Chapter Text
Well, fuck.
The lights bear down on them from all directions. Barrels of guns aimed with direct head-splatter intent outnumber their own twenty-something to one, and they’re semiautomatics against a revolver because, hell, why not at that point— but it’s not even the part of the whole messed up situation that has Giorno worried the most.
No, that honor belongs to the prehistoric, should-be-dead, very pissed off reptile hissing directly in his face.
He forces a short sigh through his nose, trying not to stare into the eyes of the beast, and begrudgingly lifts his hands in surrender.
Well, fuck.
Mista follows; though with the gun still glinting in his hands it only makes the creature he’s panickedly (and seemingly correctly) identified as a Sinraptor growl even more.
“Hey, chill, chill, chill, good girl, good Sinraptor—“
Someone laughs.
And that is how after seventeen hours spent as voluntary stowaways on the two hundred thousand ton cargo ship of a rival gang’s assumed smuggler Antico Lucertola, and on a mission to find out what the hell he’s even smuggling that made his group’s fortune skyrocket so fast, they come eye to eye with the man himself.
At least, as much as can be; given he’s very much content to stare down at them with the energy and condescension of a Greek g-d, the rafters of the ship’s second story his Mount Olympus; leaning with one hand on the railing, surrounded by beasts as well as armed men, and infinitely more curious than threatened.
“And who do we have here?”
It’s a statement of mild interest at best. With about two dozen guns aimed at them, a dinosaur snarling a foot off their heads and no easy route of escape, they’re about as far from that mindset as one feasibly can be.
They’re surrounded. Utterly. Turns out sneaking on the ship was indeed the easy part, the real challenge being the task of staying hidden as they scour its contents and crates and rooms for information; a test they failed, miserably. One slip-up, and it was over, really. Stealth sections in videogames truly do lie through their teeth about how supposedly trivial it is to sneakily dispose of an enemy once they discover an intruder.
Which leaves them as they are; back pressed against a red (and empty) cargo crate, ready for their own execution by a half-circle of gangsters armed to the teeth with light as well as weapons; so much so not even narrowing or averting their eyes helps. Giorno barely makes out the gray of the ship against the onslaught, especially the fact they’d just spent more the vast majority or the day creeping in the dark with only hazard lights and flashlights for company; he’s utterly blinded, the only exception to that being his wretchedly clear sight of the man who laughs at them from above like they’re nothing but a particularly interesting bug found in the bedroom, about to be squashed after examination.
The notably feathered reptile the size of a van screeches into his face like it implored him to answer and not only does that deafen him atop the blindness, but forces him to spend the next breath and a half fighting the urge to hurl from the smell.
Nothing more to lose. They either die here, or they don’t. It’s really that simple.
Oh, he was looking forward to dinner, but that may no longer be an option, it seems.
“Good evening,” he starts with, hoping the politeness delays the inevitable by force of shock alone if it has to, “we are, ah, here on the behalf of the Don of Passioné as he…suspected you might be carrying cargo, we— as you have certainly been made aware— do not condone.”
“Giorno,” Mista whispers next to him with some kind of intensity to it, which Giorno has neither the mind nor time to unpack, “Giorno, they’re smuggling dinosaurs.”
He nods, weakly, in his teammate’s direction. Moves along.
“But seeing that you’re— not carrying that kind of cargo, we’ll…” he continues, grasping at threats but managing to fill his voice with the conviction of a political figure nevertheless, “gladly leave—“
Mista next to him nods, shakily. “Yeah, we’ll be, um, we’ll be on our way—“
“— no harm done, just inspection, you know how the times change—“
“Yeah, just passing through, really—“
“So you’re Bucciarati’s, then?” Lucertola lets out, one of his hands under his chin; mild interest shifting to some matter of light amusement, which could be either very good or the worst news imaginable. Giorno trusts Mista to be the optimist on this.
“Yes.”
“That young fool— I don’t know what he’s playing at, but yes, I do agree with you that I pose no threat to his… goal,” he sighs, theatrically, and continues with an enviably easy smoothness: “There is not a single gram of any drug on my Carboniferous; I am glad your…inspection came to that conclusion as well, gentlemen.”
He speaks in exactly the way a man of his power would to an audience that cannot leave. Giorno hates him for it, but the other half of his brain gets thankfully too hung up on the thought of Wait, not even painkillers?
“Not even a single Ibuprofen…?” Mista lets out, quietly, next to him. The single braincell they share has achieved superposition yet again.
It causes the Sinraptor to switch its targets from Giorno to him momentarily; one of the Pistols cries out.
“However, I have to ask,” the smuggler continues, blissfully unaware or harshly uncaring, “how exactly were you planning on leaving?”
They hesitate.
Then, shifting his weight and forcing multiple of the guns to make out tinny clicks as their barrels are moved, Giorno lets out: “On a ship?”
He receives a hearty laugh preceded by a moment of silence, and followed by: “You think I’d just let you steal one of my precious lifeboats? You really didn’t think this through much, did you?”
He glares back; it probably doesn’t change his expression much due to the light, but what matters is the intent. They did have reserve plans— they’re professionals, after all— but, well, none of them thought to account for a ten ton prehistoric reptile blocking all escape routes.
Beginner’s mistake, really.
“Uh, swim then?” Mista tries.
