Part 4-2: The Hand is Unbreakable

[Solomon Grundy]

A flash of red light, and momentary pain.

Then darkness. Again. For the second time.

He couldn't blame anyone else for this one. Okuyasu was the one who decided to sign up for the games. But there was a prize at stake, and his home. Anyway, it didn't matter now.

"The hell it doesn't, you idiot."

Huh? Keicho?

Okuyasu looked up to see his brother standing in a doorway, backlit by bright light. The youth himself was floating in a black void, unable to see or feel anything else around him.

"Okuyasu. I told you the last time you were here. It's not your time. I mean, it's your choice, but how else are you gonna fix Dad's house?"

Okuyasu nodded, and turned around towards the darkness. As he walked, he heard Keicho call behind him. "I'd better not see you back here anytime soon!"

__

A hand slapped his face. Stirring, the stand user groaned, feeling soft and wet things slithering underneath his body. The same hand that had smacked him then grabbed his wrist and hauled upwards, yanking him out of the dumpster he'd apparently been in. "Hey! Kid! Good to see ya!"

Okuyasu blinked, taking in his surroundings. Everything felt too bright or was too raw, but the face that swam into view was a friendly one. It was Banto, the driver of the truck Okuyasu had worked on before joining the death game.

"A bunch of the guys was watching you! Pretty nasty way to go out." The pigman snorted with laughter. "Anyways, better luck next year, huh?" He started to walk away just as Okuyasu raised his hand to question how he was back on Erde, but the youth shut his mouth. He didn't like thinking about things like that, and he had a bus back to Morioh to catch.

 

[Solomon Grundy]

Okuyasu slept the long hours of the bus ride back to Morioh, dreaming of violence and popcorn. He jerked awake just as the bus lurched to a stop in the middle of the town square. The bus driver seemed nervous, shooing the youth off the bus with a hand and peeling off in a cloud of dust as soon qs the doors closed.

Now that he was outside the bus's tinted windows, he could see why. The bag of luggage dropped to the ground as Okuyasu beheld his hometown anew: a half dilapidated, smoking wreck.

Most of the buildings were damaged somehow, a few still pristine but coated in the dust of neglect. Bricks in the street were ripped up and scattered, as if rent by some great claw. Black ash coated a majority of flat surfaces in an outward pattern, as if from an explosion. Or multiple explosions...

It was hard enough to see his favorite hang out spots wrecked or buried, but when he saw the first body he was sickened anew. Rotting flesh laid untouched on the sidewalk, the unfortunate victim mangled into nothing more than hamburger. Okuyasu couldn't bear to look at it or leave it any longer, so he turned away and let The Hand give whoever it was some semblance of rest.

A sudden crumbling noise echoed around the corner, and Okuyasu stalked towards it angrily, stand activated, ready to utterly destroy any enemy. Instead, he saw a short man wearing ripped brown slacks and a pink button up shirt, with a ragged and deflated hairstyle. He was bent over a garbage can, seemingly trying to scavenge. Wait...was that....

"Okuyasu-san? Okuyasu!" The man noticed him and ran towards the first friendly face he'd seen in days.

"Tamami??!!" The youth grabbed the con man by the nape of his shirt, ripping it further. "What happened?! Tell me! Tell me now, damnit!"

Tamami choked and spit up his words as if he'd been waiting to say them for some time. "It's been horrible! He's let them run loose through the town, and he got Hazamada the other day!" Tamani tried to wipe his nose, only succeeding in smearing soot on his face.

Okuyasu put hin down and grimaced, cracking his knuckles. Leering, he bit his lip at Tamami and bent forward. "Tell me who, so I can go beat their ass for this." The little man froze, clamming up all of a sudden, and Okuyasu couldn't help but feel a sense of deja vu. "I....I can't tell you." He squeaked, jamming his hands into his pockets.

Okuyasu started to get mad, raising a fist and bringing it down towards Tamami's head. "Wait! Wait!" The con man cried, and Okuyasu paused as he continued. "I....maybe you can stop him...this time."

"WHO, TAMAMI?! WHO???"

"....K-kira."

A pit formed in his stomach.

"No...no way. He's...he's dead! He got run over, they buried him!"

Tamami shook his head and sat down on the ground, burying his head in his hands.

"KILLER QUEEN - DAISAN NO BAKUDAN! BITE ZA DUSTO!"

Okuyasu saw the little pink figure appear in his eye, panicking as he sent The Hand out to attack the Stand.

It went past the apparition.

"Killer Queen is in your eye, Okuyasu Nijimura."

-click-

 

[The Future Warrior]

Her world was filled with nothing but the sight of flashing, garbled static and the groaning whine of electrical fizzling and popping before it lapsed into darkness and blissful silence.

She had done the best she could, in her current state. Destruction had been an expected outcome; but perhaps she had managed to improve the odds of someone with more real stakes in the event. She was...not 'content', exactly, but she had no real regrets about it. None that would be filed, at least.

Her black box components had immediately and violently shunted themselves away from the events on the strange comet, back to the last 'safe' world she had been on. With all the delicacy and grace of a full-size refrigerator being dumped out of a ten-story window, the secret components materialized in a flash of blue-gray static and plummeted ground-ward, hitting like a lead weight.

Probably because there was lead in the casing to block scanning.

The reconstruction process began immediately, taking its slow and sweet time to ensure that everything went exactly as according to programmed. Processing errant matter and energy from the nearby air and environment to create the necessary nano-machines and repair droids to commence the fullscale rebuilding.

And in only a matter of a quarter of a day, the finishing touches were being put onto her body. Rebuilt from the ground up, utterly unblemished as if fresh off the production line.

Deep in her chassis, the final components were finalized and secured in place, and the initial startup sequence began. A long series of quiet, muffled beeps and blips, and a flashing of numerous indicator lights. Diagnostic reports and logs, readouts on current condition and environmental factors, tests on pressure and quantity of various internal fluids.

Suddenly, in her 'sleep', Ashe's body jerked, and immediately a slew of errors flashed and swarmed over her internal readouts, growing increasingly rapid until they began to devolve into spitting out garbled masses of text interspersed with legible traces of 'NO NO NO NO NO' and 'EXTREME DAMAGE DETECTED' and 'NOT LIKE THIS' and 'SUGGESTED ACTIO'. It eventually grew so incomprehensible it was simple an incomprehensible mess of colors, clashing in the 'classic' green and black, until it all resolved into an all-too familiar face, snarling in rage.

