The warm breeze of the air brushes past your face as you lie down calmly on a grassy hill. The sun is about an hour away from setting, luckily though it’s already at the point where it’s by the horizon so it gives off a golden light that makes everything it touches shine brightly yellow. It’s a beautiful scene wherever you look, everything just shines linearly in an aesthetic yellow. You always loved this time of the day as it makes every scenery look ethereal and otherworldly almost as if you’re in a haven. Sadly despite this being a daily occurrence, it’s also a fleeting moment as it doesn’t last too long.

Throughout the sea of yellow, a certain cyan blue mare with a rainbow mane lying down beside you stands out. The two of you were just relaxing on the hill talking about anything that comes to mind as another thought hits her. “I can’t believe A. K. Yearling went on hiatus again.” she randomly blurts out still lying on the ground.

Rainbow Dash occasionally talked about Daring Do with you. She even trusted you enough to let you know that A. K. Yearling was Daring Do, it wasn’t anything shocking to you but you’ll keep it a secret for her anyway. Most times she’d even just brag about her adventures with Daring Do when she was talking about her. “You mean the author of Daring Do? She’s your friend right? Why don’t you just go ask her what’s going on?”

“That’s the thing! She just said she needed some time since she doesn’t have any adventures right now. I’d go and help her but I’m too busy with some Wonberbolt stuff to go away for a few days.” she somberly explains.

Sounds like your schedule just got full. “Well alright then.” you exhaust as you slowly get up and stretch.

“Going already?”

“Nope, I gotta go see a man about a thing. Take care, Rainbow.” you bid her as you pat her mane carefully rustling your fingers through each strand. Before she can give you a pout of denial, you teleport your way back to your diner’s kitchen where an other you is manning the cooking.

You stop him for a bit as you briefly explain to him, “I’ll be gone for a while, a few days tops. Live my life until then and make sure no one gets suspicious, I don’t want them to stop me from going since this is important.”

“Will do, chief.” other you confirms with a salute.

“That’s what I like to hear.” you say as you teleport to the outside residence of Daring Do herself.

Looking around, the place is full of shrubbery and trees. It makes for a beautiful scene at this hour of the day. Turning back, you focus on the reason why you’re here and begin to lightly knock on the door three times.

No answer. You knock on the door once more and then you notice a pony peeking out from the window on your left. She looks perplexed as she disappears and quickly opens the door. The opened door reveals a light gold pony wearing red glasses that ornament a beautiful pair of moderate rose eyes, a cloak, and a hat. Her mane is made up of different shades of colors ranging from black to dark gray.

“I’ve heard of you. You’re that, human was it?” she starts off. Not exactly a welcome but it’s a reasonable response.

“My my, I didn’t think I was that famous even for Daring Do to know me.”

“You know?” she asks with a little frown.

“I would’ve known even if Rainbow didn’t tell me.”

“Well then, I don’t suppose you’re hostile so please come in. It’s getting late.”

“You have my thanks. So how’d you hear about me?” you ask your fair share of questions.

“First from rumors and then from Rainbow Dash as you’d heard about me from her. I don’t suppose you’re here because of my hiatus.”

“Truthfully, yes I am.”

“Well tough luck. I don’t have any adventures for now. Ahuizotl and Dr. Caballeron haven’t been out destroying the world or stealing artifacts lately.” she wearily explains, though it looks like you have what you came for, the cause to her hiatus.

It’s time to go and do something about it, but before that, “Oh, I nearly forgot. Here’s a gift from me to you for being so hospitable.” you’d made sure to alter her memories a bit so she doesn’t get suspicious about a self-materializing cake. You’ll tell her about yourself eventually, but not just yet.

“Why I haven’t even offered you something to drink yet. Thanks I guess.”

You hand her a paper bag with a boxed cake in it. Cake always was a great gift when visiting someone’s house. You really forgot to get her a hospitality present and only remembered to get her one just now, luckily, you can always make anything from thin air. It’s all fair courtesy anyway at the end of the day so the rest is irrelevant as long as you get her the present.

“What’s in it?” she asks with a little head tilt as she peers in the paper bag.

“It’s chocolate cake, I’m sure you’ll like it.” you say with a grin as you know what’s written on the cake.

“Wow, I’ve been needing some sugar lately. You’ve just made my day.” she thanks squeeing.

“No I haven’t, not yet.”

“What was that?” she looks back at you as she places the box of cake in her refrigerator.

