Chapter Text
Life as an intern was simple for one Coco Jumbo. Sure, it wasn’t easy balancing his work in the Speedwagon Foundation labs and his dual zoology (with a focus in herpetology) and psychology majors, but Coco Jumbo wouldn’t trade his life for the world! His large backpack bounced in time with the keyring on his beltloop, his collection of skeleton keys jangling all the while. The sun shone above his head as he munched on some fruit from a stand that was placed perfectly between his flat and the Foundation building. Life was pretty good!
The details changed every day like the passing of the tides, but the walks between his flat, university, and labs were a constant fixture of his life. The natural consequence of that was anything glaringly different was certain to stand out.
A crash echoed from the alleyway between two restaurants. As luck would have it, Coco Jumbo was walking past just in time for his hearing aids to pick up the noise. A few steps forward and he wouldn’t have been able to hear it. How fortunate! Coco Jumbo peeked around the wall, fruit still in hand, and adjusted his tortoiseshell glasses to get a better look down the alleyway.
He gasped at the sight at the end of the alley, right in front of the trash bins, was a scraggly-looking dog. Although Coco Jumbo was more well-acquainted with the more scaley or slippery members of the animal kingdom, he wasn’t so out-of-it when it came to mammals that he couldn’t identify a poodle on sight. Her fur was a lovely shade of red, but she clearly had never seen a groomer in her life. Blood and dirt were clumped in the tight coils. Her limbs seemed a bit too long for the rest of her body, indicating that she was still fairly young. But the most striking thing about this dog wasn’t anything about her body; rather, Coco Jumbo’s attention was drawn to her mouth, or perhaps it would be more accurate to say, the Stand arrow between her teeth.
Coco Jumbo decimated the remainder of his fruit and pulled a handkerchief from his puffy jacket to wipe the juices from his fingers before taking a step into the alleyway. Instantaneously, the dog’s eyes locked onto him, and she started growling. Her stance made it clear that she was prepared to attack and not impressed with Coco Jumbo’s presence. He froze in place, trying to make himself look smaller as he consoled the agitated and potentially scared dog.
“Hey hey, shhhhhhhh. I’m not going to hurt you. But you really shouldn’t have something like that in your mouth. That could be really bad. So why don’t you drop it?”
The dog growled at him, and a light pink aura started glowing around her. Coco Jumbo froze at the sight, keeping one arm in front of him to keep himself safe. He racked his brain for the standard protocol for dealing with dogs, but the only fluffy creature that he had regular contact with was a cat, and Leone wasn’t exactly dog-like. Sure, interacting with dogs should’ve been second nature to him—they were a fully domesticated animal, for Christ’s sake—but that information was pushed aside to deal with animals with more scales and less domestication. The only thing that he could think of was food. Dogs love food! He didn’t think that he finished his lunch, so he moved to slip his bag off his shoulders.
That motion was enough to startle the dog into action. The pink aura intensified as a large, pink dog appeared over the poodle. The Stand appeared lupine, but its skin looked soft and translucent. Ignoring the large teeth snarling in Coco Jumbo’s direction, he imagined it would feel like a balloon animal when pet. Beneath the skin, there were mathematical symbols floating around, occasionally bouncing off the sides like bugs in a jar.
Despite staring down a maw of teeth, Coco Jumbo took a risk and stepped forward. Even if he had to put his wellbeing at risk, he needed to get closer to the scared poodle. There was nothing more important than getting that arrow away from the dog. Without breaking eye contact with her, he unhooked the keyring from his waist. He carefully started filtering through the keys by touch until he found the one that he needed. His eyes flicked to his left, finding the door to the restaurant a few steps away.
Swallowing down his nerves, he turned his back to the dog and Stand, shifting the key to rest between his middle and ring fingers. He launched his hand forward, making contact with the keyhole with the tip of the golden key. The teeth shifted and remolded until it could slip into the keyhole without resistance. From there, the key acted on its own, turning ninety degrees without Coco Jumbo laying a finger on it. The door opened with a click, sliding inward like it had been lightly pushed and revealing a brief glimpse of Mr. President’s suite.
