“Now that’s what I call a drink!” Cajole Joyride slammed his empty glass back on the counter and hiccuped. “It’s been some time since I’ve had this much.”
“Yeah, you really need to watch it.” Josher himself only had a single glass to drink, wanting to be on his toes in case Die Die Riches were to do something again. “You can’t save the world if you don’t know what you’re doing.”
“Hey, we didn’t really know what we were doing when we challenged the Nugget People.” Cajole hiccuped again.
“Alright, how many cards am I holding up?” Josher whisked two cards between his fingers.
“Uhh, hmm, eight.” Cajole tapped his son on the forehead.
“Yeah, you definitely have had too much.” He slid his hands back towards his chest and the cards vanished. “Great. Just what we need. Now I’ve got to carry your weight too.”
Just as a cuckoo clock went off just above the bartender’s head, the main entrance slid open as Joshi Horner walked in, hands in his pockets. Josher was still getting used to his name. It was very much similar to his and it was a little weird that he had been named after both his dad and Shiho’s mother.
“Ah, Josher, Cajole. There you are.” Joshi waltzed over and hopped up onto a stool beside them. “I see one of you had too much to drink.”
“Nah, me?” Cajole chuckled. “I had like, a bottle.”
“More like two bottles,” Josher added. “So, uh, Joshi. I take it you have a plan to track these DDR folk?”
“Ah, that’s what I’m here to discuss.” He ordered a glass of lime juice from the bartender. The bald, skinny man nodded and grabbed a glass from the shelf before grabbing a transparent juice dispenser from the counter. He held it up with two fingers and bent his arm at a strange angle as he poured the juice. “So Weather Alternate is still tracking their base of operations, but it’s definitely somewhere in Europe. We’ve found traces of them transporting cargo along the highways instead of the docks or the airports.”
“That’s good. We can’t let them just kill people like that, rich or no.” Josher shoved his glass aside. “No one should ever take the lives of others into their own hands, even if it means making the world better. You can’t kill a bunch of people for the good of many.”
“Well spoken, Josher.” Joshi accepted the glass of juice from the bartender as he slid it over. “Now, I’m taking you over to our head office, but my father is quite busy now with the aftermath of these Die Die Riches attacks, so he won’t have time to host you, the Berliner Helden, as he calls you. Heroes of Berlin.”
“I wasn’t even there then,” Josher said.
“Well, you get the point.”
“Right. Well, we should at least start by getting out of the bar.” Josher pushed his stool back and got off. “I don’t want my dad ordering another drink.”
“Hey, I can use another drink. It tastes so good. Mmm!” Cajole licked his lips, then suddenly, barfed everything back out. The bartender jumped back in surprise as bile dripped down his counter.
“No, you don’t. Come on, Joshi.” Josher grabbed his father’s wallet from his back pocket and dropped a thousand euro note on the counter. “Sorry, that’s for the drinks and the clean up.”
As Joshi and Josher dragged Cajole away, the bartender watched them go as he grabbed the cloth from his shoulders.
“Rich people… They always think they can do what they want…”
—------JO-JO—-----
Past a few blocks, Cajole had begun to feel a little better and he started walking on his own two feet again. Josher and Joshi let go of him and he started stretching his arms.
“Man, I could use another drink,” Cajole said.
“Nope. Nope. You don’t, dad.” Josher shot him a glare. “You threw up all over the bartender. I gave him a little extra for that. I think I should’ve given him more, now that I think about it.”
“Relax. Your father isn’t the first person to puke in a bar,” Joshi snickered. “But jokes aside, we should head for the train station. From there, we’ll stop at Weather Alternate’s head office to plot where we go next.”
“Yeah, let’s do that.” Josher nodded. It would be nice to get on some public transport instead of walking everywhere.
The walk to the train station was no more than fourteen minutes. The bar they had been on was at a fairly popular and populated street, and to place a station nearby was a good idea on the town planner’s part. That meant that all the shops along this street would be thriving.
Josher’s father still looked a little woozy and he wasn’t sure how he would handle stairs. Instead, they opted to take the elevator down, queueing up behind all the older folk wanting to do the same. The path curved off from the escalators heading down, leading to a small corridor where a single set of elevator doors stood. It was a boring hallway too, with no ads or posters for them to look at to pass the time.
“Gee, there’s a lot of old people in Berlin,” Josher analyzed. “They must’ve all been survivors of the battle.”
