Chapter Text
Josuke had been fixing his hair in calm platitude when his whole world shifted on its axis. Echoes of laughter still ringing in his ears as his life came crashing down like the rain pouring out his window onto cold, hard pavement.
It happened in the blink of an eye. A gulp of milk, tearing his mother from the inside out without even a scream making it past her lips, just the sickening gurgle of blood as it frothed from her mouth, dripped from her eyes.
The need to puke was overwhelming, but not as much as the sheer panic that consumed his body at the gory sight. It was so sudden, so unexpected, that it took him a whole second for his brain to react. Another second for Josuke to make it across the room, immediately dropping to his knees and gathering Tomoko’s lifeless body in his arms while frantically calling out Crazy Diamond to heal her wounds, attempting fruitlessly to restore her bloody appearance back to the smiling woman standing just seconds before. It was a second he didn’t have.
Aqua Necklace made quick work of its victims; Tomoko’s existence was terminated in a heartbeat.
The thought that his mother might be dead hadn’t even crossed Josuke’s mind.
He let out a howl of despair as his fist went right through her chest in a desperate attempt to physically pump her heart back to life, his eyes fixated unblinkingly upon her resting face, praying her eyes would open again.
They never did, and the pain of that realization was excruciating.
But there was no time to think, let alone grieve, as the wicked stand responsible for his mother’s demise came out of her corpse’s mouth cackling in glee at all the pain it caused. To Aqua Necklace, the scent of fear was like an aphrodisiac, absolutely addicting, and Josuke was reeking of it.
“So Ryohei’s grandson has a stand of his own, huh? Well, you can stop wasting your efforts, kid, that bitch is already dead!” it exclaimed, in a puddle of its foul liquid.
The pure hatred, the rage that Josuke felt in that moment, was greater than anything he had ever experienced. Crazy Diamond was already lunging towards Aqua Necklace faster than he could think, fists ready to pummel the stand. There was no time for questions; he wanted that foul creature dead.
But it was raining, and Angelo had been prepared to enact his revenge upon Ryohei despite any setback. Aqua Necklace had already moved before Crazy Diamond’s fists could graze it, and Josuke could only watch in slow motion, head frantically scanning the area for the perpetrator, as his grandpa opened the front door to their home, mouth opened to greet his family, and Aqua Necklace promptly forced its way down Ryohei’s throat.
It was over before Josuke had a chance to stand.
A scream of terror tore through his throat as he helplessly ran towards the gruesome scene, deja vu flooding through him. Crazy Diamond’s touch could do nothing for his grandpa; his organs may have been repaired, but his lungs never breathed again. Josuke’s own lungs threatened to collapse.
This time, he couldn’t help the puke of disgust that came out, fingers trembling, covered in blood, and eyes blurry as the wrist in his hand held no pulse. The acid reflux burned his throat; it tasted like defeat.
Aqua Necklace cackled in the background, spewing insult after insult, gloating on and on about his win against the Higashikatas, but Josuke may as well have been deaf. He couldn’t even begin to care about the risk his own life was in when his whole world had been taken from him in one fell swoop right before his eyes.
Seeing the vulnerable state the boy was in, Angelo decided to come out of his hiding spot, ready to finish the job with his own two hands. A shiver of pleasure went down his spine at the mere thought of all the fun he was about to have with the boy. It was too bad Aqua Necklace had made quick work of the woman; he had hoped to see her squirm, but humiliating Ryohei’s heir in every sense of the word was a delicacy he simply could not pass up.
The presence of another person a couple of steps away from him alerted Josuke out of his panic attack, a part deep within himself still concerned over the lives of others. Being in this area was dangerous, and the evil stand wouldn’t hesitate to kill any bystander lurking nearby, but one look up at the mysterious entity dissipated any worry he may have had.
The look of pure lust and gratification in the man’s eyes was downright sickening, psychotic even. He had to be the stand user, Josuke felt it in his bones. There was no way he wasn’t with the way he was licking his lips in anticipation at the sight of a dead man on the ground.
It was automatic, the way Crazy Diamond unleashed its rage upon the intruder; it managed to land two good hits before Aqua Necklace forced it to focus on protecting its user instead, about to enter Josuke’s own body. However, it was all calculated. In the time Crazy Diamond shifted its focus to swatting the foul stand away from the boy and keeping it from entering his user, Angelo managed to close the distance, kicking Josuke across the face. Josuke’s vision blacked out from the impact of the hit, and he felt his own strength debilitated, so much so that for a second, Josuke wondered if it would be better to just let it end right there and then, with the disgusting murderer’s bruising hold on his jaw, forcing it open to spit in his mouth.
The humiliation of it all lay heavily.
Then, suddenly, a mysterious force sent his perpetrator flying away. It was hard to make sense of it all, with the heavy rain and his blurry vision, but one second he was being assaulted by the cold-blooded murderer and the next, the man lay in a puddle of his own blood. In his stead, there was an imposing figure before him with a stand to match, looking down at him with fierce emerald eyes, seemingly asking him something, but Josuke was at his limit. Gagging, his own bile coated the concrete below, and the world faded to black, but even when unconscious, the heartache tormenting him did not cease.