Chapter Text
“Hurts.”
Stabbing. Searing. Twisting. Your cheeks are wet with tears, but this fact is distant to you; secondary, unimportant, unreal compared to the agony radiating hot needles down your neck and into your shoulders. You whimper and shift again, holding the back of your neck to the concrete floor of your room, kicking your legs until you’re pressed against it almost hard enough to bruise. The cold sends a wave of goosebumps along your skin, chills your muscle, but the pain you’re so desperate to relieve is untouched, buzzing along the column of your spine as if each vertebrae was a wasp’s nest.
You wish you were alone. It would be a blessing if you were alone, but it’s you and the pain and the dark and the chilling certainty that no amount of stretching or writhing or crying will change anything.
“H-hurts…”
You flip over onto your stomach, welcoming the distraction of the painful scrape of your skin against concrete. This position isn’t comfortable either—you have to keep shifting your head to find a good way to rest your cheek—but the alternative is to struggle back to your bed and compound your misery with scratchy sheets and a thin mattress. You don’t have it in you to deal with that. Instead, you stare at the blurry paper-thin rectangle of light a few meters away, hoping against hope that you’ll see the shadow of someone walking past your room. Would you get in trouble if you called out to them? It’s After Hours. You’re supposed to be quiet.
It hurts. It hurts. The desperation and the fear roil inside you, pressing against your lungs until you can’t breathe, and suddenly it doesn’t matter what The Rules are anymore. You don’t even need comfort anymore, you just need proof, proof that you’re not alone, that you haven’t been abandoned to tremble in the dark.
How long do you cry out? Who are you hoping will come? You crawl forward, pulling yourself along until you’re pressed against the cold metal of the door. You call, and you call, and you call, until your voice is breaking on every syllable and you’re gasping out sobs more often than words.
It is only when the worry of ‘nobody’s coming’ becomes a sick and horrible certainty that the door gives way, sliding seamlessly into the wall. Blinded by the sudden illumination of harsh fluorescents, you gracelessly tumble forward into the legs of the man now standing between you and the empty space of the hall. For a moment, all that registers is that someone else is here, and you twist your fingers into the soft, loose violet fabric around his legs.
“Oh, child,” you hear a deep voice sigh above you, and then the man bends, resting his dark-skinned hands on your shoulders before gently but firmly gripping you to hold you away from him. You’re still fighting to get your breathing under control, gulping down sobs, and he patiently waits for you to blink away tears and look him in the face.
His hands are warm as they hold your shoulders, but his eyes are cold, dark and empty in a face that’s gentle for everyone else. Your hands twist nervously in front of you—you want to pull away from his grip, but you’re the one who cried and begged for him to come here, weren’t you?
“Everyone must make sacrifices for the future of mankind” he murmurs, still staring into your face as if he could engrave the words with the intensity of his gaze, “how can we rely on you if you can’t even bear a little thing like this?”
You don’t realize he’s pushing you until you’re already tilting backward to sprawl on the floor of your room. From here, the man looms, silhouetted by the light glinting along his clothes and the white of his hair. You can’t see his face anymore, but you know his expression is unchanged as you cower in his shadow, fully in darkness once more.
“I’ll give you a few hours to compose yourself.” he says as the door slides shut, already turning to walk away.
It’s dark. You’re cold.
But, more importantly, you’re alone.
—
You were doing it again. Dwelling on things you shouldn’t.
You force yourself to inhale deeply, taking in the heavy summer air and letting it warm your lungs. The sun’s strong enough that you’re almost pressed into the concrete you’re lying on, weighed down by it’s rays. You’ll have to move, before too long, or get sunburned, but for now you’re enjoying the moment.
Cicadas whine distantly. The discordant buzz of their loneliness is the only thing breaking the silence; there isn’t even a breeze to rustle the nearby leaves or brush past your hair, and the familiar sounds of traffic and pedestrians are completely absent. You can’t remember the last time Tokyo-3 was this quiet.
Evacuation orders will do that, you suppose.
“Well, aren’t you a rebel today. Everyone’s supposed to be below ground by now, didn’t you hear?”
The man’s deep rumble is probably meant to be stern, but you don’t have to look at him to know there’s amusement in his expression. You crack an eye open and tilt your head to give him a once-over.
“Nice shirt, Lieutenant. Anyway, if the evacuation order’s been issued, that means the Angel’s made landfall. I’m going to be the last one hiding out in a bunker; why waste the trip?”