“You’d be surprised.” Joshi twiddled with his phone in his hands. “A lot of people managed to get out, those living at the edges of Berlin, before the wall came up. And this place is all they knew. Once it was up and ready for people again, they came straight back.”
“Well, it’s good they came back. Otherwise, Weather Alternate would’ve built the whole city back up for nothing.” Cajole rubbed at his face and groaned. “This is going to be a while…”
“I told you not to drink so much.” Josher gave his father a pat on the arm. “But not bad. For an old man.”
“You clearly haven’t seen how much your grandfather can drink.” Cajole let out a small laugh as he ran his fingers through his hair. “Anyway, how far is this headquarters of yours, Joshi?”
“It’s situated in Leipzig, near Mount Fegel, which I’m sure you remember,” the boy replied. “The train will take no more than twenty minutes.”
“Ah. Yes, that brings me back…” Cajole shook his head. “To times I don’t wish to go through again. Blast it with this Die Die Riches stuff!”
“If we find the head of the snake, we can cut it off sooner, maybe stopping their future plans,” Joshi said. “If we’re lucky, we’ll get them before they can cause more world panic.”
“Uh huh. With our odds, that’s unlikely…” Cajole sighed and pressed the elevator button as the last person in front of them went down. “The chances of us being attacked, I’d say, is quite high, since we’re aiming to stop them now.”
“What, really?” Josher made a weird face. “They’ll come after us?”
“It’s a possibility. But I don’t think they will.” Joshi lifted a finger. “They want to kill all the rich people in the world. From what we know, they don’t have much resources because they’re against the rich. I don’t think they’ll devote people to specifically hunt you down.”
“I guess you’re right about that.” Cajole shrugged and was the first to walk into the elevator as it opened up.
The elevator they were in was a fairly small one, with four metal sheets as walls. They were sleek white and glossy, letting Josher see a dark reflection of his general shape, but not his detailed facial features. Four lights were positioned in the four corners of the box, giving it decent lighting, but that was it. It was as boring as the corridor they had been waiting in.
There were only four buttons on it, one being this level, the other being the level below, and the open and close buttons.
“Simple enough,” Josher said as he pressed the button for the floor below as the doors slid close with a hiss of air as it sealed them in.
The elevator began to descend and everything fell silent around them. They even stopped talking and Josher was sure he could hear his own heartbeat. The descent was painfully slow, maybe because he was aware of everything that was going on around them without any distractions. It was funny how time seemed to slow down when you were watching it, especially when you wore a watch. People spend so much time looking at the time. But what happens when you run out of time?
Almost as if it was on cue, the metal box they were in shuddered and jumped up a step before halting completely.
“Is… this normal in Germany?” Cajole took attention to this and looked around.
“Nein.” Joshi began pushing buttons randomly. “The elevators don’t even break down anymore with our advanced German technology. That’s why we don’t have an alarm button anymore. Something is wrong.”
“Great. Just what we needed.” Cajole threw his hands up. “We’ve lived all this way just to die in a small metal box.”
“No one’s dying. You forget I have my Stand, Blitzkrieg.” Joshi snapped his fingers on both hands as his Stand appeared beside him, its arms folded. “Blitzkrieg can take over any electrical machine and even make it perform better. German engineering, eh?”
His Stand reached an arm out to the console, but as the lights began to blink on it, there was a groaning from above and the entire elevator suddenly gave way, dropping faster than a speeding car.
“W-What is going on? Joshi, whatever you plan on doing, do it now!” Josher’s feet began to leave the ground and a pack of cards lifted out of his shirt pocket.
“Blitzkrieg, override!” Joshi yelled as the lights above them began to flicker on and off.
The elevator’s mechanisms suddenly kicked in and Josher was caught by surprise, falling back down on his face. Cajole and Joshi dropped on their feet and the elevator wobbled another inch before stopping completely.
“Everyone alright?” Cajole placed a hand against his belly. “I think I might throw up again.”
“No, not in here, dad!” Josher rubbed at his cheek and quickly moved away from his father’s front.
“Kehehe, you foolish rich people. As if Die Die Riches wouldn’t come after you!” a voice echoed around them, coming from somewhere in the elevator.
“Where is he?” Joshi looked around, but the elevator was small and there was no way anyone else could be hiding in here with them.
“I don’t know how you’re keeping this elevator up, but it won’t be for long. That I can assure you!” the voice said. “You think you can just go anywhere and do whatever you want just because you have a lot of money.”
“Where are you, punk? Show yourself!” Cajole beat a fist around the walls.
