Capitolo Secondo: Ambizione (19)

The meeting was already starting on a tense note. Much of the attention was aimed at who I could only assume was Siurana. Two soldiers were already guarding the man, keeping by his side as the one on the left was in charge of pulling or shoving him around. It was clear that there was no love lost in bringing the rogue officer in these conditions and as a possible bargaining chip. Three high-ranking officers stood as the main representation for the Mexican forces on the border. A colonel, two Majors. The meeting itself happened just outside the fort, a small squad of troops was dispatched by both sides to act as a guard for the entire negotiation party.

Things weren’t exactly as diplomatic as I expected, but I was at least willing to comply with the request of the General-in-Chief to not act without a proper reason. We were observers as far as this entire meeting went, and I could tell Bloody wasn’t outright happy with the decision, but willing to hold back from doing anything study for as long I told him to keep put as I was watching him. Everyone in our group wasn’t willing to exactly accept the idea that it was too easy, and I was the first to admit that there was a high chance of this being a trap of sorts. I just couldn’t imagine how this couldn’t be. So, instead of merely standing around and trying to understand what they were saying from afar, I decided to merely ‘observe’ the field we were in. The land was arid, a mixture of dry ground with some sand forming on the sides where a few cacti had formed. Nothing unusual at first sight as the location was meant to be the ‘safest’, but also the best place to conduct a fight without any surprise due to how flat the field was. But the more I looked at it, the more I noticed something that grabbed my attention and urged me to investigate further on the matter. There were more cracks on the ground we were in compared to the surroundings.

The perimeter of the ‘extended cracking’ was rectangular or square-like in nature, which meant that… something was causing cracks to naturally form more within this specific area. Generally this phenomenon was caused when… There was an opening within the ground that stretched for long. And considering the whole extent, it felt baffling that a natural hole underground was as long and large as the area of the perimeter we were in. Something that extensive and without foundations would have easily collapsed with the lightest weight. Yet, I tested it out by crouching down, hands carefully moving away the dirt as I carefully checked for the possible hole while not giving off any suspicious reason to be attentive of me. I was quick, and I stopped in shock when I found the hole and… why the ground wasn’t collapsing. There was something filling up the hole, small things that were left there in large numbers. Tubular and red small things, I noticed before swiftly covering up the hole. TNT. Someone had decided to plant bombs underneath us and… there had to be more than a hundred of those explosives lying just underneath the thick layer of ground between us and those. It was indeed a trap, and way more different than anything I was prepared about. ｢ACT 3｣ gave me just a few seconds of working to disarm this threat, but I could tell that wasn’t necessary. At least, not yet and… not with my current reach.

But why hadn’t the trap been activated? Why the one that set this up didn’t just bomb the area at once and was actually taking this much time to do that? I tried to make sense of these questions, slowly realizing that there had to be a good reason for the saboteur to be wasting a golden opportunity like that, something that made sense in their mind to prefer waiting instead of already killing us. Either they were watching for something specific to happen or… they were within the area and couldn’t leave just yet. To this guess, I gazed over the group of representatives. Could it have been one of the high officers from Mexico? A betrayal from the US staff? I tried to study them without approaching the table, finding nothing worthwhile as they bickered over the situation as expected… but then I finally saw it. The one element that made it clear

“Derek, I need to ask you something.”

The blond cowboy hummed, frowning at my sudden words. “What about?”

“You mentioned that Siurana was a staunch nationalist. Don’t you think he is being too… calm about this situation?”

The man was about to comment about the fact that he could have been beaten up and forced to be this silent and compliant, but then he realized why I was asking him this question. Siurana’s face was quite detached from the entire situation… but out of boredom.

“Yes.”

I didn’t need other proof as I started to approach Siurana, not enough to gain the ire of his guards, but enough to gain his attention. His gaze, which had been aimed to the ground until that very moment, suddenly lifted up to lock onto my frame. He stared and I stared back while I suddenly shifted to approach the two groups of officers debating and squabbling over the border issues. I stopped just by the side and spoke up.

“Apologies for interrupting, but I have an important request,” I said while turning to the officers, with the Mexicans looking surprised but actually listening to my words. “May I speak with Siurana in front of his guards? I believe I noticed something odd about him.”

“What?” The Colonel asked in utter conclusion before turning to Sheridan. “General, what is the meaning of this?”

“What do you mean, Mr. Joestar?” Sheridan asked with a serious tone. “Do you believe that is an impostor?”

