Hello! ♡

By the time Gyro finally called a halt near a jagged outcrop of red rock, all three of you were dead on your feet

You went through the motions of camp setup like a machine. You unsaddled Valkyrie and Slow Dancer, checking their hooves for stones while Gyro hummed a distracted, tuneless melody under his breath. Johnny sat on a low crate nearby, meticulously cleaning the dust from the joints of his wheelchair, his expression grim and distant his usual "race face."

But your mind wasn't on the race. It hadn't been for weeks.

Every mile closer you got to the government's destination, the tighter the knot in your chest became. Your eyes kept darting to Johnny’s hands, You knew what was waiting in the snow. You knew what was waiting by the Atlantic Ocean.

"Hey" Gyro’s voice broke through your spiraling thoughts. He was standing right in front of you, a crooked, slightly concerned smile tugging at his lips. He reached out, his gloved thumb gently wiping a smudge of dirt from your cheekbone. "You're doing that thing again. Where your eyes go all blank like you're looking right through the mountain."

"Just tired, Gyro" you lied softly, leaning into the brief touch of his hand before he pulled away.

"Well, go sit Johnny and I will handle the fire," he said, giving your shoulder a reassuring squeeze.

Instead of sitting, you felt a sudden, suffocating need to just not be looked at for a little while. The guilt of what you knew was rotting you from the inside out. "Actually, I'll go look for more kindling. The brush around the base of the ridge looks dry. I want to get enough to keep us warm through the midnight drop."

Johnny looked up from his work, his sharp blue eyes tracking your movement as you unbuckled your saddlebag to grab your heavy coat. "Don't go too far" he warned, his voice low but laced with that quiet, protective edge he only used for you. "The sky is turning gray. If a flash storm hits, you won't see the camp."

"I'll be right back promise," you said, offering them both a small, fragile smile that didn't reach your eyes.

In your haste to pull your coat out of the saddlebag, you didn't notice the heavy, weathered leather book slipping out from the canvas folds. It dropped silently into the soft sand right beside Johnny’s boots as you turned and walked away into the canyon.

For a few minutes after you left, the camp was quiet. The only sounds were the crackle of the small starter fire Gyro had built and the rhythmic clicking of Johnny’s tools.

Johnny’s foot brushed against something solid in the dirt.

He frowned, looking down. "What’s this?" He reached down, pulling the thick leather volume out of the sand. He shook it, a few loose, torn scraps of paper fluttering out.

"Looks like their journal," Gyro said, walking over with a pot of water. He leaned against a rock, watching Johnny handle it. "They’re always scribbling in that thing late at night when they think we're asleep. I figured it was just poetry or drawings of us. You know how they get." He chuckled, a fond and easy sound.

"It's unlocked," Johnny muttered. The leather strap that usually bound it tight was frayed, the brass buckle hanging loose. Johnny wasn't a naturally nosy person, but a strange, prickling sensation began to itch at the back of his neck. A Stand user’s instinct, perhaps. Or maybe just the creeping paranoia that followed them everywhere on this godforsaken trail. "They've been acting weird for a week, Gyro. Look at the way they walked off just now."

"Johnny, don't snoop," Gyro sighed, though he stepped a little closer, curiosity pulling at him too. "It’s their private stuff."

"I’m just checking the cover," Johnny lied, his thumb already parting the heavy cream pages.

The first page wasn't a diary entry. It was a list.

The Corpse Parts: Left Arm, Right Arm, Eyes, Spine, Heart...

Johnny froze. The ink was dark, precise, and accompanied by small, hand-drawn diagrams of the geographic locations where the parts were found including the exact church where Johnny had found his first piece.

"Gyro" Johnny’s voice lost all its warmth. It became ice. "Look at this."

Gyro frowned, setting the pot down and kneeling in the dirt beside Johnny’s chair. His eyes scanned the page, his brow furrowing. "Maybe they've just been keeping track of what we told them?"

"We never told them the exact coordinates of the spine," Johnny hissed, his heart beginning to hammer against his ribs. He flipped the page, his movements growing frantic. "We never told them about the government's secret telegrams."

Then, his eyes hit a block of text underlined in thick, aggressive red ink.

GYRO ZEPPELI

Born: Naples Age: 24

Fled to America to win the SBR race to grant amnesty to Marco, a child sentenced to execution for a crime he didn't commit. Father: Gregorio Zeppeli. Family tradition: Executioners. Uses the Spin.

