madimpossibledreamer

Main Points:

Jojo's Bizarre Adventure/Buffy the Vampire Slayer AU
Chapter Summary: Willow makes her move, and no one, including her, is prepared.
Word Count: 1129

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)

         Willow has a worry-filled minute of them fighting as if absolutely nothing has changed, even though Jotaro and Kakyoin are tense, but not in a nervous way. More like a Buffy warrior-like way. Most of it is panicking. Way back when this all started, when Althenea was sharing that initial vision of the future, the one where Xander died, she vaguely remembers having thought how this was bad for her ‘no magic’ resolution. And it’d be easy to just say ‘oh, it wasn’t my fault, it just happened, because I’m not going to let us die’, but. She’s gotta be honest with herself. If she’d really been too worried about that, she would’ve said ‘sorry, I’m not going out in the field again’. It’s not like she tripped and suddenly found herself here, and she has to remind herself of that again, because it’s that, more than the magic, that’s the problem. Because magic makes things easy. Or, well, easier, not to forget the fact that there’s a flock of eyes trying to steal theirs. But she doesn’t worry, doesn’t question if she’s doing the right thing, just has to look up the right spell and collect the right ingredients and she can have anything she wants, and she’s one of the strongest witches in the world, if not the strongest (no one would tell her, probably not wanting it to go to her head, but she still has vague impressions from when she went all Dark Willow), so she was indispensable. No worries about not fitting in when she had a very clear role.
         Thinking about it, that’s probably what was messing with Xander, especially with the stuff about his overall vision (and ugh she’d jumped so quick to ‘magic can solve this’ there, too), but maybe all of them, since they weren’t supposed to be the front lines people anymore. But she doesn’t have the time to finish that thought. Because maybe she’s stalling a bit, worried about this, but at the same, she chooses. That’s probably as good a grouping as they’re going to get, and they’ve had one too many close calls with cuts, and they’re all pretty good as far as stamina goes but it’s running out.
         Hopefully improv gesture and word-based magic is good enough, because right now, that’s all she has. Jotaro pulls Star Platinum back closer, one of the nerves hitting the pins on his hat and getting misdirected (lucky he has those, Willow reflects). “Okay, Jotaro, now!”
         She doesn’t see him stop time. Well, maybe that’s part of the point, because Jotaro’s the only one who gets to see that kind of thing. It’s lucky he seems like a pretty cool person. She’d say maybe it makes her the messed up one, but it’s more of the case that she’s seen a lot of the worst of humanity and demons and doesn’t have to use her imagination to say that some really messed up stuff could happen with stopping time, and no one would even know.
         One moment she’s finishing her sentence. She doesn’t even have the time to blink before the next moment she’s aware of, and Kakyoin is breathing in a little shakily.
         “Are you all right?” She’s a little concerned, because nothing fazes this man. “I didn’t do too much damage to your Stand or anything?”
         “What did you do?” Yeah, he’s a little freaked. But hopefully that’s just the fact that it was kind of unexpected, even though she warned them, rather than wound-shock.
         “How long?” Jotaro interrupts, intelligently not getting anywhere near the semi-contained area surrounded by Hierophant’s tentacles, even though he’s definitely started withdrawing them, and for pretty good reason.
         “A couple minutes? At least, that’s how long it usually takes for real life. I’m not sure how closely the spell is replicating it, or how much of it worked during the time stop. But it actually did go off, so I’m guessing it did? I don’t know; I’ve never done this before.” Well, Jotaro does look mostly annoyed and a little intrigued at her answer. Probably partly because she’s getting closer to Babble Mode, and the man seems to like his conversations succinct. Given Xander’s description, though, maybe the emotional spread is closer to 50/50 and it’s just not quite showing properly because of how Jotaro exists.
         The eyeballs are moving slowly, floating around in the same direction they had been before, the occasional tentacle from Kakyoin’s Stand floating in the same way. A couple of them have attempted to course correct and propel themselves toward the group, but none of them have worked out yet that they have to move kind of like squids if they actually want to get anywhere. Currently, they’re just kind of flailing around and the motions look like they’re panicking a bit at how even the slightest movement gets them rotating. At least none of them have lungs or need to breathe.
         It takes a few minutes before air bubbles start to surface. They really can’t move their veins or arteries properly now, and some of the visible capillaries on the eyeballs have started to pop like gruesome fireworks as the eyeballs themselves start to shrivel. Okay, Willow had seen the announcements from NASA and other scientists that had said dying from being exposed to the vacuum of space isn’t actually as gruesome as commonly depicted, but it still looks awful. Pretty effective, though. It’s lucky the entire Slayer Network was cool with her siphoning off a little energy from all of them to pull this off. Maybe it’s a good thing it was so gory, though—she’s actually getting to see the real consequences and given what it looks like, even if it was to save their lives, she’s not super tempted to do it again. Jotaro’s watching carefully, but she can’t work out if it’s a ‘ooh that’s interesting in a biology nerd’ way or if he’s worried about a few having escaped.
         “Missed a few, but down to manageable levels. Well done, Willow,” Kakyoin praises her, casually spearing an eye or two on Hierophant’s tendrils. Her emotions are a confusing mix of warmth, confusion, and a little irritation (if he had that trick, why hadn’t he pulled it out sooner, before coming to the conclusion that it’d probably just wind up involving mutual stabbing, and Kakyoin’s more vulnerable given that the eye’s animated by weird power and they didn’t know how effective damaging it would be and didn’t want to risk it on a possible mutual lance-perforation, so it’s understandable, really).
         “Yeah, it worked. We shouldn’t split up just in case, though,” Jotaro acknowledges, and Willow would be more hurt if she didn’t remember the number of traps Rush had set up last time.