Chapter Text
Giorno wakes up with the sun, and as he rubs his eyes he is struck with the uneasiness unique to sleeping longer than you intended to. Last evening, he had been tired, and had thought a quick nap would be enough to prepare him for his inevitable shift on watch duty. Apparently, everyone else had a different idea. There is a part of him worried that the team has decided he isn’t trustworthy, or worse, useless. A different part of him is thankful that they let him sleep long enough to feel fully rested.
And a larger part of him called the stomach is simply very hungry.
He gets out of bed without delay, combing his fingers through his hair as he reaches for his hair tie. He ties up half of it while he braids the back, then lets it back loose to secure the braid. Then, with a practiced twist of his finger and several bobby pins, he secures the three curls above his forehead.
“Sounds like you’re finally up, Giorno,” comes Trish’s voice from the bathroom. “The others went down to breakfast already. I’m almost done in here, so… Yep! Bathroom’s all yours, so do your hair and freshen up so we can–” She exits the bathroom, and she stalls for a moment.
“Well, I guess you don’t need to do your hair. But the bathroom’s still all yours for everything else.”
“Thank you, Trish,” he replies, and after a few minutes to go through the average person’s morning routine, she hurries him out the door and towards the hotel’s restaurant.
“Hey, buon giorno, Giorno! And Trish!” Mista greets them warmly when they reach the table, blissfully ignoring Narancia and Fugo as they try to stab each other just behind him. Giorno would say it makes him feel nostalgic for their first meeting, if that hadn’t been just a few days ago.
“What, just gonna tack my good morning on at the end of Giorno’s?” Trish complains as she grabs a chair and shoves it between Fugo and Narancia. Abbacchio passes her an empty plate and coffee mug, and the rowdy ones blink in stunned silence before scooching over to give her more room.
“Your name isn’t as punnable!” Mista defends himself.
“To be fair, Giorno’s name is very punnable,” Narancia says, before suddenly going quiet and staring at nothing. Fugo makes a face at him and scoots his chair a bit farther away.
“I’m taking the blueberry muffins as revenge,” Trish says, just as a waiter sets down two baskets of pastries. She stands up to reach over their round table and grabs the blueberry muffin from the top of each of the pastry baskets.
“No fair, those’re the only two we’re getting!” Mista complains. Bucciarati apologizes to him and says something about how they need breakfast to be quick, but Giorno is already tuning it out. His stomach is reminding him that he skipped dinner last night, and he just spotted a chocolate croissant in the basket. He slides into the last empty chair, swipes the croissant, and shoves half of it in his mouth before he catches himself. They might be on a time limit to catch the boss, but he’s still expected to have manners, right? Chewing on his croissant slowly, almost sheepishly, he glances around the table to see if anyone caught him.
“If Giorno had sex right after waking up, that’d be morning glory,” Narancia announces completely unprompted. A glob of food falls out of Mista’s mouth as he starts laughing. Bucciarati sighs into his hands as he tries to hold onto his patience, while Abbacchio starts chugging his coffee like the caffeine can remove him from the situation. Trish shoots Narancia a look of disgust as she moves her chair away from him, and Fugo gives him a look of perfect, utter disdain.
“I cannot begin to tell you on how many levels that pun is terrible.” Narancia simply gives him a shit eating grin.
Giorno allows himself to relax as he gobbles down the croissant and reaches for a second pastry. Breakfast continues as normal.
"Alright, now that everyone's had a chance to wake up," Bucciarati starts, right when Giorno and Fugo were having a staring competition to see who would get the raspberry Danish, "I think we need to discuss our strategy for the day."
“Is he still on the island?” Trish asks
“Yes,” Giorno answers without thinking, then pauses to double check himself. The dust mites are still making a fuzzy spot in the back of his brain, but it’s much easier to manage it after a full night’s rest. “Yes, he’s still on the island.”
“An island is a better search radius than all of Italy,” Abbacchio adds drily. “Is he still at the beach?”
“He’s… In that direction from us, yes.”
“If we know where he’s at, let’s go already!” Narancia cheers, only for Fugo to knock him upside the head. It’s a gentler hit than usual, Fugo must be in a good mood–Oh. He got the Danish while Giorno was distracted.
