7joshuakujo7

[7joshuakujo7]

Ode to the Heart - Chapter 2: Nothing Behind, Everything Beyond

I sit in the void, my thoughts circling and looping.

 It was all gone, it was over. But I was still alive, why, why save me?

  My stand manifests. I turn to meet its gaze, it's form a mess of energy, barely a decipherable shape. Vaguely humanoid. It had…protected me from that attack. I hate it.  I hate it for never  being here until it was too late, I hate it for not letting me die and be with everyone else. Then I realize it’s just as much me as I’m it. And then I realize I hate myself. 

Why? I did what I could. 

Because that WAS me. It was MY fault. I could have done something to help. I could have stayed home. I could have fought harder.

I could have, I could have, I could have…

There was no point, and yet it persisted. I clutch my chest as a hollow chill spreads from the center of my chest across my entire body, engulfing me in its emptiness.  I look around with greater clarity that the void I’m in, isn't as much of a void. I wasn't crushed or exploded by the vacuum of space. 

What exactly is this place?

There’s no more.. anything to kill me, but nor is there anything to sustain me. No space means no time, so am I just stuck, here, in the moment of my death, forever? Wandering, wandering, wandering mind, wandered back to what I could have done different. What could have been. “Joshua Ambrose Kujo! Do you know what hour it is!” I groan, rubbing the tiredness from my eyes. It didn't go away. “Mom…  just errr, five more minuuutes.” “You will get your ass to school or I am going to throw you out your goddamn room!” Stone Free manifests behind her. Its approach is stopped by another stand as my father enters the room. “You had better listen to my darling wife, but I’m sure he has a good explanation, don’t you Josh?” His hair is hard to picture, but the feeling, i can't, couldn't ever forget it, the bright pink, vibrant and beautiful, like him. Only a small bit of me is like that. Just enough to cover the black. I can be nice, sure, I can treat people well, but I'm always too afraid to tell them how I feel. Forcing myself to feel nothing, because anything is better than that fear, that throwing of my care back in my face. Taking people’s shit constantly, and not even caring enough to look them in the eyes. What a joke. “I uhh, was up late studying.” Mom looks like she's about to snap. “I'm just gonna head out, I love you guys, have a good day at work!” I throw my dad a peace sign, he wraps his arms around me in an embrace. He holds it for far too long and I have to worm my way out of his arms. “One more thing!” He gives me a kiss on my forehead and only then am I allowed to leave my room. I’d rather him give me a million hugs than have to go to school today but I know mom would have some choice words for that thought. Still, I love my dad. Hopping in my Civic, I take off down the road. School was just a two minute drive away from my street, but still, no time to waste. The clouds were heavy, sitting over the sky like a dreamy haze. Signing in to the office is a pain, the attendance employee marking down my tardy and sending me off to class late.  On my way, i spot  Val in the hallways, messing with some.. thing in a briefcase. “Hey babe, you got a bomb in there or something?” I joke. She looks up at me, tears in her eyes. 

Something had happened.

 I reach out to wipe the tears but my hand finds nothing. The illusion breaks.  

I look up.

A massive light appears above where my Stand floats, it seems to be channeling this light,  and then a rippling vortex forms in the void, the inward spiral of it almost reaching out to pull me in. 

Will I ever come back? Would it matter?  

The vortex starts to waver. I make my choice. Hesitantly at first. Each step feels like learning to walk all over again, legs tired and beaten, my body stuck in the same moment, unable to recover. But it becomes easier, one foot in front of the other, the vortex wavering more, and then I run. I don’t look back, the light engulfing my sight and an escape found. 

[7joshuakujo7]

This is the first chapter of the story the character my namesake comes from. It is more a fic than an original story, but it is the truest thing I have written to my life. All criticism is welcome. I want to be better with each chapter release.

Ode to the Heart.

Chapter 1: A Broken Chain.

It wasn't supposed to end that way. And yet, That's how it began.

I got up late for school, Mom chewed me out about it and dad had to talk her down from actually physically throwing me outside. I was seventeen. Barely even a person at that point. I got to school and saw Val there. She was fiddling with some kind of briefcase. I should have at least said good morning.

Going to my first class of the day, I felt something was off. I never developed a Stand like the rest of my family, though I could see them. It was like that, like a Stand’s presence was in the classroom with me, but I couldn't see it, no evidence of one or aura either, just, nothing.

