Disclaimer: JoJo's Bizarre Adventure and all equally bizarre concepts and characters belong to Hirohiko Araki. Original characters and other concepts (as noted) are copyright of me.
Certain symptoms are usually coupled with a Synchronicity Event among regular Stand users. They tend to vary, but commonly associated with a major Synch Event are: intense muscle soreness, especially in the neck, temporary numbing of the extremities, extreme headache, unprovoked Stand actions and a constant sense of paranoid danger. Regular people, who happen to be within the proximity of a Synch Event, are prone to blackouts, brought about more often in those who suffer from low blood-pressure. The residual effects include an increase in cortisol, an adrenal hormone, due to instinctively provoked alertness and can issue heart attacks in those who suffer from high blood-pressure. Those unaffected but within a certain radius could be suspected to have, whether they know it or now, Sleeper Stands of a high grade in power.
The city was laid down a final time upon the clash of MUSE, Dio and Jojo. Their meeting energies sent a cascade of power throughout the entire city, and its outskirts, causing an enormous lapse in the general population's lucidity. Those still awake were crippled with pain and those who fainted either escaped death and became comatose or died in sudden cardiac arrest or stroke. It was an inexplicable epidemic, a supernatural Armageddon occurring right under the noses of the collective unknowing innocents. Though they knew this, the power that were could do nothing for it. Three titans of power had met and created a pillar of energy that pinpointed itself in the unlikeliest of places. An arcane energy flooded through the streets from the park, a vivid deluge of clashing forces. An unnatural, sweet-smelling wind swept through the city streets, like fresh morning grass or the fine scent of oak.
Everyone felt it, none more so than the few Stand users furthest from the point of impact. Red Wolf, still in his truck, had parked himself a safe distance from the main area of battle and fought with his still formidable Stand Blood Hound Gang. However, the tooth-grinding agony he was in prevented him from moving at all and shattered his concentration on the battle his Stand had been fighting.
Damn he thought, curled up in the seat of his car. He forced open the door and stumbled out. The blockade had simply fallen. Everyone still detained and quartered from entering the city limits by the police, including the police, had either been stricken unconscious or was writhing in debilitating pain. Red clutched the back of his neck and forced a crack with a quick jerk of his head. He rolled his head the other way and sounded off several quick, loud cracks before swinging his head back again. He sighed and looked at the pain all the people were in. This is exactly what I was fighting against. All the gangs of this city, all the upstart punks and hotshot idiots that think they can hold a matchstick to the elected officials who make it their life mission to serve the citizens of their cities. I was fighting to stop them! To prevent something like this from ever happening! The police beaten down by migraines, the people all forced to the ground in fear and pain. I'm a Freedom Fighter! I can't tolerate injustice to any extent! Summoning up all his might and courage, Red shook his body as if to shed it of the discomfort the uncontrollable energy had pushed to him.
Then he leaned back, fists tightly clenched, and let out a bone-chilling wolfen howl, harmonized by the frightening ethereal cry of his massive lupine Stand at his side, Blood Hound Gang!
HAAAAAAOOOOOOOOOHHHH!
His brave called stirred the hearts of those around him and shook them from their pain. The police officers looked up to see a taut, muscular ex-Marine standing over them with a shining light in his eyes, reflecting the light of the moon down on them.
"Stand up, men!" Red demanded. The police shot to their feet, as well as some of the still shaking men and women. "Tend to the fallen and give the dead their rites. This is no time to lay around! There is no nap-time on the battlefield!" The police, without questioning his harsh demanding tone, went to work securing the area, checking on pedestrians and keeping peace from escaping. Two were dead, an older man and lone, heavyset woman. Red lowered his head in their respect, but his Stand was still summoned and on guard. It turned and growled in the direction of the park, its lips curling up to reveal its rows of sharp, white fangs.
I'd better be off Red thought. I can do a lot more good up close than I can this far away. Red got into his truck and BHG jumped into the back.
