Fanfic / Iron Touch

From left to right: Cab, Rumor, Sara, and Michelle. Art by narakat_

"In which Polnareff’s daughter goes on her own wacky quest and learns some self-love along the way."

—The official summary on Archive Of Our Own.

Iron Touch is an ongoing JoJo's Bizarre Adventure fanfiction by Edgy Ella. It's an Elsewhere Fic known for its long chapters.

Set in 2009, eight years after the end of Golden Wind, the unthinkable has happened—Passione's prized Stand arrow has been stolen by a group of Stand users wearing masquerade masks. With Coco Jumbo smuggled inside of an exotic pet salesman's truck, Giorno and Polnareff set off for Paris, where the arrow was last seen. During their investigation, they bump into Michelle, Polnareff’s daughter who had disappeared from public records three years prior. She runs away from Giorno after he tries to tell her who he is, prompting him to believe that she was one of the Stand users that stole the arrow.

In reality, Michelle has no idea who Giorno is and mistakes him as the one who killed her father. While on the run, she bumps into Sara, a Stand using tourist, who saves her from being attacked by a mask-wearing Stand user in a public bathroom. After a brief exchange, Michelle agrees to travel with Sara and her group of friends in order to keep herself safe from the masked Stand users and their leader, the “Master of the Masquerade.”

The series has a separate Tumblr blog and a Discord server.

Not to be confused with Iron Heart, another JJBA fanfiction.

Now has a character page.

Iron Touch contains examples of the following tropes:

• Action Girl: Sara, Cynatra and Fergie. Michelle is getting there.
• Adventure Towns: Almost every arc has the main characters go somewhere new. First from France to Belgium, then after they get to the United States, from state to state on the way to Akira's concert in California.
• Aerith and Bob: Michelle and Sara are fairly common feminine names (and also music references), Cab is uncommon but named after a real person, and Rumor is a full on Aerith-type name and a music reference. Applies to the supporting cast as well.
• Alas, Poor Villain: After Sara shoots Bad Sneakers in the leg at the end of Chapter 3, Michelle takes a moment to pity her when she tries to stand back up.
  Michelle: Poor thing. I kind of feel bad for her. Which is bizarre, considering she was trying to kill me a minute ago.
• All There in the Manual: Several details about the characters have only been confirmed through the author's notes on Tumblr or posts from the author on the official Discord server.
• Analog Horror: The bonus April Fools chapter pierces.exe_11012006 is presented as a cassette tape recorded by the Vice President of the Supernatural Research Department at the Speedwagon Foundation. The tape ends with the implication of the VP's Stand, The Pierces, eating part of the listener's brain.
• And I Must Scream: Hol Horse mentions that Policy of Truth's original user was tricked by Depeche Mode into lying to his own Stand, trapping himself inside the painting. Unless Policy of Truth is one of those Stands that can persist after the user's death, this implies that he and every other screaming face trapped inside the painting are still conscious. This is made worse after Policy of Truth is cut up into a bunch of tiny shards, implying that all the souls trapped inside the painting, including the Stand's original user, were butchered by Depeche's employees.
• Anvil on Head: This almost happens to Cascada in Chapter 34, where a giant stage light would have crushed her had Michelle not blocked it.
• Arbitrary Skepticism: Michelle, Sara, and Cab all refuse to believe that vampires exist, despite all of them having their own Fighting Spirit. Doubles as Genre Blindness and Dramatic Irony; as vampires have existed in JJBA since the beginning.
• Assassination Attempt: The group arrives in Mons right before the mayor is assassinated by Hol Horse.
• Ate His Gun: Cab’s father commits suicide by shotgun for unknown reasons, one of them possibly being alienation from his son. Made even worse when Cab discovers the body.
• Backstory of the Day: Chapters 6 and 11 serve as this for Cab and Rumor respectively.
• Bathroom Brawl: Michelle's fight against Bad Sneakers in Chapter 3 takes place in a women's bathroom. You could say she's carrying on her father's legacy.
• Beach Episode: The Chicago IX chapters are this.
• Beggar with a Signboard: One shows up in Chapter 22, asking Fergie for some spare change. She promptly beats him to near death.
