digiorno | ic inbox ( ruby city ) Ⅰ

...That's really something, isn't it. When you're so in sync with someone else that you just...

[...have no problem stabbing someone in the face, because you know that even from across the entire damn town, your partner has roped the asshole's Stand in his tentacles and pulled it free, covered your back without even being there.]

Mmmm.

[He's the first to get to his feet, then, and he does, shaking loose sand off his clothes before pivoting and offering his hand to Giorno, open-palmed.]

When we're done, tell me about him, okay? But for now...I've still got to figure out how to beat your vines. And I want to see if you can work out the way I've realized, how you could break my Time Stop.

...You wanted my promise, so I'll give it to you now. I'll treat his name with the worth you gave it. I won't sacrifice myself instead of using it.

[The moment when he hooks back into the fight is visible and easy to pinpoint: it's the moment Jotaro says the way I've realized, how you could break my Time Stop. Jotaro's standing above him, towering really, and he looks up at him with eyes wide as saucers, and - really, it's shocking how unsubtle it is, how blatantly expressive, but with Jotaro it's easier, it's safer, it's better, it's fine.]

[He smiles. Grins. Smirks.]

[A challenge. He can meet a challenge.]

[He's on his feet in a second, bouncing backwards on his toes like he weighs nothing, a wisp on the wind, playful as a kitten. Gold Experience blooms beside him, and it's not in constant motion anymore, nor is it holding all the shy tension in its body that Giorno doesn't show like usual; instead it moves in perfect sync with him, only the opposite way, so that as Giorno hops backwards, Gold Experience slips forward, chin tipped up, a challenge in return.]

[What Narancia loved best of all - besides Bruno's approval, and the love of his family - was a fight.]

Stop talking! You talk too much! Come on.

...That might be the first time in my life anybody's ever said I talk too much.

[And — he can feel himself getting more and more exhausted from the repeated use of The World, it's settling in now in a way he hadn't precisely expected but that still makes sense, but this time it's important and effective so he uses it just long enough to accomplish two things. One is to retreat back across the sand to a proper fighting distance, a moment of journey that to the naked eye would look like he'd moved in no time at all, but the other comes before that; he scoops up a handful of sand and tosses it into the air over their heads before he vacates, leaving it where it'll shower down over Giorno and Gold Experience in the instant when time resumes.

Narancia.

He'll try to take good care of your boss for you, kid. And...

And Grandma, that boss thinks your grandson is amazing, and he should try to remember that, shouldn't he.

Time resumes.]

Let's go, Giorno!

[Time resumes - and sand falls into Giorno's hair, dusts across his shoulders, across Gold Experience's too. His Stand twitches, startled, and he shakes his head like a dog to get clean.]

That's a dirty trick, Jotaro!

[But he's laughing all the same - how could he not? - laughing even as Gold Experience shifts forward and vines twine up from the ground to twist around his ankles and lift him bodily off the ground. It'll take him more than the five seconds of Time Stop to get free, that's for sure, and in the meantime Giorno's advancing, grinning wide with his hair blown away from his face, giddy and excited.]

But you're not the only one who can play dirty.

[And of all things — implausibly, unexpectedly, impossibly — the vines ensnare him and lift him off the ground, and it's not even that it's unexpected; it's the familiarity that makes him laugh right back, quieter and far more subdued than Giorno's, but there just the same.]

Hierophant does this trick better.

[Okay. When he'd hit the vines the last time, he'd been blown back — so, attacking them at all poses a problem. He'll have to take damage in order to free himself from them, unless...

Briskly, he gauges the distance he has left between Giorno and himself — enough? He'll have to stop time at the last possible instant — and draws Star Platinum back inside him in a rush, urging his Stand to manifest around his limbs like ghostly armor, and trying to force the grip of the vines to expand in compensation, to keep their tight grip even around Star's naturally larger frame.

It's the same way, he thinks, that escape artists free themselves from bonds — by tensing up while the knots are tied and then relaxing when it's time to escape, a minuscule amount of room to wriggle is created.