“I can say that not even the Colonel and his group noticed that the Siurana they picked is but just a trap. Someone else ‘took over him’,” I muttered with unease, looking back at the limited officer. “So, to whom am I speaking to? I already know it’s not the true Siurana right now.”

‘Siurana’ started to smile at my words. Ferociously. “Of course… it should have been obvious that someone like you would have recognized a lie. I suppose my master was correct about what she told me about you, Dio Joestar.”

I felt no happiness in being correct as I felt true dread the moment I finished listening to his words and I saw Siurana’s body twist and turn, bloating unpleasantly as I easily realized what was happening to him. The guards aimed their rifles, first at me but swiftly back at their former prisoner- but it didn’t matter. ‘Siurana’ snapped from his restraints, and arched his arms backward… as the limbs exploded in a bigger pair of those, these bearing sharp blades that arched backward until they met together… after slashing the heads of the guards off. Two corpses fell with ease, heightening the shock as the body that was once owned by Siurana cracked and split in half to reveal a tall and muscular man that was wearing just a white cloth to cover his modesty. Most of his muscles were in full display, and I could tell who he was with a quick glance. Inhuman was the main theme which introduced this entity, with everyone tensing up but not intervening due to the lack of new aggression and the shock from the previous ones preventing a swift response from the soldiers.

“Santana,” I muttered dryly, the Pillar Man staring at me with interest.

“Dio Joestar. For a moment I thought you would have failed to notice the gravity of the situation,” He muttered in fluent English, and I felt a grimace forming on my face as just now I noticed a big issue about his presence here. In Part 2, Joseph faced a Santana that had yet to grow accustomed to Hamon and hadn’t really had the time to use his maximum intelligence in his fight. With how long Santana had been around, I knew I was going to face something that wasn’t going to be fun to face. Especially since I couldn’t use my Stand to aid directly in the fight. I could use its ability, but it was best to not get ｢ACT 3｣ too close to the Pillar Man and risk him to copy it and create an improved version of it. I doubted all Pillar Men could create Ultimate forms of Stand, with Kars having the ‘Ultimate Being’ potential unleashed and giving him the extra edge compared to his guard dog. I was also unsure about using the Spin with how quick the Pillar Men were known to learn about abilities by merely glancing at the results of those. They were tremendously smart and adaptable, which meant I had to rely on my knowledge of the Ripple.

“I would have expected for your ‘master’ to have kept you around to protect herself. I suppose she had reasons to send you out to stop us.”

“She requested for me to gauge the current situation with Siurana, and to then return by her side,” He replied calmly, and I quickly picked up on the issue in that response.

“So why did you decide to go against her request for this trap?”

“Curiosity,” Santana muttered. “A human that manages to survive through that amount of obstacles? It sounds absurd and yet you did. You’re not average, inferior-”

“You would be foolish to presume now that you can judge a whole race by a couple of individuals. And here I thought the Pillar Men were one step above humanity as a whole.”

An annoyed look appeared on his face. “That’s because it’s the truth. But it would be foolish for anyone to just disregard the danger of stronger warriors compared to the usual and you… you’re really something, Dio Joestar.”

“Enough to kill one of your master’s allies?”

“If it’s for the sake of not being annoyed furthermore by his rants and also to get a solid answer about your potential, then yes,” The tall man confessed without hesitation. “Which is why I will give you all humans an ultimatum. This shall be a fight between me and Dio. Any intrusion or intervention shall be met by me activating the trap underneath your feet. If he manages to prove his worth, I will leave and make sure the explosives don’t go off.”

“What?” Sheridan exclaimed while looking down on the ground and, peering through one of the cracks through it, he recognized it. A small piece of dynamite. “H-How did he do it? The space has to be too restrictive for someone his size.”

“It happened during the preparation,” Santana explained flatly. “The Colonel and his men did indeed capture Siurana, but while he was weak and begging to be saved, I used this opportunity to set up this trap by manipulating my frame and squeezing it so it could perfectly enter the small opening and expanding it to encompass the whole area. Then, once I was done, I took over his body.”

“Your capacity to squeeze your body through the smallest entrance possible is indeed a frightening and fascinating ability,” I commented, almost praising the man with how astute the entire thing sounded. “Ruthless but brilliant. I suppose you don’t wish to be disturbed in your test.”

“That’s correct. My interest is aimed at you despite the fact your group harbors interesting individuals,” Santana confirmed. “Which is why I shall be quick with this so I can return back to my Master.”