And then the elevator shuddered again and a metallic groaning could be heard from somewhere above them.
“Wait a minute…” Cajole looked up at the ceiling. “Make some room.”
As he shoved Joshi and Josher to one side, he conjured up Tenacious D, which barely had enough room to stand in as it punched a hole through the ceiling. As the ceiling gave way, its fist hit something metallic and bounced back, knocking itself in the face.
It vanished as Cajole fell against the wall, clutching a bloody nose. “What the…?”
Above them, they could make out a greenish-shape with hexagonal patterns. Then it moved away, revealing the face of a smiling bald man staring back down at them. But it wasn’t just some random bald guy.
“It’s that bartender. From earlier!” Josher pointed a finger at him.
“Kehehe! You recognized me!” His grin widened. “That’s right. I followed you here after you vomited all over my bar! I knew you were rich, seeing how much alcohol you ordered and how you just throw your money around. I decided that you deserve to die and I couldn’t have been more pleased when you walked right into this metal death trap!”
He revealed a pair of pliers in one hand.
“He’s trying to cut the cables!” Joshi surmised. “My Stand can control machinery, but I can’t do anything about that.”
“That’s right. Kehehehe, prepare to die!”
“I’ll get you!” Cajole tried to grab him by the face, but the metal plating moved back in front of his face and his fist rebounded off its surface, smacking himself in the nose again. “Augh!”
“There’s nothing you can do against my Stand!” The man laughed. “Today, remember, it is I, Jared Round, the best bartender in all of Berlin, and his Stand, the Turtles, who ends your rich lives.”
Joshi waved a hand and Blitzkrieg folded back the rest of the ceiling, revealing a second identical shell on top of the man. Both of them folded around him, resembling that of a turtle.
“We’ll just have to crush you at the top, then!” Joshi said and had his Stand power up the elevator to send it back up.
But it could only travel about five inches when the Turtles twisted its position, lodging themselves against the sides, stopping the elevator completely.
“Sorry. But my Stand is invulnerable to all things, kehehe,” Jared Round explained. “Even your Stand will not force this elevator past mine. You’ll just have to wait there until I cut the lines. Then plunge to your richly doom! Kehehe!”
“Joshi, keep pushing the elevator!” Josher yelled. He looked around the metal box they were in and grumbled. His Stand was larger than the space here and that meant there was no way he could use it unless they thought of something fast. He also thought of sending it up above the Turtles and Jared, but there was no way he could get past their invulnerability, even with Down Under’s brute strength.
“Ach. I’m trying, but he won’t budge!” He looked at his Stand that still had a hand on the elevator console. “And if I push it too hard, it’ll damage the machinery faster and we might find ourselves falling the rest of the way down.”
“Maybe we can get up past him.”
Cajole jumped and grabbed the hole in the ceiling, then reached one hand between the shell and tried to pry it out of place as Joshi worked the elevator. His muscles bulged as he pushed with all his strength, but Jared’s Stand was lodged tightly into the wall, scraping against it as the elevator and Cajole fought to move it.
“Kehehehe, your lives are over!” Jared peeked his face out of his Stand again. “You’re not stopping me and soon I’ll be through the wires and you’ll all be pancakes at the bottom of this shaft!”
Cajole shifted his hand to try and punch him, but he ducked back behind his shells of a Stand again and he hit his knuckles against it, only to have it rebound and hit himself again.
Josher got out of the way as his father landed where he had been standing, then looked around, trying to find something, anything that could give them an edge in this predicament.
The impact must’ve snapped one of the cables, because the entire box shifted and shuddered, now tilted down to one side. Jared Round began laughing again above them as he sheared away at another wire with his pliers.
“You’re going to die down here, kehehehe! Jetzt geht's los, jetzt geht’s los!”
“Okay. So we shouldn’t go for a frontal attack again.” Cajole rubbed at his bloodied and bruised face. “Another impact could send us down faster than planned.”
Josher continued to look past the shells of the Turtles. Above them, there was nothing much but an emergency ladder, water pipes, valves and the remaining machinery of the elevator keeping them up. Jared was already through two of the wires and if he even managed to get the last one, their combined weight would surely pull the elevator off its last wire and they’d all find themselves crushed at the bottom of the shaft in less than thirty seconds.
And then he saw it. An opportunity. He didn’t know how well it would work, if it would work in time or if it would even work, but right now, they didn’t have much more to go on.
He was going to have to take a gamble here, but at least he was no stranger to gambling.
