Time Skip (Patreon)

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Years have passed since Joshua met Xamã, Brazil's Number 1 hero, and now the kid is nine years old.

He grew considerably, but not as much as he expected; that can be attributed to his expectations being a little high. After all, he is of the Joestar lineage, and wants to be as tall as Jotaro when he is a teenager.

It seems, though, the dream of being a 1,95 m teen is getting more and more distant.

Now, he is betting his chips on a puberty growth spurt, hoping his slightly below-average height is a consequence of his malnourished early life, not that he is a later version of a Joestar.

‘I do not want to be a jockey, Araki. There is no need for me to be small and slim like a twink.’ He thinks with a heavy sigh.

He wants to be an extremely muscular man, just a little smaller than All Might… no, he can accept the “nerf” of Part 4 and settle on that middle ground.

But his naturally painted nails and lips are solid proof that his body is developing on the path he doesn’t want. That is why he cut his hair short. Gone is the long snow-white hair that fell on his shoulders; now he barely has hair to cover his ears (he doesn’t dare to cut even lower because he is doing it with his own spinning nails)

But even so, Joshua is still a little feminine at this early age. Ignoring the painted nails and lips, the natural soft, round face kids have gives him, at least, an androgynous appearance.

Then there are the nails and lipstick, and worse of all… he is cute.

No… he is beautiful.

Big and bright heterochromatic eyes, long eyelashes… When he does not “uglify” himself on purpose, he has girls even a little older than him swooning. He even receives perverted stares from older people… both female and male.

It is a sad life when the best reaction he can get because of his looks is the shock and awe that some inexperienced little girls look at him. When it is not any criminal-level trouble, he at least incurs the wrath of some jealous boys.

That is why he hides it. 

Even with the “Pretty Privilege” of being treated much better now that his beautiful appearance is more exposed, and the fact that he has clean and perfect clothes, it is simply not worth the trouble most of the time, as he lives in a low-trust society.

When he is not going fully “disgusting kid that was playing on the trash”, he is at least wearing a hat and maybe a face mask.

The use of masks is not that uncommon as it was in the past, because people want to hide certain ugly features they have because of their quirks.

Brazil is still very backward in this aspect, like rural Japan. To be fair, this kind of racism is pretty common around the world, and around here it's less about racism and more about not wanting to show their “ugliness”.

Of course, some people are confident and own their strangeness, or live in places where most people have some of that “strangeness,” which normalizes it.

But if you look around, you could always see some people covering their faces in some way.

It sucks to wear a face mask in the hot weather of this country, but Joshua can use it to train Hamon, so there are only advantages to Joshua.

That explains his actual attire. The kid is performing one of the stopping signs, using juggling balls, a unicycle, and a light beige fedora hat.

He was a little hesitant about wearing a fedora because of the bad reputation, but then he remembered that it was the hat of Indiana Jones and Joseph Joestar in Part 3 before it became a hat for losers.

He made the unicycle from a broken bicycle. Some hours of punching and restoring, not perfectly, let him mold the bicycle's metal into something with only one wheel.

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The points roll in as he makes his juggling tricks while balancing on the unicycle. What he is doing is not anything boring, no… years of practicing and his athletic body combined with his Stands give the boy the power to perform some very impressive things.

He never imagined he would have a talent for those strange skills. Still, he guesses that this is just a byproduct of the fact that he has pretty good control of his body thanks to the Hamon, which consequently allows him to have great dexterity, hand-eye coordination, balance, and reflexes.

He is juggling a dozen balls, all moving in the air in perfect arcs like a centipede, or so chaotic that it looks like he made a mistake, but anyone watching understands that it is purposeful when he catches all of them perfectly.

The balls move through the air, and with his hand he removes his hat and places it at the end of the arc; the balls start going in, exceeding the hat's capacity, but nothing happens.

Then he reveals to the public that the hat is empty with exaggerated expressions and hand movements.

After that, he goes to put it on his head, but it no longer fits; when he removes it again, the balls start falling like they've been there all along.

It does not end like that; instead of hitting the ground and rolling away in a chaotic scene, Joshua’s hands move quickly and start tapping the balls back into place. Now, once again, they are in a controlled movement, but bouncing on the ground instead of moving in the air.

And all of that while riding his unicycle around.

He doesn't stay in one place; he rides in a small circle, bouncing the balls along his path, then comes back to bounce them again.

To end the show, he does one last small lap, throwing all the balls in the air and stopping in the middle with an unnaturally cool slide of his one-wheeled vehicle.

The balls start falling, and he grabs half in each hand. What would be impossible with his small hands, but the balls balance on each other, creating spinning towers.