"HULK. SMASH!"

And then nothingness, as Ashe-0's eye snapped open and she sat bolt upright.

Her internal readouts were mysteriously clear of the unsettling mess of text they had just logged, but the resulting image was still fresh in her mind. That insane, terrifying face leering at her as inhumanly large hands closed in on either side of her head.

"A...nightmare..." It was the human term for such an experience. She didn't exactly "sleep", so wasn't supposed to experience things like that. Especially not when she had been fully ready and willing to face death, even been expecting it in all honesty. She slowly looked down at herself, lifting the limb which had been missing just hours before and carefully flexing and twisting the fingers of its attached hand.

"....strange..." she finally murmured, before proceeding to slowly push herself up to her feet and slowly peer around at where she had ended up. "Atmospheric scans and readings suggest similar composition to Erde Nona, but..." She was puzzled. This looked like no location she had previously been to. "Emergency reconstruction protocols for 'safe destination' must be reviewed at a later date..."

 

[Solomon Grundy]

"Mori, mori, mori, mori, Morioh-cho, raaadiiiooooo!"

The alarm clock clicked on, and Okuyasu opened his eyes, in his bed, in his house. It was the morning after he'd come home from the murder game, and everything seemed to be back to normal. The colorful, familiar backdrop of the town put him at ease, although that feeling was slightly disrupted as he walked into the hallway and had to push past contractor plastic to get to the kitchen. That was still a problem, but at least now he had enough to pay the construction company to start the work.

He'd started making breakfast, a carton of fresh eggs sitting in the fridge. It didn't occur to him that anything left in his fridge would be rotten by this point, or even that he didn't remember grocery shopping after he returned home. The frying of bacon dispelled any unaddressed rumor, though, and Okuyasu sat down at his kitchen table to begin eating.

Halfway though, he felt something vibrating the unstable floor of the kitchen. Huh. It was a rhythmic, plodding thump, as if someone was walking down the stairs in the house, or stomping rather. Then, there was a panicked scream, and Okuyasu heard one of the neighbors slam their down shut in terror. Okay, now he had to investigate.

And that is what Ashe-0 would notice next, one of the mansions opening its doors, and Okuyasu Nijimura waving from it. "Heyyy! Good morning! You decided to visit after all, huh?!"

 

[The Future Warrior]

Her curiosity and confusion desperately vied for the leading place in Ashe's mind as she slowly paced through the town, searching about for something which might stand out as familiar. The unfortunate fact of it all however, was simply....there wasn't anything. It was extremely puzzling, but the place she had ended up in seemed....charmingly quaint. A nice, comfortable 'small-town' feeling permeated everything. The sort of feeling which was wholly alien to her, but which she could still appreciate.

It had a calming effect, desperately needed after the nightmare of recent her re-awakening.

Her unassuming stroll was interrupted by the sound of a scream, and then the hurried slamming of a door. Clear distress and panic were evident. It made her come to a halt in her tracks, straightening up and peering around intently for the source of it. What had been the cause of such a frightened reaction?

Then there was the faint creaking of one of the houses she had been curiously admiring opening its front door. More than a house, really -- almost a mansion, especially when scaled to this relatively small little town. And who should be there in the doorway....but Okuyasu Nijimura. He was also back already from Dante's Abyss? The sight of him, seemingly untouched and in spirits as good as ever, almost threatened to bring a smile to her face. Almost.

"Okuyasu Nijimura. You seem well," she said softly, as she more carefully approached closer to the mansion in question, slowly kneeling down near to the porch for easier conversation. His comment about deciding to visit puzzled her, though, and after a few seconds to deliberate, she couldn't reach a conclusion. "Visit?" she queried. "Ah. This is your home, then. I believe it was mentioned you did not live in the city we first met..."

That made the stand user grin. "Yeah! This is my place." And he turned to proudly look up at the old dwelling he stood in the doorway of....just in time for a faint sound of crunching wood to come from within as a floorboard the contractors had yet to get around to repair work on lost its struggle to stay in one piece. "....it's being fixed up! But it's still home, y'know?"

Ashe's expression remained impassive, but there was the barest hint of amusement as she responded, "Yes. Home is....where the heart is, as they say."

 

[Solomon Grundy]

And then the world exploded.

Well, the house across the street exploded, showering the giant golem in the street with shrapnel. Okuyasu dove for cover in the bushe as the shockwave rattled his already decrepit manor, boards and drywall raining down. The explosion was immense and loud, the smoking husk of the house starting to crumple into itself, barely anything left but toothpicks.

"What the hell was that?!?" Okuyasu exclaimed noisily, clenching a fist and gazing up at the holes in his siding before heading into the street, The Hand sprinking to view in a menacing fashion. "Ashe, use your robot scanners and see what the heck that was!"

"I am not a robot." Came the reply, but she seemed to use some sort of active focus. "It appears the source was a large detonation from just inside the front door. I did hear a scream a moment ago, before you came out."

Okuyasu looked up at Ashe and started walking towards the burnt out wreck of a house. No one else seemed to be coming out of their homes, or investigating, or even around! It was mid morning, people should be going to school and work. Okuyasu stepped onto and through splintered wood, befoee hopping up onto the porch and motioning for Ashe to come inside. "Oh, right. You can't fit, ha ha!"

Okuyasu's nose wrinkled at the scent of cooked meat, jarringly familiar for some reason, and nearly retched as he saw splattered dark organic material coating the walls. It looked like someone had gotten the worst of the blast, in the most messy and shocking way possible.

Okuyasu stepped back outside, his face dark. "There's nothing left inside there to look for..." A thought dawned on him. It had been about five minutes since the explosion happened, and there were no sirens. No firetrucks or ambulances either, unlike the last time a massive explosion had happened in Morioh.

Okuyasu looked at Ashe strangely, and looked back at his house. "Hold.....hold on a minute." He motioned for her to wait outside while he grabbed the phone from it's hook and dialed the local firehouse.

