Chapter Text
Leone Abbacchio sat heavily on one of his apartment’s couches.
Today, on his journey to his simultaneously favorite and least favorite seat, he’d at least kicked his shoes off, albeit a couple feet from the actual door. They left trails of water on the entryway tile leading from the discarded footwear to the door.
It was by no means a good couch: scratchy, giving way too easily, the ugliest shade of purple he’s ever seen. It would take Abbacchio years to list every grievance he had with this particular couch, and he’s fine with that. He’s fine with having anything to distract him right about now.
He didn’t want to think about the shitty job he’s been doing serving justice around Naples, or how heavy his badge felt in his pocket, or the way that his partner always looked at him like he was the coolest man in the world; everything he really wasn’t. Because it’s nights like these that all that shit hits the hardest.
“Tomorrow’s Friday, Abbacchio! Don’t you want to… you know… party a little with us tonight? Preemptively?”
No way.
Noooooo way.
To be honest, there wasn’t a single fucking man on the force aside from his partner that Abbacchio liked enough to want to spend more than paid hours in the company of. Partying with them sounded like hell on earth.
However, that didn’t mean he wouldn’t have a little party of his own.
Alone.
So he turned on the TV to some stupid show he’d never actually watch, shrugged his jacket off on the couch behind him, popped his newly-acquired wine bottle open, and sat back on the too-solid, too-short-for-comfort cushion.
This may not be the ideal life, but if it let Abbacchio pretend that he was doing better for the world, then he was all fucking for it.
For now, all he wanted to do was to escape. To leave this reality for a little while before he inevitably returned to it tomorrow.
Yeah. That's it.
To
escape…
Abbacchio wakes up quickly, usually. He doesn’t recognize any sense until he has sight.
That’s why it was only when his eyes shot open that he all of a sudden was very aware that he was not, in fact, on his horrible couch or his floor or all the places he’d figured he’d passed out, but actually on the ground in some cold, wet alley.
And his head hurt like all hell, but that’s to be expected.
He stood slowly, gingerly, surveying his surroundings. It was immediately obvious that for one, he was wearing no shoes. While it wasn’t raining, the ground and sky signaled that it had been doing so extremely recently, and he could feel the water seeping through his socks.
Well, that’s great.
The second thing that was very apparent was that he wasn’t the only one in the alley. He could pick out four other bodies laying there, most appearing to be young teenagers. They were clearly breathing, which eased some of his anxiety, but the biggest question still remained.
Abbacchio took a few steps towards the nearest one (a boy of maybe eleven or twelve, with shoulder-length black hair and wearing now-dirtied white clothes), holding a hand to his head to keep it at least some sort of steady.
Was this some kind of party gone wrong that he didn’t remember attending? He went straight home last night, right? And that still didn’t answer the fact that there were multiple children here.
“How the fuck did I get here,” he wondered aloud to himself.
This question, obviously rhetorical, was met with a sort of whirring noise to his left (there wasn’t anything there when he looked earlier?), and when Abbacchio whipped his head around to look at what made it, he was met with-- could he call it a ghost? It looked far too flamboyant to be that.
It was human-shaped, yes, and met him at eye level with what appeared to be rotary dials. The entirety of its body was a light purple color with the consistency of latex, except for a digital timer on its head.
So this was obviously one of those weirdass dreams.
Then why did everything seem so real?
He must have hit his head or something the night before. That was why the dream wasn’t fading.
At least that was going for him.
“And what the fuck are you?” Abbacchio asked the figure, but it did not respond.
(It didn’t even have a mouth to respond with, he now noticed.)
It only continued its strange whirring and, as the timer on its forehead rounded out to two minutes, gave a satisfying click.
Following the click, the latex-y skin(?) of the figure began to mash and morph itself into something else. Or, moreso, someone else.
Abbacchio had to blink a couple of times to figure out what exactly he was seeing.
That was. . . his own face. That was himself. Moving. It was fucking moving.
“Wait. Stop,” he said, and the other Abbacchio froze.
Well, at least it listened to him.
He took a second to inspect this. . . other him.