A small wave of huffs-to-chuckles ripples through the gangsters still staring them down through the scope of a gun. Their leader shares the amusement, but appears to find it no less nor more funny than what Giorno tried to offer the first time, instead appearing to ponder; wasting time. The two dinosaurs on both sides of him seem to grow bored, and turn their heads with a cat’s kind of reaction to some noise behind them that passes just as quickly as it appeared.
The worst fact is, it wasn’t even that horrible of a suggestion— after all, they’ve done it once, they can do it again. Shame.
Giorno slowly curls his fingers into fists. Prepares for a last desperate fist-fight against a slightly smaller cousin of a T-rex and twenty seven AK-15s.
Just waits for the man’s words. Puts his trust in Mista, and himself, and Bucciarati’s easy yet concerned parting words on the wharf; Just make it home in one piece, will you?
Lucertola tilts his head. The Sinraptor shifts its footing. Mista’s shoulder presses against his own.
When the apparent dinosaur smuggler finally opens his mouth as Giorno’s heart thunders within his ribcage with rising expectation, out comes not a call for slaughter, but a nearly bored: “Lock them with the rest.”
The What? that he lets out on reflex is unvoiced. What manages to get out, though, as the gangsters close in and reach for their hands with a predictable intent to cuff them, is: “The rest?”
The dino smuggler doesn’t hear it, but Giorno reckons they’ll find out soon enough.
—
“The gist of this mission in information,” Bucciarati tells them in his office in the villa; the only significant change between how it looked before he became Don and after being the flag of Passioné now hanging beside the fishing net, the amount of folders, and the lines on his face. “I’m not expecting you to put a stop to his business and, in fact, I would implore you to not even try; all you need to do is get on that ship, find out what he’s doing, and get out. Alive. I can dispatch an appropriate team to solve this later when we know more.”
He sighs, afterward. Looks them both in the eyes. “Understand?”
It’s said in a way that directly alludes to their own special brand of mission-gone-wrong— that is, a catastrophic, unintended success— and begging them to finally do only what they are asked. Giorno can’t quite see how they could fuck up this one, yet, but he always tries to account for nothing going in accordance to plan, so at least it will feel new, hopefully.
Two different versions of “Yes,” ring out, both half-tired half-joking; Giorno follows his own with a question, much more professional in tone: “Do we have information on the ship’s course? Where do we intercept it, where it docks, the route?”
“You will board in Naples, actually; that’s the only convenient part,” Bucciarati replies, moving the papers on his desk around until he frees up space on the map he’s dutifully marked lying below them. “It’s the last harbor the ship moors at before it leaves the Tyrrhenian sea altogether and vanishes somewhere in the Ionian for a week. The plan, then, as I imagined it, would be to board it—“
“Get what we need, and steal a ship?” Giorno finishes for him.
“Well, I was leaning more towards waiting in hiding until it returns, but yes that is another option, I suppose.”
“Not everyone can zip themselves into a wall for a day, remember?” Mista chuckles, leaning back into his chair, eyes sparkling with part-confidence part-excitement; they haven’t had a solo mission like this in a while.
“I— yes, of course.”
Silence. The only reason they don’t leave yet is that Bucciarati looks like he’s considering whether or not to say something else, a thought obviously on his mind; Giorno and Mista meet eyes, and latter nods.
“Okay, I’ll bite,” Mista voices aloud what both of them think: “What’s the catch?”
Bucciarati fiddles with one of the papers on the table, lifting its upper edge to read it as his eyebrows rise, clicking his tongue.
“I found records of no less than five different people sent on this mission over the years— none of them came back.”
Oh, Giorno thinks.
“Oh,” Mista lets out aloud. “That changes things— do we know what happened?”
“No records,” Bucciarati replies firmly; obviously displeased by it. “They…all but vanished off the face of the Earth, really.”
“That’s…interesting.”
“Irritating,” Bucciarati corrects him, his mouth in a thin line and eyes boring into the table, a very familiar display nowadays; probably yet again directing threats at the long-dead former Don for having no sense of leadership nor organization whatsoever.
It’s gotten so bad he’s even ranted to a few of them about the chaos he’s had to comb through with their help; which was a pleasant change, honestly, from the previous habit of not telling them anything at all, even if the reason for it was more than unpleasant.
With his next inhale though, his eyes lift again to cut into their souls with his next words, serious and frank: “Play it safe. And, by G-d, make it back alive.”
“Aye, aye, sir!” Mista lets out cheerfully, as Giorno merely nods with a smile of his own— he likes a good challenge, after all.
This is going to be a nice change of pace, for once. A small investigation with no other objective than go there, find this, get out? With the chance to solve a seemingly long-running mystery? He’s loving this already, and Mista’s enthusiasm speaks for itself.
Mission accepted.
—
“The rest” turns out to be dinosaurs. That…makes some sort of sense he has not enough time nor care to think about.
An enormous cavity inside the ship, two whole stories in height, most of its floor filled with cages the size of entire zoo enclosures but the familiar dim red transport crates too, everything affixed to the ground or walls in a confusing mess of chain and rope. The first story is just that— two doors far too heavy-duty for a typical unmodified cargo vessel on both sides of the room in line with the ship’s length, no organization apparent in the layout past an open space roughly in the center; what it’s for seems apparent when he looks up and sees that the second story is more of a square overlook, separated from the main hall by a chain-link net affixed between the ceiling beams and the railing. He suspects that it’s not there just for show.
