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“Roll constitution.”
Diego curled his lip. “How is this constitution? I fell off my horse, that should be just a plain strength saving throw.”
HP was unfazed by his sour expression. “It’s constitution because I’m the DM and I say so. So roll it.”
Diego grumbled and grouched, but he rolled a D20 anyway.
“Seventeen with my modifier,” he said.
HP pursed her lips. “You pass out.”
“I what?” Diego nearly flipped the shitty card table that they had their setup on. “Seventeen is a great roll, how the fuck did I pass out?”
Johnny just rolled his eyes watching this mini-tantrum take place. Diego was always like this— questioning HP’s story, challenging rolls, and generally being a little bitch. For as much as he complained about getting sucked into their ‘nerd game’, he took DnD way too seriously.
They’d been at this particular game for a little under a month now. It was actually a sort of DnD knockoff called Steel Ball Run, where the conceit was that the players were competitors in a cross-continent horse race. Gyro had found it in a thrift store and insisted that they give it a shot. That was how they ended up here: Johnny, Gyro, Diego, and HP, sitting around a folding table on a Friday night with a bunch of papers, pencils, and dice scattered around.
“Johnny and Gyro have advanced in front of you in the race,” HP went on, ignoring Diego’s outburst. Johnny and Gyro high-fived while Diego fumed.
“This isn’t fair,” he said. “You’re railroading so hard right now.”
“Let me do my job,” HP said.
“Honestly, I’m sick of this blatant favoritism.” Diego folded his arms petulantly. “My character would never just ‘fall off his horse’. He’s the prince of British horse racing!”
“You came in first in the last stage, is that not enough for you?” Gyro said. He idly pushed his dice around— a bright green set with golden numbers. “I got fourth and you don’t see me complaining about favoritism.”
“Seriously? You wouldn’t stop bitching about how Johnny beat you!” Diego said.
“That was in-character complaining,” Gyro said. “It’s called role-playing, Diego. I’m playing a role.”
Johnny resisted the urge to scoff. He was pretty sure that Gyro was actually a little pissed in real life about Johnny pulling ahead of him in the last stage. He could be just as bad as Diego when it came to competition. But he was Johnny’s boyfriend, so Johnny had an obligation to stick to his side in any and all arguments against Diego. He’d let it go for now.
Diego scowled, making a point of taking out his phone and looking at it rather than at any of the other players. “Whatever. It’s your nerd game, do whatever you—“
He suddenly stopped, his brows drawing together as he read something on his screen. Gyro and Johnny looked at each other, then back to Diego.
“What’s up?” Johnny asked. “Something wrong?”
Diego straightened up and put his phone face down on the table. His face had suddenly become all too placid. “No. Everything’s fine. Let’s continue.”
“About time,” HP said. “Johnny and Gyro, you’re approaching a village in the Rocky Mountains close to the location indicated by your last clue…”
---
Johnny had a bad feeling about this.
Ever since he and Gyro’s characters had arrived in the mountain village, Diego hadn’t said another word, nor did HP mention what his character was up to. He was just sitting quietly as if waiting for his turn. Menacingly.
Of course, HP waited until Gyro’s character went outside to drop the following bombshell:
“Johnny, you look out the window to see a familiar figure crouching outside. It’s Diego.”
Johnny frowned, while Diego smiled just a little too wide. Johnny’s bad feeling increased tenfold.
“What the fuck is Diego doing out there?” he asked.
HP nodded to Diego. “Take it away."
“Rocks,” Diego said, still grinning like the Cheshire Cat. “I’m eating rocks.”
“What?” Johnny said incredulously. Was that supposed to mean something to him? Or was Diego just trying to throw him off?
While Johnny wracked his brain, Gyro chuckled a little. “You’re such a freak, in character or no.”
“Shut up, you’re not in this scene,” Diego said. “That’s right, Joestar. I’m eating rocks.”
“Yeah, I got that,” Johnny said. “But why?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know?” Diego sneered. “HP, I’d like to do a Perception check on the environment.”
