Chapter Text
When Jotaro had turned 17 years old, he had been presented with an old pelt.
The gift had not come wrapped, nor did the plain cardboard box in which it had arrived contain a note. The fur was short and coarse, and every time he touched it, the stiff, bristly black guard hair left traces of dark, musky oil on his fingers. The pelt had been cut just wide and long enough to drape comfortably about his shoulders, but it was immensely thick, nearly five centimeters at the thickest section, and very heavy. He picked it up very carefully at the corners; he didn't want to touch the underside. He could almost imagine the animal's warm, living flesh to which it had once been connected. The skin looked every bit as outlandish as he'd imagined against a backdrop of glossy wrapping paper and his ice cream cake with the little penguins made of icing. The strangest part about it was how warm it felt, even after waiting for him for hours on the front stoop where Holly had discovered it, half-buried in the snow.
“I think it's...a buffalo hide, maybe?” Holly offered, stroking the pelt with her index finger. “Who on earth would have left this on our front step?
“I wonder if that grandfather of yours sent it,” Sadao suggested offhandedly, looking far more intrigued by his morning coffee. He was a very tall man with a thick mop of curly hair and skin browned by the Okinawa sun, and he always looked at Jotaro as if he couldn't quite believe that he had, as great-grandma Lisa Lisa had once so graciously put it, ejaculated eighteen years ago and created a lifeform. “He's an eccentric one, I'll give him that.”
“Gramps already sent his 'gifts', if you can even call them that,” Jotaro said acidly, eyeing his new Snoopy Sno-Cone Machine and a stack of mint condition American comic books from the 1970s and 80s, the topmost of which seemed to be about Green Arrow's sidekick getting addicted to heroin. Jotaro groaned. Suddenly a weird animal pelt didn't seem so bad by comparison.
As Holly gently took the pelt from him to hold it up in the light, she gasped at the sight of five jagged white lines running down what must have once been the beast's flank, nearly slicing clean through tough skin. More scars were clustered above that looked horribly like the imprint of fangs. Jotaro ran his own fingers over the claw marks. Whatever had left them had paws twice as wide as his own hand. His new “friend” had certainly led a tough life.
The pelt strayed further and further from Jotaro's mind over the following months, tossed carelessly somewhere in the back of his closet beneath an ever-growing pile of junk. The Kujo family never did find out who sent it, and Holly stopped asking around the neighborhood before the cake was even gone.
As if in defiance, the strange gift began to invade his dreams.
Night came, and as Jotaro lay in bed, hovering somewhere between consciousness and waking, he felt a blazing yellow sun beating down on his naked skin. Bird calls he had never heard in the waking world echoed from the swaying trees above his head, and dry grass rustled in the wind. There were dark shapes lurking in that grass, things with huge slavering fangs and sharp eyes that missed nothing. Heat radiated from their burnished gold pelts as they crept closer on silent paws. A black-tipped tail flicked, scalpel-sharp claws flashed, and the chase was on.
The pride surrounded him in an instant, low growls in their throats as they tore at his flesh. He bucked and thrashed in their grip and sent a lioness crashing into the sun-baked earth with a yowl. She was on her paws in an instant, scrambling over the backs of her sisters to claw at him, amber eyes glittering with raw fury as well as hunger. Her gums peeled back from her long yellow fangs, dripping with hot foam mixed with his own blood, and she leaped--
“Jotaro, it's time for breakfast!”
He dreamt of the veldt again and again. Sometimes the lions won, and he woke with a scream fighting its way out of his throat just as he felt their jaws closing around his throat. He remembered the lioness, swollen teats under her tawny fur, tiny spotted cubs chasing her tail and biting their father's ear. The littlest one made a tiny rasping ow-wow-ow sound when one of its littermates played too rough that Jotaro honestly would have found cute under different circumstances. They tumbled in the grass and chased each other as their parents shoved their dripping red faces under his cracked ribs, crushing his heart to a pulp in their strong jaws. Sometimes he won, and he rammed his horn straight into the big male's gut. What was left of the pride limped away to lick their wounds, and he could almost taste a lingering sadness in the air, as if a great king's rule had come to an end. Jotaro ambled back onto his hooves and rejoined the herd.
