Reference "The dream of a knight" 1504 by Rafael Sanzio.
During my art history class, my teacher mentioned that painting and I immediately had this idea. And what I read about the original, it's like the knight's choice between these two sides, or also may be these two things that involve being a knight. What in the original is the woman on the left is the virtue, I thought about the duty and obligations that Gyro has as the oldest son, and for the woman in the right is the pleasure, I thought about the sentimentality.
Honestly, I struggled a lot with the flower that Johnny is holding, I chose to draw the one Gyro is holding in the latest promotional art with the rest of the Joestars. It's a yellow plum, and for what I read it means compassion, hope, and friendship.
Okay, so I have this headcanon that at the age of 13 Gyro was kinda mimicking his father's hair style. Its not that visible, but if you tidy him up it is kinda the way he is headed - and I drew little doodles to make my point.
Once that infatuation with his father went away he reverted back to his standard long hair. Basically choosing his own path and being a rebel against this system can be seen in his design (or, it can be just something I came up with and Araki had no intention of doing or implying).
Despite any critiques I may have of the story, you just can't beat Part 7 when it comes to the scenic landscapes. Anyway, this is the "Wrecking Ball" arc.
This arc introduces two new enemies who are out to get Johnny and Gyro. The first is Wekapipo, a Neapolitan exile who once served in the royal guard. Years ago, his sister married into a wealthy and influential family, and he thought she was set for life, until he discovered that her husband was beating her so badly that she had lost her sight. Wekapipo appealed to the Pope to get the marriage anulled, but his ex-brother-in-law challenged him to a duel to save face.
So they had their duel, using Steel Balls instead of swords, and Wekapipo won... a free trip out of Naples, because even though he killed the rat bastard, his father was too big a wheel in the kingdom, so Wekapipo was exiled by the other Steel Ball guys, I guess. Among these was Gregorio Zeppeli, Gyro's father.
It should be noted that Wekapipo's main concern in this was not for his own welfare, but his blind sister, who had no other family to care for her. Later, when President Valentine recruited Wekapipo to kill Johnny and Gyro, he offered U.S. citizenship for Wekapipo and any family members he wanted to bring into the country. But Wekapipo told him that he had no surviving family, as his sister had died in Naples.
Also, it doesn't look like Wekapipo has any personal stake in this mission. He's accepted the job of killing Gyro, but he doesn't seem to hate him, nor does he mention wanting revenge against Gyro's father. It seems more likely that Valentine learned enough about Gyro's Steel Ball techniques that he decided he needed to fight fire with fire. And Wekapipo fits the bill. He has similar training, and he's an outcast, so there's no pesky loyalty to the king to stay his hand.
Meanwhile, Johnny and Gyro are somewhere on the Straits of Mackinac, which connect Lakes Michigan and Huron. They have to cross the frozen waters to get from the Upper Penninsula to the Lower Penninsula of Michigan. The problem is that the ice isn't quite thick enough for the horses to safely cross. At the same time, they don't want to linger for too long, or they'll fall behind the other racers.
While they try to make up their minds, a wolf keeps following them around, and Gyro says it's because Johnny gave him scraps from breakfast.
Johnny spots Pocoloco and some other racers crossing the strait, which kind of forces their hand. They decide to risk following Pocoloco, and hope he found a safe way across. Gyro suspects that he must have located a "Native Path", referring to an American Indian custom of leaving logs in the water so they become frozen in the ice. This reinforces the ice along a path that's safe enough to travel. Gyro was hoping to find this himself, but if Pocoloco is already crossing then it can't be helped.
I haven't really discussed the race standings in a while, because quite frankly they don't really matter anymore. Sandman was a top contender for a while, but he's dead now. I was confused why this page showed Diego winning the 1st stages but I'm pretty sure it's because he got bumped up a spot after Sandman failed to show up at Chicago. Mountain Tim was doing well at first, but he's dead too. Hot Pants emerged to fill the void, but she's made it clear that she's only participating in the race as a cover for her mission to capture the Corpse Parts. And Johnny only entered this thing because Gyro was entered.
