Chapter Text
A voice screams out at them and a wave of nausea hits Dream hard.
His eyelids were suddenly heavy and his legs trembled under his weight. His mind went hazy and blank. At the heat of the moment, all he could focus on was to let it all go and rest. At that moment all he wanted to do was to lay down and sleep as his mind sugar coated all of his concerns and worries and ultimately dissolved into nothing as he lays down in peace. Away from all his problems. Away from the pressure of being the heir to the Speedrunner Foundation. Away from the E gg -
“Sapnap, kick down the door,” Dream commands, massaging his throbbing head.
Beside him, his partner smiles weakly. It seems like he was affected too, just as badly and probably even worse than he was. This one was strong. Definitely strong, well at least have the potential to. If he could pass through his and Sapnap’s defenses, then there was no doubt that they have found themselves possibly a formidable ally. If they help nurture him then there was no doubt that he would be one of the most powerful users alive.
“Never thought you’d asked,” his partner and friend grinned through grit teeth, his bandana soaked with sweat.
And that was what he did.
“Stop using your ability damn it!” Sapnap roared as he kicked down the door. He took wide strides towards the user before stopping his tracks. His eyes zeroed onto a man on the floor.
Oh. It was the guy that Sapnap has the hots for.
“Karl!” He says as he runs towards the unconscious man. He turned to his partner with desperate eyes, “he’s under a trance, he’s not waking up!”
“Step away!”
In between them was the user himself, George Lore. The man who was hit with a stand blade a couple of months back.
“No, you step away,” Sapnap growled, “you’re the one causing all of this.”
“Me?” George exclaimed, his brown eyes darkening, “don’t be ridiculous-”
“Woah woah , yeah right,” the black haired man snapped, “you may be in a ‘delicate’ situation,” he air quoted, “but putting it on Karl was way too far!”
“Hey!” Dream bellowed, he sidesteps in between them. This was getting too out of hand. “Both of you calm down.”
George seethes in fury. “Calm down?! You expect me to calm down after this maniac breaks down my doorway-”
“Oh yeah?” Sapnap growls, “you’re the one not answering our calls when we were clearly behind your fucking do-”
“That’s enough!”
All of a sudden, glowing green strings enveloped the room like a spiderweb or perhaps like the strings carrying a marionette. The tension pauses and the atmosphere turns cold. Dream willed the strings to do his bidding and with a snap they were suddenly connected onto George and Sapnap’s limbs. The rope passes through the appendages like light shining through a glass. He manipulated his strings to take away the tension seeping from their bodies. After a moment the strings were snipped swiftly by a blade and things started to calm down.
George felt less alarmed and Sapnap was feeling less enraged from the sight of Karl being unconscious.
After a while, things seem to dissipate. George looked at Dream in confusion, before paling and widening his eyes at the sight behind him.
Shadowing Dream was a green cloaked figure with a monstrous axe strapped behind the creature’s back. His face was obscured from the world by a white circular mask with a simple drawn smiley face on it. He wore dark cargo pants with black boots. Bundles of glowing green rope were wrapped around his shoulders, around his hands and some rolled up and hung on both sides of his hip. The being seemed to be glowing and what was peculiar about it was the fact that it was floating behind the blond man, like a guardian ghost.
“W-what’s that,” George mutters as he steps back a little. No doubt feeling a bit spooked.
“This,” Dream says as he points behind him, “is what you would call a ‘stand’.”
“A what?” He faltered.
“A ‘stand’ is the living manifestation of your life energy,” he explains calmly, “since it stands next to you, it is called a stand.”
“That sounds like a rather silly origin on why that- that thing is called.” George replies.
Behind Dream, Sapnap muttered, “tell me about it.” Dream shoves at him.
“Why are you telling me this?” George says.
“It is because you yourself have one as well.”
George presses his eyebrows. “You're lying,” he tells him, “I don’t make green strings appear and I am definitely sure that I have no green smiley thing following me behind my back.”
Dream sighed, “you are, whether you like it or not, and if you aren’t then you would be seeing nothing behind me. If Karl was awake then he would just say that the temperature has dropped or something.”
“The fact that you’re seeing my stand is proof that you are one of us,” Dream said slowly. After a minute or two Dream willed his stand to disappear from view and return to his body.
The shorter man took a deep breath, possibly to calm himself down. He stared at Dream with a new found resolve. “What does that have to do with anything?” He asks calmly, "why are you here?"
Dream met his eyes and said, “every stand user has an ability unique to them, mine has the power to control people’s minds and emotions in a certain radius while Sapnap’s one can manipulate temperature.”
He leveled his gaze on the unconscious Karl. “You too have an ability,” he tells George, “something that might be related to all the bizarre things that have happened to you lately.”