The shirt that Lieutenant Leone Abbacchio is wearing was just described by you as ‘nice’, but others might refer to it as ‘awful’, or ‘a literal eyesore’, or ‘is it illegal for you to be in here looking like that? I feel like it should be’. It’s a Hawaiian shirt—so called because it’s from back when there was a Hawaii, you have to assume—made from an eggplant purple fabric patterned with stripes and little glasses and fancy birds, and unbuttoned except for the two at the very bottom, exposing his chest. On another person, it might give them the air of being carefree and festive, but on Abbacchio it just emphasizes the pallor of his complexion and lank grey hair and the dark circles under his eyes.
He looks like an unprofessional wreck, and despite the fact that he’s been on your team for the better part of two years you’re still vaguely surprised that he’s managed to hit an officer’s rank.
“Smartass.” Abbacchio swats at an insect. “Come on, let’s get to cover.”
He waits for you to sit up and put your feet on the ground before walking away, hands in his pockets. Despite the fact that he’s wearing sandals, his footsteps are remarkably quiet, their steady rhythm drowned out by your own pace as you move to keep up.
You fumble for something to say as the two of you walk, passing by empty shopfronts and abandoned trash blowing in the wind. “So…”
“Hm?” He doesn’t turn to look at you, which was typical for most conversations with him; Abbacchio tended to speak with the assumption that you were listening, and vice versa.
“Am I…”
“No, we technically haven’t been cleared to engage with it yet.”
The emphasis isn’t lost on you. “But…you’ve come to get me. So it’s happening soon?”
He raises a shoulder in a shrug. “Who knows? The UN still thinks they’ve got a shot at intercepting it; there’s some new toy those shitheads at the Speedwagon Foundation wants to test out.”
When you don’t reply right away, just lapse into silence, he sighs and turns his head to look at you—terrible timing, because he almost trips over the curb.
“Fuck—look, there’s no point in worrying about orders you don’t have yet.”
“But I’ll get them eventually.” You protest, but he just waves a hand impatiently.
“Then worry about it eventually. The UN and Command will have their little pissing match, and then Command will win, and then you can fight this thing to the death. There’s nothing you or I could do to speed that up.”
As if to punctuate his words, something thunders in the distance. Abbacchio quickens his pace, and you hurry to stay alongside, rounding yet another corner and approaching a familiarly imposing steel pyramid.
“There we go, it’ll be in city limits soon. Good thing you didn’t stray too far from headquarters—don’t tell me you don’t have your card on you.”
“I have it, I have it.” Why wouldn’t you have it on you? Being accessible and identifiable’s in The Rules. You reach for your pocket and pull it out, turning it over in your hand as the two of you step into the shadow of the building, running past the massive gates and onto the tram that will take you into the heart of the dome under your feet: the headquarters of PASS-ON.
Are you imagining that faint rumbling as you walk, as if the earth itself is trembling to a beat you can’t hear? When you fumble to swipe your card through the slot and enter, is it a herald of your enemy’s presence or just your hands shaking from excitement?
The two of you step into the waiting car. Abbacchio scowls at the camera as the doors shut and the car begins to descend, shuddering intermittently. The chill of the air-conditioning chases away all traces of the summer heat, making you shiver slightly.
You catch a glimpse of yourself in the lens and resist the urge to look away. There’s always been a vague sense of ephemeral wrongness when you see red eyes and white hair and small shoulders reflected back at you, something uncomfortable about the skin you lived in, and it isn’t the dull ache between your shoulders that never really goes away. You don’t really know what it is, just that you aren’t supposed to talk about it.
The car jerks to a halt and the doors slide open, interrupting your thoughts.
“Oh, hey, Fugo.” Abbacchio greets as he slouches out of the car. The young man looks up from his tablet, pushing a lock of blond hair out of his eyes. When he speaks, it’s brisk and businesslike.
“Abbacchio. Yugen. Glad you’re here, I was just on my way to have Narancia find you.”
(Yugen never sounded right, either—like watching someone throw a ball only to have it spin off course—but it was your name, and you answered to it because you had to.)
You smile slightly. “Hello, Fugo. How’s the situation?”
Despite his obsessively neat uniform, Special Technician Pannacotta Fugo has a certain awkward lankiness about him, something that can make him feel out of place despite being one of the highest-ranked members of the Technical Division. Not that anyone would tell him that, naturally; if a demotion hadn’t stopped him from stabbing other technicians with whatever sharp object he had on hand, nothing would, so it became a tacit agreement among PASS-ON’s technicians that it was better to avoid setting him off.
