7th Stand User: A Wonderful World
- Thread starter TheNine
- Start date
- Pronouns
- Human/Form/Keyblade
[X] Let's not give up on evasion just yet. Let's take a train as per the original plan, but head North, into China. From there, we can redirect our route towards Egypt (though we'll have to find some route that avoids the Soviet Union and, god willing, Afghanistan.)
Yep I vote that we oppose Vins and her railroading ways, make the adventure our Bizzare adventure lol.
Yep I vote that we oppose Vins and her railroading ways, make the adventure our Bizzare adventure lol.
[X] Before we make any plans
" Avdol we are a group of people with echos of our willpower as powers hunting a vampire with the same who just found out some undead are living beehives. The last user we fought could make a *folded leaf* into a giant boat. Nothing in our life is transparently absurd enough to risk *not metioning* at this point. I would trust of you said bigfoot is real. Spill. The worat that happens is you are wrong and we are more viglent for a threat that doesnt exist.
" Avdol we are a group of people with echos of our willpower as powers hunting a vampire with the same who just found out some undead are living beehives. The last user we fought could make a *folded leaf* into a giant boat. Nothing in our life is transparently absurd enough to risk *not metioning* at this point. I would trust of you said bigfoot is real. Spill. The worat that happens is you are wrong and we are more viglent for a threat that doesnt exist.
- Location
- Israel
[X] Before we make any plans
"Avdol we are a group of people with echos of our willpower as powers hunting a vampire with the same who just found out some undead are living beehives. The last user we fought could make a *folded leaf* into a giant boat. Nothing in our life is transparently absurd enough to risk *not metioning* at this point. I would trust of you said bigfoot is real. Spill. The worat that happens is you are wrong and we are more viglent for a threat that doesnt exist.
I want to talk to Avdol first and then decide on a plan of action.
"Avdol we are a group of people with echos of our willpower as powers hunting a vampire with the same who just found out some undead are living beehives. The last user we fought could make a *folded leaf* into a giant boat. Nothing in our life is transparently absurd enough to risk *not metioning* at this point. I would trust of you said bigfoot is real. Spill. The worat that happens is you are wrong and we are more viglent for a threat that doesnt exist.
I want to talk to Avdol first and then decide on a plan of action.
It's not.
TheNine
I’ll compromise with the skeletons
- Location
- The good ol' US of A
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Yes, lest there be any mistake, Vins said she may or may not be able to fix the eye, but her and Marta's spat went down before she had a chance to try. Marta is still pirate mode.
- Location
- Gainful Employment
- Pronouns
- He/They
Did Vins just say Marta is related to Diavalo? Are we going to get Trish to call us auntie if we manage to live long enough?
Also, if Hannoi Rocks hasnt been given an entirely different power than canon, then what was experienced as the boat speeding up was probably actually it exiting reality, being in the (I can't remember the word she uses, but I think it began with a p? But I'm also pretty sure it's a kind of kaleidoscope) for a few moments, then re-entering reality at its fated location.
[X] Before we make any plans
"Avdol we are a group of people with echos of our willpower as powers hunting a vampire with the same who just found out some undead are living beehives. The last user we fought could make a *folded leaf* into a giant boat. Nothing in our life is transparently absurd enough to risk *not metioning* at this point. I would trust of you said bigfoot is real. Spill. The worat that happens is you are wrong and we are more viglent for a threat that doesnt exist.
Edit: I decided to approval vote
[X] Running doesn't work. Silly tricks don't work. Driving straight forward doesn't work. Even if we dodge DIO's minions, we'll just end up with an ever-growing clown car of enemies chasing us. Let's stop taking a road trip and start fighting a war. We'll spend the night here in Singapore and set up an ambush for whatever man or beast tries to attack us. After they're dealt with, we can move according to our original plans.
Also, if Hannoi Rocks hasnt been given an entirely different power than canon, then what was experienced as the boat speeding up was probably actually it exiting reality, being in the (I can't remember the word she uses, but I think it began with a p? But I'm also pretty sure it's a kind of kaleidoscope) for a few moments, then re-entering reality at its fated location.
[X] Before we make any plans
"Avdol we are a group of people with echos of our willpower as powers hunting a vampire with the same who just found out some undead are living beehives. The last user we fought could make a *folded leaf* into a giant boat. Nothing in our life is transparently absurd enough to risk *not metioning* at this point. I would trust of you said bigfoot is real. Spill. The worat that happens is you are wrong and we are more viglent for a threat that doesnt exist.
Edit: I decided to approval vote
[X] Running doesn't work. Silly tricks don't work. Driving straight forward doesn't work. Even if we dodge DIO's minions, we'll just end up with an ever-growing clown car of enemies chasing us. Let's stop taking a road trip and start fighting a war. We'll spend the night here in Singapore and set up an ambush for whatever man or beast tries to attack us. After they're dealt with, we can move according to our original plans.
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- Pronouns
- He/Him
Did not know until now that this quest was based on a video game!
[X] Well, we're here and back on our original schedule, despite our best efforts. We may as well just continue on the original route, then? Let's buy train tickets to India and keep moving ASAP. DIO's agents seem to be able to find us no matter what we do, so evasion is pointless
Call me boring, but I want to try and stick to what we know.
[X] Well, we're here and back on our original schedule, despite our best efforts. We may as well just continue on the original route, then? Let's buy train tickets to India and keep moving ASAP. DIO's agents seem to be able to find us no matter what we do, so evasion is pointless
Call me boring, but I want to try and stick to what we know.
WanderingTwix
Posting something good once in a full moon
- Location
- United Kingdom
Yes, it is a very very cool game, arguably the best jojo game ever and it's a free fanmade one (which isn't to knock the official ones, 7th stand user is just really goated). Let me give you some links if you wanna try it out: This has a link to a bunch of download versions, you should probably get the latest version or maybe the R mod version, I haven't used that mod since I only found out about it like yesterday but it just sounds like good QoL all around. Depending on the version, you may need to run the game in a Japanese locale or else the font will look wacky, which will require something called locale emulator. I don't think you need that for the latest version though, but keep it in mind if you have issues. Now, the game uses MIDI music, and the basic windows MIDI soundfont is... middling. So you'll need to get a different one. I use VirtualMidiSynth and the fluidGM soundfont because uhh, honestly I couldn't bother with trying out other ones and that's what the page recommends as a solid one so yeah (EDIT: You'll know if you're using the fluidGM soundfont if the main menu music has a sick guitar riff and this electric "WOOP" noise constantly going off, I think with the default windows soundfont it's a piano instead without the WOOP). Finally, the game is ridiculously dense with content and a lot of stuff you won't have a chance of finding out on your own. While this will be up to people's preferences, if you need a guide, the fandom wiki (yeah I know, maybe find one of those alternate wiki things if that exists) has a lot of helpful info. Oh, uhh, I don't know if you need the RPG Maker RTP for this game, but if you do, then get that as well.
