#ch67

CHAPTER 67: Take You To Burn - Part 1

All-Kill adjusts his cufflinks. Steam continues rising from him like an otherworldly mantle. Yeon-in closes one of his blazing eyes and squints the other before turning the black jacket flung over the back of the lawn chair. After a few seconds, All-Kill picks it up, feels it, then sighs in relief. “It didn’t shrink. Good boy,” he says, slipping the jacket on. “This one is my favorite, after all.”

He turns back to the women on the other side of the pool, silhouetted by the inferno engulfing his backyard. The two sets of rivals stare each other down, standing still. Shizuka is the first to move. “Mom… In time like these…” she whispers, “there’s only one thing to do.”

T’onga keep her eyes on All-Kill, but listens intently to Shizuka. “Yeah? What’s that?” she asks, then quickly turns at the sound of high heels crunching on the stone ground. “Eh?”

“RUN AWAAAAAY!!!” Shizuka yells, already disappearing around the corner of the house.

T’onga stares at her go for one second, glances quickly at All-Kill, then scrambles to follow. “H-Hey, wait!”

Yeon-in growls and stares at the ground beneath T’onga’s feet. However, it takes too long to charge, as by the time it combusts, T’onga has already sprinted to the corner of the house. He barks in frustration and charges around the pool.

A Tibetan wolf is capable of running at 50-60 km/h at short distances, easily outpacing the greatest human sprinter. Because of this, All-Kill simply walks after Yeon-in, confident in his faithful pet’s ability to catch the interlopers. However, when he reaches the front yard, all he finds is Yeon-in alone, looking around confusedly. The women are nowhere to be seen. 

“Oh, that’s right. The girl can turn invisible, can’t she? How annoying,” he mutters, walking over to his front door. He whistles and clicks his tongue, beckoning Yeon-in to him. The wolf complies and with his master's consent, bites his trouser leg. All-Kill crouches. With one hand, he grips his door handle tightly. With the other, he summons BLACK KEYS and stabs it into the ground, then turns it.

The earth almost seems to shudder. In the next moment, everything not bolted to or growing out of the ground begins sliding down the sloped driveway. All-Kill’s own parked car collides with the now closed gates, all friction in the ground removed. A squirrel appears from the bushes, frantically trying to scramble along the stony ground, but finding no purchase.

All-Kill holds fast to the door handle and Yeon-in to him. Soon, his desired result appears. He hears a woman’s voice grunting as she collides with the ground and spots T’onga sliding past him on her belly. Shizuka skates after her as if on ice, trying to help her up. 

Abruptly, All-Kill turns his ley in the ground again, returning friction to the soil, causing Shizuka to bowl over and collapse on top of her mother.

Yeon-in wastes no time. He barks, his eyes blazing, and the two women are instantly engulfed in flame. He draws closer to them, staring, intensifying the flames, watching them scream silently, their skin blister and blacken.

Suddenly his ears twitch. Something is wrong. He looks to the right and finds he’s not standing by the front door at all, but in the driveway. Further, All-Kill is not by his side. He faces forward again, only to receive a cruel kick to the muzzle… from T’onga!

Yeon-in whimpers, scurrying away from the attack. His lips curl back to reveal his teeth, then his expression drops, a pained whine escaping from his throat. All-Kill stands silently before him, staring ahead in utter surprise. His body is wreathed in flame. He hunches forward, slumping against the wall of his house, seeming to inspect his own burning body. Yeon-in did set someone alight, but not who he intended.

The wolf tries to run to his master, but T’onga doesn’t allow him to. She tackles him from the side, punching his throat to make him cough. 

They land with a thud. Yeon-in struggles, ready to rip and tear with his teeth, but T’onga clings to his back, restraining him in a choke hold. She forces him to face away from All-Kill, where Shizuka stands.

“The illusion worked!!” T’onga thinks, exerting all the strength she has to keep the struggling animal down. “They were already under ACHTUNG BABY’s spell the moment they reached the front yard! With All-Kill out of commission, we have our opportunity to eliminate Yeon-in!!”

