#‘the pillarman always walks at night. a huge behemoth of a human but Not Quite a body that can change shape at will…. always on foot….’

[rosenmarille]

First of all: that One Day bit is quality content. Second of all I read "3.5 for Holly" and am Highly Interested

HI yes! i will explain, however i first have to correct myself. its actually a part 2.5, not 3.5. like i mentioned in the other post, the part is called “heart unbound”, this is about 25 years after battle tendency, when holly is in her early 20s!!

the rest of this im gonna put under the cut

so the setting. joseph (43), suzie, and holly (21) live in new york, smokey is in georgia, lisa lisa (75) is Somewhere in the states, erina and speedwagon have passed away (sad). its 1963! the speedwagon foundation has continued expanding, with joseph and lisa lisa closely involved after speedwagons death. they’ve mostly moved their attention into new territory, but still have all their old research kept. stands aren't a thing yeeet, but its been long enough that the pillarmen have faded into unpleasant memory.

until one night the power at the swf hq goes out for just a moment too long, and santana manages to escape.

joseph and lisa lisa are contacted asap, and they decide to travel down to texas and find him (preferably take him out for good this time). holly, who has grown up hearing about jojo’s wild escapades, really wants to come along. she knows some hamon! she can defend herself! come on!! (yes i said it, holly learned hamon, do you think having lisa lisa for a grandmother would result in anything less?) anyway, joseph and lisa lisa Really don't want her to come since it could be really dangerous and they'd rather not put her in harm’s way.

so holly (rich, unsupervised) books a plane and goes after them.

we skip to texas!! joseph and lisa lisa investigate at hq and the surrounding area and find practically no trace of santana or where he might have gone. when holly arrives, she decides that since she can't look into hq without getting caught, she’ll ask around with locals, and manages to hear rumours about a new sort of cryptid (only appears at night, weird anatomy etc), both cattle and people have been disappearing, but on a very small scale. she looks into similar stories and realizes that santana must be moving south, though what he's planning, she doesn't know. but she will follow!! (and leave breadcrumbs for her family to pick up on this pattern too, she guesses. not so helpless now, huh?)

so this goes for a while, taking her down into mexico, until she is pretty sure that she can triangulate the missing people reports accurately enough to actually Find him. holly isnt stupid, she doesnt think she can win in a battle against a pillarman. what she’s hoping to do is prove herself to joseph and lisa lisa by prepping and helping out enough for them to then take care of the problem. she's an adult now and she doesnt appreciate being treated like a child. (you may say this contradicts how she behaved towards joseph in part 3, but to that i counter: she's in her 40s in that one, and her being an adult is established enough that she knows she can act a lil silli without that being put in question)

but hey!! she does find him!! she decides to stalk him for a bit, see what he does. so she happens to be there when santana attacks a young woman (midnight snack), who pulls a KNIFE instead of running away, so Holly rushes in and deflects an attack with a quick hamon swipe. santana has learned from his previous hamon encounter and instead of sticking around, he decides it isn't worth it and absconds instead (smart). (at this point you might notice this is the first fight of the part. yeah it be like that in this one. call it battle untendency) 

holly and the woman (who later introduces herself as Maria (no last name yet; but named after Maria Maria by Santana (lol)) also get out of dodge and hide out in an alley, where maria decides that she needs to know what the fuck that Thing was, yesterday. magic?? sparkling?? hello??? and hollys like uhh hah yes so. that's an ancient semi immortal vampire creature? and this is sunlight breathing magic, which he's allergic to. yea. and maria is like ................yeah okay i buy it. teach me sunlight breathing magic, i wanna come.

maria side paragraph! she's our oc and we love her. remember that awful scene from the santana arc with all those prisoners and the one kid who doesn't get sacrificed? that's her older brother. he was “let go” but “let go” basically did just mean “free to wander the desert and find civilisation maybe”, so when he did eventually find his way back home, he'd been severely traumatized, plus on death's door. other prisoners had been turned into vampires to test on the pillarman discovery, so the word “vampire” is something he'd have heard and conveyed to his family, who didn’t. really believe him. he also hasn't really recovered from that experience :( then the war happened and maria's dad served in it, and afterwards decided that his other child needed to know how to defend herself, and maria learned how to handle a knife, as well as how to physically fight. their family managed to avoid post war financial problems for the most part, and maria was able to finish her studies! she's a pilot :)  she is, however, harbouring very deep anger and resentment for what happened to her brother, and has not really had a face to direct that anger towards, so it's been on a relatively low burner for the most part, but now there’s talk of vampires and a person she can blame for her family’s trauma.

they exchange notes and she realizes that yeahh, that is pretty much exactly what her brother had told them, so it was true. hah :) yes actually, i would like to learn vampire killing magic please holly. and holly, who didn't really want to bring someone with her, but kind of does believe in accidents not being a thing, decides that yeah, she probably should bring maria along. and sure!! if they have to deal with sanata again, why not teach her hamon!! they share stories and continue to follow the trail while they train together, and become really close friends! jobro time.

we've now reached the first third of the story.

we travel further south!! soon, holly begins to realize......... ohh..... the temple they found santana in.. that's south of here, isn't it? oh huh. what could he want there?? the masks have been destroyed as far as she knows?? she doesn't know enough first hand to know what significance there could be, but the girls prepare for anything. maybe a big weapon the researchers had not been able to identify?? MOre pillarmen, secretly living underneath the temple??? 