So the only serious racers in the lead are Gyro, Pocoloco, Diego Brando, and Norisuke Higashikata. Diego still wants to win, but he's been taking it easy for the past few stages while his horse recovers from injuries sustained in Kansas. And Pocoloco and Norisuke are... barely in this story.
Initially, it seemed like the narrative flow of Steel Ball Run would see supporting characters show up throughout the course of the race, then drop out and be replaced by new characters. Mountain Tim was a key player for a while, then he's out and Hot Pants is in. But no one's really showing up to take Sandman's spot in the cast. Dot Han seemed like he might become important, and then he died almost immediately. Norisuke Higashikata has been around a while, but he never does anything to impact the plot.
On the other hand, Pocoloco is still doing really well, but he's become a virtual afterthought in this story. He seemed to be an important player when the story began, but now he's just a name near the top of the rankings. Gyro wants to beat him in the 7th Stage, but not for any personal reasons or to settle a rivalry. He just needs to score some points to stay in the game.
But before Gyro and Johnny can begin their crossing, they get attacked on the ice by Wekapipo and his ally. Gyro recognizes Wekapipo, but he never knew him all that well.
We get a flashback to when Wekapipo's sister was brought into the hospital after breaking her shoulder in an accident. Gyro realizes that she's blind from optic nerve damage, and he determines that his father had treated her before, but did not perform the surgery that could restore her sight. Gyro wants to do it now, but his mom, who is assisting him in surgery, warns him against this.
So let's talk about Wekapipo's powers. His Steel Ball is like Gyro's excpet it's orange and it has fourteen smaller balls built into it. These "satellites" pop out during his attacks, and when they hit Johnny and Gyro, they suffer several seconds of "left side ataxia". This is a condition where you can't see the left side of your body. I think this is a real-world thing, but Araki has expanded it to include the awareness of one's left side as well. Like, even if Johnny grabbed his left arm with his right, he wouldn't be able to tell he was doing it.
This leads to the other bad guy in this arc, Magenta Magenta. He has a Stand named "20th Century Boy", which basically makes him indestructible while he uses it. The Stand disperses the impact of any attack down to the ground, in this battle, the ice. The drawback is that he can't move while the Stand defends him. His sole purpose in this battle is to stay on the left side of Johnny and Gyro and shoot them with a gun. Magenta Magenta kind of sucks.
Here, we see Johnny's nail bullets have no effect on Magenta Magenta, although the dispersed attack does direct the force into one of his guns. It doesn't matter, though, since Magenta Magenta has more than one.
What Johnny and Gyro don't pick up on right away is that the wolf that's been following them around out here is in possession of the next Corpse Part. Wekapipo knows, however, because when whatsisface took the Corpse Parts from Johnny in Milwaukee, he observed a map of Lake Michigan that appeared in the snow. ANd there was an image of a wolf on the map too.
So when the wolf shows up, Wekapipo and Magenta Magenta make sure to shoot it so they can take the Corpse Parts later.
Despite Wekapipo's skill, he insists that Gyro is not to be taken lightly, as the Zeppeli Family knows the secret of enhancing their Spin with the Golden Rectangle. The implication is that Wekapipo doesn't know how to do this, which is why he chose this particular battlefield. Gyro taught Johnny to seek out the Golden Rectangle in nature to use as a reference for spinning his nails, but here on the Mackinac Straits, there's just ice in all directions. Johnny can't find anything to use as a reference, because he usually relies on plants and animals. Gyro can still use things like his hands and Johnny's eyes, but that's about it. Also, one of his hands got messed up during the fight, so his options are rapidly dwindling.
We see another flashback to Gyro being a doctor in Naples. He attempted to perform the surgery that his father wouldn't, but he failed. This was because of a sudden burst of steam from a nearby teapot just as he was preparing his Steel Ball for the procedure. This somehow threw him just enough off his game that it didn't work, although he's certain his father could have done it.