• Blackmail: Hol Horse and Depeche Mode end up blackmailing each other when the former tries to get the latter to make a fake passport for Michelle, with Hol Horse threatening to expose Depeche's money laundering scheme and hit on the mayor while Depeche threatens to expose Hol Horse as the one that actually killed the mayor.
• Blood Is Squicker in Water: In Chapter 17, Depeche's decapitated head rolls into a jacuzzi and ends up turning the water red with blood.
• Blood Sport: The "Stand-offs" at Chicago IX lean into this trope, but Cascada reassures Michelle that they're not about killing the opponent. They still prove to be very deadly; when Cascada forces Michelle into one, Michelle nearly dies from blood loss and the strain her Stand puts on her while Cascada is nearly crushed by a stage light.
• Brains and Brawn: At a surface level, this is Cab and Rumor's dynamic, with Cab being the cocky boxer and Rumor being the analytical researcher. In reality, it's not that clear cut; Cab is shown to be smarter than he looks with deep insights on philosophy, while Rumor's Hamon training has made him stronger than he looks and is more battle-oriented than anyone else in the main group.
• Brick Joke: Giorno totes Coco Jumbo around in a messenger bag, which, according to him, is often labeled as a purse by Mista and Fugo. Come Chapter 4, and Michelle notes that she saw Giorno carrying a purse with him.
• Call-Back: As to be expected from a fanfiction, Iron Touch has a few.
  • During Chapter 1, Giorno mentions Sheila E and Cannolo Murolo.
  • Michelle’s first fight takes place in a public bathroom, mirroring her father’s tendency to run into trouble in them.
  • Rumor is a Hamon user, an ability that hadn’t been seen since Part 3. Additionally, the design of his Stand, The Chain, invokes Hermit Purple, another Stand capable of conducting Hamon.
  • Michelle recalls hearing a story about the pig toilet from Part 3 in Chapter 7.
  • In Part 3, Kakyoin notes that Midler's voice reminds him of Audrey Hepburn. The Stand of Midler's apprentice Cascada is named after Hepburn's most iconic song.
• Call-Forward: When Cab explains his views on fate to Michelle, he invokes the famous gravity speech from Part 6.
  Cab: The world’s an ugly place. Buttering up the truth with ideas of fate, like we’re all pulled in by gravity to some predetermined result no matter what we do, doesn’t make it any better.
• Cassandra Truth: Happens twice:
  • Rumor’s obsession with hunting vampires is treated as childish and strange by the other characters, because they don’t believe that vampires exist. However, the readers do know that vampires exist in the JoJo universe.
  • Played with in regards to Iron Maiden’s “curse.” Even after Michelle explains her whole backstory to the group, Sara, Rumor, and Cab remain skeptical of the curse’s existence, with the latter saying to her face that it can’t exist.
• Cement Shoes: How Michelle disposed of her grandmother’s body.
• Censored Child Death: Averted hard in Chapter 30. Not only do we see a seven-year-old die, but we see it from his perspective.
• Cerebus Retcon: Hol Horse shooting himself in the head with his own Stand was Played for Laughs in part 3, but here, it's given much more weight with the implication that he can no longer summon his Stand properly because of it.
• Character Tics:
  • Michelle fidgets with her necklace whenever she's anxious.
  • Sara tends to whistle to herself during moments of silence.
  • It's subtle, but Hol Horse usually fakes a cough before he tells a lie or stretches the truth.
• Chase Scene: Chapter 33 is essentially one giant chase scene of Michelle running after her bracelet.
• Checkpoint Charlie: Downplayed. Saxon airpark serves as this for Michelle, as travelling to the United States means she has to have a passport with her.
• Child Soldiers: Hol Horse reveals in Chapter 36 that he was working as an assassin for SEES since he was sixteen years old.
• Clock Tower: The Belfry of Mons is mentioned in Chapter 7, then becomes the battleground of the fight against Sting and Fall Out Boy in Chapter 10.
• Coming in Hot: When the suitcase raft lands at the end of Chapter 20.
• Conviction by Contradiction: While he had always been suspicious of her, what solidifies Michelle as involved in the arrow heist in Giorno's mind is her counterfeit passport because it had been commissioned by Depeche Mode shortly before he was killed by Fergie.
• Covered in Gunge: Sara and Hol Horse spend both Chapter 27 and 28 coated head to toe in sewage in order to throw Highway Star off their trail.