“Don’t be stupid. The boss is dangerous, and he almost definitely knows our Stands, if not our faces. We need to be careful, and we need a strategy.”
“And the first part of our strategy is that no one is going to be left alone,” Bucciarati jumps in. “He can control time, and beyond that, he’s smart enough to stay the boss of Passione for this long. All seven of us searching for him together would be too conspicous, though, so I suggest that we split into three groups.”
“Dibs on Fugo and Narancia!” Mista exclaims. “No offense to everyone else. We’re just, like, a trio.”
“Like neapolitan ice cream,” Narancia adds.
“Exactly!” Mista cheers.
“Yeah! Fugo’s the strawberry,” Narancia tugs at his tie to emphasize his point, and Fugo swats his hand away, “I’m the chocolate, and Mista’s vanill–”
“Wait, hang on, who said I’m vanilla? You’re the vanilla,” Mista argues.
“I am not vanilla–” Narancia gasps like his very pride has been wounded, only for Trish to cut him off by snapping, “Neither of you are vanilla or chocolate! Narancia’s orange, Mista is… Blue raspberry, I guess. Now shut up.” Mista and Narancia exchange a look.
“Fruit trio?”
“Fruit trio.” They nod and clasp hands in a handshake far too serious for the situation. Fugo groans and shoves the last of the Danish in his mouth.
“ …With that out of the way,” Bucciarati continues, sighing as he holds onto his composure, “Giorno and Trish, if you two wouldn’t mind being in the same group? The boss is most likely to recognize the two of you, and Giorno’s–Dust mites, if I recall?–will give you two the best odds of staying out of sight.” Giorno glances over at Trish, waiting for her to decide for the both of them.
“Sure, that sounds good to me. Then you and Abbacchio are the third group?”
“Yes. And, to make sure that all of us stay in contact, I got these.” From some unseen place, probably involving some sort of zipper, Bucciarati pulls out a set of seven pagers.
“Woah, cool!” Narancia immediately grabs one. “When did you have the time to get these?”
“Never underestimate the powers of the team mom, Narancia,” Mista says with false gravitas.
“I’m two years older than you, Mista, that hardly makes me anyone’s mother.” Bucciarati sighs again.
“Wait, you’re–You’re twenty?” Trish asks, bewildered. “Does that mean everyone you’ve fought so far has been older than you?”
“Older than all of us, I’m pretty sure,” Abbacchio answers. Trish’s eyebrows furrow as she looks at him.
“I guess it makes sense that you’re the oldest, considering how you dress.”
“And what’s that supposed to mean?”
“I’m just saying, if your fashion sense is gonna be stuck in the early nineties, you should pick between romantic or industrial gothic.”
“This? Coming from someone who wears too much math and pink to commit?” Trish gasps in indignation.
“Can we please not argue about alternative fashion scenes?” Fugo asks, uncharacteristically mediating the argument. Giorno makes a note to himself of the power of raspberry Danishes. With a final huff from them both, Trish and Abbacchio set their argument aside.
“Anyways,” Bucciarati sighs for the third time, “We’ll all split up and search for him. When one group finds him, page the others and tail him from a safe distance. When we regroup, we’ll plan our attack. Our one advantage is that we can track him, while he cannot track us. We’ll have to make the most of that element of surprise.”
“An ambush, then?” Fugo summerizes.
“Yes.” Bucciarati picks up his coffee mug, draining most of it in a single go, and then stands. “Abbacchio, if you’re ready, you and I can get started. You kids–”
“Mom,” Narancia whispers. Bucciarati shoots him a mild glare without interrupting himself.
“–finish breakfast, then head out.”
“Yessir!” Mista answers, the others quickly following suit. Abbachio gets up to join Bucciarati, and then the two of them leave.
“Y’know, I think there was one thing that the strategy’s missing,” Narancia says the moment they are gone.
“Which would be…?” Fugo prompts. Narancia beams at him with mischief.
“Duh! Disguises!”
Several pastries and one short walk later, the five of them are at what may be Sardinia’s only mall. Mista and Narancia, the usual spearheads of any mischief, are having a blast finding the most atrocious combinations of clothes they can, while Trish is turning that spear into a trident by mixing and matching their choices to be only a bit less terrible and calling it “avant garde.” Fugo is also getting into it, though so far, that means he’s keeping the store attendants from kicking them out without complaint. They might be here because of a very serious mission, but they’re having fun.
