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madimpossibledreamer~Dreamer~
PS: I haven't seen the latest ep yet, but I know what's coming and I'm not ready after a day like today.
Main Points:
Jojo's Bizarre Adventure/Buffy the Vampire Slayer AU
Chapter Summary: The fight with Pestilence comes to an end.
Word Count: 1419
Rating: Teen
Note: HERE THERE PROBABLY BE BUFFY/JJBA SPOILERS.
Whitney bites back a scream as the razor vines bite into her arm and weakly attempt to tug her away. She stumbles and falls just as the stinger goes through the fence where she’d been, and a clay hand misses her ankle. She scrambles along the ground as best as she can, but there’s only so much she can do when her body is screaming at her.
The terrified grip around her arm loosens, and she glances over just in time to see the Stand flicker. It doesn’t have an expression, because that’s impossible given the Stand’s anatomy, but the insistent, frantic way it’s pulling at her conveys the emotions it’s feeling just as well. It solidifies before her eyes, grip turning as strong as previous. It’s not that strong of a Stand, but the fact that it’s trying at all is a little endearing.
Its flickering, though…she glances over to see that the clay has engulfed the Englishman, coming after her slowly. He’d probably gotten grabbed again, leading to a much faster spread. Or something. She’s not entirely sure how it works, but if this all goes well, they won’t have to learn. She’s not sure what kind of willpower would be required to keep your Stand active when your mind is being taken over, but it probably won’t last much longer. Worse, the fact that he’s not completely braindead seems to be making a difference and not for the better—unlike the rest of the clay soldiers, he’s crawling at her, keeping himself out of the way of the Stand’s attacks. The others are capable of the tactic, given the ones that had run in panic, but for whatever reason it just hasn’t occurred to the others.
“Whatever you’re planning, you better do it quick!” she calls. It’s hard to breathe. It hurts.
“The last time we did this, Lotus Juice dropped the Stand into an acid pit with its new power!” Brown responds, sounding a little stressed, and with good reason. “I’m not sure if we can pull that off with Fitz like…”
He’s interrupted, probably by dodging more clay soldiers, but he doesn’t have to finish his sentence. The Kaiju Stand is moving at the same pace as most of its army, but now that it has her cornered without Simple Plan active, it doesn’t have to move quickly.
“Why are you all so useless? You’re our allies, act like it!” Antonia screams. “Whitney, I’ll get you!” She squeezes off another couple shots, and despite the fact that he’s now acting against them, Whitney hopes that Speedwagon isn’t one of those targets.
Whitney coughs, deep and wet and it just hurts. Something broke. Something important. She feels the stabbing pain in both sides of her chest. “No!” It’s a gamble, but she sees the manhole cover just a few inches from her scrabbling fingers. “Use Three Days Grace! Trapdoor!” With a flickering Lotus Juice’s weak help, she’s barely able to roll out of the way of another leg attempting to crush and/or pin her like a butterfly on a board, but now she’s trapped between that and the fence. Trying to squeeze past is an agony she doesn’t want to experience, but—she’s still alive, she might as well take the effort to move.
“You’re in the same spot!” Antonia yells, arguing.
“I won’t be for much longer if…” And then the leg moves sideways, just a little, and she can’t move anymore, words choking off with the pain.
“Three Days Grace!” It sounds like Antonia has decided to stop arguing. Hopefully she’s going to actually follow directions for once. She’s never been so excited about hearing the sound of gardening shears, but it doesn’t stop when she expects. Did Ellis create two sets of traps?
Whitney hears the sounds of the arrows smacking on the glass of the Stand’s side. They’re fairly rhythmic at first, but then they falter—so he was grabbed, too.
“Hey, ugly! I wonder how fragile you are, being made of glass and all!” Suddenly the voice of her partner is a lot closer. There’s a few bullets followed by the sound of—is that a knife on glass? Is Antonia actually attacking a kaiju with a knife—actually, don’t answer that, it’s exactly the sort of thing she’d do so it probably is exactly what is happening.
She glances up, and there she is. Antonia sees her looking and winks. Three Days Grace places one of the paper chains delicately on the fence behind Antonia. They hadn’t known before this fight that the traps could be placed on non-horizontal surfaces, and Antonia’s going to exploit that, but then, fights are the best place to learn new moves, aren’t they? You’re not going to be pushed to your limits (like she is, right now) in just practice.
But then, of course she would be trying to get the Stand’s attention, to get it to move. She’s forgotten one of the most important limitations of Three Days Grace. The trap can’t be placed underneath its target. The target has to move onto, or hit, the trap.
Three Days Grace has already moved out of view, but Antonia stays in place, dodging the attacks of the frustrated Stand with a sneer on her face. Whitney can see its reluctance and annoyance from the way it’s moving. It’s slow, so it’s missing, and it has a perfectly vulnerable prey within reach, but there’s another refusing to let it just do what it wants.
Just in time, Antonia ducks out of the way of the tail smacking against the fence and activating the trap, which turns into paper stones that crumble out of the way to reveal a horde of paper streamers that sweep out, knocking Antonia aside as she reaches for Whitney’s hand and picking Houston and the Stand up and carrying them along. It’s a very strange sensation to feel paper next to her arm and yet still feel the pressure of gallons of rushing water washing them away. That’s a new trap, too—Antonia’s certainly feeling creative today, isn’t she?
And then the ground disappears. Folds away like walking through some swinging doors. They’re not made of paper, but she catches a glimpse of the edges, ridged in paper as she falls.
And then Three Days Grace catches her arm, strong and determined, and she swings into the ‘wall’ created by the trap as the Stand falls below her. It catches a glancing blow with one of its legs, and between that and the collision she bites back a scream.
Three Days Grace hauls her out, barely getting her onto solid ground before it closes beneath. The clay has begun melting slowly off the bodies of the possessed, which have all fallen like puppets without strings.
Speedwagon isn’t going to recover in time.
But if the army is disappearing, the Stand acknowledged its loss. A statue across the way judders to a stop.
Whitney shivers. She’s cold.
“Hang on, hang on, Whitney. You’ll be fine!” Antonia yells, running over.
A second set of running footsteps. A face in view. Brown. He elbows past to place his hands on her chest, controlling his breathing. Hamon, perhaps? Still, he’s out of breath, possibly partially from the clay slowly melting off his shoulder. That affects his ability to use it, doesn’t it? The pain eases slightly, but it’s hard to breathe, still.
Antonia looks scared. She looks pissed off.
Houston can’t let her stay like that.
She reaches out a shaky hand and pats a balled-up fist. It takes effort she doesn’t entirely have, but she can’t let this continue. “Don’t cry. Wolfram & Hart contracts last after death, so I’ll see you again.”
“Shut up. Stop…” Antonia begins muttering.
Whitney speaks over her. It feels like every breath is being measured out, so her words are important. “Don’t trust Wolfram & Hart. If I’m a monster…” She trails off, not sure what she’s able to say here. Even destroying the body isn’t enough, she’s heard. Wesley’s body, supposedly, was destroyed, and he’d merely returned a few days later. “Don’t blame yourself,” she manages to Brown, voice rattling. “Guess I just didn’t deserve a miracle…”
Darkness.
New York has rumors about alligators in the sewers. London has one about a scorpion kaiju, despite all of the disbelievers who point out that there’s not even a good explanation such as pet alligators being flushed down toilets, but there are those who persist in their stories.