Gyro’s breath hitched. He reached out, his hand trembling slightly as he grabbed the edge of the book to steady it. "No... no, that’s impossible. I never told them Marco’s name. I never told them about my father. Johnny, I swear to God I never told them."

Johnny didn't answer. He was already flipping pages, his eyes tearing through the text until he found his own name.

JOHNNY JOESTAR

Former prodigy jockey. Paralyzed from the waist down after being shot outside a theater due to his own arrogance. Father (George Joestar) disowned him emotionally after his older brother Nicholas died "Bring back my brother instead."

A horrible, violent tremor ran through Johnny’s frame. The words blurred before his eyes. It was like looking into a mirror held up by a stranger who had sneaked into his childhood home, into his nightmares, into the deepest, darkest room of his mind where he kept his worst sins.

"They’re a spy," Johnny whispered, his voice cracking with a terrifying mixture of rage and profound, agonizing betrayal. He felt sick. The person he had held in his arms last night, the person whose hair he had gently braided by the fire, was a plant. A fake. "They’ve been playing us since the first checkpoint. Valentine sent them. They know everything about us, Gyro! Everything we've ever done!"

As you stood frozen at the edge of the campsite, the dry sagebrush scattering around your boots, the silence between the three of you was deafening. Johnny didn't move. He sat in his wheelchair, the leather journal heavy in his lap, his head bowed so low his hat cast a shadow over his entire face. Beside him, Gyro stood perfectly still, his hands resting on his holsters. He wasn't looking at you. He was staring at the ground.

"Johnny..." your voice was barely a whisper, a pathetic, trembling sound that the desert wind immediately tried to swallow. "Gyro, please. I can explain."

"Explain what?"

Johnny’s voice didn't sound like him. It was a flat, hollow rasp that cut sharper than a knife. When he finally lifted his head, your breath hitched. His blue eyes weren't bright they were dark, swimming with a terrifying, turbulent mix of betrayal and raw venom.

"Explain that our lives are a joke to you?" Johnny hissed, his fingers gripping the edges of your journal so tightly the paper groaned. "Explain that while I was crying on the ground, bleeding, wishing I was dead, it was just entertainment for people in your world? That my brother dying was just a plot point?"

"No! No, it’s not like that-"

"Then what is it?!" Johnny roared, the sudden blast of his voice making you flinch violently. He threw the journal down into the dirt between you, the pages fluttering wildly. "You sat by our fire. You slept next to me. You let Gyro hold you. And the whole time, you were looking at us like we were ghosts! Like we were already dead! You knew everything about my father, you knew the exact words that haunt me every night, and you kept it in a fucking notebook like a scientist studying bugs!"

A sob tore from your throat, your hands flying to your mouth. The sheer force of his anger felt like a physical blow. You looked to Gyro, silently begging for a lifeline, but the Italian’s face was carved from stone.

There was no warmth in his golden-green eyes, only a profound, aching disappointment. "You told me I was a good man for trying to save Marco. But you didn't learn that from getting to know me. You already knew it. You knew my whole life before you even met me. Was any of it real? Every time you looked at me, were you just pitying a dead man?"

"Gyro, no, I love you! Both of you!" You took a desperate step forward, your vision entirely blurred by hot, streaming tears. "I didn't choose to come here! I just woke up in the dirt! I was terrified!"

"Get away from me," Johnny spat, turning his chair sharply, his back completely to you. "Just... stay away from the camp tonight. I can't look at you. Every time I look at your face, I just think about how you've been playing us for fools since San Diego."

Gyro didn't say a word. He just turned around, walking over to the horses to check their lines, effectively shutting you out.

The rejection was total, absolute, and crushing. You stood there for a horrific, agonizing minute, your shoulders shaking, the cold wind biting through your clothes. They hated you. The two people who had become your entire universe looked at you and saw a monster. A fraud.

Wiping your face with the back of your sleeve, you choked down another sob, turned on your heel, and ran.

You didn't go far you couldn't. You stumbled into a shallow, freezing alcove in the red rocks just a few hundred yards away, out of sight of the fire. Sinking to your knees in the dirt, you curled into a tight ball, burying your face in your knees. The emotional exhaustion of carrying the future, combined with the agonizing pain of their hatred, completely broke you. You cried until your chest ached, until your throat was raw, shivering violently as the desert temperature plummeted into the dead of night.

Hours passed. The sky turned a deep, ink-black, studded with cold, uncaring stars. You had stopped crying, mostly because you had no tears left. You were just numb, huddled in the dark, wondering how you were going to survive the rest of this brutal race alone.

