro's example, though, kicking off of the bars to dodge at an impossible speed for any mortal creature.

"Orangutans are ten times stronger than humans!" Jotaro yells as he and his Star Platinum step towards the cage, "being a Stand-user must make this one even more fit! Whatever you do, don't let it touch your body!"

With a bone-shaking ORA, Star Platinum throws one of its classic punches that makes you desperately relieved that you only ever fought Jotaro once. The cage's bars which it struck wiggle violently, making noises like high-tension cables in a storm, but don't break. Instead, they recoil from the blow springing around Star Platinum's cracked forearm like so many lassos. "Ngh!"

"OH SHIT!!!"

"Hey, Avdol! Back in jail, you remember what you said your Stand could do!?"

Avdol blinks in momentary confusion before nodding with recognition. "Yes!"

"Do it fast! These bars are tightening fast!"

Avdol grimaces, knowing before you do that what he's about to do will be anything but pleasant for Jotaro, but he doesn't hesitate- it seems scorching Jotaro's fists is becoming a habit of his. "Magician's Red!"

Immediately, a blinding stream of flame shoots forth from his avian Stand, enveloping the bars constricting Star Platinum. Faster than your brain can fully comprehend, the bars burn red, then white, and then they're slag, dripping to the ground. The moment Jotaro is free, leaping away to check the state of his scorched flesh, Avdol heats up his flames more, enveloping the entire cage and flash-frying the straw bedding. Surely the ape is toast!

After a few moments of that, Avdol waves his hand and the flames vanish as though they were never there, revealing nothing but a half-melted cage full of black residue. No sign of either a living orangutan, nor its skeletal remains.

"Those flames were hot enough to cremate a body and reduce bones to ash, but I don't feel as though I actually hit the ape! I can still feel the energy of his Stand!"

"But the cage is completely wrecked!" Polnareff says, incredulously, "and where in Hell could it have gone!?"

The moment the words leave his mouth, the entire ship shakes, and before you even notice the steel floor beneath your feet is turning liquid! All five of you are immediately beginning to sink into a quicksand so tough that you can't even twitch inside it.

Not a problem.

Instantly, you're back on solid ground, with Due floating in a perfectly you-shaped hole, which is easily large enough for her to escape. Too fast for anyone without a Stand-user's accelerated reflexes to follow, you've swapped yourself with Jotaro, then yourself with Due again, getting the two of you free from your holes. You repeat the process for Polnareff, then Avdol, and finally use both yourself and Pol to get Joseph and Kakyoin out of your shared hole.

"Quick thinking, Marta!" Joseph laughs, "I'm damn jealous of that slippery power of yours again!"

"But can it be?" Avdol mutters incredulously, "that this entire ship is the enemy Stand!?"

"Isn't that impossible?" Polnareff responds, similarly flabbergasted, "it's all real, solid material!"

"Some Stands can manipulate a real, solid object, making it into a Stand power all its own- but I've only heard of that being the case for objects small enough to be handheld! This ship must weigh thousands of tons!"

"I think we're all learning that 'impossible' is a word we should be more careful about using!" you interrupt, "but forget that! We need to find that goddamn ape!"

"But how the hell can we-" Joseph begins but suddenly trails off, his eyes going wide. A grin spreads across his face and he laughs. "No, nevermind! Just trust the ol' Joestar intuition! Follow me!"

With that, he turns and sprints away from the areas you'd already explored, deeper into the ship past the room you're in with the now-melted cage. The door is shut in your path, but Joestar doesn't slow down.

"One of the heavy-hitters, blast that thing down!"

Jotaro grunts, but doesn't seem eager to go for another haymaker with his scorched right hand, so Avdol answers the call.

"Crossfire hurricane!"

At the command of that strange incantation, an ankh-shaped wave of fame bursts forth from his Stand's feathery hands, smashing the door off of its now-melted hinges. Joestar leaps over the partially melted door, paying seemingly little heed to poor Kakyoin on his back.

Despite his strange behavior, his confidence seems infectious, and you're all hopeful that you're going in the right direction as you follow him down various hallways (though by now you've utterly given up on the agonizing prospect of running and are simply sending Due and Quattro ahead and then repeatedly swapping with them while you personally "stand still." )

After a fair number of seemingly-random turns, you find yourself in- the bridge? There's various computers here, and the stereotypical ship's wheel.