“...The smell of dust like a red paprika in the hot air. And now the sounds: the thump of distant antelope feet on grassy sod, the papery rustling of vultures...”
Night after night, the lions stalked him. They were crafty and cunning, chasing him over sharp rocks to trip him as they snapped at his ankles and twisting around in midair as they leaped over his horn and aimed for his neck. He saw the lion queen again and again, smelt her sweat and the strands of bloody meat in between her teeth. Even in his dying moments, he found her beautiful: sleek and elegant despite her massive frame, her coat lit by the African sun. The pride rallied behind her like a phalanx of soldiers, awaiting her command.
The relentless heat of the veldt evaporated the instant he opened his eyes, memories of blood and death scattering like startled doves. Jotaro shook his head and grabbed his school bag. He could feel the memories tickling in the back of his mind. Sometimes, when he unfocused his eyes, the black uniforms of his classmates looked like glistening dark hides beneath heaving muscles, the exhaust from cars and cigarette smoke like clouds of dust kicked up by hundreds of hooves.
Sometime during his second semester, Jotaro had taken to carrying the pelt with him tucked under his jacket. It wasn't nearly as heavy and cumbersome as he had first thought. In fact, it molded itself to his shape like a second skin, sticking to every knob on his spine and trailing across his ribs as if it had always been there. Jotaro couldn't quite explain what possessed him to do such a thing. The raw animal smell of the hide lingered in his nostrils, but not in an unpleasant way.
It hadn't taken long for Jotaro to get himself into trouble again. He couldn't remember exactly what he said to the man in the tacky yellow and purple suit at the restaurant downtown. Maybe he hadn't even said anything to him at all. Maybe Jotaro should have apologized after carelessly shoulder-checking and sending him tumbling face-first into the dessert cart with the lemon meringue pie. Maybe the man shouldn't have groped the waitress and threatened to have her entire family killed if she screamed.
Either way, it was now six against one in a grimy alley behind the cafe, and more were pouring out of a sleek black car. Jotaro put his fists up as the lions surrounded him, snapping at his flanks.
The results were predictable. Jotaro was a big, strong kid who dominated all of the other kids at wrestling and swimming and baseball, but he was still just a kid, all alone against at least eight or nine full-grown men. They carried switchblades, bats, and rusty bike chains. One of them wouldn't stop yammering about how he was a trained boxer. A fist slammed into his gut. A broken bottle grazed his cheek. Jotaro grit his teeth as he kicked and punched, determined to go down fighting.
He staggered and dropped to one knee, punch-drunk, one eye swelling shut, wheezing around bruised ribs. Three, no, four of the men lay in bloodied heaps and didn't look like they were getting up any time soon. His knuckles were raw and stinging from the scrape of teeth, many of which he had liberated from their owners' skulls. Blood trickled down onto the grimy cement from a dozen cuts. He could feel the hot red wetness seeping through his tattered t-shirt, mingling with the blood of his enemies. It dripped down his back, right down into--
The pelt.
The black fur greedily soaked up the blood, and as it fed, it grew hotter and hotter. Hotter, thicker, heavier, stronger. Angrier. The hairs bristled, traveling down his arms and legs. His nostrils steamed, catching the stink of the greasy thugs standing over him, petty anger and bewilderment turned to fear, then panic. He lowered his horns and charged.
The rage left as quickly as it had come, and Jotaro sank to his knees once again, not nearly as out of breath as he expected to be after slamming into the thugs' car so hard he knocked it over. The hooves, horns, and lashing black tail shrank and disappeared beneath his thin human skin like a coiled secret. His injuries were gone. The same couldn't be said for his enemies. So what if he crushed a few balls? At least he hadn't managed to gore anyone.
When the cops showed up an hour later, Jotaro held his hands up in surrender. 'What am I becoming?' he wondered as they led him away.