The question is, will it be enough, when added to stopped time for the sake of getting loose?

There's only one way to find out, so it's worth a try.]

I'll tell Kakyoin you said so.

[And he will, too. Maybe later, when everything's less fraught and immediate, but he absolutely will.]

[In the meantime - Giorno's coming close, closer, not so quickly that he can't watch Jotaro calculate. It's really fascinating, now that he takes the time to look, because the minutiae of his expressions are so subtle, but he's beginning to know them now, and - look at him, look at him go.]

[The thing is, though, that big gestures only do so much, and Giorno knows that, so . . . this is a way to buy time, absolutely; to wear out Time Stop, for sure; to see what Jotaro can do when he has a little wiggle room, of course. And he's not disappointed, but he's also not being quite still. One of the vines, a very thin and unobtrusive one, sneaks up while Giorno's approaching and Jotaro's wiggling around with Star Platinum pushing against the main body of plant matter and peels one of the aglets off of a shoelace, then absconds with it and disappears.]

[Well. Appears to disappear.]

[By the time he's close enough to see the sharp furrow of concentration forming between Jotaro's brows, he feels prepared to make his next feint, and sends a tree-trunk-wide vine snapping forward towards Jotaro's face. Better stop time, friend, if you don't want to break your nose.]

[...Of course. He'd outright asked for this, hadn't he — work out the way to break my Time Stop, and it sure as hell didn't take him very long to hit on a solution, had it? If he could use it the way he'd be able to if he had a vampire's body supporting him and mitigating the taxing effect it has, then he'd have employed it long before now. That he hasn't might be a consideration of honor, sure, but more likely than not —

So. That's what he's going to do, then. Pressure him with situations that will force him to stop time or get hurt, and break it from overuse when he can't anymore.

This time, there's no escaping it. Accepting a hit like that — no, even if he lashed out, it'd hurt him anyway, wouldn't it. Shit.

He'll just have to be fast, then.

He doesn't bother to waste breath on a verbal command; he simply wills it, and Star Platinum stops time in the same instant that he immediately withdraws, and Jotaro starts wriggling in an attempt to scramble his way free.

Although — ]

Hey, Giorno.

[He's not usually one to speak, while time is stopped. He dislikes the silence, but deep down maybe it's just that he's always a little afraid that he'll open his mouth and Dio's voice will come out. This kingdom outside the flow of time isn't something that belongs to him; he's the invader in it, the conqueror who stormed the gates and threw out the old master, and wasn't sure what to do with what was left when he was done.

But if his hunch is true, and Giorno's going to force him to use it to his limit...

Well.

Well, indeed.]

[And this is how it goes. This is how they fight, or maybe play, testing each other's limits until they know exactly how to keep going without giving any ground. There's really no combating Time Stop, but there's no combating Reset, either - two undefeatable techniques, two great minds, battling in the sand like children on the playground.]

[Jotaro had a normal childhood once, more or less; Giorno never did. But it's been a long time for both of them since they had the opportunity to do something just because they could, to match up against someone who was their equal but didn't want to hurt them.]

[So they're not hurting, but they are exhausted quickly, because both powers are relatively untested for roughly the same reason: they're frightening, dangerous, too much, a reminder of awful things. And it's not long before Giorno's breathing a little heavy, his expression focused but obviously tired, Gold Experience retreating across the sand to stand just in front of him.]

. . . Jotaro.

[He wonders if he'll have to say the rest.]

[He won't.

Even now, with Star Platinum still faithfully at his side, Jotaro can feel himself hovering on the verge of a significant crossroads. Through and through, he knows he's not done yet. He can't possibly be, because he's still standing, and his body is aching and his breath is coming short and shallow but it's still holding him up, and his heart is still beating. He's never used Time Stop this much before, in a single sitting or even as a cumulative sum; in one night he's pushed himself farther and farther than he's ever gone with it, farther than Cairo, farther than mistakes, farther than Kakyoin's fear of it.