• Cover Identity Anomaly: This is how basically all of Chapter 14 plays out. At first, Michelle is able to use her Dead Person Impersonation of her grandmother to her advantage while interviewing Depeche Mode for her passport, but it falls apart as the conversation drags on and she's forced to stretch the truth out as far as she can.
• Creepy Basement: Boney's base of operations gives off this vibe.
• Creepy Cemetery: Downplayed and Inverted in Chapter 1; where the ghost Polnareff goes to visit a cemetery.
• Crosses the Line Twice: At the start of Michelle's interview in Chapter 14, Depeche Mode calls her a bimbo, which she takes offense to. Hol Horse advises her to tell him how old she is, to which Depeche casually responds that he owns a brothel that will accept girls as young as sixteen.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: See Your Head A-Splode below.
• Cyberspace: Random Access Memories can scan any inorganic object into a digital Pocket Dimension that can be accessed when the Stand is plugged into a computer.
• Deadly Road Trip: Much like part 3 before it, the protagonists go through a lot of shit while traveling around Europe. Even in her first day away from France, Michelle witnesses two of her friends nearly die at the hands of a Masquerader assassin, then almost dies herself to the hands of a Living Lie Detector Phantom-Zone Picture.
• Death by Origin Story: Happens to Michelle’s mother, pet dog, grandmother, and Cab’s parents.
• Dirty Cop: Quite a few pop up, though the duo in Chapter 27 that try to steal Yuya's (already stolen) motorcycle stand out in particular.
• Dismantled Macguffin: Policy of Truth is cut into a bunch of small pieces in accordance to Depeche Mode's will after he dies. The pieces are then shipped off to everyone on his payroll, including Hol Horse and Lovestrong. Interestingly, it still retains its Living Lie Detector status in this state, but no longer functions as a Phantom-Zone Picture.
• Disposable Intern: Depeche Mode doesn't seem to care when his intern is absorbed by Policy of Truth.
• Disproportionate Retribution: Policy of Truth effectively kills anyone that lies to it.
• Do Not Call Me "Paul": Inverted. When Sara suggests nicknaming Michelle "Chelle Belle," Michelle staunchly rejects it and demands that she never call her that again. This is because it's the Affectionate Nickname her father gave her when she was little.
• Dramatic Irony: Tons of it, specifically when it plays with the source material.
  • Rumor's fascination with vampires is dismissed by the other characters as a quirky hobby at best and don't take him seriously about it, with Michelle and Sara only playing along to humor him and Cab outright mocking him about it. This is coming from a series that's home to one of the most famous vampires in anime.
  • When Michelle sees Giorno talk into his bag at the cemetery, she thinks that he’s commanding the Masqueraders to do his bidding and later says that she “doesn’t want to think about all the horrible things a man like him would carry around.” In reality, Giorno was actually talking to Polnareff, her father, whose grave she was visiting at the time.
  • Michelle recognizes right away that there's something off about Hol Horse but doesn't know what. Even without his little monologue at the end of Chapter 12, his connection to Polnareff makes it very clear why he's so stressed to hear her name.
  • The Poor Communication Kills between Michelle and Giorno that set the foundation for the plot may count as this, too. The audience is well aware that neither of them are connected to the Masqueraders, but they are each other's prime suspects.
  • Yuya casually tells Sara that a friend of his has gone missing, one whose father lives in New York. While he never shares his friend's name in the story, the readers all know who this character is.
• Driven to Suicide: Cab’s father, Martin. See Ate His Gun above.
• Elsewhere Fic: Iron Touch focuses mostly on Michelle and the group of tourists she ends up traveling with, with canon characters like Polnareff, Giorno and Hol Horse taking up important but nonetheless supporting roles.
• Enemy Mine: Originally, Michelle only teamed up with Sara and co. because both of them were against the Masqueraders, and Michelle didn’t want to be put in a situation where she’d be forced to use her Stand out in public again. As the story progresses, she comes to see them more as friends and traveling companions.
• Episode on a Plane: The Aces High arc takes place almost entirely on a plane, with the latter half focusing on how to escape the plane after it starts to lose altitude.
• Epunymous Title: Downplayed, Chapters 8 and 9 are titled "The Emperor's New Group," which is both a pun of The Emperor's New Clothes and The Emperor's New Groove as well as a pun of Emperor, Hol Horse's Stand name.
