Jojo's Bizarre Adventure: Shadowed Suspicion Chapter 74

[madimpossibledreamer]

Main Points:
Jojo's Bizarre Adventure/Buffy the Vampire Slayer AU
Chapter Summary: Josuke starts planning a counter attack.
Word Count: 1650
Rating: Gen
Note: HERE THERE PROBABLY BE BUFFY/JJBA SPOILERS.

 

        Josuke is really starting to get sick of the snow.

        It’d always been…well, a novelty.  It’s not like it snowed in Morioh all that often, which made that blizzard that much weirder.  And, he supposes, he’d always kind of associated it with comfort.  Being safe.  Just like a pompadour was a hero’s hairstyle.

        Maybe that really had been him.  Depends on how the Stand worked, whether he actually had been messing around with reality-as-it-had-been, or whether it only changed things if it managed to erase him from existence, and now that he thinks about it, he’ll never really know.

        But now he’s learning that snow is treacherous.  It promises comfort, but it’s sometimes a lie.

        Being someone else in the snow was fine.  Being the hero in the snow was a lot colder and more uncomfortable, and he realizes that the wound on his face still hasn’t healed.

        Damn it, Rohan.  Of course the mangaka had noticed and not asked him if he was okay or anything else.

        He pulls the gakuran tighter around himself and sticks his hands in his pockets and keeps moving to stay warm.  He’s cursing Kishibe (not an uncommon thing) and trying to remember when in his life he’s been in snow like this again.  Is it possible that the Stand sent him back to the same time twice?  So far, it seems like it’s slowly throwing him forward in time, from when he was four dealing with the side effects of gaining a Stand to when he was sixteen learning about Stand Users and trying to save the town.  Then again, two moments is hardly enough to make a pattern from.

        It’s a shock when his phone rings.  He didn’t remember he even had it on him, let alone think anyone would call him.  It’s not like someone can place a call through time.  Can they?

        He checks the caller ID.  And groans.  It’s Jotaro-san.  If anyone’s not going to give up, it’s his nephew.

        But, wait, what if he answers at the same time as his past-self?  That would definitely be a problem.  He decides to ignore it on the first couple tries, because usually if the other person has to redial two times or so, he’s not by his phone.

        And then be very careful about what he says.  On the other hand, if anyone can help him fight this Stand User or at least give him an idea about where he is and when he is, it’s Jotaro-san.

        His nephew keeps calling, most likely muttering ‘yare yare daze’ under his breath.  When he’s as sure as he can be that his past self isn’t going to answer, he hesitantly hits the button to answer the call.

        He can hear the frown in the man’s voice.  “Josuke.  Why are you in Russia?”

        He blinks and feels his heart seize uncomfortably.  “What?”  His breath is coming faster.  It’s getting colder.  Not another blizzard.  He’s going to have frostbite if not worse after this.  But…

        If this Stand is giving him his own personal tour through memory lane, there’s only one reason he’d be in Russia.

        He instantly falls, burrowing himself into the snow.  There’s no other way to hide himself effectively, since there are no trees.  It’s barren.  If not for the snow, they probably would have seen him already.

        And, hang on if it’s Russia, why does he feel like someone’s watching him?  With Rohan’s house, it made some sense, because he was a guy with blood on his face running through the city like he was being chased, which he was, but…and then, in the snow of Morioh-cho…

        “Yesterday you were in Morioh.  I know you’re worried about your daughter, but…” Jotaro-san continues, and it’s about the level of emotion he expected from his nephew, but there’s something off about it, in a different way than Jotaro-san’s weird mood for…months?  “…while Josie could have gotten you, we’ve lost contact with her.”

        “Stand attack,” he explains, and doesn’t even feel the world tremble.  “And be quieter.  I don’t want to draw his attention.”  If there’s a point where he’s tempted to change things, it’s now, because he knows there’s not a moment that his Jojo regrets more, even if it turned out fine, and he reminds himself of the pain and if he breaks space-time, there won’t be him or Josie or even his grandson.  The only time more tempting would be when that bastard Sarde scares his daughter and her best friend into another dimension, but again, he can’t change things.  He can’t.

        No matter how tempting.

        It might make things even worse.  Or break the world entirely.  Or other not-so-great things to be avoided.

        To his credit, his nephew instantly shuts up.  “How can I help?” he asks, and Josuke tries to decide exactly how much he can tell his nephew.