***
Over the next several days, Jotaro met more of his own kind. Joseph Joestar arrived from New York City with a silverback gorilla pelt wrapped around his thick waist like a hairy fanny pack. Why couldn't the old man have changed into a cute little vervet monkey or something, Jotaro thought grouchily, massaging his aching head where Joseph had grabbed him by the horns. The battle was over almost before it began: the old man didn't have the heart to give him anything more than a substantial love tap. He quickly ambled off on his knuckles and was walking upright again before he had even crossed the room, furless except for his bushy eyebrows and neatly trimmed beard. The old man's eyes had glittered in the dim light as they shifted from warm brown back to their familiar misty jade green, an interplay of anger, frustration, and deeper sadness on his features. He sort of reminded Jotaro of that documentary he had seen a few years ago about Koko the gorilla and how she had signed “bad, sad, bad, sad” after her trainer told her that her beloved kitten All Ball was dead, running her thick fingers down her cheeks to mimic tear tracks. Joseph's heart was as soft as his daughter's in his own way; the pelt had chosen its wearer well.
Joseph's old friend Mohammad Avdol had only brought with him a single silky black and brown plume about as long as his hand, the flight feather of an African Crowned Eagle. He shed his long, flowing robes and dived at Jotaro's face in one smooth motion. From tip to tip, his wings were wider than Jotaro was tall, and each yellow toe on his feet was longer and thicker than Jotaro's fingers. Those sharp talons flashing near his eyes had gotten him out of his prison cell much faster than all the huffing and chest pounding Joseph could muster. The bird perched on Joseph's shoulder, unbothered.
There were, Jotaro learned, a variety of ways an ordinary man or woman could come to carry the curse of the werebeast. Avdol told him the story of a woodcutter from his village who had drank from a huge paw print left in the forest and spent the rest of his days roaming the woodlands by night as a wolf. The eagle feather was a family heirloom, passed down from generation to generation in Avdol's own family. On the day he turned one year old, he had been placed on a woven mat in the thorn enclosure where the cattle were kept. A mortar and pestle, a cowbell, the head of a hoe, and various other objects were placed around him in a circle. When Avdol ignored them all and reached for the feather instead, his parents knew that he would be a Skin Changer.
Everything he learned about skin changers left him with more questions. Who had given him the pelt? Why had it chosen him? Who the hell wants to turn into a goddamn buffalo, of all things?
“It's about time I told you about the Joestar family's ancestral enemy,” Joseph told him and Holly the morning after Jotaro had been successfully collected from prison. On the table was a grainy photograph: on it, a towering behemoth of a man, his face cast in shadow beneath a tall silk top hat. An untamed mane of flaxen blond hair streamed down his back like the lions in his dreams, and a billowing purple and yellow coat flared dramatically around his frame. In the background, he could see a beautiful white tiger balancing on a ball, and a splendid leopard with a jeweled collar leaped through a flaming hoop. Beneath that photo was another, and another, each showing more animals: lions, cheetahs, bears, elephants, hippos, even alligators, cavorting about and balancing on tightropes in tutus and fool's motleys. He caught a flash of too-white teeth from the man in the top hat, pride and excitement etched in what Jotaro could see of his features. As the curtains descended, a shower of red roses was tossed at his feet. Jotaro thought he deserved a swift kick in the crotch instead.
“The man who made it his sole mission to reign supreme over all the Skin Changers in the world. That bastard stole my grandfather Jonathan Joestar's magic lion pelt in 1888 and murdered him in cold blood!” Joseph's eyes were wild, and he looked ready to pound the images and the table beneath them into splinters. “They call him DIO. Dio the Ringmaster!”
“You expect me to believe any of this bullshit?” Jotaro grumbled. No one listened to him.
“Oh, those poor animals.” Holly shook her head sadly. “Don't you feel sorry for them? They should be running free in the jungle, not being made to dance and balance balls on their noses.”
“It would be bad enough to treat any living creature like that. But you haven't heard the worst part yet: each and every one of those 'animals' is a human being,” Joseph said darkly. “Well, sort of. Without their magic pelts, they're as much people as Avdol and I. And now you.” He turned to Jotaro, an oddly serious look on his face.