• Every Man Has His Price: Giorno is easily able to bribe the police officer guarding Depeche's mansion with a hundred dollar bill into letting him in.
• Everyone's in the Loop: Despite Giorno's efforts to keep the arrow's theft a secret, much of the key cast knows about it anyways. Downplayed in that some characters, like Hol Horse and Depeche Mode, only know that Passione had been robbed, not specifically what had been stolen (though Hol Horse does correctly guess that Passione's treasure is a Stand arrow) and Justified in that characters like Fergie and Boney are the thieves responsible.
• Exact Words: How Michelle is able to avoid being detected by Policy of Truth at first. For example, when Depeche asks where she's from, he doesn't specify "where she currently lives," leaving her to say that she's "from" the town she grew up in that she hasn't been to in years rather than her grandmother's apartment in Paris. This ends up becoming meaningless when she realizes that she can just use Iron Maiden to temporarily deactivate Policy of Truth, but it takes her a while to muster up the confidence to do so.
• Excuse Me, Coming Through!: Happens a couple of times, usually with Michelle.
• Exit, Pursued by a Bear: Inverted. Chapter 17 ends with Shatter Me's shadow looming ominously over Depeche's maids.
• Familial Foe: Discussed but ultimately averted twice over. Michelle thinks that Giorno and Hol Horse are this, but the former is actually friends with her father and the latter doesn't want anything to do with him anymore.
• Fanservice Car Wash: Inverted. The Royce car wash is a rundown rust bucket, and instead of getting your car cleaned by a scantily clad woman as this trope usually entails, it gets cleaned by a Giant Spider's Overly-Long Tongue.
• Fighting Spirit: This being a fanfic of the Trope Codifier, it's no surprise that Stands show up.
• Food Porn: Chapter 8 opens up on a mouthwatering description of the group's first breakfast in Belgium.
• Foreign-Language Tirade: Michelle goes into one in Chapter 29 when Hol Horse carries a beaten up Sara back to her hotel room.
• Foreshadowing:
  • One of the Masqueraders that stole the arrow has the ability to manipulate electricity, just like Akira Otoishi from Part 4.
  • In Chapter 8, it's mentioned that they mayor died from "a bullet to the head, except there was no bullet in his head." Later that very same chapter, the group finds Hol Horse passed out behind a dumpster.
  • Giorno alludes to the possibility of a mole or traitor being responsible for the arrow's theft in both Chapter 1 and Chapter 21. In Chapter 22, Bufala shows up.
  • Sara's affinity for Akira's music is hinted at in Chapter 16, where she blasts a Japanese rock song with many "upbeat electric guitar riffs".
• Gay Paree: Notably Averted. All of the other real-world cities that the group visits, like Mons and New York City, are played up as legitimate tourist spots and show off at least one of the city's landmarks through a Stand fight. While the cemetery that Michelle and Giorno run into each other in is indeed real, Paris is not described as being particularly glamorous from either Michelle or Giorno's point of view and the two Stand battles that happen in the city take place in a public bathroom and on the street as someone tries to steal the group's car. May be justified when seen through Michelle's point of view, as she's jaded from having to live in a big tourist city for as long as she has.
• Gen Fic: While there are some ships, they're not the focus of the story and mostly involve Original Characters.
• Gene Hunting: Averted. When Michelle asks Sara if she's travelling to find her biological father, she responds very negatively.
• The Ghost: Marylou, Polnareff’s wife and Michelle’s mother, both in the figurative and literal sense.
• Glorified Sperm Donor: Seems to be the case for whoever Sara's biological father is, as she tells Michelle that she's never even met him.
• Gravity Screw: In Chapter 19, the Static Electricity running through the plane is strong enough to keep Hol Horse standing upside down on the fuselage.
• Great Big Book of Everything: Rumor's diary acts like this in the story. He'll almost always have whatever information the plot needs written down in it, from European travel laws to a tally of how many Masqueraders each of the main group has defeated.
• Groin Attack: Midler knees Hol Horse in the crotch as vengeance for him trying to shoot Dio twenty years prior.
