Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Sami dreamed of a soul, and a soul dreamed of her.

It was lanky, though not very tall, with numerous lavender limbs emerging  from the sides and bottom of its pill-body. A neckless head perched on the body, tilted at a mischievous angle and producing a low chatter from its vertical lips. Were it to have anything but compound eyes crammed on its head and a pair of golden mandibles to emote with, Sami had the vague yet persisting notion that it’d be giving her a relived smile. Ribbons sprouted from the marbled red-and-blue pill-body as she dreamed, and bundled some of its purple appendages together into a set of articulate arms.

It crossed its newfound arms over its chest, and a similarly created pair of legs tapped a foot beneath it. It was waiting, that much was clear. Yet, what was not as clear, infuriatingly enough for Sami, was what it was waiting for.

“What do you want?” She asked, meaning to yell but only able to muster the single loudness of a thought.

The same things you do, came the reply. It wasn’t really said, it just happened in the way that could only make sense within the walls of a dream.

“Thank you. That’s very helpful.” She said, entirely truthfully, before shaking her head and correcting herself. “Wait, no it wasn’t! I- what did I ask you, again?”

The winds of the soul’s sigh didn’t come from its own mouth, instead seeming to be pushed from the crimson background it floated in. We’ve had this conversation about 45 times, Sami. I’m sure that it won’t make a difference, but in regards to the question you were supposed to ask before you got sidetracked, I was waiting for- it glanced down at a turquoise watch that hadn’t been there before the instant it looked- well, right about now. Go join the upper blue.

“What are you talking about?” Sami, adrift in her own scape of purple.

The figure tilted its head back into a neutral position, and stared at her with each and every one of its golden compound eyes, and flared its mandibles wide to speak in a voice that wasn’t its own.

“Wake up.”

Sami Sapna, age 19, dutifully did just that to find herself far from being suspended in a formless world with an inhuman figure that seemed to mildly resent her. Rather, she found herself suspended in a math lecture with a professor that also seemed to mildly resent her. She blinked herself back to consciousness with a quiet groan even as the details of her dream slipped away to be replaced with knowledge of the setting she’d decided to nap in. As her eyes focused, she let her gaze trail to her sides to find and thank the person who’d saved her from entirely sleeping through a (probably) important class. Yet, what she found were two columns of entirely empty chairs sweeping away from her with no sign of her savior in sight. She massaged one eye with her fist blearily and brought her open eye’s gaze to her front to scan the board, only to have it land on… a cat. Standing on her desk, self-importance radiating from every inch of its posture, and glaring at her with far too much intelligence in its eyes.

Sami’s massaging hand moved to her other eye as she wondered if she’d woken from one dream to find herself in another one entirely.

The cat huffed, emitting a little blast of steam, and that small movement was enough to make Sami’s sleep-addled mind realize that the thing before her wasn’t really…organic. Or corporeal, for that matter. The cat seemed to be made out of hundreds of interlocking bronze cogs, grinding and clicking as it moved. An odd pattern hung from the bronze collar around its neck, an overly stylized shape resembling an intertwined LD, and the luminescent eyes that stared back at her had a glassy sheen coating them. Strangest of all, the cat seemed to be slightly transparent, as Sami could still see the shape of her professor keeping on with his lecture even though the cat was perched directly in her line of sight.

“Dude, what was that?” The cat asked.

Alright, talking cat. Never thought I’d see one of those outside of a comic or something, Sami thought woozily. Perhaps it was best that her mind was still defrosting from sleep, as a lucid Sami might’ve had a much less nonchalant attitude. 

She still had enough wits about her to respond with a “What was what?”, though the part of her mind that would’ve questioned the merits of entertaining a conversation with a probably-hallucination cat thing was still groggy. 

“The…thing. Your stand. I know what I saw, that was a stand. You’ve got a lot of balls to have it out in class, I’m pretty sure the Prof has one too. Though I guess I got mine out too to wake you up…” The cat’s last sentence trailed off, and it shook its head slightly with a rattle of gears.

“I- sorry, what? I have no idea what’s going on, who you are, what you are- Just, go back to the beginning, alright. What happened, the thing you were talking about?” Sami kept her voice to a mutter, glancing down the lecture hall at her scattered classmates and lingering on the shape of Professor Stelar, still visible through the cat and going on about formulae.

All of the gears in the cat’s body clicked over by one tooth, causing it to ripple and distort for a second. “Alright, then. 15 minutes into the lesson, you keeled over onto your desk and started napping. Not good. About a minute later, something which I’m almost entirely certain is your stand came out of you and started writing. I think it was taking notes? On the class? Weird, but it’s a stand. They’re always weird. Anyway, Prof Stelar noticed too, I’m not sure if he saw the stand or not but he definitely saw you sleeping and shrugged it off. I sent over my LD to wake you up, and now I’m speaking to you through it- wait.” The cat’s glassy eyes flicked over Sami’s face, the sides of its mouth flicking upward gleefully as it took in her utterly confused expression. “You have no idea what I’m talking about, do you?”

Sami shook her head, keeping her wide eyes pinned to the slightly-ethereal cat.

The cat let out a cackle. “Oh, that’s incredible. One of the few times I find another stand user, and it’s a newbie? Brilliant! I can’t wait to-“

Sami would have to wait to hear the rest of the cat’s monologue, as it was cut off by a stern drawl rolling out from the center of the lecture hall.

“Jaime Raimondeau, Sami Sapna. I understand that what you’re discussing is very important, so could you please accompany me to the hallway outside? Also, Mr. Raimondeau, I’ll have you know that pets are very much not allowed by our fine establishment, so please put your cat away.” Professor Stelar’s French was, as always, tinged with his native Russian and unchanged after years of teaching at the Collège du Château des Nomades.

The cat scowled, flicking its tail with a sound like a bullwhip. It turned and padded a few steps down the desk-row, before jumping up onto the desks behind Sami’s own row and landing in the arms of one of her fellow students.

 Sami’s eyes followed the cat as it phased into its master’s chest, causing her gaze to land on the most garish suit jacket she’d ever seen. Was tan fabric with irregular slices of fluorescent purple considered fashionable these days? (For the sake of France’s clothing industry, she hoped not.) 

That suit jacket, of course, was attached to the rest of the cat’s master. He had the same easy smile, the kind that said I know all your secrets and I wouldn’t mind selling them to the highest bidder. His dark skin and hair were highlighted by a few streaks of white in his sideburns and a set of magenta glasses perched on his head, and his posture didn’t invoke the attitude  of an attentive student so much as that of a used car salesman. 

His eyes swung towards Sami, pinning her with a violet gaze (Why does he have so much purple on him?) and his lax smirk turned into a conspirator’s grin as they made eye contact. He shoved off his desk and swept off his chair, and with a tiny jerk of his head he signaled for her to do the same. 

She did so, though with a notable lack of swagger, and they set off on the much-dreaded death row walk, where singled-out students inevitably attract the eyes of everyone else as they trudge out the door for a ‘talking-to’. As college students, Sami’s classmates had of course seen the death-row walk before, but that didn’t stop them from letting their gazes follow the two out the door. 

Now, Professor Victor P. Stelar was by no means a terribly sweet man. His students often referred to him as ‘Professor Glacier’, or some variant thereof, and even his fellow staff knew to keep small talk with him at an absolute minimum lest they receive a look that could freeze over Hell. One of his ‘good days’ in class was marked by a slight increase in tolerance for backtalk and muttering under his lectures, along with the occasional minute smile. As for his bad days- well, people didn’t like to speak much of them for fear of invoking another one. 

Despite his aloof demeanor, though, he wasn’t as much of a pain to look at as he was to appease. A chiseled face, eyes like blue ice, and and a jaw sharp enough to carve stone had made him the subject of many teacher-crushes, and several people could (but probably wouldn’t) admit to spending a good portion of his lessons simply studying his three slim and ever-present ponytails swaying over the nape of his neck or admiring his taste in primary-colored turtlenecks. The professor also had a penchant for metal-studded belts, most of which ended up looped over his shoulder rather than actually being used to hold up anything. Most relevant to his temperament, however, was his lean and built frame that caused him to loom rather than simply stand.

Sami and her classmates (including the clockwork cat’s master, ‘Jaime’, apparently) had all become accustomed to Professor Stelar’s typical icy demeanor, which was why they were both shocked when he leveled a glare at them that could potentially crack a skyscraper in half.

Sami swallowed, and she even noticed a crack in Jaime’s cockiness from the corner of her eye.

“What,” the professor hissed, “do you want from me and my class?”

Jaime was the first to speak against the torrent of chill, a marvel in and of itself.

“Oi, Prof, calm down. I’ve got no particular interest in disrupting anything.” He somehow managed to keep up his casual tone despite the continued death-glare being directed at him, and waved his arm nonchalantly in front of him. “I don’t think she really wants anything either, except maybe some more sleep,” he motioned at Sami, “so can we please just continue with the lecture, that quiz is coming up real-”

His drawl was cut short by an icy manacle of a hand closing around his wrist, bunching up the sleeve of his gaudy suit and thoroughly locking it in place.

“Don’t try it with me, swindler. I know full well of your silver tongue, and I had no problem with it until you brought out your stand. In class, no less.” The professor hissed. “And you,”- he turned his gaze on Sami, who managed to remain groggy despite the frozen glare blasting her clean in the face-“I can barely stand to trust anymore than him. I have no idea what you’re capable of, and with a probably-sentient stand you’re incredibly volatile.” He tightened his grip on Jaime’s arm.

Sami rubbed her eyes, trying to hide her shaking hands. “Sir, I was woken up by a talking cat a few minutes ago, and with all due respect I have no idea what you’re talking abou-”

Her well-meaning explanation/sleepy rant was cut short, however, by a surprised grunt from Jaime. She flicked her head over to him, and was met by a shocked expression from the cat’s master directed at his arm, still locked in the professor’s grip.

Were it not for the fact that Sami was well-acquainted with the feeling of sleep, she would’ve thought the scene before her was sprung from a dream. Jaime’s arm was unmoved, still locked in the same position, but his sleeve was completely unraveled. Tan strings hung down from his elbow in a fuzz of fabric, and the floor below them was decorated with even more of the sleeve’s remnants. It looked like the cloth had just decided to stop being a cohesive surface. 

Almost in unison, the two students swiveled their shocked expressions from the wreckage to their professor. His position hadn’t changed either, but his entire demeanor had. His glacier-blue eyes had narrowed in a look of determination, and he seemed to be emitting an aura of power.

“Russian.” He stated simply, as if it explained everything.

Jaime jerked backwards, and Professor Stelar finally released his arm. The fuzz of his sleeve swayed under his arm as he settled into a defensive stance, and Sami noticed a faint shimmer on one of his shoulders. It was mostly indistinct, but the grin of the cat that’d woken her up was definitely recognizable.

“Don’t bother. I know a non-power type when I see it, and someone with such a reputation for  craftiness and manipulation, anything that you could send my way would most likely need to be set up rather than immediately activated. I caught you off-guard, so you also probably don’t have much in terms of things you’ve already prepared. I’m not claiming to know you well enough to guess at the nature of your ability, but I do know that a quick-draw power type wouldn’t mesh well with our resident swindler.” The professor rattled out a simple reasoning in the same tone he used for his lectures, and Jaime dropped his defense to draw up into a tense posture in a facsimile of his depleted confidence. 

“Resident swindler, huh? I see my reputation precedes me, sir. Not sure wether to feel offended that you’re summing up my entire personality to find out my weaknesses, or happy that you didn’t factor that into our last quiz’s grades.” The faint hint of the clockwork cat faded from Jaime’s shoulders, and Sami let out a faint sigh of relief.

“Of course, any biases or preconceived notions I may have cannot prevent me from marking a test correctly.” Professor Stelar visibly relaxed, and even defrosted enough to give a small grin. “In fact, I-” his head jerked around to face the wall, and in less than a second his arm was outstretched and pointing something directly forward. At once, the icy aura was back, though Sami was grateful that it wasn’t directed at her this time.

A golden staff, wrapped in royal blue beads, struck the wall with a resonant thrummm. A blade curled from one side of the staff’s end, and a dense block protruded from the other. Where the staff came in contact with the wall, paint peeled and crumbled away. The professor flicked it away to rest on the ground, and glared up at where the ceiling met the wall.

Jaime, who’d been appraising the staff with a gleam in his eye, followed his teacher’s gaze upwards. Sami took the hint, and did the same. She didn’t get to see much, but  she did glimpse a stark white creature streaked with black slipping away through the wall.

The professor scowled. “We were being watched, and that wall connects back into to the classroom.”

“Sir, I- you know, I still have literally no idea what’s been happening for the last like, ten minutes. Can I just-” Sami’s rambling was cut off by a look from Jaime, one that said we’ll talk about this later. (He seemed to be pretty good at communicating with glances- Sami was sure that if she tried the same thing she’d end up making herself look like an idiot.)

Professor Stelar huffed, and with a flick of his wrist the staff vanished. He pushed his glasses up, rubbing his nose and showing more emotion than Sami’d ever seen from him.

“Something tells me that stand users are going to be a real pain from now on.”

Chapter Text

Louise Medicament liked to think that her job at Collège du Château des Nomades’ most accessible bookstore was worth the hassle. The hurried students rushing in to dump their money on overpriced books, the teachers just standing around near the textbooks and refusing to respond to offers of aid, the random outsiders that’d just come in to take up space and not even buy anything for their trouble- it was all worth it, to be around the shelves and new-book smells. The pay was a decent upside, too, she had to admit. But the books! It was all about the books!

It was quite a slow day at the Tape Five bookstore, which Louise appreciated. Sure, she couldn’t actually just curl up in a corner with one of her employer’s products and lose herself in it, but even standing at the register on a quiet day was enough for her. She drew back an auburn curl of hair and hooked it behind her ear, huffing a small chuckle as she imagined exactly why she was getting this reprieve. Quiet days often meant test days, after all, and students would be taking the time they’d normally spend loitering around Tape-Five to head to the library and study up. The librarians had her sympathy.

It was in this state of relative boredom, slouching against the counter and occasionally eyeing the door over her owllike glasses, that she greeted the day’s biggest obstacle. It burst through the door in the form of a wiry redhead perhaps a tad younger than her, who proceeded to blitz toward the counter and hop over it. An arm flicked around her shoulders, and she found herself on the ground a second later with no memory of the fall.

She turned to face her new acquaintance, and glared at him in the most customer-respecting way she could. “Sorry, can I help you-“

Oh. Damn it. The face in front of her was contorted in an expression that could only really be achieved by someone in deep trouble, all clenched teeth and sweat drops and darting eyes. She knew the expression where she saw it, understandably so due to the fact that it was the last one she’d ever seen her father wear. She strained her ears, hoping for the best and expecting the worst, and found the latter- police sirens, faint but getting louder. For all intents and purposes, she was a hostage now.

“Alright, for all intents and purposes, you’re a hostage now.” The boy informed her. At least they were on the same page.

She sighed. “Where’s the gun?”

The boy shoved her slightly away from him, clamping onto her arm to keep her in place. “Oh, I don’t need a gun.” His blue eyes swirled above a cheeky grin, but it wasn’t his attitude or his words that put Louise on edge. During his little proclimation, an orange arc had flashed over his head, and she could put the pieces together.

This guy was a stand user. Louise had always just wanted to live peacefully after her own stand had first shown up, resolving that causing her abusive dad’s arrest was the last time she’d need it. So, she tried to make herself as generic as she could muster. She went to a normal school and then a normal college, got a normal degree and made normal friends. She resisted the urge to indulge her own burgeoning fashion sense in favor of keeping with ‘la mode’, and made an effort to stay under the radar as much as she could.