“Go ahead,” HP said.
Diego rolled. “Twenty-four with the modifier.”
Twenty-four! Johnny was not buying this. Even if he did roll a natural twenty, that was damn high! He tried to peek at Diego’s character sheet to see if his modifier really allowed for that, but Diego covered it with his forearm and gave Johnny a dirty look.
“No cheating,” he said. “HP, what do I notice?”
HP raised her eyebrows, but otherwise gave no hint in her expression as to what was going on. She described the scene as if nothing was odd. “Your senses are sharper than they’ve ever been. Especially your sense of smell: to you, the world is now a painting of aromas rather than colors. You can smell various natural odors on the desert breeze, as well as more domestic scents: fire smoke, human bodies, coffee brewing—“
“What kind of coffee?” Diego interjected.
HP arched a brow. “It’s generic. It has a pleasant smell. You can tell that it’s coming from the house where Johnny and Gyro are currently making camp.”
Diego smiled wider, if such a thing was possible. “Why, how convenient that my best pals are making some delicious coffee right about now! I follow the scent.”
“Hell no you don’t,” Johnny said.
“Are you still wondering why I was eating those rocks, hm?” Diego asked in a tone that was entirely too shit-eating to be comfortable. “It’s for digestion, Mr. Joestar. It helps your stomach digest. It crushes what you ate inside the stomach. They’re called ‘gastroliths’. Most meat-eating creatures do this.”
“That’s bull,” Johnny said. “Like, lions don’t do that shit.”
“It’s a health method learned from birds and alligators!” Diego said. “Don’t fact-check me, I know what I’m talking about.”
He donned his smug ‘in-character’ voice again— at least, Johnny thought he was trying to be ‘in-character’. He wasn’t sure, since it was Diego after all. “But you’re making coffee, aren’t you? Mind if I have a cup?”
Johnny looked from Diego, to HP, to Gyro. Diego still had that infuriating self-satisfied expression on his face; HP was neutral as ever; Gyro just shrugged as if to say this is on you. Johnny looked back to Diego.
“HP, I want to do a perception check on Diego,” he said.
“What are you looking for?”
“Anything weird about him. Like, about his body or mannerisms.”
He rolled his iridescent blue D20. The pink number that sat face-up read 14. Not horrible, and he had a plus one in Wis. He read the result out to HP, who nodded.
“You notice Diego moving strangely,” she said. “His movements are more animalistic than before, you would say. He sniffs the air, licks his lips, and holds his hands in front of him. He’s still in full gear, including gloves, and he has a small bandage patch on his right cheek.”
“Just a small bandage? What happened to his wound from before?”
Diego pursed his lips.
“I told you, I’m doing great,” he said. “I don’t feel pain anywhere.”
“Why aren’t you taking off your gloves?”
“October nights in the Rockies can get pretty chilly.”
“Like you’ve ever been there,” Gyro muttered.
“We’re role playing, Gyro,” Diego snapped. “Since that’s apparently so important to you, you ought to stop interrupting!”
He turned back to Johnny. “Let me have some of your coffee.”
Johnny narrowed his eyes as he considered it. Something was clearly going on here. Starting with Diego falling off his horse, then the weird way he acted after looking at his phone— HP must’ve texted him something. She sometimes did that to convey information to the players that nobody else was supposed to hear. It seemed like they were working together to create some conflict, but Johnny didn’t know what it was yet. Would it be a mistake to let Diego get close to him? Or would it be better to placate him and prevent the situation from devolving into a fight?
“First of all, I want to make it clear that I don’t want to travel with you,” he said eventually. “But you can take the cup that I already made, as long as you go somewhere else afterwards.”
“You put the cup of coffee down on the counter between you,” HP said. “Diego, roll perception— with disadvantage.”
Diego frowned but didn’t complain for once. He rolled twice: a 13 and a 4.
“Yeah, so, you fail to distinguish the cup of coffee from a nearby stack of cans,” HP said.
Gyro giggled a little. “God, can I please get in on this soon? This is too good.”
