Chapter Text
Only hours after his death, and the question on every gangster’s mind is “Where is Polpo’s fortune?” It’s overpowering enough to drown out any thoughts such as, “He didn’t seem like the suicidal type,” or the even more dangerous, “Did he even really kill himself?”
Even Bucciarati’s group, on their way to collect the prize, with a leader on board with Giorno’s goals, have been left in the dark. With Mista and Narancia bickering in the background, Giorno hides a self-satisfied smile with a well-practiced neutral frown. He killed a man, and not a soul knows. If he’s not careful, he could get addicted to the adrenaline of such secret successes.
Then again, it leaves him drunk on enough confidence to jump on the sword of an enemy Stand, which leads to the resolution of the problem, so perhaps the benefits outweigh the risks.
They find the fortune, gain a new charge, and evade untimely deaths of old age on a speeding train. The flesh-shredding Stand he encounters makes him realize the untapped potential that Golden Experience has, and when his snakes manage to kill the user, he has to hide his own venomous grin behind a hand scratching at a pretend itch. Giorno gets his face under control just a moment later and returns his hand to the steering wheel, but the adrenaline and sticky feeling of a private pride stay far longer.
It’s enough to make him numb to the news of Pericolo’s death. At least the old man had a good life, and seemed at peace with his fate. At least Giorno is now aware that this is a risk associated with the job, and he can better prepare himself to avoid it.
“We’ll have to send a small retrieval team ahead of the main group,” Bucciarati commands. “Mista and Giorno will drive ahead to Venice, while the rest of us will follow behind by rowboat for better stealth–”
“I can go alone,” Giorno interrupts. The whole group turns on him, shocked and even appalled by his obstinance. Strangely, he preens under the attention, and the feeling stirs a memory of their faces when he pretended to drink a mug of piss. Maybe surprising people can be as fulfilling as murdering people in secret.
“Giorno, I can’t allow that,” Bucciarati chides him. “If somebody were to attack, it would be better for there to be two people to handle the situation.”
“If somebody were to attack, I think that I would be able to handle it,” Giorno counters. Summoning barely a centimeter of Golden Experience under his jacket, he makes the ladybugs on his chest flutter their wings. A silent, innocuous show of power. Why is he pushing so hard to go alone, anyways? Just for the thrill of it.
“Besides, aren’t I the most expendable member right now? I barely have anybody’s trust, while Mista is a central part of the group dynamic. The team will be better suited to carry on if I am the only one facing an ill fate.” They give him strange looks as they ponder his words.
“How do we know you won’t take the disk and run?” Abbacchio accuses.
“How could I get away when you have Moody Blues?” Giorno fires back. Abbacchio’s perpetual scowl deepens, but he concedes the argument. Bucciarati looks like he drank sour wine, but with a glance at a shrugging Mista, he sighs and schools his expression.
“Very well. Giorno, you will be retrieving the disk alone. This task and all potential consequences rest solely on your shoulders.”
“Yes sir.”
Without a companion to keep up appearances for, Giorno drives the Ponte della Libertà with the windows rolled down. The wind tears at his hair, making it snake out of its pins and bands and twists and curls, at at the speed he’s going, one wrong move could send him falling into the sea and drowning. His mouth curls up and his heart pounds with not-quite-fear. He rolls the windows down a little further.
Of course, having the windows down means he notices when the wind goes from a cool sea breeze to a biting chill. Temperatures don’t drop suddenly like that, which can only mean one thing.
Golden Experience reaches through the floor of the car to run its palms along the surface of the racing road, and behind him it becomes an impromptu evergreen forest–he can tell they’re Dahurian larches, the same way he knows which snakes are venomous and which frogs are toxic without ever having touched a book on reptiles before. The trees aren’t exactly happy with being in the ocean, but they can handle the chill.
Then, with a jerk of the wheel, Giorno sends the car jumping over the short barrier between lanes and skidding on the ice starting to cover the wheels. His hands are red and raw from Golden Experience’s work and warm from his racing heart. It buys him an extra thirty seconds, perhaps, before his fingers freeze to the wheel. He drives back the way he came, his Stand still transforming the road. This time, the asphalt and concrete turn into a racing pack of wolves, breath steaming and covered in dense fur, each of them close to Giorno’s height with easily twice the muscle.
