Commencing massive fanfiction upload in 3...
Uh, okay... So here's some fanfiction I wrote for JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. It's like, the most depressing thing I've ever written, I seriously almost cried twice while I was writing it for what that's worth.
Apocalyptica
Pairings: Josuke/Rohan, Mista/Giorno, Rohan/Giorno
Rating: light R
Summary: After the end of the world has been brought about by Pucci, two Stand users immune to the madness caused by Stairway to Heaven try to make sense of what happened.
Disclaimer: I don't own these guys. They belong to Araki-sensei.
They were the last in the world, he was fairly sure of it. Florida, the United States, all the other nations, had crumbled around them and left only the remains of civilizations. Even the bones had degraded into dust. It was as if humanity had never existed.
Some days, Giorno Giovanna thought maybe it hadn’t. Maybe the dilapidated buildings had sprung out of the earth, weird plants of concrete and steel. Maybe Mista, Buccellati, the others had been dreams made up by his unraveling mind (because it was unraveling despite his efforts to keep it together, although if Mista had been a dream then he’d never existed and Giorno wasn’t all alone now, cut off from the first group of people to value him, oh, my poor Guido- KEEP IT TOGETHER, GIOVANNA.)
His companion looked over at him. The man was wearing too much...well, Giorno couldn’t rightly call it junk, because his own preferences ran towards pinning his several large ladybug brooches onto whichever shirt he was wearing...but it was strictly unnecessary for surviving post-apocalypse. Pen-nib earrings. An odd headband that was reminiscent of something one of Giorno’s long-dead friends had worn. Gold pins, three of them: a heart, a peace sign, a letter “J”.
His name was Rohan Kishibe. Not a “J” to be found.
“Night’s falling,” he said, looking toward the sky instead of toward Giorno. “We want to find some place that’s not going to nearly collapse on the two of us like last time.”
Giorno didn’t nod, didn’t give any sign of having acknowledged Rohan’s words, but set off in the direction of a hotel that didn’t seem to be breaking down yet.
That was one of the many troubles with this strange place the world had become. Things were in a constant state of accelerating decay. A building that looked perfectly sound when the two of them entered it to sleep might have them fleeing as it fell down around them only hours later.
“There’s always the forest,” Rohan suggested.
The forest. It was creeping into the cities, retaking what humanity had colonized. After all, humanity now consisted of a thirty-three-year-old Japanese mangaka and a twenty-six-year-old Italian mob boss who was (in Rohan’s opinion) starting to go insane. Not that he blamed the kid. The way the sun and moon had acted in the early days of the acceleration would make anyone crazy; that had stopped after a few weeks when the effect spread outward through the solar system. The earth was still speeding, but now the sun and moon were as well.
Giorno shook his head violently. “No. Not there. The animals-”
“There are no more animals. Not even the bones are left.”
“There’s something, then. And what else could it be?”
What indeed? This wasn’t something Giorno was making up. Rohan had heard a distorted, slow laugh coming from the trees at night in the few days after humanity had mostly ceased to exist, though he hadn’t heard it lately. As disconcerting as it had been, he was almost ready to take his chance with whatever was in the woods instead of risk being crushed by falling steel beams again.
“Fine.”
“We could sleep in the open. It’s warm enough.” Giorno punctuated his statement by lying down on the grassy field that had once been a busy street, closing his eyes, and dozing off.
Rolling his eyes, Rohan sat down beside him. He wasn’t yet tired. It was certainly warm enough to sleep outdoors, almost too warm- this was Florida in early autumn, after all- and there was probably no danger from animals or people, though he would keep watch until he felt like sleeping. The animals had all died within two months after the acceleration had begun; anything no longer living decayed immediately. Fruits and vegetables picked off the vine or tree, creatures killed for sustenance, roots dug from the earth- all rotted and were rendered inedible. Everything starved.
The animals that lasted the longest were the ones who ate plants directly from the earth, not giving them a chance to decompose. But even those were hunted to extinction by the bands of humans roaming through the remains of civilization.
The humans had died out eventually too. Most killed themselves, having gone mad from the shock of the world ending, or starved, unable to learn the ways of the grazing animals. Those who were left, hunted the animals, and when those were gone, hunted each other. In the end, the few who had managed to survive went insane or starved, and died anyway.
Rohan and Giorno remained. Giorno had Gold Experience to save him; Rohan simply managed to hold on to his sanity thanks to Heaven’s Door. Even if everything was speeding around him, his pen could move faster than that when guided by his Stand.
Sleeping, Giorno looked at least a decade younger than his real age. He had inherited neither Dio’s nor the Joestar’s tendencies toward muscle, instead remaining small and slender, and that was even when he was properly nourished. Neither he nor Rohan had eaten enough in months. They had learned from watching the animals that lasted the longest, those who ate plants right out of the earth; they had found all the canned food they could; they drank fresh water out of the streams they didn’t bathe in, to their hearts’ content.
But it wasn’t enough, not for two grown men, certainly not for two grown men who were constantly moving in an effort to survive in a world that was trying to kill not only them, but itself. As a result, Giorno looked even smaller, especially curled on his side in the high grass. His hair, which had long ago come loose from its braid, hung to his shoulders; now it fanned out around his head, a wavy gold halo. Funny that a mafioso should have a halo, Rohan mused idly.
Silence blanketed them, save for Giorno’s soft breathing. Hopefully he wouldn’t have nightmares tonight. Twice within the past month he’d woken up screaming for friends who’d been dead for years, clawing at invisible attackers. Once, still asleep, he’d called out Gold Experience. It disturbed Rohan, seeing the emotionless facade Giorno kept up during the day crumble so completely and so suddenly.
He supposed he had let down his own barriers while sleeping, too. His dreams, when he had them, were certainly not happy things, although lately he’d been too exhausted to do anything but fall into a state more akin to unconsciousness than sleep. He was thankful for that small release from the memories that plagued him unbidden during his waking hours.