“Can you not see or something?” Johnny asked. While it was pretty funny to imagine Diego failing at simple tasks, he was more concerned with the strangeness of it all.
“Can’t see?” Diego scoffed. “Give me a break, I can see great! To demonstrate, I snatch a fly out of the air without harming it!”
He made such an air-punching gesture in real life. Then he paused and looked to HP. “Do I need to roll for that?”
HP shook her head. “Nah, you just do it.”
“Nice!” Diego grinned. “Both my eyesight and physical performance are at their best!”
He really is getting way too into it, Johnny thought. “Fine. Get your cup, then, genius.”
“I reach for the cup.”
“Roll for it,” HP said.
“For picking up a cup of coffee?” Diego asked.
Even Johnny was a little confused by this seemingly-arbitrary roll. But HP just raised her eyebrows in a classic display of HP-brand lack of amusement.
“This was your idea, Diego,” she said.
“Fine.”
Diego rolled. The table watched in mild disinterest as his teal-and-yellow D20 skipped and spun and finally landed… on a 1. A critical failure.
Gyro and Johnny burst out laughing while Diego seethed. Even HP smirked at the result.
“Oh, this is gold,” Gyro said. “The prince of British horse racing with the world’s best eyesight critically fucks up picking up a cup of coffee!”
“I’m saving my good rolls!” Diego shot back.
“Okay, Diego, you struggle for at least a minute to identify the cup of coffee,” HP said. “Even with your strong sense of smell, you have to investigate the pile of cans in an attempt to parse out which cylinder-shaped thing you’re looking for. In the process of sniffing around, you knock over the can pyramid with your bumbling. They fall off the counter with a clatter. You still don’t know where the coffee is at the end of this adventure.”
Man, HP’s narration was amazing. Her completely deadpan tone only made it all the more hilarious, too. By the end of that comedy of errors, Gyro was practically rolling on the ground with laughter.
“Oh my god, I love this,” Johnny said, wiping a tear from his eye. “Diego, please try again. Keep trying until you get it, I’m begging you.”
“You’re gonna be sorry for this real soon, you chucklefucks!” Diego said, snatching up his D20. “Someone hand me the damn cup.”
“I got you, buddy,” Johnny said with a smug smirk. “I pick up the cup of coffee—“
“Diego, you can now see the coffee,” HP said before he could finish his sentence.
“I snatch the cup out of Joestar’s hand!” Diego said. “And drink it, obviously.”
Johnny frowned. Something was definitely up. All this fooling around was HP’s way of hinting to him what it was. He was going to have to investigate further. “I’m doing another perception check on Diego.”
“Don’t waste your time,” Diego drawled.
“No, it’s my turn and I’m doing it,” Johnny said, already picking up his die and throwing it. “I got a… seventeen, eighteen with the modifier.”
“Diego makes cooing noises as he drinks his coffee,” HP said. “Upon closer inspection, you see coffee dripping down his cheeks, which leads you to notice that under his bandage are glittering white teeth. Diego’s mouth extends almost all the way to his ears, and it’s full of sharp teeth.”
“What the fuck,” Johnny whispered.
“Gyro, you’re up,” HP said, before much speculation could be done. “When you walk in the room, you notice there’s, like, a shit-ton of flies.”
Gyro sat up attentively. “Flies? Coming in through the window?”
“Yeah. The door, too.”
“Okay, well, I tell Johnny to close the window,” Gyro said. “And I head to the door to check it out.”
“Right outside you see the source of the swarming flies,” HP said.
Her voice did this thing that it always did before an enemy encounter: it got lower, and slower, and more menacing, if that made any sense. For as much shit as they sometimes gave her about her DMing, she was damn good at this part— heightening the tension, deepening the mystery, and then finally making it all explode in a shitstorm. Before she even continued, Johnny knew such a shitstorm was coming.
“It’s a grizzly bear,” she said. “But it’s been completely disemboweled, and its half-eaten corpse is now a feast for flies. Looking at this, you both know immediately that a human isn’t capable of this type of destruction. Only a large, vicious predator could have done this.”