For what it's worth, his patient, Wekapipo's sister, doesn't take this very hard, since she's been blind for a while, and she's just grateful that Gyro was able to treat her other injuries.
In the present, Gyro's other hand has gotten hurt during the battle, and now he can't find any Golden Rectangles either. I really like the distorted, incomplete rectangles in the art here. It's a great way to showcase Gyro's abilities failing him. Now Wekapipo has the advantage, because his techniques still work perfectly, while Gyro's best skills are unavailable to him.
At one point they seem to be cornered, as Gyro has lost his Steel Balls, but he uses one of Magenta's bullets as a projectile and launches that at him instead. It just ricochets straight up into the air.
Magenta taunts them as he approaches, and Wekapipo warns him to finish them off now while he has the change, but then the bullet Gyro used comes back down and goes straight through Magenta's head. His Stand wasn't there to protect him because he was unaware of the danger.
I'm not sure how Gyro made the bullet autotrack Magenta like this, but earlier we saw him use the Steel Ball to take an X-ray of that blind woman's head, so whatever. Magenta's out of this fight.
But that still leaves Wekapipo to deal with. Gyro does his best, and even manages to score what looks like a clean hit, except Wekapipo repels Gyro's bullshit Steel Ball powers with some bullshit Steel Ball counter.
They go again, and this time Wekapipo's sattellite balls hit the ice where the dead wolf is. It falls into the water, which is bad news for Johnny and Gyro, because they were counting on using the wolf's body to find a reference for the Golden Rectangle. Wekapipo anticipated this and cut them off.
So Gyro is screwed, right? Well, it sure seems that way, but...
As Wekapipo prepares to finish Gyro off, he reflects on his failure to win the race or do anything else with his young life. Then he things back to what his dad said after he failed to save that woman's eyesight. Once more he uses the analogy of the tennis ball that hits the net. The Zeppelis cannot interfere with the outcome of certain things, because they're in God's domain. Something like that anyway.
But the Zeppelis can, and do, believe in miracles. So at the very least, Gyro can pray for the ball to fall on the other side of the net.
And that's what happens in this battle. Snow suddenly appears, and Gyro can use the snowflakes to find his Golden Rectangle.
Armed with this, Gyro launches his Steel Balls with greater power than before, and this shatters Wekapipo's Steel Ball with ease.
Wekapipo's mistake was to sink the wolf's body. Doing that caused water to splash up into the air, where it froze and came back down as snowflakes. In his effort to deny Gyro the Golden Rectangle, he ended up handing it to him on a platter.
Johnny pieces together the rest of it. The wolf only had anyone's attention because Johnny surrendered the Corpse Parts to Valentine's goon, who saw the map with the wolf on it, then reported it to Valentine, who passed the information to Wekapipo. So this was all one huge coincidence, or... perhaps, a miracle.
In the flashback, Gregorio explains to Zeppeli that the reason he didn't save the woman's eyesight was because her ex-father-in-law would surely have her killed if she weren't blind. Ironically, the blindness saved her from a much worse fate. And so, Gyro reveals to Wekapipo that his sister is still alive. Gyro's dad put her up somewhere in the country, so whatever reports Wekapipo had about her death were untrue.
Also, the wolf is still alive? Maybe?
Gyro spots a piece of wood in the ice and discovers the Path he was looking for earlier. So Pocoloco didn't find it after all, which means they can cross it themselves and probably do it faster, since it's a sturdier way.
After losing, Weakapipo tried to kill himself, but Gyro stopped him. He wanted to tell Wekapipo about his sister, but also, he asks him to look after Lucy Steel, since she's probably in danger right now.
Moving on, Chapter 55 does a brief retrospective on how Gyro and Zeppeli have traveled. They can only cover 50-70km per day. Anyone going faster than that is written off as a threat, because sooner or later they'll wear out their horse or end up dead. In the north, they would camp out and rest whenever the wind was blowing against them.
