Jojo's Bizarre Adventure: Shadowed Suspicion Chapter 342

[madimpossibledreamer]

Main Points:

Jojo's Bizarre Adventure/Buffy the Vampire Slayer AU
Chapter Summary: Of course, being on Rush's trail isn't any safer than actually physically encountering him.
Word Count: 1106

Rating: Teen
Note: HERE THERE PROBABLY BE BUFFY/JJBA SPOILERS
warnings: canon-typical body horror ahoy (moreso jojo’s, though Buffy has its share of body horror too)

 

         When Willow blinks, she’s suddenly standing on the other side of the couch, there’s a trickle of blood down her cheek, and her eye hurts. She finds herself finishing her sentence despite herself, in spite of the fact that something clearly happened. “Dr. Kujo?”
         Kakyoin, next to her, straightens instantly. “Emerald Splash!” he calls, and then the wall with the fireplace is just...gone. In a rush of green.
         “Thanks for the warning,” Jotaro grunts. It’s unclear if it’s a thanks to her, because she’d been the one to alert them to...whatever this is, or a complaint about his friend’s attack.
         “I don’t suppose this would happen to be one of those few occasions where the Emerald Splash actually happened to fully destroy the enemy, would it?”
         “After your boasting?” he sneers—but then, they’ve all made fun of each other, at one time or another. “You did. For once. Think it was an eye.”
         “An...an eye?” Willow, personally, thinks she might be sick.
         “Yeah. Eye itself was normal, but the nerves and blood vessels weren’t.” Jotaro takes a deep breath, putting a hand into a pocket casually. “Sharp like razors. It tried to burrow into your eye.”
         Okay, now Willow’s pretty sure. Though this isn’t the first time Jotaro’s saved her life with the timestop thing. “Thank you,” she manages, shaken.
         If anything, Jotaro’s glare just gets worse. “Don’t mention it,” he insists. “We should stick close.”
         “If any of the neighbors decide to investigate, they’ll be in danger, so we should probably do something…” Halfway through her babble she realizes that she’s the only one who can really do anything. “Right, sorry, um. Fortunately, glamours aren’t too much work, though I haven’t had too much practice so it might end up looking a little odd.”
         “How do those work?” Kakyoin asks quietly, as they slowly and carefully move cautiously in the direction of Jotaro, not getting too close to any of the shelves just in case there’s more.
         “You’re just changing perceptions, rather than the actual world, so you don’t need too much magical energy.” She’s a little out of practice, so it’s not quite that easy, but fortunately it doesn’t look like either of them notices. They’re not too familiar with magic anyway, she reasons, so that’s probably why.
         “Fascinating.” And then Kakyoin, of course, has to use Hierophant Green’s tendrils to probe the wall. Of course, it being physical is part of the illusion, because it hadn’t been that much more work and it’d be more realistic if, say, they were about to get ambushed. If they could trick an enemy into thinking they had to go around, rather than just moving through the illusionary wall, it could save them some precious time.
         They’d been quieter, but apparently that didn’t stop it from annoying Jotaro anyway. “Stop talking and keep searching.” He’s more terse—maybe he is actually worried, or something? Looking at him and how casually he’s glancing around with his Stand, hands in his pockets, it’s hard to imagine, but then, maybe he’s pretty good about hiding it.
         Kakyoin laughs. “I can multitask, you know. It’s not as if I can see, exactly, but I can feel, and if it’s roughly the same size and consistency as a normal eyeball, then my net should catch a ‘glimpse’ of any more, sooner or later…”
         Another blink, and suddenly Jotaro is standing right next to them, with Star Platinum holding a disintegrating green tentacle and what, yeah, actually looks like a blood vessel in one hand. Except unlike, she assumes, normal blood vessels, it starts turning into a puddle of goo. But at least it looks vaguely inert and not alive?
         “You were saying.” Hilariously, it sounds like he’s just continuing on the conversation like it’s completely normal and not urgent in any way.
         “It’s somewhat intelligent. It didn’t just sever Hierophant’s tendril; it started looking for the source.” Kakyoin responds, by the look of it, by suddenly making more of a net, looping tendrils around and over each other in a difficult pattern to make it harder to follow. Like one of those puzzles.
         “Or maybe it’s being directed from a distance?” Willow suggests. “It’s not like the targeting was perfect, or it wouldn’t have had to follow the tendril so precisely—the moment it got in the room, it would have spotted them and could strike directly.”
         Jotaro’s grimace deepens, and she’d almost say he flinched. Like he’s shaken. “Keep your attention here. Doesn’t matter where the jackass is; if he’s out of range we should concentrate on not getting killed here.” She doesn’t respond immediately, so he adds, “Are we clear?”
         “I was just thinking—I might be able to trace him if we had something of his that wouldn’t kill us or turn into goo, but if he’s as good as we think he probably wouldn’t have left anything like that, and there’s no way I’m going to be able to cast a spell on one of the eyeballs without it making a murder attempt,” she reassures him, and he looks a little more relaxed, so maybe he had been worried after all. “Why is it turning into goo? Is he messing with acid again? Should I be ready to heal—” Uh-oh. Once she’s stuck in babble mode, there’s no turning it off.
         Jotaro pulls down the hat. “It’s not acid.” He shows her Star Platinum’s hands and—oh, yeah, that would make sense. She hadn’t wanted to assume that normal things would affect Stands the same way it would something physical and non-psychic in origin, but apparently it would. Even if Stands are maybe more durable. That’s something else she’ll have to ask later, when it’d be more appropriate and they’re not in danger of dying any second. She can switch it to internal babble, maybe. Just so it’s not distracting people when they’re in the middle of trying to save everyone’s lives, including hers. “I’m pretty sure it’s natural decomposition processes, maybe sped up a bit. Like this Rush guy was keeping the eye and everything attached to it in stasis, and when that ended, the bacteria were free to act.”
         “Biology nerd,” Kakyoin states fondly, before stiffening. “I may have found the rest of the eyeballs. They’re marching this way.” Which may sound absurd, but then, most of her life (and their lives, she suspects) up until this point are just one long line of absurd things, so it’ll fit right in.
         Willow recognizes that kind of ready stance. That’s the look Buffy gets before she comes up with a plan and kicks some butt.