She gave a slow, grave nod to Diego.
“You’re up,” she said. “What are you going to do?”
Diego’s face broke into a vicious smile.
“That’s easy, HP,” he said airily. “I’ll be completing my transformation into a seven-meter long, one-and-a-half-meter tall, blue and yellow Utahraptor.”
“What?!” Johnny and Gyro shouted. This was what they’d be planning all along— for Diego to turn into a fucking dinosaur? They were both insane!
HP ignored their protests, a smile emerging on her face as well. However, in Johnny’s opinion, HP was a thousand times more frightening than Diego, because it was obvious that she was going to take immense pleasure in the beating she was about to hand down on her idiot players. She hit a button on her phone behind her DM shield, and a song started to play:
Scary monsters, super creeps
Keep me running
Running scared
“Roll initiative,” she said.
---
The fight was hell, just as Johnny predicted. They didn’t have to deal with just HP’s scheming, but Diego’s as well. He and Gyro scrambled to keep up with everything he kept throwing at them using his apparently encyclopedic knowledge of dinosaurs. Johnny even got a little bit of comeuppance for laughing at Diego earlier when he himself failed a simple intelligence check and his character was forced to admit he didn’t even know what a dinosaur was.
Before they knew it, Johnny and Gyro were racing against the clock to get to their objective— two ‘corpse parts’, as HP dubbed them— before Diego’s ability completely dominated them. Diego would pull some crazy shit, like turning all the villagers into dinosaurs alongside him, and Gyro would pull some even crazier shit as if he had to outdo him. Johnny barely even got to use his own special ability (even though he was trying to level it up as much as he could).
Now they were up against the real boss, an NPC named Dr. Ferdinand who was apparently behind all of this. Johnny suspected HP wrote that in so that Diego’s character didn’t become entirely antagonistic to them. But he also knew that Diego would find another way to fuck with them later. Not that it was looking good for them at the moment— Ferdinand had them cornered, Gyro basically had to hand control of his character over to HP after failing a constitution check, and Diego had the goddamn corpse parts.
Time to do what you do best, Johnny, Johnny thought to himself. That was to say, something totally outrageous and unpredictable. HP sometimes complained about how difficult it was to plan for their play style, but he thought it made things interesting.
He folded his hands on the card table and took a deep breath.
“I drop the left arm,” he said. “When my body becomes dinosaur-ified, I use my tail to propel myself towards Diego and Ferdinand to hit Diego back and knock the corpse eyes out of Ferdinand’s hands.”
He rolled. Diego and Hot Pants did the same. Diego made a sour face.
“10,” he said. “What did Ferdinand get?”
“A 14,” HP said. “Johnny?”
Johnny exhaled a sigh of relief. “16.”
“You manage to knock the corpse parts away from Ferdinand,” HP said. “Now see if you can catch them. Roll dexterity.”
Johnny did so. “With the modifier, it’s an 18.”
“You fumble with the eyes for a moment, but you manage to grab them.”
“Can I do anything?” Gyro asked.
“No, you’re still under Ferdinand’s control.”
Gyro sighed. “This sucks.”
“I want to do one more thing,” Johnny said. “It’s like, all one fluid movement— can I do that?”
“No,” Diego said, at the same time that HP said “Yes.” Diego gave her a dirty look.
“You’re basically skipping my turn!” he complained.
“You got knocked back,” HP said. “Plus, this is cool, with Johnny becoming a dinosaur and all that. He needs to act fast.”
“Yeah,” Johnny said. “I throw the corpse eyes to Gyro. Both of them.”
“What!” both Gyro and Diego exclaimed.
“You’re crazy,” Diego said.
“Johnny, think about this,” Gyro said, touching Johnny’s arm. “You could die without those eyes. Don’t sacrifice your character for me.”
Johnny met Gyro’s gaze evenly. “I’m trapped where I am, hon. I gotta do this so at least one of us can progress.”