The car reaches his forest, and Giorno brakes and turns to bring the car to a sudden, screeching halt. Maybe action movies are better driving teachers than he’d first thought. The trees bend down and around the man frozen to the car, as natural as swaying with a strong wind, and the wolf pack leap onto the car snapping and growling. One by one, the wolves attack, not doing much damage but too quick and too furry to be frozen solid, and Giorno calmly gets out of the car and convinces the trees to wrap tighter around the attacker. His ice exoskeleton cracks and slides off him in thick shards, and he panics, kicking with sharp blades and quickly trying to freeze the branches and wolves. Not quick enough, though, and the instinct to curl into a ball leaves the back of his neck open–How interesting, an airhole. One particularly wily and unfrozen branch sprouts into it, spearing the man’s brainstem and unfurling its spiky green needles into him. He falls limp, and his skating suit fades away.
Giorno has the wolves rip his body apart and dump it into the sea, just to be safe.
He takes a moment to stroke the head of one of the wolves, smiling at its dopey expression as its tongue lolls out of its bloodstained maw. Then, he dismisses both the forest and the pack, restoring the road to how it was before. Golden experience eases the car back onto the lane going towards the city, and feeling pleasantly drained, Giorno finishes his drive.
With the sun barely poking over the horizon, he reaches the little lion statue. Soon, it turns into a wolf pup, obediently holding a red computer disk in its jaw. He takes the disk, and his job is complete. A moment to repin his curls, smooth out the tails that rise like tiny horns at the back of his head, and redo his braid, and he is presentable again. Narancia isn’t due to arrive for a while yet, so Giorno figures he has a few extra moments to indulge in puppy fur and a wagging tail. It’s so soft. Cold climate animals know what they’re doing. It’s also very strong: its little puppy teeth sink into the meat of his hand and almost pierce through it when it tries play-fighting with him. It only takes a single “no” to get it to stop, but that doesn’t erase the holes in his hand. He leans down, turns a fistful of dirt into enough skin to cover the wound, and pretends it never happened.
“Everyone out of the turtle, guys, shh! No, it’s not an enemy, it’s–Calm down Bucciarati, everything’s fine. It’s just–Giorno’s petting a dog!” It appears that Giorno misjudged Narancia’s noodle arms, and he has been caught red-handed not being an aloof bitch. Narancia is hurriedly helping everyone out of the turtle and frantically pointing to wear Giorno is sitting with a puppy in his lap.
“I take there weren’t any problems on the way?” Abbacchio asks with a furrowed brow. Apparently, he isn’t impressed by baby wolves.
“Nothing unexpected happened at all,” Giorno answers him, basking in the pleasure of another secret.
“Lucky bastard,” Mista complains with a grin. “We’re on a boat worrying you’re gonna die, and you’re sittin’ pretty with the disk and playing with a dog.”
“Wolf, actually,” Giorno corrects. Mista’s eyes go wide, and Narancia rushes towards him with his arms outstretched. Giorno turns the wolf back into a statue before Narancia can get an impromptu piercing. Narancia turns on him with a pout.
“Bring him back.”
“We’re on a time limit,” Giorno reminds him. “I’ll make a wolf for you when we’re done with the job.”
“You better,” Narancia grumbles.
“What happened to your hands, Giorno?” Bucciarati asks. Giorno looks at them, still red and raw from giving life to half a mile of cement. And where he patched the bite, the bleeding hadn’t stopped, leaving him with a trail of purple-red bruises. He turns to Bucciarati and lets his neutral frown turn into a neutral smile.
“Nothing but my own mistake, I’m afraid.”
Fifteen minutes later, and they are floating at the stairs of the San Giorgio Maggiore. Giorno has to hand it to the boss, the time limit was a stroke of genius. After staying up all night to get to Venice, they’re all tired. They’re in no shape to turn this into a last-minute coup. Mentally, he’s taking notes for his own future reign.
Mista and Narancia have started talking about the local food. Bucciarati shouts a reminder to them all to stay focused, and Giorno seizes the opening.
“I volunteer to be Trish’s body guard in the tower.”
“Who do you think you are?!” Abbacchio yells at him. “This is a job for the capo, not some newbie. The only reason the boss didn’t specify was because he wasn’t sure who’s still alive!”
And isn’t it better to keep it that way , Giorno thinks, but he bites his tongue and keeps it to himself.
“He’s right, this is precisely a job for a capo,” Bucciarati agrees. “Besides, you’re already had one solo mission tonight. That’s a bit much for someone who’s still green.”
“I should be the one to go precisely because I’m new,” Giorno counters. Is he getting his thrills by arguing now? This is a dangerous habit, he really should nip it in the bud.
