Chapter Text
The city carried tension the way a blade carried light.
It was always there, even when no one acknowledged it. In the way conversations paused when certain names were spoken. In the way colours mattered more than they should. In the way strangers measured each other before deciding whether to pass peacefully or not at all.
Morning had barely settled when the first crack appeared.
It was a hot, albeit humid day, the sun pestering its heat all over fair Verona. Even when it was not high, the rays still worked to bring the people’s work to a square halt.
Pork Pie Hat Kid stood near a stone wall, idly tracing the edge of his glove with his thumb. Beside him, Magenta Magenta leaned back, adjusting his top hat with practiced ease, his posture loose, but his attention sharp. They wore the colors and crest of House Zeppeli openly, without apology.
Across the wide, cobbled street, footsteps approached. Dressed gauntily in the crest of the Joestars;
Andre BoomBoom.
Benjamin BoomBoom.
Neither side acknowledged the other at first. That was how these things always began. A silence stretched thin, waiting for someone to test it.
Andre slowed.
Looked directly at Pork Pie Hat Kid.
And smiled.
It was not a friendly expression.
Magenta exhaled through his nose. “Don’t,” he muttered under his breath.
Andre raised his hand.
Bit his thumb.
Flicked it at the Zeppeli servants.
The gesture was small. Almost childish. Barely hidden.
But in this city, between these houses, it carried weight.
An insult. A challenge. A deliberate strike without steel.
Pork Pie Hat Kid straightened.
“Do you bite your thumb at us, sir?” he asked calmly.
Andre tilted his head. “Do I bite my thumb at you?”
“Don’t even joke.”
Benjamin chuckled under his breath. “Oh, he meant it.”
Magenta sighed heavily, pushing himself off the wall in a single fluid motion. “Then say it properly,” he said. “Don’t hide behind it.”
Andre stepped forward. “Gladly, wretch. Have at it!”
Steel rang free from its sheath.
The street exhaled.
And the fight began.
It spread quickly, like fire catching dry wood.
Magenta moved first, blade flashing in a clean arc that forced Benjamin back. Pork Pie Hat Kid followed, his strikes precise, testing Andre’s defence.
The clash drew attention.
Voices rose.
Footsteps rushed closer.
Within moments, the narrow street had become something else entirely. Not a place of trade or passing, but a stage for something older. Something rehearsed too many times.
“Stop this!”
Sandman forced his way between them, catching a blade mid-swing and shoving it aside with controlled strength.
“Are you all idiots?” he snapped.
Magenta stepped back half a pace, breathing steady but eyes still sharp. “They started it.”
“They always say that” Sandman replied.
Andre smirked. “Because it’s usually true.”
Sandman turned to him. “And you’re proud of that?”
“I’m consistent. Of course. Unlike you Zeppelis, who just don’t know when to back off!”
Before Sandman could respond, another voice cut through.
Cold.
Precise.
“And you’re all beneath me for it.”
Wekapipo entered like a blade unsheathed.
He did not rush.
He did not hesitate.
He simply stepped forward, and the tension shifted to accommodate him.
“Prince of all cats.” Sandman muttered under his breath.
Wekapipo’s gaze flicked over the Zeppeli servants with open disdain. “You pollute the street with your presence,” he said. “And now you think to stain it further.”
Magenta scoffed. “You don’t own the ground.”
“No,” Wekapipo replied, drawing his weapon slowly. “But I can decide who bleeds on it, villain!”
Sandman moved quickly, placing himself between them again. “No,” he said firmly. “This ends here.”
Wekapipo’s eyes narrowed. “Move.”
“No.”
For a moment, it looked like restraint might hold. Like Sandman’s words had any actual threat in them.
Then Wekapipo struck.
The fight reignited with twice the force.
Steel met steel in sharper, faster bursts. More joined. Voices blurred into noise.
This was no longer posturing.
It was something closer to instinct.
By the time Gregorio Zeppeli arrived, the street had already lost control of itself.
“Fetch me my longsword, wife. It is my duty to defeat the Joestars!”
A secod figure, by Gregorio’s side, Giulia Zeppeli was already trying to stop Gregorio from joining the fight.
“Please, man. Your bones are aching in complaint as we speak. I will not fetch your longsword.”
Across from him, George Joestar stepped forward, his expression carved from authority and expectation.
“Control your house,” George said.
Gregorio’s gaze did not shift, although he had now composed himself a bit more. “Control yours.”
“They provoke.”
“They respond.”
“And you excuse it.”
“And you escalate it.”
The argument might have continued.
It often did.
But a third presence cut through before either could claim ground.