The line rang a few times, and then the sound that followed the click nearly made him throw the receiver across the room. He leaned out of the crumbling doorframe and wordlessly held up the reciever. A tinny song was just barely audible to the golem's auditory receptors.

"That's all, folks."

 

[The Future Warrior]

For the most fleeting of moments, the usual look of indifference on Ashe's face cracked. Replaced by a dumbfounded look of sheer bewilderment at the sound which came from the phone receiver. It was gone as quickly as it came, as she immediately turned her mind to trying to figure out just what exactly that was all about.

"You attempted to contact emergency services," she finally spoke part of her conclusion aloud, just as Okuyasu had replaced the receiver back in its cradle.

"Y-Yeah." The stand user grimly replied, none of his characteristic exuberance on display. "I tried to, anyway..."

"You dialed the correct number. But that was not emergency services," the golem went on, stating the incredibly obvious.

"Tch....yeah! That was kind of the idea! And why it was so shocking." His expression turned sour, as if he were suddenly thinking very hard about something. "Maybe...I just got the number wrong or something..."

"Or maybe there is something else at play." Slowly, Ashe-0 shifted to rise up to her full height again. Taller than most of the nearby houses, she was afforded a reasonably clear view of the surroundings. "The fact no one else at all has responded to such a devastating explosion is odd."

His face twisted into something resembling that of someone who had just been socked in the gut, Okuyasu let out a half-muted groan as he slowly slouched his way back out onto the porch of his home. And all at once his face lit up as he realized. "Hey, you're right." And he peered around the neighborhood with freshly dumbfounded look. It wasn't just the police or any kind of emergency response which hadn't managed to manifest....it was any kind of response at all. "At this time of day, there should be plenty of people around! Going to school, going to work, even just going to the store or something!" He made an exaggerated display of shading his eyes with one hand to look around, the hulking figure of his Stand materializing over his shoulder to mimic his efforts in the opposite direction.

"The sound which played when you attempted to contact emergency services," Ashe finally spoke up again. "It did not seem to simply be random noise. It had a distinct melody." She directed her gaze down to the disgruntled stand user. "Do you recognize it? Perhaps there may be some clue in that."

"A clue in something like that? Ghhgh....." He rubbed at his head in frustration, looking increasingly agitated. "I feel like I've heard it somewhere before, but..."

 

[Solomon Grundy]

His eyes shut, the youth thought deep and hard. Ignoring the building ache that came with deep thought, he remembered saturday mornings in front of the TV, before either Keicho or his dad had gotten up. Loud, colorful tv shows that held his attention for hours, mostly due to the simplistic comedy form. His eyes snapped open and he grimaced. "Hmm...I think....."

His voice suddenly rose to a shout. "There's another Stand User in Morioh! Again!" Then he looked back at Ashe and summoned The Hand, prepping for a long, arcing swipe. "Hey, follow me! We're gonna go to the local fire house and tell them about the explosion!"

BMMMMMM

Okuyasu launched up into the air, soaring forward in long arcs much like he had on Dante's Comet. Ashe slowly realized that Okuyasu without one of Karl Jak's dampening collars was almost as fast and manueverable in the air as Okuyasu with a collar and the jetpack. Each swipe consumed great heaps of negative space, zooming the youth forward into the sky nearly 20 feet at a time. The momentum allowed him to sail on the wind, swiping upwards each time he started to descend. It was...deceptively simple, almost as if Okuyasu were a video game character abusing a design flaw in the universe.

The golem followed, her strides getting longer and longer as she simply...moved. At twenty feet tall, she was easily keeping pace with the airsurfing Stand User as he glanced back to see her feet from his heels. He nearly crashed into a tree in surprise, before righting himself and crossing through empty streets, followed by the jogging giant lady.

Ashe-0's sensors could pick up faint life signs from inside the houses and business, a few pings of movement that looked normal from the imaging. Curious. To be investigated, later, surely. Okuyasu started to shorten his swipes as they drew closer to a more commercial district of Morioh. In the center of a traffic circle was a fountain, clusters of shops and scattered greenboxes full of manicured plants dotting the "square". However, the intended peace was currently being disrupted by a distracting, noisy, and completely nonsensical ruckus emanating from a large brick building.

"Morioh Ladder 8...." Okuyasu read aloud as he landed across the street from the firehouse. Squinting, the youth dropped his jaw as a window on the upper level of the building broke, a high powered jet of water spewing forth, then disappearing and ejecting a limp ragdoll from the second story window.

The man fell too quickly to catch, but the impact he made was thunderous. So much so, that there was a person shaped crater in the asphalt of the street, pained groaning wafting up out of the hole. Similar situations played out inside, a merry melody wafting through the air in a block radius. Three more firepeople burst out of the front door, yelling about a murderous dog. The dog followed them, a strange, almost unreal bipedal animal wearing a fire helmet and hefting an axe, chasing them around the corner of the building.

Okuyasu could only stop and stare at the mayhem, before the garage doors of the firehouse opened and a huge engine roared, a bright red fire truck with bells and lights screaming as it hurtled towards the duo standing in the street.

 

[The Future Warrior]

"This does not seem like typical operation," Ashe commented with a particularly dry tone to her normally flat words. "Something is most definitely amiss. Perhaps it is in fact..." Her gaze briefly flicked down to Okuyasu before returning to the scene of cartoonish chaos unfolding before their eyes. "...another Stand user, as you said." She had no way of even guessing accurately if that was true, but if any other iterations of this 'stand' phenomena had abilities as difficult to identify and pin down as the one Okuyasu possessed...

Further rumination was cut off by the opening of the firehouse garage doors. and the screaming and blaring of bells and lights as the fire truck within roared to life and roared into motion.

Directly toward them.

Ashe's reaction was swift, and resulted in a quick shove to Okuyasu, sending him tumbling a dozen feet to one side and well clear of the ensuing carnage as she simply braced herself and stepped forward into the imminent collision. The impact was thunderous, and went off like a literal explosion of crumpling steel, protesting and dying whistles and sirens, and popping electricity. And the curious sound of old rubber bands crunching and a distressed dog baying loudly in the background, all under cover of a heavy veil of smoke and dust.

