entrancelogs | [closed] stone free I can't stay

Entry tags:

[closed] stone free I can't stay

Who: Jolyne and Josuke
Where: The Roof
When: May 31st
Rating: PG-13 because both of them are idiots
Summary: Before making any introductions to the rest of Wonderland, it's time for a family reunion.
The Story:

Jolyne's first day in Wonderland so far was mostly spent assuming this was a dream she'd wake up from. Why wouldn't it be? She's been through some real crap lately, so she can chalk it up to stress. That makes sense. Yup. Sure, it seems weird that this seemingly has fuckall to do with her current situation, but she's had weirder dreams before.

And since it's a dream, she's not really going out of her way to talk to anyone or interact with them because she'll wake up soon, right? Let's just leave well enough alone and it'll all work out. Or well, that was her strategy up until she saw some guy with really goofy hair and what she's pretty sure is a Stand. That's something she can't really leave alone.

Because what if the dream is the work of an enemy Stand? It wouldn't be the first time. Or what if Wonderland is some sort of enemy Stand? That's...not something that seems possible to her, but she's seen too many impossible things lately to rule it out. But luckily for her, the mystery guy seems willing to hear her out and follow her to the roof for a discussion. She just wanted somewhere quiet to discuss things, but also somewhere open, you know, just in case this turns badly.

“Look, I already told you I can see it, so let's cut to the chase. Is this your doing?”

He doesn't look like someone the priest would send after her, in fact, she's pretty sure whatever's happening next in Florida is between him and her, but still...this doesn't sit right with her. Why would there be a Stand user in her dream? But for now, she'll try and keep that confusion hidden while she glares at Josuke. This isn't her first bizarre encounter with another Stand user okay, she knows how this goes.

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Conversely, Josuke's first day in Wonderland had been spent running around trying to find Mr. Joestar because he should not be left alone with a baby. Or left alone at all. Fortunately, he'd managed to search the grounds without anybody insulting his hair, but the mansion itself was next and well...

Not that he'd gotten very far.

The closer he got to the mansion, the stranger things felt, so he'd summoned Crazy Diamond to keep an eye on his back as he explored. He was beginning to wonder if this was all the work of an enemy Stand, that maybe the baby had been part of some more elaborate trap when Jolyne had stopped him. He'd been put on edge by the fact she could see his Stand, but she seemed reasonable enough and he had faith in Crazy Diamond, so he'd followed her.

He meets Jolyne's glare with a look of confusion, his brows knitting together as he processes that question and then... folds his arms across his chest.

"How do I know you didn't do this?"

All she can do is roll her eyes at that. Really. Well, she could probably do more, but she's pretty immature, so there you go.

“If I did it, why would I be asking you if you did it? Besides, that's not what my Stand does.”

She doesn't see a problem with admitting she has a Stand. She already said she could see his, so it stands to reason that she has one too. That's how it works. As far as she knows anyway. And she's willing to trust Josuke's answer about not doing it. There's no real reason to go with it, just a gut feeling. And that hasn't steered her wrong before. Except with Gwess. But no one wants to talk about Gwess.

“But I wasn't sure. I've never seen a Stand user that would make something like this, so I had to ask.”

Whitesnake could, but this is definitely not Pucci's style. Absolutely not. And like she said, she doesn't think he'll resort to illusions so soon. She'd see through it, and more importantly, he has everything he wants, so why would he?

“Besides, you don't seem like someone who'd follow him.”

That hair's something all right, but nothing about Josuke screams Diospawn.

"Because you could be trying to throw me off."

Duh, Jolyne. But he gets the feeling she isn't lying, so he relaxes a little. Not entirely, because he doesn't know who she is besides the fact she's a fellow Stand user, but some.

"It's not like any Stand I've seen either. Doesn't mean it isn't, but it feels different.

He doesn't think he's alone in thinking that Stand business has a different air about it to whatever this is. This is a whole new level of weird, and while Bad Company had a similar level of foreboding when he couldn't see it, it doesn't feel dangerous. But he raises an eyebrow at Jolyne's remark.

"Him who?"

“This guy I'm chasing. He looks like a priest, but he doesn't act like any priest I've ever seen.”

There's a pained look on Jolyne's face as she explains. She shouldn't have mentioned him, not to a stranger, but it's too late now. She's always doing this, isn't she? Saying the wrong thing, doing the wrong thing, that's why...

She shakes her head to get rid of that train of thought. It won't help her. She just has to keep going. That's all she can do. Keep moving forward and when she finds Pucci, punch his stupid face in.

“Look, I'm going to tell you what he looks like, but if you see him, don't start shit with him, okay? He's a Stand user, and a dangerous one. He's...he's hurt some people close to me.”