The dinosaurs filling the cages— notably calm, seemingly sleeping— add to his small, building hypothesis.
Hands tied behind his back, and suppressing the urge to shake off the hand of the man gripping him by the shoulder, he sneers at the gangster’s apparent confusion once they arrive near the first couple of cages; the entire group simply pauses. Hand gestures happen.
Giorno and Mista meet eyes for a coordinated, quick roll.
Starts and ends of sentences sprout out randomly— what he gathers from it is their apparent confusion at where exactly they’re supposed to put them. The uselessness of it annoys him so much it overflows the irritation from being kidnapped in the first place; they should’ve figured that out before they got there, G-d damn it— an amateur, reckless mishap breeding exactly the sort of chaos Bucciarati could not stand, and no, that’s too funny to leave just in his head. He’s saying that aloud.
“Shouldn’t’ve you figured that out before you dragged us here?” He growls out, lowly.
Mista wheezes.
The gangster still gripping his shoulder only barks out a rough: “Shut the fuck up,” and carries on arguing.
Giorno shrugs. It’s a half-hearted attempt to get the hand off him, too, but he doesn’t exactly expect for it to succeed.
Yet again, he considers trying their luck— he knows it has to be on Mista’s mind as well, given the next time their eyes meet, Mista’s are asking for something. A small nudge of the head, a meaningful look, all spelling out a clear message of Do we?
Giorno shakes his head. The Sinraptor and two smaller but no less intimidating dinosaurs still tailing the group have something to do with it; he knows how to fight against human opponents; doesn’t want to find out how he’d do against dinosaurs atop that.
He keeps throwing glances at the creatures, still in some kind of disbelief— they look, well, so alive. Physical. Real.
All the signs of a truly living creature and not merely a Stand— they breathe, sniff the air, tap their claws against the floor and drool on it from their open, huffing, toothed jaws, their movement more akin to a goose awarded all the might it thinks it has than the calm, vicious predator they were presented as in the documentaries Mista loved to watch. They are easy to distract; feather-framed eyes darting around their environment and exhibiting a near constant desire for movement, restless but also faintly bothered, uneasy, from the signs Giorno notices with his expert skills in watching animals— frustrated huffing, clawing at their own skin and acting like they wished to shake out of it by force.
As the mob attempts to coordinate, one of the raptors seems to get as bored of the ordeal as Giorno himself is and begins to clean the feather of its not-exactly-wing in a display so eerily familiar to a raven it gives him some sort of vertigo.
Mista, on the other hand, keeps staring at them like he can’t quite decide whether this is the best or the worst thing that has ever happened to him— and utmost and understandable captivation of someone who can talk about dinosaurs for literal hours if someone prompts him. (Which Giorno has tested. And timed.)
The gangsters appear to finally choose. It’s not an unanimous decision— no, Giorno only gets woken up from studying the feather patterns of the raptor closest to him when the guy next to him, most likely a leader, announces: “Just throw them into the closest one, ‘s not like I give a fuck,” and, true to his word, begins to drag him away.
It makes him jolt, and stumble; having to reorient himself to see what “the closest” means, and— of course. It’s one of the cages. Most importantly, it’s not an empty one.
Someone tries to argue; the “leader” isn’t having it, and all but slams Giorno against the thumb-thick steel bars of the cage, holding him there as he fishes for keys with his other hand and a muttered curse escapes his lips.
With a near-unobstructed view of the sleeping beast within, Giorno reconsiders attacking— dissolving his bonds and trying his best— it’s too late, however, as before he finishes the thought, the cage door flies open and he’s being shoved in.
He falls. Worse, with his hands unavailable, he does so face-against-steel, and the only good thing about all the agony is that he doesn’t cry out from it.
And that they apparently share it. Mista joins him half a breath later with an angry: “Hey, hey—!“ followed by an Ugh that Giorno feels at his soul.
Stifled laughter. The cage shuts closed, the impact reverberating through the steel and into his bones. The click of a lock.
As their footsteps slowly fade away— their departure from the room confirmed by the heavy clang of the door— he breathes slowly, and rolls to his side, accepting his fate.
Mista also waits until they’re gone— even if in his case, it’s to panic.
Understandably so. He’s landed closer to the maw of the beast that they’re involuntarily sharing a room (or cage) with, and not all that much space to spare.
“Oh G-d— oh-h Christ.”
Giorno, lying on his side, his face squished against the cold, silver metal of the cage’s flooring and coincidentally facing the dinosaur, calmly studies the animal and arrives at the conclusion that he knows fuck all about it.
It just looks like a T-Rex to him, but with its head shaped weirdly. Its scales glint dim maroon in the limited light.
Patiently, he waits for Mista to inevitably correct him— who wastes no time putting as much distance between himself and the probably-not-a-T-rex in the meantime; at least until his back runs into the wall.
“Fuck, fuck, that’s— that’s a Baryonyx,” he wheezes out, the Pistols popping into view and glowing like miniature stars.
Giorno sighs out. There it is.
Then he uses Gold Experience to turn the cuffs into a strand of five-leaved ivy and frees his hands, getting up from the ground and joining his friend.
At least intending to, but as he’s moving over, another voice rings out from the dark; a simple amused question of: “First time?”