"Quick, Avdol!" Joseph points urgently at an air vent up in one of the top corners of the room, "flambé anything in that vent!"

Avdol doesn't hesitate despite how inexplicable Joseph's apparent knowledge of the ape's whereabouts are, and as his flames blast into the vent, you hear a terrible pained cry from within.

"Got him! How the hell did you-"

Joestar cuts you off. "It's not dead yet! It's…"

He glances down. "The room beneath us! Someone smash a hole in the floor!"

"I can handle that one, old man."

Star Platinum leaps in the air, raising its legs like it's going for maximum vertical jump height (despite its ability to fly) and then smashes down with a double-kick that would have thrown all of you off of your feet for the sheer deformation it made in the floor did you not all have Stands to keep you upright.

One more almighty kick is enough to shred whatever supernatural durability the ape is pumping into the ship and shear a hole directly in the middle of the floor, allowing you all to fall down into the dark room beneath the bridge. You, for your part, just carefully swap down there rather than violently jerking your injuries by taking a five meter vertical drop. You're relieved to see Joseph lower himself down with Hermit Purple for Kakyoin's sake.

The room beneath is some sort of cargo room, as you can more clearly see when Avdol's flame radiates the room. But it's no normal cargo hold- huge walls encircle you on all sides with no exit in sight, and as the hole in the floor (now ceiling, you suppose) above you begins to mend itself, you hear more of the ape's obnoxious whooping laughter.

"OH NOO!! I led us right into a trap!!"

"Seriously!?" You turn your head to Joseph with enough force to make your concussed brain scream in objection. "Avdol, Jotaro, one of you break us out of here before!!-"

It's too late. From all around the room, bolts begin popping out of their places on the walls, floating as though a swarm of insects all around you. You technically have no idea what the ape's attack will be, but your instincts scream that the bolts are all about to fire at bullet speed. Due, Tre, and Quattro concur, moving into position to defend you from projectiles, Tre raising her leg in an imitation of martial arts abilities you know for a fact she doesn't have.

Likewise, Star Platinum, Silver Chariot, and Magician's Red have taken up defensive positions, ready to block, slice, or simply evaporate any incoming attacks. Joseph, strangely, seems barely concerned. What the hell is that old man thinking?

The monkey makes its appearance in the flesh, hanging upside-down from a bar on the ceiling. Drooling from that obnoxious grin it wears and ignoring the obviously burned fur on its shoulder and back, it holds out a book that you can't make out, pointing the pages at you.

"It's an English dictionary," Jotaro answers before anyone has time to ask him, "he's pointing at the word 'strength.'"

"A major arcana! His Stand must be that of the Strength card!" Avdol raises his hands as though to attack the ape if he remains within line of sight, but it seems the damn thing is done stalling now that it's revealed its Stand's name and swings its arms together, sending all the bolts at once into motion!

Any thoughts of counterattacks vanish as everyone in the group raises their defenses, but before the accelerating bolts can hit you, they inexplicably stop in midair? You glance up at the ape, who looks as bewildered as you are. But upon closer inspection, you can see the bolts didn't stop on their own, they collided with something in midair- nearly invisible green tendrils! It could only be-

Your thought is both interrupted and confirmed by a weak but manic laughter from Joestar's back, joined by Joestar's own much heartier guffaws.

"We'd make pretty great actors, wouldn't we, Kakyoin?"

"Heheh… I spotted some cracks in your performance, Mr. Joestar… it's lucky we'll both live to get more practice!"

The ape suddenly realizes its drastic miscalculation- it had been planning for fighting one too few enemies- and begins trying to swim back up into the ceiling above its head, but it's too late.

"I apologize I had to hide it from the rest of you, but I thought it was best if the enemy didn't realize I'd already woken up… my Hierophant has been exploring this ship for some time, keeping track of the orangutan's movements. Which also means I had plenty of time to position him for this attack!"

Just as he said so, a blast of emeralds shoot forth from behind where the ape is hanging and trying to escape, obviously badly maiming it and throwing it from its perch, where it falls directly down above your heads.

"Pretending to be out cold was pretty rude, Kakyoin," Jotaro mutters with a grin. "I was real worried about you. How about in exchange… I steal the last hit from your win!"

Sure enough, as the orangutan falls down to your level, Jotaro unleashes a single brutal uppercut that sends it hurtling off into a wall- "ORA!!!"