(there are gonna be some scenes that involve lisa lisa and joseph figuring out where they need to go, and maybe also realizing who set that trail, maybe they have smth else going on, who knows) 

holly and maria follow santana and eventually do find the temple, and prepare to stake it out, hopefully hopefully not alerting him to their presence, because that would be.........bad. (tho tbh marias kinda itching to try out vampire begone magic. wouldn't You want to if you suddenly learned how?) neither of them have ever been here so they're honestly pretty floored by the temple interior, the tunnel that leads into the main chamber dark and uninviting, with who knows what hidden dangers are lurking about. 

and then they see him. santana is investigating the place where the pillar had been cut out of the structure, the stone masks crushed and broken, strewn around the floor, running his hands over the broken stone. Then he walks to one of the murals carved into the wall, a large one, similar to the one speedwagon had been investigating, with the 4 faces representing the pillarmen, and he lingers there. dips his head, then walks back to the empty space of the pillar and sits down where it was, crosslegged, and closes his eyes. and then he stays still. what does That mean?? 

the girls decide this is enough, they should fall back and formulate a proper plan, maybe wait for joseph and lisa lisa to catch up. buuuut we can't have that be the end of it, and so something happens, maybe one of them trips? steps on rubble that falls loose? they make a noise. and get noticed. 

change of plans! fight now! except there isn't an attack? they stay still but “i know you're there.” damn it. battle formation, stances ready, they make their way into the chamber, where santana hasn't moved at all. he's still sitting there, but he's looking at them now. holly asks what he's doing here, he asks the same back. she says not to play dumb, hes been killing people this whole time, he has to answer for that! and to that, santana honestly looks a bit confused because. has he? in his defense, he's not human, his prey is humans. pillarboy has to eat.

marias like “well? aren't you going to attack us?” and he's like “not unless you bother me.” and closes his eyes again. the girls aren't sure what to make of this.

santana side paragraph: first of all, this is a santana stan account. name one (1) thing he's done wrong, canonically. woke up in a strange place. captured?? got his bearings, tried to Leave and was accosted! shot some nazis (go king), and finally only snapped when joseph got mad he didn't laugh at his clownery. anyone would get murderous as a result. tried to escape further, ultimately was stopped and detained Again! morally, he's above joseph. 

so they're just standing now. since their earlier encounter where holly used hamon, santana refuses to talk more at first, but holly has the bright idea to get his trust by having maria restrain her and then stand back with her weapon -- a show of putting herself in a helpless position and promise she wont attack. that’s enough for santana to agree to come closer and have a proper conversation.

holly asks again why he's here exactly? what's here? and he tells her that if she Must know, he's waiting. waiting for what, she asks. and maria looks back at the carvings and realizes “oh. there should be 4 of them.” now santana looks mildly uncomfortable, and holly rememebers that “oh fuck, dad killed all of them.” and then “wait they were evil tho??” and then again “wait fuuck, didn't the leader guy say they left this one behind in mexico on purpose? oh man does he Know?” holly finds herself in the position of “not only do i have to tell this guy his friends aren't coming because they're Dead, they also kinda abandoned him.” yikes.

meanwhile maria is kinda pissed that her one chance at revenge might have just been taken from her. she still blames santana for what happened to her brother, and she refuses to let that go. she’s too stubborn and proud for that. and now, especally since holly seems to be focused on creating a bond, it feels like a slap in the face. so she kinda… snaps, ruining their chance at resolving this peacefully and causing santana to run off again. she and holly have a fight. it sucks.

soon after that joseph does find holly and he Does send her home. maria, after explaining her intentions, stays with them. holly is heartbroken :( after shes gone, joseph and lisa lisa make a plan to trap santana, aimed to go off in a few days prep, and during this, maria is starting to realize that that... really isnt the right thing to do... shes now had some time to sit alone with her guilt and regret about how she handled the situation, ssso she gets an idea on how to make up for it...

meanwhile holly is sitting at home and is sad, until suzie drives her somewhere in guise of going to a fancy lunch with smokey (whos in town), but really she drives her to the joestars airpad where her friend marua(!!) is already waiting in front of joseph’s plane, which, turns out, she hijacked in the south and flew all the way up here, and suzie tosses holly a bag with clothes and stuff and tells her to hurry up and get going :3

and hollys all "but what about lunch with mr smokey? :o" and suzie winks at her and says "don't worry, he's waiting for me to tell him everything went well at the restaurant ;)" and then holly gives her a big hug, runs to her friend and hugs Her, and they are off to fly back south to save some lives. on the way, maria apologizes and explains -- how she had harboured this resentment for so long that the sudden target for her blame put in front of her, plus the immediate removal of it were so jarring that she acted impulsively... she knows santana isnt at fault for what happened with her brother... and now she just hopes they make it in time.

as luck would have it, they catch up with joseph and lisa lisa just in time to jump between them and santana (maria accidentally cuts off joseph’s prosthetic hand in the process and freaks the fuck out before realizing it’s fine) and try to talk it out. it’s a tense few minutes, but holly is determined and stubborn, and she manages to get her dad and grandma to see her side of things and santana is saved! they find something for him to eat, giving him the energy to heal his wounds. pillarmen absorbing shit never gets old.

And from there it’s mostly just everything getting settled down and smoothed out. they get back in touch with the swf and tell them the problem is handled. santana turns out to be a relatively peaceful dude when his life isn’t being threatened, and he becomes a good friend with all four of them, but especially holly and maria. they help teach him about the modern world and he decides that he’s going to do some travelling and learn about the history of his culture and other ancient mesoamerican cultures he interacted with in his youth, and he shares the things he learns with the swf so they can get the info about where theyre needed etc.  maria gets hooked up with one of the many therapists we decided work at the swf that has experience with the supernatural things she and her brother have gone through. holly, maria, and santana stay in touch and go on regular trips together. holly receives many post cards.

it’s all really good and happy :) thats heart unbound baybee!! <33