“One more time!” he shouts after climbing out from softened to solid ground, “I know I can get her if we try one more time!”



“That won’t be necessary,” Trish replies, climbing out after him. The ground reverts to its original state. Her hair is a mess after flying through the air.

“What do you mean not necessary?! We can catch her if you use that trampoline move again!”

“That method of pursuit is far too risky. A single miscalculation will result in us becoming pancakes on the sidewalk. Besides–”

“So what the hell else can we do?!” he shouts, grinding his teeth. He advances on her, looming over her, getting in her face. “How else are we going to reach her?! Are we just gonna stand here like idiots while one of your fans dies?!!”

Trish’s eyes narrow. Her eyes spring wide open again when SPICE GIRL spontaneously materializes and hovers over Kilo. It prods his chest with one finger and stares him down. “YOU WERE TOLD TO HAVE FAITH. ARE YOU SO FULL OF SUSPICION AND HATE YOU ARE WITHOUT REASON?”

“Wha?…” Kilo mutters, bewildered but still on guard.

“WE KNOW YOU. WE HAVE KNOWN MEN LIKE YOU BEFORE. THOSE WHO HAVE MADE AN ENEMY OF THE WHOLE WORLD. BELIEVING IN NOTHING, BELIEVED IN BY NOBODY. A CLOSED-OFF SOUL, RIPE SOIL FOR CULTIVATING EVIL. JUST LIKE FATHER.”

“SPICE GIRL, enough!” Trish yells, “you’ve said too much!”

Her Stand goes silent, before receding back into Trish’s essence. Kilo stands his ground, but a chill runs up his spine nonetheless. That was not bluster, he is sure. He does not know what the Stand meant, but he senses there was no lie in it all the same. There is anger in Trish’s eyes. Hatred. Fear and pain and regret, like baubles of light floating in a green pool. She sighs.

“Mi scusa. My Stand can be rather outspoken… Your doubt in me… is not unfounded. You haven’t known me longer than half an hour. But I ask you to trust me now and believe when I say I will do everything in my power to save Shizuka. But how can either of us do anything for her if we are too damaged to even help ourselves?

“That’s why we must change tack. Rather than catching up to her, we must learn where the Stand is taking her. And now we have a trail of follow.”

Declaring this, she raises her left hand. Tied around her index finger, what appears to be an ultra thin thread of gold waves about in the warm evening wind. Kilo follows the path of it, and sees it leads up into the sky. In the night sky, he cannot pick Shizuka out anymore, but he realizes that the thread must lead right to her.

“This is living hair,” Trish declares, “the move earlier wasn’t intended to catch Shizuka, but for this. I softened this hair and its cuticle. It will stretch endlessly, no matter how far she flies. With this, we can know exactly where she is going.”

“… Like Theseus in the Labyrinth. Finding his way with a golden thread…” Kilo murmurs, backing off at last.

Trish smiles at him, producing a comb seemingly out of nowhere to brush her hair back into place. “Have you faith now, Kilo Staples?”

—

“Let go of me you rejected Muppet freak!” Shizuka yells. She struggles and kicks in NYT’s grip, which so far has proven to be unbreakable. It is cold up there, and difficult to breath. The wind whip her hair into her face and bring tears to her eyes. It carries her by her arms, its claws cold and metallic, its joint creaking audibly. “SUNAVA BITCH!!!” she shouts, swinging like a acrobat to deliver a kick to the Stand’s forehead, but only for her foot to phase through.

“It’s not letting go…! Regular Stand rules still apply… It can touch me, but I can’t damage it in return…!”

She lets her foot swing back down, and looks up, to see the moon. As far up as they are, she can make it out, even against the glare of the streetlights below. ACHTUNG BABY reaches out and takes hold of the light rays streaming down from it. “See how you like this!” Shizuka shouts, as Achtung Baby delivers a fist cracking into NYT’s face, followed by a flash of light.

The grip on her right arm is released, and she begins to grin in triumph. But then NYT’s right hand blurs and she feels a stinging pain in her neck. Coughing, she looks down and see one of the Stand’s syringe fingers sticking into her neck. The fluid press injects some dark pinkish fluid into her veins.

Instantly, drowsiness like a wave crashes over her brain and her vision goes blurry and dark. “Aghh… Son of a… bitchhh…! Whadidyudoo…?!” Her speech slurring, she soon goes limp. NYT resumes its grip on both arms and continues to carry her away.

—

“Did you a favor, dumbass,” sneers Cone at his laptop screen. “What were you even trying to do, stupid piece of bait? Don’t you know what’d happen even if you could get loose?” He raises his hand, then lowers it, waving it side to side. “Wheeeeeeeew, KERSPLAT!!” he exclaims, slapping his open palm on the dusty ground, then laughing grimly.

“Ok, enough of that. Back to the main problem. Trish and this blackie. How do I get him away from her? How dare he get his stink all over her like that?” Grumbling to himself, he opens a tab on his laptop, keeping the footage of NYT in the corner of the screen. He pulls up a road map of Los Angeles.

After a moment of studying the map, he makes his decision, and picks up a remote controller, slightly heavier than a regular one but with the same shape as a standard video game controller. “Follow the drone, NEED YOU TONIGHT. Follow this path,” he mutters at his screen, manipulating the joysticks.