But she couldn’t stop her weirdness, merely divert its direction. Her urges to dress flamboyantly and get in fights had been suppressed and then supplanted with a burning love of the romantics. Obsessing over books of femme fatale and daring escapades had led her to Tape Five, where she could get lost in her fantasies during slow days.

However, she shoved that down and focused on the dude in front of her, who’d evidently done the very thing she’d tried to avoid for years. He looked a little younger than her, dressed in a brown dress shirt streaked with gold and orange stripes here and there, cut-up jeans stained with…something, and an actual cape attached at the collar and tattered at the hems- they betrayed the same flamboyance that Louise thought would look good on her but knew it’d be far too ridiculous for a 9-to-5 job. Even his hair, which she’d just registered as ginger, turned out to be mottled with brown and spiked up at the ears.

Comparing to her own outfit of work-permitted muted colors, he basically looked like a firework. Splendid.

She shoved away from him, trying to get up, but his hand clamped around her wrist and she ended up pulling him up with her. His expression hardened, and Louise silently reminded herself that she was still something of a hostage.

A cold chain brushed past her arm as her captor got to his feet. She looked down at his hand in confusion, and noticed a broken handcuff dangling from it. He’d… escaped? Was that it? She engaged the part of her brain that she liked to think noticed everything, honed to a skill from years of poring over mystery novels, and got to work figuring out as much as she could about her captor.

His pockets seemed full, with the jagged corner of a wrapper sticking out of his right one. Slight reddening around his wrists suggested that his handcuffs had been hastily slapped on. He’d been arrested, or at least partially so, but the cops hadn’t had the chance to confiscate the stuff he’d stolen? That didn’t make much sense. She tried again. He was wearing actual clothes, not prison wear, so he hadn’t escaped from prison. The presence of a few cuts on his arm also could mean that he’d dived through glass or something. They looked pretty fresh, too- so, her working theory was that he’d somehow used his stand to escape a cop car and had to go through the window to do so, after which he’d broken his handcuffs and… gone on to steal from somewhere while he escaped? That was the only thing that’d make sense, the police were definitely after him and the handcuffs meant that they’d nabbed him temporarily, but searching an arrested person’s pockets was one of the first things they’d do after cuffing them. So, she had her theory, and there was really only one way to immediately confirm it.

“So… you got arrested, escaped, broke your handcuffs, and then while you were running away you stole something?”, she asked him directly.

His eyebrows lifted, and he gave her a look. “Yeah, kind of. The handcuff thing came before I got away, but I did have a little fun when I was- er, running around looking for a good hostage.”

Huh. One point to the side of her brain that noticed things. Louise allowed herself a mental fist-pump before pressing on with her impromptu interrogation.

“What’s the point of that, though? You’re already on the run, and they’re gonna be here soon, so you won’t really have the time to even use, or like, eat, the stuff you stole. You—”

He interrupted her with an exasperated sigh. “Look, you’re a captive, not a therapist. Just shut up and rest assured I definitely can pose a threat to you without needing a gun.” Another orange arc curled over his head momentarily and flashed away, and any doubts Louise had about him not having a stand vanished.

She let herself fall silent as instructed, and engaged her brain again to deduce what his ability could be, and a way to deal with it-

Her thought process screeched to a halt. This wasn’t like figuring out where he’d previously been; in her limited experience with stands, she’d realized that there was basically no way of telling what a stand did without seeing or hearing about it in action. All she knew was that it was partially orange and probably ethereal, not fixed to an object. Damn it.

Her captor did seem sort of weedy, though- she could probably take him down even without her own stand. But the knowledge that he could definitely do something unprecedented, compounded with the fact that his claim of posing a threat without a weapon didn’t seem like a bluff, made her think twice about rushing him. He could potentially injure her grievously or destroy Tape Five, for all she knew. So, Louise kept her stand away.

The ever-growing whine of police sirens reached its peak as blue and red lights shot through the bookstore’s windows, and the boy gripped her arm tighter.

“Do me a favor and at least pretend you’re intimidated by me, please.”

“I make no promises, I don’t really tend to feel threatened by people in the worst of situations and much less to people like you.”

He started dragging her to the storefront unceremoniously, and Louise let herself go along with it despite the lack of real strength behind it. “And people like me being…what, exactly?”

“Weedy, probably foreign, confident for no reason, and especially a…habitual…thief…” As she ended her statement, the meaning of it dawned on her. It made sense, someone with an overwhelming habit of stealing would have experience running from the cops, explaining how he’d managed to get so much distance between himself and their cars. And that kind of mindset wouldn’t stop him from a little shoplifting, even while he was already escaping from another crime.

Well, that revelation changed things. Searching her captor’s face, Louise noted how it’d gone noticeably stony, like a free-flowing river in a flash freeze. It all lined up, it all made sense. And now- she might be able to get something out of this.

Allowing a slight grin to creep across her face, she innocently asked him, “So, I hit a nerve there, huh? You’ve really got a habit for stealing things?”. She tried not to emphasize the word ‘habit’ too much, but her anticipation got the better of her.

She considered it a mighty test of strength to not jump for joy as her inquiries were met with an uncomfortable nod. Glancing outside the storefront to see police cars pulling up and expelling their drivers, Louise noted that she’d need to work fast.

Using her free hand, she grabbed his wrist and pulled him in to make eye contact.

“Luckily for you, I work with habits.” She made sure that her grin was on full display.

Her captor’s eyes drew themselves to her cheek, where Louise was finally letting out the thing that she usually kept dormant. A bug, it currently looked like. A scarab beetle, specifically, identical to a real one in all respects save for it being comprised entirely of green reeds.

It buzzed on her face comfortably, and tore away from her as it started to swell and change. The reeds grew, reshaping themselves into several more forms- snake, cat, jackal, crocodile- before settling into its largest humanoid form and striking a pose behind her.

“My Human Leather Shoes For Crocodile Dandies has something to share with you. Show him, Human Leather,” she directed her stand with no small amount of glee.

The reeds of its face contorted, and a green gem the size of a fist pushed itself to the surface and started leaking a yellowish sap. Before her captor could react, it darted towards him and covered him in an affectionate embrace.

The stand’s gem-eye kept crying sap, faster and faster, and soon its target was drenched in it. Through the sap, Louise felt it. A repeating urge, sequestered in his brain, and dug in with barbed hooks. The habit, the subconscious tendency to steal things. The sap, the stand, and the user all stiffened at once, and the habit came out in one pull.

Its job done, Human Leather Shoes For Crocodile Dandies flowed back into its user and the hardened sap evaporated into nothing. Louise’s head spun, like it did after finishing a really good book, and she sighed euphorically.

Her captor was in no such state, though, and glared at her with the eyes of a wounded animal.

“What-I-you- STAND! THAT WAS A STAND! WHAT DID YOU DO?” He barked.

She massaged her bicep and gave him a lofty look. “I think you’ll find out soon enouuuuugh,” she singsonged.

His eyes darted around the store, lingering on the officers outside the windows, and he grunted frustratedly. The grunt turned into a growl, and as it did the orange arcs of his stand appeared. This time, though, they stayed. Louise could even notice insect wings lining the bands, which encircled his body as odd hieroglyphs flared up on them. The ribbons expanded, and a pair of jaws bit down from nowhere over their user’s body. As he vanished, the jaws and the rest of the head came into focus, clarifying into a horse’s skull. That, too, vanished, and Louise couldn’t really be bothered to find out where it went.

Human Leather could usually track its targets unless they were hundreds of kilometers away, but she didn’t think that a relocation like the one she’d just witnessed wouldn’t have that kind of reach. Sounds of car engines revving up again to continue the chase only confirmed that theory. He’d probably just managed to get out of the door.

Oh well. It didn’t sound like any of the police cars were lingering, but she figured it was probably a good idea to just keep everything her ex-captor had disturbed where they were. If they wanted to get fingerprints off them or something, then she didn’t feel inclined to stop them.

-<|°_°|>-

An hour or so later, Louise’d drifted right off back into her daydreams when the doorbell rang again.

Thankfully, looking over to the door did not reveal another flamboyantly-dressed twink with designs of dubious legality; instead, there were two of them. They’d obviously come from the college, and seemed to be in the middle of a heated discussion.

One was significantly taller than the other, with tanned skin and curly black hair, and was dressed in a forest green dress shirt flecked with gold with a hoodie’s sleeves embracing his waist. His shorter companion had shorter hair of a similar color, and it looked like it’d been thoroughly combed through with a blender. He had lighter skin and almond-shaped eyes framed with silver glasses, and his gray shirt was injected with whorls of red. He was gesticulating wildly as he chattered up to his larger companion, who kept his hands in his pockets and added to the conversation in a much lower voice.

“-and that’s what I’m telling you, man! It’s basically impossible to directly copy the psyche onto a computer with conventional means, but if we were to bring in an adapter cable of sorts,” the shorter one exclaimed, nudging his friend(?), “It could be theoretically possible to download it directly and without risk to the copied mind.”

The taller boy sighed. “I get the theory behind it, yes, but there’s a lot of risks. This literally can’t have ever been attempted exactly the same way before us. It’s all just vague ideas of what might happen, if everything goes as planned. But- Javi, the chances of that happening are slim to none. The subject could have their mind transferred rather than duplicated and downloaded, and even if that goes well then what’s stopping backflow? And-”

“Hugo, don’t worry about all the semantics. The- um, adapter cables can probably pick up my specific intent, can’t they? All I need to do is hook them up to a supply of my ‘intent’, which also happens to be the thing that we’re trying to download, and it’ll all go smooth as rice pudding!”

Hugo, the taller one, looked like he was going to retort, but his eyes slid over to Louise at the register and he sighed again. He grabbed his friend’s hand and pulled him towards the desk, his face creasing as his mouth curved into a polite smile.

“Hello, my friend and I were looking for some books on neuroscience?”

Louise, who’d listened in on their discussion and only been able to pick up some vague ideas of their project, nodded and responded with a customer-friendly smile of her own.

“Check the Biology isle, I believe we have a few items on that topic.”

Javi’s head darted up and swiveled around like a sci-fi sentry turret until he zeroed in on the row labelled with a simple ‘Biology’. He all but lunged towards it, tugging along Hugo with him via their still-linked hands. Louise stifled a chuckle, but it faded when she decided to actually think about the conversation she’d overheard.

Downloading a human consciousness? Directly onto a computer? From their wording, it seemed like a subject would be literally hooked up to a computer, aided only by these ‘adapter cables’. To add to her speculation, she glanced over at the two boys as they flipped through a book. The kinds of clothing assemblies they had could only be seen on a drunk, a drag queen, or-

Shit.

They were stand users, weren’t they?

Louise closed her eyes and groaned internally. 3 in one day? Had she angered a god of luck or something?

The boys returned with a glossy brick of a book tucked under Hugo’s arm, and once they reached the desk they glared at each other and had something of a silent argument. Well, it would’ve been silent, were it not for the fact that their voices still sounded out without their mouths opening.

“Don’t even think about it,” Hugo ‘said’, a faint cloud of smoke forming out of his hair.

“Dude, no. You bought me that new headset, I’m paying for it,” Javi responded, with equally indistinct spikes rolling over his cheeks.

“Only because I saw your old ones were getting pretty worn out, it was courtesy! Let me do it.”

“You’re a broke college student, you could use the saved money on things that aren’t funding my stupid project.”

“Haven’t you forgotten that you’re ALSO a broke college student? Plus, don’t think I haven’t seen all the little things you do around the dorm. Fixing the TV, air conditioner, so on, and you rewired my phone so I don’t get phone bills anymore! You beautiful idiot, I’m doing it.”

Javi bit back with a flush on his cheeks. “WELL-”

Louise had been spectating the tirade, but she’d seen this kind of debate before and she knew how long they could take. She swallowed her doubts, let Human Leather Shoes For Crocodile Dandies float to the surface, and interrupted them in the same non-voice they’d been using.

“Boys, boys. Just- just split the bill, alright?” Her stand held up both hands in an appeasing gesture.

They turned to her, eyes wide, and one held that expression while the other broke into a slight smirk.

“I knew it,” Hugo said. “I’m not sure what tipped me off, but I knew it.” The slight ethereal quality of his voice had ceded back into his normal tone.

Louise shrugged, and Human Leather dematerialized. “We attract each other, huh?”

Javi held his fist forward. “Weirdoes tend to do that.” Louise knocked her knuckles against his.

She was honestly quite surprised by their relatively nonchalant reaction. After the fiasco earlier in the day, she’d expected them to leap over the desk and- well, probably kill her. The guy earlier hadn’t seemed like he’d be too averse to that.

They paid for the book (half-and-half, like she’d suggested) and swept out as suddenly as they’d come in. She wasn’t too fussed to see them go, if the morning’s fiasco had taught her anything it was that she kind of preferred Tape Five without any sort of aberrations. Even the well-mannered ones.

She exhaled in a half-hearted whistle, melting down towards the desk to brace her elbow against it. She was sure that her tangles with stand users were far from over, but she honestly couldn’t muster much of a care right now.

She had a shift to finish.

Chapter Text

Antoine MacLaurent liked to think that ‘homeless’ wasn’t the best descriptor for his situation.

He was just… currently without a place of residence.

Yeah, that was it.

Being disowned by your parents and withdrawn from school wouldn’t immediately make you homeless, right?

Right?

Yet, his current setting begged to differ.

He was lounged across a park bench, listlessly staring up into a rainy sky and pretending that his backpack made for a comfortable pillow.

(It didn’t. It really didn’t.)

He wasn’t exactly dressed the part of a homeless teen, though- a maroon dress shirt unbuttoned over a tie-dye t-shirt, loose black pants with strings of forest green flowing from the waistline to the pockets, and a sterling necklace with a pendant in the shape of an atom symbol.

Not exactly something you’d expect to see on some unfortunate teen making a bed out of a park bench.

Antoine made it work, though.

He ROCKED that park bench.

It was getting dark, too.

Joy upon joys.

He really did need to get to some shelter, didn’t he?

It was only drizzling now, but Antoine was familiar with Paris’ tendencies to beat the ever-loving crap out of you if you expected the best from the weather.

A bus stop or something would probably work.

He just needed to get under a ledge and avoid dying of hypothermia.

But searching on foot would be boring, and tiring.

(Also he didn’t want to catch pitiful glances as a downtrodden guy looking for a place to spend the night.)

So, using his ability in his present situation could be justifiable!

A small smile slid over his face as he rightened himself on the bench and planted both feet on the ground.

No matter the circumstance, he always got some enjoyment from summoning his power.

Other people couldn’t see it though, and it didn’t seem like anyone else had something similar.

At the very least, no one discussed it.

Antoine never really questioned it though.

Que sera, sera.

In any case, whatever what his power really was, that wasn’t really important.

The only thing that mattered now was that he had a power, and he could use it.

He reached into himself, and pulled his soul out to the surface.

Little straps of skin curled up all over his body, and golden lines slid out from under them.

More lines came from his nose, his eyes, under his fingernails- anywhere they could.

They crawled over their user’s skin, found some of their fellows, and knit themselves together.

Golden designs, coming together and spreading out into fingerprint-like shapes, drifted over Antoine’s skin.

Faces could be seen in some of them, if he felt like looking for it.

They formed a sort of armor, a suit of gold fingerprints.

His power.

