Chapter Text
Trish clutched the turtle to her chest as she ran up the Colosseum stairs. Coco Jumbo was tucked into his shell, but whether it was because he was tired or scared out of his little mind, Trish couldn’t tell. She made sure to angle Mr. President’s key outward so the French ghost haunting the Stand could pop out and give her directions.
“You’re going to get off on this floor,” Polnareff said.
Even if he hadn’t pointed it out, Trish would’ve been able to guess based on the mess. A few random items were scattered around the stairwell. As important as it was to get the bodies out of the Colosseum before the employees started arriving for the day, Trish figured that they couldn’t leave these things for a guard to pick up. She set the haunted turtle aside and gathered a discarded pink sweater, a set of binoculars, and a laptop. Quickly, she dropped into Mr. President and shoved the items into Polnareff’s arms.
“I’ve got these.” He shifted the things into one arm and used his free hand to spin Trish around. “Now get back out there. My body should be nearby.”
“On it!” Trish ejected herself from the room and scooped up Coco Jumbo and Polnareff. From this point on, she didn’t need any more directions from Polnareff. The bloodstains were enough to guide her, like breadcrumbs leading her through the woods.
Her pace faltered when she saw the lump in the distance. Her leg muscles went tense, like they were primed to sprint away at a moment’s notice, but she carried on walking forward. As bombastic as Polnareff proved to be in the short time they’ve known each other, it only served to make standing above his corpse all the more harrowing. The blood-stained man next to an abandoned, overturned wheelchair made the bile churn in her stomach, and Trish knew it wasn’t because she was standing above a man rapidly approaching his own decay.
How dare he? What gave her father the right to do this?
Trish refused to look down, but her peripheral vision caught movement from above Coco Jumbo’s shell. Despite his prior rush, Polnareff lingered silently, fixated on his corpse.
Trish gave them both a moment before asking, “Would it be better to get your chair or your body in first?”
Polnareff shook himself out of his stupor and looked up. “It’s probably for the best that we bite the bullet, don’t you think?”
No, Trish didn’t think. If she had the choice, she wouldn’t be up here cleaning up her father’s carnage. But she didn’t really get a say in the matter, did she? Just like everything she’d gone through since the funeral. The only choices she was allowed to make were only for things that didn’t matter in the long run, like sharing her ice with Narancia so he wouldn’t die on the train or saying that she’ll fight alongside the team before they started dropping like flies at her father’s hands. She wanted nothing more than to run back downstairs and get one of the boys to handle this. They’re mafia, aren’t they? They should have experience moving dead bodies!
But before that thought could gain too much leverage in her mind, her ear caught the wails from the floor of the arena. The stairwell blocked out the noise, but here, out in the open, there was nothing to protect Trish from the weeping below. Looking to the left, Trish could see Giorno kneeling in the distance, holding onto a collapsed Mista. His arms were wrapped around Giorno’s torso, his hands clinging to the fabric between his shoulder blades. Since she ran up the stairs, Mista had moved from sitting in shock with Giorno supporting him to burying his face in Giorno’s shoulder, sobbing.
Trish couldn’t help but volunteer to collect Polnareff when she saw Mista starting to break behind his eyes. She didn’t think he was emotionally manipulating her into doing the gross work. How could she think that when they were surrounded by the corpses of their friends, including the bullet-riddled Buccellati? She’d have to be the world biggest bitch to demand Mista work in that state, but they needed to get moving.
But Giorno had better hold up his end of the deal and move Narancia and Buccellati when she returned with Coco Jumbo.
Trish set Polnareff and Coco Jumbo down and steeled herself for the task ahead. What she expected was that she could shut her eyes and throw Polnareff’s body over her shoulder. It would be awkward pulling it up, given its size and flopping limbs, but she was sure that she’d be able to drag it to the turtle. But when she grabbed the corpse’s arm, it was stiff enough to drag the torso and head along with it. When she heard some popping, she couldn’t help but drop the body with a small shriek.
“Ohmigod, its stiff! Why is it stiff?” Trish looked to Polnareff with wide eyes. “Polnareff! What’s wrong with your body?”
Polnareff raised his hands and gently said, “Relax, Trish. That’s perfectly normal. I’ve been dead for a few hours, so my body is well into the rigor mortis phase. Are you familiar with that?”
“I’ve heard the term, but I don’t know specifics.”
