Diego (diego_brando) wrote in antecedents, @ 2010-03-17 21:57:00 |
|
|||
Entry tags: | diego brando, edgar figaro, hot pants, locke cole |
Diego Brando, Hot Pants, Locke Cole & Edgar Figaro
The two of them had at least another twenty, thirty miles to go before they caught up with the President's train; no more than that, though. Diego's senses were incredibly precise. He could look at a hoof print in the ground and know exactly how much weight the horse that made it was carrying; he could spot the most minute tics in the animal's behavior to be able to predict just what it was going to do before the rider himself did. This ability could mostly be credited to his new powers, but even before he had acquired those skills, his aptitude with horses was unsurpassed.
When Diego was only six years old, he had snuck away from where he was supposed to be and found his way to the stables behind the servant house that he, his mother, and several others lived in. Able to slip between the holes in the fence, he went straight up to the stallion he had seen several times before from afar; the creature was, in nearly all senses of the word, wild. It had kicked several of the ranch workers who had gotten a bit too close, winding one of them up with a broken shoulder. It was a beautiful animal, though, and the owner of the stable had hoped to be able to clean it up right and present it as a gift to the mayor of the town. But with it's unbreakable, obstinate spirit, it was unlikely he would be able to do that.
So that was the horse Diego had seen, rearing and kicking and galloping around the small structure it was confined to, and like any young child, once he got a thought in his head, it stuck there like glue until he was able to see it through. That idea was that he wanted to get near that stallion, see it up close. He and his mother were always kept so busy doing chores, that the boy didn't even time to watch it on his own time. That's why he'd had to sneak away.
Of course, it wasn't long before his mother noticed Diego's abandoned pail, the one he used to go collect the chicken's eggs in, and had soon grown worried when he didn't respond to her call. The other workers overheard her soon enough, and though the ranch covered a good few acres of land, it was a short time before someone noticed that the most violent of the horses housed in the stable had disappeared. The mother's worry turned to panic, recalling how the child had tugged at her skirt and tried to tell her he wanted to go have a look at that horse before. That horse had injured a toughened ranch hand; her Diego, a child who was small even for his age due to poor nourishment, would surely be killed by the animal.
Well, general chaos broke out shortly after; it wouldn't, probably, if it had just been the child that was missing, but that the purebred horse had escaped as well was cause for serious concern. The perimeter of the ranch was searched and nothing was found. Diego's mother--only twenty two years old, petite and beautiful, but stronger than she looked on the surface, toughened by so much hardship in such a short life-- would of finally lost it at that point, but just as the tears had finally begun to well up, someone called: "We found him!"
It turned out the boy was just fine; more than fine, he had somehow mounted the horse which was known to kick anyone who even looked at it the wrong way-- riding it was completely out of the question, no one had been able to manage. Yet, there sat the thirty five pound Diego right on top of the "beast", an impossible sight to behold. He had apparently been able to lead it to one of the nearby trails and wandered around on it for a bit, before he had realized he'd lost track of time. He had never ridden a horse before, too young, too small for that, but he'd been able to manage with this one somehow. He'd only planned to slip out for ten, fifteen minutes, be back before anyone noticed he'd abandoned his chore. His mother had been beside herself with relief, snatching her son off of the stallion and into her arms, hugging him tightly and repeating, "Thank God, thank God!" She stared in awe at the now-strangely placid horse, which had spared her Diego (although, it reverted to it's old behavior almost as soon as the boy was removed).
"Mama, why are you crying? I'm sorry, did I get you in trouble? I'll tell them it was my fault, they can punish me."
"No, Diego, it's not your fault. But baby, what were you thinking? You've been told that horse is dangerous! You could of been--" She stroked his blond hair lovingly, pressing it down against his tiny skull; she had already almost lost him once, twice was too much. "You could of been hurt."
"Yeah..." he replied, frowning. "But when I saw it, it looked like it wanted to run around in the open, not in that small stable. I thought, maybe that's why it treats everyone so mean, because it doesn't have any freedom. So I walked up to it and I said: if you let me ride you, I'll take you on one of the trails around here, and you can run around all you want. And it let me, Mama, it was real nice." He beamed at her widely, and she couldn't help but smile back even when the tears were still falling, because it was the happiest she'd seen him in months. Genuinely happy, not like the way he'd smile a lot just so she wouldn't worry about him. Yet, that same smile broke her heart. His words were innocent and direct, but she realized so much about him then. That he already had a firm idea of the concept of 'freedom', what it meant to be caged, and angry or sad because of it, and how that's really what she and he were, working off a debt to the man who had taken them in here, a debt she herself would never be free of. But she hugged him harder then, that day, because she knew that he would one day.