The ape collapses on its face, but forces itself to roll over onto its back instead as the walls trapping you all in slowly shrink away, leaving you in a normal cargo room. Without a word, you begin stepping towards it, Quattro's hands ready to finish it off.

"Wait." Jotaro orders, and you've got enough shame to obey. "When animals show their bellies, it means they're surrendering. It hasn't actually killed anyone, so it'd be wrong to execute an enemy who surrendered."

"Not to mention," Kakyoin mutters with a cough, "don't forget that we're all floating at the convenience of that thing's Stand. If we kill it, we could very well find ourselves treading water. Here, orangutan, you can understand English, can't you?"

The beaten beast nods.

"Then open your mouth."

It complies, and rather disturbingly, Kakyoin's Hierophant unceremoniously slithers down its throat. "There, that's our insurance. If anything happens to hurt me or piss me off, Hierophant will go crazy in your stomach, tearing you to bits, you understand?"

Frantically, the ape nods.

"Good. Then good news, everyone. We have a ship- one that won't sink so easily, and with no civilians to endanger either. The real question is where to sail it."

[] The ape doesn't have a flesh bud, it was obeying DIO of its own volition. It'll probably help us as long as that'll keep us alive, but if it finds a chance to betray us, it will at its first opportunity. We can't possibly be safe sailing inside its Stand. We need to finish it before it comes up with a good plan to kill us all.
- [] But we should probably also have a plan to not drown first. (Write in.)

[] The nearest safe land to us is probably Malaysian Borneo, which is probably also where you and Kakyoin can get medical attention at the earliest opportunity. Let's head there.

[] Let's head to Singapore, as per our original plan. Joestar's contacts are there, and the hospitals and accommodations will be much better than in Borneo. Plus, we'll have more travel options leaving from there.

[] Why stop? This ship is basically unsinkable, it has food, running water, and basic medical supplies. We can sail right past Singapore, south of India, and directly to Egypt with minimal fear of being attacked. Plus, we might even be able to radio for Joestar's mother to visit at some point during the trip.

[] Write in…

 

[TheNine]

Jean-Pierre Polnareff​

Strength: C
Agility: B
Resilience: B
Intellect: C
Chutzpah: B
Wisdom: B

46 days until Holly Kujo's death (I literally just mistakenly thought that she only had 40 days to live when I first started this Quest. No, she had 50, so that'll be corrected from now on)

Location- Floating on the stand Strength in the South China Sea, northeast of Singapore.

Team status-

Marta Scamorza: Missing her left eye and badly maimed face. Injured breast and collar, fractures in both shoulders, unknown injury to digestive tract, ruptured eardrums, skull fracture, concussed, many other more minor wounds causing pain and inconvenience. Suffering from early stages of dehydration, fever (perhaps from infection), and hunger. Estimated full recovery (eyeball and scars withstanding): 7 days. Less if she can get good food, water, medical attention, and rest.
Uno: Incapacitated due to face and brain injury, plus torn up chest and missing right arm.
Due: Injured but capable.
Tre: Both arms nonfunctional due to smashed shoulders. Otherwise mostly fine.
Quattro: Injured but capable.
Cinque: Incapacitated by bring ripped apart at the guts and having her corpse mangled.

Joseph Joestar: Shallow barnacle wounds all over. Ruptured eardrums. Mostly-minor slashes from fins and claws on arms and torso. Unknown internal damage from having Hermit Purple frayed. Resisting the effects of dehydration with the help of Hamon, for now. Estimated full recovery: 10 hours.

Jotaro Kujo: Burned fists, including a severely burned right fist. Riptured eardrums. Barnacle wounds all over, especially up and down the arms. Pretty major slashing wounds to arms, hands, and torso. Suffering early stages of dehydration. Estimated full recovery: 40 hours.

Mohammad Avdol: 1st and 2nd degree burns all over. Ruptured eardrums. Barnacle wounds everywhere. Suffering early signs of dehydration. Probably the best off of anyone, if you ask him. Estimated full recovery: 14 hours.

Noriaki Kakyoin: Severe lacerations to torso, smashed open ribcage, severely broken right arm, severe barnacle wounds to almost everywhere. Fever dropping, mostly conscious, still dehydrated. Estimated full recovery: Survival seems likely, about 15 days without medical attention.