        He hears movement on the snow and scrunches down even further, the cold biting through his skin.  “I keep being teleported.”  Nothing.  Then again, he can probably tell Jotaro-san anything and he’ll keep it secret and not tell anyone anything because that’s the kind of guy he is.  He’s actually kind of lucky it was his nephew that called and not anyone else.  “Even if I defeat this Stand User, I may not remember.”  Again, nothing but a gust of cold wind and snow.  “I’m trying to figure out how to defeat him without messing anything up.”  He gasps a little as the four come into view—he recognizes Jojo and Mercia and that bastard Sarde, but not the fourth with the Arrow and really dorky looking glasses.  Still, he knows exactly what this is, despite the innocent appearance, and how it plays out.  How it has to play out.

        At this, Jotaro-san snorts.  “Time travel Stand, huh?”

        Josuke gapes at his phone and takes it away from his ear, staring at it.  There’s no way he heard that correctly.  None.  The world doesn’t waver.  “E-excuse y—”

        Running.  Other more noticeable noises.

        “Who’s a living expert on Stands that manipulate time?” Jotaro-san’s amused now. 

        He stops to think about his experience fighting Stand Users.  Thinks about the eyes he keeps feeling on him, even when it makes no sense.  “What’s the likelihood this is a distance Stand?”
        He glances over and sees the man dance out of the way of B3’s rush attack, glasses askew, and pull back the bowstring in a smooth, practiced motion.  He’s aiming directly at Josephine.  His heart stops and he almost doesn’t hear the reply.

        “Almost nothing,” his nephew responds immediately.  “That kind of power requires a lot to maintain, if Star Platinum or any of the ones I’ve fought or heard about are any indication.”  He pauses and then sounds thoughtful.  “Actually, all the ones I know about are close-range Power Stands.”

        “I keep feeling someone watching me,” Josuke explains.
        He hears the twang of the bow even above the howling of the wind, hears the desperate scream of his daughter and the crunch as the arrow strikes through Mercia.  He remembers the same panic, the same terror, with Koichi.
        He can’t interfere.
        It helps that he knows how this ends, because it’s the only thing keeping him from bolting to his daughter’s side.

        “How far in the future are you?” Jotaro-san asks, and when Josuke makes a noise of protest mutters his signature “yare yare daze”.  “I’m trying to calculate range,” he elaborates calmly.

        The problem is that when in the future he is makes almost no sense, given the whole dimension travel on top of everything else.  He tries to work it out.  It’s been about twenty-five years at this point since he was a student trying to find the asshole murderer in Morioh-cho (well, before the police badge joined the other pins in his collection) if he’s going by his own age, but only about…hang on, if he’s counting from the point he was at where he’s got a grandson, he’s in the future by nineteen years.

        His head’s starting to hurt.  Math is even harder when you’re trying to ignore the trauma your daughter’s going through, because stepping in would be worse than saving her friend.

        “Josuke.  Still there?” Jotaro asks.

        But if his nephew’s asking about this, it’s the furthest he’d gone that’s important.  So that’d be the first jump, to 1987.  Going by age, that’s thirty-nine years, or less if he goes with the date he left from.  “The most it’s been is thirty-nine years, though honestly it’s probably less,” he answers eventually, making a face.  He’d laughed along with Okuyasu when his teachers had told him he’d need math in his daily life.

        “Answer quicker next time.”  Jotaro-san replies, sounding annoyed.  He’s probably actually worried, not that he’d say so.  “Probably not your first jump.  If it’s that far out, there’s absolutely no way it can be long range, not with the amount of energy it’d take.  Even if the Stand was near you all the time.  How does the teleportation work?”

        He sees where his nephew’s going with this.  “It doesn’t look random, no.  I have a close call, I manage to avoid it, I get teleported.  Which means it’s not a remote Stand, because that’s a higher level of control than just a Stand would be capable of.”

        He hears another scream and can’t help but glance up.  The man has crossed the distance between himself and the three.  He apparently pulled the arrow out of Mercia and immediately plunged it into Sarde.  “So,” he whispers, trying to stay calm, “…find the User, beat him up, don’t be noticed in the past.”

        “I’d wish you luck,” Jotaro-san replies gruffly, “…But you don’t need it.”  He hangs up.

        “Thanks anyway, Jotaro-san,” he mutters into the wind as he puts the phone away.  And then he closes his eyes, because he feels a little dizzy.