• Gross-Up Close-Up: This paragraph from Chapter 37:
  Before he had a chance to avert his eyes, a series of squelches and gurgles trickled out from Mr. Williams' body as his skin peeled open like a pair of doors. A sour odor fanned through the air as some of his muscle fibers tore off his body with them while others stayed firm where they were, leaving a good chunk of Mr. Williams' skeleton and internal organs exposed for the world to see. His remaining muscle tissue tensed against the cool air, his fleshy lungs contracted and expanded with every breath, and his veiny intestines sporadically throbbed and pulsated, no doubt still digesting his dinner. A thin layer of slimy mucus coated everything, making his innards look somewhat greasy in the glimmering sunset. Perhaps most disturbing of all was his face—nearly all of the veins and muscle tissue had been torn off, leaving him behind with almost nothing but his skull. Mr. Williams stared back at Hol Horse with literally bulging eyes and a perpetually toothy grin. The shed skin hung off of Mr. Williams' neck by the collar of his vest like a hood.
• Hair-Contrast Duo: Energetic Manic Pixie Dream Girl Sara is a redhead while misanthropic Shrinking Violet Michelle has silver-gray hair.
• Hand Gagging: Hol Horse does this to Midler in Chapter 35 to prevent her from revealing any more about his connection to Polnareff in front of Michelle.
• He Knows Too Much: Probably why Depeche Mode put a hit on Mayor Dixie, if Hol Horse is to be believed.
• Inner Monologue: Expect a lot of these from whoever the POV character is, usually Michelle.
• Interesting Situation Duel:
  • The fight against Bad Sneakers takes place in a public bathroom.
  • A majority of the fight against Fall Out Boy takes place on the side of a belfry.
  • Most of the fight against Highway Star takes place in an abandoned, flooded subway.
• Irony: Despite being Muggles who fear the supernatural, the Fleetwoods gave their son the most unusual name of the main cast.
• Just a Flesh Wound: Sara invokes this trope to calm Michelle's nerves over her shooting Bad Sneakers in the leg, despite its user screaming and sobbing on the ground.
• Just in Time: In Chapter 14, Michelle is able to use Iron Maiden to save herself just seconds before melting and being absorbed inside Policy of Truth.
• Living Lie Detector: This is how Policy of Truth works; anyone who lies within the Stand's range ends up turning into paint and being absorbed into the painting.
• Logical Weakness: During the Aces High chapters, the plane becomes riddled with Static Electricity that keeps the group stuck to the floor. Their solution? Turn on a humidifier to dispel some of the static.
• The Magic Touch: Several Stands work this way. It's called Iron Touch for a reason. Most notably, Michelle's Stand, Iron Maiden, can cancel out all forces acting upon anything it touches (including gravity), making them indestructible and unmovable for a short period of time.
• Major Injury Underreaction: Happens twice with Boney:
  • In Chapter 22, Fergie and Bufala don't so much as bat an eye when they see their commander shoot himself point blank with a Desert Eagle, instead snarking at the situation.
  • In Chapter 30, Boney barely flinches when Ben stabs him in the back with a knife, not even noticing the knife still lodged in his back until it bumped against the back of his chair.
• Malevolent Masked Men: The Masqueraders, a group of Stand users wearing Masquerade masks that become aggressive around other Stand users.
• Meditating Under a Waterfall: Downplayed, Rumor does this in an ice cold shower in Chapter 23.
• Mini-Golf Episode: Chapter 37; albeit at an actual golf course.
• Minor with Fake I.D.: Subverted and Played for Laughs. Michelle's fake passport lists her age as twenty-one rather than seventeen, which only makes her worried that the age discrepancy will get her caught and arrested. Cut to Cab begging Hol Horse to get him a fake passport as well.
• Motive Rant: Boney's dagger speech in Chapter 22.
• Muggle: The staff of Chicago IX call individuals without Stands Lonelys. Though unlike many versions of this trope, the Lonely guests at the resort seem to at least be aware of Stands.
• Musical Theme Naming: As to be expected from a JJBA fic. A playlist containing all of the music references so far can be found here and here.
• Noble Male, Roguish Male: Rumor and Cab lean into this dynamic but never fully embrace it.
• Noodle Incident:
  • Cab and Rumor's fight is continuously referenced, but we don't know anything that actually happened in it other than the fact that Cab won and Rumor started travelling with him and Sara afterwards.