After that, Jotaro's dreams began to change. He saw the lions again, but they were sunning themselves on the broad, flat rocks near the baobab trees, bellies full and coats freshly washed. The massive, battle-scarred queen who had killed him over and over was dozing, her ears flickering in her sleep as a tiny colorful lizard crawled onto her face, snapping up flies with its long flickering tongue. Otherwise, all was still. A cub, a round little bundle of fluff that would have fit in Jotaro's hand, gazed sleepily at him with baby blue eyes before laying his chin back on his mother's paw.
As a cool breeze drifted across the sun-soaked Savannah, animals of every shape, color, and size began to stir. A giraffe loped across the plains on long spindly legs, blinking away the sun with his long lashes. Baboons leaped from tree to tree with fistfuls of nuts and berries, chattering to each other in their own harsh language. Wild dogs with their big ears ran past him, yipping excitedly and running for the sheer joy of it. He smiled. (Or tried to. His facial muscles didn't quite work the way they were supposed to). The white patches on their brown and black coats made him think of moldy bread. In the distance, he could make out the long curling trucks of elephants on the march; in the foreground, a nervous cheetah mother darted away from his shadow, taking a moment to lick and nuzzle her frightened cubs before the family disappeared into the thicket.
It all felt too vivid, too consistent to be a dream. Could these be...memories? Memories of the animal whose pelt he wore?
Jotaro woke about fifteen minutes before his alarm went off. He wasn't awake enough to actually get up and get dressed, but the thought of laying there waiting for his alarm to blare in his ears the second he started to drift back to sleep set his teeth on edge. His fingers wandered toward the pelt, and he found himself stroking it absently. He wondered what it would be like to not have to worry about alarms or school or traffic jams and taxes, to eat and sleep when he felt like it and wander wherever it pleased him. Eventually, the smell of miso soup and buttered toast propelled him to his feet.
“Something strange happened last night,” Holly was telling Joseph. Through the shoji screen, Jotaro could see that her shoulders were hunched. “One of the neighbors' dogs disappeared. That big pit bull who lives a few blocks away down by the old train tracks they don't use anymore.”
“That's not so strange,” Joseph said. As Jotaro crept closer, he saw that Joseph had absconded with every throw pillow in the house to build himself a big, round nest. He looked quite strange crouched in it, sipping his tea. “Pets run off all the time. I'm sure he'll turn up sooner or later.”
“I think something got him,” Holly insisted, her voice low. “Something dangerous. He was a great big dog, and he was, well, vicious. Everyone in the neighborhood was scared of him. I-I watched him kill a stray kitten once. The poor little thing barely set a paw on his yard before he was after it--.”
Jotaro paused in the middle of sweeping his homework off the kitchen table and into his school bag. He knew the guy who owned that dog. Holly was too polite to mention it, but everyone in the neighborhood knew he sold drugs. Rumor has it he ran guns, too. Might have even had a hand in a few of the girls from the city going missing. That animal would have ripped your hand off if you so much as looked at it, and the dog was a nasty piece of work, too.
“Holly, I really don't--”
“The dog was left outside chained up outside on a strong, thick chain, and something just...snapped it in half like it was nothing. Whatever attacked it must have jumped right over a 2.5-meter fence and then jumped back over it with the dog in its mouth! There was white fur and blood all over the—I'm sorry,” Holly finished suddenly. “I'm just worried. All of the talk about the Ringmaster and people who can change into animals...it's all s-so...it feels like a dream. A bad dream. I don't want Jotaro mixed up in it, anymore than he has to.”
“I'll keep him safe, Holly,” Joseph said, patting her hand. “I'll keep all of us safe. You have my word on it.”
***
Jotaro was late getting home. Very late.
The sun was sinking below the horizon before Jotaro had even crested the hill, and he knew it would be pitch black before he made it back into his neighborhood. Holly would probably be frantic by the time he showed up on the front step, and he couldn't blame her. He'd gotten so sidetracked doing research at the library that he had completely lost track of time. All that effort, and he'd learned absolutely nothing about his “condition”, or how to reverse it.
He could take a shortcut through the little patch of woods on the rural outskirts of the city. That way, he would only be walking in near total darkness for a few minutes as opposed to a half hour through the bad neighborhood. He'd walked through this dense clump of trees dozens of times since his family moved to Kyoto. Maybe hundreds. He knew every rock and tree as well as he knew his own hands and feet.