His ability.

His Tattoos.

The name had come to him in the same way the ability did- unexplainably.

He focused, directing his thoughts, and the designs moved.

They slithered down his legs, poured over his shoes, and hit the pavement in a spill.

Tattoos spread out and about, leaping from surface to surface.

Antoine touched what they touched, and so he could experience much more of his surroundings.

It wasn’t his actual ability, this spreading out of his touch, in the same way that one could use a sword to prod around in the dark.

Possible, and useful, but not its true use.

His touches soon came across a cold wall of wood, almost on the very edge of his reach.

The wood felt ornately carved, but musty and unused.

Tattoos spread out across the wall, and found its way to the other side through a broken window.

It felt like the inside of a house, and quite a big one.

Antoine sifted around though this find for a while, slipping though layers of dust and dancing over spiderwebs.

He focused on this find and recalled the rest of his searching power, and came to a conclusion.

Shelter.

Tattoos ended its expedition, and started flowing back to its user.

As the last fingerprint was making its way out, it felt something odd, though.

A shiver, of sorts, making its way though the floorboards.

It seemed to be actively apprehensive, too.

Like a cold hand of hate, grasping at him.

Antoine shook it off.

Tattoos could sense temperature changes, it was probably just a draft or something.

When all his power had gathered back on his body, he pulled it into himself.

He pushed off the bench, swept his backpack on, glanced at the sky, and started walking.

Not too much later, he stared up at the old mansion and wondered how he’d managed to miss the giant gate.

Any locks on it had long since crumbled into uselessness, though, so he slipped through the gate with no issues.

The grounds- for they were too big to be a ‘yard’- were heavily overgrown to the point where the path under his feet had been largely consumed by the grass.

Sounds of rain picked up, and he scowled down at the plants for no real reason.

He hastened towards the manor.

Not today, hypothermia.
The door swung open with the barest touch.

He scanned the entryway, marveling at all the details that he’d felt over before.

This was, at one point, a grand place.

Now it was the residence of a single dark-skinned homeless teen and his army of fingerprints.

How the mighty fall.

He wiped off his shoes on the doormat, and strolled on in.

All the furniture was covered in white shrouds, and the dust had piled up everywhere.

Antoine glanced out a shattered window at a black night, then down to his watch.

He was quite tired, wasn’t he?

Exploring could wait for tomorrow.

A couch with its tarp stripped from it would serve well for a bed.

More so than a park bench, at least.

Plus, he didn’t feel like disrespecting the house even more than he already was by sleeping in a master bedroom.

He dropped his backpack, grabbed an old cushion to scrunch his head into, and curled up.

This place wouldn’t hurt as a temporary residence.

His dreams were wild.

To be fair, they usually were.

But these ones were just… unnerving.

Guard dogs prowled a shifting mansion, phasing out of their chains to give chase to a trespasser.

Crows gathered on the roof, impaling themselves on pigeon spikes and thinking nothing of it while calling out with voices that weren’t their own.

The house crumbled and died, then drew itself back together and started disintegrating again.

All the while, the master slept peacefully in a bed that only existed in the bedroom mirror.

The house creaked, grumbled, and turned into Antoine’s father with windows for eyes and a door for a mouth.
He knew what the father-house was going to say; he’d already heard it.

The door-mouth creaked open, but in place of words the golden prints of Tattoos spewed from his mouth.

His power sailed towards him, flipping and congealing and becoming a swarm of purple crows.

Again with the crows?

As soon as the thought sailed through his dreaming mind, the flock fell to the ground as one, turned to purple dust, and sailed away.

The dust circled the father-house and clung to it like a net of mucus.

Once the purple powder had vanished, the house had been shrunk and molded into the visage of a well-groomed old man.

Antoine went along with this, of course.

The logic of dreams could be questioned by none but the waking.

Tattoos recognized something about the old man, though its master wasn’t sure what.

Antoine felt like he’d remember a lanky grandpa with a magnificent mustache and a suit of purple velvet.

The old-timer caught his eyes, and an odd sensation of cold swept through him.

He realized that he’d felt that cold before, remembered a sole artifact of his power being bombarded by it while leaving the mansion, and recalled what emotion had accompanied it.

Almost as a defense mechanism, Antoine immediately woke up.

Sleep left his eyes quickly.

He hauled himself up and rubbed his face where the seam of his cushion-pillow had been embedded.

One hand running though his hair a few times served as his morning groom, and he scanned the room to get a sense of it without the cover of darkness.

A few tarp-covered armchairs, an ornately carved table that hadn’t been given protection from the dust, a purple crow sitting on the windowsill looking right at him, an ottoman-

Huh.

The crow hadn’t been there last night, had it?

He tilted his head, and the bird mirrored him with the sun’s rays shining through its neck as it moved.

So, it was real.
Sort of real, at least.

Real enough to be seen, but not enough to be acknowledged by the world.

The same sort of real as Tattoos, then?

He cleared his throat.

“Erm, hello, Mr. Crow.”

Its head perked up.

“You wouldn’t happen to be- um, well, I don’t even know how you could answer, you’re a bird, but- are you the same thing as these?”

He lifted up his arm and let Tattoos shimmer to the surface of his skin.

It twitched, and did something with its beak that almost resembled a grin.

Purple feathers ruffled in the morning sun, and whorls of green and gold curled from its eyes and clung to its body as it emitted a low warble in its throat.

Its wings flared slightly, motioning in a beckoning gesture as it hopped to the floor.

Antoine rose, feeling his power dissipate on his arm, and followed the bird through the halls

Trailing behind a multicolored crow in an abandoned mansion after having a dream about said mansion while SLEEPING in said mansion because of a ‘lack of permanent residence’ was certainly not where Antoine had seen himself at the age of 22.

Well, he couldn’t really do anything about it now.

The crow’s feet skittered on the floorboards as it hopped along.

It stopped soon enough, leaving Antoine standing next to a floor-to-ceiling mirror in what might’ve been a living room.

Grime gave way to silver as the mirror shed itself of dust.

Sure, why not.

Self-cleaning mirrors were the least of his wonders.

Another warble from the crow made his eyes snap to it.

Ruffling its feathers, it hopped right through the mirror to land inside the reflection.

Only then did Antoine notice that his own reflection was oddly absent on the mirror’s surface.

The crow started to molt, losing its feathers as they drifted into the air.

It kept shedding feathers, far past the point where a normal crow would’ve run out.

(Not that this was, in any sense, a normal crow, but the point stands.)
The feathers swirled into a cyclone.

By this point, the crow had dissolved entirely into it.

The flurry increased, packing down tighter, before compressing entirely and halting.

An old man stood in the reflection, and smiled at Antoine.

“Welcome to my house, my domain, my Wonda.” the man in the purple velvet suit said smugly.

Another wave of cold hit Antoine, stronger than ever.

It felt like condensed hatred, a sort of passive-aggressiveness strong enough to be tasted in the air.

The house hated him, and he was scared of it.

He reached up to rub his face, and his arm was covered in gold.

Tattoos had shown up unbidden, it seemed.

The man in the mirror raised an eyebrow, then brought up a hand and clenched it into a fist.

Animosity bore down on him even more heavily.

Antoine was glued to the floor at this point, but Tattoos was still free-flowing.

They raced down his legs, and as they left his skin more appeared to take their place.

Gold designs covered the walls.

Antoine braced himself.

Tattoos’ power took a lot out of him, but it was probably worth it to find out what was going on.

Instead of feeling the sensations felt by an object in the present, it could see the recent past and immediate future as well, though it needed to so all at once.

To see 5 minutes into an object’s past, it gave Antoine all of those 5 minutes of sensations all at once, even the parts he didn’t need.

Seeing into the future was even worse- it took a lot more effort, and Tattoos also went ahead and gave him several possible outcomes at once, and everything from the present until that outcome.

He’d once tried to use his power on his entire house (back when he still had one) and the resulting overload had knocked him out for several hours while his mind processed the backlog of sensory data.

So, he only looked about a minute into the future, and 90 seconds into the past.

Far less possible outcomes, and much less to process.

But, what he saw came as a shock- he’d never seen anything like it before.

Throughout the material of the house, energy was pumped through in lines.

It felt like a net of veins and arteries.

The pump had started around when the animosity barrage had, so it was definitely causing it.

So this energy… it was treating the house like a body?

He thought back to the first time he’d felt the cold- that bit of Tattoos was still inside the house when it’d felt it.

So, the hate-power was tied to the house.

Running and leaving seemed like a good way to get rid of the attack.

Then again, running away was pretty effective against a lot of things.

But he needed a way to deal with the power, not just escape it.

He shifted to examining the future-data.

The same energy would keep flowing through the house, but Antoine picked up something interesting.

In 30 seconds, the power was going to increase.

Not good.

But he got something from it.

The increase in power came in the form of a pulse.

That pulse was emanating from…

The mirror!

Good to know.

Was it the actual source of the power, though?

It might just be a conduit, something that molded it into the veins running through the house.

Basically impossible to tell.

He didn’t have a lot of time until the pulse came, spreading Tattoos further around the house would take a while and it wasn’t exactly going to be easy on his brain.

Working with what he had was his best option.

He glanced back at the past, and saw something else.

A highly concentrated source of the power, no movement behind it, coming in contact with the ground.

In the shape of-

A bird’s foot.

A CROW’S foot.

The crow, then, was the actual source.

It’d hopped into the mirror, and seemed to directly transform into the man in the purple suit.

So, Antoine had his target.

10 seconds until the next pulse.

The man probably couldn’t defend himself- if his power was anything like Tattoos, he couldn’t use it and meaningfully counter attacks at the same time.

5 seconds.

Antoine drew back his fist, summoned the last vestiges of Tattoos he still had to cover it, and threw it forward as hard as he could right into the reflection of the old man’s face.

The mirror shattered.

The skin on his knuckles did too.

He cradled his fist to his chest and silently reminded himself why he didn’t like to get in fights.

A voice sounded out from nowhere.

“I deserved that.”

Antoine looked up, and saw the crow sitting on an ottoman, much more transparent than before.

He grimaced as a means of reply.

The crow continued, for the human voice had come from its beak.

“I’m sorry for attacking you, I just- well, you seemed somewhat resistant to Wonda and I wanted to see how far I could take it.”

“Huh? Wonda? That’s your power, right?”

The crow bobbed its head.

“Indeed. I can create paranoia towards anything in my stand’s reach, to put it simply.”

Antoine flicked his gaze around the room- the entryway, the windows, the glass shards on the floor- and then back to the bird.

“So, where are you? A power as strong as that, you’d have to be close by, right?”
The crow chuckled ruefully.

“I’m afraid not. I am nearby in a sense, but my physical body has been in the ground for decades.”

Antoine recoiled.

“You’re DEAD?”

“Yes, exactly.”

“So-”

“How am I talking to you? My stand only activated posthumously, and bound my soul to my residence. Wonda keeps the house from collapsing in on itself, and I induce paranoia on trespassers.”

Antoine suddenly felt incredibly awkward.

“So… like me, then.”

“Indeed.”

“I should probably be the one to say sorry.”

“Ordinarily, yes. But we find ourselves in a remarkably unique situation, with myself having little to no corporeal presence and you being desperate to sleep in an ancient husk of a mansion. Also, the door was unlocked.”

“Does it have a lock?”

“It does. A good one. I just forgot to use it.”

“Alright, then… do you mind if I stay?”

The crow seemed a little taken aback by this.

“You mean… here?”

“Yeah.”

“You wish to live in a rotting old manor, with exactly no modern appliances, running water, or temperature control?”

“It beats sleeping on the streets.”

“Oh. You’re homeless, then?”

“…I prefer ‘without a place of residence’.”

The crow cackled and flared its wings.

“Well, not any more, you’re not! I could use some good conversation. Welcome to the manor, Mr…?”
“Antoine. Antoine MacLaurent.”

“Ah, a wonderful name. Lyre Letton, at your service.”

It bowed with as much grace as a crow could muster.

And so, Antoine found himself no longer…homeless.

He could use the word now, with the benefit of hindsight.

Chapter Text

“We’re going to break into the science building tonight.”

Hugo Aiguille, being an exhausted college student, didn’t register the statement.

Then he did, and choked on his cereal.

Javier Vial, Hugo’s slightly less exhausted roommate and the one that’d made the proposal, reached over to thump him on the back. “There, there, you knew I was gonna say it eventually.”

Hugo finished his recovery, and stammered out his response. “I didn’t think we were going to RAID THE SCIENCE CENTER, though. I figured you were just going to make me go over there and politely ask. Not- y’know, commit a crime.”

“Look on the bright side- at least this way you’ll have my company when you get the stuff!”

In typical Javi fashion, ‘the stuff’ in question meant a lot more than the words he used to describe it. He was actually referring to an entire laundry list of different bits of tech that he needed for his project- transcribing the algorithms of the human mind into a working code. Essentially, he wanted to create a new life. It was insane, implausible, and exactly the sort of thing Hugo’d come to expect from his friend.

Javi had started formatting his plans when he was in high school, the year he’d met Hugo. His pipe dream had continued all the way into college without ever becoming completely unattainable, and Hugo’d been there with him every step of the way.

Their ambitions had exploded during the last few years, which was perfectly captured in a physical form by the state of their shared rooms. Every square centimeter that could hold a scribbled set of notes or a random bit of tech had been repurposed to do exactly that. Javi was sitting on a stool made of crocodile clips, and Hugo’d been balancing his cereal bowl on a…he was pretty sure it was an ammeter or something. Had the two of them not spent an afternoon or two reinforcing everything, they’d end up with their furniture caving in on itself.

Hugo picked up his bowl, stepped over a pile of voice recorders, and set it down in the sink. The faucet slapped the bowl with a beam of water, and he let his thoughts flow with it.

No matter the amount of stuff they already had lying around their apartment, it wouldn’t be enough to complete a transcription. They needed a few very specific bits of equipment, or the risk would be too high to go on. Javi and himself supplied some of what they needed, but they’d figured out that if they didn’t make everything happen perfectly then the subject could be in serious danger. 

That neuroscience book they’d bought from that girl at Tape Five had certainly helped, though- in fact, Javi was going through it again at that very moment.

“Where was that page with the nerve map, again?” He called from the table.

Hugo snapped away from the faucet and called over his shoulder. “Page 251. I put in a marker.”

“Ah, so you did. This is why I keep you around, Hugo. That, and your butt.”

Hugo turned back around and pretended he wasn’t blushing. Javi’s…’advances’ had been a constant part of their friendship for years, and he wasn’t entirely sure what to do about it. Was it harmless fun, or genuine? Both? They shared a bed, but that was because the cascade of junk had made it onto both of their own beds. They slept in the living room, on the pullout couch. Bros being bros, or something more? Hugo had literally no idea.

He flipped off the faucet and swept back over to the table, and Javi slammed the textbook shut and rose to meet him, leaning against the table and looking over his glasses.

“Well, whaddya think? Wanna rob our own college?”

Hugo sighed. Even if he said no, Javi’d just go off on his own and do it. He stood a better chance of making it out with Hugo tagging along. “I can’t say no to you, can I?”

He was given a gleeful smile in response. “You really can’t.”

Looking at the ceiling and contemplating his decisions in life, he felt a small grin slide over his face, too. “Yeah, I’m with you.”

“Great! Let’s go!” He strode off to the door, skipping over piles of gadgets effortlessly.

“We can’t do it now, Javi.”

He spun. “Why not?”