“Johnny…”
Johnny put his hand over Gyro’s to soothe him. “I’m not worried. I know you have my back.”
Diego faked a retching noise. “Gay-y-y.”
“Shut up,” Johnny said. “I’m throwing the damn eyes, okay?”
He picked up his D20, closing his fist around it. All right, let’s do this. He’d rolled well the first two times— he just had to keep that going, for his and Gyro’s sakes. He wasn’t much of a gambling man, but just to be sure he kissed his closed hand for good luck. Then, he took a deep breath and threw his die. It skittered across the table towards their opponents.
When it came to a rest, Diego was the first to jump up and look at it. Johnny’s heart sunk as his face lit up.
“A three!” he cackled. “You’re fucked!”
HP was impassive. “We’ll say that for Ferdinand’s turn, he sends his dinosaurs to step on you as soon as you attempt the throw. The eyes bounce out of your hands in Gyro’s direction, but they obviously don’t make it there. Gyro makes no effort to catch them, either.”
“Shit.” Johnny covered his forehead with his palm. “I fucked up.”
Gyro patted his shoulder comfortingly. “It’s all right, babe. This went way better than our last game.”
Well, yeah, anything was better than his character dying after he thought he’d defeated the enemy and not even getting to enjoy his reward— another fuck-up thanks to Diego’s meddling. Nobody asked him to have his shitty chaotic evil come back as a disembodied head, but he apparently just couldn’t resist ruining everyone else’s fun! And that was even after Gyro’s character had gotten killed heroically, leaving just Johnny and their other occasional player, Lucy, to pick up the slack. Johnny scowled at Diego.
“Thanks for this, Diego,” he said. “I don’t know why we even ask you to play with us if you’re always going to try and fuck it up.”
“I’m having fun,” Diego said haughtily.
“You’re the only one!”
“No, HP is too!” Diego folded his arms. “You idiots begged me to play, anyway! And I’ve put up with so much shit already!”
He pointed to HP. “I say that you let them get away with everything just because they’re dating in real life!”
“Oh, stuff it, Diego!” Gyro said, leaning back in his chair. “Not our fault if HP is doing her part to fight homophobia.”
“Losing at DnD is not homophobia, asshole!”
“We haven’t lost, we’re just in a tough spot.”
“You’re both dinosaurs!” Diego said, jabbing his finger at them. “Game over!”
“Hold on,” HP said. “Johnny rolled badly, true, but not so badly that I’m not going to give you two one more chance.”
Johnny raised his eyebrows while Gyro perked up. Diego looked outraged.
“Another chance?” he said. “And how the hell are you going to do that?”
“We’re going to let the dice decide, obviously,” HP said. “You’re all situated on a mountainside. I’ll give one of the corpse eyes the chance to roll down towards Gyro. But it’s not going to be easy.”
She pointed to Johnny. “We’re going to do it like a death saving throw, except you’re going to roll the D20 to determine the fate of your party. If you roll a number lower than ten three times, the eye doesn’t make it to Gyro. If you roll higher, though, it will. Then, it’ll be up to him to defeat Diego and Ferdinand.”
“I’ll do it,” Johnny said immediately.
“This is bullshit!” Diego exclaimed. “Why can’t they just die?”
“Because I’m the DM and I make the rules,” HP said. “I like that Johnny risked it all to give Gyro another chance, so I’m going to reward him. And the divine nature of the holy corpse makes it that fortune is everything. This outcome, whatever it may be, should make you question whether fate is at work here.”
Diego folded his arms with a huff. “This is what happens when you let the religion major be the dungeon master. We should’ve just been racing for diamonds like the game’s instructions said.”
“No way, this motivation is way better,” Gyro said. “HP, you should think about becoming a writer or something.”
“Stop sucking up to her!”
HP appeared unmoved by the supplications of either side.
“Plus,” she said, “I don’t want this game to be over yet. It’s too interesting.”
“So you admit it’s for your own enjoyment!” Diego muttered.