I scoffed. “You’re always asking to be the guard dog of someone, Santana. Truly a shame that you don’t have an inkling of your former owners.”

That seemed to be enough to set him off as he rushed at me. And he moved really fast- so fast that I barely mustered the Ripple to deflect his bladed arms but failed to allow his left limb to slam onto my shoulder. The sharp but thin thing pierced through the skin and bruised part of the bone, forcing a flinch out of me… before I returned the favor by slamming a strong kick right onto a precise spot of his side. His eyes went wide and he pushed away as quickly as the intense pain of getting struck by a hamon-powered kick right into the liver reached his brain. He fell on one of his knees while I held my sore arm close to my chest as I felt my sensitivity lessened on it. The hit had to have hurt my nerves there, which was why I had to be careful about facing another attack of this kind while I prepared for what came next. Santana didn’t exactly hesitate to keep trying to attack me despite the damage I had inflicted to him. He rushed again, this time squeezing his body thinly and striking me as if he was a spear of flesh. A big mistake on his part as I used ｢ACT 3｣ to freeze time and land two hits on his belly. His face was too covered for me to strike, thus preventing me from dealing deadly blows at his exposed self and putting a quick end to this fight.

Still, he didn’t retreat untouched, slamming down on the ground as soon as I ended the Time-Stop, Not even the time to try and squash his face by stomping it down on his head that he rolled away fast, taking just a moment to grasp what happened. It was clear that he had realized something had happened, something that allowed me to move fast and deliver two strong hits on him in the span of a minuscule and insane window of opportunity. My arm felt a little better, just enough to give me the confidence of finally being more aggressive in this fight. With Santana charging at me once more, this time being slower but more attentive of my response, I decided to employ Divine Hamon and try to overwhelm him. A major mistake on my part for two big reasons: First, I had yet to bring my body to the level where I could match up the full reaction ability given by this unique form, and second, Santana was fast and strong enough to return hits while dodging some of mine. If before it had been a simple game of action and reaction, now it was a full-fledged massacre on both sides. Ten minutes, that’s how long that entire mess went on and I felt like the progress I made with this new form was far from reaching even a good grasp over it.

I felt like something was missing from the form as I was burning too much of it too quickly and my body wasn’t just able to hold it properly. I was about to collapse as the skirmish was dragging for too long. I wasn’t exactly spared by any of the hits as the current Divine Hamon coursing into my body just dulled the pain and allowed me to push through it to keep on fighting. I could see that Santana hadn’t noticed, which was why he didn’t put too much effort into trying to tire me out and why he looked rather unsure of wanting to continue that battle. I held back the panting, forcing myself to keep my breathing stable despite the strong pain burning within my chest. I was putting too much energy out too fast. It didn’t help that I realized how the Pillar Man was suffering much less than I would have expected from the amount of Hamon I was using in my attacks. He was much more resilient than normal vampires, that was something I already knew about, but to be able to survive this much at the punishment he was being subjected to? That actually felt incredibly odd. Still, one last punch slammed onto the taller man’s mug, pushing him away from close quarters, and it seemed like Santana wasn’t able to throw more of that aggression back at me.

“You’re- You’re definitely beyond normal human. Your potential… is remarkable,” He admitted while he fixed his jaw. “Dio Joestar. This name… I will remember.”

“If you’re so prideful, why serve another human like Vins?” I asked sternly. “Why aren't you trying to find independence from her?”

“I am just a guarding dog as you said.”

“Only if you want to. And we both know your role as a guard is tied to Kars. He is no longer there to dictate you around so why would you submit to a vampire of all people?”

Instead of instantly replying to me about it, he seemed to actually ponder about it. “It… it is what it is.”

“You’re just aimless. You’re trying to find yourself, aren’t you?”

Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.

He didn’t reply to that question, but I saw something in his face that confirmed my suspicions about his current submission to Vins. It wasn’t one driven by absolute obedience, but by the sense of having no purpose within this world. What can a bird born and raised in a cage be able to do when dropped into a bigger, wilder, and more complicated world? It either learns slowly about it by keeping near its home, the cage itself, or dies by trying to learn without a safe place to go and rest when tired. Santana bailed from that confrontation, forming some wings and soaring away, leaving all spectators shocked… before they realized I had dropped to one knee. The stress was a lot worse than expected as I finally felt all the pain hit my brain at once and almost knock me unconscious due to its intensity. My Ripple was already working to fix the wounds all over my body. Bhediya was the one that rushed up to check on me first, the rest coming shortly after while Sheridan himself merely advanced close, still stunned by what had just happened.