Honestly, if Abbacchio had to picture what he’d look like in ten years, this would be exactly it if, within those ten years, he married an old rich man, killed him for his money, and then walked around smoking a cigar with a feather boa around his neck--
(though he was notably missing the cigar and boa, still donning the first figure’s forehead timer,)
--and then didn’t sleep for forty years straight, all mummy-style.
Abbacchio frowned.
That hair length really looked… weird on him. Damn.
Whatever he was tripping, it really was giving him some life advice.
“Is this what I did last night? Holy shit.”
All of a sudden, the other Abbacchio began moving again, and the real Abbacchio had to step back so he didn’t intercept him.
He seemed a little panicked, quickly walking into the alley. He aggressively glanced around, seemingly not finding whatever he was looking for. Then, he began, “Bucciarati, you--” and promptly collapsed onto the pavement.
As disorienting as it was to hear his own voice, Abbacchio was impressed at his own ability to dream up names as well. Bucciarati, was it? He’d never met anyone with that name before.
Obviously, the current goal of this dream was to figure out what happened to this Bucciarati, probably. And then he’d wake up right before finding out.
Abbacchio’s been through this spiel before, why not do it again?
Nevermind the continued throbbing in his head that was most definitely not something that could happen in a dream, but he chose to try and ignore that for now.
He looked down at his own collapsed body, and something strange began to happen to it. Within a few seconds, the horribly-long hair shrunk down to become the buzz cut Abbacchio had always known himself to have, and the weird robe seemed to unthread itself to become the dress shirt and pants he wore now. Even the shoes on the other him vanished to become his stupid wet socks.
Hold the fuck up. What’s this supposed to mean?
Then there was another click, and the other Abbacchio melted back into the purple figure from before. It gazed up at him from the ground through its eyes(?) as if waiting for another task.
Abbacchio did not have one. He was still trying to figure out what it had just shown him.
His mind just… wasn’t working. Nothing was able to make sense yet. And he hoped it fucking would before something else went wrong.
He… looked like that? He’d collapsed looking like that? What?
Something shuffled in the alley to his right, and he kind of internally panicked. What was he supposed to do if one of these other people woke up? Would this strange ghost also communicate with them?
It was then Abbacchio noticed a revolver near his feet, and without hesitation, he picked it up. He wasn’t really sure what he was going to use it for, intimidation, maybe? So he could run without having to answer any questions that he didn’t know the answer to himself?
Now it felt so much more real than a dream.
He looked into the chamber of the gun to see if it held any bullets. Four of the slots were full, but the other two appeared to have something in them? Something small and yellow and definitely not bullets.
It was barely a second after that one of the little yellow things came flying right at Abbacchio’s face.
It was crying.
“Abbacchio!” it yelled in a shrill voice. “Save Mista! We don’t know if he’s okay!”
Another flew out to slap the first.
“Of course he’s okay! If he wasn’t okay, we wouldn’t be here, idiot!”
Abbacchio blinked.
He didn’t know how to take this.
Strange yellow numbered demons knew his name? That was probably the creepiest part.
“Fuck, this is a weird dream,” he muttered to himself.
What else is there to do? He wasn’t about to talk to the fucking sentient gremlins.
Another yellow demon appeared on Abbacchio’s shoulder. It whispered entirely too close to his ear.
“Look! He’s waking up!”
Abbacchio turned just in time to see one of the other people in the alley rise to a sitting position. He was a tan man, fairly strong-looking and donning a purple beanie (the beanie was, of course, soaked through on one side from the puddle he was lying in).
It only took him about two seconds of looking around the alley before he promptly stood, brushed himself off, and pointed a thumb in the direction of the main street.
“You know what? I’m going home,” he muttered. “I’m obviously too tired for this. See you guys, whoever you are.”
“WAAAAAAAAAIT!” the yellow things called from the gun’s chamber. “You have to stay here, Mista! Please!”
“Yeah, stay here,” Abbacchio commanded. He wasn’t about to be the only adult on the scene. He needed someone here to back him up.
The man regarded Abbacchio wearily (the latter registering that he wore absolutely nothing to differentiate him from the average citizen except the literal revolver), yet he stayed in his spot.