Anyway... it's been a hot minute for me, but yeah, Vins is a lot different here than she was in the game. What does seem to remain is that we probably shouldn't trust her.
[X] Let's not give up on evasion just yet. Let's take a train as per the original plan, but head North, into China. From there, we can redirect our route towards Egypt (though we'll have to find some route that avoids the Soviet Union and, god willing, Afghanistan.)
[X] Before we make any plans
"Avdol we are a group of people with echos of our willpower as powers hunting a vampire with the same who just found out some undead are living beehives. The last user we fought could make a *folded leaf* into a giant boat. Nothing in our life is transparently absurd enough to risk *not metioning* at this point. I would trust of you said bigfoot is real. Spill. The worat that happens is you are wrong and we are more viglent for a threat that doesnt exist.
Canon is a bust
formatting on avdol vote isn't right but sure, poor communication kills, we should ask.
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- Location
- Hollister
[X] Let's not give up on evasion just yet. Let's take a train as per the original plan, but head North, into China. From there, we can redirect our route towards Egypt (though we'll have to find some route that avoids the Soviet Union and, god willing, Afghanistan.)
[X] Before we make any plans
"Avdol we are a group of people with echos of our willpower as powers hunting a vampire with the same who just found out some undead are living beehives. The last user we fought could make a *folded leaf* into a giant boat. Nothing in our life is transparently absurd enough to risk *not metioning* at this point. I would trust of you said bigfoot is real. Spill. The worat that happens is you are wrong and we are more viglent for a threat that doesnt exist.
[X] Before we make any plans
"Avdol we are a group of people with echos of our willpower as powers hunting a vampire with the same who just found out some undead are living beehives. The last user we fought could make a *folded leaf* into a giant boat. Nothing in our life is transparently absurd enough to risk *not metioning* at this point. I would trust of you said bigfoot is real. Spill. The worat that happens is you are wrong and we are more viglent for a threat that doesnt exist.
TheNine
I’ll compromise with the skeletons
- Location
- The good ol' US of A
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Damn man I never even did all that when I played, lol… I was just satisfied with the crunchy lame MIDI tunes. But yeah y'all take this guy's advice he seems to know what he's talking about.
DMUA
Z I P P E R M A N
- Location
- San Diego
[X] Before we make any plans
"Avdol we are a group of people with echos of our willpower as powers hunting a vampire with the same who just found out some undead are living beehives. The last user we fought could make a *folded leaf* into a giant boat. Nothing in our life is transparently absurd enough to risk *not mentioning* at this point. I would trust of you said bigfoot is real. Spill. The worst that happens is you are wrong and we are more vigilant for a threat that doesn't exist."
I'm not really settled into voting for it, but I think we're making a bit of a mishap by trying to bypass whatever Vin just did. If we just hunker down to fortify, there's nothing that really stops multiple stand users from coming together/that's not really stemming the tide of however many guys DIO could ultimately have access to. I'm less opposed to maybe trying to swoop near the soviet union and the likes, but we shouldn't sacrifice the speed we've been trying to fetch
"Avdol we are a group of people with echos of our willpower as powers hunting a vampire with the same who just found out some undead are living beehives. The last user we fought could make a *folded leaf* into a giant boat. Nothing in our life is transparently absurd enough to risk *not mentioning* at this point. I would trust of you said bigfoot is real. Spill. The worst that happens is you are wrong and we are more vigilant for a threat that doesn't exist."
I'm not really settled into voting for it, but I think we're making a bit of a mishap by trying to bypass whatever Vin just did. If we just hunker down to fortify, there's nothing that really stops multiple stand users from coming together/that's not really stemming the tide of however many guys DIO could ultimately have access to. I'm less opposed to maybe trying to swoop near the soviet union and the likes, but we shouldn't sacrifice the speed we've been trying to fetch
- Location
- The wrong battlefield
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Interesting thought! Your mentioning Diavolo made me think it might be a more spatial version of KC, cutting/erasing space (in this case, distance). But I could also see something similar to D4C.
Chapter 18: Devil
TheNine
I’ll compromise with the skeletons
- Location
- The good ol' US of A
- Pronouns
- He/Him
"Personally, I say we get out of here as soon as possible," you begin. "Even if DIO's minions didn't expect us to be here after our detour, who's to say they've already left? These guys could be enjoying Singapore, sunning it up or doing terrorism or whatever they do in their free time."
"I'd still like to face those bastards occasionally," Polnareff counters, scowling. "Running away leaves a bad taste in my mouth, and more importantly, by interrogating them I may be able to get information on that man I'm hunting."
"At this rate it seems inevitable we'll be attacked no matter what routes or strategies we take," says Kakyoin, who's checking himself over for new injuries with Hierophant. "Besides, once DIO is dead and Miss Holly is safe, we can hunt down his surviving lackeys all the same."
"I concur." Avdol is collecting his scattered things from the boat acceleration incident. "But if we simply continue upon our predetermined route, it's likely that DIO will have already stationed enemies in our path."
"China," you say, simply. "The trains should run right from Singapore north into China. Their borders are decently open, it shouldn't be too inconvenient to get a tourism or transport pass. From there, we can head West and avoid India altogether. We'll have to enter Pakistan as per our original plans if we want to avoid the USSR and Afghanistan (I promise, we do,) but we'll still be hundreds of kilometers from our original route. It's starting to seem like DIO has some way of tracking us in real time, but there's no harm in trying, right?"
"How much time will we burn?" Joseph asks, rubbing his chin.
You shrug. "The trip may be a few days, at most it'll be a day longer than if we just went through India, assuming no border trouble. Plus, it'll be easier to enter Pakistan through China than it would be India, so that might help make up for the extra time."
"You say it like it's no big deal," Jotaro says in objection, "but we've got a time limit."
You shake your head. "Despite being literally shipwrecked twice, we're making good time considering the original timeline. If anything, we need to consider ways to save time once we get closer to Africa and wind up having to cross desert with no paved roads."
"Will there even be railroads in the West of China?" Kakyoin asks. "I'm under the impression it's largely rural or desert."
"Yes, but you're right to be concerned. There's only one rail line that'll get us to the West, and even then it doesn't link internationally with Pakistan. That last day of travel in China will have to be by car- or an extra week on foot, and that we can't afford."
"Respectfully, Marta," Polnareff says with an expression of obvious incredulity, "how the fuck do you know all this off the top of your head?"
You wave your hand dismissively. "I couldn't tell you about all the new lines in the urban centers in the East, but most of the stuff out in rural areas is just updates to lines the European colonizers built a century ago. It's not hard to remember all that."
"I am sure it is."
"Shut up." Jotaro says with a sense of finality. "Are you sure we can get a car out there?"
"Yeah, no problem. If we call ahead, we can have it waiting for us, even. And regardless of if DIO's goons know where we are, it'll be tough for them to catch up when we've taken the only available rail line."
Avdol nods. "Of course, we're in danger of being attacked, either on the train or in transit to Pakistan, but that danger can never be completely dispelled. Indeed, a more rural route isolated from other modes of transportation may well help us detect attacks sooner rather than being ambushed as so often we are."