  • When Michelle and Hol Horse reunite with Sara and co. after negotiating with Depeche Mode, they find her taking pictures of a giant sculpture made entirely of orange slices held together by Rumor's Hamon with Cab sitting off to the side holding a small paper bag of oranges. I mean, when are we gonna get this many oranges again? Besides, we gotta hurry before that old lady gets back.
  Rumor: You know, usually I welcome your artistic pursuits, Sara. I must ask, however, is this really necessary?
  Sara: Of course!
• Not That Kind of Partner: Hol Horse says this verbatim after Sara mistakenly believes that he and Sting are a couple.
• Obvious Villain, Secret Villain: As the leader of the arrow heist, Boney establishes himself as a major villain as early as Chapter 1. The Grand Marshal, meanwhile, is so secretive that they're only ever referred to by their code name.
• Original Flavour: The fic's plot structure and tone is very similar to Part 3 and Part 5 of JJBA. Even its status as an Elsewhere Fic works within JJBA's style; as every subsequent part focuses on a different member of the Joestar bloodline than the last. It's the same here, except we're focusing on a different family.
• Outside Ride: Taken to its logical extreme in Chapter 20; where Michelle and co. put together a makeshift raft out of their suitcases, a couple of parachutes, and several layers of The Chain.
• Perky Goth: While she's not still exactly pleasant to be around, Fergie acts more like this than the traditional moody Goth.
• Phantom-Zone Picture: Policy of Truth becomes this to anyone that lies to it.
• Plane Awful Flight: Initially averted in the Aces High arc, despite Michelle's anxiety over flying. Then Red Hot Chili Pepper shows up and crashes the plane.
• Pool Scene: Chapter 17 starts with Depeche Mode lounging in his private hot tub, complete with a couple of cute maids relaxing with him. It ends with Depeche's decapitated head floating around in the water and the implication that the rest of his staff share a similar fate.
• Posthumous Character: Most of the main cast's parents count as this.
  • Marylou, Michelle's mother and Polnareff's wife, is dead and buried years before the story starts.
  • Sara mentions that her stepfather died of cancer about a year before she meets Michelle. The status of her biological father, however, is unknown.
  • Both of Cab's parents die well before he gets involved in the plot.
• Power Outage Plot: In Chapter 19, Red Hot Chili Pepper drains the plane the protagonists are on of its electricity while they're still airborne. To make matters worse, he turned it all into Static Electricity to keep them all from jumping off with a parachute.
• Prematurely Marked Grave: Polnareff and Marylou both share a grave at Cimetière de Belleville...except Polnareff's date of death hasn't been engraved onto it, he's not buried there, and his remaining family wasn't even sure if he was dead or not.
• Propaganda Piece: The Dio Appreciation Day poster depicts Dio as simultaneously holy and patriotic (despite not being American), dressing him up like the Statue of Liberty with the moon shining behind him like "the light of heaven itself." Dio was obviously nothing like this in reality.
• Properly Paranoid: Given the fact that she's been avoiding tax collectors for several years while living alone in a big city, most of Michelle's paranoid monologues are understandable even if they are played for laughs. Whenever it's Played Straight, it usually ends up turning her into the Only Sane Man of the group, like when she rightfully finds Hol Horse suspicious for wanting to join their group.
• Rage Breaking Point: Michelle hits hers in Chapter 35 after Midler confirms that Hol Horse did indeed know her father, considered him an enemy (she assumes that he helped kill him), and that he intentionally hid it from her the whole time the two were travelling together.
• Recursive Fanfiction: While Iron Touch isn't one, it has a few of its own:
  • The Red and the Black, a Crossover with fellow JoJo fanpart Streetlight Pursuit written by leafgilly.
  • Big Iron, written by Culture Shock author AllShaftsFall.
• Running Gag:
  • As a carryover from part 3, Michelle has a habit of running into trouble in public bathrooms.
  • Hol Horse getting his shit kicked in every time he runs into an old girlfriend (or their Knight Templar Big Brother).
• Save the Villain: While not a villain per se, in Chapter 34, Michelle saves Cascada from a falling stage light.
• Scenery Censor: When Cab and Hol Horse walk in on Rumor meditating in the shower in Chapter 23, his lower half is blocked off by the rim of the shower's embedded bathtub.
• Scenery Porn: Particularly when they reach New York; several paragraphs are devoted to describing Times Square and the different parts of Central Park.