Giorno might be a little left out of their fun, but that’s alright. His plan for a disguise works better if he’s alone anyways.
He figures his shoes won’t give him away, but just in case, he goes looking for a pair of pants on the longer side. Somewhere in the back of a shop, he finds a pair of baggy cargo jeans and shrugs to himself. A single brush of the hand, and the pant legs become a pair of denim-colored snakes– Coluber constrictor foxii, Golden Experience helpfully tells him–that slither into his sleeves, happy to stay put across his shoulder blades as they soak in his body heat. He leaves the store and goes into another, where it takes about two minutes to find an aggressively colorful polo shirt. He turns that into many ladybugs, which disperse throughout the mall. He’ll reconvene with them later, probably in one of the mall’s bathroom stalls. After that, Giorno takes a break from the clothing stores to duck into a cosmetics store, where it takes a while to find what he has in mind. Spray on hair chalk, in black. He turns it into a vine, scientific name not needed. All he needs to know is that it has aerial roots, so it’ll be fine wrapped around his ankle. Finally, he goes back to the clothing section and picks out a newboy hat. He’s running out of creative ideas for shoplifting, so he simply turns the hat into another vine around his other ankle and leaves, heading straight for the bathroom his ladybugs found.
Once in the stall, the first step of his outfit swap is, of course, to turn his pink suit into frogs. The frogs themselves aren’t pink, though. They’re more of an orangey-red, and Giorno tunes out whatever their scientific name is to focus on the facts: They look like tomatoes, two of them fit in each of his hands, and they are absolutely adorable. He pauses to congratulate himself for coming up with such a great plan, then sets the frogs down to put on his cargo pants. Once the snakes are denim again, and they are on his legs, he gently slides one frog into each of his pockets. It’s convenient that clothes don’t have a lot of mass when compressed down into frogs. The ladybugs coalesce into the painfully vivid polo shirt, which Giorno then puts on. Then he takes it off again so he doesn’t stain it while spray-dying his hair. His bobby pins go next to a frog, and after the full bottle of hair chalk, his hair is black again for the first time in… A year? Maybe less, maybe more. He uses his hairtie to make his hair into an awkward bun, then places the hat on top of it. He leaves the ends of his hair hanging loose to create an illusion of bangs. Then, finally, he puts the polo shirt back on, and the disguise is complete.
Oh right, the pager. Giorno slips it next to another pocket frog, and now, looking completely unlike himself and prepared for his job, he exits the bathroom with the intention of finding the others.
There’s a road to a certain place paved with good intentions, though, and Giorno’s road leads him to the food court. The spot in his head reserved for the dust mites starts tugging, and he finds his gaze trailing over the heads of people eating until–Pink hair, just like Trish, even if it is a shade or two darker. It’s about the only similarity the two of them have, but what’s more important is that the dust mites are going wild. The guy looks a bit young to be anyone’s father, but there’s no doubt about who this is. Even more importantly, he just sat down for an early lunch. It’s a golden opportunity, but not one that’s going to last for very long. Giorno knows what Bucciarati said, what they all agreed on, but he simply can’t ignore this chance. He’ll have to do this solo. Besides, the anticipation is making his heart race in the way that is quickly becoming familiar, and he knows that at this point it won’t be easy to talk himself out of this.
The moment his decision is made, Golden Experience starts flooding his head with information. Foxglove, cottonmouth, black mold, more and more deadly species, until there is one that stands out to him: the blue-ringed octopus. Small, native to the Pacific, possesses neurotoxic venom. Posesses enough venom to kill a man twenty times over, death resulting within seventeen minutes. It’s perfect.
Giorno heads to the counter of the least busy restaurant in the food court. It only takes a minute to order and pay for a small soda, and he sips at it as he slips behind one of the many pillars surrounding the seating area. Mostly out of sight, he slips his pager out of his pocket and transforms it into the little octopus. He has to give it the life energy to grow bigger than the pager was, but it’s still only six or so inches in diameter. With one hand full of tiny deadly octopus, he fumbles for a bit to pop open the lid of his soda without dropping it. When he finally succeeds, he holds the octopus over it, and it wraps its arms around the cup so it mouth–beak, thanks Gold–is right over the mouth of the cup. Then, it starts spraying out its venom–spitting, technically; the tetrodotoxin is created by bacteria in its salivary glands. Thanks again, Gold. Every last drop of its venom, filling the empty space left by what Giorno drank. Job complete, the octopus turns back into a pager, and he puts it back in his pocket. He has nothing left to do now but to walk straight to the boss’s table and keep everything under control.