They both jolt; turning in the direction of the sound and freezing, trying to spot it in the relative darkness of the room— as Giorno reaches the wall of the cage in order to peer through the bars, he wonders whether the gangsters have left behind guards bored enough to actually want to talk to them; but once he finally locates the person whom the voice belongs to amidst the mess of reptiles and cages and crates, it turns out to not be the case.
It’s a woman; also locked in a cage a few meters off, though she appears to be utterly at peace with her predicament; her legs sticking out and swaying in the air, eyes glinting in the dark with the amusement of he would expect from a fae, or a trickster of the sort.
She’s luckier than they, at least. The creature she’s locked with doesn’t appear to have any teeth to speak of; more of a bird-like beak and a crest on top of its scaly skull the length of a German shepherd's, half as big in length as the Baryonyx.
“Uh, hi?” Mista greets back, high-pitched with stress and surprise. “Hang on, first time? ”
“Yeah,” she says, fingers of her left hand tapping at the steel of the cage as her right holds up her head. “I haven’t seen you here before.”
It’s entirely, bafflingly casual; like she’s meeting them over coffee and not as fellow captives locked in separate cages on a mafioso’s cargo ship full of living dinosaurs in the middle of the Mediterranean.
“Um, you— you come here often?” Mista struggles out and immediately cringes at his own phrasing.
The stranger doesn’t mind; she huffs, politely, and answers: “You could say that.”
“I— apologies, but, who exactly are you?” Giorno weighs in— motioning at Mista to offer him his hands to get rid of the cuffs in the same breath, who complies with a thankful nod and tears the ivy off his wrists in relief after it’s done.
She weirds him out, is all. The implication of her words doesn’t sit right with him— nobody whom Diavolo’s administration sent on this mission ever returned alive (nor dead), so how the hell did she manage to survive, and why did she come back?
Unless there was something else going on. Was she a plant? A guard pretending to be a victim? Why would she reveal something so suspicious, then, instead of committing to the bit?
His brain starts to ache; he glares in her direction, trying to solve the puzzle she presents, and waiting for her answer.
Disappointingly, she only replies with a sly smile, and a similarly coy: “I could ask you the same question.”
Ah. So he’s not getting any straight answers, good to know.
“Are you two gangsters?” She asks right afterwards, something strange to her tone he can’t quite place— Mista and Giorno share a look before the latter risks it and answers the affirmative.
If she’s a guard in hiding, she most likely already knows; if she’s one of theirs, perhaps, somehow , it might be of use.
“Oh. Shame,” she lets out instead, bafflingly, the words echoing against the distant walls. “I don’t work with gangsters.”
They share a look again; leagues more confused than before.
The Baryonyx in their cage breathes out from sleep, loud enough to draw their attention; its nostrils widening, a shift of its jaw, its head dragging a foot to the right across the ground. Giorno studies the serrated, narrow maw of needle-like teeth for a short moment before he whispers, aimed at his friend: “Should we worry?”
“It, ah, it’s supposed to mainly eat fish but— you know,” Mista answers. Or tries to. “Better get out of this cage as fast as we can, anyway.”
He can agree with that.
So he turns his head back in the direction of the inexplicable stranger and throws a neutral: “Are there any cameras? Or security, really?” her way. Testing the waters.
Gets back a weak, nonchalant: “Nah.”
It doesn’t sound like a lie, at least. Too uninterested to care, yes, but not lying— he takes the future gamble it presents over the massive present risk lying on the other side of the cage, dormant for now, but possessing teeth that could turn him into a fish filet the second it wakes.
“Can you get the Pistols—?”
“Already on it.”
On the same wave, as always.
“They never bother to watch over this place,” the woman continues, surprisingly, as Mista instructs his Pistols to see what they can do about the lock; it’s not the classic kind they can pick, and all their tools were stolen anyways.
He can always turn it into plants, but replacing it afterwards would be a chore; less-destructive measures first.
“Oh?” Giorno prompts her to continue.
All that she offers turns out to be a weak, disinterested: “Yeah.”
Dammit.
“So—“
“You won’t get out, though. Out of this room, I mean. Those doors can withstand the whole thing flooding and probably a bomb too, I don’t know. No lock or anything either.”
Oh. Wrong assumption then. “Thanks.”
It does complicate his newly-hatching plans somewhat, though— he thought he could find a backdoor or something of the sort around this place, perhaps a vent; with her description, that seems more than unlikely.
Determined to find another way, he carefully stands up and begins scanning the perimeter through the bars, focusing on the second story— if he could get up to the net, he could maybe turn it into a vine and get out that way, perhaps it has doors he can’t see from his position…?
She seems to notice what he’s doing, and cuts that off fast: “Yeah, I meant what I said. Same doors uptop.”
“Oh.”
“Don’t even try it. I’ve seen a few guys kill themselves that way— they actually guard those doors on the other side, you know?”
For someone who apparently refuses to work with gangsters, she doesn’t seem to mind doing exactly that when it comes to information, huh.
Again, he wonders just what the hell her deal is— a civilian would be freaking out, or anything but her almost lazy frame, content with the whole situation; a rival mafioso?
With a shake of the head, he dismisses it. If she’d asked them about Passioné, it would’ve worked, but not the firmly general statement that she’d offered as explanation.