You scoff. "One would hope. Didn't stop Forever and Vins from both sneaking up on us in the middle of the ocean."
"It doesn't matter. If we're doing it, we're doing it. I don't wanna, but it looks like I'm outvoted."
"Sorry, Jotaro, but I agree that this is probably the best route," Joseph says. "You're right that now that we've probably already decided the plan, we should put the kibosh on the discussion and just get moving. Come on, let's get tickets."
In half an hour, your group has the tickets you need. Your train will be leaving in 3 hours, so the group should be waiting at the station in two and a half.
The group decides, for the moment, to split up. Jotaro wants to stay by Kakyoin, who still isn't particularly mobile or capable in a fight, and Kakyoin wants to stay by the train platform.
Joseph and Polnareff go off to do some unspoken activity together, though you judge by their giggles and conspiratorial looks that it's the sort of degenerate shit rich old tourists and French people do when they go on vacations to Asian countries.
As for you… you let Avdol know you weren't interested in secrets, and his response was that since this concerned you, if you insisted on hearing before he was sure of his conclusions, he'd talk to you in private and leave it to you if you wanted to believe him or share with the group.
And so it has come to pass that the two of you enter a hotel room (you had to book it for a full night to only use it for an hour- at least it's not a fancy one) for the sake of privacy and Avdol begins taking out several books and a pack of tarot cards.
"So, Avdol- you said you have a theory about whatever shit Vins was saying, me not belonging here, and being related to a devil and all that."
Avdol nods, moving a table in the room such that the two of you can take a seat at either side of it. In the process, he uncharacteristically messily shoves the table's contents, some cans of beer and an ugly doll, to the ground. You'd balk at the carelessness, but you chafe more at the previous occupant who left all this shit and the hotel that didn't bother to clean the room before booking again.
"Please, sit."
You do, your lips pursed into a tight frown. This fortune-teller shit isn't your scene, but you've been through a barrage of constant insane supernatural phenomena recently, so generally speaking you think you're becoming more open-minded. "So?"
Avdol sighs and nods, before making eye contact with you. "Do you believe in Gravity?"
You blink. "S-sorry?" Gravity? Yes? Who doesn't? "Like, do I think it's a force or a consequences of spacetime, or-"
"No, I apologize, I should be more straightforward. When I speak of Gravity, I don't mean merely the physical force that holds one to the ground. In spiritualist circles, it is said that Gravity is the force that 'draws things together.' Not merely objects of mass, but people in a more metaphorical sense."
You blink. Why did he put it that way, then? "So, like, what you said before? That Stand-users are drawn to one another."
"Yes. Presuming these theories are true, that phenomenon is indeed a consequences of the force of Gravity. But it is not merely that. This force of drawing people together, and drawing events to their conclusion- this phenomena is also what we call 'fate.'"
You cock your head. "I've never really been much of a destiny believer, but I guess the fortune teller is the expert, right? So 'Gravity' equals 'fate.' I'm still not picking up what you're putting down."
"It is most pertinent that you mentioned me being a fortune teller." Avdol's voice is dead serious, and he's barely broken his intense eye contact that almost compels you to look away. "That I am, indeed. I only rarely mention my predictions, as their accuracy is imprecise."
"You're a smart guy, so I'll give you the benefit of the doubt- if you're accuracy wasn't better than blind luck, you'd probably quit the fortune trade."
"You are correct. My accuracy is not perfect, nor near it- but I am confident my predictions are better than any mere charlatan."
You frown. "So why don't you tell anyone about them?"
Avdol sighs. "Because a fortuneteller's predictions are irrelevant. If I am mistaken, then naturally, such a prediction is useless and will only mislead those to whom I tell it. There are no "half truths" in soothsaying, a fortune told in error has no bearing whatsoever on the future."
"So what about the true ones?"
"They, too, are irrelevant. Because fate is fixed." Avdol opens one of the books before him as he continues, "you must imagine that fate is like a book. As we live it, we read one word at a time. By correctly using the cards…" he draws out a tarot card, the six of cups, from behind the next page of the book, "we may see a peek at what the next page holds for us, or simply what appears a few lines down where we currently are."
"But it's a book. It's printed in ink. Knowing what'll happen doesn't mean you can change it. But that logic doesn't hold up to me. Even if fate is fixed, isn't knowing so you can prepare for it better? And if it isn't, seriously, what's the point of your job?"
"The situation is different for civilians and those on a journey like ours. What is harmless or perhaps even comforting in a comfortable lifestyle can create deadly indecision on the field of battle. Believing a good omen breeds complacency. Believing a bad one encourages either defeatism or a relentless, wasted effort to change fate. Surely, you are familiar with the Greek tragedies.
"S'ppose I am. There's no point in arguing about this, because it isn't the point, is it? I want to know what you have to say."
Avdol nods. "As I said, my predictions come with varying degrees of confidence. I can never be completely certain of a course of events, but at times my confidence is high enough that I live my life assuming they will turn out to be true."
"And?"
"When this journey began, I made several predictions I was highly confident about. Among them were these- that all the combatants from the start of our journey would have Stands bearing the names of the major arcana- and that our group of three would gain three new members along our way. One in Japan, one in mainland Asia, and one in Africa."
You glance at the ground, furrowing your brow. Your Stand is called Flashdance, not Flash Emperess or whatever. And you didn't meet the group in any of the places they mentioned, but instead in the sky and in the ocean. Furthermore, if the group meets another member in Africa, that would make…
"Seven," you say, your eyes wide, incredulous.
"Yes." Obviously, Avdol can recognize your train of thought. Vins called you the "seventh" when she said you shouldn't be there.
"Couldn't your prediction have just been wrong?"
"Yes," Avdol says without hesitation. "I assumed that out of hand when you joined us. Any fortune teller worth his salt must be prepared to admit his mistakes. After all, it is as I said, if a prediction is partly untrue, it must be completely baseless. And yet…"
"And yet you did meet another member of the group in Japan, and then in mainland Asia. And the Hierophant, the Tower, the Chariot, the Moon, and Strength… all the other Stands you've met so far actually have been named for the Major Arcana, all except Flashdance. Which if what you're saying is true, doesn't make sense, it could only be a cosmic coincidence that your completely baseless predictions happen to be coming true."
He nods firmly. "Yes. It could only be a coincidence. Unless…"
You finally rejoin eye contact with him, staring him down as though you can barely believe the conclusion you're being led to. "You think fate doesn't apply to me? Me specifically? Me alone?"
"I suspect that Vins believes that, and it seems to me that increasingly evidence points in that direction. She may be a fortune teller of her own sort, one who saw you as an unexpected blind spot in her predictions, the same as you seem to be in my own."
"But… but…" But that doesn't make any sense.