Shizuka, her thoughts running concurrent with her mother’s, watches the wolf splutter and choke. “It’s Stand is powerful, but it needs time to generate enough heat to produce a flame! As long as we stay out of his sight, we can do this!!”

T’onga squeezes tighter. “In less than two minutes, he’ll pass out from lack of oxygen, then I can kill him easily! I can do it! I can do it! All-Kill’s already down! I can do it! Just two minutes, and we… we’ll have our freedom!!!”

Even as the thoughts enter her mind, dread chills her blood. Her fears are confirmed when Shizuka calls to her, “Ah! Mom, watch out!!!”

T’onga looks up and sees the impossible: All-Kill standing over her, glaring at her. He is on fire, but he isn’t burning, his skin is pale and unscarred beneath the licking flames. It doesn’t appear that he’s even in pain, standing upright as unbothered as a man on an evening stroll. The BLACK KEYS are in his hand.

She releases Yeon-in before All-Kill even moves, and still barely avoids being pierced by the key. Yeon-in inhales gratefully and rises slowly to his feet, whining apologetically. T’onga dashes back to Shizuka’s side, turning sharply to stand between her daughter and their enemy.

“That’s impossible…!” Shizuka exclaims. “How? Is he immune to fire somehow?!”

All-Kill turns to them and slowly places a hand on Yeon-in’s head, petting him. The flame engulfing his hand catches on the wolf’s fur, but Yeon-in doesn’t react with pain. Just like his master, the fire merely catches without burning him. “I’m as susceptible to Yeon-in’s fire as anyone else,” the Korean boss announces. “It’s just that this particular flame isn’t doing its job right now. Or more accurately, I relieved it of duty.”

T’onga frowns. “…You used BLACK KEYS as soon as the fire caught.”

“That’s right,” he says, summoning the key on the end of his chain and spinning it around. “BLACK KEYS deactivates or reactivates the ‘function’ of whatever it pierces. The ‘function’ of fire is ‘to burn’. Stripped of that, all there is light and smoke. Like an abandoned castle. Beautiful, perhaps, but hollow. Worthless.” He then fixes his eyes on the young girl. “Kind of like you, Shizuka.”

Her eyes narrow. “What’d you say?”

“Don’t talk to her!” T’onga shouts at him, then turns back. “Don’t listen-”

“You don’t mind if I call you Shizuka, right?” All-Kill says, patting out the already dwindling fire on his arms and head. “It’s not as if it’s your real name. It’s just what the Joestars decided to call you. T’onga hasn’t told you what it is, yet, has she? But that aside… your Stand really is quite neat. Controlling light, making little illusions, turning allies against each other. But of course, there’s no real power behind it…”

“You piece of…” Shizuka hisses.

“Stop!!” T’onga shouts. She raises her hand to block Shizuka, “Don’t listen to him! He’s trying to make you lose your cool! Don’t let him-”

“A fake name… A fake Stand… and a fake family,” the boss declares, the fire on him now put out. At the last line, Shizuka shudders. “Seems to me that everything about you… is a lie.”

T’onga tries once more to block her, but Shizuka moves before she can. Her rage takes hold and she charges past. ACHTUNG BABY appears and splays its hand, but BLACK KEYS pierces its palm, spearheading the chain attached to it. The humanoid Stand doesn’t flinch, however, instead unleashing a frantic strobe light, a hail of bursting flashes directly assaulting the Korean boss’s vision.

All-Kill raises his arm to shield his eyes. After a moment, he peeks over it and winces, his vision blurred by dazzling floaters. BLACK KEYS has slipped out of his target’s hand, both women now gone. Yeon-in trots to his side, shaking his head woozily. “Good boy,” All-Kill says, petting him without looking. “This hasn’t been a good night for you, huh?” He looks back at his burning back yard and sighs. “This is drawing too much attention. We’ll need to finish up soon… We can’t stay in this house anymore…”

Here, she cries in front of everyone, loud and ugly and emotional.