"Wait a second!" a police officer demanded, moving in front of the truck. "Wait! Who are you?"
"I" Red began, hesitating to draw from his thoughts, "well, let's just say I'm a vigilante in training. Once I fully master my kick-ass super powers I'll hit the streets and take on crime. How about that?"
"Um..." the officer said. Red slowly pulled his truck away and through the barricade of cars. He was inbound to the city with a mission in mind, though the officers couldn't understand it. They just went on with their business of keeping the remaining public at bay and under protection. BHG, from the back of Red's truck, kept its head pointed in one direction, still growling.
"Yeah, I have an uneasy feeling too" Red said. "I guess it'd be weird if one of us didn't since we're both me..." Red turned with a screech, following BHG's snout and his own pull of instinct, making his way further and further into the city toward the park.
He wasn't, however, the only one to be affected by the sudden pulses of energy. Starski had escaped arrest by the luck of being immune to the apparent blast of power that rendered the captain holding him comatose. He welded through his cuffs and collected himself in preparation to leave. Most of the other officers were either debilitated or unconscious, and the cell next to his that contained the crazed villain was aglow with a bright green light.
"There's no argument to be made now" Starski told himself. "That living shit can die in here, for all I care." With anger, Starski left, walking straight past the cell and to the door. He found it sturdily locked and summoned his Stand. He felt a strange twinge in his arm, followed by a numbing pain, like something had smashed his funny bone suddenly. "Gah, damn! That hurts! Damn, man, that hurts! What the hell?" Starski observed the arm of his Stand. Run DMC had tested its limits too much already, and its joints had started to glow with a heated hue. Starski desummoned his Stand and walked to the captain's body. His face was stunned in an almost perverse look of joy, a freakish portrait of ecstasy complete with blooshot eyes and a sliver of drool coming from his frozen grin. Starski grimaced and began hesitantly searching the captain's uniform for a ring of keys.
"Come on, come on" he said. He searched the wide-hipped belt, the pockets front and back, and even under the captain's cap. No keys to speak of, save for those fitting a handcuff or car. Starski decided to keep the car keys, assuming a vehicle was near enough to steal, and sighed. "In honor of you own diligence to keep the peace, I swear on my honor as a man that I shall not return to my former life. There are enough terrible-ass people in the gang underworld, the least of which should be me. I'mma steal myself some nice clothes, whip up a costume and return to the streets as a daredevil super-hero. You just watch. Starski's gonna be the kind of guy parents tell their kids about in their bedtime stories, man. And I'll do it all for you." Starski gave a quick salute wave as he left, but was stopped by some pressing fear. He heard a loud, labored breathing coming behind him. A tortured and suffocating voice was rasping some nonsense syllables his way, but he dared not turn around to see it.
The darkness reached out through the bars of the green cell. Faded, gnarled roots of some black, disgraced tree grew out from the tiny slivers of natural lighting. The black Stand with pure physical form The Sickness slithered out, carrying with it the garbled insanity of its wielder, Disturbed. Starski looked from the snake-like extension and the thin boundary it had crawled its way from. The room was still bathed in green light, yet the maniac within had the metal strength and fortitude to withstand it long enough to attempt to deliver his message of repentance to his apparent savior outside.
His body is his Stand Starski thought. I guess putting him under that light too long would kill him. I can't let him roam around free, I just damn can't...but... Starski made his resolve. He swung open the door after unlocking it with the captain's key and faced down the masked man slumped like a beaten child in the corner. His eyes didn't move. All of his energy had gone to extending that single strand of himself from out of his stomach. His skin was all tattered and flayed like a shirt ripped by feral dogs. His mask was the only thing that seemed to keep up with itself, though the first layer of leather had been long peeled and scraped around.
"I have a proposition for you" Starski said, lording his presence as much as he could. "In return for letting you loose, you're going to have to give up your own freedom. You have to take my place with Dio. Got it?" Starski stood, expecting a reply. He acted as if he had got what he wanted, however, and left. The lights were on battery charge as Starski had unplugged them from their outlets. Disturbed sat in the room, waiting for the lights to diminish fully, and took his skin-torn pal of pitch black sinuous mass to his mask.