George paled. “So, what you’re saying was that I-” He looks at Karl then back to Dream, “I did this?”
Sapnap stepped forward. “Yes you did,” he snarled, “either you put him back to normal or I’ll fry your insides to crisps.”
“I don’t- I don’t know how!” He cried.
Sapnap stepped forward again, the atmosphere suddenly felt warmer. “Then try! You-”
“And that’s enough!” Dream interfered again, “Sapnap," he says his name like a kindergarten teacher chiding a child, "unlike the both of us, he doesn’t know what he’s doing.”
He looked apologetically at George. His life at the moment might be extremely hectic with the new changes and such and with almost zero explanation until recently. The new information plus the realization that he may be the reason for Karl's condition must have been overwhelming.
“I am sorry that we went off on the wrong foot,” Dream says in the most formal voice he could muster, “we’ll elaborate better once we help Karl into a better position.”
Now that Karl's been brought into the equation, George has no choice but to comply.
Once Dream, Sapnap and George settled Karl into a much more comfortable position on the couch, the duo sat on the couch opposite the one Karl had been laying on. While George sat adjacent to the sleeping man. There was a moment of awkward silence before Dream spoke up.
“You must be wondering: “Why are these stand users in my house claiming that they might know about my sleeping problems”,” he stated, “correct?”
George rolled his eyes, “yeah Mr. Obvious.”
“It’s Mr. Was-Taken, actually,” Dream corrected. Sapnap snorted beside him. Dream jabs at him with an elbow, his eyes still fixated on George.
“We’ve received reports that you have been stabbed just a couple months ago by a mysterious person.”
George nodded. Of course, that was all common information.
“It has come to our conclusion that the weapon he was using is what is called: a 'Stand Blade’, the blade is an artifact which dates all the way back to the Aztec period.” Dream explains thoroughly, “essentially, they are responsible for turning normal people to Stand users.”
“I can’t believe this,” George groaned, “all this sounds ludicrous!”
“Hey! Actual stand user here! Hello?!” Sapnap grumbled in his seat.
Dream tells his partner to shut up once again before continuing. “The blade has been under the Was-Taken family’s watch for generations since it was discovered,” his voice darkens, levelling George with a serious look, “however, exactly 8 months and a week ago, the blade has been stolen under our care and has been attacking innocent civilians since then.”
He paused for a moment to let George digest the information. It was a lot. He continued.
“According to our research about 12 people have been brutally stabbed in the abdomen, all in the same way. What’s worse was that all of these attacks have no pattern in regards to time, date or even venue. There would be an attack at Manburg Square and then the next month would be at the corner of Boomerville.”
“So,” George said carefully, “there are now 12 stand users, 13 if it includes me?”
“No, they’re all dead,” Dream deadpanned with a blank look.
“Oh.”
“Turning into a stand user is a complicated process.”
Sapnap butted in and says, “basically if the blade thinks you’re cool, you live and you get a cool superpower for the rest of your life.”
Dream rolls his eyes. “Yeah what he said.”
“What do you mean by “for the rest of your life?”,” the new stand user prodded. Dream and Sapnap remained silent.
“So, what you’re saying is that I’ll be sleeping for the rest of my life?” He snarled.
Dream looked startled and shook his head frantically, “no, no! That was just- just-“
“-your stand manifesting!” Sapnap continued for him.
“So, my supposedly super cool power is manifesting by taking precious months off my life? ” George seethed.
“Everyone’s stand manifestation is unique to themselves,” Sapnap explains, “the fact that you’re awake, running and walking with energy is proof that your stand is ready.”
George crossed his arms and leaned back on his seat. “Then what about Karl?”
“I think that was just your power getting out of control,” Dream said exasperated.
“Well if it’s my fault, how do I help him?”
The blond stood straight up on his seat. “Well for starters, you could let your stand out.”
George thinks that they are idiots. He had to be delusional. There was no way that that thing that had just emerged from Dream was real. It was fake, it had to be. Up to that point, George was merely amusing them, not taking them seriously. And then the maniac himself asked him to do the exact same thing. These people were out of their minds!
“You’re crazy,” he says, “you’re actually insane!”
“What?” The raven haired man said, looking shocked and angry at the same time. “Until now, you still don’t believe us?”
Dream sighed. “Look, I know things have been difficult for you and Karl lately, but you have to give us a chance.” He spared Karl a look of pity. “If you really want him to get better, then please,” the blond pleaded.
George was pushed to a corner now that they have brought Karl up. Though deep down, George knew they were right. The display earlier was too real to be faked. Even his body knew that it was not fake, the goosebumps on his forearms showed exactly that. They claimed that they knew what was wrong and knew how to fix it. He just was not expecting the root cause of it all.