Back at the camp, the fire had burned down to embers.

Johnny hadn't slept. He sat staring into the glowing red coals, his mind a chaotic, agonizing loop. His anger had carried him through the first hour, but as the adrenaline faded, the silence of the camp began to suffocate him. He looked down at the dirt where your journal lay.

With a frustrated growl, Johnny leaned out of his chair, scooping the book back up. He didn't want to look at it, but his hands moved on their own, flipping past his own trauma, past Gyro’s past, until he hit the pages written in that frantic, messy script.

Gyro walked back into the light of the embers, throwing a heavy blanket over his shoulders. He looked exhausted, his usual vibrant energy completely dimmed. "They haven't come back," Gyro murmured, looking out into the pitch-black canyon. "The temperature is dropping fast. If they stay out there without a fire..."

"Look at this," Johnny interrupted, his voice rough. He wasn't looking at Gyro his eyes were glued to the wrinkled, tear-stained pages of the ending you had tried so hard to rewrite.

Gyro sighed, kneeling down beside Johnny. Together, in the dim, flickering orange light, they read the words they had skipped in their initial rage.

The handwriting changed from a calm, archival script to a desperate, jagged scrawl. The pages here were warped, wrinkled

I don't know how I got here. I woke up in the dirt outside San Diego and there they were. The horses. The dust. It's real. It's all real. It’s not just pages in a book I read in my bedroom. If it's real, that means the pain is real. That means Johnny’s legs really hurt.

Johnny and Gyro exchanged a bewildered, tense glance. Manga? Read in a bedroom?

Johnny flipped the page again.

Stage 6 is coming. The world is going to try to kill them. I have to memorize the timeline. I have to remember exactly how Valentine's Stand works. D4C. Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap. It allows him to hop dimensions. If I can just warn them about the train no, if I tell them, they’ll think I’m insane or an enemy. Johnny is so paranoid right now, he'd shoot me with a nail bullet before I could finish the sentence. I have to play along. I have to keep them safe from the shadows.

"Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap..." Gyro repeated the phrase slowly, the foreign words heavy on his tongue. "Valentine's Stand? The President has a Stand?"

"Keep reading," Johnny ordered, his anger suddenly giving way to a cold, paralyzing dread.

The ending. God, the ending. I woke up crying again because I dreamt of the beach. Gyro... Oh gyro.. Lesson 5. Johnny figures it out, but it's too late. The infinite rotation works, but Gyro is already gone. His horse comes back riderless. Johnny is left completely alone on that boat back to Italy with a coffin. I can't let it happen. I love them too much. I love Johnny's stubborn, beautiful smile when he thinks he's won. I love the way Gyro sings his stupid songs about cheese. I will take Valentine's bullet myself. I will throw myself into the Atlantic if it means they both cross the finish line.

The camp went entirely silent. The wind seemed to die down, leaving only the sharp crackle of the fire.

Gyro sat back on his boot heels, his face pale, his hands dropping to his lap. His mind was spinning faster than any steel ball he had ever thrown. Someone had written their lives? Someone had decided he was supposed to die on a beach, leaving Johnny alone? And you... you knew. You had been carrying the literal execution date of the man you loved in your pocket, acting like everything was fine while secretly planning your own suicide to break the script.

Johnny stared down at a tiny scribble in the bottom corner of a page, dated just three nights ago

Johnny held my hand while I was shivering from the cold tonight. He looked at me with so much love it made me want to scream. He doesn't know he's a character in a story. He doesn't know people back in my world read about his suffering for fun. But he's real to me. They're both my entire world. If they find out the truth, they'll hate me. They'll look at me like I'm a monster. I'll tell them after the race. If we all survive, I'll tell them.

Johnny stared at the page, a wave of intense shame washing over him, hot and choking. He had called you a monster. He had told you that you were playing them for fools. But you had been sitting by their fire, looking at them every day, knowing exactly how they were supposed to bleed, bleed, and bleed some more and you had chosen to stay. You had chosen to throw your own life into the gears of fate just to jam the mechanism.

"We're idiots," Johnny whispered, his voice cracking with a sudden, sharp panic. He looked up into the darkness of the canyon, the cold wind whistling through the rocks. "Gyro... they don't have a blanket. They don't have a fire."

Gyro was already on his feet, his heart hammering against his ribs. "I'll find them."