“So,” he starts again as he refocuses on the contents of the room, wondering what could be done about the dinosaurs; exploiting their animal nature for their own end perhaps? “If you’re not a gangster, then…what brings you here?”
Bad phrasing. G-d.
She either doesn’t mind, or doesn’t notice.
“Business,” Simple, firm.
“Of what kind…?”
“Is this an interrogation or what?” She argues back in her accented Italian; he hasn’t figured out what kind of accent yet, though. He’s working on it.
“You could think of it as a…mutual trade,” he offers.
A chuckle. “Sure.”
“Then…?”
“Fine,” she says, shifting her position with the rustling of fabric, “I’m here because the asshole who runs this whole thing stole something very, very important to me.”
Oh, interesting. “And what would that be…?”
A pause. Her head tilts to the side.
Mista, kneeling next to the cage door with hands near the lock, curses in light amazement and continues leading the Pistols.
Then the woman finally replies, though with only one word falling out of her. “Bones.”
He blinks a few times. Then, he repeats: “Bones?”
“What, you thought these were real dinosaurs?” She throws her hands vaguely in a sweeping gesture around the room and the two dozen or so dormant creatures of the far past that it holds, and is met with awkward silence, given the answer is yes.
As her hands come to rest against the steel again, it transforms into a sigh. “The guy’s a necromancer. His Stand brings bones back to life, if they’re the real deal.”
“So these are— wait, his Stand? You know what Stands—?”
This time, she actually scoffs at him.
“Why are you gangsters always so surprised? What, you thought you were the only one with the shiny magic powers? Yes, I’m a civilian Stand User, so what? We exist.”
“I— of course,” he blinks past it, wishing he could convey to her that he understands but ultimately deciding it’d be too much effort for too little gain; refocusing on what matters: “So…he makes dinosaurs from…fossils? Do I have that right…?”
His gaze sweeps across the animals as he says so; seeing them in a new light, understanding the mystery of their presence, though it does not take away that significantly from the wonder that still awakes within him at the sight. It only makes them more real, sensible in a way. Forbidden magic arts and all, these were real creatures, or at least a representation of them; life and death and life again.
“Yeah, all he needs is one bone, and he has the whole animal up and running. For a little while, at least.”
“What do you mean?” Mista joins in; masterfully hiding disappointment. Giorno notices, though.
“Well, he can’t bring them back to life or anything like that. He just makes them real in the form they existed eons ago and that magic dissipates, I guess, with enough time or damage— they fall apart to ash and bones if you hit them hard enough, as an example.”
“And he’s built an empire of this? Fake, impermanent dinosaurs?” Giorno wonders aloud; they were incredible, yes, but useless in the long term; even more fragile than natural life; it felt wrong to him.
“I mean, all life is impermanent in a way—“ Mista mutters out next to him, but the woman’s reply is much more illuminative.
“If you could have a dinosaur— an actual, real, living dinosaur— in your mansion, even if just for a day; wouldn’t you pay billions for it?” She asks frankly, continuing with a deep-felt distaste: “The people he sells them to probably have no fucking clue what to spend their money on anymore; I think they take this as a nice party trick, or something. Invite all their rich friends to come look at the dinosaur they got, buy another next year. Bigger, more teeth, no responsibility— it’ll die on its own long before it becomes a problem, and the bones it leaves behind are a bonus, you could say.”
“Like a rich man’s surprise egg?” Mista says, face twisted in disgust.
“Basically. Yes.”
“G-d,” his friend sighs out, shaking his head; Giorno sympathizes.
“So he…sells them off?”
“Yeah,” she nods, “does a whole auction right in this room; at least, once he’s with done his fun little demonstration.”
“Which is…?”
Her eyes meet his across the wide space; she tilts her head, smiling like it’s obvious, a faintly eerie display that makes about all of the danger bells ring in his head, as she replies: “Oh, simple! He makes them eat someone.”
He infers what she means by that in the blink of a second.
“You mean us.”
A nearly cheerful : “Yep!”
“So that’s why nobody ever made it back,” Mista breathes out in realization.
It makes the woman perk up; shifting so that both her elbows rest on the steel. “Oh, they were all yours?”
Narrowing his eyes, Giorno shoots back: “Just how many times have you been on this ship?”
It’s getting ridiculous. He has to know.
The stranger pretends to ponder; or maybe truly has to count in her head. That option terrifies him.
“About eight. Why?”
“Eight?” They both blurt out.
“Yeah.”
“How the— how are you still alive?”
From her lack of reaction to that very, very understandable question of Mista’s, he infers that she doesn’t find it all that surprising.
Giorno is quickly becoming afraid of this woman.
“I think he just finds it funny,” she responds, a perfect picture of nonchalance. Or insanity.
He’s remembering Einstein something or other about doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results; given she’s unceremoniously stuck in a cage, same as them, and constantly alluding to it not being the first time she’s been in a predicament such as this, he thinks it applies.
“I— I’m speechless, actually,” Mista says, blinking hard. “He lets you live and you just walk into it again? Seven times? ”
That seems to hit a nerve.
“Gentlemen, I don’t think you understand just how precious fossils are,” she states, her tone instantly changing from uncaring to bothered, annoyed like she’s definitely not happy she has to say it again ; he can imagine why.
“Well, the floor’s yours— enlighten us, then.”
