Jojo's Bizarre Adventure: Shadowed Suspicion Chapter 156

[madimpossibledreamer]

Someone needs to tell Buffy the correct terminology for person with a Stand is User or Stand User because this is just starting to sound awkward
Also featured: the entire reason I could totally see Buffy being Captain America.

Main Points:
Jojo's Bizarre Adventure/Buffy the Vampire Slayer AU
Chapter Summary: Buffy continues the fight with Three Days Grace.
Word Count: 1122
Rating: Teen (Buffy|Jojo's level violence)
Note: HERE THERE PROBABLY BE BUFFY/JJBA SPOILERS

           The flames start to lick at the roots, but they’re moving sluggishly.  There’s still a disconnect in her mind between ‘paper’ and ‘actually dangerous beyond papercut’, but she’s doing her best to keep it in mind, because not taking this seriously might just seriously wound her.  It does, however, become spontaneously a lot easier, because when she finally gets through one half of the link, she feels just the hint of heat from near her feet.  It doesn’t feel super warm, but it’s not worth underestimating it, either.
           And here I thought my life was weird with just vampires, magic, hell goddesses, possible aliens…now it’s deadly paper.
           At least the Stand isn’t moving to throw any more traps, because she doesn’t know how she would deal with buzzsaws or more lasers or an electrified, on fire tree.  In fact, it’s not moving at all, which might mean it’s passed out, finally, but apparently that doesn’t get rid of any of the traps still present.
           She tries the sensible thing—because sure, she’ll be trailing a tree branch behind her like Cavewoman Buffy until she can cut that off, too but that’s an improvement on her current situation.  Except nothing happens.  If she wasn’t watching closely she would’ve entirely missed the moment when her new awesome advertised as ‘can cut anything’ sword doesn’t cut anything but just…phases through the tree limb like there’s nothing there.
           It would be easy enough to blame it on her sword, to claim false advertising, but that’s far too easy.  It’s probably another rule of the Stand.  Removing the trap from the point where it’s set is impossible.  She’d even go so far as to bet you can’t just tear the entire chunk of concrete up and throw it, or whatever.  It can go off, see: Fugo.  She was able to set a landmine off with the other tree limb, so it’s not like a trap has to catch a human or anything else living or breathing to actively go off.  She’s also able to hack through the links on the chain, so obviously you can do damage to the trap itself.  It’s too bad she doesn’t have a fire extinguisher on her.  But at least she can buy herself some time.
           She swings toward the tree, using it as a springboard to swing herself up and onto the tree limb.  She’s still stuck in an on-fire tree, but she’s got a little more time to hack at the chain.  It’s a little more difficult when she’s not dangling, making it straight and an easy target, and it takes her a few moments to find the link she’s already damaged.  She’d half hoped the extra strain from swinging herself around would break it, but she’s not that lucky.  It does look like it’s bent just a little more, so she straightens the chain as best she can, gets a good angle, and takes a swing.
           For a second, she thinks she’s misjudged it, had been doing it wrong or something, because the sword goes smoothly through the other side, and then she realizes it’s not quite as easy as all that.  The feel is like the one if she took the best pair of scissors they had and tried to cut through tissue paper.  And then the rest of the links start to tear, like they’ve been soaked in water, and start falling down like confetti.  The slowly growing smell of burning wood is suddenly gone.
           She glances down at the Stand, and it’s not fading, like she feared.  It’s not dead.  But something else is happening.  It looks and sounds like yellow lightning, playing over the Stand’s form.  It’s not the electric trap repurposed.  That had been a more natural looking blue.  And there are rings of the same color, closing in, one after the other…That’s definitely reminding her of something, only she can’t place it.
           “What the hell did you think you were doing?” Severin yells, and she hears the sound of pounding feet before she sees him round the corner and sprint to her.  “You were doing so well.  You could’ve finished her.”  The way he’s looking over her in concern contrasts sharply with the casual disregard for life she hears in his voice—because he is, she’s utterly certain, advocating for the death of their enemies, like it’s Faith all over again.
           A variety of different responses run through her head, including excuses (“being burnt like a witch in Salem”) to outright lies (“Slayers can’t kill humans”), but she discards them all, because in the end she has to know what he’s planning, and it’s not like she hasn’t said it right before the fight, anyway.  “She was human, according to my Slayer senses.”
           He sighs.  Not dark and contemptuous, like she’d been expecting.  Disappointed, maybe.  She thinks about it, but can’t honestly decide if that’s better or worse.  “I don’t know how that matters.  She said she was from Wolfram & Hart.  They don’t have human compassion.  Their contracts supposedly involve signing away their souls.  They’re as good as demons already.”  Okay, that faux-reasonable tone he’s taking is definitely worse than if he actually sounded insane.  “So why should we not treat them as the monsters they already are?”
           “So you’re willing to become a monster, just like them?  If everyone thinks that way, we’ll end up with no humans left.”  Someone has to take the higher ground, and if it’s her, so be it.  “And before you try to argue that you have nothing left to lose, you’re wrong, because you’re starting to get a friend, and there’s so much future potential that hasn’t happened yet.”  An entire untapped place never before seen, with so many different places it could go.
           “What a good thing I’m an anomaly, then,” he responds, and there’s the darkness she’d been expecting.
           “There’s a reason Minority Report was a bad idea.”  She’s not usually one to make the movie references, but why not, she’ll take a leaf out of Xander’s book for once.  “People aren’t machines.  They always have the capacity to do something to surprise you.”  A reminder and a warning, all rolled into one.
           “I’ll keep that in mind.”  That smile is downright sinister, but at least she’s not the clueless blonde in the movie, and she can fight back.  “Come on, let’s get back to Fugo.”
           She can’t get the thought out of her head.  What you do to the Stand happens to the person with the Stand, sure.  She’d already established that.  But she’d been nowhere near the Stand, and couldn’t have done whatever it was that was done anyway, so…did it work the other way around, too?  What had Montreux done?