A little over a year later, Diego's mother died at the age of twenty three. Before taking her last breath, she said to him: "Don't be sad. It's because of my sin. It's not your fault. But, Dio ... even the untamable horses on this farm listen to you when you come near, and will eat from your hands. You should try riding them when you grow a little older ... That is your talent."
Diego had entered the race with his favorite horse: Silver Bullet, a 4 year old Arab thoroughbred. It was a gorgeous and rare shade of white; it's coat showed off a glimmering sheen in the mid-day sun. On the center of it's forehead was the only discolored spot on it's whole body, one in the shape of a single black star. It's endurance, speed, and agility were all some of the best of the best; truly, if Diego had entered the Steel Ball Run race to just to win, there was an incredibly high chance he would of. Even after his penalty during the fifth stage, where he'd come in thirty fifth place, he still held second place overall. And he'd scored first place, during the last stage, when he'd been multitasking other objectives. At this point, it was still very possible he could come out of this with 'everything'. First place in the race, the information he needed from the President, the additional money and power he planned to claim, and then...
Well. Maybe not everything. Because there was one other large prize that was to be found on this race course, something that several racers were having a fight to the death over, even the President himself. The saint's corpse. But Diego had agreed that, at the end of all of this, he would give up the piece he had, and let his partner assemble all of the other pieces by herself, once they stole them back from the President.
Diego had entered several 'partnerships' before. His first of this kind could be found when he was sixteen years old. His marriage to the eighty three year old Enya, that was a partnership -- a partnership as defined as a relationship between two people that provided mutual benefit. Her benefit was that she got to be married to a handsome, popular young man, a rising star jockey. His was that he would finally be able to break free of needing to appeal to others to sponsor his career; the old lady was veritably rich, and when she died less than a year later, all of that money went right to him.
He'd had a partnership before this most recent one; the mutual benefit of that one was, for one, to get some bothersome competition out of the way, and for the other, a means to the beginning of an end. Unfortunately, Soundman hadn't been able to hold his own against Johnny and Gyro, so that relationship ended less than a week after it had begun, and all Diego could feel about the man's death was a bit cheated that he'd been given such an incompetent partner by the President's men. When he'd requested, in essence, an underling, as part of the deal for his collection of the corpse parts, he'd expected they'd of given him someone who wouldn't die on him so quick. Well, his opponent had been Joestar and Zeppeli, so Diego wasn't really mad either. Those two had a way of overcoming some pretty tricky odds, and Soundman had wanted them out of the way more than Diego had. As long as they weren't stopping him from acquiring what he wanted, he had no business with them at this time.
Which brought him to this most recent partnership. A young woman, but once again, it was only those highly attuned senses which had initially clued him into that-- later, when she'd tried to kill him, and was right on top of him, it was kind of hard to miss. On the surface, everything about her said: man. The way she sat on her horse, the tone she used when she spoke, even the way she rolled her shoulders or checked her nails. Her features themselves were even stronger than Diego's own-- but, Dio was a sort of interesting mix between masculine and feminine himself, his eyes clear and his lashes long, but with wild, dark eyebrows atop them. This woman's face doesn't read like a pretty young man's, but one that was plainly male. It probably helped that they've been at this grueling race for weeks now, they're all fairly dirty and worn down. Anyway, this interested Diego because of the fact she has even got the smallest, subtle gestures, things a person does without noticing, concealing her real gender perfectly. It seems to suggest she's been doing this a long time. He outright asked her about that, a few hours ago -- they only began to work together yesterday -- but she didn't give him a straight answer.
It... bothers him a little, actually. There were his partnerships with Soundman, even the President himself; ones he had with other men. Those relationships were formed with only his own interests in mind, people he would turn on in an instant if something better came along. It was no secret that Diego is ruthless, untrustworthy, the guy that's going to stab you in the back the second you show it to him. Those whispers started back when he was sixteen, back when Enya died, and he was sitting at her funeral, silent through almost all of it. "He killed her," the rumor began. "Why else would he of married her? All he ever wanted was her money." A rumor became what was, more or less, known as 'the truth'. That was what happened, in almost everyone's eyes, but because his status as a celebrity grew more with each passing year, everyone was willing to otherwise look the other way about it. Regardless, those whispers kept up, and that's why even the public proclaimed they knew what his personality was.
He didn't look at women the same way he did as men. At this period in the 1800s, it would be hard to say anyone did. But the difference with Diego wasn't a matter of respect or rights, or anything like that. It was a little more complicated than that.