Then we see the final stretch of the 6th Stage, and all the riders go all out. We see Pocoloco and his Stand, Hey Ya, one more time, and I think this might be their final appearance in Part 7. This always bugged me, because I really enjoyed Pocoloco when I read SBR for the first time in 2017. But the more I think about it, the more sense this makes. What else can you do with a guy who always wins? Even defeating Pocoloco is kind of cheap, because it undermines his incredible luck power.
Johnny has a dim view of Pocoloco as a jockey, but Gyro doesn't buy that. If he's a third-rate horse rider, why is he so far ahead in the race? The answer is that he's got one-in-5-billion luck right now, but they don't know that.
Anyway, Hey Ya leads Pocoloco to a more favorable course, which leaves Johnny and Gyro on a path that leads to a crevasse. Except Gyro throws his Steel Ball, which somehow unwinds itself into a length of wire, and their horses run across it.
So that's how you beat Pocoloco's luck. You just have to whip out a skill so profound that no amount of luck could overcome it. Gyro wins the 6th Stage, putting him back in contention to win the whole thing.
Meanwhile, Magenta Magenta is still alive, and he wants revenge on Wekapipo. He recalls hearing them talk about Lucy Steel, so that gives him an idea. Well, I forget what he ended up doing from here, but I hope it was better than his presence in this arc, because all he did was shoot guns and get wounded.
This is the "Tusk" arc, but first we have another flashback to Gyro Zeppeli's days working in the dungeon of Naples. Some lady prisoner went bonkers and bit a guy's finger off, and Gyro hesitated before finally calming her down with his Steel Ball powers. During the scuffle, she tore up his collar.
Gyro's father, Gregorio Zeppeli, has trained him to take his place as the palace executioner, but he's concerned that Gyro is too distracted by sentimentality to do the job properly. He observed, correctly, that Gyro was slow to react because he felt a twinge of pity for this small, beautiful girl.
I think Gregorio comes off like the bad guy in this story, so let me say a few words in his defense. As cold and harsh as his attitude may be, his job is to kill people for the state, and his objective is to accomplish this as mercifully as possible. As backward as it may sound, empathizing with the condemned prisoners can lead to greater suffering, like the guy getting his finger bit off.
Gregorio isn't just telling Gyro this because he's an uncaring bootlicker, although that might be true as well. The point is that he's gotten this far in his career by maintaining a sense of professional detachment from his work. The best way to care for the prisoners is to keep a healthy emotional distance from them.
And the more I think about that, the more impressed I am with Gyro's conflict with his father. I can see where Gregorio is coming from, but I can also see why Gyro is having such a hard time accepting this, to the point where he'd enter a transcontinental horse race just to avoid following his advice. It all comes back to Fate as the overarching theme in JoJo. Gregorio has accepted that the prisoners are doomed to die, and he can only control how much they suffer on their way to death. Gyro is too fixated on Justice, another major theme in JoJo. He wants to believe the people he executes truly deserve it, but the Zeppeli's aren't on that end of the criminal justice system.
Later, Gyro finds the little boy prisoner, Marco, who has repaired his collar using a fish bone found somewhere. Marco doesn't know why he's in the prison, so he's trying to do whatever he can to make a good impression on his jailers, just like he did when he worked for the baron before the failed coup.
Gyro is clearly touched by Marco's gesture, but he doesn't want to let it get to him, especially after the episode with the woman prisoner. The next day, he learns that the boy is condemned to be executed, and that's what leads Gyro to enter the Steel Ball Run.
In the present day-- well, 1890, but that's present-day enough for the moment-- Gyro has led Johnny to the "Zombie Horse" a boon from the King of Naples that someone left for him. Johnny was thinking it might be some kind of magic horse with healing powers, like Dende from Dragon Ball Z, but in horse form. Turns out it's just a thread someone stuck on a rock, and the thread is arranged in the outline of a horse.