Good. That’s… something.
All of a sudden, the whirring noise of the purple ghost returned. This time, it came in the form of a single arm reaching over Abbacchio’s right shoulder, offering him some sort of paper booklet.
Abbacchio tentatively took it.
A calendar. That’s what it was. For 2001.
Do they really print calendars two years in advance?
“Why are you giving me a 2001 calendar? The hell is a calendar for two years from now supposed to mean?”
“2001 isn’t two years from now.”
He turned to see one of the other bodies in the alleyway rising. This one was an albino kid whose red eyes glared directly into his own.
“That’s just plain 2000. Are you dumb?”
Beanie man didn’t seem impressed. “2001 is next year. I don’t know what you guys are on, but--”
Abbacchio interrupted him. He’d noticed the kid nearest to him had sat up and was watching the quarrel.
“Hey. You. Kid. What year do you think it is?”
He frowned. “It’s 1993. Is… that not what year it is?”
The entire group looked at each other.
What the fuck?
It was after a few seconds of staring that Abbacchio felt something tapping at his shoulder. He quickly turned around to see--
No one.
Of course.
However, he did see a whiteboard on the front of the store across the main street from the alley. It read: <50% off almost everything RIGHT NOW 1/8/01 to 22/8/01!
Was it… was it really 2001?
How?
Abbacchio put his head in his hands.
“Holy fuck, we’re all schizophrenic.”
The albino kid, who’d also seemed to notice the sign across the street, reached around on the ground for a little bit, surveying his surroundings, before he flinched. Hard.
His hand had touched the back of… a turtle.
A turtle with… a key in its back?
At this point, Abbacchio wasn’t even surprised.
The kid seemed just a bit more shocked by this strange turtle than the officer was. He stood on shaky legs, the edges of his mouth quivering. Each breath he took seemed labored.
He choked out, “I just… I’m going home. I don’t know what is--”
He took a couple steps back, coincidentally right into the alley wall. He seemed dazed, but managed to peel himself off it and brushed his clothes off with his hands.
Then he froze.
The red-eyed boy crumpled to the ground, grasping his head in his hands.
Abbacchio was about to approach him, but just as he reached out, the boy began intensely shaking and letting out strange hissing noises. The cop and the other two glanced at each other, but none made a move towards him.
Abbacchio’s job now, apparently.
As he looked closer, he could see what was strangely enough not the weirdest thing he’d already seen that day: the boy’s clothes slowly began to rework themselves. The threads moved in and out of each other and formed strange holes throughout the back of the garment.
Moreover, it wasn’t just the clothes. His hair and nails both began to cycle similarly, growing a little before the ends would break off, flutter in the air and fall to the ground, and disappear.
It was like… what the ghost had just shown him with himself.
“What the… fuck?” Abbacchio muttered, beside himself.
He, too, had frozen in place at this point.
What’s he supposed to do for this kid? What’s even happening?
The sound of labored breathing echoed in Abbacchio’s ears, coming from nowhere and everywhere at all. It was getting louder, louder--
And then it stopped.
He finally built up the courage to at least inch a little closer to the kid when the quivering form in question stopped shaking for a second. He only had that little bit of peace before promptly sticking his head out and throwing up right onto the ground.
Yikes.
Once the kid had heaved his guts out, he laid there, breathing hard, finally unchanging for a little. The alley was calm, the only sounds remaining the whooshing of passing cars and the last few drops of rain falling off of the edge of the roof onto the ground around the boy.
Slowly, he rose from the ground. When he faced Abbacchio, the man could see the skin around his eyes outlined in red and tiny trails of spittle leading down his chin. Those weird holes in his suit remained, like they were supposed to be there.
He also seemed… older. Literally older. By a couple of years.
Of course, Abbacchio didn't mention those things, because before he could get a single word out, the boy had already scanned the group and declared, "We need to get out of here."
Then he regarded the young boy nearest to Abbacchio (the one wearing white) with a furrowed brow.
“Bucciarati, you--”
There’s that fucking name again.
Was that kid… the one that the other Abbacchio had been trying to speak to?
He froze in place for a couple seconds.
