Chapter Text
Seathwaite, United Kingdom, 1989
Like many a day in Seathwaite, rain drenched the bustling pedestrians and the bumpy rock walkway. Most either held an umbrella or enveloped themselves in their raincoats. A short old woman, touting an umbrella with a thick handle in one hand and a golden arrow in the other, walked alongside a tall confident muscular man, in his late twenties, wearing a raincoat. While his height dwarfed hers by a factor of at least three, they barely stood out among the crowd, just as they intended. Rain splashed onto the woman’s cloak and the man’s orange sweatpants with green kneepads, but neither took effort to cover themselves further.
“Must I shield my magnificent appearance for a matter this banal, Enyaba?” the tall man asked. His voice’s cadence put tubas to shame. Beneath his coat, he wore an orange vest, orange sweatpants with green hearts for kneepads, and short sleeve black underarmor.
“I beseech that you do, Lord Dio,” Enyaba said. “Despite the lack of sun this country gets, a single ray could turn you to dust. If you’d like, you can wait at the fort while I gather servants on your behalf.” Subservience drenched every word Enyaba spoke to Dio, even the ones concerned about the glaring weakness to his vampirism. A bandana separated her wrinkled toothless face from much of her long white hair, and she had two right hands.
“But I refuse.” Dio spat onto Enyaba’s umbrella. Her smile twitched. “I care little if my servants exercise their powers against the unsuspecting masses. But a general does not sit at a desk and let any willing fool enlist. I will personally assess all potential Stand users who join us. Ask me to concede further than wearing this apparel if you value your life, hag.”
Stand users are humans who, when pierced by the arrow in Enyaba’s hand, can summon a spiritual assistant and can use a superpower based on their personality. Ability potency has no rules, so a child could overpower a grown adult if blessed with the right power.
“My apologies, Lord Dio!” She bowed repeatedly, then twisted her neck to look at anything else. She gripped the arrow in her right hand, hoping that it would react to a potential user soon and move towards them. To her delight, the arrow struggled to leave her grip.
A woman in her late twenties stood below a store’s cover and looked inside. The store contained all manner of baby goods, likely for the baby in her arms. Below her thin poncho was a white nurse’s outfit. The soaked fabric had seen better days. Save the purse on her right arm, she didn’t have an umbrella. Excess water dripping off her back communicated how she kept the baby from catching a cold. She sighed, and started walking.
Enyaba gripped the arrow as it tried following the young woman. “The arrow desires the mother working in the medicinal field, Lord Dio.” Her bony hand could only immobilize the arrow for so long.
“Then let it fly.” Dio sighed. “I’d hoped to avoid putting the weak willed or promiscuous in our ranks. Hopefully her Stand ability will let her live through training.”
“If I may ask, Lord Dio,” Enyaba said, “why do you assume her to be either?”
“A strong person takes as they like,” Dio said. “To carry a baby in the rain, rather than leaving him at home, means that she lost her urges to a man who likely cast her aside.” His mind wandered to a time when a young blond girl responded to his advances by washing her mouth with pond water. He blinked the memory away. “Someone who works under me conquers, not cowers. I expect you to beat any residual sentimentality out of her.”
“I see.” Enyaba thought to the time Dio assaulted a woman in Italy due to his uncontained libido, and wondered which party deserved to be called weak. “What of the child in her arms?”
“It’s an accessory. I’ll take care of it. Let go of the arrow, hag.” He leaned forward and placed his hands on his kneepads.
“As you command.” She let go of the arrow. It flew through the rain, dodging other pedestrians on its path to the nurse. No one noticed the zippy arrow, let alone gave it a second glance. Just before the arrow made contact with the nurse's back, it turned left and swerved around her body.
“An odd movement,” Dio said. “Did the arrow ever require its target to be a person’s stomach?”
“I have seen it pierce any part of the body,” Enyaba said as she loosened her umbrella and retracted it. “But that could mean-“
The arrow found its mark. Its left side pierced the baby’s side, while the right side hit the woman’s stomach. Both injured parties screamed, but in the woman’s shock, she let the baby drop to clutch her chest.
