righthandstand | IC Inbox

Half a brain is quite important, Okuyasu.

[ 'spicy' ... well. that doesn't tell him much, but it's a descriptor and he'll take it. ]

I suppose it's the same with others too? Different .... body parts are affected. I met a child whose jaw seemed to have been replaced with something more ghoulish.

Yeah. One girl got her voice ripped out. [Her vocal chords, he means.] And one of my lungs're gone. I couldn't run when we were escapin'.

I see.

[ angelo tilts his head, considers everything that okuyasu has told him as well as what the shelter had looked like; been retrofitted for. was it the only one in town? he doesn't know, but he suspects that it is. it seems reckless to create more than one laboratory for horrors in this city, but what does he know? in the meantime, he'll operate with just one.

he crosses his ankles as he thinks about it. ]

... I suppose, then, the next thing we have to worry about is another enhanced creature with all of the body parts that have been taken from nine of you. How ghoulish.

[ that's the only reason he can think of this happening. someone wanted a body badly enough to take from nine expendable strangers, where there is still something to be taken from, as opposed to the residents which belong here and are therefore important. ]

[Okuyasu groans and presses his head deeper into the pillow.]

Great. That's one new thing to look out for.

[He can't take another adventure so soon after this.]

Shit. I wish Josuke was here. He'd used his Stand to fix all this! How are we supposed to track down whoever did this?

I wish for many things. But we can't have everything, Okuyasu. We can't even have good things in here.

In any case, it's just a theory.

[ he could be wrong, and wouldn't that be the greatest thing? even if that theory is the only thing that makes sense to him right now. why else get separate body parts from people? to go to great pains taking test subjects, keeping them sedated and separate, but only take parts of them - it's all very deliberate to him. ]

You still could be right. [Angelo seems like a smart guy. Plenty of people smarter than Okuyasu have solved mysteries before.]</small. Did you see anyone in there when you rescued us? Like scientists or whoever?

If there had been anyone else, they were already gone before any of us made it down there.

[ a pity. but there really isn't anything to be found on the other occupant of the shelter. ]

Daylight mentioned something - around January, you acted oddly. Do you recall? The way he phrased it was like 'the weirder people of town'.

[Oh. Okuyasu squeezes his eyes shut. This again.]

I thought I was born in America. I still thought shit was weird, but...

[It was ridiculous. Why didn't think any of this was weird?]

I thought my fake mom and dad were my real ones. I thought we really moved here. It's...yeah. Something messed with my memories.

How did it happen? [ because it happened to him, as well, however - ]

Do you remember what you were doing before all of that?

I was... [keying the chief of police's car] botherin' that police guy. Wasn't threatenin' him or anything, but he got mad, I ran away, and he must've shot me with something.

[Thinking back, it must have been some kind of dart, if he didn't find any evidence of it on his body later.]

Right then, I forgot who I was. I got new memories. I thought this shit was weird, but it wasn't like I knew I had another home.

[ so it's him. it's him who's the problem.

he thinks about harding, and the fact that he always seemed reticent when they were asking him about 'living island'. ]

... when you mentioned 'Stands' before - were you referring to an ability?

Yeah.

[He doesn't know the details on how they work or how they come into being, but he can explain the basics.]

People call them our fighting spirits taking shape into something else. Could be a person-shaped ghost, could be something else. And all of them have one kind of special power.

When I first woke up, I tried summoning mine, but... [shrug.] Nothing was there.

.... I can't pretend I understand that, but I'll take your word for it.

[ that being said - ]

In your experience, have you faced against something similar to what had happened to you? Or have seen someone else do it? One who ... changes their behaviour, and not remember as to why. Only that it happened.

Uh... [He thinks back to all of the stands he encountered in Morioh. Most of them didn't bother to wipe memories, but-]

There's this one called Heaven's Door. This guy turns people into books and writes things in 'em, stuff to make them act different. But it wasn't like I wanted to set myself on fire. My arm did it on its own.

[Is Rohan involved? Why does he get worse every time they meet?]

But once, one of my friends get forgetting what he was doing because of that Stand. It wasn't like he got all of his memories replaced, but with a lot of work, maybe... [rubbing his chin.] Maybe it's a similar kind of Stand.

I see.

For now, let's assume that there are people in this town with something similar to that Stand. One of them happens to be the chief of police.

[ a pause. ] I don't know if that means the entire precinct has that ability. But it does point to a solution: we cannot confront Harding by ourselves. There always needs to be another witness, either recording or observing from a distance.

The hard thing is that if you don't have a Stand, you can't see it. I guess I can be hiding in the bushes the next time it happens, but if I don't know what it looks like, I don't know what to look for.

[A big Stand? A large group of tiny stands? What if it's just a strange bullet?]

We're gonna need someone to be the bait.

It has to be someone who hasn't been affected by what they can do, so they won't be expecting it when it happens.

[ how interesting. but yes he'll go on and give away that he has been affected by harding's .... 'stand', as well, for the lack of a better term. ]

I can think of a few candidates. But we'll talk about it again at a later time - figuring out how they do it is easy, figuring out how to stop it is something else entirely. And figuring out the extent of it - whether all cops can do it to a degree or just Harding - is an even greater undertaking.

[That narrows down the list. It has to be someone new and someone that Okuyasu already trusts. The intersection of those two groups is very small.

He'll hold back on asking Miss Monika for now.]

It's a puzzle. Once we see the Stand in action, we know how it works. Once we have that worked out, we come up with a strategy, easy! [Not that...Okuyasu did much of the strategy in the past. His friends ended up figuring out how to win the fight.] Damn, if only we had more Stand users, we could all gang up on him right then and there

We'll come back to this. It is something to consider in the future, for certain.

We already know what some of them are capable of; understanding what their power is will allow us to figure out ways to anticipate harm when it happens.

Yeah...once I feel better.

[It would likely end in disaster, but when is life easy?]

IC Inbox

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject