Donatello Versus


 * The character featured in this article is sometimes referred to as "Donatello Versace".

Donatello Versus is an antagonist who appears in Part VI: Stone Ocean. He is the illegitimate son of Dio Brando, and the half-brother of Ungalo, Rykiel, and Giorno Giovanna.

Story
It dawns on him during chapter 716 that all of his suffering as a young man was because of his stand power Under World, which was at the time, undeveloped. However, Enrico Pucci helped Versus train this power and let it develop. Even so, Versus explains in a monologue that he wouldn't hesitate to attack Pucci, holding a grudge against him because of how high Pucci thinks of himself.

Early Life
Donatello Versus was raised by his mother and stepfather, a man who "did nothing but tell long stories of his womanizing ways," who his mother married at an unknown point in Versus' life.

After running away from home at age 13, a pair of baseball shoes fell from the sky onto his head. He put them on, but was soon arrested and taken to court, where he learned the shoes belonged to real-life Seattle Mariners outfielder Ichiro Suzuki, originally to be given to disabled children as a gift.

Upon hearing the boy say (truthfully) that the shoes fell from the sky, the judge flew into a rage, disgusted by the fact that a 13-year-old boy would stoop so low as to steal from children less fortunate than himself. Versus was quickly deemed guilty on circumstantial evidence of stealing the shoes and was sent to a juvenile detention facility for six months, Versus' mother and stepfather not objecting to his incarceration.

However, four months after Versus' arrest, the true criminal confessed. The criminal was a professional burglar, who, after stealing the shoes, was afraid that he would be caught because the shoes were so famous, and dropped the shoes down a ventilation shaft on top of a building to get rid of them.

When word reached the facility he was being held in that he had been wrongly condemned, Versus had already been physically and emotionally drained, and he was almost too weak to even move because of a string of strange events that had occurred over the course of his incarceration. For instance, Versus tripped while walking in the field of the facility and his hand was impaled by a knife that had been buried there some time before. Versus would find out the next day that the knife belonged to a corrupt guard who had been hiding it, presumably to threaten other inmates. As a result of this, the guard bullied and beat Versus regularly. His hand wound was finally treated two weeks after the fact, but worms and pus still infested the wound. Possibly as a result of this, Versus fell into a fever and nearly died. Another occurrence was that Versus urinated on a decrepit wall that crumbled and revealed the skeleton of a long-dead woman.

However, during the events of Stone Ocean, Enrico Pucci took Versus and two of Dio's other sons, his half-brothers Ungalo and Rykiel, under his wing and helped them develop their stand powers.

Stone Ocean
Versus' final moments in the manga would come when Jolyne attacks Pucci with her stand while Whitesnake activated its illusory powers. However, Jolyne realizes that she attacked Versus instead of Pucci, killing him.

Trivia

 * Versus' backstory is either an homage or a direct lift from the novel, (and later feature film) Holes, written by Louis Sachar, in which the protagonist Stanley Yelnats IV is sent to a juvenile correction camp called Camp Green Lake, after the sneakers of fictional baseball star Clyde "Sweet Feet" Livingston fall from the sky onto his head. As it turns out the sneakers were to be auctioned off, the proceeds going to orphans. Stanley is wrongly accused and is sent to the prison, but when he is revealed to have been innocent, his life takes a turn for the better. Versus' life takes a turn for the worse after he is freed.