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Fugo sat on an unstretched recliner, clutching a thick novel in his hands with his leg swung over the arm rest. Narancia was nearby, on the couch seated perpendicular to him, holding a graphic novel in her hands about rappers turned into superheroes. Books with illustrations were the only thing she was willing to read, since action scenes brought her a visceral joy that couldn't be described. Trish wasn’t far, curled up on the other side of the couch, flipping through a magazine with a red marker in hand, circling all the things she was adding to her mental wishlist and planned to buy with someone else’s card. Most likely the don's.
There was a respectable silence amongst them, though Fugo was obviously still extremely tense, and Narancia was speechless, wanting to provide her best friend with comforting words, but knowing that her habit of accidentally agitating him might just make the situation worse.
Trish kept stealing glances at the older boy and he tried his best to pretend he didn’t notice.
He knew what she wanted to ask him. She’d been asking him ever since Giorno readmitted him into Passione and placed him back in their elite set, with the main task of protecting their princess.
Fugo flips a page. The book is still fresh so the pages are still thick and sharp enough to slice open your fingers, but he doesn’t care because with each turn of the page he gets a whiff of that familiar, therapeutic paper-ink smell.
Up till now, he still felt guilty and undeserving of his place. He had ran away from his team because he hadn’t believed in their mission or goals. Bruno, Giorno, and everyone else had forgiven him, saying he made the logical choice at the time and assuring him that there was no hard feelings or malice held towards him. But that didn't make him feel better. In fact, that almost made it worse. He’d prefer them to be upset at him. He worried constantly about deserting them again—and he knows if he were in their position, he wouldn’t be so quick to forgive a second time. On top of that, he didn’t know what actual value he brought to the team. He joined Passione as a rescue, as one of Bruno’s hand-picked underlings—like a child. He was smart, sure; but there were dozens of smart men in Passione with much more useful stands. He was as useful as a civilian to them. Truthfully, he didn’t see why Giorno, of all people, wanted him in the crew so badly, as if they had some deep personal history stretching over multiple years. They’d only known each other for a week and he saw Purple Haze drool all over itself while Fugo was cornered in another dimension. Hell, the younger teen managed to utilize Fugo’s stand better in those two hours than Fugo had been able to do in two years! It was beyond embarrassing.
Trish glances at him over her shoulder again. He lifts his book higher, trying to ignore her. He’s glad Narancia didn’t notice what was going on; she’d definitely exacerbate the whole thing, trying to forcefully pull an answer out of Fugo since she had backup.
The pink-haired girl blinks and her eyes turn back to her thin magazine of designer shoes and luxury purses.
The day after Fugo left, Trish had become a stand user—or according to Abbacchio, she had always been one, but her stand had been dormant until she was in imminent danger and had no other choice but to protect herself. Abbacchio had called the feat amazing; since she managed to protect their boss’ severed hand on a moving aircraft piloted by an artificial man while fighting against a stand that was essentially the legendary Kraken. It sounded amazingly bizarre and heroic! Almost jealousy-inducing. That made two. Trish, in twenty minutes was more in-tune with her stand that Fugo was, and used her powers to save the entire crew's asses, all without being a member of the gang, but the person they were sworn to protect. It was incredibly pathetic on his part.
Ever since he had returned, Trish had been badgering him in private about seeing his stand. Spice Girl had met and bonded with everyone else, especially Sticky Fingers, after Bruno made it his responsibility to teach her some evasive martial arts (because “teach a girl to fish, feed her for life”), but Fugo had been reluctant to show off Purple Haze.
He didn’t wear his stand as proudly as the others, using it for household tasks, like when Abbacchio commanded Moody Blues to ‘replay that one time he didn’t fuck up the linguine,’ or when Narancia used Aerosmith to knock some snacks off of a high shelf. Fugo’s stand was much too erratic and deadly for that. He had no control over it; just like his feelings of rage, his stand acted blindly in a fit of destruction and Fugo’ll be damned if he let it kill his friends.
He couldn’t even bear the thought of losing them. Being the cause would just send him into a spiral; a hole more deep and inescapable than his first one. He would suffocate under the weight of his own guilt.
“Fugo,” Trish slaps her pages shut, sitting up straighter. “Come on.”
“Come on, what?” He asks, pretending to be casual.
Trish walks up to him, tugging at his hole-punched sleeve.
He gulps.
“Come on. Let’s go outside.”
“Trish.”
She tugs his arm, lightly, but firm enough to make her point. “Come on,” she says, harsher.
Fugo sighs. “Fine.”
Once in the courtyard of the absurdly large mansion the group inherited, Trish puts her hands on her hips and fixes a coy smirk on her face.
“Show me your stand, Fugo.”