“Operational command for engaging the Black Sabbath is still in UN hands,” Fugo rattles off as the three of you begin your walk to the command center, recounting the intelligence report from memory, “at the moment, PASS-ON has not been cleared to engage. The Commander’s still tied up with something in America, and the Assistant-Director’s advising the UN forces, so orders will be coming from Lieutenant-Commander Polpo.”
“Polpo? Why not Buccellati?” A placid sneer on a flabby face flashes in front of your eyes, and you resist the urge to clench your fists.
Fugo frowns at you. “Buccellati’s only a Captain, a lot of people would need to be out of commission before he sees command of operations. Besides, he’s not here, he’s out picking up the new pilot.”
“We’re getting the new pilot?” Abbacchio says, at the same time you say “but I thought he was coming here next week?”
Fugo’s spared the decision of who to answer first, because Abbacchio steps forward and jabs a finger into his chest, accusingly.
“Hell do you mean, we’re getting a new pilot? I thought the next one’s supposed to be American.”
Fugo juts his chin. “Apparently they’ve run into a problem with their candidate. Yugen and I only got the news yesterday, but I haven’t heard anything else about him.”
Abbacchio grinds his teeth but doesn’t push the issue further, something you’re profoundly relieved about. “Where were you, Fugo?” you mumble, hoping to change the subject, and he very thankfully seems to catch your drift.
He lowers his voice as the three of you walk down another empty hallway, as if the painted numbers themselves have ears. “Unofficially, Polpo’s ordered you to be on standby. The moment the Foundation’s N2 Mine fails, he expects the UN to transfer command to us, and he wants you launched as soon as physically possible.”
Abbacchio snorts. “Of course he does. The man’s been given command for thirty seconds and he’s already ordering the whole damn base around.”
“The Black Sabbath is the first Angel to attack Tokyo-3…well, ever,” you murmur as you reach yet another door and have to pause as each of you swipes their card. “He’s under a lot of pressure to do well.”
“That’s a way to—“ Abbacchio’s next flippant remark is interrupted by a distant explosion that makes the walls shake, even with how far underground you are. He watches the lights flicker warily.
“I take it that was the N2 mine?” He tilts his head at Fugo, whose features are now pinched in an expression you’ve come to recognize as ‘grim anticipation’ as he checks his tablet again.
“The N2 mine was detonated a minute and a half ago. That disturbance just now was Black Sabbath breaching Sector One.”
Sector One is the block of facilities and houses farthest from PASS-ON headquarters, but that meant that the angel had successfully broken Tokyo-3’s perimeter. This is completely and unequivocally out of the UN’s hands; it always had been, but now they won’t be able to pretend otherwise anymore.
A few seconds pass where the three of you stand stock still, unsure of where exactly to go or what to do. Fugo checks a notification on his tablet.
“Oh! Look at that!” He says brightly, “Command has been transferred. We’re cleared to engage. Let’s get you suited up, Yugen!”
—
“We’re sorry! This phone line is currently not in service. Please hang up and try again later.”
The cheery automated voice’s message is the longest anyone has spoken to him in over a week, which is about typical for how things are in Giorno Giovanna’s life. He takes a moment to dab the sweat away from his forehead—this heat is absolutely fucking oppressive—and considers his options.
A large, very appealing part of him wants to call this whole thing a nice idea and hitchhike back to the airport, stealing enough money to afford a plane ticket back to Naples and never look back. Pros of this idea: he can put the situation behind him, one that’s consistently proven to be nothing but a frustrating hassle. Cons: he was already all-but-threatened into coming here, and heading back would almost certainly incur the wrath of shady people with a lot of money and resources. There’s nothing really for him in Italy but bad memories, anyway. He’d have to steal a lot of money…
Giorno looks around, squinting against the glare of sunlight glinting off the gold of his bangs. Heat hits the pavement in waves, giving everything a vaguely unreal shimmer, as if he were dreaming.
Additional cons: there’s nobody around here to steal from.
He considers his next set of options. Nobody knows much about Angels, except that they’re bad fucking news and the reason half the planet is uninhabitable. One of his classmates is convinced that they’re really just a metaphor for the hubris of man, but metaphors don’t split continents. Being in the general area of one, without several dozen feet of concrete and steel to separate them, feels like the absolute worst situation to be in, and it’s with this in mind that Giorno tucks the folded note back into his pocket and starts looking around for directions to one of the evacuation shelters.