Jean Pierre Polnareff: Ruptured eardrums, relatively minor barnacle wounds, hairline fractures to various bones, suffering from the early stages of dehydration. He takes it back, Joestar is way better off than him. Estimated full recovery: 14 hours.

 

[TheNine]

"I'm sorry, ma'am, but we can't willingly allow you into Malyasian waters. It would take some time, but if you would be willing to surrender to the navy-"

"No, no, it's alright. We don't have the time, and it's totally understandable why you can't offer us harbor- I hope you have no objection to us trying to get entry to Brunei instead."

"I suppose it isn't our problem then. Presuming your story is true, I wish you the best of luck finding the help you need."

"Yeah. Big Daddy signing out."

Due flicks off the radio as you lean back in your chair, groaning. Stupid, fucking stupid. 'We were sunk in a shipwreck and encountered an abandoned cargo cruiser with no national markings, which we requisitioned. We're badly wounded and need medical attention ASAP.'

No shit they'd immediately assume you were pirates- and worse, pirates who'd quite possibly just massacred the entire crew of a US cargo freighter. Leave aside any possible criminal activity you could do in their country, sheltering you could very well cause an entire political incident.

"Shiiiit," Joseph grumbles in commiseration. "It was a good try, though. Not being able to get help from the SPW makes this trickier than I expected."

"I just wish I had a better cover story. That one was so close to honest that I feel like I'm giving up an advantage by using it- but how the hell else are we supposed to explain the fucking boat, man? It's such a ludicrous situation that no possible explanation could sound believable. There is no explanation for being alone on an empty cargo freighter that isn't suspicious- technically we are pirates, we seized this ship by threatening the captain with death."

It'd been 8 hours since you (mostly Kakyoin and Joseph, but everyone pitched in) defeated the orangutan and forced him to captain his Stand, Strength, in hopes of sailing and getting medical attention for you and Kakyoin in Borneo.

The ape, who communicated via a dictionary that his name was Forever, showed you to food, water, and basic medical supplies, which you availed yourself of.

It was when taking your first shower in days of action that you finally got a good look at the terrible mess that Dark Blue Moon had made of your face, and it was then that you finally had enough time not fighting for your life that your emotions caught up with you and left you sobbing on the shower floor for the better part of an hour, tears stinging as they flowed thoughtlessly back into an empty eye socket.

Even with a false eye and your cheek wounds healed to the point that they're only nasty scars, a fight that lasted about three minutes will define your appearance for the rest of your life. Everyone you ever meet will think of you as "that woman who was mauled by an animal," and you can't even imagine the struggle that any future romantic endeavors will be for you.

You'd managed to shove all that grief and despondency into the back of your mind with only one thought- "If I die on this adventure, none of this will matter, so I'll just focus on killing DIO."

You got up and cleaned your wounds, first with water, then saline, then antibiotic disinfectant.

Kill DIO.

You washed your bloodied clothes in the shower, doing your best to reduce great mauve streaks to dark brown stains.

Kill DIO.

You dressed in only a towel, not particularly concerned with the eyes of the men you're traveling with under current circumstances, and noted with mild relief that none of them seemed to be taking the incredibly tasteless opportunity to oogle.

Kill DIO.

You made Forever reconnect the radio, which he'd deactivated in expectation of you trying to use it before the fight and struggled through an hour-long circular conversation with Malaysian authorities, who utterly refused to provide harbor to six strange foreigners sailing a mysterious unidentified boat with no passports.

Kill DIO.

"There's got to be some good angle we can come at this with," Joseph says, chewing his forefinger in thought. "There's no situation you can't talk your way out of."

"That's assuming you even know what angle would be a good idea. The whole reason I initially wanted to land in Malaysia instead of Brunei was that I seriously barely know anything about Brunei, they only got independence two years ago and I've been more focused on history than current events during that time, I seriously only know the basics."

Joseph lets out a sheepish grin. "That's one better than me. I would have told you Brunei was a British colony if you'd asked me 30 minutes ago."

"Damn." You groan and try to stretch your back, only to nearly crumple in pain from your guts, clenching your teeth to avoid crying out. "Should we just land illegally out in the boonies somewhere? Before we tell them we're coming, so they wouldn't know to keep their eyes out?"