Now there were hours to sit and think until he could no longer keep his eyes open. Rohan looked up at the sky, at the new forms the stars had taken. The universe was doing the impossible, spinning faster than light; the clear, deep blue was streaked with glowing whitish-yellow rather than dotted with pinpricks of light as it had been before. The stars were almost mocking, most of them having died long before they were visible from where Rohan sat now. They were lucky.
Curious that death and luck should be nearly synonymous, but they were at this point, had to be.
Otherwise I made a mistake. What I did to Josuke- no. No. He needed it.
Looking up at the memories of the sky, Rohan thought upon his own.
***
It had seemed like a wonderful idea: a trip to Florida, all of the old gang from Morioh together again. Josuke and Rohan, Okuyasu and his girlfriend, the newly-married Kouichi and Yukako, plus Kouichi’s younger cousin Yasuho, who’d been in the room when the subject was brought up and had dropped hints about wanting to visit the States.
The only reason the plans had even been made was a book deal- rather, a manga deal- that the publishing company Rohan worked under had made with one Giorno Giovanna. He would give them his life story, they would employ the world’s number-one mangaka to draw it. Giorno was going to be in Florida for some undisclosed business, Rohan’s boss had said, and would Rohan be kind enough to go there and consult with the client himself?
So Rohan told Josuke, who told all of his friends, who packed their bags and bought tickets to Disney World. Rohan had grumbled at first, wanting the trip to be something he could share with Josuke alone, instead of with all Josuke’s friends- and he was especially wary of that Yasuho girl, who almost definitely had a schoolgirl crush on his boyfriend!- but he warmed to the idea eventually. Josuke would be bored while Rohan was conducting interviews and sketching drafts. Letting him bring along his stupid friends to hang out with was just the humane thing to do.
And Rohan would never admit this to anyone, but “Josuke’s stupid friends” had become his friends over the years as well.
They’d had exactly three days in Florida before the world started to end. It had turned out that they all would be going to Disney World, Rohan included. Giorno’s ‘undisclosed business’ had been a trip there; Mista had apparently wanted to go since childhood and now that he had the money and time, he was hell-bent on meeting Mickey Mouse and riding nausea-inducing rollercoasters. Of course Giorno had to come as well. Mista had insisted, saying that Giorno had no idea how to have fun, and Giorno admitted he was probably right.
He and Rohan had been sitting in the outdoor seating of a café, going over some specifics of the manga, when the sideways falling started. They held onto the iron table, trusting that the bolts holding it to the sidewalk would be stronger than the sideways pull. The tiny café couldn’t withstand the contents of the kitchen pressing against its wall, however, and began to collapse outward, arching toward them like a tidal wave of concrete and metal and glass. Mista saw the whole thing, saw the brief look of panic that flashed in Giorno’s widened eyes for the fraction of a second before he regained his composure-
-and launched himself from the lamppost he’d been holding onto. He went careening into Giorno who knocked into Rohan, the two of them losing their grip on the table and coming to rest against the side of a sturdier building, stunned and a bit scraped-up but mostly unharmed. They’d escaped the airborne rubble that had once been the café. The jumbled mess slammed against a wall a few feet to the left of the two of them, held there by this odd new gravitational force. Rohan breathed a sigh of relief. They were safe.
Mista wasn’t so lucky.
Giorno stared at the debris for a full five minutes, completely expecting Mista to emerge from the concrete chunks and twisted bits of metal at any second, grinning in that silly way that Giorno had always scoffed at but secretly adored. Mista had known that, and had smiled more when Giorno was around, not that he needed to make an effort to do so.
A hand emerged, then an arm, the tatters of Mista’s T-shirt clinging to it. A head, shaggy black hair matted with blood. His hat was somewhere under the remains of the café. Six tiny creatures were slowly pulling away chunks of rubble, uncovering the battered form.
Raising his head slightly, Mista gave a faint smile before spitting out a mouthful of blood. He managed a thumbs-up and a whispered “Ti amo” before he went limp.
The six tiny creatures disappeared.
Giorno screamed until his throat was raw, then clamped his mouth shut.
For all his efforts to rush to Mista’s side, he couldn’t fight the gravity holding him against the wall, and eventually he sagged, his eyes blank and his lips pressed tightly together.
Around them: chaos. Roller coasters collapsed; rides disassembled themselves and flew parallel to the ground; candy and souvenirs went flying, a strange hurricane dreamed up by a demented child. The head of a mascot whizzed by, trailing red liquid through the air. Rohan had a sickening feeling that the unlucky soul in the Minnie Mouse suit had never gotten a chance to remove the costume’s heavy head piece.
After what seemed like an eternity, the two pinned against the wall fell to the ground. Gravity had seemingly gone back to normal, leaving Disney World looking as though it had been the epicenter of an earthquake or the focus of a military attack. Giorno’s first action was to run over to where Mista’s body lay; Rohan’s was to take out his phone and try to call any of the others from Morioh. He paled as he read Josuke’s last text: ALL GOING ON TEST TRACK BWARE MY DRVING XD
That ride had been one of the first ones to hurtle by, the cars mostly empty of their passengers by the time they’d passed Rohan and Giorno. One still had the torso of an unfortunate rider strapped in; another trailed a pair of arms like macabre streamers, but most had dumped their cargo fairly early on. The lack of recognizable carnage didn’t necessarily mean any of Rohan’s group had survived; it simply meant they were in one piece. Probably.
Despite having called on Gold Experience for help, Giorno was unable to revive Mista. The kind dark eyes didn’t flutter open; the Stand didn’t reappear. Rohan found himself wishing that things happened like they did in manga: despite all the chaos and the death around them, the main characters always survived. The love interests always survived.
This wasn’t a manga.
Eventually Gold Experience disappeared and Giorno sat stonyfaced with Mista’s body in his lap, stroking his short, soft hair. Giorno’s light green suit had been ruined, torn by debris and now stained with Mista’s blood, but the normally immaculate man seemed not to care.
“We have to get out of here,” Rohan said. There was no urgency in his voice, just exhaustion. He’d been through enough adventure during the past afternoon to last him for a lifetime. “Come on. There will probably be riots or something.”