And now that Karl was involved, he knew that there was no doubt that they were right. He felt power surge through him from his outburst earlier, he was just in deep denial. He just did not want to think that after everything Karl has done for him, George would be the cause of his current suffering.
George sighed, looking defeated. Anything to make Karl wake up. He'll do anything, even sing on top of his lungs on top of the roof. “Fine,” he muttered, “what do I have to do?”
Sapnap, the asshole, grinned wildly. “Ok, so just imagine your stand to stand next to you,” he instructs helpfully, “a stand is basically a manifestation of your soul, life energy and mind. Just will it to appear and it will.”
George cannot help but roll his eyes. ‘A manifestation of your soul, life energy and mind?’ Seriously? That sounds something one would find in a twitter biography.
He closed his eyes and focused on… his stand. He imagined a figure to appear right next to him. He caused it and so he must be the only one who could reverse it. After all, it was his ‘ability’.
A few heartbeats later he heard Sapnap gasp while Dream let out a satisfied hum.
“Is it- is it there?” George questions, hoping that it was so he would not look like an idiot.
Sapnap whistled, “it sure is.”
“You can open your eyes now,” Dream tells him.
And he did and he could not believe his eyes. A floating figure with round white rimmed goggles with black lenses floated in front oh him. He had the exact same physique as him. His skin was tinged blue and dotted around his body were brooches or perhaps containers designed like red mushrooms with white dots. Unlike Dream’s, he had no cloak, but he held a similar aura. Behind his stand, he saw Dream and Sapnap starting to struggling keeping their heads up. Their eyelids looked like it weighed ten kilograms. They were getting sleepy.
That was his ability, he realises. His stand has the ability to make people sleep.
He wandered his eyes to his stand. Somehow, he just knew that those brooches were not just accessories. They contained something and that something was probably the reason why the people around him were dozing off.
His mind went autopilot and on his brain were simple instructions:
“Wake them up.”
The stand took one of the containers, which instantly clicked open similarly to a locket. White fog, almost invisible to the naked eye but just enough to see if one was looking hard enough, started to emerge from each of their heads, going through them like a ghost. The container was somehow sucking them inside until no fog was seen. As the fog quickly began to dissipate, the people around him started to come back to their senses. Miraculously, Karl’s eyes started to blink and soon enough he was not sleeping anymore and he looked very confused.
“What- what happened?” He said, looking around confused.
A part of him felt guilt, but the other felt nothing but happiness once he woke up. “Karl I-“
“KARL!”
The brunette was suddenly engulfed in a bone crushing hug from Sapnap.
“Sapnap!” Karl gushes, red tinting his cheeks, “you’re here!”
The black haired man grinned cheekily, “wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
Behind them, Dream simply waved a smile grazing his lips.
Immediately Karl noticed George who, for once in his life was ignored, felt very awkward. His eyes softened, a hopeful smile on his lips.
“George?” Karl whispered as Sapnap let go of the hug,” are- are you okay? You’re not feeling coma-y, are you?”
Now that he mentioned it, George does not really feel all that weak and frail . Sure, Sapnap said the same thing earlier. Or words to that effect. Now George really, really looked at himself; his arms did not feel heavy anymore, his body was not trembling at every movement and his eyes did not feel tired at all.
He was… awake. Alive.
George was bewildered to say the least. He looked back at Karl with wide eyes and nodded slowly, his lips parted like a letter ‘o’.
Instantly, the room burst into a wild celebration. George and Karl hugged each other fiercely, both sobbing happily. The other two from the Speedrunner Foundation only smiled and looked at each other, happy that the long term problem was finally solved. Not only that, but George has somewhat learned the grasp of his power. For a long time- he felt good.
George’s life has changed forever because of the incident. His problems may be solved, but if he lets the words of Sapnap and Dream taken into consideration, he will be stuck with this new found power. Whether he likes to or not.
Seeing the two overjoyed ultimately brought a smile to his face. All in all, he was genuinely glad that it has all worked out in the end. But of course, there is always going to be a downside.
Whether it be fate or destiny. The life of a stand user is a very dangerous one. Even if they refused to use their stands, a life of peril is inevitable. After all, as they all say, stand users attract other stand users.
And not all of them are good people.
Now, George has to learn to adapt to a new world. A world he has never seen before. The world of stand users. George currently has two choices, either accept his new surroundings or deny it.
Either way, both choices lead to the same outcome.
Dream sees potential in George. With his power, he may be able to help and subdue the perpetrator in the end. It was only fitting. The man who caused it all, stopped by the consequences of his own actions.
Things were starting to get really interesting. And Dream was looking forward to see how it ends.