When it cleared, Ashe was standing more or less right where she had been, arms crossed in front of her to brace for the impact, and the truck itself...almost comically folded around her, like it had run afoul of something utterly indestructible. The sirens continued to slowly spiral and spin, flashing in weak flickers and giving distorted warbling chirps. Ashe was battered and covered in a mixture of dust and blackened soot from scorching, but otherwise seemed...untouched.

Okuyasu, already on his feet again and looking utterly flabbergasted, could only staaaaaare. "You, uh....alright?"

She blinked her large eye once. Then again. And as she went to speak, could only manage a wheezing sound as her innards disgorged a thick poof of thick black smoke and dust. "I...am fine..." she finally managed to get out moments later.

"Not the word I would've used, but y'know, hey, you do you, lady." The golem's eye was drawn back to the remains of the fire engine. And more specifically, the driver's cab. And the occupant within it. Wrapped in a far-too-biig bright yellow and reflective silver coat only generously recognizable as something a fireman would wear, and a similarly oversized fireman's hardhat, sitting in the driver's seat as if the entire vehicle hadn't just undergone a crushing compression incident. "'Sup." Blue skin, with lazy swirls of hazy and indistinct furry masses on its body, and with a cigarette lightly twirling between its fingers, it leaned forward to exhale a long cloud of wispy, gray smoke into the war machine's face. "So how's my drivin'?"

".....you are not human," Ashe stated bluntly.

"Wooooow, figure that one out all by yourself, did ya?" The hardhat helmet was suddenly replaced by a comically small bowler hat, which the blue thing mockingly tipped in her direction. "Fantastic deduction! Looks like we got another Sherlock on our hands!"

"I am going to extricate myself from this wreckage now," Ashe went on flatly. "And then you will be dealt with."

"Mmm....nah." And like a mess of liquid smoke, the blue creature just oozed out of the damaged doorway and back into solidity, scampering off and up the side of the firehouse, through one of the windows, with an audible 'woop woop woop woop' noise.

 

[Solomon Grundy]

The remains of the fire engine started to crumple as Ashe-0 picked the metal apart with her large hands. Okuyasu sprang forth and swiped his Stand's arm, the air being erased and making his loose clothing pull forward. "Oi, Ashe lady! You can't fit in the building, so-" His voice was cut off as he went zooming forward through the open doors. "- find the User!"

He left the giant golem outside and landed on his feet inside the blown out front door of the firehouse. He could hear wild, high pitched cackling coming from down the hallway, and the youth let out a yell and charged down the hallway. "Who's your user? Who are you?" The blue furred monkey popped it's head out of a doorway, shrieked upon seeing Okuyasu, and stuck it's tongue out. "I ain't just gonna tell ya, ya dunce! You're gonna have to work it out, ahahah!" The door slammed shut just as the blue suited stand user reached it.

"Oh no you don't!"

The Hand glowered, and swiped down on the closed door. The wooden portal evaporated, leaving behind a clear entry into what looked like the main offices and back rooms of the fire house.

"How about we cool you off, hothead?"

A hard gust of air slammed into Okuyasu's chest, sending him flying backwards and smashing him against the opposite wall. Brick, too, so it hurt even more than getting shoved by Ashe-0. He had to fight to open his eyelids, and then winced with pain as they were forced open by the massive metal fan that had been wheeled out in front of the door. The monkey-looking Stand was ashing his cigarette in the backdraft from the blades, and he winked at Okuyasu. "At least we can be polite now." He tipped his bowler hat at the youth as he struggled to break free of the air pressure. "I'm Average Man, and you were too easy! Time to mess with the robot again!"

The thing left Okuyasu and floated over to a window. Ashe-0 would probably still be visible outside, and the blue Stand put two fingers in it's mouth and let out a high pitched whistle. A hose rack from the totaled firetruck bounced up off the ground, the spooled canvas hose on it suddenly bulging oddly, coiling like a python, and growing two googly orbs atop it's nozzle. "Huh hyuk!" It....laughed?...somehow? And rose up, spraying incredibly blue and foamy water at the colossus.

'The Hand!"

There was a crashing noise from behind Average Man, and the Stand whirled around to see Okuyasu vaulting over the knocked over fanblades, erasing desks and papers in a berserker rush to reach him. "Bwaaaaaah?" The Stand squeaked, nimbly leaping onto the ceiling. "How'd you get up?"

Okuyasu grinned, and pulled down an eyelid with his finger. "You can't stop The Hand with a stupid fan! Or ME!"

BMMMMMM

"OOOH, YOU WASCALLY WABBIT!" Average Man shrieked theatrically as it failed to evade as nimbly as before, Okuyasu's fist hitting the small creature and sending it flying backwards as quickly as it had been pulled. It managed to right itself in midair, slipping around a corner and up a staircase, shrieking much like it's visual inspiration. Behind him, Okuyasu heard clicking paws on the tile floor, and turned to face three more of the odd, cartoony fireman/dog things.

"Bring it, freaks! I can't wait to erase your whole stupid gang!"

 

[The Future Warrior]

"Affirmative." was Ashe's sole response before she set to preying herself loose of the mangled remains of fire engine with renewed vigor. A singular focus was easier to manage, even for one with machine-driven multitasking. She was still perplexed and trying to figure out just how the truck had crumpled the way it had. She was durable, certainly, but it had been more expected she would be....if not thrown back from the impact, at least pushed along with it. Instead, though...

She finally forced the crumpled metal loose, stepping free of the mess and rising back up to full standing height and slowly peering around the area. It was a scene of chaos, certainly. She was almost certain she could see the firehouse itself wobbling and contorting in on itself from the absurdity going on within its walls. She could on'y dimly hear what was taking place in there, but it sounded like almost as much of a mess as what was going on outside.

Of course...that all took a backseat as she heard a sharp whistle from the building. One of the hose racks from the mangled fire engine was...moving? Not just moving, but acting similarly to a snake in the way it coiled and slithered about. And then...eyes. Those were definitely eyes, or some absurd cartoonish mockery of them. And now the animated inanimate was laughing?