With a weary breath in, she sighs, and motions to the dinosaur in her cage; duck-beaked and silver-scaled, its thick skull laid on the floor in some kind of profound exhaustion, its entire back covered with fine, black feathers making it appear nearly spiked.
“You see this little beauty? It’s a Burianosaurus, but more importantly, the bone it was made out of? It’s the only dinosaur bone in a whole country,” she lets the sentence drop with as much weight it deserves. “You understand why that’s a problem, I hope.”
At their nods of quiet affirmation, she continues.
“Many people think dinosaurs aren’t that special. They think, oh, we know so much about them, it must not be that big a deal when a single bone is stolen— well, it fucking is! because we can’t know anything when we don’t have anything to study; every shard of a skull is important! And that’s not even accounting for the fact that some areas just don’t have dinosaurs— this little baby here is the only bone found! In a whole country! A single femur and maybe some footprints— though their validity is disputed— and that’s it!”
Gesturing to emphasize her point, she makes her case: “So you understand that, right? I’m going to get these bones back to the museums they belong to, one by one, or help me G-d, I’ll die trying.”
A pause.
Then Mista says: “You’re a paleontologist.”
It’s not a question; rather a realized statement of all the information they’ve been given falling into place.
“Just a paleontologist?” She shoots back, nearly offended, which makes them quiet again; though she reveals the reason immediately after: “I’m the head of the Slovakian Geological Society!”
Oh.
That…makes it clearer. Most of it.
Scientists. Yeah.
“So you’ve been stealing them back?” Giorno asks after a moment of silence; receiving another scoff.
“Stealing? No, I’ve been returning them. Successfully, I must say.”
“Not to be rude but, um,” Mista pauses amidst his sentence to gesture at the whole of their predicament, following it with a jerk of his head and a simple: “how?”
“I make lists. And I follow them. Every time.”
“And he just lets you?”
“It’s not like he notices three or four of his zombies vanishing,” she explains as if confused about why she has to. “I think he treats me like a pest. You know, acceptable losses of revenue from time to time.”
Still doesn’t explain much.
“Oh, and I’ve also been blackmailing him. That’s true.”
There it is.
“Blackmailing…a gangster. While continually breaking onto his boat,” Mista struggles out. “Wow.”
“It’s more pleasant than negotiating research grants; you’d be surprised.”
He doesn’t think he could imagine a worse example of living on the line between life and death if he tried, and he’s a sixteen year old in a mafia. It’s almost impressive, really.
“Am I understanding correctly then, that you have a plan? Of escape?” He asks after he’s done processing it. Or after he decides he just won’t.
“Ah! Yes.”
“…and what is it?”
“Wait.”
“What?” He blinks. “Just wait?”
“Yeah.”
“How does that—“
“Well, he’ll throw you to the metaphorical wolves, and after that’s done and they start to take out the cages, I sneak out! It’s fairly simple, really.”
“Oh. Thanks,” comes out of Mista, dry and acidic.
“Any plan that doesn’t involve us dying?” Giorno adds; not daring to hope.
Which is the right choice, given she only repeats: “Sorry, sweetie. I don’t work with gangsters.”
With a brief side-eye at that nickname, he murmurs: “Right. So we’re on our own.”
“Yep,” she lets out, enunciating the last letter; her gaze lifted somewhere to the rafters as if she couldn’t care less.
“Any…ideas?” Mista turns to him, earning a shake of the head in response, but not for a lack of trying as Giorno’s brain is running on full throttle considering all kinds of options, but rather the lack of information . The one thing the paleontologist seemed more than happy to provide.
“How does the auction…work?” He starts with; the first point on the list.
She reaches to pet the— was it Brunosaurus? No, he’d remember that— dinosaur next to her with no fear, running her hand through the fine feather on its head as she answers. “Well…all his guests come in onto the overlook, him included; but before that, his goons file in with tasers to ready the room, so to speak; mostly making sure to goad the animals and piss off the carnivore of choice. Then’s a little speech, and the demonstration, and the auction itself— it takes about an hour, sometimes two, but they carry out the cages as it progresses instead of waiting and doing it all at once, so it’s kind of easier to get away, I’ve found.”
During her explanation, the lock of their cage finally clicks open, which Mista informs him in-between praising the Pistols of just in case he hadn’t noticed; he nods, but doesn’t leave yet.
Instead, he turns back to the creature that has refused to even acknowledge they exist over the whole ordeal and doesn’t react to him even as he gets closer; feeling a little less like walking on eggshells now that he has a guaranteed way out in the case he jolts it out of its ennui.
Even as he stands a foot away from its jaws, the dinosaur doesn’t react; and they hadn’t been particularly quiet before either. Was it that used to human presence? It can’t have been, it can’t have existed for longer than a week, perhaps; though he can’t know that, can he?
“Why are they…so docile?” He asks, risking the full volume to make it carry all the way to her; the Baryonyx’s nostrils only flare at that, and nothing more.
“Because the guy controls them. He can make them passive like this when he doesn’t want to worry about what they might do.”
That changes things; and explains more. Throws one of his plans out the window.
Emboldened by her words, he kneels, slowly, beside the beast’s maw and considers trying to touch it; admiring the streaks of red within fallen gray below and around its half-closed eyes. Its straight, conic teeth jut out from its jaw; faintly irregular in the front. They are about as long as his index finger, and certainly something to fear.