“We have class. And even if we didn’t, other people do, and it’d be a little conspicuous breaking into the computer room while there’s a lecture going on.”

“Oh. Damn.”

“Yeah. Also, dude?”

“What?”

“Can you at least put on some pants before leaving?”

Time did as it was aught to- it flowed. Hugo felt himself being listlessly carried by the current for most of the day, as lectures jumped into one ear and out the other. In every class in the science building, his mind flicked from window to door to security camera, noting each and every one of them. The futility of the exercise wasn’t lost on him- Javi tended to absorb information much more easily than him, so he’d be the one to remember it all- but he did like to feel like he was doing something of value.

Before he knew it, classes had ended, and his feet were taking him back to his dorm. His phone was pressed against his ear, and the familiar chatter of his roommate was steadily emanating from it. A bird skittered around in the air above him and a lawnmower had been revved up nearby. There was, thankfully, a full blanket of clouds draped over the sky- he’d always been slightly unnerved by the random lumps of sky-cotton that drifted around on sunny days. Individual things as large as those really shouldn’t find their home in the sky.

Anyway, what was Javi saying? Something about clothes?

“-anyway, just don’t wear anything too bright and I think we’ll be fine. Also a mask. And gloves. Not having either of those would probably end up with us being arrested, and I for one am not too jazzed about that.”

“Huh. Yeah.”

“Hugo, are you staring at clouds again?”

“Huh. Yeah.”

A sigh drifted through the speaker. “I knew it. Just meet me back at the dorm, man.”

“Huh. Yeah.”

He lowered his phone when he heard Javi hang up, and stuffed it back in his pocket. Shapes were congealing and flaring in the sky, and so he turned away. He knew better than anyone to not let his imagination get carried away.

He made his way into the dorm, soon enough, and paused at his door. A torrent of clanging and rustling was escaping though the door, and Hugo paled at the implication. Javi was looking for something, and he’d turn the room inside out in order to find it. It wasn’t like the room didn’t already look like it’d been hit by a clockwork hurricane, but each new pattern of debris brought a whole new network of paths to take. His calves suddenly itched, the scars of skimming by unprecedented sharp metal standing out on his skin. He braced himself, flicked the door handle around, and walked into hell.

An entire wardrobe’s worth of clothes lay scattered over the floor, draped over mounds of clutter and snagged on various things. Hugo could still see the remnants of the old arrangement of the mess, but it’d been mostly swept away by a new reigning chaos. And in the center of it all, the orchestrator of his own domain’s mess, Javi. He was hopping around on one leg, with an outstretched arm plastered with clothing and the other waving around as a counterweight. Black spikes were rolling over his face, a clear sign of agitation, and his glasses were askew. Hugo sighed, and went to help.

About 15 minutes later, the dust had settled. Javi had retreated into the bathroom to change into his ‘heist clothes’, the outfit he’d been inverting the room for, and Hugo’d set up on the table to write an essay for both himself and his roommate.

“Hey, Javi, I got a worksheet packet today-”

“I did it during lunch on your account. How’s my essay going?” The interruption sounded out from behind the door, saturated by echoes.

“Pretty good, I think there’s a few more things to outline in this paragraph. Your notes helped.”

The setup had started in high school, and it’d worked out pretty well for both of them. Hugo was really good at writing, and Javi always did incredibly well at lists of fact-based questions.

A crash sounded out from the wall as Javi burst through the bathroom door and almost knocked the poor thing off its hinges. He’d changed into a black dress shirt crisscrossed by crimson lines, a zip-up black hoodie, and jeans that would’ve been fashionably ripped were it not for him resewing the holes back together. His glasses had been shed in favor of contacts, and his hair’d actually been somewhat wrangled into a manageable shape.

“HEIST OUTFIT!”

“Do you want the entire dorm to know we’re doing this? Keep it down, man.”

“Oh, sorry. Heist outfit! That better?”

“A little. Anyway, Javi, why exactly are we doing this?”

“Whaddya mean?”

“A…heist. Why can’t we just go over and ask your engineering professor if we can borrow some specific things? It’s just a project.”

Javi exhaled and swept himself onto the crocodile-clip stool. “Well, here’s the thing. Prof Pandagénial… he really doesn’t like me. I think I pissed him off when I fell asleep in class that one time. And those other 12 times. Anyway, the chances of us actually getting the resources we need for an unsupervised project of this kind, with the things we’re doing to complete it,” he gestured at his face, and the black spines of his stand rose to the surface, “it’s highly unlikely that we’ll get anything for our trouble. It’s better to just borrow them for a while, get this thing done, then return it.”

“Ah, I get it.”

“Also I think going on a heist could be really fun.”

“Fair enough,” Hugo rose, and offered a hand to Javi. “You know, we’re probably going to need replacements for the parts we steal. I don’t wanna halt all functionality of those machines because of missing pieces.”

He took the hand and let Hugo pull him up. “Well, let’s get started, then.”

An hour or so later, everything was ready. Replacement components were resting in a bag slung over Javi’s shoulder, and he’d even coerced Hugo into donning a heist outfit(!) of his own- a sensible thin-sleeved hoodie, loose pants, and gloves. Having a mask was probably crucial, too- Javi could deal with security cameras, but people would be more of a problem.

Nothing else to do, really. The bag was packed, the plan was double-checked and triple-checked and quadruple-checked, and nerves were calmed as much as possible. Operation Steal Stuff We Could Probably Just Ask For was primed to be carried out.

Javi hefted his bag, Hugo flicked the door open, and they strode out.

They then frowned, looked down, and darted back inside.

They’d forgotten shoes.

Professor Victor P. Stelar was having a good night. This was a rarity for someone in his position, as a normal evening for him consisted largely of marking various quizzes or homework he’d received. He didn’t consider himself to be much of a social creature, and what few friends he did have were all in the same grading hell as him, so his experience of the nightlife around Collège du Château des Nomades was minimal.

Yet, despite all of that, he was still having a good night on this particular occasion. All of his marking and lesson preparations had been done beforehand in anticipation of this one night, and no aberrations had occurred thus far.

He almost felt like smiling as he made his way over to the science building. All he needed to do was enter for about a minute or two in order to grab his telescope, which Prof. Mareks Pandagénial had allowed him to stash in the computer lab. He could set it out on a field, drape his blanket below him, and stargaze as long as time allowed. Pure bliss.

Padding up the stone steps at the building’s entrance, he swiped his card on the door and swept it open. Or, rather, he should’ve swept it open. Instead, it stayed exactly where it was. Odd.

The indicating light on the card’s scanner had turned an affirming shade of green, so he knew that the card was still valid. There’d been a series of clicks, too, so the door had even responded to it. Yet, the door’s locking mechanism remained determined to keep him out. He raised a hand and an eyebrow in perfect sync, and wondered if it’d be considered an abuse of power to break down the door with Russian.

As soon as the thought darted through his head, though, another resounding series of clicks accompanied the door as the indication light switched to red. Victor narrowed his eyes, and tugged on the door experimentally.

It opened.

He frowned, closed the door, and swiped his card again.

It didn’t open.

The light flicked to red again, and the door… unlocked. Somehow, it seemed, the door’s two states of being ‘locked’ and ‘unlocked’ had switched. So, the door would remain openable until  someone swiped a card on it, which would lock it for a few seconds.

Bizarre.

He opened the door, and left his concerns at the threshold. He’d call someone later to get it looked at. Right now, though, there was a night sky to admire.

The door to the computer lab was ajar.

He heard hushed voices inside.

For goodness’ sake.

Without hesitation, he strode over to the door and threw it open, giving himself a second or two to process the situation. A pair of black-clad figures were huddled over a piece of equipment, and the smaller one of the two had frozen with their hand buried inside it like a kid caught in the middle of pilfering from the cookie jar. The larger one rose to their knees warily, and before Victor could bark out a demand for an explanation they leapt to their feet and struck a pose with their arms outstretched. Smoke billowed from their shirt sleeves with a surprising amount of speed, and soon the room was cloaked in a thick grey-green gas.

A stand user, almost certainly. Victor stifled a curse and started analyzing what he’d seen. Two guys, stealing from a computer lab at a fairly prestigious college. They probably lived somewhere on campus, seeing as it was late on a weekday night and the campus’ security cams would doubtless alert security to two suspicious people dressed in all black coming into the college. 

They weren’t stealing out of necessity, then- more likely, it was due to them not being able to ask for one reason or another. Perhaps they were looking to sell parts for drug money or something.

In any case, Victor concluded that a) stands were involved and b) their motives were of questionable morality, at best. Therefore-

Using force would be acceptable. At least the folks in Panic would think so.

Having processed all that in the span of a second, Victor settled into a defensive stance and drew Russian from its sheath in his mind. A golden staff fell into his hand, comfortably weighted at one end by a scythe’s blade and a blunt hammer-face, which were mounted on opposite sides of the pole. Blue abacus beads of various sizes were scattered over the staff’s surface, and the whole thing hummed with the desire to be swung.

He was planning to do just that, but he waited for a few seconds as he surveyed the smoky domain that’d swept over him. Cloudy shapes, formed by patches of dark and light gas, were congealing and splitting every second over the surface of the smoke, but they seemed to halt their frenzy as Victor’s eye swept over them.

But…

He was feeling something odd.

Like he was a kid again, staring up at the night sky and letting his eyes see the things they wanted to in the stars.

He’d make letters, shapes, objects, until his mother called him in for the night.

It was as it was then, with the shapes in the smoke jumping out at him and begging to be given a form. One in particular, an irregular cross, reminded him of an opened pair of scissors. He looked and he looked, and the image sharpened. One blink later, and a forest-green set of scissors were darting at his face.

He ducked under them, and glanced around to see them swerving back around. So, either the stand was a fully-automatic attacker, or the user could see where he was and could aim with the scissors. He dodged again, but the scissors changed direction as he did so and struck him in the shoulder.

To his surprise, though, instead of the sharp pain of a stab he only felt a dull impact.

He’d been hit with the handle.

So, another two explanations- the automatic stand had simply miscalculated, and couldn’t determine a ‘correct’ way to strike him, or there was a person who either had terrible aim…or wasn’t going for grievous harm.

That last one was a terrible thing to assume, though, so he went with the idea that the force behind the strike wasn’t perfectly precise.

Good to know.

The scissors were veering around for another strike, and Victor made sure to keep his eyes from wandering to the still-churning shapes in the smoke. One of these sentient objects was bad enough already.

It darted forward again, but this time he was ready for it. He hefted his stand, and swung.

The hammer-side of Russian impacted against it, and he felt his stand’s power happily flow into the scissors as his swing cleaved through it. Russian’s power was that of ‘dissection’- anything he or his stand touched could be cleanly separated into the components that made it up. Clothes became piles of string,  cloudy water repelled itself to become clear and fresh with detritus at the bottom, and it seemed that these scissors became…pine needles? That’s what his power was telling him.

He’d also hit the user, it seemed, as he heard a loud and wet hacking emanating from the surrounding smoke. So the stand was controlled, then, or only semi-automatic.

Russian hit the tiled floor beneath him, and a pair of large slabs of tile sheared off the rest of the floor. Victor grabbed them, and started fanning them around in large arcs to disperse the smoke. It faded quickly.

The smoke-user was bent over on the opposite side of the room, coughing into their mask while their partner alternated between worrying over them and fiddling with one of the devices.

Victor scanned the room again and stepped back to the doorframe. Neither of them had a teleportation ability- from what he’d seen, they’d come through the door- and he was standing in front of the only door in the room. To get out, they would quite literally need to go through him.

Resolving to finish this quickly, he dug his feet into the ground and lashed out again with Russian. The stand lengthened as it flew through the arc of his swing, long enough to reach the two thieves, and aiming to take their clothes to shreds and hopefully give him a face to work with.

He hit nothing but air, though.

The smoke-user had managed to dodge, and the other thief was rushing him. He had to retract Russian in order to block a strike from them, and the smoke-user had seemingly recovered and started spouting pine needles from his sleeves. The needles twirled into the air and surrounded him, shedding smoke violently, and while he was distracted the thief in front of him delivered two quick strikes. The one to the face wasn’t particularly jarring, but the one to the chest made him glance down.

A stand, doubtless belonging to his attacker, had manifested. It had the general appearance of a fish, like a cross between a piranha and a pufferfish with a gaping black-toothed mouth and a red body covered in silver antennae. Its fins, too, were made out of these spines and in the place of webbing were arcs of electricity. Its body was mottled with speckles of yellow, and its three bulbous eyes spun in their sockets.

It sprang out of its user’s arm, and dived into his chest.

Oh dear.

He flicked his gaze up to meet the almond-shaped eyes of his assailant.

“Sorry,” they said, in the non-voice of a stand user. “I promise it’ll be gone in a few hours.”

Before he could ask what it was, though, another odd sensation took him over. It felt like his body was malfunctioning, all the carefully-arranged thoughts and nerves that made him function scrambling themselves into spaghetti. He tried to step back and started scratching his elbow. He tried to stop scratching his elbow and sneezed. He tried to speak and-

He fell asleep.

One last thought managed to scramble through his head as he hit lights-out- Francois is not going to like this.

The professor hit the ground and Javi groaned.

“This is literally the worst situation I predicted. Not only did someone walk in on us,” he gestured at Professor Stelar’s sleeping form, “but it was a teacher, and a teacher with a stand to boot.”

Hugo coughed again and pulled his mask down to wipe his mouth. It left a red smear on his arm. “A strong stand. Those scissors he made from my Aftermath- well, I knew damage transfers to me, but that was rough.”

Javi darted over to him and put his arm on his back. “Yeah, I saw the needles on the floor. You alright, there?”

“I’m- I’m good, yeah. I just need to-” He coughed again. “Just need to shake it off. Keep working on the stuff.”

“Okay. I only need a few more minutes and then we’ll be out of here.” Javi glanced at the moon outside, and then down to his watch.

Hugo leaned against a wall and monitored the door in silence while he got his breath back. The professor had only gotten in one hit, but it hurt like hell. He had no idea how all those guys in action books dealt with it.

A sudden clang echoed through the room, making him jump, and he looked around to see Javi messing with a piece of detached machinery. His stand, Mighty, was just about visible inside it, the familiar black spines poking out of the metal as it swam around and worked its magic.

Mighty had the ability to ‘rewire’ anything it moved through, allowing it to mess with electronics as well as people’s nerves. Hugo’d bore the brunt of a full nerve-scrambling before, and it was not pleasant. It also worked wonders on clothing, and consequently Javi had endeavored for a double major in engineering and fashion. Mighty worked best with knowledge of an object’s makeup, especially with machines, so Javi’d been researching as much as he could about the wiring of electronics for years.

It was intriguing to see him in his element, his hands flying over the gadget while Mighty connected and disconnected and rerouted the machine’s entire functionality to make it compatible with the replacement they’d brought. Finally, the last piece they needed was ejected from the machinery, and Javi fed in the new one as it plugged itself in seamlessly. Hugo, for the most part, had little to no idea what was going on. But he knew Javi, and a look of delighted exhaustion was all he needed to understand. He pushed off the wall, Javi swept the components they’d needed into the bag, and they wordlessly left after cleaning up as much as they could.

In the hallway, though, something occurred to him.

“Javi, how long is Professor Stelar going to be out for?”

“An hour or two. And I blocked off all the short-term memories he had of what happened.”

“Wait, you did? You can do that?”

Javi shrugged. “Sort of. It’s not an exact science, and he’ll probably recover his memories eventually. But by that point, they’ll just be faded into his long-term memory, hopefully.”