Gyro calls it a "crappy mural", but I think it looks pretty cool.
The purpose of the thread is to stitch Gyro's right leg back together. It got blown up in the previous Stand Battle, but apparently it didn't get blown apart. Like every major injury in JoJo, it only looks horrific until it becomes clear that the character survived. Then they can just put a Band-Aid on it and walk it off. Johnny's sole concern with any of this is that the thread is all dirty from being out in the desert.
According to Gyro, this doesn't matter, as the Zombie Horse thread does have some sort of special healing power, though nothing too wild. It'll heal Gyro's leg faster than ordinary stitches, and apparently it doesn't need to be sterile or anything.
But enough about Gyro's leg, let's talk about Joseph of Arimathea. In the Bible, he's the guy who took Jesus Christ down from the cross after his death from crucifixion. Note that we're not talking about the carpenter who raised Jesus. That's a different Joseph.
Joseph of Arimathea was a rich man and a "secret" disciple, which I always interpreted to mean he was a believer in Christ's teachings but wasn't ready to go public with it. He arranged for Jesus' burial, putting him in the tomb Joseph had originally purchased for himself.
This is why I've never had much interest in people trying to find Jesus Christ's tomb. It's a tourism thing or something atheists like to chuckle about, but it's kind of dumb because the Easter story establishes that you can pretty much put anyone you want in these tombs, and they're not necessarily going to stay in there.
Like, okay, I'm going off on a tangent here, but whatever. It's my blog. Blame Araki for writing Jesus into his manga. The way I was taught the story, they didn't dig graves back in those days. You had a tomb carved out of a rock or whatever, and they put a big stone in front of the entrance to seal it. The thing is, you kind of had to get that set up well in advance, and Jesus was executed at a pretty young age, so he wouldn't have a tomb ready to go. Joseph of Arimathea stepped up and provided his own tomb, which is a nice gesture. Nice enough that I have to assume his allegiance to Jesus didn't stay "secret" for long.
Anyway, the Pharisees were worried that someone would steal Jesus' body from the tomb, because Jesus' disciples believed he would rise from the dead, and someone might try to pull off a hoax. So they asked the Roman authorities to post guards at the tomb.
The problem was that Jesus died so close to the Sabbath that there wasn't time to prepare the body properly. So after the Sabbath, Mary Magdalene and at least one other woman went to the tomb to annoint the body and complete the funerary rites. They weren't sure how they were going to get into the tomb, though, but that ended up not being an issue, since they found the guards asleep and the stone rolled away. Also the tomb was empty and an angel (or two) informed the women that Jesus was alive again.
I bring all this up because somewhere in the 2000's I remember a lot of hype about some expedition discovering a tomb with Jesus' name on it, and it "proved" that Jesus died got buried and stayed dead like everyone else. This is dumb because anybody can be buried in anyone else's tomb, regardless of whose name is on it. In the Bible story, Jesus is buried in Joseph's tomb, and it's apparently not that hard to open it up and take him out. The guards were there to make sure that didn't happen, and the women were at least hopeful that someone would open the tomb for them to do their business. So even if you don't want to believe that Jesus let himself out, it's still extremely plausible for his body to have been relocated or swapped out with different corpses.
And if you don't believe in the Resurrection, why would a tomb with Jesus' name on it mean anything? If we're chucking the entire Gospel account, then why believe he was put in any tomb at all? Who's to say Jesus wasn't cremated at sea?
The reason I'm still annoyed with that story twenty years later is that finding Jesus' tomb doesn't settle anything, and yet there were people acting like it did somehow. It reminds me of people trying to "prove" that pro wrestling is fake, like there's some secret evidence that will collapse the entire industry once it's made public.
I seem to remember a pastor of mine describing a trip to the Holy Land and visiting one of these purported tombs of Jesus and he joked that he looked inside and confirmed he's definitely not in there. And I think there's some value to seeing what the tombs from that era looked like, if only to provide some context to the story. But the tomb itself isn't the point. The point is the occupant got up and left, and you're never going to prove that one way or the other.
Where was I going with this? Oh, right. I'm a Protestant, so for me Joseph of Arimathea's story begins and ends with Jesus' burial arrangements, which is sort of like being Clark Kent's optometrist. Not entirely irrelevant, but easily overlooked. However, Joseph became a legendary figure in early Christian mythology, which has him traveling to Britain to found a monastery, among other things. I suppose this reputation as a traveler is what led Araki to choose him for this story, because Part 7 introduces the idea that Joseph of Arimathea drew a map of North America centuries before it became known to Europeans.
Meanwhile, Gyro and Johnny are still fighting off other racers who want to collect the bounty on Gyro's head. This guy is F.V. Stroheim, a German with some sort of fancy gun on his arm. Bullets only sort of annoy Gyro because he can use his Steel Balls to... I don't know. I guess it makes his skin tougher? So Stroheim threatens to shoot Johnny instead, and he demands that Gyro throw down his Steel Balls. Gyro agrees...
But it's a trick! Apparently the Steel Balls can also carve lots of stone balls out of the rockface Gyro was leaned up against, and they have spin too, so they fly out and hit Stroheim as soon as Gyro puts down his hands. Eh, fair enough.
During all the excitement, Johnny fell off his horse and apparently cut his hand, but then his flesh splits open and a corpse's hand emerges. Mondays, am I right?
Meanwhile, Stephen Steel receives reports of racers passing through the Devil's Palm, including Gyro Zeppeli. Steel asks if it's possible that Gyro might have found something like, oh, I don't know... a corpse? Maybe part of a corpse? His aide has no idea what the fuck he's talking about, but Steel's guest on the train certainly does. As far as he's concerned, Gyro definitely found the corpse, as confirmed by Oyecomova.
Okay, wait. Back up. Oyecomova searched Johnny and Gyro's stuff in their hotel room. But the he got caught by MOUNTAIN TIM and had to blow up the entire hotel. Immediately after that he got in a fight with Gyro and Johnny, and he lost. So two questions:
When did he have the chance to send a message?
Why would he confirm that Gyro found the corpse? Apparently it's been in Johnny's left arm this whole time, so how would Oyecomova have found it when Johnny didn't even know he had it?
Steel's guest then produces the same map that Joseph of Arimathea created centuries ago. And it becomes clear that there's a secret agenda behind the Steel Ball Run race: the route follows the points on the map, which apparently denote pieces of a corpse. Riders with Stand abilities are apparently able to discover these pieces, and will eventually gather them together as they head for New York.
The only real question is whether Gyro knows anything about the corpse. Little is known about Gyro, so it's possible that he entered the race to find the corpse pieces for himself. And if he's a rival, that means he needs to be eliminated.
Stephen Steel objects to murder, but this guy overrules him, and Steel defers to him, addressing him as... the President of the United States.
We'll get into this guy later, but for now, what matters is that the Steel Ball Run is actually a great game for control of these corpse pieces, which have something to do with Joseph of Arimathea. And Johnny has the left hand of the corpse and didn't even know it.
To deal with Gyro, the President dispatches one of his agents. Johnny and Gyro are just riding along, when Johnny turns around and sees Gyro's horse running without a rider.
Then the horse disappears too, folloed by Johnny's horse.
Johnny takes cover under a rock shelf and sees the enemy using hooks on lines to capture their targets. Johnny is less concerned with the how and more with the why. They already took the horses and Gyro, so what more could they want? Then Johnny realizes they want that corpse arm inside his body, because it's the only thing on his person, and the enemy has already looked everywhere else.
Speaking of the enemy...
Sigh...
You know, some of these Enemy Stand Users just try my patience. I don't mind the crazy ones of the androgynously sexy ones, but the really stupid rando ones are just so obnoxious. This guy looks like the Rock-Paper-Scissors kid from Part 4 had a baby with Secco from Part 5.
This is "Pork Pie Hat Kid", and his Stand is called "Wired". His deal is that he has a dish of water and a winch in his mouth. he can lower hooks into the the dish, which acts as a portal above his target.
Somehow he uses animals as "lures", but I don't understand how that works. A beetle gets to close to Johnny in his hiding place, and when he brushes it away, the hooks get him.
Then, as Johnny is dragged out of his hiding place, this pink creature crawls out of his left arm and keeps repeating "Movere crus", which is Latin for "Move your legs". Johnny doesn't know Latin, and I'm not sure he'd understand anyway, but then the creature hops onto his left leg and causes spinning blue toenails to shoot out of his boot. They fire straight up and nearly hit PPH Kid, so I guess that water dish portal leads both ways.
PPH Kid loses track of Johnny, but also discovers that Gyro managed to throw his Steel Ball while he wasn't looking. This didn't accomplish much except to dig a line into the ground, which will point Johnny in the direction of the enemy. The question is, will Johnny follow the line away from the enemy, or towards him? But Johnny has already decided. He won't hand over the corpse, and he won't forsake Gyro. Both of these things have become his hope in life, and he's willing to fight for them. Johnny is determined to complete the race with Gyro and collect the rest of the corpse parts.
And this is kind of an important moment for Johnny, because it resembles similar moments for all the other JoJos. For example, Jolyne had a chance to escape the prison, but chose to go back inside to investigate the plot against her father. The difference is that the other JoJo's had a more concrete reason for answering the call to (bizarre) adventure. Johnny has become very passionate about the corpse parts in a very short span of time, but it's pretty similar to the way he glommed onto Gyro's Steel Ball powers. Both produced a reaction that caused Johnny's legs to move, and he wants to know more.
No one has promised Johnny that this quest will help him walk again. No one is even hinting that this is a possibility. I'd argue that Gyro has been actively trying to manage Johnny's expectations. But Johnny still wants to see this through anyway. For him, it's less about finding a sure thing, and more about investigating the possibility.
PPH Kid can't find Johnny because he's slowly moving through the dirt, like Bugs Bunny tunneling to Albequerque. So he releases Johnny's horse, figuring the horse will seek Johnny out by his scent. Also PPH Kid pours gasoline around Johnny and ignites it, figuring he can burn the guy alive without damaging the corpse part too badly. Johnny can't hit PPH Kid with his fingernails, so he's kind of screwed.
So instead he tosses out a decoy, which he... carved from a chunk of wood? In the desert? Just carved an entire figure of himself, 1:1 scale. Tossed it through the flames. Well, whatever works. He names his Stand Ability "Tusk" because it's more powerful than just a nail. I'll never understand that name, but it's fine.
Johnny almost gets to Gyro, but PPH Kid uses Gyro as a lure to pull Johnny through him. This complicates things because Johnny can't aim at PPH Kid with Gyro's body in the way, and if he's not careful he'll get pulled through Gyro, which will surely kill one of them. Well, probably not Gyro, since we've already seen him survive a leg explosion, dirty stitches, and a gunshot wound.
Gradually, the tide turns against Johnny, and it looks like he has no choice but to surrender, but he doesn't want to. He refuses to give up this hope that he's found.
And while Johnny explains that, Gyro spots his Steel Ball in Johnny's pocket. Impressed that Johnny would go to such lengths to bring it to Gyro, he tries to battle on in Johnny's place...
But it doesn't work. Gyro's down, and Johnny finally agrees to surrender the Corpse Hand. In the end, his devotion to Gyro is greater.
As PPH Kid leaves, Johnny is despondent that his Tusk ability appears to be gone. I think he believed that the Corpse was what gave him the Stand ability, and he can't use the Stand without the Corpse. But that isn't quite right.
Johnny's nails aren't spinning on his hands, but the nails on the corpse's hand are spinning, because Gyro made them spin. Uh... how? You know what? Whatever, it's fine. The bad guy gets shredded by spinning fingernails, that's all folks.