It's probably obvious there's more, but it's a painful subject, so she's doing her best not to talk about it. And she's about to make a pretty big mistake, but she doesn't quite realize it yet.

“Like I said, he's dressed like a priest, and he's got some really weird hair now. Not goofy like yours, it's different. Like star shaped bangs. And his Stand looks sort of like a mummy that's way into S&M. If you see it, stay away. It can...it can steal Stands. And other things.”

It's not hard to see the pain on Jolyne's face, and that's enough for Josuke to pay complete attention to what she's saying. As she talks, his frown intensifies because while he doesn't know Jolyne, a Stand user using their power to hurt people is unfortunately very familiar to him. If it isn't people like Angelo, it's people like Hazamada and now, apparently, this priest.

He opens his mouth to ask about how it can possibly Stands when it hits him.

"The fuck did you say about my hair?!"

Everything else is gone, the sympathy he had for Jolyne, the confusion over Wonderland and everything else. Completely gone, replaced with red hot, blinding anger over something most people wouldn't even notice. His stance changes from relaxed, if guarded, to radiating intense anger as he slowly begins to advance.

You know, at this point in her life, Jolyne understands her father's terrible attempt at parenting. There are things she wished he'd done better, but she gets what he was trying to do. That being said, by the end of today, she'll have wished he gave her at least some advice like “if you ever meet your great uncle Josuke, don't talk about his hair.”

But since he didn't, she doesn't know about any of that. She's not even looking at him at the moment, she's busy glancing over the side of the roof at the rest of Wonderland.

“Nothing too bad, I mean you have to admit it's pretty goofy, right? It went out of style like years before I was born, so it's pretty old. If I knew my grandfather well enough to ask, he'd probably remember guys having hair like that, but nowadays, it's really out of place.”

She'll turn around to say more, but uh...shit, that doesn't look good. She can practically see the menacing sound effect starting to appear already. He looks pretty pissed and this definitely isn't something like Survivor, so it's a trigger, right? Did she just make it worse? And he's a Stand user, so shit, this won't go well. So she'll take a defensive stance and summon her own Stand.

“Stone Free!”

Her Stand quickly spins itself into existence using string from...her back or wherever the hell Stone Free gets string from when Jolyne doesn't seem to be falling apart.

“Man, I really didn't want to get into a fight today.”

While Jolyne is having her moment with the skyline, Josuke continues to advance and only gets angrier and angrier because she keeps talking. He's long since progressed past the point of being able to actually see anything, having gone blind with rage and is largely relying on remembering where Jolyne is to get to her.

The issue with having a literal hair-trigger temper, everyone.

"I don't give a rat's ass who you are, I'll kill anyone who talks shit about my hair!"

Sorry, Jolyne. Does he even realise Stone Free is there? We just don't know, but once he's close enough, at least where he thinks she is, he starts throwing punches and they're not exactly weak.

Oh man, she doesn't have a lot of options here. Or well, she does, but it's not like she wants to move, at the rate he's going, she's genuinely worried he'll punch his way over the edge and that would be bad. She doesn't want to spend her first day accidentally pissing someone off to the point where they fall to their death. And she could probably disable him a number of ways, but he's just mad, he doesn't really deserve some sort of crippling injury, so when in doubt...

“Jeez, I'm sorry I said anything. Just calm the hell down!”

She'll try and deflect the first punch with a kick while Stone Free mimics her kick, which would be aimed at Josuke's chest. Sorry buddy, this might suck, but it's better than any of the alternatives.

Josuke is strong, sure, but most of his strength comes from Crazy Diamond which he fortunately hasn't summoned. Nor is he in any real shape to dodge or deflect Stone Free's kick, taking the full brunt of the blow to the chest and getting knocked back. He stumbles backwards, falling over his own feet and ending up on his back, his head hitting the rooftop with a hard thud.

The blow to the head and the fact Jolyne didn't keep going on about his hair is enough to knock some sense into Josuke, who sits up with a groan. He reaches back to check the back of his head, wincing when he finds a large bump already forming. Crossing his legs, he folds his arms over his chest and looks up at Jolyne with a frown on his face.

"I won't forgive anybody who doesn't shut up about my hair, but you apologised. So I'm sorry too."

Which in itself is weird enough, but this whole thing is strange enough that they have to stick together, right? She doesn't seem like one of Akira's Stand users, and something about her tells him she can be trusted.

"Josuke Higashikata."

Well, that was...fast. Not that Jolyne's complaining but considering how long her fight against Westwood went on, she was already prepared to spend the day trying to beat some sense into Josuke. So instead, she'll breathe a sigh of relief and send Stone Free back to wherever Stands go. Inside her mind? The Stand dimension? We just don't know.