He stumbled backwards from the door, arms swinging back so he could keep his balance. In his flailing, he pivoted to face the dog. Taking in the sight of her again, Coco Jumbo was suddenly struck with the memory that poodles were bred to be hunting dogs. Usually, they were fluffy and groomed enough to mislead the public into thinking they were only fancy lapdogs, but staring at her nose scrunched up in a snarl and hearing her growl around the arrow made those hunter characteristics clear as day.
“Ahahahaha,” Coco Jumbo laughed nervously. “Good girl?”
The Stand lunged.
Coco Jumbo tried to turn and defend himself, but its teeth sank into his arm. Yet, he didn’t feel pain. A slight pressure maybe, but not outright pain. He wiggled his arm, taking advantage of his relative safety to attempt to break its hold. However, with each shake of his arm, his forearm grew in length and became looser. A thick eyebrow raised above his tortoiseshell frames, and Coco Jumbo took a step back, trying to piece together the Stand’s abilities. It didn’t take much thought to figure that out as Coco Jumbo watched his arm stretch out with every step he took.
Watching his arm meant that Coco Jumbo had to take his eye off the Stand, meaning that he missed the sight of the Stand steadily backing up until his arm nearly reached the opposite wall. Once Coco Jumbo looked up again, the Stand released its teeth, sending the arm flying back toward him. When his hand smacked against his face, it felt like he had been hit with a rock. Blood started gushing from his nose, mixing with the spittle that erupted from his mouth. He would be surprised if his glasses were intact because his eye was throbbing. However, the absolute worst of it wasn’t even the initial impact; it was the ricochet that was the kiss of death. The force of the arm hitting his face sent him crashing against the wall behind him. His puffy jacket and protective layer of heft kept his back safe from the impact, but he definitely felt the tickle of blood sliding from the back of his skull down his neck.
Coco Jumbo collapsed to his knees and let himself carefully fall forward. The Stand loomed above him for a few moments longer, but once it figured out that he wasn’t a threat—not that he was one to begin with—the Stand returned to the poodle. The dog seemed less agitated at the sight of Coco Jumbo collapsed on the ground. Rather than snarling, her head was cocked to the side, investigating the pathetic man. Confident that she wouldn’t attack again, Coco Jumbo reached his arms forward, dragging himself until he could rest his forehead on his backpack. He briefly snapped his fingers by his ears, testing to make sure he didn’t screw up his hearing aids. (Between his head and the little machines in his ears, one of those two could be fixed by a Stand user back at the Foundation building, and it wasn’t the more expensive option of the two). Fairly certain that the devices were still working is they should, Coco Jumbo sank into the comfort of his improvised pillow.
The darkness of the fabric pressed against his face was soothing; however, his relaxation was short lived when the feeling of a dry nose brushed against the back of his neck. Coco Jumbo carefully turned his head to face the dog. She stepped back at his movement but approached again when he made no effort to get up. As she returned to sniffing him, Coco Jumbo slowly slipped his hand into his backpack. He did his best to keep his fumbling to a minimum until he found the half of the sandwich that he didn’t finish for lunch. He curled his fingers into the bread and ripped off a chunk, which he offered to the dog. She moved from sniffing Coco Jumbo to the bread, but the moment her investigation was complete, he felt her teeth scrape against his hand as she ate. Although nothing came to mind immediately, Coco Jumbo sincerely hoped he didn’t have anything that would be harmful to dogs on the sandwich.
It took every mote of self-control in his body for Coco Jumbo to not react to the sound of metal hitting the ground next to his ear. Admittedly, the pain throbbing in his head made it pretty easy in to avoid snatching the arrow from underneath the dog’s nose. Instead, he grabbed another chunk of bread and threw it down the alley, only taking the arrow when he heard the poodle chase after the food. Slowly, he pushed himself up until he was sitting crossed-legged. He sat his backpack between his legs and tucked the arrow away before the poodle could take it back.