He wonders if the universe itself is growing weary of it, these two god-children that they are, stopping and starting the flow of time itself like siblings fighting over a remote control.

He's not done yet; he's still standing, he still has a few more left in him, but the strength that's keeping him up is artificial and as fleeting as the adrenaline coursing through his veins, and as soon as that wears off, well. Once he would've said that's just a sign he'll have to finish his fight before it does.

Except —

Except that all of a sudden he can see the difference between done and able, and what he's been thinking was the former has actually been the latter, because there's more to being finished than fighting to incapacity.]

...Yeah.

[He reaches up with an arm whose muscles feel heavy from use, finding the brim of his hat to tug it slightly down.]

You're about to say, "We've still got to walk back to the city after this"...right?

[Maybe he's not; it's not as though he can make that sort of infallible prediction, unlike some people. But it's a pretty good guess, anyway.]

. . . Oh.

[He smiles. Smirks, maybe.]

Am I?

[He was going to. Now, in a fit of obstinacy, he doesn't want to. But it comes all the same.]

We've still got to walk back to the city after this, Jotaro.

[But that isn't all. He's tempted to cross his arms over his chest, but they're too weary to lift that far, so . . . he just tucks them into his pockets, a gentler mimic of Jotaro. Behind him, Gold Experience pads backward through the sand to fetch the cloth bag.]

Can I come over there?

...Yeah.

[His hand half-sinks down of its own volition, and he tries to play it off by swiping at his nose with his fingers, but it's halfhearted at best and soon it's back at his side, anyway.

And what happens next is — well. It's that he tips his eyes down toward the sand, and then back up at Giorno, and then they drift on their own to Star Platinum, whose guardian stance abruptly melts away in favor of drawing over and wrapping supportive arms around his user.]

Hey. Who d'you think'll get it worse? You from Mista or me from Kakyoin?

[Gold Experience deposits the bag in his hand just as the smirk softens to something less, something shyer. He cocks his head at Jotaro in a curious kind of way before crossing the space between them, which suddenly seems much further than it was before, when they were fighting.]

[When he finds himself at Jotaro's side, he lays his hand briefly on Star Platinum's arm, just to let them know he's there, then lets it fall again.]

It's not really the same thing, is it? And Kakyoin's meaner than Mista.

[Even though Mista is legitimately an actual real-life criminal, Kakyoin is the mean one.]

[He huffs out a short breath and elegantly collapses in the sand, legs crossing neatly as he folds himself up like a telescope.]

...Yeah. Did anybody tell you about...Tower of Gray?

[Oh. Oh, Giorno's down. Good, his knees were just about arriving at the same idea, and Giorno's always been one good for leading by example...

Fortunately, Star's there to catch him when he stops supporting himself outright, and eases him down onto his back in the sand, muttering soft oras as his capable purple hands get all of his user's limbs arranged so he won't end up with godawful cramps in them after five minutes of holding still.

...It's nice. He can see the sky and hear the ocean, and the sand is cool to the touch but weirdly warm when you lay on it for a while, and it's sort of like when he was exhausted and laid out before except infinitely better.]

That was...probably one of the best things I've seen in my life.

[Hello there. Giorno watches out of the corner of his eye as he goes down, scoots a little closer once he's settled, even though he stays sitting up himself, arms wrapped around his knees. He can taste the salt in the air for the first time since he got down here, now that he's tired enough and the anger's worn off.]

Tower of Gray?

[He's curious. Tired, but curious.]

. . . Kakyoin did something scary, I bet.

Sure did.

[And because he's just sort of lazing and drifting as the adrenaline wears off and the tired catches up, that state ends up reflected in his voice; it's raised up slightly out of its usual gruff pitch, quieter, with a little something like genuine fascination in it.

Which is usually what happens, when people talk about their favorite Stands.]