"That'd beat the whole point, wouldn't it? If we were hiding out, we wouldn't be able to get medical attention for you and Kakyoin."

"Ugh, medical attention. I could use it, but I don't even know if Brunei has any modern hospitals. Maybe we could just skip over to Singapore and intentionally shipwreck ourselves- they'd have to rescue us then."

"If we're gonna just keep sailing, maybe the idea of just sailing directly past Singapore and heading straight for Egypt- or at least India- is the best plan."

"Kakyoin could die without some sort if serious medical attention. And even ignoring the obvious reasons that would be terrible, he's the only thing constantly keeping Forever cowed. If he died, we could all get killed in our sleep by the very beds we're lying in."

"His situation is rough, but I think if I focus on him with Sendo healing arts I can make sure he won't die at least, even if it'd speed up the process of his arm healing wrong."

"Gah!" You punch the ship's console in frustration, almost shrieking with pain as the reverberations run through your wounded shoulder. "Fuck! Are all our options garbage!? I almost wished we stayed on the damn rafts, at least then any normal people who spotted us would pick us up instead of assuming we're criminals."

"Well hell, what if we-"

Joseph is interrupted by the door to the cabin being slammed open. "Old man. Marta. We think we've got a solution for the boat problem."

You turn in your chair to see Jotaro, carrying Forever by the scruff of his neck in one hand like a tote bag.

"The orangutan's decent at talking when he has a dictionary, just really slow. But we got some good information out of him eventually. This ship ain't really a big cargo ship, it's actually just some little junky wooden boat. He can make it look like whatever he wants."

You snap your fingers, your eyes lighting up with excitement. "So we could be, I don't know- a fishing boat! Some little fishing boat full of idiot tourists who got caught in a storm, got hurt, got lost, and now we just wanna land anywhere- I think they'll buy that in Brunei, more than the cargo freighter anyway."

Jotaro nods. "Cool. Kakyoin's asleep again, by the way."

Judging by the green tendril trailing from Forever's mouth, Hierophant is still active. According to Kakyoin, if it's crawled into a small space, it can stay there indefinitely as its "nest" as long as he doesn't get too far away.

"I'm sorry to say, we'll have to wake him up to change the shape of the ship soon."

Joseph and Jotaro look at you with concern, all three of you equally as aware of the unspoken part of that statement- if we can wake him up.

---

A few more hours, and hopefully this awful leg of your journey is finally over. Kakyoin did wake, albeit only enough to display minute signs of cognizance and recognize that Strength was about to change shape. After that, you'd set a course for Brunei and converted Strength from an almighty 215,000 ton cargo freighter to a dinky, miserable little wooden fishing ship, damaged as though it'd been wracked by a storm.

While the transformation seemed absurd to everyone, Avdol in particular seemed utterly astonished, shocked beyond words to see incontrovertible proof that Forever had, by his own power, manifested and manipulated hundreds of thousands of tons of solid steel. That level of Stand power, he said, was by orders of magnitude the greatest he'd ever seen (though of course, Forever couldn't possibly bring all that power to bear at once in a combat situation.) You had to suppose "strength" was an appropriate name.

"OK, I'm no expert on Brunei, but I'm guessing I still know more than you guys, so I'll give you all the tips I can. Brunei was a colony of the British up until just two years ago in '85, so they're brand new. The British were basically letting them handle all internal affairs for decades, though, so they shouldn't be too politically unstable- don't worry about bandits or failing infrastructure or anything, I don't think that'll be a problem."

You scratch your head, wracking your brain for anything else pertinent.

"They're the Sultanate of Brunei, technically. They're ruled by a Sultan, and Islam is the state religion. They have religious freedom, so just, you know, do all the things you normally would in a Muslim country and don't be too weird about it. There should be lots of shipping going on near the coast, so I expect we'll get spotted by an oil or gas vessel before we make landfall. When that happens, we surrender immediately, let them know we're wounded, and ask to be taken to the appropriate authorities. Hopefully once you have access to a bank, everything should smooth out, Mr. Joestar."

Everyone nods in understanding.

"The national language?" Avdol asks.

"Probably Malay, but everyone who isn't an old granny should speak English, and most grannies too. Maybe little kids don't, I don't know."