“Cool. Also, can you fix the lock on the door?”

“The card-reader?” 

“Yeah. Seems pretty suspicious to leave it just as it is.”

“…”

“What is it?” 

“I thought it’d be kind of funny to…” He trailed off, but Hugo understood anyway.

“We’re not keeping it like that, dude.”

“It locks when you swipe your card on it! It’s hilarious!”

“For you, it is. But what about the poor schmucks who’ll get stuck outside tomorrow morning?”

“Agh, fine. I guess it’s an easy fix.” His tone betrayed his words, though- easygoing, seasoned with good humor.

“Oh, and Javi?”

“That’s me.”

“Don’t ask me for anything ever again.”

Chapter Text

Jaime Raimondeau, swindler extraordinaire, finished his coffee and grinned at the girl sitting across from him. Normally, this setting of a midmorning cafe meetup would play host to one of Jaime’s very many schemes, using elegance and confidence (and cheating) to lure something he wanted out of an unwitting target. By this point, his mark would usually be smitten with him, and his goal would be a short conversation away.

However, this situation was far from normal, even for someone working in a field as large as Jaime’s. (He’d once been hired to charm the MVP of the football team into stealing one of the coach’s socks- by this point, nothing surprised him.) The person sitting across from him, for the first time in ages, wasn’t one of his marks and even more importantly all of his charm slid off her like water on a duck’s back.

Her name was Sami Sapna, a classmate of his. He’d come to learn several things about her through their conversations- her major was undecided, she’d grown up in India, and she hated squids. Of greater significance, though, was something she’d only just learned about herself. She had a stand.

Jaime could faintly recall manifesting his stand for the first time, and he was pretty sure he’d just thought ‘cool’ and went on with his life. Sami’s first experience with the life of a stand user had been a bit more…hectic than his own, and he’d taken it upon himself to ease her into it as much as he could. She could barely even summon her stand, and its name hadn’t come to her yet. But it was there. Not being able to use her stand just made him more determined to help her; stand users attracted stand users, and without a usable ability she’d be at the mercy of whatever the red strings of fate brought.

Although, to be honest, Jaime had no idea why he hadn’t already caught onto her having a stand; her fashion sense was just as abnormal as his own. Sami’s usual wardrobe consisted of dark blues and purples draped over the most wild mixes of red and orange that he’d ever seen. Today’s display was a tie-dye shirt that looked like a cherry orchard had beat it up and left it to die, covered by a lilac sweater knit into swirls and curves. His own fashion sense wasn’t much better- the shirt destroyed by Professor Stelar was one of several neon-purple-over-tan clothes that hung triumphantly in his dorm closet. The belt designed to look like the front of an outback car and the purple-tinted glasses were, admittedly, also not in any way conventional. He’d been told he made it work, though- something about his dark skin calming down the purple- and he wasn’t going to argue.

This was France. Everyone and their mother had fashion engrained into their souls.

Currently, though, all he could see of her were folded sleeves and the top of her bob cut. A faint humming emanated from behind the sleeves, a definite sign that Sami was dead to the world. Jaime had two options: wake her up now and suffer the consequences, or wait until she did it herself and…suffer consequences anyway.

Oh well. He opened his phone and continued work on his latest project- exposing a rival of his. Jaime normally didn’t see people in the same field as him as rivals, more along the lines of compatriots, but he made an exception in the case of the supreme blackmailer known only as Whatchugot. If Jaime wanted to make someone go down, they’d go down, but the sheer amount of anonymity surrounding Whatchugot meant that he had nowhere to start. They were almost a cryptid, only showing up in emails to people laden with everything they didn’t want getting out. They weren’t even widely discussed, due to an ever-present demand in the emails to never talk about them. Jaime’d only managed to collect the information he had through incredible amounts of deceit and manipulation.

The mere presence of a serial blackmailer within the school didn’t concern Jaime too much- he might even be able to relate to them, and certainly couldn’t condemn them for basically doing the same thing as him- but Whatchugot had crossed the line. They’d stolen his clients and targets.

Unforgivable. He got all his enjoyment and profits out of the people who hired him and the people he swindled. A new scammer in town? Cool! Great! What’s wrong with a little competition? But they’d made it personal.

His fingers were going white on the screen of his phone by the time Sami awoke. The differences between asleep Sami and awake Sami were infinitesimal, at best. A slight shift in posture, and a ceasing of the sleep-humming, and an increased rate of shifting in her seat were all things that normally wouldn’t be able to be picked up, but Jaime made a living from reading body language.

“Welcome to the world of the living, sleepyhead,” he drawled.

He got a mumble in response.

Examining his nails, he continued. “You know, you should really sleep more at night. Stops you from falling unconscious every 30 minutes.”

Another mumble, this one more annoyed.

“Hm? What was that?”

She finally picked up her head and glared at him over massive eye-bags. “I said, I do sleep at night. It doesn’t matter, I’m always tired.”

He shrugged, and figured that it was about time to actually discuss what he’d called her for. “Anyway, you’re not going to be going to bed early tonight.”

“Oh?” She raised an eyebrow. “That sounds like a threat.”

“It’s not a threat,” Jaime chuckled. “More of an invitation. You know that white-and-black stand we saw the other day?”

Sami tilted her head. He had her attention, good. “The one that was watching Professor Stelar and us, before he hit the wall and scared it away?”

“The one and the same. I need to know who’s behind it, and I think it’d be beneficial for you to come to this party I’ve organized. A lot of people are going, and more importantly I’ve made sure every suspect I have is gonna show up. With luck, we’ll find the user. We can confront ‘em, make sure they don’t want our heads on pikes, et cetera. It’d also be good for ya to have another friendly voice confirming what I say, because I’m about 70% certain you take all of my insights and advice with a grain of salt.”

She grunted. “Sue me for not believing everything told to me by a known and prolific liar.”

Jaime grinned and conceded to her, considering that even right that second he was withholding information; he also considered the cornering of a stand user to produce an excellent amount of stress in Sami, particularly if things got heated, and that’d be all the stimuli she needed to bust out her ability.

“So, are you in?”

“I wasn’t going to get that homework done anyway,” she rolled her eyes and smiled slightly. “Yeah, I’m in.”

Jaime loved parties. The music, drinks, and dancing weren’t appealing, but the concept of a party, the idea of a large group of minds intermingling was incredibly fun for a guy like him. Even just watching people bounce off each other, fuse into groups and scatter into arguments always got him giddy. He could cause so much joy or so much havoc by saying the right words to the right person, and often did so just for fun. Even his stand was well-suited to the environment of a party.

Sami, on the other hand, evidently despised them. The second she walked in that night, she visibly shriveled. Her feet slanted towards each other, one hand gripped her sweater while the other played with the fringe of her sleeve, and her eyes leapt from face to face erratically. Jaime shrugged; parties weren’t for everyone, he guessed. Fair enough. 

He’d give her a distraction, then. He caught her eye, struck a pose, and activated Lone Digger. Bronze gears spun out of nothing, interlocking with each other into a feline shape. It grinned, glassy eyes filling with awareness, and its tail curled and cracked and extended to multiple times its length. As its power flickered on, he turned his eyes on the crowd and started observing it.

Lone Digger granted him an intimate understanding of body language, both his own and that of others. By observing someone for long enough, it was possible to read their thoughts, in a way.  Every motion, no matter how small, was indicative of some idea passing through a person’s head. And by manipulating his own body in subtle and precise ways, Jaime could even impart commands and thoughts into the people viewing him. He could even do it from afar and in overwhelming amounts, but in order to do so Lone Digger had to bind itself to his clothes as a stylized patch. As long as someone had the capability to remember that patch, long-distance manipulation was possible.

His movements were small, but as long as one person saw them the command could spread. He’d said if you’re a stand user, lean against the wall at the back. It was packaged with a lot more programming to ensure the message spread and went unnoticed by everyone it didn’t apply to, but that was the gist of it. Computing and executing these movements precisely was quite difficult, but Jaime had managed to acclimate to it.

Glancing at the selected wall, he chuckled to see Sami leaning against it with a mildly baffled expression on her face.

He was almost having too much fun observing her confusion that he almost didn’t notice when another girl peeled off the crowd and slumped against the wall.

Almost.

He zeroed in on this new girl, feeling Lone Digger’s cogs turning rapidly on his shoulder. She was slightly taller than Sami, and a lot paler. Her hair was a deep black, pulled up into a smooth ponytail that slowly faded to white as it curled to a tip. Her dress seemed to be designed in a similar palate to her hair; it was colored in a halftone, black dots of varying size on a white background, moving along a gradient so that her neckline was almost completely black while the hem was white. Even her shoes seemed to be in on the joke, with a checkered design of white and black.

She seemed… nervous, certainly. One hand was wrapped around the opposite elbow, and her free hand fiddled with itself and the hem of her dress. Her head was slanted towards the ground, her shoulders drawn together, and her back slouched. The only part of her that didn’t match with the rest- and therefore the only part he trusted- were her eyes, darting around in a practiced way and seeming to absorb information ravenously.

Eyes are the window to the soul, he thought, and hummed in amusement. This girl’d deliberately made her posture insecure, and the only reason to do that would be because she was hiding something. He had his target. Now all he needed to do was waltz over there and test his thesis, earning Sami’s trust and allowing him to ally with her in further schemes-

Sami was flirting with the girl. At some point during his rumination, she’d marched over to her and leaned against the wall with a lazy smile on her face. He couldn’t hear what she was saying over the noise of the crowd and music, but that was definitely Sami’s flirting face. It was working, too. The girl’s pale skin had noticeably reddened, and she’d also relaxed against the wall. Even her restless eyes had ceased their search, with her head firmly turned towards Sami’s.

Confound it, Sami. He was all for her scoring a date or something, but in this particular case it could wait until after he confirmed that said date didn’t have any plans involving Sami’s/his mutilation. He sighed, pushed up his violet glasses to rub his nose, and aligned his body for a perfect swagger.

Sami glanced up as he crossed the room, and the girl followed her gaze. Once again, the dissonance between eyes and body showed itself. Her body stayed relaxed, but her eyes hardened and narrowed. It was specifically directed at him, too- she knew him by reputation, was that it? No, not really, the usual reaction to him was mild to extreme distrust. This was a simmering hatred, and enough confidence to back it up. Fascinating.

“Didn’t expect to see you here, chatveste,” she called out.

Jaime stifled a scowl. Chatveste was an undesired nickname of his, after his tendency to act like a cat in a suit jacket- sly, suave, selfish- during his work. He didn’t mind people appreciating his skill in swindling, but building up a reputation as untrustworthy could negatively impact future endeavors.

He sauntered over to the girl and glared. “If you know me, then you’d be familiar with the fact that I show up where I damn well please.”

“Oh, I barely know of you. A friend just told me to stay away from the likes of you,” she laughed. Despite her flippant attitude, though, the glower in her eyes hadn’t dissipated at all. She stuck out her hand. “Camille Bobine, pleased to make your acquaintance.”

Jaime ignored it. “Jaime Raimondeau. Likewise.”

Now, Lone Digger wasn’t true telepathy. It could only read a thought that somehow manifested on the body. But there was something there, a clear thought written on her posture and face, so plain as day that he could almost hear it. He kept his power simmering below the skin, not giving this girl with a welcoming face and hateful eyes anything to work with. Camille was asking a question, the probing kind that threatened to make truth explode from the answerer if not properly moderated. This, by itself, was shocking enough. Lone Digger was, as much as Jaime didn’t like admitting it, not a very powerful ability. It usually took his own wits to piece together what he read on a person. But Camille had a clear, practiced, and specific question.

“What do you have on you?”

Not in the physical sense, but rather she seemed to be after emotional baggage. What dirt someone had on them. If this question was mixed into a drink and steadily fed to someone, it’d be incredibly powerful for a rumor-mill or… a blackmailer.

If she was a stand user, especially if she was the user of the stand that’d been spying on them, she’d have access to tons of information no one else would. Her being a blackmailer explained the look in her eyes, too; she specifically hated him, because he was competition. And the question, “What do you have on you?”, could be shortened to-

Whatchugot.

Was he paranoid? Very possibly. The life of a swindler didn’t lead to a worry-free existence. But Lone Digger didn’t give false reads, and it was worth a shot.

His stand dived into his shirt, contracting and twisting and settling to form a stylized LD flanked with the silhouetted heads of a cat and a dog. To a normal person, it’d simply be noticed, as if it was always there but just never seen, but a stand user would see it form. From the way Camille’s eyes widened, it was the latter.

Sami noticed it too, and narrowed her eyes at him.

“Jaime, you can’t be thinking-”

“Yeah. I am,” he retorted. “Nothing much more than an estimated guess, and if it turns out to be wrong I’ll back off, but,” he flicked a point towards Camille and braced himself. “Lone Digger.”

She’d given up on her facade; her body had stiffened and her face hardened. Her eyes drew over to Sami. “What is this?”

Sami sighed. “He thinks you’ve been spying on us-”

“Not just us. A lot of people.”

“Fine. He thinks you’ve been spying on a lot of people with a supernatural ability that you may or may not have with a malicious motive that you, again, may or may not have. I don’t really know, it was mainly his idea to go snooping.”

“Wait, so-” she started.

“Are you the user of a long-ranged stand, incorporeal, small and white, and fast?”

She backed up. “I-”

“Do you have malevolent goals?”

“Well-”

“Do you use your stand to gather information on people, then blackmail them?”

Sami, brow furrowed, stood between a shrinking Camille and an almost snarling Jaime.

“Oi, catman, back off. Even if she is, you’re not gonna get anything like that. At best, she’s just gonna clam up and at worst she’s gonna lash out at ya.”

“Even if she clams up, I can get it out of her,” He let Lone Digger’s cogs crawl across him, and sighed. “Listen, Sami, if my theory is correct she’s a lot worse than you think. Don’t defend her just ‘cause you want to get in her pants.” He ducked under her and lightly pushed her away. He’d gotten very close to Camille, who in response pressed herself into the wall and glared even harder. “And you.”

“Oui, chatveste? What is it?” The tone in her voice wavered, but her words were defiant.

He pushed in even closer and spoke in a low tone. “I don’t appreciate you interfering with my work, Whatchugot.”

That shattered any vestiges of the facade. Camille stiffened entirely, and opened her mouth to speak, undoubtably about to confirm his suspicions entirely, when something struck him in the back of the head. He frowned, turning around, and could almost feel the fear staining his skin pale white when he saw the cause.

In the flashing lights of the party, the sight before him was slightly indistinct, but still unmistakable. Sami stood there, hair billowing and posing in such a way to convey nothing but menace. Her stand had manifested in front of her, crimson insectoid head tilted and lights bouncing off the sheen of its pill-shaped body. Multiple jointed violet arms curled from its sides, and as he watched they knotted together into powerful, if short, humanoid limbs.

“I said, back off.”

Jaime sighed, flipped her off, and turned around, only to hear her shout behind him.

“WONDERLAND!”

Huh. She’d named it. Cool.

It struck him again, and a sensation spread through his body like an anasthetic. Less cool.

The hits sped up, and even bringing Lone Digger to the surface to defend him made a negligible difference. The stand pummeled him, injecting sleepiness into his mind and unleashing a war cry. 

“DODODODODODODODODODODODO!”

It leeched the last of his consciousness from him, and he picked up on one final mutter from Sami.

“Dormez bien, Jaime.”

Sami turned away as he crumpled into a snoring tangle of limbs, her wrathful expression collapsing back into a bored stare as she grabbed Camille’s arm and tugged. Meeting some resistance, she looked up into her face to see utter befuddlement draped across it.