“You guys. . . have to figure out what happened to you.”
“What?”
“I don’t know how much it’ll let me tell you, but the year is 2001. We. . . need to get out of here. We also have to stick together. We’re all friends in 2001. Now,” he began, fishing around on the ground for a second before picking up and holding out the thing he was looking for, “get in here.”
He brandished the same turtle he’d just had a crisis over.
At that moment, Abbacchio’s brain stopped all logical function.
“How the fuck are we supposed to get in that?” asked the man with the beanie incredulously. “I’m not sure what you’re on, but that’s a turtle.”
The albino kid sighed and kneaded the skin of his forehead with his fingers.
“Oh my god. Hey, Trish! Sheila! Come out for a second.”
He spoke the last part at the shell of the turtle, and Abbacchio and the beanie man exchanged a single look of solidarity.
Their look was interrupted, however, when two girls quite literally emerged from the key on the back of the turtle. They seemed to materialize above it, then landed solidly on their feet to the left of the kid.
They both were clearly teenagers (what is it with all these fucking teenagers around here?). One had very heavily hairsprayed pink hair and seemed like the type of girl to call herself “chic” unironically. The other had simple braids on the sides of her head and a sort of star shape around her left eye.
Once the pink one had settled her feet on the ground, she began to ask holes-in-suit kid, “Are we really home yet?”
Then she noticed whatever the fuck was happening and stopped talking.
Albino boy looked at the two girls, then back at the rest of the alley.
“Hey. Sheila. Restrain that one.”
He pointed a finger to a bleach-blonde kid laying on the ground near him. He was the only one originally in the alley that hadn’t woken up yet.
The girl nodded. She quickly hopped over by the boy with unreasonable dexterity.
Though instead of using handcuffs or simply grabbing onto him like Abbacchio would have expected, a strange, almost translucent creature appeared next to her and grasped him in its arms instead. It was reminiscent of Abbacchio’s purple ghost… maybe they were related?
No. Fuck it. They’re definitely related. No way has Abbacchio seen multiple apparitions in one day and have them not be related.
And he was going to figure out what they fucking were. Soon. Whenever they decided to show up again.
The albino boy looked once around the alley, then landed his gaze squarely on something else on the ground there, something that Abbacchio hadn’t even realized until this point.
It was a small Asian boy, maybe four or five, curled into the fetal position on the ground. His clothes that appeared to be ripped, and like Abbacchio, he wore only socks, no shoes.
Albino boy bit his lip.
“Trish… grab him and bring him into the turtle.”
The pink-haired girl slowly walked over to him (in heels that seemed very poorly equipped to deal with the torn, wet ground) and gathered him in her arms.
He did not stir.
The girl seemed… uneasy about holding this young boy.
“You’re… really sure this is him, Fugo?”
The albino boy (Fugo, apparently) snapped back, “Of course I am. Who else would it be?”
She pursed her lips, but did not say anything more.
“Now,” Fugo began again. “Get in the turtle. I’m not going to say this again.”
The man with the beanie stepped closer to the boy and peered down at the turtle.
“You’re saying… we can go in this?”
“I am. Now get in.”
And with that, the boy shoved the turtle extremely close to the other’s face.
Within seconds, he had been absorbed into the key in the same way the girl had come out.
The kid appeared quite satisfied after, a tiny smug smile on his face.
The two teen girls and the kids they were charged with watching were not far to follow. The strange ghost still held the blond boy in its arms as it, too, vanished into the turtle.
This just left Abbacchio and the white-clad kid.
“Come on,” Fugo urged. He sounded more angry now. “Get in. I don’t want anyone following us.”
The two others in the alley looked at each other. The boy looked at Abbacchio with an unsure expression, but he gave a firm nod.
“I’ll do it,” he said. “But what’s going on? Where’s my father?”
Fugo looked down at him. “Your father knows where you are. I’ll say more once we’re all in.”
The boy nodded, then waved a hand above the turtle and he was gone.
Abbacchio gave the albino boy a glare.
“The dad doesn’t know where he is, does he?”
He regarded Abbacchio.
“I haven’t told a lie yet, sir.”