You begin a bit of an internal thought experiment. You assume that everything Avdol's said about fate is true- not only his genuine belief, but the absolute truth. You assume that your guesses about Vins' beliefs are true as well, and that she's right. In this world, destiny is an absolute ruler, the philosophy of predeterminism is true, everyone's actions are set in stone. Everyone's except yours.
It just doesn't make sense. You're not special. Well, you are special, you have one in a million supernatural abilities, but the world has 5,000 one in a million people in it. There's nothing about you that would single you out as the one person who gets to break the secret rules that nobody else knows they're playing by. Except, maybe…
You cringe and clench your fists, grinding you teeth as you prepare for this discussion.
"Avdol… do you have any idea why she said I was related to the Devil?"
He shakes his head quietly. "On that, I have no idea. Perhaps if she hails from a brach of spiritualism I do not know of, it could be some sort of metaphor or reference to a concept of which I am unfamiliar." He looks at you sadly for a few moments, before reaching down to the floor and picking up one of the still-sealed beer cans he previously threw down. Sliding it across the table to you, he gives a halfhearted smile. "I sense you may have more to speak about it, though?"
"It's nothing related… more importantly, that kind of conversation would take more than a bee-" your eyes widen a bit as you actually read what's printed on the can he passed you. "What the hell?" It's not a beer at all. You can't read the label, but "53%" isn't hard to interpret even despite the language barrier. Hard spirits? In a can? In a hotel fridge? What a strange country.
"Fine, you convinced me." With a flash, Due has the can open and you take a swig. Yeah, wow, that's definitely some variety of bourbon. Is that normal here? Did you and Avdol just check into some weird hotel? Your first reflex was to shotgun it, you feel like canning hard liquor has to count as some kind of entrapment-
"Marta." Avdol's voice is soft, but firm. You grimace.
"Right, sorry. It's just a tough subject. To be honest, I really was just starting to feel like I was putting this stuff behind me- first leaving home and getting my scholarship, and honestly even all this DIO shit made me feel like I never had to worry about the past again. But you're right, if there's any chance it's relevant…"
You take another healthy swig before you tell your story, and you'll finish the can before you're done.
You are Marta Scamorza. You were born Rosa Accardi, on September 14, 1968, in Pozzuoli, Italy, about 20 km from Naples. Your parents were Matteo and Martina Accardi. Scamorza was your mother's maiden name. Soon after your birth, your mother allegedly became highly unstable, a bout of supposed postpartum depression. According to your father, whom you don't believe, their marriage had been happy and without incident until that time. You've been told she became a threat to everyone around her, including you, but when your father suggested she be institutionalized, she attempted to stab him to death with a kitchen knife.
You know at that time she was taken to a psychiatric institution, but after that no one told you anything, and once you were old enough to research it yourself you couldn't uncover any further evidence.
Flashdance was with you for as long as you could remember. You knew, almost by reflex, not to let anyone see you swapping before their eyes, but nonetheless the effects of Flashdance were anything but hidden. Your father constantly caught you escaping from your crib as a baby, and until you started school it was extremely common to find you having bypassed locked doors or making your way into otherwise implausible positions.
The teleportation wasn't all, of course. In those days, Quattro played out your negative impulses without hesitation. Toys in your vicinity when you were in a bad mood wound up mangled beyond recognition, those who touched you against your will would pull away with dark bruises or inexplicable puncture wounds in their hands or arms.
It didn't take half of that supernatural nonsense for your father to conclude you were cursed. Add it all up, and before you could even count past 10 he was so disturbed by you he insisted you weren't his daughter at all, though out of some sense of duty or legal responsibility he never kicked you from his home, nor attempted more drastic measures.
The beatings were common, though. By the time you could walk and talk, he'd demarcated extremely strict boundaries, lines that couldn't be crossed. You weren't to access any locked room or container, you weren't to enter his room under any circumstances, you weren't to approach him without loudly announcing yourself first, and a dozen other rules that have since been thoroughly implanted on your psyche even years after his death.
You know now as you did then that they were his twisted-form of self-defense. He was terrified of you almost from the beginning, and he only grew moreso as you gained independence.
Things grew a bit better when his father moved in with you. He's gotten too old to take care of himself on his own, so he moved in with the two of you. Very much unlike his bastard son, ("I mean that metaphorically, for the record. She died before I was born, but nonno talked about nonna all the time,") he was a good guy and a good teacher, even when his mind wasn't completely there. Right up till the end, he was borderline obsessed with keeping up with politics and current events, though when it got bad in the later days his definition of "current" could slip. You could probably write a PHD thesis on Mussolini source from nothing but his many rants and speeches.
He was what really tied you down to something closer to a normal reality, separate from your own supernatural internal reality and the twisted perspective of your dad. When he died, rather than sending you adrift, you felt like you gained new clarity. You couldn't keep living an insular life, trapped in one house in one town in one country. You had to break out. You had to see the world. You had to do something, write something, be something.
Nonno died when you were 12, and while you were desperate to change your life, you were still just a kid. By then your dad's fear of you had gradually festered into an earnest and deep-throated hatred, a toxic muck that made him want nothing more than to have you gone but to nonetheless never let you go, whether out of spite or some other twisted motivation you could never say.
("By then, I honestly believe I could have taken care of myself, but I didn't expect him or the state to know that, he couldn't just kick me out. We had to keep living together one way or another. But what he didn't have to do was constantly try to stamp out all my goals, get in the way of every academic pursuit, punish me for any time I tried to get a measure of independence- he hated me! He would have rejoiced if I vanished into thin air! But he kept me under his thumb almost like it was a reflex, like he was a snake biting a poisonous toad. Both of us were suffering, but he refused to let go.")
In hindsight, you could have just run away. You should have. But you didn't. You had your justifications, but with the way it all ended, they didn't wind up helping anyone.
After his father died, your dad lived two more years. During that time, his physical abuse, which had largely subsided while Nonno lived with you, had returned in force. But the bruises and welts healed- indeed, with your constitution, they healed quickly. What stuck with you, for reasons you've struggled to articulate, was what he said to you, again and again.
"You are not my daughter, Rosa." Again and again. "Your father could only have been a demon. Your mother worshipped them, cavorted with them, attended satanic orgies."
His story would change a bit in each telling. Sometimes you were the half-human daughter of the Devil himself, conceived without your mother's knowledge, and she truly was a loyal wife until you were born and drove her into madness. Other times, she was part of some satanic cult, cheating on him in great orgies in the mountains, your existence a vector for evil to be invited into the world.
He'd insist, nonsensically, that he was trying to do his duty to raise you into someone decent. As though his facade of obsession with the satanic was cracking, he'd show glimpses that he never truly believed it, and was only grasping at straws to explain his hatred for his own daughter, someone he loved by instinct if nothing else.
But it never changed his behavior, nor had he even bothered to tearfully and drunkenly apologize in years. Regardless of whatever mingled love, fear, and loathing bubbled in his own psyche, it had no effect on yours- you were strangled by love for him, which barely managed to force your seething hatred under the surface. Despite everything, what you desperately wanted was just to be acknowledged by him.
