Jojo's Bizarre Adventure: Shadowed Suspicion Chapter 215

[madimpossibledreamer]

Main Points:
Jojo's Bizarre Adventure/Buffy the Vampire Slayer AU
Chapter Summary: Dio is a dangerous opponent.
Word Count: 1006
Rating: Teen (Buffy|Jojo's level violence)
Note: HERE THERE PROBABLY BE BUFFY/JJBA SPOILERS

        Fitz had, at the beginning, a bit of a reputation to maintain.  He was the cynical type, the one who complained about everything and expected everything to go wrong.  To be fair, that had been his experience for far too long.  It was too easy to claim that nothing good happened because that had been his experience.  He’d kept that up even after he needed to act, uncomfortable with how close he’d become to Xander, and so quickly too.
        Very quickly into this new fight, he starts to wonder whether he picked the wrong time to become an optimist.
        Oh, it’s not that the two of them aren’t working in lovely synchronization, moving like they’d rehearsed a choreographed dance to perfection.  He’s felt this before, with Grace, though it’s not as if he’d been using Lotus Juice at the time.  He’s learned so many more tricks with LJ, too, and both Johan and Pretender are in top form.  All the fear is gone, with every trace smoothed away as if it had never been.  True, he’s not taunting Dio now, but he’s also not acting rashly out of fear, either.  All the rash, shaky movements are gone now.  He’s simply…going with the flow, Fitz supposes.
        Dio breaks their guard, sometimes, with a well-placed taunt or two, and Jojo doesn’t panic.  He barely even seems to react to the words.  Not like he had been doing before.  He just intervenes, when he can, and trusts Fitz to do the same when it’s his turn the line.  It’s not even that he’s just turned off his emotions, either.  He’s just calm.  Admittedly, it’s an eerie sense of calm, even as it’s reassuring.
        For one thing, they learn quickly that Lotus Juice can affect water to at least counteract Dio’s freezing effect, though he doesn’t have the time to analyze whether it’s a subset of his Stand’s usual healing powers or yet another skill drawn out in the middle of battle.  It’s simply a matter of using it, keeping a close eye on his remaining ammo, and refilling when he has to do so, though there’s definitely a component where he’s unarmed during that.  It was dangerous enough the first time, and Johan definitely has a bleeding wound on his chest where he’d had to block using Pretender.
        They can’t keep up this string of close calls, though.  Something’s got to give.  At first, Dio had appeared frustrated, only obvious in a sudden escalation of the physical strength poured into his attacks, but that’s quickly enough transitioned to a dangerous thoughtfulness.  He might not know, directly, that Stands are a thing, but he’s demonstrated he can actually respond to their position, which is odd as they don’t, technically speaking, exist in the real world.  His ability to dodge Pretender is the only thing that’s saved him from an existence better suited to an urn.
        The thing was, Fitz had been happy, had rejoiced even. Because he'd been overconfident.  True, fear can paralyze, but it can also temper one’s ego, or counteract vampiric allure.  Dio was obviously not just a normal vampire, and training against a few in the graveyard had not been nearly enough to prepare him to fight Dio. Then again, he's fairly sure very little would be.
        Dio is, simultaneously, one of the most poised people he's ever fought, let alone vampires, which indicates a deep familiarity with the extent of his powers, and extremely quick-thinking, probably to the point of being paranoid.  It's quick enough to determine that a fair part of Dio's training when it came to fighting came from, what was that phrase, the school of hard knocks?  In this particular use of the phrase, very apropos.  Oh, there were formal bits added on after the fact, likely once he'd been adopted and was in training to be a gentleman.  In general, though, he was used to street fighting, ruthlessly following up on any perceived opening with vicious attacks that didn't affect any semblance of following any kind of 'sporting rules'.  His goal is solely to maim, wound, kill.
        Fortunately, it seems both of his opponents likewise know this game of blood.  Admittedly on Fitz's part, it hadn't been particularly long, but one had to learn fast or wind up a corpse.  And Jojo had definitely seemed confident enough, and willing to punch straight through your average vampire with ease.  Even more, he seemed particularly opposed to the continued existence of a vampire.  But before, well.  Before he'd been intimidated.  Now, there's symmetry, both similar to and different from the feeling he gets from Dio, in the shelf-confident way Johan moves now. If Fitz had to put a name to said difference, he would name it kindness. As similarly merciless as Johan is being toward Dio, the same doesn't extend to the blond, where, necessary or not, he's definitely protective. LJ getting hurt had definitely shaken him up, it seems.  It's slightly amusing; they've come so far since their initial fight--and it seems Xander's forgotten entirely about the time he'd pulled off one of LJ's limbs. Still, it's sweet of him.
        And perhaps he’d been a little too distracted, or maybe he’d just been right about not being able to keep up this stalemate indefinitely, because the next time he goes to refill one of them isn’t quick enough.  Suddenly he’s caught in a tangled web.  He’d suspect a giant spider out of Tolkien’s fertile imagination, if not for the way the strands move of their own accord, wrapping around his neck like Whisper’s violent cousin and plunging into his own skin, seeking his blood vessels, from the feel of it.  He tries to call out a warning to Jojo only to see him, furious.  It’s hard to tell whether the slight red tint in the man’s eyes is due to the lack of oxygen or not.  All he manages is a single gasp or wheeze.
        “The monkey thinks he can stand against a god?  Useless, useless,” Dio laughs, and everything goes black—