That is when he ends the show with a little bow after throwing the balls back into the air and catching them with the hat he removed to bow without even looking, the juggling balls disappearing inside.

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This whole performance gave him more than a hundred Bizarre Points, a very high number considering that it is something he did in under a minute.

And of course, he finally goes around the cars with his fedora hat to collect any money. It is not his priority, but it would be weird if he didn’t ask.

But his performance and his looks, even with a face mask, let Joshua easily gather favorable impressions from the people around him. He was a kid too, not some grown, unwashed man, begging.

So, even though magic tricks are not that impressive because everyone will think, “that is a quirk”, he got himself some nice amount of money, mostly coins, of course.

With one last small bow, Joshua says his goodbyes to the cars that start moving and rides his unicycle to the sidewalk where Danny is resting.

The caramel dog looks bored, but he perks up when his owner appears.

“I think that is enough for today, right, Danny?” The kid asks

“Woof!”

He'd been doing it all afternoon, and the sky was already orange.

Since his meeting with Xamã, Joshua has focused on getting Bizarre points.

He understands he can do nothing but wait for him to grow up, so the best way to guarantee his survival is to have strong Stands.

He also trained his Spin; after all, if [Tusk] reaches Act 4, he is good. But that is not so easy… He reached Act 3, though.

It was literally just a little after meeting Xamã that he found himself in a bad situation again, and all the bottled-up emotions of his powerlessness accumulated and were never released against that unfair opponent; they were used on his enemy.

It was also a guy who apparently wanted to do unspeakable things to him, so Joshua snapped.

In hindsight, he feels that he would be able to use Act 3 against Xamã, because it came off so easily when he tried, and maybe he simply didn’t think about it because the situation was hopeless.

‘If that bastard didn’t put me down, I would use the Stone Mask or Act 3…’ It would be his breakthrough.

Johnny couldn’t hurt Xamã’s skin, so he couldn’t even create a hole to control to a more vital spot.

But what if he shot himself? Then the hole would be able to crawl up the man’s arm till his forehead and BANG, maybe he would be able to defeat the greatest hero of the country just like that.

With nothing but his Hax and a suicidal thought of taking the hero with him, a small kid would accomplish a feat that no one else dares to think of in all of South America.

That's what Xamã’s instinct probably warned him of… There is a real chance he could die to this kid.

And because he never really wants to hurt Joshua, and he was just playing around, it would be really dumb to get to that point just because he was escalating the situation.

In the end, Joshua had a revelation about another fight… a soft “What if I…?” When he was stuck to a wall by the bastard's spider web quirk.

That little power-up gave him another layer of assurance and protection. Joshua would now be able to escape using Act 3, 

Who would expect him to shoot himself and escape on a moving hole?

That is a pretty bizarre ability even by this world's standards.

“What should we eat today?” Joshua asks Danny, as he plays some cards.

One of the best ways to train is constantly doing things instead of forcing himself. That means Joshua is always fiddling with one of his toys to build his skills as he grows up, conditioning his body to get good at them.

For example, right now he is playing with a deck of cards, spreading and shuffling them like a master, even flicking them from one hand to the other.

It took a lot of time for him to get this good, and he did it all while his hands were small and childish. In the future, he will be able to do it in his sleep, and do even more amazing tricks.

He does the same with his juggling balls, and even when he plays the guitar… The limitations of his small, child-sized hands just make him train harder, and when the limitations disappear as he grows, he will be a master.

One can never underestimate how good a kid can be at an activity they do constantly, even if they don't go through a “training montage” or are just playing around.

After all, great athletes are born by playing around first.

“Woof!” Danny barks

“Meat? You are a greedy bastard.” Joshua scoffs. “Other street dogs are eating from trash, and you want meat.”

The common caramel dog is finally a full adult, big but skinny, and Joshua thinks he must be a mix of a Fila with some other hunting dogs. He is like a Dalmatian without his spots, only brown.

“Do you think our life would be better if we grabbed the opportunity with Xamã?” He asks

“Woof…”

“Yeah… I am also unsure… That guy doesn’t look like the responsible type.” Joshua comments with a purse of his lips, “In the best-case scenario, it would be like some Spartan training, the Garp Treatment or something… like throwing me off a cliff or in a forest to survive on my own.” That is his impression of the Number 1 Hero.

Joshua isn't wrong for thinking that way; after all, in the first minute they met, the hero sent him back to fight adults just to see what his abilities were. He was pretty sure he'd gotten an accurate read on the man's personality.

If he didn’t have his System, he would gladly grab the opportunity; it wouldn’t matter how hard it was. It would be his chance to turn his life around and reach the top.

But he can do it on his own with the System.

“It would also be a pain in the ass to hide the System from him…” He still doesn’t trust adults. “And mentor figures tend to die at some point. You could say I saved the guy! He should be grateful! HAHAHA!”