“I’m not leaving Guido,” Giorno replied, never looking up from the corpse.
Seeing the confused look on Rohan’s face, Giorno realized he’d spoken in Italian. He repeated himself, this time in Japanese.
“It’s dangerous here.” Rohan’s voice was still oddly flat. He was trying not to think about Mista lying there dead in the rubble. It was all too easy to replace the messy mop of hair with a pompadour, the loud yellow checkered T-shirt with Josuke’s loud purple overly-adorned polo. Since that was the first thing his mind wandered to, he was trying not to think at all.
“No.” Giorno’s voice lacked emotion also, sounded hollow and small and quiet.
Even speech required thinking, and the places Rohan’s thoughts went were too painful. Not trusting himself to say a word, he grabbed Giorno’s arms, hauled him to his feet, and set off at a brisk pace toward the hotel room, leading Giorno by the wrist. Giorno didn’t protest and didn’t walk of his own accord, instead simply allowing himself to be pulled.
When they arrived at the hotel they found chaos. The building hadn’t been damaged, but the street in front of it was full of crashed cars, dead bodies, and people with varying degrees of wounds. Fortunately, the staff recognized the two VIP guests and let them in; Rohan had momentarily gone into a silent panic at the thought of staying out there in that mess, wondering if every body brought by on a stretcher belonged to Josuke.
As soon as they reached the room, Giorno sank to the floor and showed no sign of wanting to stand. Rohan had to pick him up and half-drag, half-carry him to the bed, where he just sat on the edge staring at the ground while Rohan tried again to contact Josuke. There was a signal, and the phone would ring on the other end-
But it would ring, and ring, and ring. Either Josuke had lost the phone or he was no longer alive to pick it up and answer with any number of stupid jokes that Rohan only pretended to find annoying.
“Are you hurt?” he asked Giorno.
No answer.
Well isn’t this awkward. “Uh... If you need to take a shower, you can. I have clothes you can borrow if you want.”
Still nothing.
After digging his art supplies out of his luggage, Rohan walked over to the table- that was one of the perks of fancy hotels like this, tables and kitchens in the rooms for those guests that were paying too much money to be content eating their meals sitting at the foot of the bed- set everything up, and began to draw in order to keep his morbid thoughts at bay. His hand flew over the paper, a precise and talented blur, his pen making real the images in his mind. Heaven’s Door stood at his shoulder, guiding him. Pages piled up at his elbow as the hours passed, the fluid movement of his arm and tiny, quick, mechanical flicks of his fingers keeping him from thinking of anything but the story in front of him.
Secluded in his world of ink and fantasy, he didn’t see the new mayhem occurring outside, the cars that seemed to speed up of their own volition, the automatic doors on the building across the street slamming open and shut so fast as to be imperceptible.
Everything in the world seemed to be rushing along at a breakneck pace except for the people, who screamed and wept and wrung their hands in fear.
Rohan’s pen moved even faster.
He didn’t notice the meat that was rotting before people could get it to their mouths, the ice cream that melted upon being removed from the freezer, the milk that curdled as soon as it was poured into a glass. The diet of a mangaka was coming in handy, the occasional handfuls of almonds and pretzels that he chewed on while drawing, the coffee he chugged when he remembered to be thirsty.
The room was silent but for the sound of the pen scratching the paper. After almost two days of work- two manga volumes- Rohan had sent the manuscripts off to his publisher by way of a particularly haggard-looking courier, but other than that he’d had no contact with the outside world. His subsequent calls to the desk for other couriers had gone unanswered, and so ten volumes’ worth of work lay neatly stacked on the floor next to Rohan’s workspace while he drew the final book in the miniseries.
There was one good thing to be said for escapism: in Rohan’s case, it motivated creativity.
Giorno hadn’t moved from the bed but to use the bathroom and drink some water. He’d showered but kept the bloodstained, torn clothes he’d worn when Mista died.
“I’m going to go to my room and change,” he announced as if he hadn’t just been sitting in a state of near-catatonia for the past week. “I may or may not come back.”
Rohan stared after him in disbelief, his eyebrows raised.
Ten minutes later, there was a knock at the door, and Rohan opened it to find Giorno standing there with a suitcase, wearing a clean blue suit with ladybug brooches in all the usual places. He offered no other explanation than “The window was blown out,” set his luggage down in the closet, and began rummaging through the fridge.
“All...right.” Rohan was at a loss. Was this the same person who just an hour ago was so grief-stricken that he was nearly incapable of carrying out the basic necessities of life?
He finished the final book, quickly read it over (though he’d learned that this was more of a formality than a necessity since he’d acquired Heaven’s Door), and went over to join Giorno at the fridge.
Giorno turned to him. “Do you really mean to tell me,” he asked incredulously, “that all you have in here is beer?” And there were two lonely cans, at that.
More than a little irked, Rohan snapped, “I didn’t stock the fridge. Josuke did. There are some chips in the cupboard, I’m sure.”
There were indeed chips in the cupboard, a small bag of the ham-and-cheese Doritos that Josuke had liked enough to bring with him from Japan. Giorno opened the bag and ate. Rohan didn’t have the heart to be angry with Giorno for his rudeness; after all, it seemed less a case of bad manners and more a case of not having eaten in a week. Not to mention that at this point, it seemed as though Josuke probably wouldn’t be returning.
“They’re stale. Badly.” Giorno looked up from the chips. “I just thought I’d tell you.” He went back to eating. Beggars couldn’t be choosers.
“That’s impossible, we bought those the day we left Japan.”
Giorno shrugged.
“I’m going to go outside and see if I can get to a grocery store,” Rohan said. “I don’t know what happened last week with- with that incident, but it might be a good idea to stock up on supplies. You stay here.”
The elevator wasn’t working, so Rohan descended the eighteen flights of stairs to the ground floor and exited the lobby.
As soon as he got outside, he saw the sun flash across the sky, the moon chasing it, day and night alternating with dizzying rapidity. Bones were scattered along the sidewalk, some with rapidly decomposing flesh still attached. Cars had been abandoned in the street, rusting and falling to bits as the seconds passed.