Polnareff nodded and the turtle moved forward so he could gesture to his body. “A few hours after death, the body starts to stiffen up because there isn’t blood flow anymore.” He looked up to the sky, and his face twisted in thought. “Let’s see, I died last night, we went unconscious for a few hours, and the sun came up about forty-five minutes, an hour ago? I’m certain that my body is pretty stiff now. Do you think you’ll need help moving it?”
Trish looked down and cringed at what she needed to do, but she shook her head. “No, I’ve got it. Just stay close.” She crouched down and threw her arms around the corpse’s torso, its back pressing against her chest. With a deep grimace, she heaved herself and the body up and stumbled toward the turtle. The body wasn’t as heavy as Trish expected from a grown man, but the weight distribution was awkward, surprisingly so until Trish remembered the number of prosthetics replacing its limbs. The jostling put pressure against the head from her shoulder, and after a few unintentional strikes, Trish heard a small pop as the muscles tried to move. She froze, doing everything she could to fight back the gag at the noise, only moving again when she was half-certain she wouldn’t throw up on Polnareff’s body. When she finally dropped into Mr. President, Polnareff was there, arms out to steady her.
Slowly, carefully, Trish deposited the body to the floor. Taking in its face for the first time, she noticed that its eyes weren’t completely closed and were half-lidded instead, like Polnareff died drunk. She swallowed down another gag and reached out to close his eyes fully; however, the lids were too stiff to move and remained locked in that position.
Just another thing for her to fail at.
A firm hand, one with all five fingers, dropped onto Trish’s shoulder. She turned to meet eyes with Polnareff. His face was pensive, but he still managed to smile at her. “Thank you for trying. It means more than you’d think.” He offered a hand out and pulled her up. With a gentle push, he urged her, “Go grab my chair, so we can get out of here.”
Trish nodded and leaped out of the Stand. Throwing the chair was a lot easier than moving the body, though she did hesitate to question whether she should collapse the chair. But that conundrum was quickly resolved because she couldn’t get the locks to move. Once everything was fully stored in Mr. President, she leaned over the edge and waved to the boys to get their attention. Unfortunately, neither were in a position to see her, with Giorno facing the opposite direction and Mista still sobbing into his shoulder.
With a huff, Trish summoned Spice Girl. She picked up the turtle duo and looked down into Mr. President. “You two hang on tight. This might get bumpy for a second.”
Trish walked back until she reached the wall before sprinting forward. Once she got enough momentum, she jumped and threw herself off the edge. It felt like her stomach migrated into her pelvis while she was in freefall, but she swallowed her nerves and kept her eyes locked on the rapidly approaching ground. When it entered her range, Trish sent Spice Girl forward to rapidly strike the stone below. She angled her body so she could land on the softened patch, turtle cradled in her arms. When she stopped bouncing, Trish rolled across the rubberized stone until she reached solid ground. There, she stood up, adjusted the fringe falling over her eyes, and ran over to the boys.
Hearing her footsteps, Giorno looked up. “Did you get everything?”
“Yeah, there was a bit more to clean up than expected, but we’re good now.”
Giorno nodded and gently prodded Mista. He pulled back with red-rimmed eyes and nodded in Trish’s direction. He stumbled to his feet and brushed off his pants. Mista exhaled through his nose to compose himself before looking toward the arena entrance, eyes not really focusing on anything. His voice was vacant when he said, “I’m gonna go get the car.”
As Mista walked off, Giorno held his arms out. It took a moment before Trish realized that he was asking for Coco Jumbo. She deposited him into Giorno’s arms. He quietly thanked her as he walked to the remaining bodies. Trish was briefly a little jealous seeing Narancia’s body flop in Giorno’s arms, not having to deal with the gross popping when its joints were disturbed or the unnatural stiffness of its muscles. That flash of jealousy was extinguished when she saw Giorno stumble, not expecting how heavy “dead weight” truly was. When Narancia’s body nearly slipped out of his hands, Trish rushed over and grabbed Giorno’s arms to better support the body.
Hell or high water, she was not letting Narancia suffer the indignity of having his body dropped.
They walked together until they reached Coco Jumbo, where they dropped into Mr. President. When they landed in the Stand, Polnareff took Narancia from their arms. He didn’t seem to struggle with the weight, though Trish wasn’t sure if that was because he wasn’t affected by his physical limits anymore or if it was just because he was genuinely more muscular than the two of them combined. Giorno exited the room to grab Buccellati, and Trish moved to follow, but something caught her attention. Or perhaps, it would be better to say the absence of something caught her attention.
