Chapter Text
Italy 1994
It was January, the streets of Napoli ran cold with the wind rushing through the seemingly empty alleyways. A young girl shivers in the cold of the night with nothing but a few flour sacks hastily sewn together. A lowly street rat is all the public sees in her. Rumor is that she was a survivor of the old burned down orphanage. Others say that she's just a failure of a child abandoned by her parents at birth. But those are just rumors and are far from the truth.
Bona Lapone is her name, a loner since birth. She never quite fit in with the other children at St. Novara’s Orphanage. The others treated her like filth all for not being fully Italian. All she knows is that her father was Italian and her mother was Welsh. That's about all the information the nuns would give her when they weren't high off their rockers from the drugs the local drug peddlers gave to them in exchange for a cut of the orphanage's donations. She quickly learned to keep her head down for her own protection, only coming out of her shell to protect the younger kids from the bullies. The younger kids looked up to her and she tried her best to be a good example to them, even if she was treated like filth herself. One day a gas pipe was cracked in the basement of the orphanages chapel. That day as service was being held 3 nuns snuck out to the basement to smoke their daily cigarette. As soon as the lighter flickered, everything was blown to a crisp. Bona was one of the few escapees. Skipping church that day as she had long lost faith in their service. She was only 9. The flames ate away at her shoulder as she lay on the ground. She tried to crawl to at least save somebody, anybody, but she couldn’t. She constantly lives with the guilt of not being able to save anyone.
3 years later she lives her life as a thief among the markets of Napoli. Grabbing what she can to survive without drawing attention. She's mostly successful with only a few times she's been caught and sometimes beaten. Silence and Solitude are her core values on what it takes for her to survive. Protecting herself is her top priority. She refused to make any sort of connection with somebody in fear of losing them.
Shivering in the dead of night Lapone looks up to see a faint light in the distance. She starts hurrying towards it in desperation of just a sliver of warmth in the cruel January frost. She sees a young man holding a lighter, mesmerized by the flame. Lapone prepares to strike and take the lighter in desperation but as she sneaks over, she bumps into a trash can knocking it over. The man jumps and drops the lighter, the flame dies in the snow. The man looks at it panicking and races to light it, muttering about someone not knowing that it was relit. As the flame comes back to life, the man seizes up, blood spurts out from his neck and he drops to the floor, lifeless. Bona freezes, afraid. Suddenly she feels as if her soul is lifted up by a similar force by which the man was killed. She looks back and sees her own body on the ground. An invisible voice booms “THERE ARE TWO PATHS YOU CAN FOLLOW, THE FIRST PATH IS FOR THE CHOSEN ONES WHO WILL LIVE…AND THE OTHER! THE PATH OF DEATH.” She felt her very soul being constricted as if a snake had wrapped itself around her form. A sharp pain spreads across her neck, as if an arrow was shot directly into her throat. Her soul slams back into her body. Her vision hazy, her thoughts slowing. The last thing she sees is the outline of a young boy appearing above her dying body…
Bona wakes up, groggy but somehow alive. Her vision adjusts and she notices that she lies in a rather nice bed. Her hand rushes to her neck, expecting a gaping wound, but all she feels is the smoothness of her own skin. She whispers to herself, “Was I just in some sort of cold induced nightmare? That must be why I'm in this random apartment.” She starts to lean upwards as she hears the door slowly open. Her head snaps to the figure walking in. It's a young boy looking to be only a year older than Bona. Dressed in a spotted white suit with a slender, yet tall build for a boy his age. Also sporting a sleek, black bob cut. “Buongiorno, it seems like you healed up quickly.” Bona stares speechless at this comment. She shudders “It- it wasn’t a nightmare? But the wound? I was stabbed! How am I-” Her eyes were then drawn to a nail floating near her face. She shrieked as it dropped back to the floor. The young boy speaks up “Stands, you’re either born with them or you are granted it by the arrow. We both share the same fate. My name is Bruno Bucciarati, I can help you.” Lapone turns toward Bucciarati “M-my names Bona, Bona Lapone.” Maybe it wasn’t so bad making a friend…
For the next 5 years Bruno and Bona became inseparable. Bruno helped Bona develop her stand Ride The Lightning and Bona ended up being quite the formidable defense on missions. They were a dynamic duo. Eventually they got promoted and were able to start their own small gang running out of Napoli with Bruno as the leader and Bona as his right hand woman.