At the time it was my biggest insecurity, like it was the world telling me I wasn't strong enough, I wasn't important enough. More than anything else I wanted to be like my Grandpa. He was my hero, my idol. What I dreamed of becoming. And no matter how much I looked or tried to act like him, I always felt less than because I didn't have anything like [Star Platinum]. Grandpa’s Stand. Even when he would be busy with Foundation Business over the phone, [Star] would always be a good sport and play catch with me. And I always knew he'd be there. My parents used their Stands for alot more mundane things. The amount of times I'd get whacked in the face by [Stone Free]’s strings trying to grab a bagel from the kitchen while my mom was in another room, or have [Diver Down] phase through me when dad needed his laptop…it still makes me chuckle.

A fever and nausea crept up my back, racing to see which reached my head first. The nausea won. This along with the feeling of the Stand, what else could it have been but- no, why now? Why would it develop now? With a sweaty palm raised I asked to go to the bathroom. The teacher gave me a disapproving look; I had already gotten to class late and was now asking to leave? I told her it was an emergency and she reluctantly let me go, but the presence still felt overwhelmingly close.

I headed to the bathroom and tried to calm down. I felt feverish, like I suddenly contracted something, but I just kept telling myself that it was all in my head, that I was just imagining it. I leaned over the sink, running the tap and splashing my face with water, trying to get rid of the heat and nausea. The cold water hit my overheated face like jabbing icicles onto a searing iron. The temperature shock was painful and sharp, and it kept me centered.

I heard a voice in my head, ringing out as the feelings of sickness wash away.

“Home.”

I ran out of the bathroom, hopping the fence and getting in my shitbox of a car. I fumbled with my phone as I pulled out of the school’s lot, dialing my grandpa.

He would know what to do.

This has to be some insane, horrible set of coincidences, like the time in the ball pit. If something happened I wouldn- WOAH!

My thought was cut off by the pedestrian I almost hit while I was staring at my phone dialing and stuck in my own head.

It clicks, he answers.

“What’s happened?” I don't usually call him, reserving our conversations to awful shitpost text messages that leave the old man confused more than anything. I especially don't call him during school hours.

“I think something’s gone wrong at home, please, I need your help.”

“I'll be there.”

“Thank you, I'll see you there. Bye.”

I pulled up concentrating on my house and saw both of my parent's cars were still in the driveway.

They should both be at work right now.

I parked sloppily, hopping out of the car and ran to the front door, my heartbeat pounding in my head from fear. And I felt it, the presence again, but instead of it making me feverish and sick from the inside, it felt like a dread coming from inside the house. I slammed the door open and freeze in place. The trail of blood started at the door, leading forward, getting heavier, then teeth, then bits of hair, pink, green, black. And I look up, and, It's me. He's dirty and bloodied, deranged, and he's holding… holding….mom. dad. It's me.

'He’s fucking dead… ILL FUCKING KILL HIM.'

I meet him right in his face, running as i land a blow to his face, then another, one after the other in a sequence of attacks while his Stand raises its arm at me firing an peircing a chain through my chest. There was no physical wound, but I could feel myself weighed down by a force I could describe, beyond my strength. I had to keep pushing regardless, every movement feeling like wading through mud at neck level.

I hear my grandpa’s car pull up to the house. Coming to a sudden halt and the door of it slamming open and closed.

He looks like he's just about to say something, face bloodied but with the same determination as mine. He then looks in complete shock and stumbles back in fear. Familiar footsteps approach. When did he eve- Time stop.

His stand wavers as Star Platinum manifests. An opening.

The Stands above me and the other are identical, his is wrapped in chains, and that chain has pierced both our chests. An omen of complete finality. If he couldn't take a deluded, petty vengeance on me, then the whole world would-

My Stand reaches into my chest, shattering the chain. Then wills itself forward, faster than SP could manage at his age, punches down onto the other with a blinding white energy and smashes his fucking skull like a watermelon. I'm covered in my own gore.

I fall over to the side, in shock , unmoving, unfeeling. I look up at my Grandfather. The realization of what that was hits me as his stand fades with his death. The other had run chains into the earth itself while we fought. And as he died, those chains…started to rot. I only had a few seconds, I can't process what to say except a few words.

“It was me.”

As I speak those final words, I look down at my chest, realizing. The chain broke attached to me, but not the world. And then it was all gone. Everything attached to The Chain. Just like that. No more, Never would, never could. I sat in an empty void of nothing. Nothing at all.

[7joshuakujo7]

Devil's Dream cont.