"This is preposterous..." She was only halfway through her statement before being sprayed down with a huge wash of foamy, deep blue water. The pressure of it was enough to take her by surprise, making her stagger back half a step. Not needing to breathe was helpful in not being half-drowned by the sudden blast of foaming spray, but it had its problems in other ways. She lunged forward and grasped semi-blindly for the snickering water snake with all four arms, and felt one take hold with an odd, distorted gulping wheeze-laugh.

She squeezed it tightly enough she could feel the blockage of water she caused. The thing's incessant guffawing and nonsensical amusement came to an abrupt halt, to be replaced by breathless wheezing as she lifted a spare arm to wipe the foamy detritus from her eye. "You will cease this inane absurdity immediately," she seethed, in an uncharacteristic display of frustation. She could handle many things, but this level of sheer....strangeness was already beginning to take its toll on her.

"J-Jeeze, lady, take a joke already!" the water-spewing canvas snake wheezed, its lower half continuing to comically swell and balloon out from the water pressure building up within. "C-Could ya like....le-let go, maybe?"

"No." If anything, Ashe tightened her grasp even further, producing a terrified squeak from the poor creature. "No more of your nonsense." Another of her arms came up and closed about the nozzle of the hose, slowly pulling it up and drawing more of the hose through her grasp along with several weak dribbles of that ridiculous blue foam. And then she simply violently stabbed the nozzle into the bulging section with enough force to puncture the bloated canvas. The cartoonishly-animated thing sputtered and coughed as water flowed the wrong way, and as Ashe forced more of the end back into itself until it was doing a fine impression of an ouroboros that hadn't quite reached its tail.

"Insufferable..." She tossed it aside with more force than necessary, eliciting a damp clang as it splashed down to the ground. And then she turned her attention elsewhere, her features sporting a thin scowl as she surveyed the area again. "Not understanding how these Stands work is making it difficult to guess at where this one's user may be." She stormed off away from the scene of chaos surrounding the fire station to broaden her search. It took her a minute, but eventually she spotted him.

Or at least who she thought had to be the one. The only one not bothered at all by this rampant insanity going on, simply calmly sitting in a chair on the opposite side of the street. Well out of the 'splash zone' but still close enough to keep a casual watch over it. And judging from the sketch pad in his hands....he was taking no small amount of inspiration from the ongoing devastation of sanity and all logical reason. He looked up from his efforts, stared directly at Ashe with the look of one who was frustrated, and made a quick 'shoo' gesture at Ashe.

"....my murder protocols are going to be triggered before this day's events are through," the towering golem muttered.

 

[Solomon Grundy]

"Your gigantism is blocking my view of the inspiration." The man stated plainly, his voice flat and unexpressive. Gripping his pen, he flipped to another page and raised it like a dagger. There was a flash of movement that almost didn't register on the ponytailed golem's sensors, but the audible effect of what he was doing was clear. His pen stabbed and slashed over the paper in intricate patterns, yet not actually TOUCHING it. Ink flew in elegant trails from his pen, laying down the bones of a sketch. The very person in front of him. "If I tell you my name, will you go away?"

Ashe-0 could only blink down at the man with intent. He was dressed plainly, in red coat with stripes and black jeans. Almost emaciated, his cheekbones made his face look hollow, the spiky black hair covering his eyes almost entirely. "I'm Mahiro Tsanshiro."

The lack of recognition seemed to raise the first hint of ire in the man's personage. His eyebrow twitched and his smile grew thin. "Of course you don't know. Of course. Why would you? No one watches cartoons anymore. It's all about manga now." His grimace drew back further as he stabbed his pen down on the center of the eye of his sketch of Ashe-0. "Manga....and that thieving talentless hack, Kishibe Rohan."

"Who is this? He is irrelevant to this situation." She stepped forward one more step, the asphalt cracking under her for dramatic effect. "You are causing chaos and havoc with a municipal city's emergency services. This is classified as a crime in multiple codes of law." Her lower arms tightened as she smacked a fist into her palm. "You will cease at once, or I will hurt you."

Tsanshiro stood up, his body radiating a curious blue aura. Ashe-0 could see what looked like strangely familiar coronas of energy rippling over his body, before Tsanshiro's hair flew up from the static, revealing crazed red eyes.

"『AVERAGE MAN』- BALLYHOO!"

The blue monkey creature from before appeared behind the cartoonist, much larger than it had been. Now it looked much more similar to Okuyasu's stand, except instead of a coin eyed genie, it was a muscular gorilla smoking a fat cigar. It still had the bowler hat, oddly enough. Roaring, it leapt over its user and produced an absolutely massive hammer from thin air, the heavy leaden weight at the end reading "3x⁹ Ibs" just before it entered critical threat range.

"This was....unexpected." Ashe-0 admitted, a half second before the impact shook her sensors.

 

[The Future Warrior]

The huge hammer hit the towering golem square in the center of her large eye, the force of the impact sending out a minor rippling shockwave through the surrounding air along with the sharp report of a metal-on-metal CRACK, almost immediately followed by the sound of electrical arcing and angrily fizzing and popping as sparks shot out from the impact site, lancing and coiling down the hammer to give its wielder a painful jolt, making the hammer go flying from its hands. And then she was sent flying backward, head and upper torso snapping back until they impacted the ground and she went toppling over several times until she crashed into the wall of the building opposite the disgruntled cartoonist and his Stand.

The building all but collapsed under the collision, throwing up terrific clouds of dust and a heavy shower of debris and chunks of rubble. The blue gorilla just sneered mockingly, taking a long drag from its cigar while Tanshiro himself simply winced, trying to shake the feeling back into his arms from the shock delivered courtesy of his link to his Stand. "Try again next week, lady."

"Negative."

From within the billowing dust of building destruction, a huge chunk of loose stonework nearly the size of a person suddenly erupted forth akin to a cannon shot, making the cartoonish behemoth's eyes bug out wildly only moments before it hit him square in the chest, rocketing him across the street to collide with the building behind him, flattening into a blue gorilla-shaped smear against the wall, his eye blinking several times quickly in surprise. The user, meanwhile, staggered back and had to bring a hand up over his mouth to stem the mess of blood which came up, along with a choked cough.

