Green County Medical Center, November 22, 11:34 AM
Jojo blinked. That’s probably good. I’m not dead enough to need to shut my eyes forever. She pushed herself up, looking around the room. Hospital, nice. Good to see that I’m not lying in a ditch. Mildred was in here too, asleep, slumped up in a chair nearby. Her arm still hurt, the wound in the forearm seemed bandaged up pretty well though. She was in one of those freak paper hospital gowns though, wish they would just give me my shit back and leave me under the covers till then. Oh, well, should probably wake up Nana at some point.
“Nana, can you go get me some real clothes? I don’t wanna wear this freak hospital gown anymore.”
“You’ll wear that freak hospital gown until I let you out of here.” A masculine voice said from her other side. She turned to see the dividers for the beds pulling away, a familiar face appearing like the end of a bad horror movie. “Now, I’m going to need that bullet back.”
She couldn’t twitch, couldn’t move, could barely think. Why does this always happen to her? She had no idea, only knew that she had to rip this man’s eye out and crunch it under her foot. There was something else behind him, a horrible thing with at least 30 arms and triple the number of eyes. She was held there, couldn’t move for the life of her. He followed her vision, and when he looked away, she could feel herself relax, almost able to move again, could definitely get close enough to slam his head into the table and run out of here. But just as quickly, his face turned back, and she felt trapped again.
“Right, yeah, forgot you would be able to see it now, most people find my stand Eye a little… dissimilar.”
“Do you even know what that means?”
“Are you in any position to talk back to me?” A long pause passed between them before he continued, “I don’t want to have to kill you, so I just need you to fork over that bullet you had.”
“I’d rather die than have to give it to you. I’ll stay glued to this spot until you die of thirst.”
“Alright, be that way. I’ll just check the medical records for where they left it.” He grabbed at a clipboard next to him, holding it up for her. “Read this.”
She hesitated before begrudgingly reading out, “Patient was unconscious when arriving, bullet was lodged in forearm, removed and placed in personal belongings drawer with her clothes and other possessions.”
“Thank you. Now was that so hard? Now which drawer is supposed to be the personal belongings one?”
“Bottom middle, the one with the circle handle.” He stuck his hand in, excited to get his prize possession back, before yanking it out with a scream, a scalpel stuck into his palm. Before he could turn back, a leaping punch came from across the room, slamming into his eye. He stumbled, knocking his head into the wall, desperately trying to open his eyes. But Jojo would not let up, continuously punching him into the corner of the cabinet, trying to blind him. Before she could however, his stand grabbed her by the throat, holding her a few feet off the ground. The man stood, holding the side of his head, blood dripping not from his eye cavity, but from his temple. He smiled, but then he stopped as his situation became clear. The left side of his stand crumpled away, along with half of the eyes that were on it. Jojo fell to the floor and began approaching the man.
“I noticed that you hadn’t blinked once since you were in this hospital room. Personally, if I only had to keep one eye at a time on somebody, I would just blink one at a time, why bother with anything special? It’s your fault though, why trust the word of someone you shot and landed in a hospital bed. To be honest, you just got unlucky.” A small caterpillar crawled onto her shoulder. She pointed it out with a thumb. “To Pimp a Butterfly. I can take one cubic inch from anything I touch, including the human body. Wanna take a guess at how big an eye is? If you win, I’ll only beat you within an inch of your life.” Only a mild quivering came from the man. “Oh, c’mon, you know this.”
His previous bravado had all but escaped him as he cowered into the corner. “T-The Eye!” He threw an arm with his stand, but it wasn’t anything dangerous, just a little duck forward into a straight jab at his face.
“Not quite, but I’m feeling nice, I’ll give you another shot at it.” She leaned in, pressing his head into the wall, leaning her weight into it a little. “Maybe you just need a little encouragement. I’ll give you a bit of a teaser for now.” She leaned back his head, slamming it into the wall over and over and over and over and over and over and over. A small tinny voice from her shoulder let out a series of emphatic, “ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA!!!!”
She let go of his head, letting it slump to the floor. “Oh man, I should’ve asked him some questions. Tsk, why’d he have to lose consciousness so quickly.”
“Jojo? What’s going on over there? You know my eyes aren’t what they used to be. Come over here where I can get a good look at you.”
Jojo looked at the possible corpse she had at her feet, looked at the blood splattered all over the wall and cabinet, then stepped over to Mildred, wiping her hands on the inside of the gown.
“Sorry, just looking for my stuff in the cabinets. Do you know where they put it?”
“I have it… right… in one of these pockets…” It was a very large purse, and Mildred was being very thorough in her searching. “Speaking of searching, I was looking for a good hospital that wasn’t miles away for nearly 30 minutes, it is ridiculous the kind of service you can’t find out here. I had to settle for this one but let me know if you find any needles or scalpels left in your arm, I read a concerning number of reviews that mentioned it. Also check for mold, cancer, and any and all items found in a construction site. Can never be too careful.” Finally, she pulled out a t-shirt and pair of jeans.
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“No, I mean like the ones I was wearing. I want my jacket back.”
“I don’t know where it went, I think they threw it out or something.” Jojo ran out the door, sprinting through the hall. “COME BACK, PUT SOME PANTS ON!”
Jojo ran to the back of the building, throwing open the dumpster and pulling out bags labeled ‘BIOHAZARD,’ ripping them open over the ground.
“Seeing as how you just ran out of a hospital and started ripping through bags, either you’re a junkie or somebody threw something away.” A voice from the second story called down.