“Don’t pretend like this isn’t the most fun you’ve had playing this whole game,” Johnny retorted. “You got to incorporate your little paleontology fantasy and beat the shit out of Gyro and I, why are you mad?”
“Because I want to win,” Diego said. “And I’m going to!”
“Not if I have anything to say about it,” Johnny said, gripping his D20 hard. “All right, HP, I’m going for it.”
“You got this, babe,” Gyro said. Diego just scowled and said nothing as Johnny rolled the first time. The dice bounced once and landed on 12. Johnny exhaled and nodded.
You can do it, Johnny, he told himself. He just had to roll better than ten three times. That wasn’t so hard, was it? It was a 50/50 chance each time.
“First success,” HP said. “Go again.”
Johnny rolled again. A 10. He looked to HP, unsure.
“Does that count as a success?” he asked.
HP shook her head. “Nope. Gotta be better than ten.”
“You didn’t say that earlier,” Gyro said.
“It’s just logic.”
Gyro frowned. “But you should’ve—“
Johnny held up his hand, silencing his boyfriend. He was staring hard at the card table in front of him like it was the highest stakes roulette wheel in Vegas.
“Don’t worry, Gyro,” he said quietly. “I got this.”
He could feel Diego staring at him intensely as he rolled the third time. 7. Johnny bit down hard on his lip as Diego’s face slowly split into a smile.
“Bad luck, Joestar,” he said. “Better not roll lower than ten again, right?”
He shot a critical look at Gyro. “Sorry. Better not roll ten or lower.”
Gyro opened his mouth to say something scathing in return, but this time Johnny smacked his arm.
“Cut it out, I’m concentrating,” he said.
Gyro nodded. “Puoi farlo, amore.”
Johnny had no clue what he said; he was too busy focusing on a good roll to access his limited Italian vocabulary. He tossed his D20 with a short prayer to the DnD gods. It bounced across the table to land on a neat 16.
“Yes,” Johnny breathed as Gyro pumped his fist.
“Two successes, two failures,” HP said, touching her fingertips together under her chin. “The next one decides it.”
“You’re done for,” Diego hissed. “This is useless.”
He was crouching by the edge of the table so just his narrowed, glittering eyes appeared over the edge. He rapped his nails against the table’s surface like claws. “Useless, useless, useless!”
Johnny shot him a choice glare and then returned his focus to his prized D20, turning it this way and that so that the pink glitter inside it caught the light.
This is it, he thought. If I don’t roll above a ten, Gyro and I are gonna become dinosaurs and lose the corpse parts and the race. The next part of this adventure depends on this. Depends on me. Not Diego. Not Hot Pants. Not even Gyro. It’s all me.
Johnny took a deep breath. He rolled.
The D20 twisted and tumbled. It came to a rest just before HP’s DM shield, and she was the first to read it. A little smile appeared on her face, and Johnny didn’t know whether to feel relieved or devastated until she read the result aloud.
“Natural 20,” she said. “You succeeded.”
“Yes!” Gyro yelled, jumping up so fast that his folding chair tumbled over. He commenced a silly dance with gloating moves that were pointed very clearly at Diego. For his part, Diego slammed his hands down on the table so hard that all the dice shook. But that wasn’t changing the roll.
“Wryyy!” he roared, leaping up from his seat. “God damnit!”
As Gyro went on dancing and Diego went on raging, HP just went on smiling enigmatically. Johnny sat back in his chair, barely managing a smile back at her. What a rush. Man, who knew that tabletop gaming could make your heart race so much…?
Even better was the fact that Diego was practically tearing his hair out in frustration. He really was invested in this. After all his shit-talk, Johnny couldn’t help but rub it in his face a little more. He stopped Gyro in the middle of his victory dance by yanking him down into a kiss.
“Gross!” Diego yelled, throwing a D4 at them. “Get a room!”
“Nah,” Johnny said, releasing a stunned Gyro. “I will be getting those corpse parts, though.”
“Not if I have anything to say about it!” Diego rushed back to his chair and sat down. “This fight’s not over, is it, HP?”
