The fluid kept pouring. Jolene closed her eyes and waited to be stabbed again, but to her surprise, nothing happened; she didn't even feel any pain. Slowly, Jolene opened her eyes and saw two arms made of a shining, silver liquid coming out of her stomach. They seem to be restraining Novo's hands.
"Dammit!" she screamed "What the hell's happening?! Aarghhh!" It was as if Novo couldn't see the hands that were holding her back-neither could anyone else in the yard. Jolene looked down at her stomach, and to her horror, more fluid came out. After a dozen seconds or so the arms were no longer just arms; they were now attached to a body, a body seemingly made of a liquid metal that was constantly flowing. The fluid moved around quickly and would regularly split apart and mix back together, it looked as if it was someone hidden under a pile of slime. Its giant, bug-like eyes glowed a menacing red, and on the back of its head was an antenna with a red underside. Jolene screamed in fear, "WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU!?"
Jolene Joestar was born on the 30th of May, 2002. Her parents were irresponsible teenagers and didn't want to take care of a child, so when she was a year old, they dropped her off at her paternal uncle's house and ran off. Arthur Joestar raised Jolene alongside his son and treated her as if she were his own daughter. The family wasn't particularly wealthy or upper class, but they lived in a good neighborhood and Jolene had a happy and safe childhood. When she was around seven, she took an interest in programming and building computer hardware, something she knew her cousin enjoyed doing, and was able to help pay the family bills. Her cousin taught her everything he knew, and Jolene would help with odd jobs. One day he left without a warning, and her uncle and aunt refused to tell her why. This devastated Jolene but fueled her to study hard and be accepted by the best universities in the country, hoping that it would bring him back. After 12 years her dreams came true, but he still hadn't come back, and this left her empty inside.
One or two people took an interest in the event taking place, Novo noticed this and wasn't going to let people think she was beaten by some teenager so she used all her might and was able to wriggle her way out of the creature's grasp and rush towards Jolene. Jolene raised her arms in defense but before Novo's fist could even get close to her, the creature threw its fist at Novo's head. A slit appeared on the creature's face and made a mouth, and it screamed a battle cry in a voice Jolene recognised, her own.
"OORAAAAAAAAAA!!!!".
The creature's hand smashed into Novo's face, horribly disfiguring it, breaking multiple teeth, flattening her nose and bulging her eyes out of her head. The creature continued punching and eventually landed a final blow on the Novo. The woman was launched back at a speed Jolene was certain could break the sound barrier. Slowly, more and more people take a look at the scene unfolding before them. "A liquid could not possibly do that much damage to someone." Jolene thought to herself. She took a look at the creature's arm and saw it was no longer a liquid, but was now a hard, reflective, metal, no longer was it constantly moving and could easily be broken, now it was dense and its shape was fixed. Before Jolene could finish her trail of thought, her enemy threw her shiv straight at Jolene's face.
"Go back to Hell, you demon!"
Novo's face quickly changed from an anger-filled scowl to a grimace overloaded with fear. Jolene had just realized what had happened and saw the knife flying at her. but she didn't feel any pain. She knew the knife would have hit her, so where had it gone? Before she could investigate any further, Novo screamed.
"What happened to your face?!"
Jolene didn't understand what the woman was saying; she felt no pain, and her face seemed perfectly fine. Jolene suddenly felt lightheaded and tired, she tried to place her hand on her head but to her horror, it went right through. She slowly shifted her gaze towards the creature's reflective back and saw her reflection; her face had a huge hole in it which was surrounded by the shiny metal. She could see straight through her head and noticed the weapon stuck in the wall behind her. As soon as Jolene was about to scream, she felt a lump in her throat and the metal surrounding the hole filled it in and changed back into the missing part of Jolene's face. The creature and Jolene both shifted their gaze towards Novo and the creature jumped towards Novo but before it could reach her it stopped right in its tracks. Jolene couldn't hear Novo's questioning over her own thoughts and testing of this strange creature.