We fought Tower of Gray on a plane. That's what took us so long getting to Egypt, in the beginning, it made the plane crash. It was a...

[He lifts his hand, palm down and fingers spread wide, and waves a vague circle with the flat of it — a rocking sort of motion that, without realizing it, Star lifts his own hand and copies.]

...beetle. Flying stag beetle. It was fast, faster than Star Platinum. None of us could hit it, and Kakyoin wouldn't let us try because we might miss and blow up the plane.

It'd use its stinger to grab a target's tongue and rip it out. It hit Hierophant in the mouth once, he started bleeding. But he kept after it, persistent. Kept using Emerald Splash, the beetle kept dodging. He just wasn't fast enough.

So it's coming in — we're all just standing there watching, it's coming in, and it goes, "Once this rips your tongue out, you'll go mad from the pain."

[He laughs, softly, and it rasps a little from being breathless but it's there.]

And Kakyoin, he sits up and just smiles, and goes, "My Hierophant Green?"

Turns out the Emerald Splash was never about hitting it, just about keeping it in the same lane of air space — so it couldn't move around. Distracting it while he got Hierophant surrounding it, and then speared it from every direction at once.

So then there it is, trapped, impaled a dozen times over on Hierophant, and he goes, "When he rips you apart, he'll go mad, all right — from joy."

...It was the first time I saw him fight as Kakyoin, and not a puppet. I think it's still probably one of the best things I've ever seen.

[Giorno listens to this. It's pretty scary. He isn't sure how Kakyoin could ever think himself a coward, doing things like this, being brave like that - clever and strong and brilliant in every sense of the word, not just smart but effervescent and faceted. Too bad he doesn't have a camera. If he could take a picture of Jotaro's face right now . . .]

It sounds like you've thought about that a lot.

[There's an undercurrent of "you are such a fucking idiot, son" in there somewhere, overlaid firmly with fondness.]

He's really a scary guy.

[Funny how he manages to make it sound like there's a "mine" thrown in there somewhere, regardless of grammatical correctness and sentence structure and the fact that none of those words sound like it in the slightest.]

...Your turn. Mista story, come on. Let's hear it.

Are you giving me an order?

[For all that it could easily be a rebuke, it's really just quietly amused. He hears the possessive and approves of it, even though it doesn't matter whether he does or not. Even though he still thinks they're both idiots.]

[He toes his shoes off, sinks his bare feet into the sand, and looks out at the water. Water.]

. . . We were in Venezia. All of us split up, me and Mista together. He didn't like me then, or maybe he didn't care one way or the other, but either way - we were in a stolen car, racing down the highway, with a Stand user chasing us. Ghiaccio, and White Album. Freezing up the streets and the car and us, too.

It was so hard to think. And Mista was yelling at me, and he couldn't get a good shot in because this Stand, it covered the user's whole body, and it didn't seem like there were any chinks in his armor. I think Mista was pissed. He's good at what he does, you know, he doesn't like that kind of thing, when people cheat like that.

So to get away, get a moment to think, I drove the car into one of the canals. Which was stupid. He just froze the water, but - Mista wouldn't believe he couldn't be beaten. He thought there had to be a gap somewhere, some way to get him. So he figured out a way to get to shore, kept trying and trying different things to kill him, and I was stuck on the fucking car, sinking.

[The briefest flicker of a smile; he touches a spot on the back of his neck, under the braid.]

He found the weak spot. And he shot at it, but Ghiaccio, he froze the air solid, and the bullets just bounced off it and hit Mista instead. And he was saying . . . it was his responsibility, he had to take care of this. For Bruno, for everyone. It didn't matter if he died. And I thought . . .

That kind of spirit, it's too beautiful to waste.

[With a sharp exhale, he licks his lips.]

I had never really thought that before. That there were ways to victory that were unacceptable, because of the cost involved. But Mista dying there like that, I wouldn't have it. So I showed him - I had to show him - I injured myself, to show him that when blood got close to Ghiaccio it froze. And he just knew, he knew without me having to say anything - got close enough so that when he shot at Ghiaccio again and the bullets ricocheted back, the blood got in his face and froze. He couldn't see an attack coming. All he could do was die.