After joking like that, Joshua's eyes slowly turn to Danny, who looks up at him clueless.

“...” He suddenly crouches down and hugs the dog. “Don’t die on me, furry bastard. We are in the hero academia and not on Jojo, so I think you are safe.”

“Woof!” The dog only wiggles happily in the embrace, not really caring about what Joshua is saying.

“Haah~” Joshua sighs as the dog shakes his body while awkwardly trying to climb his unstable lap. “Okay, doofus! Hahaha! Don’t lick my face! Out! Out! No, I will not carry you. Who told you to grow so big??”

With a little effort, Joshua stands up again and pulls his deck of cards from his pockets once more. As Joshua plays with his cards, one slips away.

“Ah…” He shows a surprised expression but does nothing as the card drifts to the ground; he knows that he will never need to crouch down to pick anything up if he doesn’t want to.

Suddenly, a spectral yellow bony hand separates from his arm and quickly catches the card before it can move too far away. Then it brings it back silently to the top of the deck as if nothing happened.

He isn't surprised, because that is one of Joshua’s new Stands.

Yes, since he met Xamã, and after getting good at his performances, he accumulated enough Bizarre Points to move forward with his plan to buy all the cheapest Stands first.

This way, if he ever is gifted a Stand on his birthday, it is guaranteed to be a good and expensive one.

And he did it… He bought all Stands priced below 10.000 points. And right now he is accumulating points to start purchasing this new tier with more zeros.

He thinks it sucks that there's such a disparity between the prices of some Stands, but it is a two-way road… Yes, he can’t buy [The World] because it is worth millions of points.

But he was about to accumulate a large number of Stands considered “trash” by price alone but have their uses.

‘Like Dio once said, there is no bad Stand.’ He thought when he bought [Survivor].

The problem with his new Stands is that they are too specific and, most of the time, require him to be a very good user.

But that is okay; he is taking them out the way, and there are some very good ones amidst them.

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[Flamboyant Bizarre System]

Name: Joshua Joestar

Age: 09

Race: Human (Joestar Bloodline)

Stands: Tusk Act 2, Mr. President, Moody Blues, Achtung Baby, Manhattan Transfer, Dark Blue Moon, Beach Boy, Hermit Purple, Geb, Ebony Devil, Crazy Diamond, Khnum, Echoes Act 1, Tohth, Cinderella, Highway to Hell, Chocolate Disco, Fun Fun Fun, California King Bed, Les Feuilles, King Nothing, Space Trucking, Strength, Emperor, Empress, Lovers, Talking Head, Notorious B.I.G., Cheap Trick, Goo Goo Dolls, Oh! Lonesome Me, Limp Bizkit, Dragon’s Dream, Burning Down the House, Wired, Clash, Catch the Rainbow, Tubular Balls, 20th Century Boy, Doggy Style, Nut King Call, Black Sabbath, Milagro Man, Bastet.

Techniques: Spin(Journeyman), Hamon(Journeyman)

[Store]

BP: 7749

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The list became so big that Joshua gave up on many of those Stands.

They are literally too "specific", or they take too long to take effect, so he will never use them in a fight.

There are also detrimental Stands, but his System doesn't seem so heartless and adapted them for him to at least not be a curse… At the bare minimum, they will never be activated, and at best Joshua can control the “curse” to some extent.

That is the case of [Cheap Trick]. Joshua doesn’t need to worry about hiding his own back; he can even put [Cheap Trick] on other people in line of sight and let his Stand kill them eventually once the conditions are met. Then [Cheap Trick] harmlessly comes back to him.

The problem is that he will be incapable of using any other Stand while [Cheap Trick] does his thing, so that is not optimal when he can shoot people to death instantly.

[Cheap Trick] may only be used as… a cheap trick to kill someone he doesn’t want to fight directly.

His limitation of using only one “good” Stand at a time because of his body is just slowly being circumvented. He can keep multiple very weak Stands activated, but that is it. No two strong Stands can be used together at this point. Maybe his Spirit is too weak, or his stamina can’t keep up.

It doesn’t matter if it's only a dwarf like [Cheap Trick] or [Goo Goo Dolls]; most of the time, he can only use one… Interestingly enough, “Object Stands” are a little different for some reason. They seem to use very little of either Spirit or stamina.

A part of him feels a little bad, because if he'd saved those points instead of spending them on weak, barely usable Stands, Joshua could've bought some really good ones like [The Fool], [Red Hot Chili Peppers], or [Hanged Man].

Any of those three Stands are very cheap for their power level because they are pretty simple, but they are very effective in defeating anyone directly.