“It’s nothing, I think I’ll take my leave.”

“Already? You’ve barely been here for five minutes. I hope it’s not because the house is a bit messy.” she worryingly says despite the house being in complete disarray.

“No, it’s not that. I gotta see a man about a thing.” you explain as you get up from your seat.

“Well alright then. The sun’s setting so you should be fine if you move fast. Are you sure you’ll be okay? I’m not one to invite people I’ve barely known to my house but I’m not just gonna leave someone out in the night, especially if he’s a friend of my friend.” she wholesomely offers.

“I can get home quickly so no need to worry. I know it’s harder to get home at night and it’s more dangerous but I’ll be fine.”

“Well if you’re sure then take care. Goodbye, Anonymous right?”

“That’s my name, but you can call me Anon. Goodbye, A. K. Yearling.”

“You can call me Daring Do, or just Daring.”

With a smirk you give her a wave and leave her residence. The scenery is now dimmed down to dark shades yet everything still looks rather visible almost as if it’s about to rain heavily in the afternoon. As the door closes behind you you immediately teleport to Ahuizotl. He’s pretty big but not exactly daunting. You’re in a temple of a kind and he flinches at your sudden appearance. He takes a combat stance and attempts to strike you until he freezes in place. You paralyzed him to refrain his movements and mostly to present your dominance to him.

“Good evening. I believe your best option now is to calm down.” you greet him with a dangerous but friendly aura. He’s sweating bullets now. He knows that it can be the end of him if he doesn’t comply considering that he just got paralyzed without even being touched. His hostile aura disappears and you drop the paralyzation on him.

He returns to a regular stance before asking, “Who are you?”

You gotta keep this brief so you can get it done with. “My name’s Anonymous, you can call me a Anon. I need your help to give Daring Do another adventure.”

He’s still uneasy but he feels a little more casual before answering, “Even if there was an artifact to find, Daring Do would probably still beat us in the end and our efforts will be useless.”

“That’s the point, but you’ll do it with insurance this time.” you tell him as you summon a plethora of gems, artifacts, and treasures that should suffice his efforts. Though the artifacts you summoned can’t activate any age old mechanism that’ll cause carnage.

With no steady form of acquiring treasures, Ahuizotl’s widened eyes speak for himself. “What do we do?”

“I’ve got an idea, just tell it to your lackeys and have them play their part well. So here’s the plan.”

The sun has set and Daring Do just finished eating her dinner and is about to open up the cake you gave her. Suddenly, a shadowy figure bolts outside Daring’s house. The sound of rustling gave her enough time to take a glance at one of her windows and recognize who it is, it’s Doctor Caballeron.

In a flash, Daring Do removes her disguise revealing her iconic costume and makes her way outside to trail him, she’s glad that some sort of progress has finally shown up though it’s fairly confusing to her why they’d be at her house, nevertheless she does her job and follows him.

She didn’t trail him for long as he soon came to a stop after a while. It’s in the middle of the forest and shrubbery of all sorts encompass the area. Momentarily, Ahuizotl makes an appearance. Daring Do gleefully thinks to herself positively as things are lining up as they should, though she still keeps a steadfast mindset as she still plans to foil their schemes, though she can sense that the three of them are alone in the forest. She waits a bit to see things unfold as she eavesdrops before she makes her own entrance.

“Do you have the artifact?” Ahuizotl asks hopefully.

“Yes, it took us a while to find it but we finally have it.” Doctor Caballeron answers as he hands Ahuizotl a sort of stone mask.

“Perfect, now we can push through with the last few steps to our master’s plan.” Ahuizotl states snickering as does Doctor Caballeron.

“Not if I got anything to say about it, and I do.” Daring Do comes out from the bushes knowing her target, that stone mask.

“You’re too late, Daring Do. We finally have the artifact to summon our mentors.” Ahuizotl condescends as he does a large jump towards a fairly big hill next to them.

He places the mask on the ground in front of a stone wall with creature-like engravings on it before bowing and saying, “Awaken, my masters.”

The earth shakes a bit as Daring has her guard up before asking, “What’s that sound?”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUhVCoTsBaM

https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn%3AANd9GcSUysy9pPA2q5_-2IRG8OL0HEUSEXPMGpJOnBEHyZqP9GAKmQju

*AYAYAYAY*

Just then three muscular creatures burst from the wall as they pose and flex while loud trap music plays. They keep posing as the music plays for about a minute. They’re positioned so high on the hill such that the three of them are exactly in front of the moon being shone upon by the bright white light.