“It’s not,” HP said with a nod as the players reconvened. “The right eye has entered Gyro. What will you do now?”
---
Using Gyro’s special ability and weapon, the duo managed to take down Dr. Ferdinand and his dinosaurs. HP added a bit of poetic justice by making the wildcats that the enemy had turned into raptors eat him alive. She didn’t leave Diego out in the cold completely, though— the session ended with his escaping with the other corpse eye and his dinosaur transformation ability intact, which seemed to placate him somewhat. Had to give him a reason to keep playing, after all.
Now they were just hanging out in HP’s kitchen, finishing the last of the pizza they’d ordered earlier. It had gone cold long ago— all in all, they’d been playing for something like four hours. It felt like nothing to Johnny.
“Thanks for DMing, HP,” Johnny said. “This game’s pretty fun.”
HP nodded in acknowledgement. “Better or worse than Phantom Blood?”
That was the name of the last game they’d played, the one that had gone so disastrously at the end. It had been fun leading up to that, though.
“I don’t think they’re really comparable,” he said. “They’re both good, but in different ways.”
“RIP Baron Zeppeli,” Gyro piped up. “His sacrifice will be remembered.”
“I think I like the ‘Stand’ system better than ‘Hamon’, though,” Johnny added. “It’s more customizable, y’know?”
“Believe it or not, both games were made by the same company,” HP said. “I googled it. They have a whole series of tabletop RPGs.”
“That would explain why they both suck,” Diego said around a mouthful of reheated pepperoni pizza. He was still bitter about not getting both corpse eyes.
“You sure you don’t want to get a character in the race?” Johnny asked HP. “We could switch up the DM for a session.”
HP rested her chin on her hand. “Not sure.”
Diego snorted. “She totally wants to. She has a character sheet and a special ability planned out and everything.”
HP pursed her lips and snatched a pepperoni off of Diego’s slice of pizza. Diego pouted, but didn’t fight her for it like he might’ve if it had been Johnny or Gyro. Johnny suspected he had a soft spot for HP— if someone like Diego could have a soft spot. Maybe it was something more like a soft underbelly. Like a lizard.
“It’s gonna get harder from here on out,” HP said. “I hope you’re ready.”
“Have you already got the other stages planned?” Gyro asked.
“I have a few ideas. If you’re up to the challenge.”
“Um, always!” Gyro said. “Right, Johnny?”
Johnny nodded. “Yeah, bring it on.”
“I hope ‘challenge’ means no more pandering to the less-skilled players,” Diego said with a sniff. “Now that I’ve unlocked my ‘Stand’ or whatever, I’m gonna be unstoppable.”
“Isn’t it technically Dr. Ferdinand’s ability?” Johnny asked.
HP nodded, but Diego just scoffed.
“It’s mine now,” he said. “Just like the left eye.”
“Not for long,” Johnny warned. “Gyro and I are gonna get all those corpse parts and find out whoever the hell this saint is.”
Diego gave him a look. “You still haven’t figured out who the corpse is? Isn’t it kinda obvious?”
HP elbowed him sharply. “Don’t ruin it for him.”
When the pizza was demolished, they helped HP clean up the kitchen and living room before Johnny and Gyro got ready to take off. It was getting late, and they had stuff to do tomorrow. A real, boring life to attend to, not at all like the adventure they were imagining together. HP graciously saw them out, while Diego sprawled out on the couch. He always refused to say hello or goodbye like a normal person.
“Arrivederci,” Gyro said, shrugging on his jacket.
“See ya,” Johnny said with a small wave. “Same time next week at our place?”
“Yeah, that works for me,” HP said. “Lucy said she should be free as well, so she can jump in if she wants.”
Johnny cast a suspicious glance towards the couch. “What about Diego?”
“I’ll make it work for him, too.”
“Thanks for not killing our characters, by the way,” Johnny said.
“What can I say,” HP said, her tone and expression neutral. “I’m not a homophobe.”
Somewhere in the distance, Diego groaned.