“Pretty busy in here, isn’t it?” he comments as soon as he sits down. Conveniently enough, the food court is full of other people, enough that he can get away with pretending that there aren’t any open tables.
“It is, isn’t it,” the boss chirps.
“I can try to find another seat, if I’m bothering you–”
“No, that’s alright, I don’t mind. Wouldn’t want to bother any of the families out today, right?” The nerve of this man, to say that when just yesterday, he had people out on orders to kill his own daughter.
“Right. What’s your name, by the way? I’m Haruno,” he says, pronouncing the r with the vagueness so opposite the sharp roll of Italian. It took him so long to perfect that roll.
“You’re a tourist, then! I’m Doppio. I grew up on Sardinia, and I’m returning for a short visit at the moment. How’re you liking the island?”
“It’s beautiful,” he replies honestly. Then he takes a sip of his drink, calculated to look absent-minded. Even using the same jellyfish trick that he has before, his heartrate spikes from the inherent risk of putting poison in his mouth. The jellyfish shudders as it turns back into a tooth, and Giorno swallows his own spit to complete the illusion.
“Care for a sip?” he offers. “My ice hasn’t melted yet, and the air conditioning in here isn’t the best.”
“I don’t know, you’ve already used your straw,” Doppio says, head tilting so his bangs cover his face. Giorno’s stomach starts to sink in the ensuing silence. But then, Doppio’s face brightens like he’s had an idea.
“I know! I can just pour some of your drink into my cup. It’s empty, anyways.”
“Go right ahead,” Giorno responds, popping the top off of his cup and passing it over. Doppio opens his own cup and pours a splash of hissing soda and two ice cubes in. When he drinks straight from the lip of the cup, Giorno has to bite the inside of his mouth to keep from smiling.
“Thank you, Haruno! I hadn’t realized I was still thirsty,” Doppio thanks him.
“Please, it was nothing.”
“Well, back to the topic at hand,” he resumes. “Do you and your friends have any plans for your vacation?”
“We had thought about visiting the beach, but most of us forgot to bring any swimwear. Hence, our visit to the mall.”
“I see. Be honest, Haruno, were you one of the ones that forgot? I won’t judge you.”
“I did, I’ll admit that.”
“Then shouldn’t you be shopping right now?”
“I already did. One of my friends is carrying mine for me while the more fashion-savvy ones shop around.” And at this point in the conversation, Giorno realizes his one miscalculation. If the boss is drinking the poison, it won’t take seventeen minutes to kill him. It’ll take seventeen minutes plus the time it takes for the poison to be digested. He feels a bolt of panic, but he tamps down on it, turning it into a current of energy that can buoy him through the next several minutes. The plan hasn’t changed, just the timetable.
Giorno keeps him talking. He lets Doppio ask about the friend he’s with, mixing and matching details about his old classmates to form convincing false people. He starts asking his own questions about harmless things, like which restaurants serve the best foods and points of interests that most tourists would pass over. He starts picking at any details he can find that won’t raise any flags, like the frog Doppio saw when he first got here and the other people on the island. Half an hour passes, and then some, and Giorno spends every minute of it willing the poison to act faster.
“I know you said you met your friends in school,” Doppio says, when Giorno starts running out of other conversational thread to keep him there, “but I have to know the things you do together. What really made you–”
A sharp cough cuts him off.
“Sorry, I don’t know what that was. Like I was asking: What really brought you all together? Besides going to the same school.”
“I can’t say that it was anything other than proximity and good luck–” More coughing. Giorno’s teeth draw blood as he tries to keep his face neutral.
“Are you alright?”
“I’m fi–I’m–I–” he stammers, his throat betraying him before he can finish the sentence. Each cough sounds more and more like a wheeze, then each wheeze sounds more and more like helpless gasping for air. The poison is taking effect, and Giorno got lucky: paralysis of the respiratory system, the most fatal of all possible symptoms.