At this point, Coco Jumbo could easily walk away and return to the Foundation. And yeah, the dog might’ve been happy enough sniffing around the alleyway. She was a pretty little one, so she wouldn’t have difficulty getting adopted apart from her size as a standard poodle. But even if she wasn’t a Stand-using animal, the very thing Coco Jumbo is researching, he couldn’t leave the little lady alone after seeing her sitting politely, waiting for another scrap of his lunch. So what choice did he have but to pull the strip of prosciutto from his sandwich and use it to lead her into Mr. President? Clearly, there wasn’t a single other option.
As the door swung shut and the keyring fell into the room—phasing through the door as usual when Coco Jumbo entered his Stand—Coco Jumbo tossed the prosciutto onto the couch. The poodle jumped up and snarfed down the meat in a matter of seconds before she curled up on the cushion. Coco Jumbo refrained from stopping and petting her head, choosing to instead putter about his Stand. The first piece of order was shoving the arrow with the odd little beetle into the safe that he kept near Buccellati’s emergency tank (they never knew how far that silly octopus would roam from a source of water when he did one of his escape artist acts). Once that was locked up, he pulled out the bowls that he kept for Leone and dug through the fridge to find the food that was prepared and packaged for the kitty. There shouldn’t be many differences between cat and dog food, right? It was more or less unseasoned meat at the end of the day, but Coco Jumbo would ask about a proper dog diet later. Evidently, his new friend didn’t have any complaints because the food had barely hit the bowl before she started wolfing it down.
Once he poured water into the other bowl, Coco Jumbo flopped onto the sofa and started taking account of his injuries. He didn’t feel too beaten up, but he made a note to get his head checked out and was fairly sure that his nose was broken. Everything else seemed incredibly superficial in his opinion. He resolved to return to the Foundation building to see if someone could help patch the two of them up.
However, before he could stand up, a soft head dropped onto lap. The dog’s eyes started drooping as she snuggled onto his quad. Coco Jumbo smiled and set his hand on top of her fluffy curls. He gently petted her until her eyes closed and she started making little doggy snores. Carefully, he pulled a cushion and traded his leg for it. It was a good thing that Mr. President was self-cleaning, more or less. The little lady was sweet when she wasn’t attacking him, but she looked like an absolute mess and her smell wasn’t much better. Coco Jumbo definitely needed to get her to a vet and a groomer, though he wasn’t quite certain which order was best.
As soon as he confirmed that the dog was asleep, Coco Jumbo picked up the keyring and exited from the door. When he stepped into the alley, he looked around to make sure that nothing was too damaged. With nothing too out of place, Coco Jumbo walked back out to the sidewalk and turned back down the route to the Foundation building. If anyone would know how to help the dog, it would be the Speedwagon Foundation.
Coco Jumbo pulled out his Stand’s key and glanced into the gemstone. The poodle was still snoozing on the couch, peaceful as can be. He couldn’t help but feel a bit of sadness for the poor dog. Would she be able to be adopted? She was a lovely dog, maybe even a purebred, but she was a Stand user. That meant she was much smarter, more capable, and more dangerous than the average pup. Leone was proof that adopting out Stand-using animals was nearly impossible. There was a reason why he was the team’s responsibility rather than living in a nice flat. But would he be able to convince the Foundation to take in another domestic animal, especially one as large as a standard poodle? She would have a spot as a research subject, certainly, but would she have the same freedom as Leone if the two didn’t get along?
…Would Coco Jumbo be able to take her in? It would be a challenge between her size and his flat; he might have to move in order to keep her. The price for food might be subsidized by the SWF as support for a research subject, so that would take some burden off. But did Coco Jumbo have room in his heart for more than one and whatever-fraction-Giorno-was mammals? He was a reptile man through and through. He was even saving up for a tank to have a tortoise or lizards or something. He wasn’t a fluffy creature guy. Not that there was anything wrong with them! They just usually weren’t for him.
But looking back down at Mr. President…Coco Jumbo didn’t think he could trust anyone else with her. She was so so incredibly hurt. Plus, he already spoiled her with Leone’s food. Who else knew where to get the good pet food and understood Stand stuff?
Coco Jumbo sighed and bought himself another piece of fruit when walking past the seller again. Guess he had a dog now.