Damn.

[It's impressed, of course — the sort of remark that usually comes accompanied by a low whistle of approval, except that he doesn't quite feel like trying, not just yet. It's better to stay quiet and tip his head over to watch Giorno, the seemingly absentminded things he does as he talks and recollects.

Even without understanding them, he can understand that they're significant. It's interesting. It's important.]

When they just get it, and you don't have to say a word...it's really something, isn't it.

It really is.

[His smile comes soft, a little shy, as he listens to the sound of the water and the sound of Jotaro's breathing (because he is breathing now, he isn't going to stop his heart again). Gold Experience, who was standing sentinel, falls into a crouch at his side now, then sits and releases all tension, running its fingers lightly through the tangles of Giorno's hair, for one rare moment open and affectionate. Comfortable.]

I didn't know it could happen. Not like that. I'm good at talking, not so good at just showing. But he knew.

[He's so much smarter than people give him credit for. So good. He deserves everything.]

Sometimes I wonder if they're ever really going to understand how lucky we are, having them.

I don't get how they look at us and think we're so great, when they're...right there.

[How many times has he wanted to just...grab him and sit him down and shake the fears of worthlessness out of him and tell him again and again and again how important he is, until he comes around to believing it?

So many times.

It's so frustrating. So frustrating, why can't they see it, why can't they just hurry up and believe it.]

...I'm glad he turned up. Followed you here.

Me too. I'm not as strong without him.

[He would be better with Trish, too. But if he were alone, he'd be helpless. He needs Mista, and Mista needs him.]

[Good thing Mista would follow him anywhere.]

[Casting a glance sideways, he gives a crooked smile - to Jotaro, to Star, to both of them. Gold Experience begins to redo his braid, slowly and attentively.]

If you still want me to help you show Kakyoin. I brought something. For the fish.

...I do. I mean. Either way, I want him to have the fish.

[Although...]

I think...I don't know if I'm going to tell him with the fish. I might try to come up with something more...

[He pauses, staring quietly up at the sky for a minute, as Star shifts and mirrors the action with wider-eyed fascination emblazoned across his face.]

...Words. But I want him to have the fish.

Something more words?

[The low amusement in his tone is overlaid, once again, with affection. It's hard to talk to him at all without that being present. His life was so empty for so long, and now it's so full . . . he doesn't know how to be this whole of a person. But he's trying.]

[So he lays one hand on Jotaro's shoulder, and hopes the touch translates to Star, while the other hand paws open the cloth bag next to him and pulls out the two things - the green button and the washcloth. He sets them between his legs in the sand and flexes his toes, then pulls a hair tie out of his pocket and hands it back to Gold Experience.]

It's a beautiful thing you're doing, you know. It's a very you kind of thing to do.

[Which really means roughly the same thing in this case.]

Something he can't convince himself is different than what I mean. Not blunt, just...words.

[This makes sense. The motioning of his hand elaborates on all the sense it makes.

Star does, in fact, glance up when contact is made, even though it's not contact to himself directly, and the look on his face is curious, open and eager, but a touch tentative. The lines between battle and a lack of it are still something unpracticed in their nuances for him, but he learns from the experience and the observation, and he's watching intently now.

Giorno, Jotaro muses silently, is like Star — and he wonders, vaguely, if it's somehow that way for him in return, because Star is petrifying when he's cut loose, wild and uncontrolled and violent and thirsty for battle, but never once for single instant does he honestly believe that Giorno means him harm, any more than Star does.

And there's a distinction there. Meaning someone harm isn't the same as hurting them. One can happen by mistake; the other necessitates intent.

The moment he thinks of that is also the moment when Star finally smiles, bright and winning, and beams it in Giorno's direction.]

...You're going to do it out of a button?

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