Battle Damage | A CaeJose Story

Caesar

TW for intense injuries (and intense emotions ig?)

The weak part of him didn't want to go.

The weak part of him wanted to stay there under the eaves with JoJo and forget about everything else.

Snow crunched under his feet as he walked away and tried to crush the thought. This was what he had to do. This was what he had known he had to do since he had watched his mother's eyes go dull with the shouted warning still on her lips, the stone faces of the pillarmen impassive behind her. He knew she hadn't recognized him. Why would she? What had been left to recognize? Not the cold green eyes. Not the ragged clothes or the wrench tucked into his belt. Not the family name he had given up.

Caesar took a breath of frigid air and imagined the cold numbing everything else. The boarded-up windows of the hotel stared back at him like empty eyes.

He had to do this.

The iron gates swung open soundlessly when he pushed them, opening onto the empty field of snow before the hotel. He couldn't help thinking that it wasn't the best position to attack from, but he shrugged it off as he stepped into the open. There was no sliver of view to the outside world from inside the shuttered hotel, even if anything had been watching.

The crunch of his footsteps was magnified in the quiet. Above that, his heartbeat was a steady thrum in his ears, just a little too fast for him to convince himself it was purely alertness. Idiota. This was what he had been waiting for, wasn't it? This was what he had been -

The doors of the hotel burst open.

Caesar was in a fighting stance before a single thought had crossed his mind. Only as the bite of adrenaline flooded his body did he register that the gaping doorway stood empty. No. A shiver slid up his spine. He squinted across the twenty feet of snow, waiting for his vision to clear, but it remained - the shimmering outline of a tall frame, barely visible.

Then the light twisted, and it was gone.

The field of snow was perfectly still. Caesar stood motionless, the pounding of his heartbeat no longer an even thrum. He could feel the sun on the back of his neck - he could see his shadow on the snow. Impossible. Wasn't it? It had only been there for a moment. If it had even been there at all.

The first attack came from the left, an impact that sent him flying. He twisted midair to land on his feet, each muscle coiled like a spring. It only took him a few seconds to pick out the shimmering distortion. Beneath it, footsteps in the snow. How - ?

The apparition blurred into motion again. A high jump. Caesar forced the question out of his mind. Breathe. His eyes locked to the distortion as it arced toward him. For the sliver of a second as it obscured the sun, he could make out the dark, narrowed eyes, the thin braids.

Wamuu.

He dodged in a fluid motion seconds before she hit the ground. The hiss of the near miss filled his ears. The hiss of wind. He whirled to face her as she unfolded from the impact, a blurred, translucent silhouette standing in the sunlight. Wind. The rush of it seemed unmistakable now. He could see where it wrapped around her, the sunlight bent and refracted through water vapor. An invisible, immaterial armor.

Caesar kept his voice cool. "Nice trick. Why don't you come out and face me for real?"

"Where is the other one, human?" The deep, disembodied voice sounded surprisingly angry. "Where is the one who killed master Esidisi?"

Caesar dropped the cool tone. "Not here." He brought his hands together, the thin film of soap slippery against his fingertips. "But I assure you, he hasn't been the only one training since we last met."