An instant later, her eyes widened and she saw her baby fall to the pavement. “John, no!”
“Two victims at once?” Enyaba said. “This is unprecedented. How should we-“
“Allow me,” Dio said. “The World.” A warrior in gold armor appeared from thin air. In the next instant, Dio, the armored figure, and the baby were gone.
Enyaba gathered her nerves and ran to the bleeding woman. While Dio never shared the abilities of his Stand with any subordinates, Enyaba had a few theories from seeing its aftermath, and each one terrified her. She hid her own fear while a skeleton ghost, with a crown and scepter, appeared behind her. Enyaba called it Judgment. It linked itself to the woman’s wound through a string of mist. The bleeding stopped, but the woman’s screaming didn’t. A crowd had gathered around her.
“Oh, no!” Enyaba shouted as she pretended to stumble on her umbrella-cane. The skeleton king floated behind her with a trail connecting it to the woman’s wound. “You look hurt, Erina.” Some eyes drifted to Enyaba, but none looked at the skeleton, since people without Stands cannot perceive them.
The woman’s eyebrows furrowed. “Are you…to me? Who, are you? And behind you, con…ting?” The wound and overload of bizarre sensory information flubbed up her ability to talk.
“Ah, that doesn’t look too bad.” Enyaba ripped the woman’s hands off her wound with incredible strength for an old woman. Then, using a bandage from her bag, Enyaba patched the woman’s wound. The bleeding stopped. “Looks like it’s just a small wound.” She turned around and shook off the crowd with her umbrella. “Clear the way, people. No emergency here, she’s fine. Just going to get her home.” Judgment’s ability was to insert smoke inside a body through wounds and control the body’s actions, ranging from word spoken to preventing blood from exiting the body. No one save the woman not deprived of pain could perceive reason to worry.
The woman looked around. “Someone, please help-ack!” Her body coughed. “Thank you, Mom,” her mouth said as she glanced at it in horror. “But it still hurts. Can you treat me at home?” A million thoughts converged with each other in the woman’s mind, as that was the only body part still in her control.
“No problem, Erina!” While one of Enyaba’s right hands held her cane, the other extended to the nurse. “Come along, Erina. I’ll make you a hot cup of tea once I’ve properly cleaned that wound.”
The nurse’s mind demanded an answer for her son’s location. “I’d love that,” her mouth said. Her hand grabbed Enyaba’s and the two walked back the way Enyaba and Dio came. Rain continued pouring down as Judgment followed both of them, trailing behind the nurse like a dog on a leash.
After passing through an empty alleyway, the two stood alone in front of an abandoned hotel. The mailbox had rusted and a piece of wood fell off the roof. Enyaba let go of the nurse and Judgment faded, along with the string of mist.
“Where did you take me?” the nurse asked. “Ah, my voice! And…my body…” She groaned as she slumped to her knees. Blood flowed from her chest wound again.
“Your new home, my dear ‘Erina’,” Enyaba said. “Scream if you’d like that chest wound to open more. I’ll just control your body again and make another plausible excuse, assuming anyone would hear you or care.”
The nurse gasped as she held her abdomen wound. “Why did you…bring me here? John, where is he?”
“John?” Enyaba asked.
“The baby…you stole.” She breathed heavily and she looked around for something that would stop the bleeding.
“Ah, that reminds me.” Enyaba extended her right hand to the hunched over woman. “My name is Enyaba Geil. What is yours? Or do you prefer Erina?” Part of Enyaba wondered where Dio took her kid or if he just outright ate him, but the rest of her dismissed the thought as something Dio kept on a need to know basis.Wouldn’t be the last civilian he drained for sustenance, by a long shot.
“Are you…fucking…” The nurse glared at Enyaba, but her eyes softened as she lost consciousness.
Enyaba shrugged. “We can talk when you’re ready.” She summoned Judgment again, and after the mist string entered the woman’s wound, she floated into the air like a ragdoll. The nurse’s body shook a few times, causing her name tag to fall from her chest pocket. Enyaba grabbed it and looked it over. “Nice to meet you, Gwen Stefani. Here’s hoping you survive the training.”