#ch83

I am strangely enamored by his veins

Sherlock being 90% legs confirmed

who makes you smile like that? JK we all know it's Liam

Very punchable face

OK SHERLOCK

Also: enamored again by his bony hands

CHAPTER 83: Achtung Attitude – Part 1

The wind blows over the Santa Monica Mountains. A young woman with a deep tan kneels at the edge of a certain precipice. Before here, standing firm, a middle-aged man in a dark suit prepares to attack. The distant skyline of Los Angeles illuminates them both.

Illuminated. Light. Shine. Bright. Radiate. Glow. Sparkle.

These words race through Shizuka’s head as she prepares her final move, drawing on the essence of light itself. But there is no more time. She’s already in All-Kill’s, in LONELY BOY’s range. But with LONELY BOY’s power diminished by her enemy’s lack of control, there would be no tremendous final strike, but rather, a slow, torturous end by countless light punches. In desperation, she forces a chuckle out of her throat through the blood that stains her teeth.

“You… You didn’t think… I would really just annoy you to death, did you?” she says, “I mean, I was hoping that might work, but I… I didn’t count on it…”

“You’re still talking,” All-Kill blithely remarks.

“I set… all this up! To bring you here…! To bring you right here. Wanna kn…!” she suddenly gasps, but endures the pain that struck her and desperately continues. “You wanna know why?”

LONELY BOY’s hand curls into a fist. “Why not? Whatever makes you happy, before you die.” The man in black wears a cruel smile.

Summoning all the courage she has, Shizuka stridently points outward, beyond the cliff’s edge and over the mountains, at the glittering LA skyline. “You see that, Mr. Seo? That… That thing you want so badly? The city you want to control? The City of Angels… Well…” She draws her finger back to point straight at All-Kill and declares, “That city… is going to help me kill you tonight!!”

“Hmm?” All-Kill replies. He doesn’t move as Shizuka’s Stand manifests from her being. 

In that instant, dozens of impossible triangles form. All-Kill scrutinizes them as they begin to spin, quickly rotating fast enough to appear as pinwheels. From within them, blinding lights form. At last, Shizuka calls her Stand’s name…

“ACHTUNG BABY!!! ULTRA VIOLET OVERDRIVE!!!”

Like a special effects display at a music festival, compressed beams burst from the spinning triangles, searing the air and filling the place with the scent of ozone. Every last beam aims at All-Kill from every direction. As has happened many times in her adventure, Shizuka’s perception of time slows to a crawl. Slow enough to perceive the lasers converge on her enemy. Within a fraction of a second, they are six inches from his body…

“LONELY BOY.”

… then they stop dead. As soon as the lasers had fired, the Stand of the man in black was already in motion, sweeping the area around its master. With that alone, the beams are stopped in place, not one reaching their mark. The triangles continue to spin, as if attempting to push their respective beams further, but it’s no use. The lasers slam against nothing at all. An invisible, impenetrable fortress of nothing.

“So… Was this it?” All-Kill asks, gesturing to the frozen beams. “Was this your big plan? That first laser in the kitchen didn’t work, so you thought… ‘More should do the trick’?”

Shizuka gasps, releasing a held breath. Blood drips from her nose and ACHTUNG BABY vanishes. The impossible triangles fade with it, but the lights frozen by LONELY BOY remain. All-Kill slips past them and steps closer to stand directly over her.

“This is… just… disappointing,” he exclaims. “So… anticlimactic. Maybe it’s a good thing you refused to join me, if in the end, you turn out to be this pathetic.” Slowly, he reaches down and takes a handful of the young woman’s hair in his left hand and drags her off her knees. She groans, arms limp at her sides, the toes of her shoes scraping the ground. 

“You thought you’d be the one to kill me?” All-Kill sneers, readying LONELY BOY with its fist raised at his side. “It wasn’t you that defeated my family, it was your friends and that treacherous mother of yours. You never achieved anything yourself. You were just lucky…!”

Suddenly, blood spills from his nose. It doesn’t burst out as though he’d been struck, but flows out, as if a dam in his nasal cavity had cracked. It pours over his lips and down his chin. In surprise, he releases Shizuka’s hair to dab at it and inspect his stained fingers.

“What… What the-?”

Something in his stomach churns and instinctively, he brings his hand to his mouth. But there is no stopping it. He wretches, his body twisting away from the cliff before the contents of his stomach come spewing out, soiling his hand and draining into the dirt. Then the pain makes itself known. He stumbles backwards, his eyes glazed and unfocused. His shaking legs collapse and he drops to one knee..