“Saying it confidently doesn’t mean I’m automatically going to comply,” says the blond, unimpressed. “The answer’s still no.”
“Please?” Trish begged, with Spice Girl materializing effortlessly behind her. “There’s nothing to be scared of.”
“There’s a lot to be scared of. Purple Haze isn’t… it doesn’t work. It can’t be controlled. If it hits you, you’ll get gassed with its poison. I’m not releasing it.”
“That’s only if it hits me. And I can defend myself. You can say what you want about your abilities, but at least believe in mine. I’ve gotten a lot stronger since you came back,” she says, stretching her arms.
Her stand adds, ⁂Plus, I’m curious too. It’s the only one we haven’t seen. Show yourself, Purple Smoke. ⁂
“It’s Purple Haze,” Fugo corrects sourly.
He had named it after his favorite strain of weed, the one that’d lift his mood no matter how shitty he felt.
⁂You rarely call it. How was I supposed to know?⁂
Fugo grumbles.
“Be quiet,” Trish hissed at her counterpart before taking a softer tone with Fugo. Her voice doesn’t match her words though, because what she says is essentially a threat. “Fight me just this once and I’ll never bother you again.”
“You’re crazy,” the boy deadpans. “I’m not in the business of hitting civilian girls.”
“Well, I’m not just some civilian girl. I’m Trish.”
“Daughter of the devil,” Fugo mutters tersely, shuddering at the thought of their powerful, faceless former boss.
Trish actually smiles at the comment, bittersweetly. The only good thing Diavolo’s genes did for her was ensure that she would be protected by a stand. It was the only thing she could be grateful to him for.
“Exactly.”
“I didn’t mean to say that,” the boy scrambles.
“It’s fine. Make it up to me. Hit me.”
“Trish…”
“Do it.”
“It’s really not a good idea,” Fugo says warily.
“That’ll be for me to decide,” the girl says proudly, with the authority of a seasoned mafiosa with Passione under her thumb.
Fugo didn’t exactly know what she’d been through once he’d left—he just knew she unlocked her stand and became aware of the world hidden beneath the world, that being the supernatural world of spiritual manifestations—but he wondered what made her so sure she could defend herself against something as unhinged as Fugo’s soul.
He frowns at the thought. It seemed that in that short time, everyone had grown significantly without him.
With a disgruntled noise, Fugo concedes, only because it looks like there’d be no end to Trish’s insistence if he didn’t. The girl was painfully persistent; just like her father was when he forcefully acquired dominance over the northern cities of Italy or when he struck up manipulative deals with the Albanians. Fugo figures he would just have to try to hold his stand back as much as he could; and if push came to shove, he’d tell her to run.
Since Trish, who used to be timid and conflict-avoidant in the face of physical violence, was exceedingly confident in her abilities, that meant that Fugo would just have to trust that her mastery of Spice Girl’s power extended beyond her mind.
“I’m trusting you, Trish,” Fugo says sternly, only for the girl and her stand to nod in unison. He waves his hand and calls out, “Purple Haze, show yourself.”
In a flurry of gray vapor, his stand materializes, and Fugo almost would’ve been scared if it weren’t for the fact that the gray smoke simply came with the summoning.
“Wow,” Trish praises, tilting her head to appreciate the figure from a different angle, still carefully minding Fugo’s outstretched hand, keeping her distance. “He’s beautiful.”
Fugo felt a chill run through him, settling in his face. “Huh?”
Purple Haze was a monster. What did she mean?
“The pattern. It kind of looks like an old-timey jester, though the helmet reminds me of a knight.”
If anything, it looked like a carpet. Never in his life did anyone compliment its looks. Fugo wouldn't expect them to. Maybe it was because of Trish's weird obsession with patterned fashion.
The stand growls and snaps at her, baring it’s huge teeth, which makes her fall back slightly; not quite flinching but still on guard.
Slobber trickles down Purple Haze’s flexed jaw and it struggles pointlessly to poke its finger under the gap of the helmet to wipe it off. It only seemed to get more annoyed, reflecting the tension Fugo felt all over, though it seemed bashful under the scrutiny of it’s master’s eyes, which only added insult to injury. It was confused, nervous, and feral. A terrible combination. The situation was uncomfortable for everyone involved; and Fugo found it to be an atrocious waste of a beautiful, harmless day. Trish had practically asked him to kill her.
He felt sweat on his palms and suddenly became incredibly aware of the holes on his clothes and how the fabric clung to his skin in the summer warmth.
With a perplexing calmness on her pink-glossed lips, Trish commands her Spice Girl.
“Attack.”
The stand laughs in that distorted, echoey voice they all seemed to have, excitedly replying, ⁂You got it, girl! That's exactly where I... wannabe!⁂
And within a fraction of a second, Spice Girl is charging directly towards Purple Haze, fists out and immediately delivering a flurry of punches that Purple Haze evade off of pure instinct.