"...Di...o..."
The Event had created a massively powerful resonance that swept through the city, affecting the hundreds of thousands that therein lived. Even those from far out of the city, those normally dulled to such sweeping powers by their constant exposure to the unnaturally powerful, were affected in some particular way. Those nearest to the epicenter of the titanic energy were left fazed by the gravity of what had truly happened, but those just outside of the park were all affected the absolute worst.
It seemed that all fate had conspired hotly against Brad Bangalter on that day. He curled into a dark corner of the broken room that his transport had driven into and watched as the crackling electric whip of Mr. Network was squared off against the vastly superior power of Astella's Coldplay. The girl had a deep, grinning scowl and seemed to ignore the frozen blue shade her skin took. Her sweat slowed and froze into icicle droplets at her broad chin, exaggerating the snapping cold she controlled even further.
"Are we going to fight or not?" Network asked. "We have an appointment that exceeds your desires in priority." Astella wasn't amused. She attacked the air and fired a dense cloud of snow at Network. The second it hit, his skin poured out a defense wall of steam, heat meeting cold suddenly, and Brad was blinded from the action. Surely, though, Network wasn't unfazed yet. Such a vicious, frontal attack had to leave some visible mark of effect. Network dashed through the cloud and swung his whip into Coldplay. It caught the frozen knight's arm and cracked through its armor. Astella's own skin broke and bled, like a shell, and she forced herself to retreat. "No fighting? Then you'll surrender..." Astella tensed up and forced herself forward. Her Stand vanished and she, herself attacked Mr. Network with a powerful stomping kick. Network leaped to the side and made an acrobatic combat roll out of the way. His whip swung back on momentum and caught onto something nearby.
"RRRRRGH!" Astella growled. "I'm going to freeze-dry you and defrost you later just to lay a good, blind, angry beat-down on something!" Astella pounded her fists together, shattering all the ice around and on her body. Network, without a flinch or wasted second, swung his whip forward and threw the object he had latched. It hit Astella square on her forehead and seemed to explode in a bright, static flash. Astella reeled away from the attack with a steaming, burnt mark on her face which only seemed to increase her already substantial rage. Network rushed forward yet again and cracked his whip at Astella's face. She leaned away just in time and summoned her Stand to grab hr Stand to grab the whip on its second swing. Though it crackled with energy and tore at her flesh, she held it steady and attempted to freeze it.
"Electricity is energy" Mr. Network said. "You can't freeze that." He swung Coldplay aside and delivered a leaning punch to Astella's throat. She was forced back even further and hit against the solid wall of the room. Mr. Network clenched his hand and examined his fingers strangely after the punch. He saw Coldplay reaching forward to grab at his face and leaned away appropriately to dodge the fiend's attack. He retreated behind a counter and swung his whip back to hook onto another unseen object.
"That whip of yours is getting obnoxious" Astella lowed.
"It's about to get worse" he said. With a flick of his wrist his whip's energy died and in his hand he held nothing more than a simple leather belt. He wrapped the belt around his hand and balled it up neatly before stowing it into a pouch on his tactical-military gear. "Electric Hellfire has more than one simple form. It's true form is about to blow you to bits."
"I'd like to see that!" Astella shouted as she pushed herself from the wall with a smash. Coldplay rushed forward to grab Network and freeze him to death. The man ducked and replacing his standing presence was a blinding flash of light coupled with a multitude of loud and bright explosions all along the wall behind. The rear of the store the battle had so rudely intruded upon was covered with monitors and hard-drives. The monitors were on so bright that they blinded Astella and Coldplay together and the hard-drives were activated at such insanely high frequency and output that their internal components had suddenly begun to combust and explode out toward the front of the store. Hard disks and clusters of wires attached to silicon flew out as searing-hot shrapnel, all aimed roughly at Astella. Coldplay fell back to protect, freezing and shattering what it could in mid-air with its super-fast punches of ice.