"If we keep this pace up, we'll catch up to the train before sun down," he spoke up over the sound of the horses hooves beating against the ground below. A lot of things could change by tomorrow. The President was one of the most dangerous people in the world right now; Diego had already faced off against his reality-distorting Stand once before, and was incredibly lucky to have lived to tell the tale. To go face off against him again seemed to be guaranteed suicide. Yet, Diego didn't doubt himself as they rode, because he knew he possessed the determination to get himself through this. That 'ruthless' behavior had trained him for a moment like this, a moment where he simply wouldn't let anything stop him. Diego's sure Valentine's the same way; he and the man probably have quite a lot in common. Enough in common that one of them was going to have to die for the other to get what he wanted.
So it's not himself that Diego's thinking about right then. It was the woman he'd spoken up to. Her ability is incredibly useful, and could be fatal if used just right, but it's meant for battles that could be handled with quick, precise action, battles that could be ended before they began. This wasn't going to be one of those battles; it was going to be all out. Which meant, when it came down to it, there would probably be a crossroads where Diego would have to decide if he focused his efforts purely on downing the President, or, if it came to it that she became endangered, he would take off that tunnel vision. In short, this may be the first partnership that wasn't just about mutual benefit, a very exact exchange, but was about the much more general idea of what it meant to be partners. He's only known her for a little over twenty four hours, now.
Diego grinned into the sunlight that shined on them that day, looking over at her, showing off a row of white teeth. "We go a little faster, we can be done with it and back on the road before sun down!" He laughed then, and kicked his horse's side, urging it ahead with more speed. He sounded to be challenging her there to a little race of their own, playfully, to match the expression he wore. Yet, he was speaking about going to deliver death unto the most influential man in the United States; there was something definitely dangerous about Diego, even when his exterior didn't always match.
Had reality gone the way fate had originally meant it to, less than six hours later, both Diego and Hot Pants would of found themselves on the brink of a painful death. But another force, one with the power to change a reality's original intention, was exerted that day. The two were pulled away from a world that would of doomed them both, before they could even know it.
It would be difficult for Locke or Edgar to say they were anything close to resembling okay with the idea that Setzer had somehow been in a relationship with Tina for the past three years completely and utterly unknown to them, much less the fact that they had gotten married, in Vegas, while drunk and with no memory of it, yesterday. But, they also had to remember why it was they were here: because they wanted to spare Tina the experience she would have to go through when she found out exactly what it was that had happened before they'd all come here, at least until they could bring it up a lot more gently than a news broadcast could. At the heart of that was the fact that these three men wanted the best for her. She was one of those people who's happy mood could become contagious, too; seeing her having a really good time here made undeniably everyone feel better about things. When it seemed like she was, for the most part, happy with the fact she was now married to the man that Locke would still describe as "kind of shady" this many years later, meant that in the end, no one decided to contest it for right now. Easier said then done though, to keep those protests quiet.
The solution for this, of course, was to get even more drunk than the night before; everyone had good words to say about the marriage after that. "Now how long you gonna make us wait before we get some gran'kids!" Locke had joked, punching Setzer in the arm, who even laughed along with him in good humor that night. That alone should of been a testament to the level of alcohol they had ingested.
As a result, when Locke woke up that morning on what appeared to be the hotel stairwell, he wasn't exactly shocked by the idea he didn't really have a clue about what happened last night, either. With the knowledge nothing could be worse than Setzer marrying Tina, it didn't matter that much, right? "Oh...man," he muttered as he came to consciousness, his body stretched over about six or seven steps, yet he'd somehow fallen asleep like this? Didn't really remember that, but okay. Given his background, not like he hadn't slept stranger, less appropriate places. "S'just me here?" he checked, waiting for a response; he wasn't going to look around until his head hurt a little less. When he received no reply; "A-huh."
About five minutes later, he'd managed to get up, rubbing his eyes free of sleep. Guess everyone else made it to the room. Walking up the last few steps, he checked the number beside the door, seeing if this was the floor he wanted. Not even close; he must of just given up halfway last night, trying to get there. He'd laugh about that after he got some Advil.
Reaching the elevator across the hall once he emerged from the stairwell, he rode it up to one of the suites they were staying in, able to at least recall the number correctly with a little thought. With a soft 'ping' (although it sounded more like a gong, right now) the elevator doors opened, and he started down the hallway once more, turning left shortly after.
It was there he saw Edgar standing in front of their door, appearing to heading back inside the room himself. Locke smiled a little, seeing him distracted as he had a bit of trouble with the card reader. For the most part, this trip was for Tina's sake, but it was also the beginning of him and Edgar being back together. Doing this kind of dumb stuff, he'd really missed it. Seeing his mussed-hair boyfriend, the buttons on his dress shirt either undone or off by one hole, made Locke pretty happy right then.
"Yo," he spoke up to him as he walked over to the door too. Gesturing over his shoulder, "I, uh, guess I spent the night on the third floor stairs. Dunno how I got away with that all night with no one kickin' me." He looked at the card slot that still hadn't flashed green for the card Edgar was trying. "What's up?"