Doctor Caballeron all this while had been racing up the hill as he and Ahuizotl praise respectfully and bow to their masters. The middle one picks up the mask after everything tones down and his expression turns from neutral to a smirk, “Good job Ahuizotl, we’re one last piece from acquiring immortality.”

Immortality, Daring Do feels herself tense up at that. With someone as dangerous an aura as that and with three of them or maybe even more, it might be the end of Equestria itself. She flies up to an safe yet audible distance from them for a little Q and A.

“What are you?” Daring asks once she gets close enough.

The middle one slowly turns her way before the three of them superbly flex with all their might, “We are the Aztec Gods of Fitness, the Pillar Men. I am Kars, this is Wammu and this is Esidisi.”

“Well then Kars, you’re not leaving here with that mask.” Daring Do challenges as she lunges at them at top speed with a flurry of hits. Clearly none of them were effective and they didn’t even budge. Right after, Ahuizotl and Doctor Caballeron stride towards the heavily panting Daring Do until they’re stopped by the hand of Kars.

“Her efforts are meaningless, the Red Stone of Aja is what’s important right now.” Kars bluntly states. Ahuizotl and Doctor Caballeron let up though Daring Do didn’t as she bucked a sharp rock at them to see if they bleed.

Before the rock even gets anywhere near them, Wammu already moved faster than the human eye could see and caught the rock in front of Daring Do as he effortlessly crushed it with his bare hands. Daring Do is shaking in fear now, but she hasn’t given up yet. As she makes her tactical retreat to devise a plan to somehow beat them and and as Wammu stands up and turns to leave, Daring Do accidentally touched Wammu’s shadow. He took notice of this instantly and is baffled with rage as he moves his hand to strike Daring Do.

“Hermit Purple!” a stranger’s raspy voice calls out as purple vines coming from a nearby bush stop Wammu’s hand just before it strikes Daring Do. Suddenly, orange shocks of electricity are surging through the purple vines. Wammu’s arm is heavily bleeding but he quickly draws back before it comes off.

“I-Is that…?” Esidisi asks in disbelief.

“Hamon.” Kars bluntly answers. “No matter, one user simply can’t beat us. There’s no math to it.”

“Well I’m sure I can do it all again.” the stranger calls out once more as he makes an appearance from the shadows while getting close to Daring Do who is speechless from shock. He’s an old muscly man wearing safari-esque clothing. “You should really control your breathing.” he quips at the hyperventilating Daring Do.

“What?!” the three pillar men ask in disbelief. It’s vague but they still recognize who it is, it’s Joseph Joestar.

“Joseph… I don’t know why you’re here but I can’t let you ruin our plans again. I still have a respect for you, but with everything reset, anything’s fair game.” Wammu states as he strides towards Joseph. “Divine Sandstorm!”

With both his hands rotating to attack Joseph and Daring Do, he goes at full strength without holding back. After his turn is done, Daring Do and Joseph have disappeared from the area.

“Tch… tricky as always, Joseph Joestar.” Wammu slightly commends.

“Wammu, let us go. There’s no point looking for him, let’s go find the Red Stone of Aja first. We’ll fight him when he comes to us.”

After doing a visual recon of the area and confirming that their enemies are beyond sight, Wammu lets up, “I suppose you’re right. It might have something to do with his new abilities too, there’s no way he could’ve used Hamon from a distance if he didn’t have something new up his sleeves.”

“We’ll know what it is when the time is right.” Esidisi comments.

“We have hours before the sun rises, let’s make the most of our time.” Kars firmly suggests to his entourage.

They all nod in unison as Kars and company make their way towards the location of the Red Stone of Aja.

Meanwhile, Joseph and Daring Do are hidden by the surface of the ground. After a while of silence, Joseph comes out of the leaves and steadies Daring Do. “How’d you do that?!” she asks in curiosity.

“Well, I know his Divine Sandstorm takes up a lot of his field of vision and it was too dark for the others to see us, so I took the first second of his attack as an advantage before it got deadly. With my Hamon I infused these leaves together like glue to provide cover while we hid in one of the more hollow spots on the ground. Luckily, this terrain is a bit rocky so we both fit in this hole, it looked like flat ground from outside almost as if we disappeared.” Joseph explains to the still confused Daring Do.