Hell.
Rohan was convinced he had walked out into Hell.
Instead of running back to the suite, he kept walking purposefully toward the small grocery store on the corner. Curiosity had won out over horror, a strange kind of detached curiosity born of shock. Too numb to be afraid or nauseated, he stepped over a ribcage which crumbled into bits as his foot hit the pavement in front of it, walked past something that might have been a human once, and nearly tripped over a child’s faded, ragged pink dress that sat atop a tiny pile of dust, hair, and teeth.
There was the staccato sound of gunfire from somewhere close-by, and Rohan hurried his pace, cursing himself for his lack of foresight. Of course there would be other people out here, other people who were desperate and scared and crazy. Heaven’s Door could protect him, but only if he saw his attacker, and anyone outside in this apocalyptic nightmare seemed to want to stay hidden.
The two minutes it took to walk to the store seemed more like two days- it literally was, with the sun and moon chasing each other frantically in the sky- but eventually Rohan was there. The windows were broken and the automatic door had been busted out, and Rohan’s heart fell as he realized that looters had probably taken all there was to take.
No bodies lined the aisles, although one cashier had taken his job to the grave. The produce section looked more like the beginnings of a rainforest now, the fruits and vegetables having rotted, composted, and given rise to new plants. Canned and dried goods, then. That was where he’d have to look. Rice, and some canned fish and vegetables, maybe some soup. Bouillon. He could have killed for a can of milk coffee, the kind that was so full of sugar and chemicals that it could outlast a nuclear holocaust, but it apparently had never caught on in America.
Grocery shopping in a foreign country where all the labels were printed in a language he could not read was a trial, and Rohan found himself resorting to squinting at pictures in the dying, flickering fluorescent light. There was a can of something- a mermaid? Probably fish. He was fairly sure mermaids didn’t exist, though he did know that Americans ate some odd things. Canned corn. Two bags of rice (and again he was so thankful for the fact that the publishing company thought highly enough of him to pay for a hotel room with a kitchen and cooking supplies).
He was heading toward the next aisle when something half-caught half-tackled him from behind, causing him to drop all the food he’d found. Something big, warm, breathing. A human. It was holding him tightly, so tightly he couldn’t move-
Calmly, Rohan realized he was going to die. I wonder what will become of my manuscript.
There was a spasm against his back, a noise like choking: a sob. Wetness against the top of his left ear: a kiss.
“Rohan,” a voice whispered. “Rohan, it’s you, it’s you, I thought you’d died, Rohan, Rohan, Rohan...”
The arms released him. Rohan turned. The pompadour had come undone so that his hair was basically just a thick black mop hanging halfway into his face, but this was unmistakably Josuke. He’d managed to keep all of his gold adornments somehow, even in this mayhem.
“I tried to fix everything but it didn’t work. It still breaks, the world is going too fast.” Tears were running down his face. He captured Rohan in another hug. “I tried to heal them but they... It was too fast, they rotted too fast, I couldn’t do it, it doesn’t WORK!”
Rohan stroked Josuke’s face. “I thought I’d never see you again. The ride you were on-”
“Yeah. I thought you’d never see me again too.” He was shaking.
“The others...?”
Josuke shook his head. The gesture, the way his eyebrows knitted and his lips pressed together, said more than words could have.
“I’m sure you did what you could,” Rohan said quietly. He was stunned. They were the Duwang Group, a nickname they’d adopted from a Chinese tourist who’d butchered the name of their little city; they were supposed to be invincible. He’d never even conceived of any of them dying.
“I couldn’t even get to them to try. By the time I was out of the wreckage, they were already dead.”
“Oh...” Rohan couldn’t find words, didn’t want to think enough to speak because then he’d think of the people he’d only recently admitted were his dearest friends. “Oh.”
“Yukako looked so calm,” Josuke whispered, looking somewhere far away. “Her eyes were closed.” Silence. Then: “Remember? Kouichi said she even could be scary in her sleep. He tried to get out of bed one night for a midnight snack and she growled.”
They were quiet for a long time. There was the noise of a truck backfiring in the distance, then the crashing of several tons of metal coming to rest against a building.
“We should go. It’s not safe here. I heard gunshots earlier.”
Josuke picked up the food Rohan had dropped, and Rohan grabbed another two bags of rice and some more cans.
“Which way’s the hotel?”
That explained Josuke’s long absence, then. His sense of direction hadn’t improved since his and Rohan’s first date, when he’d tried to drive them to a well-known secluded makeout spot and instead had ended up at the garbage dump in the next town over.
They walked as quickly as possible despite the heavy supplies they carried and the piles of debris and human remains that blocked their path at times. Josuke stumbled twice during the times that the temperamental sky darkened, and Rohan wound up carrying all of the food as well as supporting a man both taller and considerably more muscular than himself.
When they got back into the lobby, Rohan saw why Josuke had been so clumsy. Injuries that hadn’t been visible in the dimly-lit supermarket were fully apparent. One of his ankles was badly sprained; there was a gash under one of his ears; he had scrapes and bruises everywhere.
Rohan must have gasped reflexively, because Josuke smiled a grim little smile and said, “I fell off an amusement park ride, remember?”
“How are you going to get up the stairs?”
“I’ll manage. Say...” He considered something for a minute. “Do you think that you could write in my brain that I can’t feel my ankle? Just until we get up the stairs.”
“Don’t be foolish. You’ll end up making it worse.”
“I don’t think we have another option.”
Rohan sighed and acquiesced.
When they got to the room, Giorno was still there and had returned to the foot of the bed, where he sat staring vacantly at his knees. Rohan wondered if he’d been like this long, if he would continue to alternate between catatonia and awareness forever, if he would indeed ever snap out of this particularly deep-looking stupor.
For the next two weeks, he didn’t. He ate if food was placed in his hands, drank, bathed, used the bathroom- but aside from that he was silent and motionless. He became thinner and thinner to the point that Rohan started to give him half of his own rations to supplement Giorno’s portion. Twice Josuke and Rohan had argued about what they would do with Giorno if they had to evacuate the hotel, taking different sides each time. He confounded them utterly, seeming both living and dead.