“Where did your body go?” Trish asked as she looked around the room. Polnareff gave her a sad smile and pulled open the door to the closet; the same one that Buccellati offered up as a potential bathroom. (Trish knew not to speak ill of the dead, but Buccellati would always be a weirdo for that). Polnareff’s body was tucked inside the closet. “You can understand why I wouldn’t want this sitting around? It’s a bit uncomfortable sitting on the sofa with a reminder of your own mortality less than a meter away.”
“Oh, yeah.” Trish shifted uncomfortably, not quite knowing how to respond to that. “That makes sense.”
Thankfully, Giorno dropped into Mr. President with an uncomfortable grunt, so Trish could focus on helping him with Buccellati’s body instead of continuing that conversation.
“There we go,” Giorno said as he settled Buccellati’s body along the wall, next to Narancia’s. When he stood up, he nodded toward the other two. “Thank you both for your help with this. I’m going to head to the car. Trish, do you want to stay here or come with me?”
Trish looked back and forth. She had spent most of the past few days in the room, so looking at the walls gave her a sense of comfort and security while also making her absolutely stir-crazy. On the other hand, if she left for the car, she’d be leaving Polnareff completely alone, and she knew how much that sucked. She would lean toward staying with Polnareff if it weren’t for the looming dread of being in a room with three corpses, with only a ghost a “living” company.
The conflict must’ve been clear on her face because Polnareff interjected. “Go on with your friends. You don’t want to be stuck here with some man you barely know.”
She nodded and left the room with Giorno. The two sprinted out of the Colosseum, hopefully not leaving behind anything important in one of the most famous tourist locations in the world. It didn’t take long to find the car; Mista’s hat was clear as day through the front window. They didn’t have the time to get settled before Mista stepped on the pedal. Trish set Coco Jumbo in her lap and held onto him for dear life so the combination of Mista’s driving and Roman traffic patterns didn’t fling him away.
It was quiet for a long time as they drove through Rome before Giorno broke the silence.
“So, what’s the plan now?”
At the red light, Mista rested his head against the wheel and sighed. “I don’t know. Fuck, guys. I don’t know what we do now.”
Giorno tapped him when the light changed and sank into his seat when the car started moving. “Is there anywhere we can go that’s safe? I think we all need to take a minute to lick our wounds.”
Mista went quiet, either to focus on the road or think about Giorno’s question. Trish racked her brain, trying to remember if she had any resources in Rome who could help them. Her mom was an only child, and her maternal grandparents passed away a few years ago. Her whole family was Calabrian anyway. Her mom’s friend and their manager had small apartments all over Italy because he needed to travel a lot for work; but Trish didn’t know where he lived in the city nor did she want to drag him into Passione business. Her school friends were out as well. Trish was modestly popular at school, but over the past few months, she learned that didn’t have many deep friendships. Most of them became distant after her mom was diagnosed. To this day, Trish wasn’t sure if she resented them or not. She knew that she became a lot while her mom was deteriorating before her eyes and was pretty much a zombie after the funeral. But it said something when she looked more fondly on Buccellati’s attempt at comforting her in the elevator just before her hand was ripped off than any time her schoolmates tried the same. Whatever. They probably didn’t have connections in Rome anyway.
That left her…father’s…side…
Oh.
Holy shit.
Holy. Shit.
Trish was an orphan now, wasn’t she?
That thought hadn’t crossed her mind since she woke up in the boat in Venice. She was so focused on what killing the Boss meant for Passione and for Buccellati’s team that she never considered what killing her father meant for her. Admittedly, she was barely used to thinking about her father to begin with. It’s a little hard to think about a man that wasn’t in your life from day one. But even then, she never thought of him as dead, just a deadbeat. Now? Trish was alone, truly alone. What did that mean?
A sharp gasp from Mista broke Trish away from those thoughts and gave her the opening to blink away the itchiness from her eyes.
“I think I know where we can go.” He sounded so tired when he spoke. “Me and Fu—…Me and Fugo had a mission over here a few months ago, and there was a safehouse we stayed in.”
Giorno’s eyebrow twinged upward. “Do you think it’s a good idea to lay low from Passione in a Passione safehouse?”
For the first time since they left, Mista laughed a little bit. “Trust me, no one wants to go there. It’s awful. There’s absolutely no upkeep on the place. It’s probably the safest place for us.”
“Well then, I’ll trust your judgement. Trish? Any objections?”
“I don’t have any better ideas, so lead the way, Mista.”