The bare black tree branches seemed to close over Jotaro's head the instant he set foot on the path, and he immediately began to miss the soft neon glow of vending machines and waxy yellow street lamps. The faint chatter and grumble of passing cars vanished with the light, snuffed out like a candle. He had been walking for almost a minute before he realized that the only sounds he could hear were leaves crunching underfoot and his own breathing. No owls, no deer or foxes, no nesting birds, not even the flutter of a moth. He remembered something Grandpa had taught him when they were hiking through the giant redwood forests of California: the forest only goes silent when all the little animals are hiding from something.
And that was when he saw it.
Less than an arm's length in front of his face, several long, jagged scratches had been gouged into the bark of an oak tree. The cuts ran deep, left by incredibly long and sharp claws. Even worse, the claw marks were nearly two meters off the forest floor. Whatever had left them was big, far bigger than any of the little stray cats in the neighborhood.
Fuck, fuck, fuck. He didn't even have a flashlight. In the unnatural stillness, the cold, rain-slick darkness beating down on him from all sides, he couldn't bring himself to even turn his head. Only his eyes moved, flicking from one side of the path to the other. Even if there were a sharp stick or a good, heavy, fist-sized rock, it's not like he could even see it. If some...thing came barreling down that path, he hoped to hell it could be discouraged with a good knuckle sandwich.
There came a loud, echoing snap somewhere off in the darkness, followed by a softer scraping noise. No, not a snap. More like a crunch. Splintering, dripping, and under it, deep, heavy growling, like something ripping meat from bones. The smell of soft, spongy loam, cedar, and wet leaves was drowned out by the stench of blood.
Whatever was making those awful sounds was directly between him and the path that led home. If he turned back now...no. That would leave his back exposed. There was nowhere to go but forward.
Jotaro took one step, then another. He could see a trail where something large and heavy had been dragged through the thick underbrush, leaving sticky red strands that stank of iron and raw meat past its prime clinging to the broken grass. The sounds of rending flesh grew louder, and for the first time, Jotaro realized that it was coming from high in the trees. He forced himself to look up.
A goddamn leopard was staring back at him. In Japan, in the middle of November, maybe eight or nine kilometers outside of a busy town in the forest he used to play in as a kid. And it was eating his neighbor's dog.
It gazed down at him through its long golden lashes with a look that could only be described as dispassionate loathing. It was the sort of look cat haters thought all cats reserved for the human race, but that was really just the mean ones, and even then, you could usually win them over with a little patience and a treat... The big cat's ears flattened against its skull, its lips peeled back in a snarl, and it let out a deep, rumbling growl that would have put a tiger to shame. Any relief Jotaro had felt at being confronted with a normal animal that he had seen in zoos instead of the cthuloid abomination he was imagining evaporated rather quickly.
“Alright, alright.” Jotaro put his hands up. The cat's only response was to bury its blood-soaked muzzle into the dog's ribcage. The pit had been huge, taller than Holly (and much heavier) when he stood up on his hind legs to bark and snap at people. Jotaro had grown up hating him more and more after each mutilated stray cat and lost dog he had to bury. Or rather, he hated the vicious brute his shithead owner had turned him into. Jotaro supposed it was only fitting that a notorious cat killer met his end in the jaws of a leopard. But he felt bile rise in his throat when he saw the weeping red mess the leopard had left of his face. He hoped most of the carnage had happened after he was dead.
“I'm not going to steal your lunch. God knows no one's going to miss that asshole dog. Just don't jump on my head, and we're good.”
Jotaro caught a flash of white from the fluffy underside of the leopard's lashing tail, and a low hiss filled the air. The rosettes clustered around its face crinkled as it bared its teeth. The two of them were most certainly not good. What could he do? If he tried to walk under the branch, he just knew the cat would pounce. He wasn't sure what he had done to offend it, but the animal was radiating hostility, lambent green eyes boring into him. But if he turned tail and ran, it might leap down and gut him out of general principle.