“Uh- Sami, was it? Yeah? What the- what just happened?” Her tone mirrored her expression.

Sami sighed. “Look, Jaime was probably right about you. I haven’t been around him for too long, but he always seems to hit these sorts of nails on the head. But that was going a little far. I’m pretty sure aggression’s sort of… the last thing you do in a confrontation. Not the first.”

Camille murmured an agreement, before something seemed to click in her head and she narrowed her eyes. “Wait- confrontation?”

Another sigh. “I’ll explain, but- somewhere else, alright? It’s suspicious to just leave him,”- she gestured at Jaime’s sleeping form- “like that, but loitering around is just gonna make things worse.”

Camille huffed but let herself be dragged towards the exit.

A minute or so later, the frenzied thrums of the party’s music had faded considerably into the distance. They paused at a bench, illuminated by a single frosty light, and Camille collapsed onto it.

“Alright. Explain,” she demanded, hanging her head back.

Sami mulled over it for a second, trying the best way to put it all into words, and decided to be quick about it. Everything she’d learned, everything her and the swindler had discussed, was chopped up and unspooled to an increasingly intrigued Camille. Her eyebrow arched up higher and higher as Sami ranted, and by the time it’d all come out her eyes were swimming with thoughts.

She scooted over on the bench and patted the planks next to her, outlining a seat that Sami gladly took. Her elbows rested on her knees as she leaned forward, and Sami had to vehemently stop herself from admiring the other’s thighs. Now was not the time for… whatever that particular line of thinking led to. 

“So… I appreciate your honesty,” Camille started. “And I guess I owe you the same thing.”

“Oh- no, you don’t really need to-”

“I am exactly the person you’re looking for.”

“Oh, that’s a relief. I- wait, what?” Sami felt her Wonderland flare up for a second out of surprise.

“I didn’t know what they were called, but,” Camille lifted her arm and a white creature crawled out of her hand. “Yeah, I’ve got the stand you guys were looking for.”

The creature, evidently her stand, was slim, white-skinned and covered in translucent hairs. It looked to be quadrupedal and vaguely humanoid, with thin arms and legs. Its hands were disproportionally large, with long fingers narrowing to black tips. It had a long, grey, sharklike fin running down its back, and a silver string connected it to its user’s hand. Its head was covered in short white spikes. In the place of eyes, a black band was wrapped around its head, with a pair of red dots darting around it. A thin tongue darted between sharp teeth as it clung to its user’s arm.

Sami stared.

“Please don’t be mad.” Camille, evidently unused to feeling awkward, couldn’t do much more than force a smile and make jazz-hands.

Sami stared.

The jazz-hands turned into a gesture of surrender as her smile melted away. “Oh, no, you’re mad. Please don’t hit me, I’ll leave you alone, just don’t-”

“Can I pet it?”

“I…what?”

“It’s cute. I wanna pet it.”

“Oh,” Camille said. “I suppose you can?” The stand unlatched itself from her arm and crawled into Sami’s lap. Sami lifted her hand, instinctually summoning Wonderland to cover it, and ran it over the stand’s body. The hairs prickled, but the body was smooth as glass.

“What’s it called?” She asked, without looking up.

“I named it Comics. I call that one Pilot, though.”

Sami tilted her head while keeping her eyes fixated on the stand in her lap. “This one? There’s another?”

“Well, yeah.” Out of the corner of her eye, Sami saw Camille lift her other arm. Another stand crawled out of it, identical to Pilot in all ways save for an inverted color scheme. This black stand leapt into its user’s lap and curled into a dark ball. “This one’s Final.”

“Huh.”’ Jaime hadn’t told Sami anything about a stand taking two separate forms simultaneously. The closest thing he’d ever said was an offhand statement- Stands are shaped by their users’ minds, so their diversity’s governed only by the variations of people. If her mind was a red-and-blue humanoid bug monster that could put people to sleep by punching them, then she couldn’t really judge Camille.

She ran her hand over Pilot’s smooth body again, and Camille shivered next to her. She looked up at that, seeing that Camille’s face had flooded with red. She gave her a quizzical look, and for science’s sake stroked Pilot with as much gentleness as she could manage. The blush deepened.

Sami grinned and filed that information away for later. But right now, she needed to get to the bottom of this.

“So, what’s up with all this? Why were you spying on us?” She questioned Camille, who straightened slightly and turned away. A sigh came from her direction.

“Well…it wasn’t personal. I promise you that. I just like having things.”

“What, like money?”

Camille chuckled. “Money’s not bad, I’ll never say otherwise, but that’s not really what I mean. You know that saying, ‘Knowledge is power’?” Sami nodded. “Well, I’ve lived by that for a while now. My Comics can go really far away from me, and they don’t really seem to be stopped by walls and stuff, so I’ve been able to sneak them into places and see what they see. People do all sorts of things when they think no one’s watching, you know.”

Sami thought back to the things she did in private- mainly sleeping- and couldn’t remember anything very interesting. But she supposed not everyone had as much of a screwed-up sleep schedule as herself, so she made a noise of agreement anyway.

“And, well, I never saw the point in having this kind of information if I wasn’t going to do anything with it sooo… I started blackmailing people whenever I wanted something.” Camille continued matter-of-factly.

“Whoa.” Sami’s eyes almost opened fully. “That seems a little excessive.”

“I… yeah, now that I say it out loud it’s not very reasonable, is it?”

Sami hummed, tapping her chin with a finger. “So, that’s why Jaime was after you, huh? I’m guessing he figured out you were a blackmailer and wasn’t too happy about it.”

“Ah. That. It’s a little more than just me doing what I do. Would you be surprised to know that I was lying when I said I didn’t know much about him?”

“It wouldn’t be the most surprising thing to happen,” Sami drawled and they both laughed.

“Fair enough. Anyway…I can kind of understand Jaime not taking a shine to me, especially if he figured out what I do. I’ve run into some of his swindling operations as-” she wiggled her fingers- “the notorious blackmailer Whatchugot. I pulled a few strings, got some innocent people out of trouble, probably pissed him off along the way. A few of my informants told me he’s been looking into my identity for months now.”

Sami raised her eyebrows. “Sounds like you’re pretty deep in all this. Informants, conflicts with other people on the market, pulling strings to make things happen- y’know, it doesn’t really seem to be for fun anymore.”

Camille exhaled a mirthless chuckle. “Yeah, you’re probably right. No one heads into this kind of thing with the aim of getting tangled up in it. But I can at least be sure that I won’t wake up with a knife in my back or end up being pummeled into unconsciousness  by a stand user.” She frowned. “By the way, what did you do to Jaime? It didn’t look like he was straight-up knocked out.”

Sami’s eyes narrowed and she looked up into the sky. “I have literally no idea.”

Jaime awoke somewhere he definitely didn’t fall asleep in. His face was pressed against a layer of hot sand, an uncaring sun beat down on his neck, and an unsettling rumble seemed to be flowing from everywhere around him. He paused for a few seconds to take stock of everything he could before he made it clear he was awake, and with no obvious signs of danger he shoved himself upward into a kneel and spat out sand. Summoning Lone Digger’s eyes to take in more information quickly, he scanned his surroundings.

He was in…an arena? It looked like one. He’d woken up on a large circle of sand, ringed by spectators’ seats made from red-tinged stone. With his limited knowledge of architecture, the structure looked vaguely Greco-roman, with swooping arches and multitudes of seats and rigid crimson pillars. Every seat was taken, and Jaime thought he recognized some of the spectators. The rumble that permeated the air was coming from them, a steady stream of conversations and exclamations vying to be heard over their fellows. The sky was yellow, and neither his nor Lone Digger’s eyes were able to look even near the sun due to its brightness. His eyes danced over the stadium again, and noticed something significant: an imperial box of sorts, a gaudy structure jutting from the stone and populated by what looked like servants.

Jaime rose to his feet and shadowed his eyes with a hand as he approached the box, reasoning that the best way to at least get an idea of what was going on would be to talk to la grande fromage themselves, the head of the event. He found himself eternally grateful for having shoes as he walked, unwilling to imagine what it might feel like to walk across sand this hot with bare feet. Eventually and in no time at all, he neared the box and looked up to see…

Wonderland, Sami’s stand, lounging on a cushioned purple seat and surrounded with what looked like the most handsome/beautiful servants money could buy. Its red and blue pill-body reflected the sun’s glare directly at him, so he could only barely see the patronizing tilt of its head and the gleam of its golden compound eyes.

He shouted up at it, mentally constructing a will as he did so. “What the hell is going on, Sami?” I leave my parents with the profits of my endeavors at college- have fun with my ill-gotten gains, mum- and to my roommate I gift 3 years’ worth of rent and a sincerest apology for    goading one of my clients into chucking a molotov cocktail through our window.

The stand clicked a chuckle through its insectoid jaws, somehow audible above the crowd, and replied simply. “I’m not Sami, unfortunately for you. I’m me, and I’ve got a bone to pick with you.”

Jaime squinted. “Eh? What for?”

“I’ve honestly got no clue,” it shrugged and shifted into a hunched sitting position. “But Sami sent you down here for a reason, didn’t she?”

He looked down at the sand and sighed. “I guess she did. So, what’s your plan for me?”

Wonderland stood. “I’m glad you asked.” It crouched, and jumped into a magnificent series of aerial flips over Jaime’s head. As he turned to keep its eyes on it, the ground below it surged upwards, sharpening and clarifying and folding onto itself to become a massive pyramid of cards that it lightly landed on. The cards crumbled back into sand and gently set Wonderland on the arena floor as it continued. “We’re going to fight.”

Jaime gulped. “Didn’t you already win a fight against me? You knocked me out and everything…” He trailed off and came back with an idea. “Except, no, you didn’t knock me out, did you? You put me to sleep. Which means all of this,” he gestured at the stadium around him, “is all a big ol’ dream!” His trademark used-car-salesman smirk slid back onto his face. “It’s a lucid dream, meaning anything I can think of is possible. Yeah. I’ll fight you. I’ll fight you and I’ll win, you pest.”

The stand clicked again. “Now you’re getting it,” it hissed. “Who do you think that crowd’s cheering for?”

With nothing else to be said, Wonderland and the swindler rushed into combat. The fight, as with most things in dreams, didn’t make much sense. The stand would attack with a squadron of rabid white rabbits that hadn’t existed up until that point, and Jaime would counter with a single swipe of his arm which caused them to turn on each other and dissolve into a flurry of flying fur. Jaime would summon a colossal clockwork cat to devour Wonderland, and it would shoot out a plume of pressurized tea to blast it away. The fight flowed nonsensically with no cohesion, with one notable exception.

Wonderland didn’t, or couldn’t, heal itself. Every glancing blow, every scrape and slash, none of  it closed over while Jaime could simply think about being healed and his body would comply. And it wasn’t unaffected by the wounds, either. One of Lone Digger’s claws to the arm left that arm lagging behind and drooping when not in use. A super-powered kick to the leg caused Wonderland to stumble as it moved. And 4 diagonal cuts to the chest from a particularly vehement swipe made it collapse.

Jaime strolled over to where it’d fallen and placed his foot on its smooth body.

“I win, Wonderland. Now let me out.” He grinned.

The stand’s head fell back and its mouth twisted into something that looked an awful lot like a smile. “You can leave whenever you want, chatveste. It’s your dream, is it not? Just think of it, and you’ll start to wake up.”

“Oh?” He raised his eyebrows. “Don’t mind if I do, then.” He thought about the sensation of waking up, and immediately his body became much lighter, like invisible hands were reaching from the sky and pulling him up to join them.

“But think about it,” Wonderland coughed. “Sami’s not here, not controlling me, so my wounds won’t be given to her.”

Jaime relaxed. “That’s good. I wouldn’t want her to deal with all of,” he gestured down at its wounds, “that.”

It laughed. “No, no, think about it. If this can’t be transferred to Sami, and it needs to go somewhere, where do you think it has no choice but to go to?”

His eyes widened and he doubled over. Pain erupted from all over his body, from a slash to the arm and a kick to the leg and four diagonal cuts to his chest. The wounds didn’t appear on his body, but they were definitely there- an exact mirror his opponent’s injuries.

The stand continued. “Wonderland. My ability is not to place people into dreams, no. It is to ‘make dreams touch reality.’ Actions done in my dream-world will affect the dreamer, and only the dreamer.”

Jaime was still being tugged back into the waking world, but through the haze of pain he could only register the gleam in Wonderland’s compact eyes.

“See you on the other side, swindler.” 

The dream collapsed and Jaime was expelled from it to meet a waking world of self-inflicted pain.

Chapter Text

Jaques Ressort had a problem.

A big problem. One of those problems that got to be so big that it gave birth to a bunch of smaller problems, all of which in turn tended to spawn their own. A goddamn grandpa of problems. He was hungry, cold, homeless, and bored, all of which was due to a simple fact that he was struggling to reconcile with. Somehow, his very ability to do petty crimes had been removed.

Usually, him being hungry, cold, homeless, or bored would often result in him breaking into somewhere and simply dealing with the issue via a thoughtless bit of burglary or something. If he was dirty, he’d climb through someone’s window and take a shower. If he wanted to read, he’d just take a book. It was a simple lifestyle, and one that’d taken him out of London and into the big, wide, easily burgled world around him.

(He’d also had to leave because the coppers knew his face, but still.)

After he’d finished up in Paris, the plan was to hitch a ride over to Berlin, then down to Madrid and probably Rome too. Hopping from major city to major city would hopefully stop the authorities from ever getting a bead on him, and he’d be able to sustain that life for as long as he pleased.

But now, things had changed. Every time he got the twinge to relive an establishment of its supplies, it was instantly stopped by a voice that sounded awfully like reason. Reaching out to break some poor sod’s locks would be met by a string of doubts and worries, and Jaques knew for a fact that it wasn’t his own because his own goddamn voice of doubt had learned to shut the hell up.

He’d been suffering by this restricting voice for days, and he knew exactly where it’d come from.

Her.

Jaques didn’t know her name, what she was like, or basically anything else about her. All he knew was that she worked at a dinky little bookshop called Tape Five, and she had a stand. The latter was something he’d learned the hard way. When he’d come barreling into the bookshop to take her hostage, he hadn’t expected her to be entirely nonplussed and subsequently whip out her stand. He still remembered the way its goop felt- relaxing and nonthreatening, horribly so, like it was hiding its power behind a facade of calmness. What that power was, exactly, wasn’t very apparent.

Only one way to find out- the horse’s mouth itself. Because stands tended to work in just the most stupid ways, he’d probably only get himself free of this damn stand if she intentionally undid her power. His loose plan of action was to confront her, get her to spill, undo her stand, and make her promise to leave him alone. Yeah. Sounded good. All he needed to do was get his hands on a knife, jump her at night, and-

Are you sure you want to do that?

Damn it. Whatever she’d sicced on him, it couldn’t seem to keep its nose out of his thoughts. Jaques knew he was thinking a foreign thought, but he couldn’t do anything to stop it and now he couldn’t even make plans fo get rid of it. He’d need another strategy, then. Something that didn’t involve petty crime. He glanced up, noting the afternoon sun glaring directly at him, and jogged over to the nearest park bench to give his ass a rest. He’d been walking around aimlessly since the day began, after all, and some pause could give him a chance to combat this…whatever it was. It felt like a sinkhole’d suddenly appeared in his head, and every time he approached it a ring of caution tape sprung up around it and told him to sod off.