"So, that's the story," you eventually finish. By the end, you muttered it down at the desk, empty can crushed to the size of a pencil in your now bloodied fist. "I'm sure you picked up on the relevant parts."
As you told the story, Avdol had offered words of understanding and sympathy, but very little in the way of other feedback or relevant comments. "Yes," he replies. "But I fear I've put you through a considerable amount of pain for no gain in particular. While it's a disturbing and upsetting coincidence, it seems to me your father had no basis for any of his presumptions aside from misguided fear of your abilities."
"Misguided.. pff." You blow your hair out of your face, slowly raising your head from the desk. "Well, anyway, I thought it was nonsense too, especially once I learned Stands existed… but what Vins said makes me worry."
"Take heart, Marta. For all my flaws, I am more learned in the supernatural than most men you may hope to meet, and in all of my days as a student of Stands, divination, and the occult alike, never have I seen a bit of evidence that such a thing as a 'demon' exists. One last thing- you said your father died when you were 14."
Avdol narrows his eyes and looks at you with a considerable seriousness. "I presume he died by accident, at which time you changed your name for the sake of disassociation from him."
You meet his eyes equally, despite throbbing in your head and a mild blurring in your vision. "You're right on both counts. I took my mom's maiden name and changed my given name after my dad died by accident."
The two of you don't need to say it aloud to be on the same page. Avdol may not know the specifics, but he knows what you did. You didn't try particularly hard to keep it a secret during your story. But all the others in this group- for them, family is sacred. They don't need to know.
"Well, regardless of whether it's related to this or not, Avdol," you turn your head away, unable to maintain continuous eye contact. "Thank you. I barely know you, but you're still the first person I've ever told all of this to. It's good to let the pressure release now and again."
"Indeed, Marta. And though we've only known each other briefly, I hope that you can consider me a friend and confidante."
"Yeah, I-" you trail off and blink as Due appears unbidden, hovering in the air between you. She's… pointing at something? In your drunkenness, you'd closed your eyes to Flashdance's vision, not wanting to make yourself dizzy with multiple perspectives.
Your gaze follows the line drawn by her finger, until it reaches… the doll? The strange, creepy doll that the previous resident had left in the room. It now sits, somehow, upon the bed, staring directly at the two of you. In one of its outstretched hands, absurdly, it's holding a card- one of Avdol's tarot cards, somehow. And not just any card…
"The Devil!" Avdol gasps. You begin to open your mouth, perhaps to ask if for some reason you cannot possibly divine he chose to play a deeply cruel prank on you using Magician's Red, but the flames erupting by his side as he prepares for a fight end that line of thought. He's as shocked and disturbed as you are.
"An enemy Stand?"
"It could only be! Either way, the only safe option…" Magician's Red's hands, now fully manifested, entwine and fold outwards like making a butterfly shadow puppet, a ball of flame forming between their palms. "Is to do away with it!"
The flame bursts forwards, crashing into the bed with a flash. Instantly, that half of the room is aflame, though Avdol clenches his fist, causing those same flames to vanish in the blink of an eye. With your visibility restored, you can see that there's no sign of the doll- only a blackened Devil card remains, charred to cinders such that its art and name are barely legible.
Near the side of the bed where Avdol attacks is the hotel window, reaching outside, clearly ajar. You're certain it wasn't when you came in.
"The Stand may have escaped! That previous occupant whom we complained about- they must have been an enemy!"
Oh god. Oh god. That doll was sitting around the entire time. If its master could access its senses (which no doubt they could,) then that entire conversation was just beamed directly to DIO. Some of your most private traumas and secrets, which you didn't share even under the influence of the flesh bud- not to mention, the plausible theories of you having a special ability to undermine fate…
Quattro squeezes the back of the chair with such force that wood extrudes from her fist like cheese from a grater. "We can not let the enemy get away."
"And we will not! That Stand had no aura at all, it was near-undetectable, so it may trade physical power for a wide operational range. Nonetheless, it could not wander that far from its master."
"And catching the Stand is just as good as catching the master in the flesh anyway!"
The only question is how to do it.
[] The Stand escaped only a moment ago. You're incredibly fast, and you have five working pairs of eyes- well, four working pairs and a spare. Chase it down!
[] The enemy was here in person just before you two arrived, he may still be close, perhaps even in the very next room. Chasing such a small and quick Stand in person is pointless, hunt down the physical body!
[] You chase down the Stand while Avdol hunts the physical body.
[] You hunt the physical body while Avdol chases down the Stand.
[] Contact the rest of the team before you take action. This enemy could be stronger than expected, or have backup. Even the worst memory leak is much more agreeable of a prospect than death.
[] Write in…
"I'd still like to face those bastards occasionally," Polnareff counters, scowling. "Running away leaves a bad taste in my mouth, and more importantly, by interrogating them I may be able to get information on that man I'm hunting."
"At this rate it seems inevitable we'll be attacked no matter what routes or strategies we take," says Kakyoin, who's checking himself over for new injuries with Hierophant. "Besides, once DIO is dead and Miss Holly is safe, we can hunt down his surviving lackeys all the same."
"I concur." Avdol is collecting his scattered things from the boat acceleration incident. "But if we simply continue upon our predetermined route, it's likely that DIO will have already stationed enemies in our path."
"China," you say, simply. "The trains should run right from Singapore north into China. Their borders are decently open, it shouldn't be too inconvenient to get a tourism or transport pass. From there, we can head West and avoid India altogether. We'll have to enter Pakistan as per our original plans if we want to avoid the USSR and Afghanistan (I promise, we do,) but we'll still be hundreds of kilometers from our original route. It's starting to seem like DIO has some way of tracking us in real time, but there's no harm in trying, right?"
"How much time will we burn?" Joseph asks, rubbing his chin.
You shrug. "The trip may be a few days, at most it'll be a day longer than if we just went through India, assuming no border trouble. Plus, it'll be easier to enter Pakistan through China than it would be India, so that might help make up for the extra time."
"You say it like it's no big deal," Jotaro says in objection, "but we've got a time limit."
You shake your head. "Despite being literally shipwrecked twice, we're making good time considering the original timeline. If anything, we need to consider ways to save time once we get closer to Africa and wind up having to cross desert with no paved roads."
"Will there even be railroads in the West of China?" Kakyoin asks. "I'm under the impression it's largely rural or desert."
"Yes, but you're right to be concerned. There's only one rail line that'll get us to the West, and even then it doesn't link internationally with Pakistan. That last day of travel in China will have to be by car- or an extra week on foot, and that we can't afford."
"Respectfully, Marta," Polnareff says with an expression of obvious incredulity, "how the fuck do you know all this off the top of your head?"
You wave your hand dismissively. "I couldn't tell you about all the new lines in the urban centers in the East, but most of the stuff out in rural areas is just updates to lines the European colonizers built a century ago. It's not hard to remember all that."
"I am sure it is."
"Shut up." Jotaro says with a sense of finality. "Are you sure we can get a car out there?"