Jolene finally uttered the words "I get it, you aren't some monster, you're a being, a being made of some metal that protects me, that fights for me. No that's not right, you have my voice and my body, it's more like, you are me..." Novo couldn't even call her insane before she started talking again, this time malice and anger took over Jolene's face and sent a chill down Novo's spine, she placed her hand on her hat and pointed towards Novo. "Hey Novo, I think my debts towards you have been paid, but you have some debts to pay me, don't you think? You can pay them off, with your bones!"
Jolene changed her foot into solid metal and launched herself towards Novo at speeds high enough to leave an afterimage, as she reached Novo both her and the creature raised their fists and opened their mouths "ORAORAORAORAORAORAORAORAORAORAORAORA ORRRAAAAA!!!!!!"
Novo's body convulsed in the air, being battered and destroyed by the creature, blood spurted from all over her body. Finally, deciding she had enough, Jolene makes the creature punch Novo in the chest with all the power it had
At this point, everyone in the courtyard was looking towards Jolene and saw Novo's body on the ground, limp and broken. A guard walked up to Jolene and aimed her gun at the remorseless prisoner.
"Inmate! What is this?" The short but menacing woman asked
"Oh sorry, it seems Novo fell from the roof," Jolene lied, using the creature she picked up a 20-dollar bill to the guard, not even enough to buy a card game, but enough to make the guards turn a blind eye. "Do you want me to take her to the infirmary?" The guard put down her gun and shoved the bill deep into her pocket.
"Yes, take her to the infirmary as fast as you can."
As Jolene walked through the halls, carrying Novo on her shoulders, she ran into a familiar face, one of her debtors.
"Hey Black Betty!"
The woman tried to distance herself from Jolene and bumped into a wall, she'd seen what that monster did to Novo. Jolene placed her hand on Betty's shoulders and brought out the creature's arm, her face lit up with a despicable smile, the fear on Betty's face kept growing as Jolene crushed her shoulders. She wondered why she was ever scared of her, such a cowardly woman wouldn't ever have been able to harm her. Jolene said to Betty in the kindest tone she could "I think my debts have been paid, could you be a dear and tell the others I owe nothing? Oh, and try not to be suspicious about bringing my friend to the med-bay. Now that I'm thinking about it, maybe you should wait a few hours."
"Y-Yeah, sure, J-Jolene."
Jolene took her hands off the woman and she fell to the floor like a doll, crying and covering her mouth, doing her best to not scream out in pain, worrying about what she would do to her if she did. Jolene sauntered towards the infirmary with a pride-filled stride, the same one she had when she was accepted into those universities.
The next few weeks of her stay in prison were her best, she was able to keep all her money to herself and no one dared to bother her. Gossip gets around quickly in prison and everyone had already heard the story of how Jolene broke 120 bones with nothing but her fists. To others it seemed Jolene was laughing at the absurdity of the story, but, it was because she knew what had happened and tried to remove any suspicion, and make those spreading the rumors seem crazy. Those who spread the rumors were now the weak and the insane, and people started to ask them for money, Novo, Black Betty, and the rest of Jolene's old debtors could barely scrape by anymore and were regularly beaten by the other prisoners. After a few days Jolene worked up the courage to call her aunt and uncle and was relieved to hear they would be waiting for her, but even after all this something still bit away at Jolene, and she knew just the person who could help her.
On the night three weeks after Novo's beat-down, Jolene walked into her cell and finally decided to ask her cellmate the question she's been wondering about.
"Hey Gwen, you heard of any rumors of people having... a being inside of them, like having a creature that has your voice and protects you?"
"Huh? Yeah, I've heard a lot of things like that. Actually, there is one thing I've been thinking about, your last name. Back in the late 1800s there was a race across America called the 'Steel ball Run' you've probably heard about it in history class, right?"
"Yeah, I don't exactly remember much about it though."