“Hamon? Infusing leaves? What’s going on? And why do you look like a friend of mine… except… more muscly and less green?”

“Lady, I’m sure you have a lot of questions but what we don’t have a lot of is time. I’ll tell you everything I can on the way.”

Daring Do doesn’t have a lot of context, but what she does know is that she must stop those Pillar Men before they get to the Red Stone of Aja and that Joseph is an ally. “Alright, I suppose you have a point. But where do we start? They know where it is and we don’t.”

“Hmmm…” Joseph thinks as he summons his purple vines once more. The ground writes up a little simple map. “This is us and there’s the Red Stone of Aja. I’d say we should get there in at least half a day on foot as long as we keep moving North.”

“How’d you do that?”

With a little smirk and a smile, Joseph answers, “Well, that’s something you’ll come to know later.”

Joseph would start his half a day journey but he can’t tell where north is. Embarrassed, he asks, “Uhhhh… where’s north?”

“Well, I saw the sun set around there earlier so I’m most definitely certain that this way is north.” Daring Do proudly points towards the direction of north.”

With a smile from both parties the comrades start making their way towards the artifact in a race against the Pillar Men.

Joseph and Daring Do have been traveling for a while now as there’s a linear exchange of questions from Daring Do and answers from Joseph.

“So what are you?” Daring Do once more asks yet another question.

“Like your friend, I’m a human.”

“What about the Pillar Men, aren’t they human?”

“They’re… a different kind of human.”

“Do all humans have powers?”

“No, not quite.”

“Then how come you have powers?”

“There’s a random few that develop these powers, we call them stands. Each one has a name and a unique ability that’s affiliated with its user. It’s also an unexplained phenomenon but stand users tend to attract each other so it’s not far fetched for a stand user to run into a fellow stand user.”

“What’s your stand then?”

“I’m sure you heard it earlier, it’s called Hermit Purple. It can display to me any information I need using any medium available.”

“That sounds amazing! I’d get all my explorations done in a jiffy if I had a power like that!”

“Yup, it sure is helpful. That’s how I found out where the Red Stone of Aja is.”

“What else can it do?”

“Well, it’s not exactly a combat stand but I can use it as a whip or a rope. I can also infuse it with my Hamon to do all sorts of other things like dealing more damage.”

“Stands really are something, huh?”

“They without a doubt are. Sadly, stands aren’t something you can develop and I’m really thankful that I got Hermit Purple. It just showed up one day when I needed it.”

“That’s a shame.”

“Yeah, like I said, stands aren’t something you can develop but that doesn’t mean that you won’t get one eventually in your life, it just means that you can’t willingly train yourself to get it whenever you want. A stand will just materialize itself one day so there’s a chance that anyone is a future stand user.”

“Well don’t get my hopes up too high, now I really want a stand.”

“Well you really can’t train yourself to get a stand but you can train yourself to learn Hamon.”

“You mean that orange electric that comes from your body? Can I really learn that?!” Daring Do furiously asks in excitement as she remembered that Hamon did some heavy damage to Wammu.

“I can teach you. It’d be troublesome if we ran into them on the road and we’ll have a showdown with them eventually so why not?”

Daring Do is now giddy giddy from excitement but she still puts on a determined look.

“Alright, first you gotta control your breathing.”

Hours have passed

It’s been a few hours already since Joseph had been teaching Daring Do the ways of Hamon. Luckily, Daring Do is a fast learner and Joseph taught her as they kept briskly walking towards the Red Stone of Aja so they still covered a fairly high amount of ground. Surely she’s no expert at it yet but she’s already doing just about as good as Joseph did before he was trained by Lisa Lisa.

“You’re pretty good.” Joseph compliments Daring Do as they both pant from exhaustion.

“Thanks, I learn pretty fast.”

Just then, the sun starts to rise from over the mountains and encompasses the horizon around them. They’re around grassy, windy fields now and the shimmering view is quite breathtaking to say the least.

“I think now is a good time to rest. The Pillar Men are weak to the sunlight.” Joseph suggests to Daring Do as he takes a seat by a nearby log.

“Really? I guess it’s a good time to eat too then.”

“You brought food?”

“Yeah, here, have some.” Daring Do searches her bag for the delicacies after taking a seat next to Joseph. Moments later she finds the two daisy sandwiches she packed earlier and hands one to Joseph.

A tad weirded out, Joseph reluctantly takes the sandwich after realizing that that’s probably normal for ponies, “Uhhh, thanks, but just the bread is fine.”