Dante approaches the worn out wreck of a place he once called home, even worse for wear with the roots of that tree tearing the land apart. The rain had washed away the blood of demons he just slain, but to him, the world around seemed to disappear as he stared up at the portrait of his family. Not even the voice of that annoying chicken that followed V around could rouse him. “Hah! There you are!”  He approaches the portrait, pondering. “Hey, what’s wrong with you? Hey, Dante!” “The demonic power was activated in me once, when Vergil lovingly jammed this through my chest.” He thinks aloud, pulling out the broken remains of the Rebellion. “I always wondered, Why did my father give me the Rebellion?” “Okay, what are you muttering?” The bird pipes up, Dante deciding to give it the time of day, if just to prove he was still aware of his surroundings. “Heh. Over the years, I’ve been stabbed and jabbed by a number of things. But who would have ever guessed…” Dante flips the blade around on himself, and understands. A demonic emperor who seeks only ultimate control and power over the human world has risen. And to oppose him, a demon bearing compassion for humanity would need to oppose him. The legend of his father, playing out again between his two sons. And to defeat this self proclaimed king, He could not face him with half measures, tapping into the well of power within himself forms arms reach. He would need to embrace it. Unlock it.  Dante digs into himself with the Rebellion, exclaiming out loud through labored breaths and the bird's shouts. “Have you lost your mind!? There’s a demon to destroy, kill yourself later, I’ll help!” “If the Yamato can separate man from Devil… Then what about the Rebellion?” He digs the blade deeper into himself, calling upon the strength he could not accept before, obeying his mother’s words. A man…Silently, And in that deepest part of his soul, as he accepted the strength in full he bore within, the Sparda responded.  Dante felt a warm embrace he had not known since childhood, That most foreign to his memory. His father’s embrace. The sword was his power manifest, naturally it would carry some part of him. And as the sword absorbed into Dante, It told him, in a wordless way, that he had  awakened its true strength when no one else could, and that was because he did not do it for himself. The strength he bore was to protect, and that love is what made the both of them different from other demons, and that he was a devil, but that did not make him less of a man. The love he bore created  lifelong friends. It changed another Devil’s heart, it found him a piece of his family he never knew existed. He needed only to hold that love close to him, and the strength  to win would follow no matter what. “You are… absorbing the Sparda!” Griffon declared in shock. Dante’s body glowed with power as The two swords infused into him, and his full self, the devil within the man, exploded forth. The form was new, drawing ragged breath as Dante’s body adjusted to it, his mind was driven by singular purpose. Stop Vergil. 

[7joshuakujo7]

A Devil's Dream

Vergil. Her last words as she ran to look for his brother. Dante curled up into a ball and repeated her words  to himself in his mind like a mantra. A man, A man. A man.The fire raged on around him, filling his lungs with smoke, each breath like inhaling shattered glass. After hours of waiting, sitting, silently hoping there was some hope of this all to disappear as some elaborate joke or bad dream, he pushed the closet door open slowly, to a deafening silence. “Momma? Vergil?” He creaked out, voice strained from the building realization. A new life. As someone else. A man. And so he did. From the time he  shuffled away from the burnt wreck left of his home, Rebellion clutched in both arms because, what else did he have to take, Tony Redgrave was born, and the need for release of that loss within him, a need for vengeance. 

The dream shifts, and he is right where he started, The throne of the Qliophoth. The stench of decay and blood is thick in the air, but clashing with the thing-that-was-Vergil, He knew he wasn't strong enough to stop him here and now, even with Sparda in his grip. And as he is blasted away, the only thought on his mind is how much of his brother was truly inside that monstrous thing, and how much he had cut away with Yamato?

The dream shifts again, and Dante is at the waterfall standing in front of his brother. He knows he’s lost, he dropped father’s sword, clutching his sliced gut so why wouldn't he just pack it up? It infuriated Dante, he knew Vergil had lost and he knew that if they stayed there they would both be trapped forever. But he also knew Vergil would never admit it. And that infuriated him even more. He was being an arrogant douchebag and could stop all this if he just put his sword down! But as Vergil stepped back to fall and Dante ran to reach out to his brother in one last, desperate attempt, Vergil slices his hand and accepts his fate. Maybe he really hated him that much. Maybe he wanted to spare his human brother the horrors within the demon world. But that wasn't good enough for Dante. They could have fell in together, not been alone anymore, or Vergil could have let him drag him back up and they could try again together. But Vergil slices at Dante’s outstretched hand and falls. Dante clenches his cut hand and looks up from the depths below, he understands that his duty is still to protect humanity. Falling into the demon world after Vergil would make Dante no better than him.  But as he turns his foot to return through the portal, a giant, glowing blue arm grips onto the stone ledge, it's owner's body rapidly approaching. The version of his younger self falls away and Dante’s current self watches as his Nephew  flies up, holding his brother in his free arm. “Nero?” he questions out loud, before Vergil grabs the Force Edge, wordlessly transforming it into Sparda and stabbing at his head with it. Dante wakes up with a start as the Sparda is stabbed into the ground next to his head, and V stands above him.