"Well one of the participants was called Joestar, and had been suspected to be involved with the disappearance of the president, but nothing was ever proven. A bunch of people in the race including the guy he raced alongside with supposedly had strange abilities. Joestar moved to Japan later, and then, 10 years ago, some strange shit happened there too, but it's hard to tell what happened, only the Japanese reported anything about it, and I can't exactly speak Japanese."
"Joestar huh? We share a last name, but there's no way we're related, I mean he moved to Japan, right?"
"Well that doesn't remove the possibility of you two being related, Joestar isn't exactly a common last name. Maybe he had cousins, siblings, maybe his children or grandchildren came to America, anything's possible. Also, you asked about strange abilities and he came up, there's definitely a relation, isn't there?" Gwen giggled and her face lit up with a cheeky smile.
"Thanks, Gwen."
"No problem. But Jolene..." The smile on Gwen's face grew twice as large. "I have a question, did you actually beat up Novo?"
Jolene knew that now Gwen knew, but it didn't matter.
"Yeah sure Gwen, I broke 120 of her bones with my fists!" Jolene rolled up her sleeve and placed her hand on her barely visible bicep "I did it with all this pure, unadulterated, muscle."
"Oh, did you? Maybe I should get you to train me or maybe you could use me as a barbell." The two women laughed at each other's jokes until they both fell asleep.
The next morning in the cafeteria, Jolene couldn't help but keep looking over her shoulders and staring down the six women who were once her debtors. She had to resist the urge to beat them, she wasn't sure what happened to her, maybe six months of prison had made her more aggressive? Or maybe it was fear she felt, fear of being used once again, fear of feeling pain. Jolene clenched her hands and a frown appeared on her face. Gwen interrupted Jolene mid-thought
"Hey, you ok? You haven't touched your food and your face is scary."
"Huh? Oh, I'm fine..." Jolene tried to eat the assortment of out of date vegetables and meat Green Dolphin Street tried to pass off as food. The one thing Jolene had yet to get used to in the hellhole she was stuck in was the food.
Gwen finally decided to take hold of the opportunity she had.
"So, Jolene, you told me you were in for stealing information from companies, do you remember what was on the USB? Lobbying, sabotage, espionage, which companies, anything?" Jolene stared at her fellow prisoner for a dozen or so seconds
"Of course you want to know about that. I remember some stuff, some companies stopped other companies from selling their products in certain areas, lots of lobbying so they would be able to use immoral methods to make and sell their products, monopolies, tax evasion, hiding deaths caused by their product, abuse of animals, human testing, a lot. A few of those companies were Zones, Buon Cibo, Peters, BOVC, VCS, Mics, too many to count." The woman sitting in front of Jolene lit up
"I knew it! Covering up deaths, human testing, this is amazing Jolene! I knew I was right, yes this is amazing!" Before Gwen could continue, Jolene cut her off.
"Well, I have some things to research, I'll be at the library, see you later."
Jolene picked out several books from the library, history books, books about geology, metals, the occult and several others. She summoned her creature and looked at its body, she began to flick through the pages of the book about metals until she finally found what she was looking for. Jolene knew she recognized what that liquid was, it was liquid mercury, she closely scanned the pages about mercury and everything related to it. A poor conductor of heat but fairly decent at conducting electricity, Jolene thought to herself
"That might be useful." Eventually, Jolene decided she'd learnt enough about mercury and picked up her next book 'The Steel Ball Run: The Legendary Horse Race Across America', Jolene flicked through the book, looking at the names, the checkpoints, everything. Johnny Joestar, Gyro Zeppeli, Diego Brando, Funny Valentine, the winner of the Steel Ball Run, Pocoloco.
"Hold on, Pocoloco, didn't he say Pocoloco was his great-grandpa or something?" Jolene cut herself off, that thought didn't matter, she had to keep reading, she had to try and find anything that could help her.
After a long day of studying Jolene fell into her cell bed, she had found nothing of value from the history books or occult books that could help her understand her creature better. Before Jolene could fall asleep, a voice from outside her cell called to her.
"Jolene Joestar, right? You have a visitor."
To be continued.