But he doesn’t regret his choices… Beyond the hidden jewels that are those cheap Stands, buying them really got him some pretty expensive stuff on his birthdays.

His most expensive Stand yet is acquired on his last birthday, and despite not-

“!!” Joshua's eyes suddenly widen, interrupting his thoughts, as he looks up.

He was already walking through an abandoned part of the city, heading back to his base to one of his hideouts… and his surprise comes from the fact that his hideout is gone.

Joshua still hasn’t abandoned his habit of having multiple hideouts, and one of them is at the very top of a five-story abandoned building that he claimed for himself,

That is how lawless people do it. They simply claim one of the many abandoned places around the country and live outside the state's jurisdiction.

They don’t pay taxes, but they also don’t receive any help from the government.

Not that they care; they have power, so if you are strong enough, you can get and do whatever you want.

Eventually, lawless communities, akin to old-school favelas, formed as those lawless individuals banded together and created their own rules.

Ironic enough, this order inside the chaos helped the government get some influence in those places, forming those low-level cities.

Joshua lived in one of those before, in the orphanage.

Above that are the super cities, with walls, where heroes live; something reminds him of One Punch Man. 

And there are some cities between those levels too, not completely horrible, but pretty average. Joshua lives in one of those middle-level cities, where only the center is civilized.

It works for him; at this point, he is strong enough to even claim a little spot in the lawless area. He lives where civilization starts giving way to chaos, far enough from the center to avoid government influence, but close enough to be safe from really dangerous people out there.

How else could he have a house to himself? It is a pretty good deal if one can defend himself.

And that is the problem: living here means that you are on your own (unless you are part of a group), and Joshua had some close encounters with rivals, but he always escaped or won.

What he never experienced was someone invading his own home.

And that is what happened… The wall of the floor where he lives is completely gone, and even from this disadvantageous point of view, Joshua can see that most of his things are destroyed.

He keeps his really valuable stuff on [Mr President], but his hideout obviously has things he likes. 

“Few things annoy a man more than having his private domicile violated.” He grits his teeth, veins appearing on his clenched fist. “It is like creating a base on a survival game and having it destroyed when I am away gathering resources.”

Joshua sends Danny inside [Mr. President] and then throws a hand; [Hermit Purple] emerges, grabs a useless lamppost, and uses it to propel himself into the air.

He lands on top of a medium-sized wall, then uses [Hermit Purple] again and jumps inside the destroyer wall.

“!! Motherfucker!!!” Joshua shouts, seeing the state of his things.

Everything is destroyed, and he can already see several of his things are missing too.

The couch is torn, the table, chairs, and drawers are destroyed, his books are torn apart, and his boxes are open, with the contents on the ground.

“It is not enough to fuck rob me; the person needs to  salt the ground.” He is getting pissed.

He can always restore all his items with [Crazy Diamond], but it's about the principle. Someone messed with him, and that person can’t get away with it… 

If the person did it once, he will do it again, and even if Joshua changes hideouts, nothing prevents this from happening again at the hands of the same person unless he moves far away.

And he got a liking for this area; it is a good spot to farm Bizarre Points because it has a lot of car traffic that connects to other cities.

No… Joshua needs to at least see who this person is.

“Heh~ The old me would be very careful, but now… Heheh!” Joshua furiously stabs his finger on the ground.

Thud bzzT

Sparks and purple vines surround his fist as the dust on the ground starts moving to draw a map.

“Show me the closest people in the area,” Joshua orders [Hermit Purple].

On the map, a big “X” appears some blocks away.

“Hehe, still so close?” He stands up while laughing darkly, dark like his mood and the sky above his head. “You targeted the wrong person… and at the worst possible time.”

Joshua is no longer a helpless chickling; he still hasn’t reached maturity, but he's already a dangerous predator. Just because he doesn’t go around hunting others doesn’t mean he does not have teeth.

He stands on the huge hole in the wall, facing the dusk sky. He opens his arms as the sun goes down and says. His habit of acting flamboyant to farm Bizarre points is becoming a recurring thing, even when he is alone. Joshua is becoming a dramatic person.

“The sun is going down, and the shadows are growing… poor rat… nowhere to escape…” His own shadow moves unnaturally, and something slowly emerges from it, a humanoid shape. “Worse than that only if we are inside water.”

“[Black Sabbath]...” The figure materializes, dark and with bright yellow eyes, his most expensive Stand. With the same amount of Bizarre Points, he would be able to buy [Sticky Fingers], [The Hand], and even Star Platinum] without Time Stop. 

A Stand that can’t is very good in a direct fight, but… Specific Stands are really strong in the exact situations they can show their powers.

“Bring me his soul,” Joshua orders darkly, and the Stand sinks into the shadows to hunt his target.

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