Funny Valentine.
The Prince.
He did not hurry, yet somehow arrived exactly when needed. His presence drew silence the way a storm draws stillness before breaking.
“This again,” he said, voice measured.
No one answered.
His gaze moved across the scene, taking in the weapons, the bruised pride, the familiar pattern.
“You stain the peace of this city with your quarrel,” Valentine continued. “And you do it so often that it has begun to feel ordinary.”
His tone hardened.
“It is not.”
He stepped forward.
“Let me be clear,” he said. “If you disturb our streets again, your lives will pay the price your pride refuses to consider.”
The words settled heavily.
Not dramatic.
Not exaggerated.
Simply true.
“Leave,” Valentine added.
And this time, they listened.
The street emptied slowly.
Tension lingered, but violence retreated, folding back into something quieter. Something waiting.
Sandman remained where he was for a moment, watching the last of them disappear.
Then he exhaled.
“Same story,” he muttered.
“Different morning.”
Later, far from the street and its noise, Gyro Zeppeli walked alone.
Or rather, he wandered.
There was no clear direction to his movement. No urgency. Just a slow, restless pacing through quieter paths, where the city softened at the edges.
He held something in his hand.
A glove.
Not his own.
He turned it absently between his fingers, studying the stitching as though it might reveal something if he looked long enough.
It wouldn’t.
It never did.
But that hadn’t stopped him yet.
“Still at it?”
Sandman’s voice came from behind him.
Gyro didn’t turn immediately. “Depends what you mean.”
Sandman approached, glancing at the glove. “That.”
Gyro hummed softly. “Observation isn’t a crime.”
“It becomes one when it replaces living.”
That earned a faint smile.
Gyro finally looked at him. “You make it sound tragic.”
“It looks tragic.”
Gyro considered that.
Then shrugged lightly. “You’re exaggerating.”
Sandman folded his arms. “You’re wandering alone, talking in half-answers, carrying something that isn’t yours like it matters more than it should.”
He paused.
“You’re lovesick.”
Gyro laughed.
Not loudly.
But genuinely.
“That’s dramatic,” he said.
“Is it wrong?”
Gyro didn’t answer right away.
His gaze drifted past Sandman, toward nothing in particular.
Or perhaps toward something very specific.
“It’s not like that,” he said eventually.
Sandman raised an eyebrow. “No?”
“No,” Gyro repeated. “It’s… something else.”
“Go on.”
Gyro hesitated.
Which, for him, was unusual.
“It’s like,” he began slowly, “you see something once. Just once. And it stays.”
Sandman said nothing.
Gyro continued anyway.
“You don’t even know it. Not really. Not properly. But it’s there. In your head. In everything after.”
He turned the glove again.
“You try to move on,” he added. “But it doesn’t move with you. It just… stays where it is. And you keep circling back.”
Sandman studied him.
“And her?” he asked.
Gyro exhaled softly, like the name itself was too sweet a word to behold. “Sugar Mountain.”
The name settled between them.
“She hasn’t said a word to you,” Sandman pointed out.
“I didn’t say she had.”
“She barely acknowledged you exist.”
“That’s not entirely true.”
Sandman gave him a look.
Gyro smirked faintly. “She gestured at me once.”
“That’s your foundation?”
“It’s enough.”
Sandman shook his head. “You’re building something out of nothing.”
“Not nothing,” Gyro said quietly.
Something flickered in his expression.
Brief.
Uncertain.
Then gone.
“Potential,” he added.
Sandman sighed. “You’re going to regret this.”
“Probably,” Gyro admitted.
“But not yet.”
Elsewhere, Pocoloco lounged comfortably, entirely removed from introspection.
“Yo!” he said as Gyro joined him later, “still obsessed?”
Gyro dropped into the seat across from him. “That’s a strong word.”
“It’s the correct one.”
“I prefer ‘focused.’”
Pocoloco grinned. “On a woman who does not care.”
Gyro leaned back. “Details.”
“Important ones.”
Gyro tilted his head. “You’re unusually invested in this.”
“I enjoy watching disasters form,” Pocoloco replied easily. “Yours is shaping up nicely.”
Gyro laughed under his breath.
“You talk like this ends badly,” he said.
Pocoloco shrugged. “Something ends badly for everyone. Not me, though, Yo!”
“That’s not reassuring.”
“It’s not meant to be.”
Gyro glanced down at the glove again.
Turned it once more.
Then set it aside.
“Maybe it won’t,” he said.
Pocoloco watched him for a moment.
Then smiled.
“Now that,” he said, “is the most dangerous thing you’ve said all day.”