They drove for a little bit longer before Mista pulled into a parking spot in front of a store. He explained that they’ll probably need to stock up before getting to the safe house. Again, Trish and Giorno trusted his judgment.
Mista pulled out his wallet and cursed when he opened it up. “Hey, do you guys have money on you? I have cards, but I don’t think it’s a good idea to use them right now. I’ll pay you back later, I promise.”
Giorno raised his hand and shook his head as he pulled notes from his wallet. “Don’t worry about it. These are shared supplies anyway.”
Trish passed Mista money as well. “Thank you for doing this.”
“Aw, you’re welcome guys.”
A sharp whistle from Trish’s lap caught everyone’s attention. Polnareff was half hanging out of Mr. President. “Trish, hold your hand out.” She complied and after he ducked back into the Stand, a wallet flew out. After she caught it, Polnareff poked his head back out. “It’s not like I’m going to need the money anyway. Though, you might want to make sure there aren’t francs in the mix.”
Mista’s eyes went wide, and his mouth opened and closed like he didn’t know what to say. Ultimately, he settled on, “Thanks man.”
He turned to Trish and Giorno. “I’ll go in there alone—just safer that way. You two mind jumping in the turtle?”
Trish nodded and set Coco Jumbo on the car floor. Giorno thanked Mista and dropped into the key, quickly followed by Trish. The view from the gem changed as Coco Jumbo walked beneath the seats. Mista shouted his goodbye before the door slammed shut.
Giorno and Trish stood around the coffee table, looking around the room awkwardly, not sure what to focus on. Buccellati’s and Narancia’s bodies were leaning against one wall, steadily hardening with every second that passed. On another wall, there was the door to the closet where Polnareff’s body was stuffed. Even someone as stoic as Giorno didn’t seem completely comfortable in a room filled to the brim with death. The only reprieve from this improvised morgue was, ironically, the vivacious ghost in front of them.
“Well, guess we’re stuck together,” Polnareff said with a clap of his hands.
Giorno nodded and gracefully sat on the couch. “Yes, for the time being. Now that we have a moment to talk, would you mind telling us about yourself?”
Polnareff shook his head and said, “No, I don’t mind, but I don’t think that’s the best idea right now. You two just got out of a hard battle. You need to rest.”
“Signore Polnareff, I assure you we’re fine.”
“Ah ah ah, no.” Polnareff waged his finger. “There will be time to talk later when Mista gets back. You were up late fighting and woke up before dawn to fight some more.” He turned to Trish. “You too, mademoiselle.”
“But—.”
Trish could understand Giorno’s hesitancy, given the short amount of time they’ve known Polnareff. But the intensity of his help over the past few hours gave him enough of a pass that Trish was willing to sit the other side of the couch and hear him out.
Polnareff’s expression softened, and he placed a hand on Giorno’s shoulder. “Look, in my experience, it’s best to rest when you can. You never know when the next thing is going to hit you like a train. And take it from me, things will keep happening, whether you’re ready or not.”
Giorno’s eyes met Trish’s, hesitancy fading a bit. Slowly, Giorno laid down on the couch, with Trish following suit. Neither of them shut their eyes until Polnareff assured them that he would keep an eye out and would wake them up immediately if there was danger. Even then, Trish didn’t close her eyes until she saw Giorno do so.
Trish was out like a light after a few minutes of resting her eyes.
───※ ·✥· ※───
Murolo swirled his cappuccino in its mug as he scrolled through his sea of emails. The morning was lovely: sunny, a little bit of a breeze, a few clouds here and there. It was a deceptively pleasant day to have breakfast at a Roman bar near the Colosseum, given the nightmare of the night before.
Just thinking about the previous night made Murolo want to down his coffee and get another. The last few months—since that woman contacted a private investigator—had been some of the most stressful that he’d had in a while. Message after message from the Roman branch of the Data Analytics Team were popping up in his inbox. Usually, these sorts of messages would be filtered through Murolo’s representative for Central Italy. Unfortunately, he was able to make it to Rome hours before Murolo—not surprising given the drive from Florence to Rome is closer than from Milan. This timeliness became a double-edged sword because it put him right in the line of fire when Green Day was unleashed on the city, alongside the rest of the Roman division. He was able to get a warning to Murolo before he went radio silent, and Murolo didn’t step foot into the city until he got confirmation that the Stand had deactivated. By that time, the data analysts were reduced to minimal staffing in the city, and Murolo’s eyes and ears over Central Italy was out of commission.