"No" Johnny demanded, grabbing Gyro’s sleeve, dragging himself out of his wheelchair and onto the ground, his arms moving with frantic, desperate speed. "Help me up onto Slow Dancer. I'm coming with you. I'm not staying behind."

you were shivering so hard your teeth clicked together. Your fingers were numb, and a dull, heavy sleepiness was starting to creep into the edges of your brain the dangerous first sign of hypothermia. You squeezed your eyes shut, wrapping your arms tighter around yourself.

Suddenly, the crunch of heavy hoofbeats echoed in the small canyon.

You slowly lifted your head, your vision blurry, as the silhouette of a massive horse cut through the moonlight. Slow Dancer.

Before you could even process it, Gyro was sliding down from the saddle, his long coat billowing behind him. Johnny was right behind him, practically tumbling off the horse’s back in his haste, using his powerful arms to drag his body across the freezing dirt toward you.

You tried to shrink back against the rock, panic flaring through your numb limbs. "I'm sorry," you croaked, your voice barely a rasp. "I stayed away... I didn't come back to camp, I swear..."

"Stop it!" Johnny yelled, but it wasn't the angry roar from before. It was a sound of pure, unadulterated terror. He reached you first, his strong arms throwing themselves around your shivering frame, dragging you forcefully against his chest. He was trembling just as hard as you were. "Goddamn it, shut up! Just shut up!"

Gyro dropped to his knees right beside you, immediately unbuckling his heavy, fur-lined coat and wrapping it entirely around your shoulders, effectively trapping you in a cocoon of warmth. He pulled both you and Johnny into his lap, his large hands coming up to cradle your face, his fingers frantic as they checked the freezing temperature of your skin.

"Look at me, tesoro," Gyro commanded, his voice thick with tears, his usual bravado completely shattered. He pressed his forehead against yours, his breath hot and ragged. "I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry. We were blind, angry fools. We read the rest of it. We read what you said about the beach... about taking the hit."

You blinked heavily, large, fresh tears finally spilling over your lashes, warming your freezing cheeks. "You... you read it?"

"You're a idiot," Johnny choked out, his face buried deeply in your neck, his grip so tight you could feel the frantic, terrified thudding of his heart against your ribs. "You thought we'd hate you? You thought I'd let you throw yourself in front of a bullet for me? I don't care about a script! If someone wrote a world where you have to die to keep us alive, then I'll tear this whole goddamn universe apart before I let them touch a hair on your head!"

"Johnny..." you sobbed, the numbness in your chest finally melting away under the overwhelming, fierce heat of his devotion.

Gyro’s hands slid down to wrap around the back of your head, his fingers tangling in your hair as he pulled you into a deep, desperate kiss. It tasted like salt, copper, and absolute, possessive reassurance. When he broke away, his eyes were burning with a terrifyingly beautiful resolve.

"We fight fate together," Gyro whispered, his lips brushing against your temple as he held you close. "No more secrets. No more carrying the world on your shoulders. If we have to break the story to keep you, then we’ll rewrite the whole damn thing in blood."

"Look at me. Am I ink on a page to you? Is Gyro?" Johnny interrupted

"No," you sobbed, shaking your head frantically. "No, you're real. You're so real."

his thumb sweeping across your cheek to smear away your tears with a harsh gentleness.

Johnny leaned forward, his mouth finding yours in a bruising, desperate kiss, a physical claim to prove to you that he was alive, that he was here, and that he wasn't going anywhere. When he broke away, his forehead rested heavily against yours, his breath hot against your lips.

"We change the ending," Johnny whispered, his blue eyes locked onto yours with the unbreakable resolve that had allowed him to survive the entire country. "We're going to win this race All three of us. Together."

🐺 You struggle to hold your rifle steady, finger brushing the trigger, and your whole body freezes when your eyes catch the red string tied around the beasts paw, just as red as the fur around its maw.

🧜‍♀️ Like so many people, you decided to follow your string once you had the funds though unlike many people, it turns out your string leads you right into the fucking ocean. Not across the ocean, no that would be normal. INTO the ocean. Others say your soulmate must be working in one of those deep-sea submersibles or a submarine but you’re not so sure. You’ve seen the way the string jerks and moves, you don’t think any human can move so fast.

👽 Imagine your red string has always lead straight up into the sky. You thought maybe your soulmate was on the ISS but the string doesn’t follow a continuous orbit, it just wobbles a little like whatever it's attached to is too far and too fast to really make it move any more than that. One day you’re staring at the stars like you always do when your string jerks violently and you watch in disbelief as something comes crashing down from the skies. Of course, given that your string is finally pointing towards somewhere you can actually go, you run towards it without hesitation.