With that, there's few more questions to be asked, and the your little ship merely sails aimlessly in the general direction of Brunei's capital, which you're pretty sure has a port? The capital is surely ah- Bandar something? You're pretty sure that was the only major city on all of Borneo that wasn't part of the Malaysian or Indonesian territories. For the thousandth time, you hiss and curse yourself for the vagueries of your knowledge. It's a newly born country, and very small, you should know all of this stuff right off the top of your head.

You're so deep in your own head, in fact, that Joseph needs to elbow your shoulder to let you know you've been spotted.

Sure enough, a boat is upon you- you scan the regalia, and- Malaysian? And it doesn't look like a shipping or fishing vessel- son of a bitch, is it the coast guard? Aren't these Bruneian waters? Why is the Malaysian coast guard here? Is that normal? Or are they hunting for-

With a gasp, you turn your head away from the approaching ship. Pirates! They might very well be searching for pirates, the very same as you, and a badly wounded European woman on a mysterious ship might very well remind them of exactly who they spoke to over the radio!

"Ho there!" a man on the deck of the boat cried in English, "can you identify yourselves? We've gotten reports there may be pirates attacking the shipping lanes out here and-"

"They aren't just reports!"

The voice you hear is so alien for a moment you wonder if some stranger just appeared on the ship, but no- it's Jotaro, crying out in a pretty reasonable impersonation of terror, albeit not a perfect one, coming from his strikingly imposing voice.

"We got attacked by pirates while we were out on this boat for fun! They slashed two of my friends with machetes, and they only backed off when they heard about my gramps' American political connections!"

"Yes, we've been looking for anyone who can help," Joseph continues, seamlessly picking up where Jotaro's ruse left off, "we've got two pretty serious medical emergencies and we've been out on the sea for hours since the attack since we don't have a radio or any electronic navigation system!"

Well hell. That was almost flawless. Joseph wasn't bullshitting when he said you only had to find the right angle to come at a problem from. And Jotaro, damn, you knew his gramps was a fast talker, but you didn't know Jotaro got the gene.

"Hell! Of course, we'll help, if your injuries are serious- and damn, I see that lad lying in the boat, they are- we'll escort you to Malaysian waters and get you to a hospital!"

All that time. All that effort. And you're never even going to set foot on Brunei. You might just kill yourself if you didn't have a man to murder first.

---

It's a few more hours before you're checked into the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Kota Kinablu, Malaysia. As far as you could tell, no one ever even considered that your group were the suspected pirates- it's fortunate you never listed your names or your respective ethnicities, or someone at the coast guard may have put it together.

While you and Kakyoin are in surgery, Joseph is getting in touch with the SPW and finding a bank that can help him make your problems disappear. Meanwhile, Jotaro is escorting the monkey, who cooperated by sneaking out of the boat and reconvening with Jotaro later under threat of evisceration- thankfully, that was all done before Kakyoin retrieved Hierophant (he suspected that with him unconscious and unable to command his Stand otherwise, it would sense he was being attacked and kill Forever during the surgery.)

Speaking of the surgery, it isn't as bad as you expected on your side. They clean your eye socket and provide you with a temporary ocular prosthetic just to avoid infection, keeping the ocular nerve intact at your request (you're still holding out hope that Joseph's friends who made his hand can fix you up a working artificial eye.)

The cheek only needs cleaning and stitches which, knowing your constitution, can probably be removed before the end of the week. The doctors are astonished by the strange nature of the damage to your shoulder and intestines, but as you refuse having your arms put in a full cast, there's not much they can do to help, simply providing antibiotics, painkillers, and steroids to assist in recovery and preventing infection.

Kakyoin, you're sure, is a much more difficult case. If you were a doctor, not knowing about his recovery ability, you'd just call that arm a loss and chop it right off. And the chest- man, you have no idea what the process for that even is. One way or another, he's in surgery nearly till sunrise, but when he emerges in a wheelchair and restrictive chest and arm casts, he's conscious and smiling.

Marta and Kakyoin have received extensive treatment at a hospital, and the recovery of their injuries has drastically accelerated!

---

Things are going pretty good until the group, sleepless and looking forward to finally resting, reconvenes on a predetermined street.

"Eh? Jotaro?" Polnareff is the first to raise an eyebrow. "Where's, ah, the monkey?"

Sure enough, Jotaro is alone as he arrives, his expression clearly grimaced even with his gaze hidden by his hat.

"He got away."