Apocalyptica
Pairings: Josuke/Rohan, Mista/Giorno, Rohan/Giorno
Rating: light R
Summary: After the end of the world has been brought about by Pucci, two Stand users immune to the madness caused by Stairway to Heaven try to make sense of what happened.
Disclaimer: I don't own these guys. They belong to Araki-sensei.
They were the last in the world, he was fairly sure of it. Florida, the United States, all the other nations, had crumbled around them and left only the remains of civilizations. Even the bones had degraded into dust. It was as if humanity had never existed.
Some days, Giorno Giovanna thought maybe it hadn’t. Maybe the dilapidated buildings had sprung out of the earth, weird plants of concrete and steel. Maybe Mista, Buccellati, the others had been dreams made up by his unraveling mind (because it was unraveling despite his efforts to keep it together, although if Mista had been a dream then he’d never existed and Giorno wasn’t all alone now, cut off from the first group of people to value him, oh, my poor Guido- KEEP IT TOGETHER, GIOVANNA.)
His companion looked over at him. The man was wearing too much...well, Giorno couldn’t rightly call it junk, because his own preferences ran towards pinning his several large ladybug brooches onto whichever shirt he was wearing...but it was strictly unnecessary for surviving post-apocalypse. Pen-nib earrings. An odd headband that was reminiscent of something one of Giorno’s long-dead friends had worn. Gold pins, three of them: a heart, a peace sign, a letter “J”.
His name was Rohan Kishibe. Not a “J” to be found.
“Night’s falling,” he said, looking toward the sky instead of toward Giorno. “We want to find some place that’s not going to nearly collapse on the two of us like last time.”
Giorno didn’t nod, didn’t give any sign of having acknowledged Rohan’s words, but set off in the direction of a hotel that didn’t seem to be breaking down yet.
That was one of the many troubles with this strange place the world had become. Things were in a constant state of accelerating decay. A building that looked perfectly sound when the two of them entered it to sleep might have them fleeing as it fell down around them only hours later.
“There’s always the forest,” Rohan suggested.
The forest. It was creeping into the cities, retaking what humanity had colonized. After all, humanity now consisted of a thirty-three-year-old Japanese mangaka and a twenty-six-year-old Italian mob boss who was (in Rohan’s opinion) starting to go insane. Not that he blamed the kid. The way the sun and moon had acted in the early days of the acceleration would make anyone crazy; that had stopped after a few weeks when the effect spread outward through the solar system. The earth was still speeding, but now the sun and moon were as well.
Giorno shook his head violently. “No. Not there. The animals-”
“There are no more animals. Not even the bones are left.”
“There’s something, then. And what else could it be?”
What indeed? This wasn’t something Giorno was making up. Rohan had heard a distorted, slow laugh coming from the trees at night in the few days after humanity had mostly ceased to exist, though he hadn’t heard it lately. As disconcerting as it had been, he was almost ready to take his chance with whatever was in the woods instead of risk being crushed by falling steel beams again.
“Fine.”
“We could sleep in the open. It’s warm enough.” Giorno punctuated his statement by lying down on the grassy field that had once been a busy street, closing his eyes, and dozing off.
Rolling his eyes, Rohan sat down beside him. He wasn’t yet tired. It was certainly warm enough to sleep outdoors, almost too warm- this was Florida in early autumn, after all- and there was probably no danger from animals or people, though he would keep watch until he felt like sleeping. The animals had all died within two months after the acceleration had begun; anything no longer living decayed immediately. Fruits and vegetables picked off the vine or tree, creatures killed for sustenance, roots dug from the earth- all rotted and were rendered inedible. Everything starved.
The animals that lasted the longest were the ones who ate plants directly from the earth, not giving them a chance to decompose. But even those were hunted to extinction by the bands of humans roaming through the remains of civilization.
The humans had died out eventually too. Most killed themselves, having gone mad from the shock of the world ending, or starved, unable to learn the ways of the grazing animals. Those who were left, hunted the animals, and when those were gone, hunted each other. In the end, the few who had managed to survive went insane or starved, and died anyway.
Rohan and Giorno remained. Giorno had Gold Experience to save him; Rohan simply managed to hold on to his sanity thanks to Heaven’s Door. Even if everything was speeding around him, his pen could move faster than that when guided by his Stand.
Sleeping, Giorno looked at least a decade younger than his real age. He had inherited neither Dio’s nor the Joestar’s tendencies toward muscle, instead remaining small and slender, and that was even when he was properly nourished. Neither he nor Rohan had eaten enough in months. They had learned from watching the animals that lasted the longest, those who ate plants right out of the earth; they had found all the canned food they could; they drank fresh water out of the streams they didn’t bathe in, to their hearts’ content.
But it wasn’t enough, not for two grown men, certainly not for two grown men who were constantly moving in an effort to survive in a world that was trying to kill not only them, but itself. As a result, Giorno looked even smaller, especially curled on his side in the high grass. His hair, which had long ago come loose from its braid, hung to his shoulders; now it fanned out around his head, a wavy gold halo. Funny that a mafioso should have a halo, Rohan mused idly.
Silence blanketed them, save for Giorno’s soft breathing. Hopefully he wouldn’t have nightmares tonight. Twice within the past month he’d woken up screaming for friends who’d been dead for years, clawing at invisible attackers. Once, still asleep, he’d called out Gold Experience. It disturbed Rohan, seeing the emotionless facade Giorno kept up during the day crumble so completely and so suddenly.
He supposed he had let down his own barriers while sleeping, too. His dreams, when he had them, were certainly not happy things, although lately he’d been too exhausted to do anything but fall into a state more akin to unconsciousness than sleep. He was thankful for that small release from the memories that plagued him unbidden during his waking hours.
Now there were hours to sit and think until he could no longer keep his eyes open. Rohan looked up at the sky, at the new forms the stars had taken. The universe was doing the impossible, spinning faster than light; the clear, deep blue was streaked with glowing whitish-yellow rather than dotted with pinpricks of light as it had been before. The stars were almost mocking, most of them having died long before they were visible from where Rohan sat now. They were lucky.