“Jolyne Kujo. And sorry, again. The last time I was in a fight like that, the other guy wouldn't go down. Hey, I didn't break anything, did I? I wasn't trying to, but...”

If it happened, she's not exactly the group healer. She can stitch things together, but it's kinda gross so uh, don't be too hurt Josuke. Okay?

For a moment, it doesn't click because honestly? Why would it? Instead, Josuke shakes his head. "Nah, I'm okay. Bit of a bump but it'll fade."

Wait. Hold up a second.

"Did you say 'Kujo?' "

He narrows his eyes at her and... There's sort of a resemblance? That plus the Stand can only mean one thing, right?

"You don't know a Jotaro Kujo, do you?"

She can't really do anything but be confused when Josuke asks about that. She didn't have time to read her dad's entire disc, and even if she did, she wouldn't. She doesn't want to see his entire life, that's creepy. Why would anyone want to do that? Plus, there's some stuff she didn't really feel a need to replay. So she really has no clue why her dad would know some high school kid with some goofy ass hair.

“Yeah, he's...he's my dad.”

At the risk of being repetitive, she looks upset again. Not because Josuke asked or anything, but because bringing him up just reminds her of what's going on back home, and how even though the disc should be on its way to the Speedwagon Foundation if they haven't gotten it yet, it's still a touchy subject. Which is probably why she'll turn around and throw questions back at him.

“Why are you asking? What's he to you?”

It's quiet enough up here on the roof, but when those words leave Jolyne's mouth, every other sound in Wonderland falls silent as he tries to process. That can't be possible, she barely looks older than him and he knows Jotaro is older than him but there's no way he's old enough to have a daughter this age.

"Huh?!"

That's all he has for a moment.

"But -- How?"

Eloquent. As his brain processes that information, he gives a yell when a certain connection is made because that can't be possible. That's even more unlikely than Jotaro being a dad, right? Right?

"That means you're -- You're my niece?!"

Well when a marine biologist and an unnamed almost nonexistent character love each other very much...

“What do you mean how? Wait...”

Holy shit, what. She can't even start processing this. She doesn't have an uncle. Especially not one who looks like he's still in high school. And that hair...it's just...well, is it possible? It could be. She really should've read more of that disc but ugh, it's like reading her dad's diary.

“Your niece? How the hell are you my uncle?”

Does someone have a family tree around (minus the DIO section) because she would really like an explanation here.

Well, when a moron cheats on his wife with a Japanese woman....

Josuke doesn't answer for a moment because he's too busy freaking out. First he ends up in some strange place that has magic closets, then he meets another Stand user who ends up insulting his hair and now he finds out Jotaro, apparently, has a daughter? Who is roughly his age? What the fuck.

"My father is Jotaro's grandfather. I didn't know that side of the family even existed until a few weeks ago, when Jotaro came to Morioh because they found out about Mr. Joestar's affair."

He's rather nonchalant about the explanation, even if he's freaking out inside. Until he groans, anyway. "This doesn't even make any sense, Jotaro would've had to have been like, 12 when you were born for you to be that age!"

Okay, so Jotaro's grandpa. That's not that hard to make sense of. She knows she has grandparents in Japan (if she's met any family, it's probably them), and there was that old guy in Jotaro's disc, so the old guy is Josuke's dad. Probably. Okay. She's...sort of got this.

Except the confusion and slight anger on her face kinda show that the sort of isn't as close to having it as she'd like because what the fuck. She gets why her dad did what he did, but she has family that are Stand users. They could've helped. She could've asked. Knowing what she knows now she wouldn't have dragged them into her mess because they might have...okay, not thinking about that right now. But the point is she should've fucking been told at some point.

“Don't be gross. He was in college when I was born. I remember he was off writing his thesis or something when I was little. Of course, I didn't know what that was, but that's why he took off.”

She knows he probably had more reasons, but she still can't help but be a little bitter about that.

“To the country...side...”

That's a little stilted because she's realizing something. Something that might've come up at some point during some conversation or argument she remembers her parents having.

“Wait, Morioh's in the country, isn't it?”

Understanding or not, she's going to kick her dad's ass if he was off visiting her secret uncle all this fucking time and never told her.

“But how old does that make you?”

She's seriously confused now. There's a picture forming here, but he's not old enough for Jotaro to have visited the guy when she was younger, and how old would his dad have been when he had him if that's the case?

Every new piece of information they both reveal adds more to the big picture, but the picture is the size of one of those space billboards and they've got like, 5 pieces and no box to reference. Confusion is plainly visible on his face as Jolyne explains since he remembers Jotaro mentioning something about his thesis when he couldn't get in contact with him one day. Surely he would've mentioned if he had a daughter, though.