“Officially, I only have the word of a dead capo behind me. This is the perfect opportunity to prove to the boss that I’m worth having in Passione.” It’s a weak argument, he’s too tired to come up with something better, but the others must be too tired to counter it because it works . Bucciarati sighs and steps aside, the others glare at him for acting like some sort of suck-up for taking all the jobs, and Giorno is allowed to step onto the island and follow Trish into the church. He feels like grinning like one of tonight’s wolves.
Trish is quiet as they walk under the high vaulted ceiling of the church, but as Giorno checks over the elevator, she suddenly crouches in the corner, trembling.
“What’s going to happen to me?” she asks, voice firm even as it starts to wobble. “I’ve been kidnapped by gangsters, had to travel by turtle to avoid getting killed, all to reach a father I’ve never met and don’t love. Am I expected to just–just go along with all this?”
“... I know a thing or two about not loving your parents,” Giorno confesses, crouching down beside her. She looks away from the wall, to him. The seriousness of the moment has sucked all the giddiness out of him.
“I’m bringing you to the boss because it’s the job I was told to do, but, well, I’m new to the group. I’ve known these people only a few days more than you have.” Trish’s eyes spark as she catches on to his meaning. He can’t outright admit to not trusting the boss, after all. There could be spies or microphones around. Giorno reaches for one of his brooches and pulls it off of his jacket, summoning a single finger of Golden Experience and giving it a heartbeat.
“Take this to remember us by. I think you’ve seen enough strange things to believe that if you ever need us, we’ll be able to find you with it.”
“... Thank you,” she mumbles, attaching it beneath the jade pin on her shirt, and she stands up from the floor. Giorno presses the button to call the elevator again.
“Ready?” he asks her.
“Ready enough,” she answers, and they step into the elevator.
One moment, they are silently riding up to the roof, and the next, Giorno is alone in a metal box. The brooch is suddenly down, far below him–the basement? The feedback from his ladybug is an increased heartrate, a cold sweat–Trish isn’t just nervous anymore. So the boss isn’t aiming for a peaceful reunion with his daughter–Rather, he’s tying up loose ends. Will this be enough to persuade the rest of the team to his side? He’ll have to hope.
“This isn’t how I imagined things would go, Boss,” he yells into the empty elevator–pretending that he doesn’t know where the boss is, pretending he isn’t already turning the elevator into dangling vines to lower himself down. The adrenaline is back.
“I can’t say I agreed to killing innocents when I joined, but I suppose this isn’t my organization to run. You’re not on the roof, are you? Nowhere to run up there. Not the ground floor, either, the echoes are loud enough to reach the boat outside.” Deceive him, make him think he’s only now figuring things out even as he’s preparing to bust a hole through the stone of the ground floor. He’s still cutting it close, though, with the rate the brooch is moving and the state Trish is in. The boss won’t wait much longer to finish her off, and both morals and strategy demand that he save her–What cards does he have left to play?
“Speaking of my enrollment, I believe I was the last one to speak to Polpo. We both know he didn’t commit suicide, don’t we?” There. The breeze on the ladybug’s back stutters, the boss hesitates, and Giorno has the precious few seconds he needs to turn the floor into vines and launch himself into the basement, just meters from the boss. Golden Experience is hovering at his back, arms outstretched over the basement floor as he tucks and rolls into the landing, and kudzu erupts around him, surging towards his goal. He suddenly knows that it’s a parasitic vine, that on a good day it can grow up to twelve inches, and he remembers the relative ease with which he sent a tree to the end of its life. Right now, the kudzu might be faster than the wolves.
Then he blinks, and his weight is shifted differently than it was before, and he’s missed several meters of the kudzu’s growth. The boss has moved to a stray staircase, to the edge of the viney flood–can his stand control time ? Giorno wasn’t aiming for the boss, and Trish is conveniently abandoned in the middle of the room, but now he knows more than ever that he’ll need every advantage he can get against the boss. His best chance at tracking the boss without being found out–
His mind or Golden Experience, he’s not sure which, supplies Demodex mites, microscopic, naturally occurring on all human skin , and the ladybug brooch explodes into a cloud of invisible insects. The still-growing kudzu creates enough airflow for the mites to disperse, landing on Trish, on the floor, falling through a Stand–and then they start landing on a bare chest, a chin, the back of an ear. Now that their target is found, the rest of the mites move to join the others. Keeping track of them all feels like a chunk of buzzing static at the back of his head, and it’s the last straw that forces him to catch himself as he overbalances and starts to tip over. The kudzu coils around Trish, and he can barely think the order before it recoils back the way it came, lifting Giorno and Trish up as they climb the vines that used to be the basement ceiling to reach the faintest beam of sunlight from the ground floor. They’re higher than they should be, and the boss’s Stand is suddenly at their feet, but for now it seems that they are safe.