“You know what?” Giorno continues from his earlier answer. “My friends and I met through a mutual interest of ours. Have you heard of Passione?” With hands desperately clutching his throat, the boss stares at him, eyes wide and angry. A mere thought turns the dust mites still on his face back into the ladybug brooch. Doppio’s eyes go sharper, like his youthful appearance was a facade, and now he is too furious to maintain it. He is tense as every muscle in his body contracts, as the full-body paralysis sets in.
Giorno treats himself to a self-satisfied smirk, just for a moment.
“Does anybody know how to do the heimlich?” he shouts, standing up from his chair. The other people in the foodcourt look around at each other. Somebody hurries over and starts thrusting their fists into the boss’s diaphragm hard enough to break his ribs. When he spits nothing out, the person does it again. And again. And again. Giorno lets the onlookers push him out of the way as they crowd around, slipping away. By now, someone is probably calling an ambulance, and someone might be trying to convince the volunteer to switch from the heimlich to CPR. But Gold can already sense the boss’s life fading away.
He calmly rides up the nearest escalator, looking for his friends.
“Seriously, out of all of us, how do we loose Giorno !? He’s like a set of pink and yellow highlighters!”
“He’s quiet though!” Mista argues with Fugo. “How are we supposed to keep track of him while debating over the Juicy sweatpants?”
“Don’t start that again!” Narancia warns, currently wearing the Juicy sweatpants. He’s also wearing the matching jacket and a pair of aviators. Fugo settled on some patchwork jeans and a split-bottom shirt. Mista’s disguise includes cropped pirate pants and a polo shirt, while Trish is wearing a short handkerchief hem dress over red leather pants.
“I’m gonna page him,” Trish announces, already tapping at the tiny keyboard. “Should we meet up in the food court?” Mista sucks in a breath through his teeth as he looks down.
“Maybe not. There’s a big crowd for some reason.”
“Do you think someone died?” Narancia asks, which gets a speedy “No,” from Fugo.
“I’ll just ask him where he is, then,” Trish replies. A few more taps, and she presses send.
There is a beeping noise coming from a dark-haired stranger.
He pulls a pager from his pocket, silences it, and then looks up. He smiles slightly when he sees them, then starts to approach.
“There you are, I was looking for you.”
“Uh, who are you?” Mista asks him.
“Oh, right. Just a moment.” The stranger reaches into one of his many pockets like he’s searching for something. He pulls out a red frog.
“Here, hold that for a moment, please,” he says, putting the frog into Mista’s hands. He has no choice but to hold it as the stranger continues going through his pockets. There is swiftly a frog in the hands of the other three as well.
“Giorno?” Mista guesses, before he finds what he was looking for. Giorno pulls out his blue ladybug brooch.
“Dude!” Narancia laughs. “Your disguise rocks! No way the boss’ll be able to recognize you!”
“He won’t be recognizing anything anymore,” Giorno replies. The gang shares glances with each other, all with varying degrees of concern.
“Does this have something to do with the crowd downstairs?” Trish ventures to ask.
“I hope you don’t mind me committing patricide on your behalf.” There is a moment of silence.
“First Polpo, and now this ?!” Fugo yells. “What is with you and murdering people!?”
“How did you even do it?” Narancia asks.
“I gave him my soda,” Giorno answers. “It was poisoned.”
“And that worked ?” Trish asks incredulously.
“I drank from it first to make him think it was safe.”
“You drank poisoned soda !?” Mista shrieks.
“No, I didn’t. I used the same drink as I did with the piss.”
“Aha! So you didn’t drink piss!” Narancia declares.
“Why did you think Giorno drank piss?” Trish asks. “Did one of you try to haze him?”
“Abbacchio,” they answer.
“We can discuss this more at the hotel,” Giorno changes topics. “It’s probably best to leave before any authorities arrive.” Fugo points to the escalators with one hand as the other pinches the bridge of his nose, and the five of them make their way out of the mall.
“Y’know,“ Mista starts when they’re halfway down the escalator, “Bucciarati probably isn’t going to be happy that you faced the boss on your own. Like, it worked out fine and all, but still.”
Very quietly, Giorno says, “Fuck.”