He opens his mouth to point that fact out when Jolyne asks her question, and he nods the affirmative.

"I'm sixteen, and yeah it is."

He frowns, and debates mentioning knowing about Jotaro's thesis since Jolyne looks like she's getting upset. Is it his place to tell her things her own father apparently didn't? He doesn't exactly have a frame of reference, since Mr. Joestar is clearly out of his mind, even if saving the baby like that was pretty cool of him.

But this isn't about his issues with his own father, it's about the entire mess Jotaro has created.

"Jotaro came to Morioh since Mr. Joestar's wife was pissed at him for having an affair. I guess it was the first time she ever got angry with him in their entire marriage? I think Jotaro said it was 61 years or something."

He still feels awful about causing problems for that side of the family, and even worse if Jotaro was keeping him a secret from his daughter for whatever reason.

"I dunno if I'm supposed mention it, but Jotaro said he'd be working on his thesis in his spare time while he was in Morioh. But if you were born while he was in college..."

His head hurts, and he groans again.

“If you're sixteen and he's still working on his thesis, then you're from the past.”

It fits together nicely like that, doesn't it? Except for the fact that this is some seriously weird shit, but...it makes sense. And that's more than she can say about some of the weird shit back home, so why not? Weather could turn people into snails, Pucci's going to use some sort of zombie plant baby to reach Heaven, and Josuke's from the past. Who exactly did she piss off to earn this sort of life, anyway?

“Which means you must be like...thirty at this point.”

Sorry, pointing out the stupid shit makes it less headache inducing. And she'd ask if he still had the stupid hair, but no, let's not go down that route. And she's trying not to go down the other train of thought either. She has an uncle out there, who her dad was visiting, and he didn't recognize her name. Understanding or not, she can't help but feel incredibly slighted about that. Thanks Jotaro.

There's a lot Josuke could focus on in the few sentences Jolyne said. For instance, he could focus on the fact she thinks he's from the past. Or he could focus on the 'still' since that makes it sound like Jotaro's been done for a long, long time. Instead, he focuses on something else entirely:

"Thirty?"

Hey. Wait. Despite his little, far too loud outburst, something else hits him. Jotaro knows him, and as far as he knows, he's in Joseph's will, therefore the rest of the family should know about him too, yet Jolyne didn't. He doesn't really want anything to do with Joseph, at least not in a fatherly capacity, but surely at some point over the years, he, or they, reached out?

"You didn't know who I was."

Yeah, he's gonna let that hang in the air.

“Yeah, I...”

Let her think about how to put this one. It's not a fun subject for her at all. And she knows it's probably not a fun subject for Josuke anyway, so the question is how to make it not fun, that's not happening, but less bad for everyone.

So she'll go back to looking at the rest of Wonderland again because ugh, dealing with her dad is bad enough, she doesn't know if she can look her great uncle (what the hell) in the face and explain all that.

“He doesn't talk about family much. Not with me, and I don't know how much he shared with mom. He's pretty closed off like that.”

Unless he decides to show up, take all the mortal blows and then drop some world shattering shit on people. Then he can't shut up.

For the longest time, Josuke had made his peace with the void represented by his father and not knowing that side of the family. As much as he's a teenaged boy who sometimes bristles under parental supervision, he wouldn't trade his mother for anything, not even the knowledge of who his father is. But then along comes Jotaro, with news of his paternal side of the family and suddenly his entire life is thrown upside down.

At least he decided how he wanted to deal with Mr. Joestar pretty quickly, even if the old man did end up looking pretty cool.

"We haven't spoken that much. He seems more interested in Stands and working on his thesis. I thought he was just busy, but maybe he's always been like that."

Josuke just kinda shrugs, because yeah, he's pissed at Jotaro on both their behalves but he's not the one who had to have Jotaro for a father.

“Yare yare dawa.”

After that exclamation (which really says a lot doesn't it?), she'll just shake her head because it's not like there's anything else she can say at that one. Jotaro's just Jotaro, and she'll never say this out loud, but part of her is glad that he was apparently just as detached and not there for Josuke as he was for her. It's a messed up thought and she feels bad for thinking it, but better than she would've felt if he'd been hanging out with Josuke and Josuke's friends all the time or anything like that.

Anyways, let's not talk about Mr. Dolphin anymore. He's a shitty subject for Jolyne anyway, even if she has a better idea of him now. That disc wasn't exactly a miracle worker, so there's probably always going to be issues here.

“Okay, so headaches aside, we're cool now, right?”

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[closed] stone free I can't stay

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