So with all that settled, what does Gyro know about the Corpse? Turns out, he doesn't know anything about it, and he doesn't care either. His mission is to win the race and earn an amnesty for that Marco kid in Naples. He never heard about a corpse and he doesn't want anything to do with it.
He does suggest to Johnny that if the corpse is so important that bad guys would kill for it, then it must be the corpse of an important person, possibly a Saint. He reasons that European kingdoms have taken possession of holy relics, including the body parts of Saints, and they've prospered as a result. This corpse has already made Johnny's legs move and it gave him his Stand ability, so that's two posthumous miracles right out of the gate.
But what is a Saint doing in North America? Well that's a whole other story.
Gyro looks out and spots Diego Brando and Sandman racing along, so it's time for him and Johnny to get back on track and skedaddle.
You drew Padre Gregorio hot af I'm not even into him that way 😭 hes one of my favorite characters in the entirety of SBR I just wanted to say specifically I love how you drew his nose!!!
HAHA yknow I genuinely didn't mean to it just sorta Happened and halfway through I was like oh.... hello.... but thank you sm!!!
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Chapters: 43/?
Fandom: ジョジョの奇妙な冒険 | JoJo no Kimyou na Bouken | JoJo's Bizarre Adventure
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Johnny Joestar/Gyro Zeppeli
Characters: Johnny Joestar, Gyro Zeppeli, Hot Pants (JoJo), Diego Brando, Funny Valentine, Lucy Steel (JoJo), Stephen Steel, George Joestar, Anne Joestar, Gregorio Zeppeli
Additional Tags: Hurt/Comfort, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Fix-It, Pining, Requited Unrequited Love, Friends to Lovers, Canon-Typical Violence, Ableism, Internalized Homophobia, Self-Acceptance, Getting Together, Sharing a Bed, POV Alternating, Alternate Ending, Medical and Rehab (spin) Inaccuracies, Kissing, Hand Jobs, Blow Jobs, Anal Fingering, Bug bites fetish, Ass Play, Finger Fucking, Dirty Talk, Top Johnny Joestar, Bottom Gyro Zeppeli, Dom/sub Undertones, Johnny Joestar is Still Disabled, Friends Are Chosen Family Aren't, Your tradition is not mine, Politics, Post-Canon, meet the in-laws, Travel, Alternate History
Summary:
“The best miracles are imperceptible to the world.” – Unknown author
While Gyro is exiled in America, life keeps going for Zeppeli family.
Gregorio ponders over his eldest son’s fate and whole family after Naples’ fall.
*updated every Sunday* (post-canon)
Snippet:
Everything had been broken.
Gregorio once heard about an art from the Far East—called kintsugi—whose meaning was to use gold to repair what’s been cracked. It must have been by Gyro, after he’d read about it in a book, and shared the image with him, his father, comparing this as the power of Golden Spin. Gregorio wasn’t a man to apologize. And naturally, Gyro had followed his example, writing words he thought but wasn’t feeling, expressing rather regrets for himself than something he got true remorse.
Gregorio knew he’s partly at fault, had done harm and behaved wrongly to a young man doing his best through difficulties.
It had been complicated at that time to be empathetic. His own father had never been toward him either. The seizure Gregorio suffered had left him so angered, frightened and frustrated against everything, he behaved like never before, and lost more than once his temper with his wife and eldest son when things were especially hard for him to accept.
Gyro leaving, it had already made Gregorio reconsider.
Despite this new disapproval about abandoning the family for doing sports, Gregorio had benefited half a year to take a step back. Thinking about how things could be once Gyro would come back.
He wasn’t entitled to make his son’s life miserable for being asked by the King to honor the country and making Naples’ citizens proud and happy. Whatever the results. Whatever how bad, or how inappropriate the initial motive for that appeared to Gregorio. Whatever the consequences at any scale.
But how were you supposed to fix anything when the other part was halfway around the world?