Being a master of cards since the young age of eleven, Josher had always been quite the swindler, even back in elementary school. Once, he had bet a bully that he could guess the card he was holding as he stood five feet away. The bully was arrogant beyond reason, so he accepted the challenge.
In actuality, there had been no way for Josher to tell which card he had picked, even if the back had been marked, because the bully stood far enough for the details to blur away. But little did he know, Josher had already planned this before he stepped into the cafeteria. By placing a mirror on the opposite table, once he got the bully to stand in the right spot, he could guess the card immediately. He hadn’t just won four dollars that day, he had also shamed the bully in front of everyone and he would remember that moment for the rest of his life. That had been the first time he stood up against people who tried to force their will on others and today, it was no different.
Reaching an arm out, Josher concentrated and brought his Stand up above the Turtles. Looking through the eyes of Down Under, Josher targeted the pipes along the sides, smashing them with an anchor Down Under carried. They immediately burst, spraying it and the Turtles with jets of water, which began to drip down the shaft.
“Du narr, what are you doing?” Jared poked a head out to watch the water sprinkle around his face. “You can’t smash the Turtles, I am invincible in here!”
“Oh, I’m sure you are, Mr Round.” Josher smiled. He could see water droplets entering the Turtles and it was then that he knew he was going to win. “But I wasn’t aiming for you, if you didn’t know.”
“What? You mean you smashed those pipes for nothing?” They could hear his guffaw from within the Turtles. “Face it, your end will come.”
“No. It is yours. You see, my Stand isn’t just a force of nature.” Josher made Down Under place a hand against its face as it stood next to the Turtles, towering over it. “When it touches water, Down Under gains even more power and speed and that means that it might be able to get your Stand out of the way!”
Reaching around the sides, Down Under bent low and once its fingers were placed nicely against the bottom shell, it began to pull with all its might. As water splashed against it, orange glows began to pour out from its joints and with a mighty roar, it ripped the Turtles from its spot against the walls, freeing the elevator. But they weren’t done yet.
As Joshi stopped the elevator with Blitzkrieg, Down Under began smashing the Turtles and Jared against the pipes, bursting more of them.
“Your Stand might have got me out of the way, but as long as I stay in here, you cannot harm me!” Jared said, still trying his best to tell them they had no hope. “The Turtles are invulnerable to all attacks and the stronger you are, the more its reflected off its shells! You can’t stop me, you rich buffoon!”
“I can’t break through your invincible Stand, yes.” Josher lifted the corner of his mouth as he removed the cards from his deck. He spread his arms apart and launched the cards from one hand to the other. “But if you’ve noticed, water can get in.”
Jared Round’s eyes widened with realization as Down Under slammed him and his Stand into the stream of water from the pipes. Water began pouring into his shells, and it was then that Jared found that the shape of his shells made it bad for him to be in water. It could just collect it and when enough water was collected…
“Nein, I have to find a way out!” Jared pondered his options as water began to rapidly fill his Stand’s hollow space. “If I don’t do something, I’ll soon drown. But if I lower my Stand to try and get away, then these rich people could possibly kill me! Either way, I don’t see how I can get out of this alive!”
He screeched with fright as Down Under peeked its head through the hole between his two shells, but as long as he was between his Stand, it couldn’t kill him. Now he had to decide: was drowning a less painful death than being crushed by a Stand?
Nein, I can find a way out of this. I will make it out once I get out of my Stand! I’m not dying here, not to the likes of these people who think money can just be thrown about!
As the water began to rise up to his nose, Jared decided to risk it and get out of his Stand. The Turtles lifted off his body and faded, allowing him one final kick off as he jumped for the emergency ladder to get out of there.
But before he could even put one foot on it, a giant weight smashed into him and crushed him against the wall.
“Gagh!” Jared coughed up blood and tilted his eyes back. Down Under had smacked the end of its anchor against him.
He already couldn’t feel his body and all his bones were broken. This was the end for him.
“R-R-R-Rich people… How c-c-could you…” He dropped to the ground as Down Under removed its weapon and faded.
“That takes care of that.” Josher arced his cards over his head and around his shoulders, then raised one hand in front of his face as he caught them all, before placing the other arm behind his back. “We outsmarted him.”
“That you did, boy.” Cajole shook his son’s arm. “Well done.” Then the water from above splashed down against his face. “Pleh. We better get down to the train before the authorities find out we’re the ones who broke these pipes.”
Then something brown splashed down on his head and he swiped a finger through it and put it to his nose.
“Oh.”