"You asshole!" Astella cursed. "This attack is useless! If these things even touch Coldplay they'll shatter! It's basic physics, isn't it? Going from too hot to too cold too fast results in breakage! Taking a piece of glass from a freezer and running hot water over it will make it shatter! Even placing something incredibly hot like a baking dish into low room-temperature air could make it break!"
"This isn't my attack!" Network shouted over the popping and hissing sounds. Astella became frighteningly aware of her surroundings. She was next to a display of extra-wide monitors that had been on the whole time she talked and defended herself. When she looked over she saw long, yellow-armored arms reaching for her throat. Before she could react the fingers of an ethereal being were wrapped around her thick throat and the lights dimmed. From the nearest monitor, one tilted from where she hit the wall, Electric Hellfire's True Form lurked. A Stand equally knightly in its appearance to Coldplay but with sharper joints and corners, high spike-patterned shoulder guards and a brilliantly complex copper-colored crown of spines. Its face was robotic, with eyes like lined glass panes, narrow and jem-like. A solid guard-metal reached down from between its eyes and covered its mouth and lower jaw, framing its emotionless robotic glass eyes and emphasizing the doom within them.
"My Stand" Network said "is a Stand of technology. It can control and manipulate energy at a basic level, which translates into pure power to machines. It can also move through machines via wiring. As long as its entrance and exit points are plugged in, it can move instantly between them. It is pure electricity, a Stand unrivaled in this world of technological dependance." Astella was still choking, her breath quickly losing. Coldplay instinctively froze the area and tried to reach its enemy, but Hellfire ducked back into the monitor it had come from. Coldplay froze and broke that equipment in an instant, after it had gone and reappeared behind Mr. Network again via the small video-camera that remained undestroyed after the explosive display of artillery power he had invoked.
As Brad witnessed a professional, a man who had been tasked with mastering his own Stand and dutifully succeeded in matching his own illustrious expectations, he felt the urge to let the feeling of his excitement slip past his lips. However, he kept himself silent. The mad woman still didn't know that he was there, watching and staying on guard, or that he had reported their status to anyone. Astella managed to recover briefly and sought a route of escape. She ran to the center of the floor and stomped the floor, cracking it like a thin layer of ice beneath her strong heel.
"I'm through playing games with you, bastard!" she exclaimed. "I don't know how you happened to luck out like this and wind up in this store, but it doesn't matter to me! No matter where we go, or what conditions we fight under, I'll always have the upper hand in the environment! A Stand that can control the climate can control the battlefield! And besides, even if I can't freeze pure electricity, I can still freeze all the devices that you can use to your benefit and give you no possible options to use against me! I can freeze anything with just a touch! I can turn this floor to ice and the machines into snow! I AM COMPLETELY IN CONTROL!"
Mr. Network, suave and arrogant as he seemed, lit a cigarette and had smoked it down to the butt in Astella's course of talking. He flicked what remained at her and let it shatter just within her Stand's freezing reach. "Only those who lack control force themselves to admit that they have it."
Buuuuuurn! Brad thought, finding it harder to stay silent upon seeing Astella's irked face. A hiss of electricity and a zap of conducted sparks was summoned again. The whip was back.
"Let's go then" Network said. "I'll show you what hell I can summon to the world of technology..."
Cydonian Knight, a vicious demon of a Stand. System of a Down, a dark satanic beast with every part of its body able to rip and shred. The World, a fantastically powerful being with unlimited energy and powers still hidden. These three Stands and their users represent the balance of power thrown so far askew by the actions of war one of them had taken. They all squared off to fight, two against one, for the greater greed for peace and control.
Dio dashed to the side and leaned out past his own Stand's body. CK threw its powerful arm in a stretching punch at SoaD, trying to force it and Dio back. Dio threw a quick knife through the air at MUSE, whose legs were locked in pain from the hit she had previously taken. CK's arm bent in its straight fly to intercept and destroy the knife on contract.