"Yeah, no problem. If we call ahead, we can have it waiting for us, even. And regardless of if DIO's goons know where we are, it'll be tough for them to catch up when we've taken the only available rail line."
Avdol nods. "Of course, we're in danger of being attacked, either on the train or in transit to Pakistan, but that danger can never be completely dispelled. Indeed, a more rural route isolated from other modes of transportation may well help us detect attacks sooner rather than being ambushed as so often we are."
You scoff. "One would hope. Didn't stop Forever and Vins from both sneaking up on us in the middle of the ocean."
"It doesn't matter. If we're doing it, we're doing it. I don't wanna, but it looks like I'm outvoted."
"Sorry, Jotaro, but I agree that this is probably the best route," Joseph says. "You're right that now that we've probably already decided the plan, we should put the kibosh on the discussion and just get moving. Come on, let's get tickets."
In half an hour, your group has the tickets you need. Your train will be leaving in 3 hours, so the group should be waiting at the station in two and a half.
The group decides, for the moment, to split up. Jotaro wants to stay by Kakyoin, who still isn't particularly mobile or capable in a fight, and Kakyoin wants to stay by the train platform.
Joseph and Polnareff go off to do some unspoken activity together, though you judge by their giggles and conspiratorial looks that it's the sort of degenerate shit rich old tourists and French people do when they go on vacations to Asian countries.
As for you… you let Avdol know you weren't interested in secrets, and his response was that since this concerned you, if you insisted on hearing before he was sure of his conclusions, he'd talk to you in private and leave it to you if you wanted to believe him or share with the group.
And so it has come to pass that the two of you enter a hotel room (you had to book it for a full night to only use it for an hour- at least it's not a fancy one) for the sake of privacy and Avdol begins taking out several books and a pack of tarot cards.
"So, Avdol- you said you have a theory about whatever shit Vins was saying, me not belonging here, and being related to a devil and all that."
Avdol nods, moving a table in the room such that the two of you can take a seat at either side of it. In the process, he uncharacteristically messily shoves the table's contents, some cans of beer and an ugly doll, to the ground. You'd balk at the carelessness, but you chafe more at the previous occupant who left all this shit and the hotel that didn't bother to clean the room before booking again.
"Please, sit."
You do, your lips pursed into a tight frown. This fortune-teller shit isn't your scene, but you've been through a barrage of constant insane supernatural phenomena recently, so generally speaking you think you're becoming more open-minded. "So?"
Avdol sighs and nods, before making eye contact with you. "Do you believe in Gravity?"
You blink. "S-sorry?" Gravity? Yes? Who doesn't? "Like, do I think it's a force or a consequences of spacetime, or-"
"No, I apologize, I should be more straightforward. When I speak of Gravity, I don't mean merely the physical force that holds one to the ground. In spiritualist circles, it is said that Gravity is the force that 'draws things together.' Not merely objects of mass, but people in a more metaphorical sense."
You blink. Why did he put it that way, then? "So, like, what you said before? That Stand-users are drawn to one another."
"Yes. Presuming these theories are true, that phenomenon is indeed a consequences of the force of Gravity. But it is not merely that. This force of drawing people together, and drawing events to their conclusion- this phenomena is also what we call 'fate.'"
You cock your head. "I've never really been much of a destiny believer, but I guess the fortune teller is the expert, right? So 'Gravity' equals 'fate.' I'm still not picking up what you're putting down."
"It is most pertinent that you mentioned me being a fortune teller." Avdol's voice is dead serious, and he's barely broken his intense eye contact that almost compels you to look away. "That I am, indeed. I only rarely mention my predictions, as their accuracy is imprecise."
"You're a smart guy, so I'll give you the benefit of the doubt- if you're accuracy wasn't better than blind luck, you'd probably quit the fortune trade."
"You are correct. My accuracy is not perfect, nor near it- but I am confident my predictions are better than any mere charlatan."
You frown. "So why don't you tell anyone about them?"
Avdol sighs. "Because a fortuneteller's predictions are irrelevant. If I am mistaken, then naturally, such a prediction is useless and will only mislead those to whom I tell it. There are no "half truths" in soothsaying, a fortune told in error has no bearing whatsoever on the future."
"So what about the true ones?"
"They, too, are irrelevant. Because fate is fixed." Avdol opens one of the books before him as he continues, "you must imagine that fate is like a book. As we live it, we read one word at a time. By correctly using the cards…" he draws out a tarot card, the six of cups, from behind the next page of the book, "we may see a peek at what the next page holds for us, or simply what appears a few lines down where we currently are."
"But it's a book. It's printed in ink. Knowing what'll happen doesn't mean you can change it. But that logic doesn't hold up to me. Even if fate is fixed, isn't knowing so you can prepare for it better? And if it isn't, seriously, what's the point of your job?"
"The situation is different for civilians and those on a journey like ours. What is harmless or perhaps even comforting in a comfortable lifestyle can create deadly indecision on the field of battle. Believing a good omen breeds complacency. Believing a bad one encourages either defeatism or a relentless, wasted effort to change fate. Surely, you are familiar with the Greek tragedies.
"S'ppose I am. There's no point in arguing about this, because it isn't the point, is it? I want to know what you have to say."
Avdol nods. "As I said, my predictions come with varying degrees of confidence. I can never be completely certain of a course of events, but at times my confidence is high enough that I live my life assuming they will turn out to be true."
"And?"
"When this journey began, I made several predictions I was highly confident about. Among them were these- that all the combatants from the start of our journey would have Stands bearing the names of the major arcana- and that our group of three would gain three new members along our way. One in Japan, one in mainland Asia, and one in Africa."
You glance at the ground, furrowing your brow. Your Stand is called Flashdance, not Flash Emperess or whatever. And you didn't meet the group in any of the places they mentioned, but instead in the sky and in the ocean. Furthermore, if the group meets another member in Africa, that would make…
"Seven," you say, your eyes wide, incredulous.
"Yes." Obviously, Avdol can recognize your train of thought. Vins called you the "seventh" when she said you shouldn't be there.
"Couldn't your prediction have just been wrong?"
"Yes," Avdol says without hesitation. "I assumed that out of hand when you joined us. Any fortune teller worth his salt must be prepared to admit his mistakes. After all, it is as I said, if a prediction is partly untrue, it must be completely baseless. And yet…"
"And yet you did meet another member of the group in Japan, and then in mainland Asia. And the Hierophant, the Tower, the Chariot, the Moon, and Strength… all the other Stands you've met so far actually have been named for the Major Arcana, all except Flashdance. Which if what you're saying is true, doesn't make sense, it could only be a cosmic coincidence that your completely baseless predictions happen to be coming true."
He nods firmly. "Yes. It could only be a coincidence. Unless…"
You finally rejoin eye contact with him, staring him down as though you can barely believe the conclusion you're being led to. "You think fate doesn't apply to me? Me specifically? Me alone?"