Ashe swept a hand from side to side, clearing out much of the remaining dust as she slowly lumbered back into the street. The lens of her eye was heavily cracked from the surprise blow, but she seemed otherwise unfazed. "That should have been a response equal in kind to your own surprise attack," she stated rather bluntly. "It will only escalate from here. But I will offer you one final opportunity to surrender, before you will be seriously injured to bring a stop to this madness."

"Surrender?" The cartoonist asked, his voice full of astonishment. "Why on earth would I do that? I'm the one who's going to win this!" He wiped his arm across his lips, smearing the dripping red into a further mess and simple clenched his fist hard enough it nearly snapped his pen, that blue aura about his person flaring into life again with an even brighter intensity. "Average Man!"

With a sound like a tire going from flat to fully inflated instantly, the ape-like Stand burst from its two-dimensional splatter back to normal and sprang over its user toward the war machine with surprising speed, suddenly sporting a pair of oversized boxing gloves, the clear imprint of a large iron horseshoe visible bulging through the fabric of each one. "C'mon, let's see what you got! Put 'em up, put 'em up!"

"You were warned."

Ashe simply stepped forward to meet the Stand's charge, twisting around the first wild punch and allowing the second to clip her shoulder. The resulting electrical jolt made Average Man flinch, and Ashe capitalized on the half-second of opening to strike. Two fists struck one after another, a solid whu-THUMP to the gut and chest, making the Stand go spinning away to crash against the wall again, and Tanshiro to let out a breathless wheezing hack, spittle and blood dripping from his lips.

It was only a momentary setback, as the azure spirit lurched once more into the fray. This time, it had adopted the chestguard and facemask of an umpire, sporting a ridiculously oversized wooden bat in his hands as he rocketed up, delving into a flip and smashing the amazonian golem with an overhanded blow, even as she snapped two arms up to intercept it. The crack of electricity once more sparked and fizzled along the site of impact, but the sturdy wood of the bat didn't conduct it back into the stand itself this time.

Ashe grimaced, the force of the attack leaving the equivalent of a nasty bruise on both of her upraised arms as they now strained against the surprising bulk and strength of the increasingly-maddened gorilla. Its eyes seemed to have tripled in size, and sported violently red lightning bolts where bloodshot veins should normally be.

"COME-ON-YOU-LITTLE-!" It snarled, repeatedly drawing back and bringing down another fierce blow, each one matching the heavily punctuated words it spat out, and accompanied by a resounding CRACK-FFZZZZT-SNAP from the sheer force of impact and electrical arcing.

Unfortunately...his blind frenzy left the stand wide open for the inevitable follow-up. Carefully calculated to coincide precisely with the impact of another of the bat's impacts, two fists seized the ape-like being by its ankle, and with one good yank sent it crashing to the ground hard enough to crack the pavement, and swiftly followed it up with an earth-shaking stomp, producing a small crater and making Tanshiro cough up another mouth full of blood as he staggered back, eyes briefly going entirely white as he collapsed against the wall behind him. His stand flickered and wavered before dissolving into a cloud of static and vanishing with a silly-sounding pop.

"....as I said, you were warned," Ashe said grimly, and simply turned around to regard the condition of the firehouse again.

Behind her, the disgruntled cartoonist, however, wasn't quite finished. His battered frame twitched, his eyes blinking themselves back to color, and his hand clenching into a fist tight enough to actually snap his pen completely in two this time. "Don't go writing me off, you bitch...." He slowly forced himself back to his feet, breath ragged but his expression full of nothing but determination. That blue aura flared back to life like a raging inferno around him. "That was just the first part of this episode...we're nowhere near through yet!"

 

[Solomon Grundy]

Just as Okuyasu had beaten down the last cartoon dog and started to rush up the stairs, the building shuddered and sharpened. The goofy, rotund architecture snapped back into realistic construction with the sound of a rubber band breaking, and Okuyasu tripped on the top step as it suddenly realigned four inches downward. Losing his footing, the youth tumbled down the stairs ass over teakettle.

"Gaaaa, oof, guuuhhh!" He hit the bottom of the staircase and tottered over to the window of the room he'd just been in. Three dalmatians struggling with heavy firecoats rolled out and whimpered, tucking their tails in between their legs as they watched Okuyasu. He saw out the window that Ashe-0 was facing off against the upgraded form of the Stand, but in the time it took him to make it outside...

+++++++

By the time the golem had recovered from the massive cheap shot delivered to the back of her torso, her sensors had been warning her about unnaturally high humidity and the proliferation of an anomalous substance. The evidence was smeared across her back, and a quick analysis determined that it was ink. Printer's ink. Puddles of it marked the streets, dripping off a large, undulating inky golem similar in size and stature to her own prodigious form. It roared, opening it's mouth and revealing Tsanshiro inside the thing's lumpy head. "This is Average Man's true power! The ink of everything I've ever created gives me strength!" A muscular black arm swung downwards, Ashe-0 stepping to the side and deflecting it with two arms. Ink splattered all over, getting her grip slippery and ill used for any sort of grappling.

The inky onslaught was rapidly coating the street with black slippery puddles, and it was only a few more dodges before the golem found herself losing her balance and falling backwards onto her rear. The inky monster towered above her, ripping off a glob of itself and preparing to hurl it at her, no doubt causing quite a mess as well as hurting. The cartoonist opened his Stand construct's face once more to gloat. "It's over! This'll make a GREAT cartoon!"
The wad of ink sailed through the air in slow motion towards Ashe-0, signaling her third death in as many weeks.

BMMMMMMMM

The projectile vanished, and a momentary rush of space later, Okuyasu Nijimura zipped into view. He turned back towards the war machine and cracked his neck. "So this is the guy? The firehouse stopped being all wacky, and I figured he musta recalled his Stand!" A black fist came down towards the young man, but The Hand sprang forth and simply erased the offending fist. Average Man roared and stumbled back, it's digits slowly but surely reforming. "Oi oi oi! I already figured out your secret, loser!"

BMMMMMMMM

Another rush of force as Okuyasu repeated the maneuver that he'd met the golem woman with, zipping her back to her feet. "He doesn't have infinite goop!" Okuyasu proudly declared. "It only took me a couple minutes to figure out!" He pointed towards the Stand, which was advancing again. It was barely, imperceptibly, smaller.