"Just as I thought" Dio said. He rolled underneath the Stand's arm and had SoaD drag its sharp, long claws into its skin behind. Dio crawled across the ground and pushed himself up into a flying leap. SoaD swung its claws down and pushed against the ground to further Dio's own flight toward MUSE. The girl retreated in a half-staggered step while her Stand remained to counter Dio. It's long arm unwound into a thick, tangled mass of separate tentacles and started to quickly hammer down at the ground. Dio rolled out of danger's way and picked himself up into a haughty stance, with MUSE out from behind her own Stand and in the open. He wound his arm up and tossed a dagger her way. Again, it was deflected by the instinctive guard of CK, but it was not destroyed. It was tossed to the side and caught in the hands of Jojo who came rushing toward the fray with a stunning calmness. He took the dagger in his hand and charged MUSE with it. As he stabbed she fell intentionally to the side and grabbed him, one hand at his wrist and the other just above his elbow. She kicked her knee into his elbow, jolting it painfully back, and continued to fall away in retreat while her Stand remained and turned slowly toward Jojo.
"The World!" Jojo shouted. His Stand was summoned in a mid-flight stance with both fists wound back. Their connection as Stand and user had peaked. Jojo unconsciously controlled the formerly rebellious living figment to act the same way he would when faced with such a horrific threat: a flurry of fists. So Jojo and his Stand both called out at the same time "ORA!" The World's fists beat into the firm, ridged body of CK with the rapidity and stopping power of a machine gun. Each hit landed with a powerful brunt sound of force and shook the Stand where it stood. Despite the awesome display of power, CK seemed unfazed and simply turned to The World with its mouth open and drooling caustic spit.
"Hmph" Dio huffed. "Cocky whore." He rushed in on its blind side and summoned SoaD to swing its long bladed claws straight down. Like the swift strike of a sword, the fiend's unwound tentacle-arm was sliced clean off of its side and a spray of green acid sprayed out. Dio jumped far away from the spray, having SoaD's taloned feet aid him, as everything the acid touched was instantly melted and destroyed. Trees, grass, dirt and rocks all gave way and liquified to the corrosive, consuming liquid. CK seemed oblivious to its wound and simply wound back its remaining arm as if to punch through the field of fists The World threw at it. Then it stopped them, not one but both of The World's fists at once. Its hand had extended open like a net and then closed in to shackle the Stand's fists together. Jojo could feel the tightness around his wrists but couldn't pull away. He saw MUSE retreating through the grove of trees, so far from her Stand and out of the battle that it seemed less and less likely that her Stand would even remain.
"Dio!" Jojo shouted. "Go after MUSE! Something is wrong here!" Dio jerked his head past Jojo and saw the girl getting away. He snarled and sprinted after her with his Stand floating just within his shadow with its vicious shark-toothed mouth wide open.
How could she still be standing? Dio wondered. Her Stand took a beating and she doesn't seem to be even fazed by it! By rule, all Stands are directly linked in the damage they sustain to their users. It's unthinkable that one could somehow be without that rule and still have control over their Stand... SoaD took a quick chomp out of the side of a tree and produced a razor-thing handful of long oak splinters for Dio to throw. It could be...that she isn't in control at all!
Jojo, meanwhile, realized such things the hard way. CK's lost arm was regrown. A burst of acid and a sickening, slithering sound summoned up a tight coil of new tentacles. They reformed and regathered, stretching and growing grotesquely around each other until an entire muscular structure for a thick and powerful bicep formed. Then, from the end of that appendage came another to form the forearm, and then again to form a hand and five fingers. That hand was clutched hard into a dripping-wet fist and was thrown at blinding speed into the gut of The World. The Stand suffered surface breakage and its user, Jojo, was hit so hard that he was lifted off his feet and was thrown clear over the lower boughs of the high-cut tree behind him. Before he landed from the ten-foot drop he managed to catch a branch and swing from it to the trunk of another nearby tree where he hit shoulder-first to save his tenderly beaten stomach.
