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There’s something nice about taking a walk in the evening once the streets are empty. Is it always the safest option? Technically, no. But Isamu’s rowdy teen years made him more than a little familiar of what parts of Morioh are best to avoid. It doesn’t hurt that he’s nowhere near a small man, which tends to make idiots think twice before picking on him. It’s rare that anyone hassles him in a residential area, anyway. Whatever implicit danger of walking around in the dark was offset by the chance to blow off some steam after a particularly long day at work. Once the yellow skies fade to black and most residents of Morioh settle into their homes, there’s enough empty space outside for his cluttered thoughts to clear out.
A few strands of hair fall into his face, and no matter how many times Isamu tucks them behind his ear, they stubbornly return to their favorite position right in front of his eyebrows. At times like this, he does miss his pompadour, even though over the years, he drastically lost the patience for the maintenance it requires. Plus, he doesn’t want to steal his little bro’s style, though the irony of seeing the pomp as Josuke’s style after he modeled his hair off Isamu’s is not lost on him. The emulation does give him a free pass to poke fun at the hairdo, an honor only bestowed upon himself and, reluctantly, Haruno. Regardless, his long curtain haircut doesn’t keep his hair nearly as orderly as his former style. He’s tempted to pull some hairpins out of his pocket and pin back the strands, but he ultimately decides it’s too much effort and the breeze moving his hair isn’t that bad.
After the umpteenth time he brushes his hand next to his head, something in his peripheral vision catches his eye. He stops just under a streetlight and looks up at one of the nearby houses. A few levels up, there is someone with a flattop standing right in front of the window. Are they staring at Isamu? Due to the backlighting casting a shadow, Isamu can’t quite tell what direction the person is facing. But years of side-eyes and judgmental stares have made him a little sensitive to that. He’s a hair’s breadth away from turning and moving on with his evening when the window starts to open.
Isamu really doesn’t want to get into a shouting match. He’s on better terms with the police nowadays, but there are plenty that still remember his hellion days, and he really doesn’t want to cause any problems for Officer Higashikata. He especially doesn’t want to start raising a ruckus this close to the Higashikata-Jostar household. He’s been trying to be a good influence on the boys, and starting a fight on a school night is NOT what a good influence does. So rather than wait for the person in the window to start screaming, Isamu takes a deep breath and turns to continue his walk.
A deep, warm pain suddenly puts a stop to that plan. For a moment, Isamu thinks that someone shot him in the shoulder, and looking down, he finds that he’s not completely wrong. Rather than a bullet, there’s a large arrow buried in his muscles. He looks back up to the window just to get a glimpse of his attacker, but the person is gone by the time his eyes land on the still-open window.
Memories from his violent adolescence are the only thing that prevents Isamu from instinctively ripping out the arrow. Instead, he grabs the shaft of the arrow to prevent it from jostling as he moves. He carefully turns in the direction of the Higashikata-Jostar house. He doesn’t want to scare either of the boys, not that a bit of blood is unsettling to either of them at this point; but any member of the family would drop anything to get him medical assistance, if not heal him themselves. Before he steps from the sidewalk, Isamu takes a moment to look up, clenching his eyes shut and sharply inhaling through his nose to compose himself.
He barely takes one step off the sidewalk before a muscular arm wraps around his chest and pulls him back. Isamu struggles against the restraint, wincing as the arrow digs deeper while he thrashes. His hand is slapped from the shaft, only for his assailant to grab the arrow and rip it from the shoulder. The spade-shaped arrowhead drags out globs of tissue alongside the steady stream of blood that flows down his chest. One particularly large clump splatters directly onto his shoe.
“Don’t think that you can walk off with this,” a deep voice says from behind him.
Isamu clamps a hand over his shoulder, doing what he can to staunch the blood. The heat-like pain from a deep wound intensified ten-fold the second that the weapon was ripped out. He blinks furiously, refusing to give his assailant the satisfaction of seeing him affected by the attack before he turns around.
It’s just some kid. Some punk in a third-year uniform and a tall, blonde flattop decided to shoot him with an arrow. What the hell?
“What…the..hell?” Isamu struggles to keep his breathing even. Between his shit homelife before the Higashikata-Jostars unofficially took him in and his rebellious adolescence, Isamu has an unusually high pain-tolerance. However, there’s something about the throbbing pain in his shoulder that is starting to mess with his head. Almost like the fuzziness that descends over his mind when he has a fever. This doesn’t stop him from asking, “What…is..wrong…with…you?”
The blonde kid looks down at him like it’s not even worth the breath needed to talk to him. “Unfortunate. It looks like you won’t be strong enough to survive.” With that lingering in the air, he turns to walk back to his house.