“Suit yourself, more for me then.” Daring Do says as she takes the daisies from Joseph’s sandwich and puts it on hers.

The bread was alright for Joseph, though he didn’t like too much the fragments of the daisy that latched into his bread, he was still able to tolerate it. Daring Do on the other hand enjoyed her breakfast very much despite it not exactly being a feast for a king.

After a few minutes more of strategizing and Joseph explaining the skills and weaknesses of the Pillar Men, Daring Do gets up from her seat, “that’s enough rest for now, I think we should go.”

“No.” Joseph bluntly states.

“No? Why? If we don’t move while they can’t then we can’t get to the Red Stone of Aja first. We should make use of this opportunity.”

“No… something’s not right.” Joseph uneasily says as he uses Hamon to flatten a small area by the short grass and throws some sand he’d been storing in his pockets onto the floor. He figured it would come in handy eventually so he kept a fairly large amount of sand at his disposal when he passed by a desert.

“Hermit Purple!” the sand reveals that there’s a hostile being nearby and it has intent to fight. “One of them is here!” Joseph quickly tells Daring Do as they both get their guard up.

“What?! But the sun is up, how are they here?”

Suddenly, a bipedal figure of rippling air appears before them. From the sight, Joseph is quick to figure out that Wammu is here and how he’s basking by the sunlight, “He’s controlling the air current around his body to reflect the light. If we stay in this windy area then he’s got the advantage on us.”

“You’re still quite the clever one, aren’t you?” Wammu starts as he strides towards Joseph and Daring Do.

“Quickly, I see a rainforest over there. The temperature is high and the trees are towering so the air current should be lower there.”

“Great idea.” Joseph agrees as they both start bolting for the rainforest as they watch their back for Wammu’s attacks.

It takes a little while but they finally get to the rainforest, though their heavy breathing shows how bad it would be for them to fight right now. They’re both still in a guarding stance but Wammu hasn’t shown up yet. They take a peek to see that he’s mysteriously gone.

Their brief relief is broken by the sound of another familiar voice, “Looks like you fell right into our trap.”

Esidisi is seen in the shadows of the rainforest as Joseph and Daring Do stand by the light.

“You can’t fight here, there’s sunlight all over.” Joseph mockingly tells Esidisi as he’s laughing hysterically.

As Joseph keeps his laughter increasingly louder, he goes dead silent just as trees are stacked onto the tall trees over their heads. It’s surrounded all over and after a few seconds, the numerous trees that are stacked on top are enough to prevent even a peep of sunlight from going in. Even the surrounding areas are covered so it’s pitch black and neither Joseph nor Daring Do are strong enough to break the trees and escape.

Daring Do uses some equipment as Joseph uses his Hermit Purple to pull down the tree fort, alas, to no avail as their efforts don’t even budge the sturdy formation. At best, it would take a few minutes to break through it and that’s already more than enough time for Esidisi to eliminate both of them.

“Wammu has already left. I can do this alone. You’re trapped here with me and I’m the only one strong enough to break out quickly which can only mean one thing, someone's dying today.” Esidisi’s voice echoes throughout the fort.

“Tch, I guess it’s a fight to the death then. Watch out Daring, his body boils blood like an electric kettle.” Joseph warns Daring Do as he latched Hermit Purple all around the dark fort and infuses them with Hamon so the electric will provide some form of light. It’s not bright, but it’s enough to see the surrounding area.

Seeing that Joseph is the more dangerous opponent, Esidisi pays Daring Do no mind as he targets Joseph first. With a leaping jump, dust forms in the area from the strength of the movement. Daring Do quickly leaps to the side as Joseph hides behind some of his Hermit Purple infused with Hamon. Seeing the orange static covering his opponent, Esidisi goes for a slide kick knocking Joseph down.

As Esidisi goes for the killer hit, he gets a Hamon buck by the hip from Daring Do. A kick from a pony infused with Hamon is strong so Esidisi gets knocked down bleeding heavily. He can’t heal in the middle of a fight, but the wounds diminish his speed and movement just by a little bit.

Realizing that Daring Do somehow learned Hamon, Esidisi pushes aside his shock for now and takes no time to leap towards Daring Do now.

With his boiling blood leaking, Esidisi is now dangerous to even touch so Joseph quickly gets up and throws Hamon clackers to his forehead once he gets close enough leaving him no time to react and dodge the attack.