When the thundering of distant artillery begins to pick up, Giorno begins searching with a little more urgency, picking up the pace into a not-quite jog, when he hears the sound of an approaching motor. A beat-up white sedan pulls around the corner, tires screeching as it attempts a tight turn far too quickly, and he instinctively hops back a step or three as it careens to a halt a few meters away from him.
There’s a good five seconds where Giorno’s considering just turning and running, because the driver is clearly insane and only here to hunt him for sport, before the window rolls down and a young man with chin-length black hair pokes his head out. There’s a rush of cool air accompanying the motion, one that makes Giorno all-too conscious of the fact that he must be a sweaty mess at the moment, and then he registers that Crazy Driver is giving him a smile and wave, a display that might have been intended to make Giorno think ‘ah, this is a trustworthy man who is capable of driving well. I feel safe around him’, but actually made him think ‘ah. That’s a lot of skin he’s showing. Doesn’t the military have a uniform?’
“Hello! Giovanna, right? I’m Captan Buccellati. Sorry I’m late!”
“I’m supposed to be picked up by a Lieutenant Luca?” Giorno replies warily, reaching for the note as if he’d find new text explaining the situation.
Crazy Driver—Buccellati, Giorno mentally corrects himself—tilts his head. It’s jarring, honestly, how poised and gentle he moves given how absolutely insane his display of driving skills was just now.
“Luca? Right, he got crushed by rubble on his way here. That’s actually why I’m so late; it took us some time to figure out what happened. I’m just glad I found you.”
Moments like these were what made Giorno incredibly grateful that his genetics and years of practice gave him excellent composure, because he has no idea what to say in response to this. Buccellati’s demeanor seems to imply that he wasn’t close, or maybe that Luca was seriously injured but not dead, so he sticks with the safe option of “I’m…sorry that happened.”
“Oh, yes it was a…terrible loss,” Buccellati waves a hand, “he was a good soldier. Will be missed. Anyway, get in, Black Sabbath’s broken the perimeter and that means we really shouldn’t be out in the open like this. Do you like jazz? Personally I find it relaxing to listen to when I’m driving.”
Without waiting for a real response, he punches in a disc as Giorno gets in the passenger seat, making sure to do his seatbelt very tightly. Buccellati floors the accelerator, and just like that they’re off, with Giorno being exactly as confused and worried as he was five minutes ago.
“So. Giovanna,” Buccellati begins, yanking the wheel a good ten degrees more than necessary as he makes another turn.
“You can call me Giorno,” Giorno cuts in, privately wishing there was a second belt he could use to strap in. The jazz is doing absolutely nothing to relax him, but he doesn’t say anything about this.
“Alright, Giorno! You can call me Bruno, I’m not that much older than you. Anyway…how much have you been told about PASS-ON?”
Giorno bites back the impulse to keep his cards close to his chest; Bruno’s been surprisingly straightforward with him so far, and it can’t hurt to fish for as much information as he can.
“Being honest, not much more than its name. I’m told my father did important work for the organization, and someone…very important to me was a researcher for them. What they were researching, exactly—what PASS-ON even does, really—I have no idea.”
Bruno nods wisely, then yanks the wheel again, veering onto yet another road. It’s enough to make Giorno assume the man’s just showing off, but those blue eyes keep darting to the rearview and side mirrors, and he realizes that Bruno’s trying to work out whether they’ll be able to get to headquarters with the angel stomping around.
“You were supposed to come a week from now, we would have had a proper briefing and equipment and…everything prepared for you, then.” He gives a disturbingly genuine sounding laugh. “Bad luck for you, hm?”
Giorno just stares.
“I’ll give you the short version,” Bruno concedes as he veers onto a straightaway, barreling for a series of buildings surrounding a road that appears to be entering a tunnel, “PASS-ON exists to protect mankind from the threat of annihilation. We are humanity’s trump card against horrors unknowable and alien; it’s our purpose to fight and destroy the Angels.”
It’s a nice little speech, and would have been fine if something hadn’t picked this moment to go flying in a tangle of limbs and white plate armor, slamming into the side of the nearby skyscraper. Giorno gives a shout of surprise as Bruno yanks the steering wheel this way and that as the building—nearly cut in half from the force of the blow and the monster’s thrashing as it tries to free itself—teeters forward and begins to fall in a hail of tortured metal and broken glass, threatening to absolutely obliterate the stretch of road he’s driving on.