"From you!?" You're utterly shocked. If it was on its own boat, sure, but escaping Jotaro on neutral ground? Well, you did say that the word "impossible" should be taboo.

"Back on his boat, Forever did a lot of origami on his off-time. I got used to it and didn't think much of it- so I didn't react fast when he casually started folding some big leaves when we were out on the road. Turns out his Stand doesn't have to be tied to the specific boat we left out in the harbor, and a folded "boat" made of leaves counts too."

Your eye widens at the implication, and you can tell the others feel the same way.

"Unbelievable," Avdol mutters. "What a truly unbelievable Stand power… and to belong to a mere animal! One of DIO's lesser henchmen!"

You clench your fists and grind your teeth.

"Anyway, he opened up distance between us with a big boat and escaped out into the woods. I spent a while searching, but couldn't find him. The boat he made turned back into leaves, so assume he's got a new one."

"Well…" you begin, shaking your head as your frustration and fear give way to focus. "Do we chase it down? Can we chase it down?"

"It's possible," Joseph says, "if he hasn't gotten out to sea. Avdol and I both have abilities suited for tracking, plus Jotaro's eyes, and when it comes to the actual 'chasing' part, I don't think anybody's faster on their 'feet' than you, Marta."

He's right. You're the only Stand user you know of whose physical body can "move" as quickly as your Stand can, and all without exertion. You can probably easily outpace any F-1 car just by swapping yourself with your girls in sequence.

"That said," Avdol interjects, "we are only now beginning to recover from the battle with Dark Blue Moon. And for now, we are in a location our enemies almost certainly do not yet know. We could take an increasingly rare opportunity to sleep."

"Or just keep moving," Kakyoin says, to everyone's surprise. "Tennille was in place ahead of us because we moved on a schedule. If we charter a boat right now, and you pay extra to have them leave quickly, we can be gone from here before they have another chance to get ahead of us. Head to Singapore or somewhere else on mainland Eurasia so we can move by land. With respect, if I can manage the journey, any of us can- we can sleep on the boat."

[] Hunt down the ape like a dog in the woods. It's too dangerous to be left to its own devices.

[] It's 7:30 in the morning. The most sleep you've gotten in the last 48 hours was being anesthetized for 4 hours in surgery, and that's better than the less injured ones got. Let's book a hotel and take this opportunity to rest before we get fucking ambushed again.

[] Kakyoin's right. DIO's been 2 steps ahead of us for this entire journey. Well, we just took 3 steps he couldn't have possibly expected (because WE didn't even expect them) so for once we're ahead. We need to press our advantage while we have it.

[] Write in…

 

[TheNine]

I spent about 6 hours today doing in-depth research about the geopolitical and societal status of every nation in Borneo just to do absolutely nothing with any of that information except have Marta get distracted with plans to go to Brunei, lol. The curse of Marta being knowledgeable about geography, history, and politics, is I can't just handwave this stuff by saying "the characters don't know." Hey, at least I'm learning. Did you know Brunei is still a theocratic sultanate to this day? And the religious freedoms are actually worse than they were in Marta's time. Wild stuff.

Strength​

Power: P
Speed: D
Range: A
Durability: A
Precision: B
Potential: B

44 days until Holly Kujo's death

Location: Kota Kinablu, East Malaysia

Team Status-

Marta Scamorza: Missing left eye. Minor skull fracture and concussion. Fractured shoulders. Bruised and contorted intestines (minimal risk of sepsis at this time). Stitched slashes on cheek. Estimated full recovery: 30 hours.
Uno: Mostly incapacitated due to brain injury but conscious and motile.
Due: Fine
Tre: Both arms limited in mobility, otherwise fine.
Quattro: Fine
Cinque: Still torn in half, still totally fucked, but she's getting there.

Joseph Joestar: Fine. $290,000 poorer than he was last week, but that's his accountant's job to worry about.

Jotaro Kujo: Burned right fist. Estimated full recovery: 10 hours.

Mohammad Avdol: Fine. Will never look at another animal the same until the day he dies.

Noriaki Kakyoin: Serious (now stitched) lacerations to torso. Ribs broken but partially repaired. A bit more titanium in his chest than he previously had. Right arm broken beyond any functionality, but at least it's pointing the right way now. Estimated full recovery: 96 hours.

Jean-Pierre Polnareff: Fine. Wishes you guys would visit a former French colony for once.