“The…fuck…you…mean?” Isamu snarls, despite the increased difficulty getting air in his lungs. He staggers forward, following this asshole.
Not paying a single bit of attention to Isamu, the kid calls into the open door. “Okuyasu! Get out here and help me with this!”
“Don’t…ignore me…you…PRICK!”
Dropping his hand from his shoulder, Isamu forcibly stomachs the pain as he grasps the back of the kid’s jacket. With a jerk, he forces the kid to turn around and face him. His intention is to give this kid a piece of his mind, to tell off this punk before he walks down the block.
Before he can even open his mouth, Isamu feels a sharp pain across the front half of his body. He stumbles backwards, almost like he’s pushed back by some invisible force, until he trips over his own feet. His head bounces against the ground once he fully collapses, his arms lacking the strength to break his fall. Looking down his body, in addition to the gaping wound on his shoulder, a series of small puncture wounds dot his body. Isamu tries to push himself to his feet, but if the series of tiny, deep-muscle injuries weren’t enough to prevent him from moving, the heat radiating from his shoulder would. His head is spinning, and he can’t tell if his eyes are watering or if his vision is starting to cloud from feverish delirium.
At the very least, the attack got the kid’s attention. He crouches next to Isamu’s head, looking down at him both physically and metaphorically. “Stop trying to resist your fate. It will save time and effort for the both of us.”
Isamu clenches his eyes shut to hide his pain, but still manages to choke out a sarcastic laugh. “So, what’s its name? The Stand?” There’s an extended beat of silence, so Isamu cracks an eye open. “Surprised? Thought I was too weak, or whatever bullshit you’re spitting out?” The kid’s glare deepens. “Got nothing to say now? Doesn’t matter to me. Yours has got nothing on my brothers’. You’re so far out of their league…you’re not even playing the same sport.”
The last thing that Isamu sees before he blacks out is the kid’s foot, rapidly approaching his face.
───※ ·✥· ※───
Jonathan pokes his head into the living room, where Josuke and Haruno are planted in front of the television, the pets flopped around their legs. “Boys? What sort of game are you playing?”
Josuke, without even breaking his focus on the screen, raises an eyebrow, “Why? Is Mom asking?”
“No, I thought I heard gunfire, and your mum told me to check with you two before I started getting worried.”
That catches the boys’ attention. Josuke hits a button on the controller and sets it on the floor. “We’re not playing anything that has gunfire.”
“I don’t know,” Haruno mumbles under his breath as he pets one of the dogs. “Sheik might have a gun. He seems like the type.”
After Josuke nudges his younger brother hard enough to topple him to the floor, he looks up to Jonathan, concern apparent in his eyes. “Do you think something’s wrong? Do we need to call Grandpa or take a look or something?”
Jonathan raises his hands to placate Josuke. “I’m going to go take a look. You two are going to stay here. I’ll let you know if we need to call the police.”
It seems like that’s enough to lower Josuke’s hackles. He nods in acknowledgment but doesn’t immediately pick his controller back up. “Okay, but stay safe out there.”
Jonathan flashes a wide smile to his boys, showing off his elongated teeth. “Unless they’ve invented a gun that shoots out sunshine, I should be fine.” He turns to walk through the door but stops when a thought crosses his mind. “Actually, you two can do something to help.” The way Josuke and Haruno lean forward in anticipation makes Jonathan feel a little bit bad for what he’s about to say. “While that game is paused, why don’t you help your mother clean up from dinner. She’ll need a hand now that I’m stepping out.”
Haruno, ever the stoic, stands up, brushes himself off, and heads to the kitchen. Josuke makes more of a show of rolling his eyes but isn’t too far behind his brother. Jonathan smiles as he walks outside. They’re good kids.
This smile immediately drops as soon as he steps outside. There are certain scents that are to be expected in a suburb. Despite his sensitivity to smells, most of the scents tend to fade into the background. Which means that when there’s something out of place, Jonathan will key on it immediately. Although the area has a vague smell of blood just from being a populated area, there’s no place for freshly spilled blood in the neighborhood. He breaks into a sprint, making a beeline to the strongest source of the smell.
He stops in front of the dilapidated house down the street. There’s no clear source, but there’s more than one sizable puddle of blood. Although the one closer to the house is larger, Jonathan doesn’t want to risk trespassing. Instead, he crouches next to the blood closer to the gate. When he nudges it with his shoe—not wanting to use his fingers and accidentally drink gravel—the blood is slightly gummy. Not quite wet, but not completely dry yet. Out of the way of the streetlight, but still completely visible to his vampiric eyes, there are streaks of blood, almost like something was dragged away from here.