Once the hit connects, Joseph grabs Daring Do close to him using Hermit Purple after he retracts his stand from the entire area making it pitch black everywhere. They both keep silent as Esidisi grows impatient with every passing second of bleeding. He saves his blood by wrapping his muscles and rearranging his veins to reserve his ammo.

A singular attack would be ineffective so he pulls out his veins and starts flailing them around as they weakly drip for conservation.

“I used Hermit Purple on the fallen leaves earlier while you bucked him, and I have a plan.” Joseph silently whispers to Daring Do.

“Alright, what do I do?”

“I gotta do this alone.”

“What?! That’s dangerous, I gotta help. You can’t beat him alone.” Daring Do pleads with genuine concern.

“Well, it’s either you make it or break it baby.” Joseph arrogantly answers as he gets up.

“Aaah!” Joseph screams as a drop of blood burns his hand.

“You’re open!!!” Esidisi exclaims as he throws a punch towards the general area of the sound he’d heard. With luck, his hit connects to Joseph’s torso though with Hermit Purple wrapped around his body acting as body armor, he turns out fairly damaged but still fine. Joseph returns the punch infused with Hamon and Hermit Purple to Esidisi’s forehead leaving him bleeding all over.

Esidisi wipes his face to regain his vision but decides to stop toying around and finish this already. He forms a circle in front of him with his veins and starts moving forward slowly.

Hermit Purple gives Joseph an awareness of the situation that he’s surrounded all around. He can tell that Esidisi is toying with him and that he’s cornered so he pulls out Hermit Purple with Hamon to provide light considering that hiding in the dark is irrelevant at this point so he might as well use it to his advantage.

“It’s over Joseph, unless you’ve still got something up your sleeve.”

“Believe me, I do.”

“That’s funny, so do I.” Esidisi condescends as Joseph screeches in pain from a sweltering heat that burns his leg. Esidisi cornering Joseph was just a diversion for him to slowly walk into the puddle of blood that he severely bled earlier. Esidisi is also fairly strategic and resourceful in combat and now he’s temporarily disabled Joseph’s movement for the rest of the battle by scalding his foot.

Joseph didn’t see that coming, and now he’s regretting that he didn’t look where he was going… but he’s not done yet.

Just then, a barrage of sharp leaves strike Esidisi as he once more gets bucked in the same place he got bucked before. Daring Do had been resourcefully creating a large ammunition of sharp leaves using her newfound Hamon by solidifying the leaves with a little mud and heat. The heat can do the job just fine, but the mud makes it thicker and harder to break. It’s not exactly the strongest, but they’re sturdy and sharp enough to hurt.

Esidisi screams from the impact though he keeps a harder front by not budging and returning a counterattack by grabbing Daring Do on the neck and throwing her to a wall of trees. (It’s all an act so he throws her just enough to launch her but also just enough to make it seem real.)

She lands on the wall by her back and the impact was pretty bearable. She felt that, but it doesn’t heavily hurt. Esidisi turns back to Joseph and starts walking towards him.

All part of Joseph’s plan, Esidisi steps on the clackers that Joseph threw earlier. With a little Hamon, Joseph uses his Hermit Purple to roll the clackers causing him to trip forwards. Right before his face slams onto the floor, Joseph gets up on one foot and slams Esidisi’s face as hard as he can onto the puddle. His face is now overflowing with blood and he gets up as quickly as he can.

While he slowly regains his vision from wiping the boiling blood from his face, his first sight is met by Joseph slapping sand in his eyes, which was his final trick up his sleeve.

The sand at first just heavily irritates his eyes with unbearable pain, but it only gets worse as Joseph inputs his Hamon to the sand. “Take this! Hamon Overdrive!!!” the sand quickly turns to hot glass which blinds both of Esidisi’s eyes.

Desperate to at least land a mortal wound, Esidisi makes a bolt towards where he last saw Joseph and goes all out. Concurrently, Daring Do pushed Joseph to safety as he himself couldn’t walk fast enough.

He doesn’t stop running so he inevitably hit the wall of trees and breaks through it. Joseph and Daring Do can now escape and Esidisi is basking in the sunlight.

Daring Do and Joseph limp towards the hole and find an unmoving Esidisi lying down on the floor.

“So this is what sunlight feels like huh? The sensation is… oddly nice.” Esidisi lets up as he knows he’s done all he can. He decides to spend his last moments to converse with his enemies freely since they’re the only people that’ll witness his death.