Curious that death and luck should be nearly synonymous, but they were at this point, had to be.
Otherwise I made a mistake. What I did to Josuke- no. No. He needed it.
Looking up at the memories of the sky, Rohan thought upon his own.
***
It had seemed like a wonderful idea: a trip to Florida, all of the old gang from Morioh together again. Josuke and Rohan, Okuyasu and his girlfriend, the newly-married Kouichi and Yukako, plus Kouichi’s younger cousin Yasuho, who’d been in the room when the subject was brought up and had dropped hints about wanting to visit the States.
The only reason the plans had even been made was a book deal- rather, a manga deal- that the publishing company Rohan worked under had made with one Giorno Giovanna. He would give them his life story, they would employ the world’s number-one mangaka to draw it. Giorno was going to be in Florida for some undisclosed business, Rohan’s boss had said, and would Rohan be kind enough to go there and consult with the client himself?
So Rohan told Josuke, who told all of his friends, who packed their bags and bought tickets to Disney World. Rohan had grumbled at first, wanting the trip to be something he could share with Josuke alone, instead of with all Josuke’s friends- and he was especially wary of that Yasuho girl, who almost definitely had a schoolgirl crush on his boyfriend!- but he warmed to the idea eventually. Josuke would be bored while Rohan was conducting interviews and sketching drafts. Letting him bring along his stupid friends to hang out with was just the humane thing to do.
And Rohan would never admit this to anyone, but “Josuke’s stupid friends” had become his friends over the years as well.
They’d had exactly three days in Florida before the world started to end. It had turned out that they all would be going to Disney World, Rohan included. Giorno’s ‘undisclosed business’ had been a trip there; Mista had apparently wanted to go since childhood and now that he had the money and time, he was hell-bent on meeting Mickey Mouse and riding nausea-inducing rollercoasters. Of course Giorno had to come as well. Mista had insisted, saying that Giorno had no idea how to have fun, and Giorno admitted he was probably right.
He and Rohan had been sitting in the outdoor seating of a café, going over some specifics of the manga, when the sideways falling started. They held onto the iron table, trusting that the bolts holding it to the sidewalk would be stronger than the sideways pull. The tiny café couldn’t withstand the contents of the kitchen pressing against its wall, however, and began to collapse outward, arching toward them like a tidal wave of concrete and metal and glass. Mista saw the whole thing, saw the brief look of panic that flashed in Giorno’s widened eyes for the fraction of a second before he regained his composure-
-and launched himself from the lamppost he’d been holding onto. He went careening into Giorno who knocked into Rohan, the two of them losing their grip on the table and coming to rest against the side of a sturdier building, stunned and a bit scraped-up but mostly unharmed. They’d escaped the airborne rubble that had once been the café. The jumbled mess slammed against a wall a few feet to the left of the two of them, held there by this odd new gravitational force. Rohan breathed a sigh of relief. They were safe.
Mista wasn’t so lucky.
Giorno stared at the debris for a full five minutes, completely expecting Mista to emerge from the concrete chunks and twisted bits of metal at any second, grinning in that silly way that Giorno had always scoffed at but secretly adored. Mista had known that, and had smiled more when Giorno was around, not that he needed to make an effort to do so.
A hand emerged, then an arm, the tatters of Mista’s T-shirt clinging to it. A head, shaggy black hair matted with blood. His hat was somewhere under the remains of the café. Six tiny creatures were slowly pulling away chunks of rubble, uncovering the battered form.
Raising his head slightly, Mista gave a faint smile before spitting out a mouthful of blood. He managed a thumbs-up and a whispered “Ti amo” before he went limp.
The six tiny creatures disappeared.
Giorno screamed until his throat was raw, then clamped his mouth shut.
For all his efforts to rush to Mista’s side, he couldn’t fight the gravity holding him against the wall, and eventually he sagged, his eyes blank and his lips pressed tightly together.
Around them: chaos. Roller coasters collapsed; rides disassembled themselves and flew parallel to the ground; candy and souvenirs went flying, a strange hurricane dreamed up by a demented child. The head of a mascot whizzed by, trailing red liquid through the air. Rohan had a sickening feeling that the unlucky soul in the Minnie Mouse suit had never gotten a chance to remove the costume’s heavy head piece.
After what seemed like an eternity, the two pinned against the wall fell to the ground. Gravity had seemingly gone back to normal, leaving Disney World looking as though it had been the epicenter of an earthquake or the focus of a military attack. Giorno’s first action was to run over to where Mista’s body lay; Rohan’s was to take out his phone and try to call any of the others from Morioh. He paled as he read Josuke’s last text: ALL GOING ON TEST TRACK BWARE MY DRVING XD
That ride had been one of the first ones to hurtle by, the cars mostly empty of their passengers by the time they’d passed Rohan and Giorno. One still had the torso of an unfortunate rider strapped in; another trailed a pair of arms like macabre streamers, but most had dumped their cargo fairly early on. The lack of recognizable carnage didn’t necessarily mean any of Rohan’s group had survived; it simply meant they were in one piece. Probably.
Despite having called on Gold Experience for help, Giorno was unable to revive Mista. The kind dark eyes didn’t flutter open; the Stand didn’t reappear. Rohan found himself wishing that things happened like they did in manga: despite all the chaos and the death around them, the main characters always survived. The love interests always survived.
This wasn’t a manga.
Eventually Gold Experience disappeared and Giorno sat stonyfaced with Mista’s body in his lap, stroking his short, soft hair. Giorno’s light green suit had been ruined, torn by debris and now stained with Mista’s blood, but the normally immaculate man seemed not to care.
“We have to get out of here,” Rohan said. There was no urgency in his voice, just exhaustion. He’d been through enough adventure during the past afternoon to last him for a lifetime. “Come on. There will probably be riots or something.”
“I’m not leaving Guido,” Giorno replied, never looking up from the corpse.