"I suspect that Vins believes that, and it seems to me that increasingly evidence points in that direction. She may be a fortune teller of her own sort, one who saw you as an unexpected blind spot in her predictions, the same as you seem to be in my own."
"But… but…" But that doesn't make any sense.
You begin a bit of an internal thought experiment. You assume that everything Avdol's said about fate is true- not only his genuine belief, but the absolute truth. You assume that your guesses about Vins' beliefs are true as well, and that she's right. In this world, destiny is an absolute ruler, the philosophy of predeterminism is true, everyone's actions are set in stone. Everyone's except yours.
It just doesn't make sense. You're not special. Well, you are special, you have one in a million supernatural abilities, but the world has 5,000 one in a million people in it. There's nothing about you that would single you out as the one person who gets to break the secret rules that nobody else knows they're playing by. Except, maybe…
You cringe and clench your fists, grinding you teeth as you prepare for this discussion.
"Avdol… do you have any idea why she said I was related to the Devil?"
He shakes his head quietly. "On that, I have no idea. Perhaps if she hails from a brach of spiritualism I do not know of, it could be some sort of metaphor or reference to a concept of which I am unfamiliar." He looks at you sadly for a few moments, before reaching down to the floor and picking up one of the still-sealed beer cans he previously threw down. Sliding it across the table to you, he gives a halfhearted smile. "I sense you may have more to speak about it, though?"
"It's nothing related… more importantly, that kind of conversation would take more than a bee-" your eyes widen a bit as you actually read what's printed on the can he passed you. "What the hell?" It's not a beer at all. You can't read the label, but "53%" isn't hard to interpret even despite the language barrier. Hard spirits? In a can? In a hotel fridge? What a strange country.
"Fine, you convinced me." With a flash, Due has the can open and you take a swig. Yeah, wow, that's definitely some variety of bourbon. Is that normal here? Did you and Avdol just check into some weird hotel? Your first reflex was to shotgun it, you feel like canning hard liquor has to count as some kind of entrapment-
"Marta." Avdol's voice is soft, but firm. You grimace.
"Right, sorry. It's just a tough subject. To be honest, I really was just starting to feel like I was putting this stuff behind me- first leaving home and getting my scholarship, and honestly even all this DIO shit made me feel like I never had to worry about the past again. But you're right, if there's any chance it's relevant…"
You take another healthy swig before you tell your story, and you'll finish the can before you're done.
You are Marta Scamorza. You were born Rosa Accardi, on September 14, 1968, in Pozzuoli, Italy, about 20 km from Naples. Your parents were Matteo and Martina Accardi. Scamorza was your mother's maiden name. Soon after your birth, your mother allegedly became highly unstable, a bout of supposed postpartum depression. According to your father, whom you don't believe, their marriage had been happy and without incident until that time. You've been told she became a threat to everyone around her, including you, but when your father suggested she be institutionalized, she attempted to stab him to death with a kitchen knife.
You know at that time she was taken to a psychiatric institution, but after that no one told you anything, and once you were old enough to research it yourself you couldn't uncover any further evidence.
Flashdance was with you for as long as you could remember. You knew, almost by reflex, not to let anyone see you swapping before their eyes, but nonetheless the effects of Flashdance were anything but hidden. Your father constantly caught you escaping from your crib as a baby, and until you started school it was extremely common to find you having bypassed locked doors or making your way into otherwise implausible positions.
The teleportation wasn't all, of course. In those days, Quattro played out your negative impulses without hesitation. Toys in your vicinity when you were in a bad mood wound up mangled beyond recognition, those who touched you against your will would pull away with dark bruises or inexplicable puncture wounds in their hands or arms.
It didn't take half of that supernatural nonsense for your father to conclude you were cursed. Add it all up, and before you could even count past 10 he was so disturbed by you he insisted you weren't his daughter at all, though out of some sense of duty or legal responsibility he never kicked you from his home, nor attempted more drastic measures.
The beatings were common, though. By the time you could walk and talk, he'd demarcated extremely strict boundaries, lines that couldn't be crossed. You weren't to access any locked room or container, you weren't to enter his room under any circumstances, you weren't to approach him without loudly announcing yourself first, and a dozen other rules that have since been thoroughly implanted on your psyche even years after his death.
You know now as you did then that they were his twisted-form of self-defense. He was terrified of you almost from the beginning, and he only grew moreso as you gained independence.
Things grew a bit better when his father moved in with you. He's gotten too old to take care of himself on his own, so he moved in with the two of you. Very much unlike his bastard son, ("I mean that metaphorically, for the record. She died before I was born, but nonno talked about nonna all the time,") he was a good guy and a good teacher, even when his mind wasn't completely there. Right up till the end, he was borderline obsessed with keeping up with politics and current events, though when it got bad in the later days his definition of "current" could slip. You could probably write a PHD thesis on Mussolini source from nothing but his many rants and speeches.
He was what really tied you down to something closer to a normal reality, separate from your own supernatural internal reality and the twisted perspective of your dad. When he died, rather than sending you adrift, you felt like you gained new clarity. You couldn't keep living an insular life, trapped in one house in one town in one country. You had to break out. You had to see the world. You had to do something, write something, be something.
Nonno died when you were 12, and while you were desperate to change your life, you were still just a kid. By then your dad's fear of you had gradually festered into an earnest and deep-throated hatred, a toxic muck that made him want nothing more than to have you gone but to nonetheless never let you go, whether out of spite or some other twisted motivation you could never say.
("By then, I honestly believe I could have taken care of myself, but I didn't expect him or the state to know that, he couldn't just kick me out. We had to keep living together one way or another. But what he didn't have to do was constantly try to stamp out all my goals, get in the way of every academic pursuit, punish me for any time I tried to get a measure of independence- he hated me! He would have rejoiced if I vanished into thin air! But he kept me under his thumb almost like it was a reflex, like he was a snake biting a poisonous toad. Both of us were suffering, but he refused to let go.")
In hindsight, you could have just run away. You should have. But you didn't. You had your justifications, but with the way it all ended, they didn't wind up helping anyone.
After his father died, your dad lived two more years. During that time, his physical abuse, which had largely subsided while Nonno lived with you, had returned in force. But the bruises and welts healed- indeed, with your constitution, they healed quickly. What stuck with you, for reasons you've struggled to articulate, was what he said to you, again and again.
"You are not my daughter, Rosa." Again and again. "Your father could only have been a demon. Your mother worshipped them, cavorted with them, attended satanic orgies."
His story would change a bit in each telling. Sometimes you were the half-human daughter of the Devil himself, conceived without your mother's knowledge, and she truly was a loyal wife until you were born and drove her into madness. Other times, she was part of some satanic cult, cheating on him in great orgies in the mountains, your existence a vector for evil to be invited into the world.
He'd insist, nonsensically, that he was trying to do his duty to raise you into someone decent. As though his facade of obsession with the satanic was cracking, he'd show glimpses that he never truly believed it, and was only grasping at straws to explain his hatred for his own daughter, someone he loved by instinct if nothing else.