• Searching the Stalls: In Chapter 3, Michelle ends up doing this while inside a bathroom stall herself.
• Shield Surf: With Michelle going up against Cascada in Chapter 34, this was inevitable.
• Shout-Out: Now has its own page.
• Sinister Surveillance: Michelle notes that Rest Aria has a lot of security cameras for a simple art gallery, which ends up being another hint that there's more to it than what initially meets the eye.
• Small, Secluded World: Chicago IX, a beach resort for Stand users, is tucked away in an unknown pocket of the world and guarded by a giant spider monster living inside a rundown car wash.
• Spooky Painting: Policy of Truth is described as "a horde of screaming acrylic faces set in front of a flaming background." It doubles as a Phantom-Zone Picture.
• Subways Suck: The New York City Subway has been flooded by a burst sewage pipe by the time the group get to The Big Apple.
• Supernatural Sealing: Michelle ends up trapping High Priestess inside of a Random Access Memory while it's transformed into a harpoon gun.
• Superpowerful Genetics: Discussed by Michelle and Sara.
  Michelle: I, um, was just wondering whether or not either of you parents were Stand users. I always assumed it was hereditary, so who'd you get it from?
  Sara: I don't think it works like that. Cab's told me that his parents weren't Stand users and I get the feeling that Rumor's weren't either.
• Surprise Car Crash:
  • This is a part of Michelle's backstory, specifically, it's how her grandmother and former boyfriend bite the dust.
  • Narrowly averted at the end of Chapter 20 when the protagonists' luggage raft almost crashes into a truck.
• Switching P.O.V.: While the fic is mostly told from Michelle's perspective following her Bait-and-Switch Character Intro in Chapter 1, it does occasionally switch between other characters, usually for their Troubled Backstory Flashback.
• Sympathetic Adulterer: It's easy forget that Cab's father cheated on his wife after finding out that he committed suicide by shotgun.
• A Tragedy of Impulsiveness: The entire All Broken Down Inside arc could've been avoided if Sara simply resisted the urge to steal Yuya's bike.
• Troll: Cab acts like this a lot, usually to Rumor.
• Troubled Backstory Flashback: Chapters 6 and 11 serve as this for Cab and Rumor.
• True Art Is Incomprehensible: Enforced by Rest Aria art museum, which is noted for its boring architecture and overpriced Postmodern paintings. Turns out, it's actually a huge money laundering scheme by a local crime boss.
  Each painting they passed grew plainer than the last, going from fuzzy shapes to one that was nearly blank save for a single red stripe in the middle. Street graffiti had more talent behind it. Then again, maybe she just didn't get it.
• Unexpected Inheritance: After Depeche Mode dies, Hol Horse receives a phone call saying that he left him something in his will, which Hol Horse suspects is a trap. Chapter 23 is even called "Surprise Inheritance."
• Villain Opening Scene: Subverted; Chapter 1 starts from Giorno's POV, but he opens the chapter by recounting the arrow's theft.
• Villain with Good Publicity: Dio has been reframed as an absolute saint at Chicago IX by Mr. Williams, hoping doing so may lure another vampire to the resort.
• Voices Are Mental: In Chapter 20, Chili Pepper speaks in a voice "that did not belong to its user" with a slight Russian accent, the same one that Boney has. Two chapters later, it's spelled out that he's capable of using Akira's Masquerade mask to directly possess his Stand.
• Wham Line: In Chapter 36: "Did you know that you used to have an auntie?"
• Woman Scorned: Hol Horse's former girlfriends have all become this, with Lovestrong breaking his nose on his sister's behalf, Lindy giving him a Bitch Slap when he comes knocking on her door, and Midler kneeing him in the balls as soon as she sees him^note Though that was because he tried to shoot Dio rather than because of any lover's quarrel..
• Written Sound Effect: The fic does this occasionally in order to mimic the source material.
• You, Get Me Coffee: Inverted in Chapter 15, where Hol Horse jokingly offers to get Depeche a coffee in exchange for Michelle's passport, but he declines and gives him a real job.
• You Remind Me of X: Very briefly in Chapter 2. One of Sara's guesses of Michelle's name is Hellen, apparently after a friend of hers. She mentions that they're both "very quiet."
• Your Head A-Splode: Masqueraders that have their masks forced off them end up having their faces peeled off and their skulls crushed by the masks.