“Is it over now? The man left and-”

“The bombs will not trigger,” I replied to the general as I pulled myself up, still strained but slowly healing through the Ripple. “But I suggest having the bombs removed once everyone is brought to safety. It would be bad if someone forgot about those.”

A nod, the general took a moment to ponder about this and ultimately went back to the Mexican entourage to check on them. They were shocked, and rightfully so. What just happened here was a classic Jojo situation, except that the men there weren’t exactly prepared for it and it took a while before they finally understood the whole situation. And of course, they were more shocked than before as soon as they caught up to the matter. The negotiations continued for a little longer, there was a mutual agreement to form a small combined force to hunt down those rebels bearing the respective uniforms of their armies, and I was allowed to retreat back to Houston with the rest of the group as our work there was over. Siurana had died, but at the hands of Santana. And I was incredibly annoyed by the fact that I couldn’t kill him during that battle. By keeping so close to me, I couldn’t use my Stand without getting him to realize what was going on and try to copy my Stand forcefully. Next time I was definitely going to make sure he died by my hands and… I decided to make sure that the train was ready for the next stop. Dallas was our destination, and there Bloody was going to see how a new party was formed and perhaps be part of it one day in the near future.

With the chances of getting hunted by any vampire bandit now diminishing due to these recent happenings, we resumed our trip without worrying too much about any abrupt interruptions. I didn’t do much for a few hours since it was nighttime, but I spent a few minutes before going to sleep to read a document that Sheridan gave me to read. Something important, he mentioned while handing me it before the train left. I decided to leave it untouched until that moment and… I felt a bit surprised when I fished out a few small medals and a document.

Mr. Joestar,

I attach to this letter some medals that Funny Valentine refused to claim after his services during the Civil War and the Indian Wars. While I know he will not accept those due to his pride and take on the war more as a show of patriotism than something to gain a trophy from, I wish for his grandson to know where his grandfather fought and made his name known.

I decided that I would have given Bloody these medals the next day, when we were in Dallas. It was late at this point and the boy was definitely sleeping at this point. After putting the letter on the side, I knew it was about time I caught some rest after what happened. My body might have recovered just fine from what happened, but I knew that I had to get my mind back in shape for the next few days as I had to double my efforts with Divine Hamon. Something was just missing in my current use of it, and I had to discover what it was before the next serious fight.

And I had a strong feeling it tied up to my current ‘mind’-related issue.

-------------d-d-d-d--------------d-d-d-d---------

“The Pillar Men, how are they so strong?” Little Dio asked, ‘waking me up’ from my state of bliss. I took just a moment to remember where we were and… the recent encounter we had with what I told him to do while I was out dealing with some crazy uber-vampire. He seemed to realize he was forgetting something important from our last discussion and he took a moment to grit his teeth. “I… I’m sorry for snapping like that. I went too far and behaved like a brat. Do you want to hear that?”

“Do you really think you were wrong about it?” I inquired back, feeling like it was more him trying to just please me so he could pester me more for the same reason.

“Ye-no! And you forced me to say that.”

“I don’t recall ordering you to do anything. In fact, the only thing that could actually match up with that is that I told you that you either picked a bad decision on yourself or for once went for the better one of the two.”

“...Fine, I know I messed up big time by acting so stupid, but that doesn’t mean you didn’t do anything yourself. You baited me to rile me up at one point in our conversation.”

I raised my hands up. “Only to get you to be honest. Since you weren’t and we both knew that.”

“T-That doesn’t justify anything! You pushed me into behaving like that.”

“I had you speak honestly, that’s all. If you believe getting coaxed into truthfulness is bad, then I bet you would be screaming bloody murder if it had been in bad faith,” I lamented and he scoffed.

“Wasn’t it?” He sarcastically asked, making me frown at him.

“Still, you changed your mind. Why?”

“...I wanted to. You told me that it was stupid and with good reasons. So I just thought about it and… agreed to that.”

It felt odd to hear Dio, the original but younger one, behave in such a way. Apologetic, it just felt out of character. But also not. Not when he knew that lying and lashing out weren’t options he needed and that were going to work to preserve himself in these very circumstances. I smiled, but before I had the chance to say anything about it, he also added something more.

“And that doesn’t mean I will just nod at everything you say. You’re flawed and an incompetent.”