Okuyasu grinned. "So, got the plan? You keep his ass busy, and I'll ERASE HIS ENTIRE EXISTENCE! GWAAAAAAAHUOAHUOAHOUAAAGGH!"

"Z A H A N D O!"

 

[The Future Warrior]

"Given its current size and apparent capabilities, I am not certain how well I will be able to keep it occupied." Ashe-o stared up at the inky-black behemoth as it slowly advanced forward, dripping the blood of animation everywhere as it squelched and schlorped onward. The amazonian goliath shifted her posture, left leg slowly sliding forward. "I will do the best I am able, however." Her upper pair of arms rose, hands curling into loose fists as she bent forward into a slight crouch. Her remaining two arms hung at her sides, elbows bent to have her lower arms cocked up and forward to guard her torso, fingers curling into rough claw forms.

"Alright, then, do your thing, giant lady!" Between herself and the encroaching enemy stand, Okuyasu Nijimura just grinned, as his Stand-powered abilities zipped him out of the line of fire.

Situated in his oozing cocoon of animated discontent, the angry animator swiveled his head to follow the frantic woogling off of the other stand user. "Not so fast, you—!"

"A poor decision."

"N-NANI?!"

The rough and grating CRUNCH of stone. The razor-sharp and screeching SHRRRRNK of stretching and shearing metal. And the grotesque visceral SPLOURCH of impact into something viscous.

Ashe's metallic fist hung suspended in the inky ooze of Tanshiro's Stand, a hairs-breadth from his face. A thick wall of the sludge-like material had lurched out to intercept the blow, and even then her sledgehammer blow had punched through it up to her wrist. The cartoonist could only stare with dinner plate sized eyes at the tattered, gloved fist hovering right before his eyes. It was easily larger than his entire head, and a direct hit would...

He shuddered at the thought, imagining something far more red than his current predicament. But the fact he had managed to catch such a blow quickly restored his confidence and brought a derisive sneer to his face. "That your best shot? Average Man can block a hundred punches like that, you stupid—"

Ashe's retort came in the form of her sludge-entrapped fist yanking back, sending a mess of the gooey ink splattering behind her. "I am not limited to one hundred." And her opposite arm flashed up from below, in a startlingly quick uppercut.

The demented drawer lurched back, his head snapping upward with the force of the near-impact as the fist carved a cartoonishly clean line clean through the facial area of his Stand, sending gobs of ink splattering everywhere like a short-lived rain.

"Enough out of you, already!" The cartoonist snarled, and with a thought closed off his Stand's head again to seal himself away for better protection. When the mouth of the creature opened again, it was an impossibly deep, muddy rumble that belched forward a single word: "DIIIEEE!"

And all at once, several arm-thick jets of ink erupted from the gigantified torso of Average Man, sparkling and glimmering like spears as they shot toward the golem. The close proximity gave precious little time to dodge or even ready a defense, but...

"ZA HANDO!"

BMMMMMMMM

Time seemed to slow down, as Okuyasu blurred into view, launching himself up into the air from behind the hulking ink golem. His Stand was there beside him, and as its user rolled into a midair twist the musclebound punchghost matched him half a beat later and swung its right arm out, shearing through the lances of animator's blood and robbing them of their penetrative power, leaving only a mess of ink to splatter against the golem.

The remainder of the streams hit home still, and struck like a runaway truck as they pushed her back. Grinding and crunching through the ruptured and torn asphalt as she dug in her heels, resisting being forcibly moved as well as her bulk would allow.

On its end, Average Man convulsed and writhed from the fierce jolts it had received, transferred through the inky masses right back to the main body.

"You appear to have forgotten this encounter is not limited to a single opponent any longer," Ashe said quietly. Splattered and covered in ink, but sporting no damage beyond what most would consider heavy bruising, she took a step forward as Okuyasu landed beside her and spun around.

"You're pretty dumb, if you forgot that! And that's coming from me!" He taunted, before simply striking a pose with his arms over his chest, and the spectral form of The Hand hovering menacingly over his shoulder.

The eyes of Average Man bulged out and exploded into thick rivulets of ink as it let out a wordless roar, devolving into a messy garble of gibberish and muddled threats. It ended with a vicious overhand smash, releasing a shockwave of oozing picture-sludge in every direction.

"He is angry now," Ashe noted while quickly backpedaling to avoid the brunt of the blast.

"Pfffft, he was already angry! Now he's just dumb!" Okuyasu chortled, and with the familiar BMMMMMMMM sound a section of the inky tidal wave vanished, and so did he.

 

[Solomon Grundy]

The crazed eyes of the cartoonist tracked Okuyasu as he flew upwards and away from the inky peril. An annoying fly, far more enraging than the evenly matched opponent before it. Sticky strings of ink shot through the sky as Okuyasu gripped a light pole and rotated out of the way, launching him in a completely different direction. Sweat beaded on his forehead from the effort, the Stand user's determination riled from the test of might. He'd been neutered during Dante's Comet in the name of fairness, and it wasn't hard to see one. One quick swipe of The Hand sent him flying forward on all sorts of crazy angles. Truly, Okuyasu dominated in the sky, even without a jetpack.

He looked back down on the ground to check on his fighting partner, the giant golem taking the momentary distraction as a chance to back off and affect self repair from the inky trauma. That was okay. Every buzzing swipe The Hand scraped away at Average Man's ink was removed from existence, and it was starting to show. The conjuration was starting to show its damage, and Okuyasu figured an all out attack would be enough to finish it for good.

"Hey, ugly! This is gonna end it!" He yelled, changing direction and zooming towards the heart of the monster. The Hand was swiping furiously in front of it, accelerating both User and Stand to a punishing velocity- if the maneuver had hit.

Instead, having been warned by Okuyasu's own battle cry, Tanshiro slapped the combo out of the sky and directly into a store awning. "Huoooouuuuuffff!" Okuyasu grunted, ripping through the cloth and feeling strips of canvas tangling his feet together. Tanshiro took the disruption in the youth's wild flight to follow up, diving at the building he'd crashed in front of in an attempt to crush him.

"Okuyasu! Brace yourself!" The golem yanked hard on the shreds of the awning, hoisting the teen delinquent out of the way and towards her. "I have...the beginnings of an idea." She stated unsurely, Okuyasu dangling by his ankles from the knotted cloth.