Breaking into a jog to get away from the overwhelming smell of fresh blood, Jonathan follows the drops and streaks until he can lock onto the new target. He turns several corners and crosses into a back street, the smell getting progressively stronger with every step he takes.
Sometimes Jonathan wishes that he still had his human eyes. If that were the case, he would initially see an indistinct shape and get himself prepared for what he would ultimately uncover. Instead, Jonathan is immediately confronted with the bloody body of Isamu Seki.
For a moment, he’s certain that Isamu is dead. Only after the sound of a struggling heartbeat reaches his ears does he spring into action. He runs to Isamu’s side and carefully scoops him into his arms. The gaping hole on Isamu’s shoulder assaults his nose with the smell of blood, but the smaller wounds littering his body and the broken nose don’t help the matter. Despite how pale Isamu has become, his lips so drained of blood that they barely have a hint of pink to them, he’s not as cold as one would expect. A feverish heat seeps through Jonathan’s shirt.
Although Isamu didn’t become a member of the family until he was nearly a legal adult, Jonathan still feels a paternal protectiveness toward him. Maybe it has something to do with his regrets with Dio, maybe he reminds Jonathan of Speedwagon’s situation, maybe it’s as simple as appreciating a troubled young man who saved his wife and children. The reason doesn’t matter. Isamu is one of his boys, no different from George, Joseph, Josuke, or Haruno. Even though Isamu is a grown adult, Jonathan cradles him close to his chest like he’s just a sick child, not a man dying in his arms.
When he finally reaches his home, Jonathan shifts Isamu to one arm and forces the door open. He winces slightly at the noise, but that doesn’t stop him from calling out. “Boys! Get in here!”
Haruno and Josuke poke their heads around the doorway, followed by Tomoko. Their initially confused looks are quickly replaced with horror when the sight has a moment to sink in. Tomoko pushes past the boys to help Jonathan lay Isamu down, not giving a single thought about the blood dripping onto the floor.
“What happened?” Josuke shouts, tossing his dishrag to the side before dropping next to Jonathan. Crazy Diamond is already out, ready to start healing.
Jonathan shakes his head. “I don’t know. I just found him bleeding out.” Resting a hand on Josuke’s shoulder, he looks up to Haruno. “Haruno.” At his father’s call, Haruno’s wide eyes stop staring at Isamu and lock onto Jonathan. “He’s lost a lot of blood. We need to replace that before he can be healed.”
Haruno nods and starts stripping off his still-dripping dish gloves. He bundles up the rubber gloves and shoves them into the hole on Isamu’s shoulder. With the materials in place, Purple Rain appears around Haruno, its hands superimposing where his are applying pressure to the wound. Jonathan is put a bit at ease seeing Isamu’s face twitch in discomfort as Purple Rain replaces his blood. Surely, he can’t be too far gone if he’s able to feel pain. However, to spare Isamu from any more suffering this evening, Purple Rain moves aside in favor of Crazy Diamond once enough blood has been replenished.
The Higashikata-Jostars stare intently at Isamu, hoping for the best but expecting him to fade away before their very eyes. The tension only snaps when Jonathan confirms that he hears Isamu’s pulse returning to a regular heartbeat and his breathing even out. Tomoko collapses onto Jonathan’s shoulder, shivering as she comes down from the emotional high. Jonathan tucks her head under his and pulls her closer. As much as she’s willing to accept the oddities that come with her relationship with Jonathan, it must’ve been terrifying for her to be on the sidelines, especially without the ability to see her sons’ Stands working. Josuke is desperately clinging onto Isamu’s hand. The two have had a close bond since Isamu saved the boys’ lives. He can’t imagine how stressful it is for Josuke to return the favor. In contrast, Haruno is frozen in space, wide eyes blinking furiously to keep his emotions at bay. He robotically stands up, mumbling about getting the guest room prepared. Although Isamu isn’t too much trouble to carry, especially without the threat of aggravating injuries, Jonathan doesn’t follow and lets Haruno have a moment alone, hopefully to release his emotions in private.
Jonathan lightly brushes Isamu’s hair out of his face. He’s going to be embarrassed when he wakes up; he always is a bit flustered when the family makes a big fuss over him. All they can do hope that Isamu will be willing talk about what happened earlier this evening. Jonathan looks to Josuke, who is leaning his forehead Isamu’s hand that is clutched firmly in his own. His eyes are clenched tight, droplets barely creeping past his long eyelashes. Even though the sight breaks Jonathan’s heart as a father, there is one consolation to be had.
Even if Isamu is tight-lipped about the incident, those boys are going to stop at nothing to get to the bottom of this attack.
Heaven have mercy on the assailant if Jotaro is dragged into this mess as well. Because knowing the three boys, they certainly won’t have any mercy to spare.