And with that, Abbacchio, too, was thrown into the turtle.
It was extremely strange being transported, like he had jumped straight up in the air and landed somewhere completely different. Somewhere specifically dry and air-conditioned and not muddy.
(Maybe he fell right on his ass, but no one noticed, so it didn’t happen.)
It was honestly a lot nicer than he’d expected it to be, but Abbacchio realized that he really should have no expectations for what the literal inside of a turtle should look like.
What was he expecting? Donkey Kong?
Whatever it was, it wasn’t elegant red chairs and a literal minifridge.
He quickly stood and made his way to the L-shaped couch in the corner of the room. He’d coincidentally ended up next to the boy in white from earlier, but didn’t exchange any words with him.
Abbacchio was just waiting for Fugo to fucking come back and explain what the hell was going on.
He assumed there was no way to get out of the turtle himself, so they’d all been effectively trapped. Who knew where he was taking them? And yet, he’d left them in this room with only what appeared to be teenage girls to guard them.
Something wasn’t adding up.
It took only a few minutes of Abbacchio sitting there for him to realize that Fugo was not, in fact, coming to explain things.
Fuck. What the fuck?
He figured he should at least do something, maybe damage control? Figuring out more? Fuck, was this even really a dream?
God, Abbacchio didn’t know what to do.
So, in a last-ditch effort to at least help someone out, or answer one of his hundred fucking questions, he turned to the kid on the couch next to him. His head was resting in his hands and he stared through blue eyes out at nowhere in particular in the room.
Now, Abbacchio didn’t really want to talk to some kid he just met in an alley. But this kid looked sad as fuck, didn’t know where his dad is, plus probably just had the weirdest day of his life. Maybe he’ll be doing something right for once.
And this kid could have an answer to what the ghost was trying to tell him?
Wow. Officer Leone Abbacchio listens to ghosts now.
That’s fucking great.
And yet… he turned in the boy’s direction anyway.
“Hey, kid. How goes it?” he began awkwardly.
The kid’s eyes instantly focused on Abbacchio. He stared at him for a few seconds before responding.
“It goes… well,” he said slowly. “Who are you?”
Abbacchio cleared his throat awkwardly. “Abbacchio. Leone Abbacchio.”
The kid sat up straight, sized Abbacchio up one last time, and then held out a hand. “Bruno Bucciarati.”
Abbacchio went to shake this kid’s hand, then paused.
“You’re Bucciarati?” he confirmed.
The boy nodded. “My father is Bucciarati. I’m Bruno.”
Abbacchio shrugged. He accepted the handshake, which was far too aggressive on Bruno’s part and went on for far too long. But he’s twelve. What is there to expect?
However, this is Bucciarati. This twelve-year-old. This was the one person whose name that strange image of him thought to call out when being attacked. This was the one name that kid Fugo seemed to know off of the top of his head earlier.
What in the entire fuck was going on?
“Where do you think they’re taking us?” Bruno whispered to him, now seeming to trust the man after the handshake. “To jail? To France? I want to go to France.”
“I hate to say this, but I don’t think that it’s France.”
“Dang.”
Bruno reclined on the couch, spreading his arms out behind him.
“Hey, this is pretty comfortable.”
Abbacchio had to agree. He couldn’t help but be a little jealous of the superiority of the fucking turtle couch over his own.
Wait. That’s not the point right now. He had to figure out something.
He stood to stretch and spotted the girl with the star around her eye who’d seemed to detest him so earlier over by the minifridge. She was still watching over the blonde boy, who hadn’t woken.
“I’m… going over to the fridge,” he announced to Bruno. “Want a water?”
Bruno craned his neck to look up at Abbacchio. “Yeah! I can go help get it if you want.”
“No, you don’t have to. I’ll go.”
Abbacchio walked away before the kid could try and bargain with him any more.
Once he reached the fridge, he could feel the girl’s gaze baring through him. As he opened the door and grabbed his couple of waters, he asked her:
“Where exactly is it that you’re taking us? When will somebody explain what’s going on?”
The girl looked up at him through her dark eyes. No particular emotion flowed through them.
“Home.”