Chapter Text
Giorno wakes up a few minutes earlier than usual.
Not a strange thing to do, but it definitely feels strange when his bed collapses under him.
Gold Experience catches him in its arms, allowing him to survey the situation from above. Rather than just falling apart, his bed seems to have disappeared completely, replaced by a horde of little yellow frogs.
He rubs his eyes, and takes a second look. Okay. Still frogs. Maybe his Stand activated in his sleep, though he has no idea why it would do that. And the entire bed? He’ll have to get a new one. He has Gold Experience put him down so he can walk to his drawer and grab a pen and paper. Time for a to-do list.
As soon as he has them in his hands, the pen and notepad shake themselves apart, dissolving into several small shapes and falling from his hands.
“Hey, what?” He asks despite having nobody around to answer him. The shapes continue to take form on the ground, eventually moulding themselves into the exact same kind of yellow frog. They ribbit at him before joining their brethren.
It happened again? But he’s awake, there’s no reason for him not to have full control over his ability. Whatever’s wrong, he’ll have to fix it quickly- everyone needs to be able to rely on him. He doesn’t feel very reliable at the moment.
If Gold Experience knows what’s going on, it’s not talking. “What do you think?” He knows his Stand won’t respond, probably can’t, but asks anyway. “Is it anything to worry about?”
Gold Experience says nothing. Giorno nods anyway. “Maybe so.”
Getting downstairs is interesting. Right away, he completely forgets his dilemma and rests his hand on the banister, which promptly breaks down and reforms into hundreds of even tinier frogs, all the same glistening shade of gold. The stairs themselves remain intact, so he’s able to continue descending.
Seriously, the frogs are so tiny. After a moment of deliberation, he picks one up, relieved when it doesn’t burst into yet smaller frogs. It looks up at him, then emits the faintest of croaks, barely audible.
Giorno does not cry. But maybe he sniffles a little. This one will be called Preziosa.
He manages not to stop and name them all, instead leaving them in his wake. He needs some breakfast.
Preparing anything without the use of his hands will probably be a challenge. He settles for one of the easiest meals possible- just a piece of fruit. He opens his mouth and slowly, carefully, approaches the nearest apple…
It only takes the smallest brush of his teeth against its skin for the apple to start quivering and changing. He jumps back, just in time to see its matter break apart and resume the forms of… you guessed it, frogs.
Giorno loves frogs, sure, but this is just far too much. What will he eat? What will he drink? How is he even going to change his clothes? As it is, he’s lucky that the pyjamas he’s wearing now are staying intact, though he keeps his hands off them just in case.
“Giorno? There you are!” There’s Narancia, clattering through the kitchen. Seeing a familiar face should be a relief, maybe they can work together to solve this, but Giorno’s gripped by fear when he remembers what could happen.
“Don’t come any closer!” He tries to warn his friend, desperately, but he just keeps approaching.
“Huh, why not? Did you have a bad dream? Here, I’ll make it all better…” Despite every warning, and Giorno’s attempts to escape, Narancia still manages to encase Giorno in a hug.
The hug isn’t the problem. In fact, it’s a very nice hug. The problem is what happens immediately after.
Narancia’s eyes go wide, and start turning green. The rest of him’s quick to follow, shape and features shifting until he’s indistinguishable from a very large bullfrog.
What has he done? Giorno can only watch, paralysed by horror. Frog-Narancia stares back, as if to communicate that being a giant frog actually isn’t all that bad. Really, there are much worse fates. Giant frogs don’t have to pay taxes, and they can smack people with their tongues. What do humans have that can beat that?
“You have a point,” Giorno admits, and places his hand directly on his own face.
Before he feels any changes, there’s a shock that runs through his entire body, so hard that it knocks him to the ground. No, wait… he was already lying down, and he’s not on the ground, he’s in bed.
Wait, bed? But his bed- his bed’s perfectly normal. He pats at the pillows, the sheets, the frame, and it is absolutely zero per cent composed of amphibians. Just wood and fabric and some other stuff.
He’s finally re-oriented enough to process things around him, and it’s beginning to occur to him that the whole frog thing might have been a dream. Why would he dream about that, though? Does he subconsciously fear his own power, and his ability to deliver judgment with it? Is he worried about his heavy responsibilities isolating him from the people he cares about most?
No, it was probably just because frogs are really cool.