Seeing the confused look on Rohan’s face, Giorno realized he’d spoken in Italian. He repeated himself, this time in Japanese.
“It’s dangerous here.” Rohan’s voice was still oddly flat. He was trying not to think about Mista lying there dead in the rubble. It was all too easy to replace the messy mop of hair with a pompadour, the loud yellow checkered T-shirt with Josuke’s loud purple overly-adorned polo. Since that was the first thing his mind wandered to, he was trying not to think at all.
“No.” Giorno’s voice lacked emotion also, sounded hollow and small and quiet.
Even speech required thinking, and the places Rohan’s thoughts went were too painful. Not trusting himself to say a word, he grabbed Giorno’s arms, hauled him to his feet, and set off at a brisk pace toward the hotel room, leading Giorno by the wrist. Giorno didn’t protest and didn’t walk of his own accord, instead simply allowing himself to be pulled.
When they arrived at the hotel they found chaos. The building hadn’t been damaged, but the street in front of it was full of crashed cars, dead bodies, and people with varying degrees of wounds. Fortunately, the staff recognized the two VIP guests and let them in; Rohan had momentarily gone into a silent panic at the thought of staying out there in that mess, wondering if every body brought by on a stretcher belonged to Josuke.
As soon as they reached the room, Giorno sank to the floor and showed no sign of wanting to stand. Rohan had to pick him up and half-drag, half-carry him to the bed, where he just sat on the edge staring at the ground while Rohan tried again to contact Josuke. There was a signal, and the phone would ring on the other end-
But it would ring, and ring, and ring. Either Josuke had lost the phone or he was no longer alive to pick it up and answer with any number of stupid jokes that Rohan only pretended to find annoying.
“Are you hurt?” he asked Giorno.
No answer.
Well isn’t this awkward. “Uh... If you need to take a shower, you can. I have clothes you can borrow if you want.”
Still nothing.
After digging his art supplies out of his luggage, Rohan walked over to the table- that was one of the perks of fancy hotels like this, tables and kitchens in the rooms for those guests that were paying too much money to be content eating their meals sitting at the foot of the bed- set everything up, and began to draw in order to keep his morbid thoughts at bay. His hand flew over the paper, a precise and talented blur, his pen making real the images in his mind. Heaven’s Door stood at his shoulder, guiding him. Pages piled up at his elbow as the hours passed, the fluid movement of his arm and tiny, quick, mechanical flicks of his fingers keeping him from thinking of anything but the story in front of him.
Secluded in his world of ink and fantasy, he didn’t see the new mayhem occurring outside, the cars that seemed to speed up of their own volition, the automatic doors on the building across the street slamming open and shut so fast as to be imperceptible.
Everything in the world seemed to be rushing along at a breakneck pace except for the people, who screamed and wept and wrung their hands in fear.
Rohan’s pen moved even faster.
He didn’t notice the meat that was rotting before people could get it to their mouths, the ice cream that melted upon being removed from the freezer, the milk that curdled as soon as it was poured into a glass. The diet of a mangaka was coming in handy, the occasional handfuls of almonds and pretzels that he chewed on while drawing, the coffee he chugged when he remembered to be thirsty.
The room was silent but for the sound of the pen scratching the paper. After almost two days of work- two manga volumes- Rohan had sent the manuscripts off to his publisher by way of a particularly haggard-looking courier, but other than that he’d had no contact with the outside world. His subsequent calls to the desk for other couriers had gone unanswered, and so ten volumes’ worth of work lay neatly stacked on the floor next to Rohan’s workspace while he drew the final book in the miniseries.
There was one good thing to be said for escapism: in Rohan’s case, it motivated creativity.
Giorno hadn’t moved from the bed but to use the bathroom and drink some water. He’d showered but kept the bloodstained, torn clothes he’d worn when Mista died.
“I’m going to go to my room and change,” he announced as if he hadn’t just been sitting in a state of near-catatonia for the past week. “I may or may not come back.”
Rohan stared after him in disbelief, his eyebrows raised.
Ten minutes later, there was a knock at the door, and Rohan opened it to find Giorno standing there with a suitcase, wearing a clean blue suit with ladybug brooches in all the usual places. He offered no other explanation than “The window was blown out,” set his luggage down in the closet, and began rummaging through the fridge.
“All...right.” Rohan was at a loss. Was this the same person who just an hour ago was so grief-stricken that he was nearly incapable of carrying out the basic necessities of life?
He finished the final book, quickly read it over (though he’d learned that this was more of a formality than a necessity since he’d acquired Heaven’s Door), and went over to join Giorno at the fridge.
Giorno turned to him. “Do you really mean to tell me,” he asked incredulously, “that all you have in here is beer?” And there were two lonely cans, at that.
More than a little irked, Rohan snapped, “I didn’t stock the fridge. Josuke did. There are some chips in the cupboard, I’m sure.”
There were indeed chips in the cupboard, a small bag of the ham-and-cheese Doritos that Josuke had liked enough to bring with him from Japan. Giorno opened the bag and ate. Rohan didn’t have the heart to be angry with Giorno for his rudeness; after all, it seemed less a case of bad manners and more a case of not having eaten in a week. Not to mention that at this point, it seemed as though Josuke probably wouldn’t be returning.
“They’re stale. Badly.” Giorno looked up from the chips. “I just thought I’d tell you.” He went back to eating. Beggars couldn’t be choosers.
“That’s impossible, we bought those the day we left Japan.”
Giorno shrugged.
“I’m going to go outside and see if I can get to a grocery store,” Rohan said. “I don’t know what happened last week with- with that incident, but it might be a good idea to stock up on supplies. You stay here.”
The elevator wasn’t working, so Rohan descended the eighteen flights of stairs to the ground floor and exited the lobby.
As soon as he got outside, he saw the sun flash across the sky, the moon chasing it, day and night alternating with dizzying rapidity. Bones were scattered along the sidewalk, some with rapidly decomposing flesh still attached. Cars had been abandoned in the street, rusting and falling to bits as the seconds passed.
Hell.
Rohan was convinced he had walked out into Hell.