Anyway. Horse’s mouth. He needed to find her, threaten her, and-

Are you sure you want to do that?

Urgh. Threatening was off the table? Fine. He’d bribe her, then-

Are you sure you want to do that?

He slammed his forehead into his hands and resisted the urge to scream. A passerby gave him an odd look. Fine. Whatever. New plan. He’d find her, and talk to her, maybe even say please, and-

…

Alright. It looked like the voice was fine with it. He seethed at the idea that he’d have to bend over backwards for this girl and her curse, but his other options were 1) find another way to deal with it and 2) live with it for the rest of his life. Granted, if he didn’t get rid of it then the rest of his life might not be very long, but he still wouldn’t enjoy it.

He didn’t know where she lived, and stalking her would probably be out of the question thanks to the bloody cop living in his head. But he did know something, he realized, shooting his head up and looking around to get his bearings. Where was that damn bookstore again?

Jaques’ gaze darted from object to object, fixing on something he recognized. He’d gotten used to mapping out cities in his mind, to the point where he tended to do it subconsciously, and with a landmark he could orient himself. All he needed to do was find the best path from point A to point B. His mental map of the city rolled out all around him, and he came to the conclusion that the journey to the bookshop would be in roughly…that direction. It’d be half an hour by foot- and probably far less if he went by rooftop.

So, the inconspicuous way or the fun way?

…he already knew the answer.

He lifted off the bench and ran for the nearest alley, fighting and failing to stop the smile spreading across his face. Once he was relatively out of sight, his Lay Down flared up around him and he shot upwards.

Jaques liked to think that Lay Down was the best thing nature had ever given him. (That wasn’t a high bar to meet, by his standards, but still.) It only popped up when he used his ability, as a translucent orange horse’s skull, surrounded by a series of rotating rings. The rings had something written on them, though he’d never been able nor cared enough to read them, and they were lined with fly’s wings all across their edges. Lay Down had the ability of ‘propulsion’- essentially, teleporting. The stand could envelop him, and then rocket him off in any direction he wanted. It didn’t do this without cost, though. Lay Down needed to feed in order to get the energy for a propulsion, and it wasn’t picky. Jaques’ own body was his most consistent source of energy, but it could nip away at practically anything. Metal, plastic, wood, concrete- Lay Down could easily consume them, and use the energy within the matter to fuel its propulsion.

He landed on the nearest roof in a roll, taking off into a run when he got to his feet. He’d jump the gaps between buildings when he could, and use his stand when he couldn’t, but found himself doing much more of the latter. The roofs back in London were so much better than these ones, closer together and of much more consistent heights. Using Lay Down excessively without something else to draw off of could get tiring. Damn Paris and its stupid roofs. Even before he’d run into the curse, his French strain of petty crimes had always felt a little less fulfilling because his own parkour skills weren’t getting much use in favor of Lay Down’s propulsion.

He vaulted over an AC unit, slapping his worn-out shoes against the concrete below it. Conserving energy would be extremely important for an extended run such as this, and the only other source of power he had came from the tiny amounts he could collect as his feet struck the roof. Taking any more would mean slowing down, and leaving obvious marks in the roof’s surface that the residing Frenchies wouldn’t be too happy about.

But he was getting close. A few more blocks, and Tape Five should be on… the left. He scrambled up a tiled slope, zipped forward in a flash of orange to grab onto the next ledge, and hauled himself up. When Tape Five finally emerged in his sights, he shot onto the roof opposite it and peeked over the edge. Busy day, it looked like. From his angle, he couldn’t see too far into the shop, but two steady streams of people through the door gave him all the information he needed.

Now, was she unlucky enough to be working the till during this rush hour?

The answer would come with time, meaning that Jaques had to partake in one of his least favorite activities in existence.

Waiting.

Bloody hell.

The sun sheared through the sky in its usual arc, and as it dipped into the horizon Jaques’ waiting finally paid off. Watching his target leave the store in a tired slouch, he reflected on the fact that if he’d somehow missed her shift then the entire stakeout would be completely pointless. He got to his feet for the first time in what felt like ages (it’d been twenty minutes, actually, since he last stopped pacing) and activated his stand to tail after her. Lay Down was far from subtle in the best of situations, but stealth would be even harder to achieve because she could see the flares of orange light that his stand entailed. Shouting ‘HEY I’M FOLLOWING YOU’ would be more stealthy than this.

He shot after her, making sure to keep out of her sights, and propelled himself from one side of the street to the other when he knew she wasn’t looking. Judging by her route, she’d pass by an alley soon. Time to get into position.

If he’d thought following her was hard, getting ahead of her was even worse. He could only leap from roof to roof when she looked away, and those brief windows of time where she stopped to look at shopfronts or take out her phone felt like freedom. Through some blind stroke of luck, he managed it. He vaulted over the side of the last building and let himself fall towards the alley floor, using Lay Down to slow his descent as he came in contact with the ground for the first time in hours.

And now he had to wait again.

Goody.

It’d be a much shorter wait this time, and when his target’s tired footsteps came into hearing range he readied himself, slipping into the shadows to hide his position and drawing breath to give her the confrontation of a lifetime-

She stopped by the mouth of the alley, turned to look directly at him, and with an air of casual
amusement she said, “What’s up?”

…

Speechless wouldn’t begin to describe how Jaques felt. She’d seen him? When? Where? How much did she know? He considered running at her and attacking, but the damn curse stopped that idea in its tracks.

Somehow noting his lack of words, his target continued. “Yeah, I knew you were there. Mind if I step inside? I don’t want to look like I’m talking to an empty alley.”

He still couldn’t muster a response.

She leaned against the wall across from him and stuck her hands in her coat pockets. Among all the other things his brain was trying to process, one part of him realized that the signs of her being a stand user were quite blatant if one knew what they were looking for. She seemed to carry a comfortable strength about her, like a thick blanket that was sturdy enough to swaddle someone while they tried to claw their way out. The inherent flamboyance of a stand user, the thing that’d made him think spiking the hair over his ears into horns counted as a logical fashion move, was present, but oddly suppressed in her outfit. A swamp-green trench coat over a brown shirt covered in butterfly designs and black sweatpants crisscrossed with green lines definitely came from the mind of someone who put thought into a wardrobe, but it seemed deliberately toned down. Even her hair seemed to be in on it, with a curtain of auburn curls masking a few strands of gold. Strange.

There were more important things to be concerned with, though. He’d sought her out for a reason, and even if the plan had derailed it was still going ahead, damn it.

Jaques steeled his nerves. “Alright. First of all: what the hell did you do to me?” Some of his more…abrasive wording was weeded out by the curse.

“Oh, that. Simple, I used my stand on you.” She raised an eyebrow. “That was kind of obvious. I even named it in front of you.”

He gritted his teeth, frozen to the spot. “Yeah. I got that. But what did your stand put on me? It feels…horrible. Like a curse.”

“It didn’t put anything on you, it took something away,” she sighed, her voice tinged with annoyance. “Human Leather can remove ‘habits’ from people, as long as they’re demonstrating it. Your crimes were habitual, and now that habit’s gone. I’m guessing the only reason you’re not attacking me right now is because you literally can’t, huh?”

He stiffened. “And how would you know that?”

“Please. I could see those flares around you from a mile away,” she scoffed, and paused when she saw his confused expression. “Wait, you didn’t realize? Your stand flashes up occasionally, that’s why I used Human Leather on you. I felt justified using my stand on someone who could pose a threat.”

He had a tic? A tic that’d gotten him cursed? Best thing nature gave him, his ass. Apparently Lay Down’d been painting a target on his back for hell knows how long.

“Oh, yeah, there it goes,” his target said, more out of detached observation than anything else. “Flashing away. Looks like it might be tethered to emotions. You know- I’ve never tried using Human Leather to get rid of a tic, but it might be doable. Just let me-“ She reached for him, but Jaques yelped and flinched back. “Okay, fair enough.”

He tried to resettle himself, trying to calm his stand’s orange flares. Now that he knew about them, they were kind of hard to ignore. Right. Priorities. “Anyway, can you remove the curse?” He all but stammered out.

She slumped back against and looked skyward. “For one thing, I don’t think it’s much of a curse. Addictions are a form of habit, after all, and getting rid of those is something a lot of people want.” She gestured to the street at their side. “You see how many cigarettes are littered around here?”

“Fine. Curse. Cure. Whatever. Can you get rid of it?”

“I most certainly could,” she replied loftily, and his hopes rose. “But I don’t think I will. Not immediately, at least.” His rising hopes found themselves being kicked to death in a dark field somewhere.

“What? But- but why?” The flares had returned, and he didn’t have enough of a mind to stop it. “Just get this damn thing off me, we’ll go our separate ways, and I’ll never bother you again. I’ll even leave the city if you want.”

She whistled a dissonant note. “Now- hah- see, here’s the thing. I could let you off the hook, get you out of mine and my city’s hair, but all I’d be doing is letting a petty criminal out into the world. Your stand is quite powerful in an urban environment, from what I’ve seen, and this urban environment has a menace or two that can’t be solved by them accidentally running into me.”

Jaques’ hopes, bleeding out in a field, were set upon by a second round of beating. “You can’t possibly mean…”

Taking out her phone and scrolling through it, she continued. “There’s been a few museum robberies connected to the same perp- the guy even left a calling card and everything- which have been seemingly carried out in ways that don’t make sense unless you bring in the idea that he’s got a stand. Guy calls himself Linceul.” She glanced up at him. “You help me nab this guy, I’ll give you your petty crimes back. Deal?”

By the next day, Jaques had learned several more things about his new partner-in-crime (or anti-crime? Whatever). Firstly, he could finally put a name to a face- Louise Medicament. She was 26, she really liked books, and she was half Belgian. Also, to his utter dismay, she helpfully informed him about her stand’s ability to track affected targets. She’d known he was lurking around the second he showed up. As if his ego hadn’t already taken enough whipping as it was.

She’d actually lightened up after he accepted her deal, even getting him some food while stressing over the energy consumption of his stand. Jaques wasn’t too worried about that, though- he and Lay Down were used to running light. She’d told (ordered) him to set out at around noon that day, though he wasn’t sure exactly where it was that he was going.

As he leaped from rooftop to rooftop, a light buzzing sound emerged from somewhere. It grew louder and louder, in one ear specifically, and Jaques almost missed a jump when a massive bug landed on his ear. He yelped and raised a hand to smoosh it when it started talking.

“It’s ME, you lug. You don’t have to freak out over it.” Louise’s voice soaked into his head.

“I think I do have to freak out, actually.” Jaques paused on a rooftop, annoyed, and looked over the city as he talked to nothing. “A random bug the size of my fist lands on my head mid jump and starts speaking, I’m gonna wig the hell out.”

“Oh, grow up. At least this way I can actually follow you while you’re off bounding around. In this form, Human Leather’s range is pretty big.”

“Goody.” Trying not to think about the reed-woven scarab beetle currently nestling into his ear, he let Lay Down flare up around him and he shot off.

“That’s the wrong direction, Jaques.”

“Go to hell.” He turned around anyway.

They moved in silence towards the address Louise supplied, until a question popped into his head at the sight of his increasingly familiar surroundings.

“Wait, where is this address? It looks like we’re headed to-”

“The Grand Louvre. Exactly.”

He couldn’t keep the incredulousness out of his voice. “You think this guy’s gonna rob the Louvre? I haven’t been in this game for too long, but even I know that ‘robbing the Louvre’ is just ‘handing yourself to the cops’ with less syllables.”

The bug huffed. “Ordinarily I’d agree, but this is a special case. From the- let me check- fifteen seconds of security camera footage they’ve got of this guy, it looks like getting past top-notch security is like a casual stroll to him. He could waltz in at any time he wanted, stuff the Mona Lisa in his trousers, then leave through the front door and no one would be any wiser.”

“And I’m supposed to catch this guy how?”

“Eh, you’re used to thinking on your feet. Work something out.” A pause. “Plus, Human Leather won’t see it as habitual if you’re doing it for the first time and involuntarily, so your crime fighting should be fully unhindered!”

Jaques was pretty sure he’d preferred Louise when he didn’t know her name.

Francois Lacour just wanted a normal lunch break. He’d pack in a sandwich or two, have as long of a nap as he could, then go back to pretending to work. Under normal circumstances, slacking off at work, especially his work, could have serious repercussions. Francois worked in admin at his local police station, supposedly tasked with logging arrests and charges and parking tickets and whatnot, though he found that Minesweeper was a far more productive way to spend his time.

The station had plenty of people at the computers as it was, and Francois knew for a fact that they were all really good at what they did. Any mistake, intentional or otherwise, seemed to be corrected before it even happened. Having exactly zero experience with admin, he figured that even attempting to help would screw with their well-oiled system.

He’d found out that he was something of a legend within their rumor-network, the dark-skinned guy in admin who sat in his little corner desk and seemed to always be busy with something, never contributing to the larger workings of the station but remaining productive and not being fired for years despite a lack of any apparent usefulness. While everyone else would eventually be promoted or transferred or fired, Francois remained in the corner working on his mysterious little goings-on. He wasn’t on a rumored ultra-precise surveillance team or orchestrating the station’s emergency reactions, though- he didn’t have the heart to tell them that he was watching cat videos all day.

Of course, he wasn’t on the roster for no reason- his job just couldn’t be done during the day. Francois only showed up every morning so that his superiors had a reason to keep him officially on the payroll. Rather than an office chair and a corner desk, his actual job might’ve gotten him a cozy little cell if it happened in an upfront way.

He’d just finished stuffing his second sandwich into his face when a flash of orange caught his eye. Then another. He looked out the cafe window, heart sinking and sentiments slowly getting grouchier, and saw a young man vaulting over buildings. This wouldn’t usually be when he was called in. A rogue traceur haphazardly doing parkour on fairly high rooftops? Standard stuff. He’d call it in if he thought the kid was actively endangering himself and others, but this one looked to be decent and just minding his own business. But then he disappeared in a flash of orange light, reappearing on the other side of a gap, and Francois fought the twitch in his eye. Broad goddamned daylight? Was this kid insane?

He finished the dregs of his coffee, grabbed his bag, and swept out the door. Then he paused, went back inside, and paid the check while apologizing profusely. Scrambling out the door again, he rushed for the nearest alleyway and thanked his lucky stars that he’d remembered to pack his stuff that morning.

Now, Francois was entirely too aware of stand users’ odd inclination towards flamboyant fashion. He’d spent the better part of his years as an employee specifically repressing those inclinations. The antisocial dark-skinned man in the corner with dubious productivity would be made even more conspicuous if said dark-skinned man also constantly dressed like a rainbow had vomited on him. He wore neutral colors, no patterns if he could help it, dark ties, and kept his curly hair trimmed to his scalp.

But his actual job allowed- actually, required- him to distance himself from that persona as much as he could. He ducked into the alley, slipping on the navy blue shirt covered in teal dots that he’d produced from his bag, and shook out a tattered grey cloak. He hooked a mask onto his ears, obscuring his nose and mouth, and swept the cloak over his shoulders. A hood would cover the rest of his head, black gloves blocked him from leaving fingerprints, and a quick change of shoes completed the transformation.

Francois stashed his bag away, double-checked his new attire, and swept up to the roof with the help of one of his stand’s black chains. The kid hadn’t gotten too far away, still at a range where Francois’ stand could probably reach him, but he figured it’d be best to chase after this one himself.

But that didn’t mean Midnight couldn’t help him out.