“M-My…! My head…!! It’s k-killing me…! What… What is this?!!” he groans, pinching his temple with his remaining hand. In his feverish, afflicted state, he hears a similar retching sound. Straining, he looks to see Shizuka enduring the same ordeal as him, hunched over and puking her guts up. “You…! What? What have you done? What did you do to me…?! There’s no way ACHTUNG BABY could do this…! All it can do is control light! It can’t…! It can’t do this…!!”

Shizuka rises to her knees shakily. She extends her hand and tries to click her fingers, but fails, her fingers not even strong enough to generate the right friction. “That’s… the really clever part… I couldn’t have done this without you…”

“What’s that…?!”

“Light is in constant motion. Even when it strikes a solid object… it just bounces away in other directions. ACHTUNG BABY doesn’t control light… All it does is manipulate the direction and the form it takes. It can’t stop it. Not outside of unnatural conditions. But you can. You can freeze molecules in place, even light itself… I knew that I couldn’t defeat you with any simple trick… the only way to stop you was to use your own power against you…!!”

“What are you talking about…?!!” All-Kill demands.

“All light…” Shizuka hoarsely says, “All photons carry trace amounts of… radiation…” At this, her enemy’s eyes go wide, his predicament suddenly becoming clear. She swallows and goes on. “Just standing outside on a sunny day for too long… that’s enough to give people melanomas and skin cancer… the light from the Sun travels millions of miles to get here, and its ultraviolet radiation is enough to do that… Do you understand now…? When you blocked my beams, all you did… was place yourself in a radiation field…! I told you, didn’t I?! Everything I did was to get you right here!!!”

All-Kill feels the sickness spread through his body. He groans, coughing up a gout of blood. Strands of hair fall from his scalp. When he rubs his head, his hand comes away with entire clumps of hair in his open palm. “But… But…” he stammers, watching Shizuka suffer in the same way, “Y-You’re killing yourself too… You’ll die along with me!”

The girl smirks. “Everybody else… They’ve made their sacrifices… All for my sake. It’s time I did my part.”

“Tsk!” is the only reply All-Kill can muster aloud, but his mind surges as he tries to figure out what to do now. But beneath his distressed strategizing, one train of thought rules. “Conviction… She’s resolved to die by her own hand, so long as she takes me with her… It’s her conviction that gives her strength… No! I won’t allow that! When this girl dies, she must feel regret! Regret for daring to cross me! I will erase that conviction!!!”

Finally, it came to him, as if popping out of a balloon. So obvious. “Radiation…” he murmurs. “You’re telling me… it’s the radiation in my body that’s killing me…?”

Shizuka doesn’t answer.

All-Kill raises his voice. “Well… Thanks for telling me what to look for… BLACK KEYS!!”

With that command, LONELY BOY opens its palm, BLACK KEYS slotting out. The Stand plunges the KEYS into its master’s side. With a simple turn, Shizuka watches as All-Kill shudders, then takes a deep breath as BLACK KEYS is pulled from his body. “Haaaaaa…” he sighs. “A well-thought out gambit, Shizuka Joestar… But it looks like I remain one step ahead.”

Shizuka’s pupils jitter as All-Kill rises once again to his feet. He poses triumphantly, clearly still suffering, but not in the way he should be.

“Just like you, I had to take a risk myself, but I was able to come out on top… I’ve successfully shut down the radiation in my body. Now it’s nothing but harmless molecules bouncing around my body.”

He steps toward her, standing firm with the pain dulled in his cracked legs. A horrible, desperate madness fills his face. “I could wait now… I could wait for you to succumb and bleed to death from your injuries. Or I could just let the radiation in your body tear you apart. But Shizuka… I’m through it. I’m through with all of this.”

His brief, agonizing trek ends upon reaching her. Once again, he stands over her with terrible menace. Under her breath, her head hanging down, Shizuka whispers, “Looks like… it’s time for my last move…”

“I’m through with you,” All-Kill concludes. LONELY BOY descends, aiming its terrible fist at Shizuka’s skull. A few seconds remain before the end of everything. “IT’S OVER… JOESTAR PRINCESS!!!!!!”

Not a second to waste.

Shizuka moves with blinding, impossible speed and reaches up from her knees to bring her hand before All-Kill’s face. She snaps her fingers.

LONELY BOY’s punch stops halfway. All-Kill grimaces, anticipating the new disturbing illusion to follow. With LONELY BOY on standby, he looks around in search of it, but finds nothing. “What did you do this time…?” he finally asks.

The young Joestar shifts her fingers before the gangster’s face and points to the sky above him. All-Kill looks straight up and sees… a single puffy cloud, like out of a cartoon. Having appeared from nowhere, it hovers above them. LONELY BOY follows its master’s gaze and fixates upon it. “What’s that…?” All-Kill mutters.