But it never changed his behavior, nor had he even bothered to tearfully and drunkenly apologize in years. Regardless of whatever mingled love, fear, and loathing bubbled in his own psyche, it had no effect on yours- you were strangled by love for him, which barely managed to force your seething hatred under the surface. Despite everything, what you desperately wanted was just to be acknowledged by him.
"So, that's the story," you eventually finish. By the end, you muttered it down at the desk, empty can crushed to the size of a pencil in your now bloodied fist. "I'm sure you picked up on the relevant parts."
As you told the story, Avdol had offered words of understanding and sympathy, but very little in the way of other feedback or relevant comments. "Yes," he replies. "But I fear I've put you through a considerable amount of pain for no gain in particular. While it's a disturbing and upsetting coincidence, it seems to me your father had no basis for any of his presumptions aside from misguided fear of your abilities."
"Misguided.. pff." You blow your hair out of your face, slowly raising your head from the desk. "Well, anyway, I thought it was nonsense too, especially once I learned Stands existed… but what Vins said makes me worry."
"Take heart, Marta. For all my flaws, I am more learned in the supernatural than most men you may hope to meet, and in all of my days as a student of Stands, divination, and the occult alike, never have I seen a bit of evidence that such a thing as a 'demon' exists. One last thing- you said your father died when you were 14."
Avdol narrows his eyes and looks at you with a considerable seriousness. "I presume he died by accident, at which time you changed your name for the sake of disassociation from him."
You meet his eyes equally, despite throbbing in your head and a mild blurring in your vision. "You're right on both counts. I took my mom's maiden name and changed my given name after my dad died by accident."
The two of you don't need to say it aloud to be on the same page. Avdol may not know the specifics, but he knows what you did. You didn't try particularly hard to keep it a secret during your story. But all the others in this group- for them, family is sacred. They don't need to know.
"Well, regardless of whether it's related to this or not, Avdol," you turn your head away, unable to maintain continuous eye contact. "Thank you. I barely know you, but you're still the first person I've ever told all of this to. It's good to let the pressure release now and again."
"Indeed, Marta. And though we've only known each other briefly, I hope that you can consider me a friend and confidante."
"Yeah, I-" you trail off and blink as Due appears unbidden, hovering in the air between you. She's… pointing at something? In your drunkenness, you'd closed your eyes to Flashdance's vision, not wanting to make yourself dizzy with multiple perspectives.
Your gaze follows the line drawn by her finger, until it reaches… the doll? The strange, creepy doll that the previous resident had left in the room. It now sits, somehow, upon the bed, staring directly at the two of you. In one of its outstretched hands, absurdly, it's holding a card- one of Avdol's tarot cards, somehow. And not just any card…
"The Devil!" Avdol gasps. You begin to open your mouth, perhaps to ask if for some reason you cannot possibly divine he chose to play a deeply cruel prank on you using Magician's Red, but the flames erupting by his side as he prepares for a fight end that line of thought. He's as shocked and disturbed as you are.
"An enemy Stand?"
"It could only be! Either way, the only safe option…" Magician's Red's hands, now fully manifested, entwine and fold outwards like making a butterfly shadow puppet, a ball of flame forming between their palms. "Is to do away with it!"
The flame bursts forwards, crashing into the bed with a flash. Instantly, that half of the room is aflame, though Avdol clenches his fist, causing those same flames to vanish in the blink of an eye. With your visibility restored, you can see that there's no sign of the doll- only a blackened Devil card remains, charred to cinders such that its art and name are barely legible.
Near the side of the bed where Avdol attacks is the hotel window, reaching outside, clearly ajar. You're certain it wasn't when you came in.
"The Stand may have escaped! That previous occupant whom we complained about- they must have been an enemy!"
Oh god. Oh god. That doll was sitting around the entire time. If its master could access its senses (which no doubt they could,) then that entire conversation was just beamed directly to DIO. Some of your most private traumas and secrets, which you didn't share even under the influence of the flesh bud- not to mention, the plausible theories of you having a special ability to undermine fate…
Quattro squeezes the back of the chair with such force that wood extrudes from her fist like cheese from a grater. "We can not let the enemy get away."
"And we will not! That Stand had no aura at all, it was near-undetectable, so it may trade physical power for a wide operational range. Nonetheless, it could not wander that far from its master."
"And catching the Stand is just as good as catching the master in the flesh anyway!"
The only question is how to do it.
[] The Stand escaped only a moment ago. You're incredibly fast, and you have five working pairs of eyes- well, four working pairs and a spare. Chase it down!
[] The enemy was here in person just before you two arrived, he may still be close, perhaps even in the very next room. Chasing such a small and quick Stand in person is pointless, hunt down the physical body!
[] You chase down the Stand while Avdol hunts the physical body.
[] You hunt the physical body while Avdol chases down the Stand.
[] Contact the rest of the team before you take action. This enemy could be stronger than expected, or have backup. Even the worst memory leak is much more agreeable of a prospect than death.
[] Write in…
TheNine
I’ll compromise with the skeletons
- Location
- The good ol' US of A
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Forgive me for foregoing an information post this chapter, nothing's really changed since last time and I'm inexplicably eepy as I finish this chapter, so I'm gonna take a nap instead of coming up with more trivia and silly jokes, see you guys later
DevilsAdvocate
Always follow the golden rule.
So, anyone have a plan? Whatever the stand was doing, it almost seemed to reveal itself after Duo found it, holding up the Arcana card. It makes me think chasing after it is a mistake.
- Location
- The wrong battlefield
- Pronouns
- She/Her
YES YES YES YES YES
Pucci.exe activated
As for battle plan, hmmm....... I think the question that needs to be asked is, how high up is the hotel room? Before we consider chasing, I think we should establish the feasibility of doing so.
TheNine
I’ll compromise with the skeletons
- Location
- The good ol' US of A
- Pronouns
- He/Him
You're on the 2nd floor, it's a decent little hop down but you're very hardy and will be fine.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Believing or not believing in gravity is ultimately irrelevant. What's important is that gravity believes in you, and will try and make you follow it.
[X] You chase down the Stand while Avdol hunts the physical body.
We're faster and our dolls are smaller, Avdol has more offensive capabilities.
[X] You chase down the Stand while Avdol hunts the physical body.
We're faster and our dolls are smaller, Avdol has more offensive capabilities.
- Location
- Hollister
[X] You chase down the Stand while Avdol hunts the physical body.
- Location
- The wrong battlefield
- Pronouns
- She/Her
That's not true I think, unless I've misinterpreted and you're comparing the size of our dolls with the size of Magician's Red.
- Location
- Israel
[X] You chase down the Stand while Avdol hunts the physical body.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Yeah, that was what I was saying--Flashstep is a similar size to The Devil, Magician's Red is person-sized.
TheNine
I’ll compromise with the skeletons
- Location
- The good ol' US of A
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Yeah each Flashdance is as tall as like, a kindergarden kid. Ebony Devil is teensy, like 30 cm tall or something.