“Do we have to do this again? I’m trying to find something, and I don’t want to have to bother with this.”
“You do have bandages on your arm, which might suggest an addiction to heroin or some other injected material, but judging by the bulge in the bandages, it seems more likely to be some kind of projectile left in there by an unconcerned practitioner. However, if it was truly a faulty doctor, it would make more sense that the bandage was also faulty, but it’s good enough for me to be able to see the object from here. It could be the remains of an IV drip, but those are usually applied to the bottom.” He slapped his fist into his palm. “I know! You must have placed the object there after the bandages were put on from inside your skin! You must have some sort of ability that placed the bullet back where it was! If I had to guess, it’s a limit on the real ability you have.”
“Uh huh, that’s nice.” Jojo was ripping apart bag after bag. Finally, she saw the sweatpants she was wearing and pulled out a blood stained jacket with a hole in the arm. “Thank God! It could probably use a wash and some stitches, but other than that, it’s perfect!” Now, she should probably do something about that lump under her bandages the freak was talking about. She ripped off the bandages and medical tape as a golden bullet slipped out and blood began pouring from where it was. Kind of annoying, but it’s not too bad. It’s almost like the bullet stopped the moment it broke skin.
“Ma’am, I’m gonna need you to go back to your room, you can’t run around outside quite yet.” Jojo turned to see a nurse standing in the doorway, hands held up as if to keep her in place.
“Oh yeah, just lemme put this stuff back real quick.” As she tossed the bags back in the dumpster, she put the bullet into the pocket of the sweatshirt. She didn’t know a hundred percent what it did, but it seemed decently important.
“Hey, what was that you just picked up?” A woman, clad in purple attire with a yellow cap pointed at her through the chain link fence blocking out the alleyway.
“A new dame was darkening my doorstep, and she looked trouble, even more so than the last. Where Jojo was an almost restrained sort of woman, this one was a loaded powder keg waiting to blow. I’d just have to make sure I was out of the blast zone, preferably with a drink in my hand and a gun in my lap.”
“Dude, just pick a genre already! Are you Sherlock Holmes or a noir detective?”
“She was getting antsy, and I was too. It’d been too long since I’d had a good cigar, and I was feeling like a lion in an aquarium.”
“That one doesn’t even make sense! Why not a circus or a cage or something!”
“I think it’s supposed to be a reference to cats and water, not so much just a sense of being trapped.” This was the new dame now, who had managed to work her way through the bars and stood behind Jojo, a fist flying into her head. Jojo barely had time to block before a fist came rushing at her head, then a hit came from behind, then from her side, then into her kidney, knocking her to the ground. She thrust her eyes open to see a tarp over her, and a kick slamming into her ribs.
She grabbed on, holding tight, trying to see what this new power was. She only managed to catch a glimpse of a small, hunched snake with cavernous eye sockets that seemed to lead into nothing, before she felt gravel get kicked into her eyes and the foot she was holding disappeared, hitting her in the back. She started crawling out, trying to get out from under the tarp, before she felt her legs starting to get pulled back. She tried kicking at the hands, but they seemed to evade her attacks at every turn. She started getting up, but felt a hand grab her head as wind started whistling by her ears.
“It’s useless. My stand The King allows me to teleport anywhere I want. You’ll never hit me or escape from my attacks!”
Jojo hadn’t worked the sand out of her eyes, but still tried to guess where the attack would come from. She guessed wrong as a fist rocketed into the back of her leg, before another hit her in the ribs, and then past her guard into her nose.
“If you stop resisting now and just hand over the bullet, I’ll consider sparing your life.”
“Maybe you should just try saying please. My mother always told me to be polite to strangers.”
She scoffed. “Could you please hand over the bullet?”
“Why don’t you tell me? I’ll show you an American style, French style, Japanese style, even Italian, specifically Naples style. All around the world there’s ways to say fuck-”
A hand slammed into her stomach before another round of sand was thrown up at her eyes, but Jojo just grabbed onto the woman’s shoulders and held her there. She could feel her becoming more desperate as she attempted to squirm out of Jojo’s grasp, but there was no escape at this point. Jojo didn’t have any free hands to rub her eyes out, but she didn’t need them at this point. She headbutted the woman, then again, blood staining Jojo’s forehead.
“Your ability isn’t quite as invincible as you say. You’ve been trying to disable my eyes this whole fight, and I just figured out why. You can obviously teleport, but you need to have all eyes off of you to do it. But if that was it, why wouldn’t you have just teleported me to Switzerland or a deserted island immediately? You waited and had the tarp ready while you beat me up. I bet you have to be unseen for a while if you want to teleport more than a couple feet at a time. I don’t think I’d even be able to beat you if I didn’t still have that eye stored from earlier.” She had managed to cry out most of the debris by now, and as she looked at TPAB, she could see the tiny caterpillar just barely keeping the pupil of the eye she had stolen earlier exposed to the elements, and in turn the stand user in front of her. She turned back to see a cowering gaunt not snake, but worm, almost blinding with its paleness, and wrapping itself around the woman’s neck with pathetic strength. It would’ve been almost cute if it wasn’t attached to someone that had broken at least one of her bones. Speaking of, she still had to beat this woman down. Teach her a lesson and all that, something that she hoped wouldn’t have to become the usual for her.
Jojo could pretty much see by now, and walked over to the side of what she was decently sure was the roof of the hospital. “Now, tell me exactly what I want to know, or we’ll see if all the one star reviews about this place are justified.”