The stand twirled into existence next to him like a plume of smoke, a dark and thin being with six clawed limbs attached to its stick of a body. It was mainly purple, though dark enough that it was often mistaken for black, and it supported itself on all six of its limbs. Its head was round, with a tapering tip at the back where the purple faded into teal. It didn’t quite have legs, with a whip-thin tail beginning right below its legs, and both its head and tail emitted a smoke so thick it was sometimes hard to tell where the body stopped and the gas began. Long black chains seemed to spin themselves from the smoke, and draped themselves across its body while others simply floated aimlessly. Its two eyes, wide as saucers and as bright as searchlights, beamed out of its purple head as it turned to look at him.

He clambered onto its back, hooking his limbs expertly between its, and Midnight took off. The priority when approaching a rogue stand user was stealth, something much easier during Francois’ normal work hours, and Midnight’s quiet footsteps greatly helped out.

Now, this was his job. Being a pseudo-legal vigilante wasn’t an occupation any parent would logically want for their child, but Francois made it work. The main problem was that, legally, stands didn’t exist. Most people had no idea they existed, and couldn’t even see them, so a criminal could pin a crime on their own uncontrollable stand or just on someone else entirely. And getting another stand to find out the truth of a situation was also quite dubious, as only the user would really know what was going on and could say anything they wanted. To verify their claim, another truth-finding stand could be brought in and so on and so forth.

The only reason the general public wasn’t constantly paranoid of stand attacks was due to the efforts of the SPW Foundation, which was somehow wrapped up in this, and their ally organization Panic. It was this latter group, a team of stand users with incredibly synergistic abilities, that’d recruited Francois into their prototype vigilante system. The higher-ups in the National Police couldn’t officially go ahead and employ him to combat stand users, because neither his nor his opponents’ abilities legally existed, so they gave him a daylight desk job to keep him on the payroll whilst turning a blind eye to what happened at night.

Every evening, after catching a few winks of sleep, Francois would duck into an alley and emerge from above it to patrol the city while it slept. He’d follow through on any reports of dangerous supernatural happenings, subdue the user, and then hand them off to Panic where they’d be imprisoned in an unescapable ability. (As far as he knew, no one had ever managed to break out of Queens.) Anonymity was of the highest priority, though- if the police were ever forced to confront and arrest him, he’d be convicted of vigilantism and the higher-ups couldn’t (or wouldn’t) do anything about it.

Hopefully, though, this case wouldn’t require Queens-level imprisonment. He was hoping to give this kid a telling-off, maybe a parking ticket grade offense at worst. Pressing his stand on, he wondered if tonight’s big football match would lead to a stand-related disruption. They were hotspots of emotional energy, after all, and if there would be any one time for a stand to emerge the aftermath of a football game would be it. He mulled over this point as his stand got closer to the traceur, resolving to worry about it later.

As soon as he got in range, he struck. Midnight’s chains unravelled and shot at his target, aiming for an instant binding.

They bound nothing but air, though.

The kid had somehow seen him coming, and teleported out of the way at the last second. Damn. That made his job way harder.

Midnight’s head whipped around, finding the kid, and Francois went for another attack. Again, his chains found nothing. The kid had teleported to an adjacent rooftop, and was scowling at him while settling into an attack stance.

It was in times like this that Francois regretted his wardrobe choice. His general inspiration had been Batman, but he hadn’t really thought about the fact that without context Batman sort of looked like a bad guy. Therefore, he looked like a bad guy. Not the impression one would want to give in the role of a helpful vigilante. He couldn’t even change it- he had a reputation to maintain.

“WHAT DO YOU WANT?” The kid yelled at him.

God, he hated this part.

“GET OFF THE ROOFS AND I’LL LEAVE. YOU SHOULDN’T BE USING YOUR STAND RECKLESSLY,” he roared, in a ridiculously deep and scratchy falsetto.

The kid’s voice lowered to a normal speaking volume. “I- that’s not your real voice.”

“You’re deflecting. And yes it is. Get off the roof.” Francois kept up the falsetto, knowing full well that he looked ridiculous. The things he did for public safety. “I’ll treat you like a normal traceur, let you off with a warning, but you need to get down now.”

“Oh? Or what?”

“Or I’ll make you.” Midnight’s chains flared around him, growing longer as each link sprouted the next.

All he got was a raspberry and a rock thrown at his head in response. He remained stony-faced, but internally he felt like banging his head into a wall repeatedly. “I’ll make you”? How could that NOT be taken as a challenge, you moron? He chastised himself.

There would be time for self-reflection later, though. Now, he had a job to do. He jumped over to the building the kid was on and started lashing out with his chains, seemingly randomly. But there was a method to his madness.

Against teleporters, especially ones that could trigger their ability quickly, it was best to get an idea of how they were inclined to move around and, more importantly, keep them from just getting the hell out if they felt threatened. His Midnight was a good enough ability for the job- just lobbing chains at people presented enough of a threat for them to dodge off to the side, and they didn’t look so dangerous that the immediate reaction would be retreat.

The kid was pretty good, despite looking to be a novice. His stand only seemed to flare up while it teleported him, so its own physical power was probably pretty low. He also seemed to only be using it to get around. In Francois’ experience, a stand could often do more than could be immediately known. Even his own Midnight, beyond its actual ability, gave him a significant movement increase by allowing him to ride it. But this kid seemed to be taking his stand at face value.

Good. Anything to make his job easier.

Francois threw out another chain, and this time the kid tried something different. He grabbed it and jerked it back, possibly with the hope that Francois would be tugged along with it. Francois was actually surprised enough to forego activating his ability in favor of simply dismissing the chain, something which he immediately resolved to fix in the future.

On such a fast-moving target, any contact at all was an achievement. Especially so in his case, seeing as he needed physical contact with someone for Midnight to actually work. Another chain sailed past his target, and a searing pain erupted between Francois’ eyes. He grunted, crouched, and reopened his eyes in time to see another rock clatter to a stop on the floor. Bundling his chains around himself in a protective dome, he rubbed his head and examined the rock as he mulled over it. He hadn’t even seen it coming. What’d the kid do?

He thought through the kid’s ability. It looked like teleportation, yes, but was it? If it worked on other things, which it might, then that rock would’ve only hurt as much as a normal throw. Teleporting thrown objects usually increased range, but not speed. But that hit was spot-on, the throw didn’t arc, and it landed hard. Through his chains, he felt more projectiles strike the dome and winced as corresponding cuts and bruises carved into his arms. Indeed, those weren’t normal throws. He’d also noted that the kid could only move along lines of sight, assuming that it was just a rule of his stand.

But if the kid’s ability was ‘propulsion’ rather than ‘teleportation’, then…

He had a plan.

The chain-dome exploded, the kid instantly noticing and dodging with his stand. Francois had hoped to maybe catch him off-guard, but it wasn’t necessary. Leaving some defending chains circling around him (and berating himself for not doing so earlier), he threw out a few more links to force some evasion from his opponent. The kid gave him exactly what he needed, moving into an area that’d make a dodge to the right pitch him straight off the roof. Francois shot out another volley to the kid’s right, forcing another teleport-dodge to the left…

…directly into Midnight’s arms. The momentum knocked the wind out of him, but his stand held on tight.

Midnight’s ability could manipulate the superego, the part of the mind that functioned as a conscience. A highly assertive superego could all but paralyze someone, forcing them to laboriously think through every action they made, and an almost inactive superego could turn people into impulsive animals. He needed physical contact to let his ability permeate, though, and the more the better. He fought the smile on his face as Midnight snuggled right up into the kid’s face and emitted a purr from its nonexistent mouth. The kid struggled against it at first, but soon his face went blank as his own conscience kept him from moving.

Feeling safe enough to approach, he was starting to let his guard down when a massive green bug detached itself from the kid’s ear and flew at his face. Time slowed down for him as he analyzed the situation- it was slightly transparent, so probably a stand, and assuredly not the kid’s because he felt like he’d seen the extent of his stand. An ally, then. Aiming for a distraction.

He’d seen worse attempts at diversion, but he’d also seen better.

Regardless, he swiped the bug out of the air with a chain and brought it forward to examine it. Insectoid stands of this size tended to mean a long range, and not very high destructive power. It looked like a scarab beetle woven out of reeds, and a large green gem glistened on its back. Ignoring its continuous attempts to struggle out of the chain, Francois almost missed when the thing started talking.

“Alright, alright, ya got us. I promise I’ll behave, cooperate, all that, if you promise to not crush me.” Francois had never thought about what a talking scarab would sound like, but ‘a young woman’ didn’t seem like it’d occur to him. He loosened the chain, now conscious of the fact that if he crushed this bug a young woman would die too.

“You were hitching a ride on him.” It wasn’t a question, but the bug gave a little nod anyway.

“Eh, sorta. More like I made him take me.”

Francois furrowed his brows. “Take you where? Your stand’s wings would suffice, and I wouldn’t take much issue with a mostly-invisible scarab minding its own business around the city. Why would you need him to take you along?” He looked over at the still blank-faced kid, loosening his hold on his mind so that he could still breathe and blink under his stand’s influence. (He’d accidentally made a few people pass out from lack of oxygen, and the people in Panic had laughed about it for a week straight.)

“Well, I made him take me because he’s an idiot and needs me to inject his directions right into his head.” Beetles weren’t exactly built for shrugging, but the scarab gave it a shot.

“Oh? You’re making him go somewhere?” He was starting to get an idea of the situation, but the details still seemed a little murky.

“Y-yeah.”

“And where would that be?” Seeing the bug hesitate, he continued. “Bear in mind that while I am not technically an officer of the law, I can most certainly imprison you and your accomplice under suspicion of stand-related crime if you fail to convince me otherwise.”

Its (her?) legs flailed frantically. “Whoa, whoa, whoa. Calm down there, cowboy. We were heading to the…bakery! I had a bit of a craving for this specific shop’s bread, and so I sent my manslav- friend to go get me some.”

“Sure.” He turned to the bug’s accomplice. “Now, where were you really headed?”

The kid snapped out of his blank staring for just long enough to blurt out “The Louvre!”, then rapidly returned to his previous state.

“Wha-what was that? Jaques, are you kidding me here?” The bug sputtered.

Francois kept a smirk at bay as he watched her (it?) start ranting at her still-wrapped-up partner. Midnight’s manipulation of the superego went both ways, and while keeping it at one extreme could be beneficial for restraining, the other extreme had its uses too. By quickly reducing the superego and asking a question, the mind had no inhibitions about saying the first thing that came to it- usually, the true answer.

(Also, the kid’s name was Jaques. He filed that information away for later, leaving a small bit of him to wonder why such an obviously British boy had a French name.)

“The Louvre, huh?” He muttered just loud enough for the scarab to hear.
The bug tried to explain herself. “What? No, that’s just Jaques, he likes to joke around…fine, we’re headed to the Louvre. I just really like the new exhibit, and I couldn’t get time off work to come-”

“Why are you going to the Louvre?” She was cut off by Francois directing a question at the tied-up Jaques.

“She’s making me stalk this thief-shroud-whatever guy, he might be gunning for the Louvre and she wants me to deal with him,” he stammered.

“Shroud- Linceul? You two…him? The most elusive thief Paris has seen in years? The one who’s altogether been caught on camera for fifteen seconds?” Francois knew his stoic mask was slipping, but these kids needed to know what they were trying to do. “The two of you combined couldn’t hold me off, and you’re going after him?”

The scarab glared at Jaques again, and sighed. “I- well- fine. Yeah. We’re going after Linceul. He’s basically working for me, and I figured that I may as well kill two birds with one stone.”

Francois turned back to the kid. “That true?”

“Yep, she used her stand on me and now I’m basically her slave till she gives back what she took.” Jaques seemed to be getting used to the effects of the quick-switch, though he wasn’t able to control himself enough to clam up.

He looked back at the beetle, raising an eyebrow. “Extortion through a stand ability, eh? I could hand you off to my higher-ups right now for that kind of crime.”

Her legs flailed again. “Hey, hey, back off. I used my ability on him for self defense, then decided I’d get my money’s worth. I could make a pretty good case with that, y’know. In fact, I-”

She went off on a tangent, rubbing her front appendages together, and a partially-faded memory sprung to the surface of Francois’ mind. Several years back, when he’d been in the vigilante business for about six months, Panic had come across the case of a teenaged girl with an alcoholic father. She’d manifested and subsequently used her stand on her father, causing an effect he hadn’t cared to learn about. All he knew was that she’d ‘taken’ something from him, like what Jaques had described. When he’d questioned her, she’d wrung her hands, went off on tangents, and generally tried to get around the question. The girl’s stand had been underdeveloped, but he did clearly remember it looking to be made out of reeds. It’d been roughly humanoid, with a mind-affecting ability and apparently a lot of potential, and it had a beast of a name:

“…Human Leather Shoes for Crocodile Dandies.” The name slipped from his thoughts to his tongue.

“I might also might be able to- wait, what?” The bug, interrupted mid-ramble, snapped its head up. “Did you say-”

“Abbreviation: Human Leather. User: Louise Medicament.” The rest of the file’s details came to Francois as he spoke. “Came to prominence after using her stand to force her father to give up drinking and then reporting him to the authorities. No incarceration deemed necessary. Given a strict talk on using stands on everyday persons, and then helped through the foster system. No subsequent cases of misconduct. Likelihood of any future infractions: low.”

Even Jaques, in his stand-altered state, was starting to look amused. The bug, on the other hand, looked about as stressed as something without a human face could.

“Wait-wait-wait, you’re one of those stand users who’re unofficially recruited to Interpol or whatever! I remember you guys!” The bug- Louise herself, evidently- turned around to look at her accomplice. “Hey, Jaques! This guy’s basically a cop! I told you to get the hell away from him, ya didn’t, now look where we are now!”

Jaques could only muster a grunt in response before Francois undid his stand’s effects enough to let him talk.

“Uh, no? You told me, and I’m quoting here, ‘knock him on his ass and then split before he gets up’.”

They kept bickering as Francois turned to his thoughts again. These kids were in over their heads, he was sure about that. But it would be nice to get some assistance on the Linceul case, and he wasn’t even sure if he could arrest the two seeing as his jurisdiction only really applied between dusk and dawn.

Also their arguing was pretty funny, and he’d long since learned to enjoy the small things in life.

He sighed, interrupting their tirade and enhancing Jaques’ superego to quiet him. “Look. You two are going after Linceul, right?” Louise’s bug nodded. “I’ll…I’ll let you free now, but I’ll also give you two an offer. Stand users are rare, and ones willing to do the right thing are even rarer. If you two want to take down an impossible thief, You’re going to have to do it under my watch.”

The bug stilled. “Do you mind undoing whatever you did to Jaques? Just for a sec, I need to discuss with him.”

Francois complied and walked a small distance away. He didn’t want his presence to have an impact on their decisions.

…But he didn’t mind eavesdropping with Midnight.

“Well, whaddya think, Jaques?”

“What I think is that you should get rid of your stand’s curse, let me skip town, then take that beetle of yours and stick it-”

Yeah, Francois could stop listening there.

He waited until their arguing died down, and their voices bounced back and forth indistinctly until it sounded like an agreement had been reached.

“Hey, old man! We’ve got an answer for you!”

Francois bristled at Jaques’ use of ‘old man’- he wasn’t that old- but kept his complaints to himself as he strode back.

“Well?”

The bug, Human Leather, finally wriggled out of her chain and buzzed over to him with an all-too-human glint in its eyes.

“We’ll help you take on Linceul. We’re in.”