Fugo shouts at both of them to stop, warning Trish that she’ll further agitate the stand. He finds himself irritated as well, knowing he’ll have to work around the unavoidable mess this will make. This was so, so stupid.
“Trish! Stop!”
She was being stupid! And it scared the crap out of Fugo!
“No,” she shrugs, still eerily calm despite the brawl she initiated.
Spice Girl finally lands a hit on Purple Haze despite its superior swiftness, hitting it squarely in the chest which should’ve sent Fugo reeling, yet it doesn’t even register.
Still, Purple Haze finally has enough, screeching out its final warning before clocking Spice Girl right in the face, which leaves Fugo breathless and shocked, having hit Trish in the face. He feels as if he's the one who got sucker-punched, worried that one of his capsules had cracked on impact with her skull.
He panics.
“Merda!”
Purple Haze yowls once more, like an ancient behemoth, assaulting the other stand in a fit of mindless fury, punching all over its body. Fugo feels the pain reflected in his knuckles as the stand throws haphazard blows, some blindly hitting the solid rock beneath them and others thumping against Spice Girl’s spongey body.
The capsules on its fists burst to the point where there isn’t a single one left. Only a thick plume of purple gas is left in its wake, billowing into the air.
Fugo has no choice but to back away, heart thumping in his chest wildly with the realization that Trish had all of half a minute left.
He had to get somebody.
He needed to get Giorno.
Maybe if he was lucky, she was standing far enough to be out of the gas’ range.
She seemed pretty far, but Fugo wasn’t sure if that was good enough. Every centimeter of space count, and every millisecond of time counted even more!
He turns on his heel and in a blind panic, bumps directly into another body, who gets knocked down by his weight.
“Ouch!” The girl says, having scraped her hands on the cobblestone.
“Trish! You’re… You’re not hurt!” Fugo huffs, helping her up. His eyes were blown wide. She can feel him shaking, from both adrenaline and the fear he had of his own stand hurting someone he cared about rippling through him like a curse. Where their hands link, they shake, under the force of Fugo’s anxiety. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. Are you?” She asked back. He nods quickly, and she gestures at him to look over his shoulder. “Relax, Pannacotta. I swear, I’m alright. Look. Spice Girl’s okay too.”
Purple Haze hadn’t stopped attacking, but with no more capsules left to break, the attacks were just brute force and nothing else. The smoke dissipates into nothingness and Fugo gets a clear view of what was truly going on. Though his stand attacks Trish’s, landing every blow, there’s never a solid impact because Spice Girl had elasticized its entire body, giving itself a rubbery consistency that was essentially as soft as a cake, like slapping an inflatable clown or trying to punch your way out of a bounce castle. No damage was reflected onto Trish, but her body did momentarily distort like the snapping of a rubber band with each of Purple Haze’s futile attacks.
It was unsettling, seeing Trish’s body mold in inhuman ways, like a sheet of paper, like molten glass, like polyethylene, and like dough, only to immediately snap back into her normal, human shape. But this was a much better sight than the alternative of her skin melting off of her bone as she screams in agony and lies in her own bubbling blood.
Fugo, never being the one to reach out and touch people due to his own personal issues, grabs Trish by the shoulders and hugs her, so upset by her recklessness yet relieved at her safety that he doesn’t know what to say. He’s just glad to known that her physical body was intact; that he hadn’t fucked up again and maimed one of his only friends in the world.
Trish hugged him back and drew Spice Girl back within herself.
With a pleasant lilt in her voice, she explains, “My power is flexibility and softness. It sounds weak until you see what my Spice Girl can do. It’s probably one of the only stands that can truly stack up with your Purple Haze. Fugo, I wanna help you train it.”
“What?”
“I’m the perfect person for you to train with. Don't you see? Your stand is literally a part of you—your soul. You can’t lock it away or ignore it forever. It’s not healthy. Giorno and Bucciarati brought you back to fight alongside your friends and fix the problems my dad started. Purple Haze is only ‘uncontrollable’ because you two aren't in sync. You panic because you see it as a wild animal, and because of that, it acts like a wild animal, lashing out at anything. I can make you both more flexible.”
“Why? Did Don Giorno put you up to this? Are you going to be my personal babysitter?” Fugo scoffs.
“Not at all. I’m doing this because I’m your friend and more importantly, your family. We haven’t known each other for long, but we’ve been through too much to not take care of each other. Plus, I can show you better than anyone else that things which are soft can never be broken. No offense, but you of all people need to know the strength in softness.”
Fugo scowls. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Trish just giggles puckishly. “You know what I mean.”