It's power is incredible Jojo thought. It's stronger than The World easily! It can regenerate lost limbs, use highly corrosive acid and even lengthen parts of its body exponentially! This Stand was created for nothing more than to fight. Every part of it is something that is meant to hurt and kill people! CK snarled and chomped its jaws together. Its daunting physique and terrible face, void of any semblance to humanity, struck a chord of fear into Jojo's chest. The boy started bleeding from the mouth. To keep himself mobile, Jojo dismissed his Stand energy and instead started a calm and rhythmic breathing. The Ripple took effect and slowly began healing his body by first numbing the pain and constricting the muscles to keep the injured parts from moving too much. Jojo stood up and started his retreat away from MUSE. CK swung its mighty arm and raked away a chunk of the tree Jojo had pushed off from, then gave howling chase.
Dio, meanwhile, caught up with MUSE. He grabbed her shoulder, heard her gasp with fear and threw a stern punch straight to her elegantly curved jaw. Before she had even moved from the force of the blow too much Dio planted his knee square under her ribs and jabbed his elbow to her back, pressing her between two hard points with malicious force.
"WRYYYYYYYYYYY!" Dio howled. He kicked MUSE off of his leg and onto the ground. She rolled and coughed out in pain, staying still on the ground as she gathered her strength to stand up again. "No more of this! Say your prayers!" Dio lunged in. From out of the shadows behind him the clawed hand of SoaD followed, reaching through the darkness for the girl's face. MUSE faced her attacker with an undaunted coolness and passive glare. Dio was struck by her and stopped himself just short of a decapitating grip.
"Why do you fight me with such passion, Dio Brando?" she asked. Dio was frozen solid. In a battle of pure charisma, he had been defeated by the gorgeous seductress. Even though she had him frozen, right where she wanted him, with all the power in her body remaining to pick herself up and call her own Stand back to kill him from afar, she did nothing. "Is it some vague matter of pride that you feel you must settle with me? Is it something to do with your ambitions of being a king of the dirty political underworld? Why do you hate me, Dio? Why must you try and try to kill me?" Dio unfroze himself a moment too late. MUSE countered his oppressing lean-in by kicking him between his legs. Dio shrank back with pain and MUSE rose up to push him over.
"How like a man" she said. "Just one attack and you fall flat to your back." She stood over him again, her hair framing her face with a mysterious aura of darkness, a nebulous movement of shining darkness. Dio, still on his back and on the ground, smiled. He began a mad, heaving laughter in response to the pain and arched his back up as he gasped in and hissed out with erratic, breathy laughs. MUSE glared down at him with a curious disgust. Before she could physically react further, she started to fall. SoaD stealthily stabbed through her Achilles tendon and ripped her muscles in both of her feet. She couldn't stand. She fell to the side but tried to lean her way back when she realized that she was falling. SoaD held her feet fast and flat to the ground, and when her legs bent too far back she felt a sharp crack of pain as her feet were quickly unfastened in their joints from her lower leg.
"I want to kill you" Dio said as MUSE fell silent in pain "because I can't let anyone stronger than me threaten my existence! I will kill you, Johnathan and anyone who would dare to rise above me in this life! I am the peak of the mountain, above all the clouds! I shall acknowledge nothing higher than myself, Dio, the Living God!" In his mad rage Dio slowly slid himself back up. He ignored his pain and relished in hers. "I shall teach you to speak out against me...blasphemer!" And so Dio's insane ego was revealed, and to it MUSE could only hold her head from its splitting pain and grit her teeth hard to bear it all. The roles had been tossed and reversed so much and so quickly that it was no wonder that she had seemed to snap. MUSE started to cry, laugh and scream out in an indistinguishable emotion all at once, like a senseless child crying out at the slightest sign of its discomfort with living.