—

Finding a vehicle proved even easier than expected for Kilo and Trish, as they simply approach a parked motorcycle. Soon enough, Kilo gets to work hotwiring it.

“Is a motorcycle a good idea? Couldn’t we find a car?” Trish asks as Kilo gets the engine started.

“This your first time in LA, lady? Traffic can be a nightmare, even at this time of night. No, what we need is something more…”

“Maneuverable?”

“Right.” At that moment, Kilo revs up the engine as he gets on. “Now that’s what I’m talking about…”

“I didn’t know you had such a unique skillset, Mr. Staples,” she notes as he revs up the vehicles.

“Well, Miss Una, I grew up in Compton. This shit is what we had instead of Nintendo.”

With her arms wrapped around his waist, Kilo speeds off. They thunder down the semi-populated streets, swerving between lanes, at times running up onto the sidewalk and terrifying pedestrians. Around Trish’s right index finger is tied the yellow hair that leads them to Shizuka. She reacts suddenly. “They’re turning! Left! They’re losing altitude!”

“Got it,” Kilo says, peeling into the next lane. He brakes, tires screaming, then turns again, drifting back onto the sidewalk. Glancing for a moment at his surroundings, he barely avoids ramming into a woman clad in blue, stepping out of a building with with white marble steps. The motorcycle screech to a halt and swerves around to avoid her. Kilo casts a glance at the hapless woman he nearly hit, and notices for the first time her silver badge, and that her navy-blue clothes are, of course, a uniform. “Shit,” he mutters, as he revs up and speeds away from the building that is obviously a police station.

“D-d… Dispatch…” the cop stammers, coming to her senses, before rushing to a nearby squad car and shouting into the radio, “Dispatch, come in. This is Muñoz at Santa Monica Pier Substation! There’s- there’s a 23103 in progress. Suspects are a… African American male and Caucasian female, they’re driving on the sidewalk!”

“Copy that, Santa Monica,” says the metallic voice from the other end of the radio, “back-up is en-route.”

The LAPD work quickly. Within five minutes of the call going out, two squad cars are already on Kilo and Trish’s tail. “For fuck’s sake!” Kilo complains.

“Oh it’s two squad cars!” Trish chides, “Who hasn’t been chased by the police at least once in their- There it is…!”

Kilo sees it, his eyes fixed forward. NEED YOU TONIGHT, directly in front of them and matching their speed, dangling the limp Shizuka in front of it. It swerves into a dark alley, and Kilo swerves after it, leaning close to the asphalt . They burn through the alley, disturbing the homeless people there. Once back on the main road, NYT remains where it is, tantalizingly close yet just out of reach.

“Damn thing’s taunting us…” Kilo grumbles, “To hell with it, I’m gonna grab her!” He sits up, releasing the handlebars. SATURN BARZ hands appear in their place.

“What? Kilo no, listen to me!” Trish says, “It’s trying to goad you, make you slip up!”



“I can’t just leave her when she’s right in front of me!”

“You can! You have to!” Trish points at the misshapen thing. “It’s fast, and it must have impressive range, but it hasn’t attempted to attack us! It must be a long range type with no combat ability. Our best chance of saving Shizuka is if we find the user and put him down!”

“What if it decides to drop her before we get to him?!”

“If the user was going to do that, they would have already! The key here is to remain calm. If you lose your cool, then it’s all over. For the both of you.”

Kilo glances back at her, then back to Shizuka, still clutched in NYT’s hands. “Damn…” he mutters, resigned. No sooner has he said that NYT does suddenly ascend, revealing a bright orange hot-rod speeding towards them.

Kilo shouts in surprise, and barely notices Trish releasing her grip around his waist. She rises to her feet on the back of the seat and leapfrogs over Kilo. SPICE GIRL rains down blows on the hood of the approaching car, turning it soft as gelatin. The motorcycle squishes into it, front wheel first, then flips forward over it. It lands on the other side, both the bike and Kilo rattled, but safe and sound.

“Oughh, you motherfuckers…” groans the guy, a young man wearing shades at night, who steps out of the car, “What the fuck did you do to my car?!!” Glaring furiously, his eyes ultimately find Kilo, and his eyes narrow in anger. “Kilo Staples…?! Oh, you bastard, you’re a fuckin’ dead man–!!

SPICE GIRL cuts him short with a slap to the face that knocks him straight out. “I think I’ll drive now,” Trish says, sauntering to the bike as if nothing has happened.

“Ok,” says Kilo, wide-eyed and dazed.

Swinging onto the seat of the bike, Trish asks, “That man said your name. Do you know him?”

“Wha? Oh, I don’t know. I might’ve kicked his ass a while ago.”

Trish chuckles wryly at this, and drives away as the sirens approach. As they speed away, the driver comes to, and immediately pulls out his cellphone. “Y-yo, it’s me, it’s Darrell…! Listen I need y’all to… No no shut up, listen to me! I need y’all to come the fuck down here, right now! Kilo Staples just wrecked my fuckin’ ride that’s what! … I don’t know what they did to it, but… Just come down here, man. Bring everybody, everybody!! Bring Kilo Staples to me!”

END OF CHAPTER 15