“Well, I can’t be perfect and I doubt anyone can,” I smugly rebuked and he groaned as we both sat by the sandy ground and looked around. “Still, I suppose you want to know more about the Pillar Men, what specifically do you want to know?”

“How is it possible that something like a Pillar Man even exists? I thought that only humans were the dominant natives of Earth.”

“That’s because there is no proof to confirm Pillar Men existed in the past. In fact, the only proof is generally hidden behind deadly traps. Santana was the easiest to reach, same for Kars and his two subordinates back in Rome, but their slumbering grounds are filled with objects that kill anyone approaching without mercy. No one just had the chance to discover and also report their existence.”

“But if they had been around, shouldn’t someone have recorded them? Shouldn’t Historians have brought up about them?”

“Well, it becomes difficult to record something that has gone mostly extinct,” I pointed out flatly. “Kars killed the rest of his kind and spared just himself, his two stooges and Santana. Then they proceeded to clash and wipe out most of the Ripple-using clans all over the world in an effort to find a way to make the Stone Mask work as intended.”

“You mentioned another function,” Little Dio nodded in remembrance. “But I can’t see how the mask itself could do anything better to them since they have powers even stronger than normal vampires.”

…

“They can’t walk under the sunlight, and so they can’t conquer the world.”

The young blond’s jaws dropped. “You mean to tell me that the main purpose of the mask is to remove their only weakness which seems to be just… sunlight?”

“And to that extent Hamon too. They would be nigh-impossible to kill at that point,” I answered with a soft hum. “The mask, together with the Red Stone of Aja, allowed them to remove that weakness and thus making them… ‘better’.”

“But how were they beaten the last time? Surely they can be beaten,” He remarked, sounding a bit worried about it.

“‘Our’ first time? I guess it happened because they couldn’t find the stone and decided to hibernate until a luckier time period,” I elaborated with a serious tone. “Then in the original timeline Jojo’s grandson, Joseph, was the one that beat them. He managed to kill Santana and the others minus Kars with some tricks with the Ripple. Kars got to use the mask’s full power and almost killed Jojo but… well, he was sent to outer space.”

“W-What?!”

I blinked, glancing at him. “What as in ‘what is outer space’ or what as in ‘the entire situation’?”

“YES!”

...I smiled at that frustrated response.

“Well, for the first topic, outer space is generally the ‘space’ between planets minus the atmosphere. Right now everyone on Earth is not influenced too much about the times the sun is close or not to the planet, but that’s because we have a small ‘barrier’ which allows the warmth to remain much longer and not be too hot for us to endure without getting injured or dying,” I explained flatly. “So what happened to Kars was that he was standing on a large slab of rock that was propelled up in the sky by the volcano he and Joseph were fighting in and the propulsion was strong enough to push him out of that ‘warm protective blanket’ and got him to freeze up and become a tiny rock floating around Earth itself.”

“That’s… absurd. But it worked so… it’s good?”

“I will tell you something I learned for a while now. While the world seems quite normal in most elements, the crazy people and logic laws that have started to appear just recently are only going to worsen in the next few decades and next century,” I replied with a serious tone. “So I guess the only thing to do about it is to roll with it or get rolled by it.”

“That… bad?”

“You wouldn’t imagine the fashion your original self picked in a century from now. Really… flamboyant. Are you familiar with Oscar Wilde?”

“Y-Yes?” A frightened young man offered, knowing it was bad.

“Well, worse than that,” I happily added and he put his hands over his eyes.

“Y-You’re jesting. There is no way I could have done worse.”

“You would be surprised,” I admitted while nodding. “Still, do you have any other questions?”

He frowned. “No.”

“I guess we can talk later then. I do have to get Bloody ready for his first political meeting and I don’t want him to be unprepared.”

“Oh.”

It felt surprising how dejected Dio looked at that moment and… I guess I felt driven by instinct when I reached out and patted his head.

“I will be back next time I rest. Or nap. Depends on what I can do to be back there.”

“I-I know,” He replied awkwardly. “And stop that.”

“Sorry. Felt like ya needed some positive support. See ya next time then!”

And I was gone, ready to get back to my affairs and… completely unaware that little Dio’s hands moved up to his hair as soon as I was gone, eyes wide open as he tried to gauge what happened with that last gesture. And why he liked it. He snorted at the notion, shaking his head at the chances of it being anything positive on himself. Despite that, he couldn’t help but smile at the idea he was going to pester me up once I was back.

That, he decided, was a good reason to feel positive about this last meeting.