His eyes trail the dinosaur’s spine all the way to its tail propped against the bars; noting the crocodile-like scales on its back and the pastel cream shade of its underbelly and the white stripes at the end of its tail— but also, its breaths, heavy and exhausted; it’s collapsed, unmoving form lying in a position that wasn’t comfortable, but defeated.
It looked like it was dying. Or like it wanted to.
One of his hands reaching out but stopping halfway, he asks with a half-turn back: “You said they fall apart with enough damage?”
“Yes. But if he sics one one your ass, especially an apex predator, it’s not going to save you. If it’ll feel like you’re winning, his goons make sure to level the scales.”
Good to know, but not why he was asking.
“It looks like it’s suffering,” he notes aloud. Finally brings himself to cross the last of the distance and lay his hand on the beast’s snout, center of its forehead and just below its eyes; its skin is cool, but still warmer than he imagined. Rough, dry and weathered.
It breathes out; heavy like relief. The Baryonyx’s yellow, clouded eyes finally find him and their gazes meet; he finds an animal understanding in them hidden under confusion and pain and something deeper and akin to fear, but it reminds him, clearer than ever, that it’s a living creature, or a representation of one— a memory interrupted by millions of years and now fading away back into the abyss of time, slowly, painfully, and uncomprehending what has dragged it back to this fate, controlled by another.
“They all are. You can see it in their eyes,” the paleontologist notes cooly.
The Baryonyx interrupts her next sentence when it suddenly pushes against Giorno’s hand, attempting to lift its head, the jaws stretching open— wide and toothed and impossibly strong, making him flinch away— but there’s no malicious intent in it. It only whines, shrieks, throaty and deep and rumbling through the steel like an earthquake; begging him for mercy, or something of the sort.
Giorno stills. Stares into the half-open maw of the beast, understanding what mice feel catching sight of a cat’s lazy yawn.
It’s only a moment before it shuts closed again, the creature’s head crashing to the ground as if this was it’s last hurrah, a desperate bout of effort to communicate a similarly desperate need; the Baryonyx closes its eyes and whines once more, deeper, muffled.
Mista’s at his side again at that point, trying to console it with soft words, his hands, though hesitating, coming to rest at the creature’s temple and snout in a matter he hopes is comforting.
The call doesn’t fade into the void, though; the others answer.
It’s one or two replies at first, shrieks emboldened and similarly stricken with the feeling only a creature grieving itself can weep aloud with; less the roars than the cries of lone sparrowhawks in sprawling fields if they were given the throat of a dragon to come through, echoing and breaking against the walls and the cages themselves, rumbling through the ground.
More come; higher and lower, the room momentarily swallowed by a hundred voices declaring their presence against the unknown, a shared desire for an answer, or comfort, or allyship; some layered and high and short and others drawn out and deep like thunder slowed to a crawl, like how the Earth would murmur if it could; others truly, finally, like a roar of a beast, along with the noise of heavy impacts against the metal of a cage.
They listen in silence, waiting for the noise to die down with the last of the flapping and struggling and screams; sharing a look in the dim, weak light, like wonder mixed with horror; then the moment breaks, and silence draws on once more.
Giorno swallows past the unease and asks, finally: “Can he feel when one of them falls apart?”
“To my knowledge, no.”
A late cry echoes through the room; incredibly, eerily birdlike. Like something that was once a bird but never will be again, or wishes it could be, but cannot approach that state, however it tries.
“What are you thinking?” Mista asks next to him, his hands petting the snout of the Baryonyx, trying to ease its fear.
“This is…inhumane.”
“Yeah.” His friend lets out; unvoiced and heavy. “Not sure what we can do about it, though— I mean, we still might die, too. Priorities and all.”
“I know, I’m— trying to figure something out but I can’t just— watch this, I—“
“I get you.” Mista lets out a sardonic huff, shaking his head. “This was not how I expected to see live dinosaurs, man. Not at all.”
The sadness in that statement emboldens him, or aches enough for him to feel justified; the fire of his moral core becoming alight, fighting through, insistent and demanding just like those months ago in Rome— he’s already decided.
“We need to— we need to stop this. Free them from this.”
“I know, I want to too but— how? We’re— we don’t even know how we’ll survive yet.”
He doesn’t know either.
Giorno runs a hand over his face in frustration, slipping it into his hair and pulling at its ends, accidentally tearing out a few; shakes them out.
“And besides, Bucciarati said—“
“When have we ever followed that advice, Mista, honestly,” he eyes his friend; knowing from the way he turns his head away and sets his mouth, that he knows. It just had to have been mentioned; just in case. They considered it— not forgot it. They chose to throw it away.
Another keen comes from the dinosaur in front of them, and Giorno begins to worry they are causing more harm than good with their presence, perhaps stressing it out more than if they’d left; but when Mista begins to stroke its forehead down to its spiked nape, it quietens. Sighs. Breathes out, heavier but fuller.
“It’s still— incredible, I mean, this is the real thing, I can’t believe it, but it’s…”
“Tainted,” he finishes for his friend.
“Yeah. Just makes you really conflicted at the soul when you realize you can’t help but— enjoy this. Yeah.”
“I don’t think you need to—“
“You two figure anything out yet?” The paleontologist (rudely) interrupts them as if it was her business, and adds: “That Baryonyx isn’t on my list, by the way, but I guess if you decide to kill it I’ll be taking that too.”