All he could do was watch it strip the carcass bare. Even with blood congealing on its whiskers, it was a beautiful animal, lean and limber with rippling muscles beneath its yellow fur. Its spotted pelt blended so perfectly with the tree bark that he never would have seen it unless it wanted him to. As it raised its head, swallowing a mouthful of dog meat, something metallic glinted beneath its chin. The leopard was wearing a heavy gold collar studded with jewels.
Somewhere under his coat, the buffalo pelt bristled, and the blazing warmth of the African sun crept up his back. He knew from the start he was facing another Skin Changer, but he wouldn't be fighting off dream lions this time. Those were real teeth and claws, and if they found his throat, there would be no waking up in the morning.
“Oy! What are you doing skulking around down there!”
Jotaro's heart sprouted wings and flew out of his throat, and he found himself blinking stupidly into the beam of a flashlight. A policeman was standing on the hill, glaring down at him, and only him. Jotaro jerked his head up at the tree, but the leopard had melted into the shadows, leaving no trace of itself other than the remains of its dinner.
“Get off my back, old man,” Jotaro grunted. “Last time I checked, it wasn't a crime to take a shortcut through the woods.”
“Well, you better get home, then. Haven't you heard? Lots of screwy stuff been happening around these parts. Dogs going missing, homes getting broken into. Even got some guy in lock up raving about some wild beast--”
“I'll keep an eye out.” Jotaro turned his back on the officer and trudged down the path, pulling his jacket closer around his neck.
***
The next morning, Jotaro woke up in his own bed, miraculously unhurt after being stalked by a hungry jungle cat. He made it less than two kilometers from his house before he promptly tumbled down a hill and nearly cracked his head open on the flagstones. Jotaro wasn't the type to get hung up over the definition of irony, but if this didn't qualify, he didn't know what did.
Something slashed his thigh all the way to the bone, painting the crumbling stone steps bright crimson. Just before his head connected with the cement below, he righted himself without even thinking about it and landed on two sturdy hooves, hidden under his school shoes. All that practice fighting lions had paid off! He crammed his hat down on his head just in time to conceal his long, ragged black ears before the squealing flock of girls that followed him everywhere caught up with him. Predictably, they clung to his coat like oxpeckers licking salt from his tear ducts.
If only they knew that he had nearly sprouted horns until a few seconds ago!
A shadow fell over him. He jolted, a startled gasp in his throat. In the confusion, he hadn't heard the soft click of heels leisurely strolling down the stairs. A long, narrow figure leaned down to look at him, red curls glinting in the mid-morning sunlight. The stranger looked to be a year or two younger than Jotaro, but he carried himself with an understated grace and aloofness that made him think of the lion queen. He had met handsome men before (the entire Joestar bloodline was lousy with them), but this boy was downright pretty. So pretty that the oxpeckers peered around Jotaro's broad shoulders to coo at him. Pretty in a way that boys weren't supposed to be, all smooth velvety skin, high cheekbones, delicately arched eyebrows, and fine, cat-soft hair. Some of the girls even began to preen and check their makeup in their little hand mirrors.
As the boy strode up to Jotaro, he caught the woody notes of some chic cologne emanating from his scarf. Beneath that was a sharp coppery tang of something red and raw and dripping. To Jotaro's surprise, it seemed to be coming from the boy's bento box, tied up neatly in a cloth with bright red cherries printed on it.
“Here." The red-haired boy held out a square of cloth with a slender, fine-boned hand. His porcelain features weren't prone to smiling, it seemed, but he made an effort. “Your leg seemed to be cut. You might want to wrap it with this handkerchief to stop the bleeding. Are you going to be okay?”
“Yeah, I'm fine. It's just a scratch.” Jotaro mumbled, struggling to his feet.
“Hold it!” Jotaro snapped in a voice that left the oxpeckers shivering in fright. The boy turned, red hair falling over his eyes. Anyone else would have jumped out of their skin, but the stranger only let out a high-pitched, trilling 'mrr?' sound, like a cat that had been startled from a nap. “I forgot to say thanks. I haven't seen you around here before. You go to our school?”
“I'm Noriaki Kakyoin. And yes, I just transferred here yesterday. See you around.”
Was it his imagination, or did the boy lick his lips when he saw the bloody wound on Jotaro's leg?