All of this just to keep tabs on the traitor team. The bugs in the Passione-provided laptop sent out some intercepted audio almost half a day prior, revealing that the team was meeting a contact at the Colosseum. However, that was the last bit of intel they received about the team, excluding a tangentially related intercepted message that implied Cioccolata was on death’s door (mortality yet to be confirmed, but so, so hoped for). The Roman team offered to send someone out to the Colosseum, but Murolo doubted that there were enough healthy soldati to spare, especially when they had to scramble to cover-up another, but possibly the final, Green Day incident before reporters started digging too deeply. Besides, he’d much rather investigate something of this magnitude himself anyway.
Murolo munched on his brioche as he looked across the street. Tourist groups were lining up to enter the Colosseum. He wondered how many people remembered the events of this morning. Murolo certainly wouldn’t be forgetting waking up in the body of a pigeon; he had already gone through all of the stages of grief by the time he was back in his body. However, non-Stand users were professionals at jumping through hoops to repress or make sense of Stand abilities. Anyone who noticed the effects on their own were nearly guaranteed to be a latent user. From this distance, he couldn’t tell if any of the tourists were acting noticeably weird, the kind of weird that implied some type of supernatural encounter. Good. All the better for him that they didn’t notice Stands.
A tug at the back of Murolo’s mind drew his eye to the Colosseum. He quickly downed his coffee, took his brioche and laptop, and ran across the crosswalk. When he reached the sidewalk, Murolo started ambling around the Colosseum until he reached the correct point on the wall. He pulled off his hat and held it out as a series of cards floated from the second level. Once all were accounted for, he returned his hat to its rightful place and walked away from the crowded landmark to find somewhere private.
Once he tucked himself into a side street, he pulled out All Along Watchtower and shuffled the deck. When he fanned out the cards, the Watchtower Troupe jumped into their pyramid formation. He quickly clapped for them to start their routine.
Joker stepped forward and took his role as announcer. “The Colosseum: the great amphitheater of Rome!”
“The perfect venue for performers like us!” the other cards said like a Greek chorus.
“On this very day, we found evidence of modern-day warriors joining the grand tradition of the gladiators of old.”
“Strategy!” “Brutality!” “Mortality?!”
“Our brave performers left no stone unturned, scouring from the arena to the audience.”
“Divide and conquer!” “Guess Aces are low this time, aren’t ya?” “Shut up, Kings!”
“Traces of blood: some hidden, some blatant on the ground. And yet, we find ourselves with a mystery afoot.”
“Blood and shrapnel, scattered without abandon! But where are the bodies?”
“The clean-up team likely needs to be cleaned up themselves, per the doctor’s orders.”
“A skeleton crew better suited for the dance macabre than the workforce.”
“Hidden behind shadows, reveling in the history of violence, who came out on top?”
“Victors, losers; does it matter without a corpse to show for it?”
Joker started backing up as the other cards lined up behind it. “Did the Boss’s iron grip choke out rebellion, yet again? Or have the scales finally been tipped, overturn, and broken?”
With that final question, Joker jumped back and floated to the ground. The other fifty-two leapt into the air, creating streams of cards folding into a deck. When they organized themselves in a neat pile, Murolo picked up the deck and slipped it into his pocket.
After years of interpreting the Watchtower Troupe’s way of speaking, it was nothing for Murolo to skip past dissecting their words and start coming up with a plan. So there was a battle in the Colosseum, but no bodies were found. It wasn’t impossible that there were only causalities and no mortalities, but if the Boss was involved in any way, shape, or form, there definitely should’ve been bodies to clean up. A team of six plus the Boss’s unfortunate daughter plus the French informant? There should at least be a bit more viscera. A finger or two? Maybe a whole limb? But nothing left behind was more than a little suspicious.
Murolo pulled out his cell phone and rapidly tapped out the office number for the local analysis team.
“Buongiorno,” Murolo said as he started walking down the street. “I need you to get me the security recordings for the cameras by the Colosseum…What time?” Murolo ran numbers as he swiped a city map without breaking his stride. “Did you get the warning last night?...Yes? Then from the time of the message to standard opening hours…Grazie.”
With information traveling down the pipeline to meet Murolo, he picked up the pace so he could return to his car, where he could scrub through the footage in privacy. In the meantime, he replaced his phone in his pocket with a multicolored pen and began marking up the map.
Murolo had no interest in the truth for truth’s sake, but information was the only tool he had to shield himself from the internal politics of Passione. And the fallout from this most recent conflict? Well, he was going to need a full-blown bunker to protect himself, wasn’t he?