Synchronized to the T, they roll their eyes— Mista letting out a short annoyed huff— before they answer.
Specifically, Mista does: “And how the hell are we supposed to do that without them noticing? What, conjure another dinosaur in its—?”
He doesn’t finish.
His eyes fly wide open in realization about at the same time as it occurs to Giorno, too.
Their eyes meet. For a brief, infinitely charged moment, they stare at each other in shock— then, with Mista’s beginning of a word, it breaks.
“G—“
“No. No. Absolutely not.”
“Why not? That’s— we could— listen,” his friend pleads, a grin on his face, his eyes slightly distracted as his brain kicks into high gear with the hatching of a plan exactly as daring and stupid as all of their preceding ones; Giorno swallows past his immediate disapproval, past the nervosity shooting up through his guts, and obeys.
“If we use Gold to change some— not all, but some— of these dinosaurs to our ones, he won’t even notice, no? At least at first, and go through the demonstration, and then we’ll have him,” Mista explains, making a fist with one of his hands. “Chaos, yeah? Plus, Gold’s creatures are actually alive, so even if he turns the remaining ones against us, we’re still gonna be fine while he’ll be stuck with piles of dust on his hands. It’s—“
“Mista,” Giorno stops him; the nervousness in him multiplying: “First off, I don’t even know if I can do that, and—“
“When has that ever stopped you before?” His friend immediately shoots back, and he’s right, Giorno knows it; but he still adds: “You made a half-snake half-brick, tell me why the hell wouldn’t you be able to make a dinosaur?”
“I, I don’t know how they even look like—“
Mista’s eyebrows drop. He fixes him with a flat, unimpressed stare, and then, with his free hand, palm-up, he slowly gestures at the Baryonyx.
Fair point.
“Okay, yes, but— I don’t control them, Mista. Not really.”
“But you sent— no, you have to have some control over them. Am I supposed to believe a rattlesnake figured out public transport fifteen minutes after being born, or the simpler, you know, Occam’s razor, option that you led it there?”
Seeing that he’s still not fully convinced, Mista adds: “You don’t need to control them, anyway. I don’t know what you do normally— suggestion, imprinting, telepathy, whatever— just do that, it’s gonna work. And maybe you can push yourself a little, learn new things, you know?”
He doesn’t have any other arguments on his mind.
Giorno gives up with a drop of the hands he’s lifted to argue, and answers, though not happily: “Fine.”
“So first…how are we going to go about this?” Mista says into the air, his eyes on the Baryonyx, completely oblivious to their brand new insanity with an animal’s innocence.
“They’re not— really alive, are they?” Giorno raises his voice in order for the paleontologist to hear him. “How… much do we need to— to kill them?”
Mista’s plan is good, and he feels it to be moral at his core to provide mercy to these creatures, but he’s still not happy about it— he always hated mercy kills. Especially on animals, who could not understand them; it brought a conflicted sense of wrongness, of panic and sickness at the soul. The Baryonyx won’t understand what they’re doing. It will just think itself in danger— will, instinctively, try to survive.
“I don’t really know, but all I can say is they’re fragile— I saw one raptor fall apart once because it got hit with a pipe too hard.”
It doesn’t help that much; they’ll simply have to see.
“Okay,” Giorno says to himself in preparation, quieter, “okay.”
“What are you thinking?”
Taking a breath for stability and ignoring Mista’s inquiry in order to focus; knowing it will be answered soon, anyway; he summons his Stand with a soft exhale and watches as its shine brings out the dim maroon of the dinosaur’s scales into a vivid cerise, its stripes contrasted by a gentle shade of orca gray; mourning it at the same time he commits it to memory, as Mista next to him gasps in wonder.
“Can you…hold its head…?”
“Oh! Oh, yeah, I’ll…try.” His friend lets out, moving further alongside the Baryonyx’s form and kneeling by its neck, noting: “Woah, this thing is huge,” as he does so, presumably noticing the fact the beast’s shoulder, even while collapsed, rests higher than his head.
Giorno agrees with him— it’s another reason why he wants to get it over with quickly, and prepares himself to book it if he can’t, and it snipes at him.
“Wish we had a gun,” Mista notes, displeasure written all over his features.
Giorno doesn’t have to voice his agreement. He feels the same, but they simply have to do without it, unpleasant as is.
He has Gold rear up for the hit— hoping that however silly it feels to try to kill a dinosaur by punching it really hard, it will still work, somehow be enough— and prepares for the worst.
It goes down. Flinches, a cut-off noise of surprise of pain— then begins to fall apart.
Withers away; flaking like molding wall paint, the colors losing purchase and its skin sinking, collapsing slowly and unnaturally on itself, its teeth breaking from the tips and dissolving into ash.
Mista lifts his hands away as he watches it happen, shaking dust off them— it spurs it to, in its last moment of living consciousness, move its head towards him, jaw open soundlessly, but all it does is spread the ash, kick it into Mista’s lap as, within the same movement, it dies.
Piles of ash and nothing more; Mista dusts it off his pants, quiet, and watches the dust settle and still.
Neither of them speak for a moment; like a minute of silence they’re respecting both without even having to agree on it.
Once it passes, though, Mista looks up and meets his eyes with expectation; his smile a little faded, but genuine still: “So, shall we?”