"O-oh? Yeah, what's that, huh?" He yelled out, a quaver in his voice as Average Man melted and reformed in a standing position. Now whole once more, the Stand's ultimate armor was almost reduced by 1/3 of its original height. It began to approach the warbot, seeing her distraction, but Ashe-0 sprang into action by starting to spin the tied Okuyasu around her head like a flail.

"What the literal hell, I'm going to barf!!!" He yelled queasily. The Hand appeared over him, his outstretched arms burning with heatless green flame.

bbbbbbbBbbbBbbmmmMmmmMmmMMMMMMMMMMMMMM

The air vibrated tunelessly as Okuyasu made a blur of unreality around his fighting partner like a halo of erasure. Ashe-0 wielded him like a tonfa or a set of nunchucks, using the unrestrained negative energy to swipe off Average Man's arms as it raised them feebly to defend itself. A final swipe brought it to it's semblance of knees as Okuyasu retched, trying to steel his stomach as the war machine launched him forward at the Stand's head like a missile. Winding up drunkenly, he swung as his body impacted the inky mass, and felt his fist hit home square on a human jaw.

Both students fell backwards onto the pavement, Okuyasu landing on Tanshiro's chest before keeling over and weakly raising a fist. The crippled ink golem of Average Man melted into the streets, flushing into the sewers as the demented cartoonist got to his feet once more. He turned towards Okuyasu with malice in his red eyes, the small blue cartoon monkey appearing above his shoulder. It was beaten and haphazard, missing teeth and it's cigar blown out and blackened. "I'm going....to use your damn skin...as drawing paper." He growled out as his foot hit Okuyasu in the side, driving the air out of his lungs with a pained grunt.

Average Man tapped it's user on the shoulder, a pitiful look on its face and a wooden sign in its hand. The cartoonist turned around to see Ashe-0 standing behind him, her fist raised very gently above his head.

"No. You will not."

The blue monkey shook his head and spat wistfully, a tiny flicker manifesting over it's user as it turned around the sign.

THAT'S ALL, FOLKS.

WHAM.

The toony stand had used the last of it's power to ensure that the final blow wouldn't be lethal. Instead, Mahiro Tanshiro was driven waist deep into the asphalt, a few local songbirds landing on his unconscious and drooling head.

[AVERAGE MAN] - RETIRED!

********

A few moments later, and things seemed to be safe and more or less quiet by this point. Okuyasu was seated on a bench near the bus stop, staring up at Ashe-0 as she made sure the embedded enemy wasn't going anywhere. "Good thing the Speedwagon foundation is outside Morioh...I told them about the new guy and they said they'd be stopping by lat-"

There was a horrendously innocuous ripple in the air. The sky darkened momentarily, and it felt like something that had been stuck, or held in place was released.

Okuyasu and Ashe got swells of panic and terror, or the equivalent of such as people started to walk outside, blearily, as if they'd been in a deep sleep or a trance.

Phones began to ring.

Everywhere.

 

[The Future Warrior]

The golem slowly lifted her head to peer around the area as people started to emerge. Like some switch had been flipped or some alarm gone off, suddenly they walked outside. Bleary-eyed and exhausted with the faces of those just pulled out of an incredibly deep sleep, they were visibly confused.

The unsettling feeling in the air, already setting off all manner of haywire alerts and warnings in Ashe's internal sensors, was making her feel much the same.

"Okuyasu. I do not think this is the same kind of power at work any longer," she finally spoke up, as she slowly rose back into a standing posture. Tanshiro wasn't going anywhere in his current predicament, she had made certain of that. His Stand had softened the blow enough to avoid it being lethal, but she was fairly certain his legs wouldn't be working any time soon. She turned to regard the stand user on the bench with her typical, unblinking gaze. "Do you think it is some cause for concern regardless?"

He was peering around in bewilderment, hands planted firmly on his knees. "Eeeeh....gwoooh.....I don't know! This doesn't...feel right. Kinda making my head hurt."

"....understood." She turned away again. "I will go and search elsewhere to see if this is isolated here, or also occurring elsewhere. This town is in your hands, for now. I will return shortly for further assistance, if need be." And with little else in the way of explanation of circumstance, she was on the move. A few quick strides and then slowly breaking into a run as she loped off down the street, away from the scene of the cartoonish chaos.

 

[Solomon Grundy]

Somewhere on the outskirts of Morioh-cho...

Monitors started beeping across an entire bank of them. Multiple camera displays were lighting up with large amounts of activity, and the Medium feeds began to confirm what had only been rumors.

"Hmm....it seems that I, Yoshikage Kira....have been pre-empted." A blonde man wearing a purple suit and immaculate shoes stood up from a chair, a placid look on his face. "My peaceful entertainment has been interrupted." He leaned closer to the screen, and frowned, his next comment nasally and high pitched.

"By fucking Darkseid, come onnnnn!"

Yoshikage Kira's visage melted away to reveal a smaller man dressed in a red and black morphsuit with furry antennae sticking out of the front. "Shit, shit, Darkseid? DARKSEID?!" The man hurried around the room, knocking over heaps of toys and memorabilia of all sorts of characters both fictional (in the Crossroads and not) and historical. He began throwing the boxes into a large suitcase and nervously checking the Medium feeds.

"Fuck, man. Hahahah, you idiots can HAVE Morioh. I'm not sticking around to get unmade by the most fucked up tyrant around."

He sighed, pulling a long thin wand from an impossible pocket and drawing a door in thin air. Space unfolded and shined, a portal to nothing but riotous colors opening. "Too bad I didn't get to have more fun. That cartoonist guy made for a great arc, but that fight was too short!" He looked wistfully over a large shelf of volumes of manga. Jojo's Bizarre Adventure, Saiyuki, Dragon Ball, Bleach, Gurren Lagann. The collection of a transdimensional weeb. A villainous one. With super powers.

"Fuck this dimension. Ahhh, maybe I can peek in at that one from a few cycles back, with all the weird biomes...."

He stepped through the portal and vanished, leaving behind no trace of anything extraordinary.

The ornate, golden arrow that was picked up off a desk some days later by a group of robed figures exploring the shack surely didn't count.