“Can you run?” Giorno asks her, half-carrying her as the kudzu places them down on their feet. She seems dazed, blood on her waist from possibly the smallest wound Giorno’s seen this week, but she shakes her head to clear it and answers, “I can run.”
“To the boat, then,” he says, and then their footsteps bounce off the vaulted stone above them as they rush towards the exit. Giorno thinks the boss might be following them, but then again, that could just be the baseline crinkling of having hundreds of mites to keep track of. They make it outside, sun only just now high enough to turn the sky blue, and the team turn away from whatever bickering they had going on to stare at them. They never even noticed that something was wrong.
“Why is Trish still with you?” Abbacchio bellows, standing up fast enough to make the boat rock.
“You guys protected me from assassins just to hand me over to another guy that wants to kill me? Classy move, guys!” Trish snaps back, hand on her hip–Right, she’s injured. Not badly, but still.
“What? The boss tried to–?” Narancia asks, bewildered. Bucciarati skips denial and goes straight to anger–His hands ball into fists tight, and the light of a burning rage flashes through his eyes. Giorno praises his past self for getting this guy on his side.
“As of now, I’m a traitor to the boss,” Giorno explains. The time for persuasion is now. “I won’t try to drag any of you into this, but if you’ll agree to go along with this, I believe we stand a chance of overthrowing him.”
“What makes you think that any of us–” Abbacchio starts, but Bucciarati interrupts him with, “I’ll betray the boss as well.” Abbacchio wheels around to him.
“You can’t mean that–!”
“I do,” Bucciarati answers. “I cannot stand alongside a man that would attempt to kill an innocent child, his own daughter no less. And in full honesty, I’ve had issues with certain aspects of Passione for a long while now.” His speech reminds Giorno, again, that he still needs to tend to Trish’s wound. Two adrenaline crashes in the span of twelve hours–wait, if he counts the flesh shredding Stand it’s three–are really starting to take their toll on him. He takes a handkerchief from his pocket and holds it over her waist, wearing Golden Experience like a glove to transform it into a new layer of healthy skin. He’ll hang onto his last two brooches for emergencies.
“... I suppose my loyalty has lain with you more than with the boss for a while now,” Abbacchio eventually answers.
“Thank you, Leone.”
“I’ll go with the betrayal,” Mista says, as simply as any decision he comes to. “For an honorable Passione.”
“You can’t–But–It’s–!” Narancia stutters, grappling with the sudden changes in everything. Fugo is having a hard time as well, growling as he stares at the floor of the boat. His shoulders are starting to shake with rage.
“... Trish is the same as me,” Narancia eventually concludes. “I’ll join too!”
“But–This is the boss we’re talking about! We can’t just go against him like everything before now meant nothing !” Fugo shouts.
“It does mean nothing,” Trish retorts, and suddenly everyone fears for her safety. She continues anyways. “You’ve never met the boss in your life ! I’ve only known about him for a few weeks , but I had the distinct pleasure of almost getting killed by the guy, so let me tell you what he’s like without the filter of your years of hero worship or whatever. He’s controlling, he’s completely confident in his abilities, he’s heartless, and if I saw things right he can maybe control time !” Trish inhales sharply, catching her breath from her tirade.
“I can confirm his Stand lets him manipulate time to some degree,” Giorno backs her up.
“So, mister swiss-cheese pants,” Trish spits, “if you want to hear it from your boss’s own flesh and blood, I’m going with these traitors, and I hope my dad ends up fucking dead !” With a huff, Trish climbs into the boat and sits down, arms crossed, cementing her spot on the team. Fugo fumes, but apparently, Trish speaks anger fluently enough to get through to him.
“... I’m leaving as soon as things go too far south,” he mumbles.
“That’s all we could ever ask of you,” Bucciarati answers with a paternal smile. Finally, with the whole team secured, Giorno steps back into the boat and sits down. Almost instantly, he tips bonelessly to the side, following the momentum it took to get in the boat in the first place. Mista catches him by the shoulder.
“You good?” he asks, mild concern hiding under his usual easygoing tone. “You’ve had a busy night compared to the rest of us, and that’s saying something.”
“I’m fine, just… Just tired…” Giorno trails off, his eyelids drooping and head dipping from the fading glow of three exhilarating events and the buzz of static in his brain. The boat pushes off from the shore, and Giorno drops off to sleep, head pillowed by a hastily raised arm, arm balanced precariously on the edge of the boat.
The rest of the team makes sure he doesn’t fall in the ocean.