“You did good, Esidisi.” Joseph genuinely praises Esidisi’s efforts.

“No… do not praise me. I know that truly… you pity me, do not pity me for this is all part of the natural cycle of living. Though I shall return it, you’ve done well to beat me, Joseph Joestar.”

A little silence build between the three of them as Esidisi quickly speaks up before he disappears, “I’m not sure if anyone’s still there but you, brown stranger, you’ve done good as well. You’ve improved quickly, even quicker than Joseph when I first met him. You’ve done really well so I leave you with a last piece of my wisdom. There are no evil people in the world… only people with different goals. I spent my life following the goal of my master, Kars. All the way until the end… even until now… I bid him luck in his journey towards his goal. I bid you luck in your journey as well. Your goal beyond this adventure, if you survive after you fight Kars… I bid you luck to achieve your goal. You may be my enemy, but I have a respect for people who work their way towards their goals. I guess that’s my piece, I’m already starting to fade away. Hehehe, who knew this was how I would end… but I guess I did enjoy my life. Forgive me, my masters… forgive me… Kars.” that is all that Esidisi could say as he finally crumbles to dust and is taken away by the wind.

“He was strange to say the least. Just earlier he was our enemy that was trying to kill us and then he talks with us like we were friends right before he dies. Despite that, if he was our enemy… then why don’t I feel right about beating him? I feel all heavy inside.” Daring Do somberly asks Joseph as her eyes start to slowly well up.

“Well, it’s like he said, there are no good or bad people in this world. He just happened to be one of the people that was opposed to our goal. You know… he might’ve been a good person aside from his goals, but now we’ll never know. All I know is that we gotta keep moving forward. I feel bad too, but we can’t just let there be a slaughter and have everyone die. At the very least… it was the lesser of two evils, and like he said, he bids us luck towards our goal. I think it’s best for us to work towards our goal like he said.” Joseph calmly answers Daring Do in an attempt to comfort her.

“I… I guess you’re right.”

“C’mon, we’ve got a Red Stone of Aja to get, the race ain’t over yet!” Joseph vigorously exclaims with strong conviction.

“Alright, let’s go!” Daring Do replies matching Joseph’s enthusiasm as she wipes her tears away with her hoof.

“Ow!” Joseph blurts out as he takes a step when he feels pain from his burnt foot.

Daring Do and Joseph just stare at each other as they burst in laughter seconds later.

“C’mon slow poke, we don’t wanna lose that race now do we?” Daring Do lightly teases Joseph.

“Hehe, hold on. I can’t move now.”

“Do I have to carry you there?” Daring Do condescendingly jokes around once more.

Joseph smirks as he gives a straight solution to their problem. “Nah. Here, I’ll teach you something else about Hamon.”

Daring Do simply smiles and nods as she makes her way to Joseph. The light is still bright all around and our adventurers still have hours to spare before high noon.

They’ve got the upper hand as they’ll reach their destination within the day and the sun still shines brightly, but will they get there before the rest of the Pillar Men? What scheme does Kars have in mind to get to the Red Stone of Aja first? Will Daring Do and Joseph be able to fend off Wammu and Kars from taking over the world? Find out next time on Daring Do’s Bizarre Adventure.

*To be continued*

Author's Note

Hello fellow Jojo fans, as you can tell this entire chapter and a few further ones are entirely Jojo references. I know this diverts from the feel and vibe of previous chapters but I thought this would be a pretty nice addition of spice and adventure in the tales of our Anon in this fic. I figured it’d be prettt great if we added a little more action just to the side and give our Anon a little change of pace from his day to day life. I know it’s a little complicated for Anon here but it sure is fun, and that’s an exception for him. I’m not sure if this chapter took longer than usual to post but my official school work comes in about 2 days so we’ll see how my schedule goes. For the meantime, I hope you enjoyed this chapter as I’m sure some of you have been excitedly waiting for it. As I said it’s a bit different from the usual but I’d like to know what you thought about it. As you can tell too, you definitely already know what the next chapter’s about. There might be just part 2 or 3 but we’ll see, it was originally supposed to be a one shot chapter but the adventure really is bizarre so it turned out to be longer than I expected, so I decided to post it in segments to build up some hype too, so I suppose the longer story is a good thing. For now, have a good day and I really hope you enjoyed the read. Also props to Araki for making one of the best anime of all time (Jojo/JJBA) and let’s enjoy Part 5: Golden Wind.