Instead of running back to the suite, he kept walking purposefully toward the small grocery store on the corner. Curiosity had won out over horror, a strange kind of detached curiosity born of shock. Too numb to be afraid or nauseated, he stepped over a ribcage which crumbled into bits as his foot hit the pavement in front of it, walked past something that might have been a human once, and nearly tripped over a child’s faded, ragged pink dress that sat atop a tiny pile of dust, hair, and teeth.
There was the staccato sound of gunfire from somewhere close-by, and Rohan hurried his pace, cursing himself for his lack of foresight. Of course there would be other people out here, other people who were desperate and scared and crazy. Heaven’s Door could protect him, but only if he saw his attacker, and anyone outside in this apocalyptic nightmare seemed to want to stay hidden.
The two minutes it took to walk to the store seemed more like two days- it literally was, with the sun and moon chasing each other frantically in the sky- but eventually Rohan was there. The windows were broken and the automatic door had been busted out, and Rohan’s heart fell as he realized that looters had probably taken all there was to take.
No bodies lined the aisles, although one cashier had taken his job to the grave. The produce section looked more like the beginnings of a rainforest now, the fruits and vegetables having rotted, composted, and given rise to new plants. Canned and dried goods, then. That was where he’d have to look. Rice, and some canned fish and vegetables, maybe some soup. Bouillon. He could have killed for a can of milk coffee, the kind that was so full of sugar and chemicals that it could outlast a nuclear holocaust, but it apparently had never caught on in America.
Grocery shopping in a foreign country where all the labels were printed in a language he could not read was a trial, and Rohan found himself resorting to squinting at pictures in the dying, flickering fluorescent light. There was a can of something- a mermaid? Probably fish. He was fairly sure mermaids didn’t exist, though he did know that Americans ate some odd things. Canned corn. Two bags of rice (and again he was so thankful for the fact that the publishing company thought highly enough of him to pay for a hotel room with a kitchen and cooking supplies).
He was heading toward the next aisle when something half-caught half-tackled him from behind, causing him to drop all the food he’d found. Something big, warm, breathing. A human. It was holding him tightly, so tightly he couldn’t move-
Calmly, Rohan realized he was going to die. I wonder what will become of my manuscript.
There was a spasm against his back, a noise like choking: a sob. Wetness against the top of his left ear: a kiss.
“Rohan,” a voice whispered. “Rohan, it’s you, it’s you, I thought you’d died, Rohan, Rohan, Rohan...”
The arms released him. Rohan turned. The pompadour had come undone so that his hair was basically just a thick black mop hanging halfway into his face, but this was unmistakably Josuke. He’d managed to keep all of his gold adornments somehow, even in this mayhem.
“I tried to fix everything but it didn’t work. It still breaks, the world is going too fast.” Tears were running down his face. He captured Rohan in another hug. “I tried to heal them but they... It was too fast, they rotted too fast, I couldn’t do it, it doesn’t WORK!”
Rohan stroked Josuke’s face. “I thought I’d never see you again. The ride you were on-”
“Yeah. I thought you’d never see me again too.” He was shaking.
“The others...?”
Josuke shook his head. The gesture, the way his eyebrows knitted and his lips pressed together, said more than words could have.
“I’m sure you did what you could,” Rohan said quietly. He was stunned. They were the Duwang Group, a nickname they’d adopted from a Chinese tourist who’d butchered the name of their little city; they were supposed to be invincible. He’d never even conceived of any of them dying.
“I couldn’t even get to them to try. By the time I was out of the wreckage, they were already dead.”
“Oh...” Rohan couldn’t find words, didn’t want to think enough to speak because then he’d think of the people he’d only recently admitted were his dearest friends. “Oh.”
“Yukako looked so calm,” Josuke whispered, looking somewhere far away. “Her eyes were closed.” Silence. Then: “Remember? Kouichi said she even could be scary in her sleep. He tried to get out of bed one night for a midnight snack and she growled.”
They were quiet for a long time. There was the noise of a truck backfiring in the distance, then the crashing of several tons of metal coming to rest against a building.
“We should go. It’s not safe here. I heard gunshots earlier.”
Josuke picked up the food Rohan had dropped, and Rohan grabbed another two bags of rice and some more cans.
“Which way’s the hotel?”
That explained Josuke’s long absence, then. His sense of direction hadn’t improved since his and Rohan’s first date, when he’d tried to drive them to a well-known secluded makeout spot and instead had ended up at the garbage dump in the next town over.
They walked as quickly as possible despite the heavy supplies they carried and the piles of debris and human remains that blocked their path at times. Josuke stumbled twice during the times that the temperamental sky darkened, and Rohan wound up carrying all of the food as well as supporting a man both taller and considerably more muscular than himself.
When they got back into the lobby, Rohan saw why Josuke had been so clumsy. Injuries that hadn’t been visible in the dimly-lit supermarket were fully apparent. One of his ankles was badly sprained; there was a gash under one of his ears; he had scrapes and bruises everywhere.
Rohan must have gasped reflexively, because Josuke smiled a grim little smile and said, “I fell off an amusement park ride, remember?”
“How are you going to get up the stairs?”
“I’ll manage. Say...” He considered something for a minute. “Do you think that you could write in my brain that I can’t feel my ankle? Just until we get up the stairs.”
“Don’t be foolish. You’ll end up making it worse.”
“I don’t think we have another option.”
Rohan sighed and acquiesced.
When they got to the room, Giorno was still there and had returned to the foot of the bed, where he sat staring vacantly at his knees. Rohan wondered if he’d been like this long, if he would continue to alternate between catatonia and awareness forever, if he would indeed ever snap out of this particularly deep-looking stupor.
For the next two weeks, he didn’t. He ate if food was placed in his hands, drank, bathed, used the bathroom- but aside from that he was silent and motionless. He became thinner and thinner to the point that Rohan started to give him half of his own rations to supplement Giorno’s portion. Twice Josuke and Rohan had argued about what they would do with Giorno if they had to evacuate the hotel, taking different sides each time. He confounded them utterly, seeming both living and dead.