There was a thud as a gray lump fell to the ground, split off from the figure of Chariot as Sticky Fingers likely separated the limb carrying the arrow, judging by the glistening golden line held within its fingers. Fugo took a few steps forward out from the shadows to get a better look at it, both the arrow and the arm coming into focus.
"Yes!" Fugo heard Narancia cry from beside him, rushing up to practically leap on Fugo as he echoed the feelings that everyone must've been sharing. "Bucciarati's okay! And he was going after the arrow before the Boss was!"
Fugo could see Bucciarati better now that he'd moved, long black-spotted pink hair and green eyes the same color as Trish's. He could see the family resemblance. But that shade of pink wasn't normal, and it wasn't only Trish it reminded him of. Doppio had had the same color hair. At the time, Fugo had assumed it was simply a strange fashion choice but now… Now he wasn't so sure. If there were two Bosses…
"The way you're talking…" the man who must be Bucciarati said, green eyes scrutinizing all of them before honing in on Narancia. "Sounds like it's Narancia who's inside you. Am I correct?"
Fugo watched as Narancia's mouth opened in shock before a wide grin split across his face, the kind of happy expression that looked incredibly strange on Giorno's features.
"Yeah!" Narancia cried happily, obviously overjoyed that his capo could tell it was him.
Bucciarai's face softened a bit at the boy's clear joy before directing his attention to Fugo. "And seeing as you're right beside him, I presume you're Fugo?"
"Spot on," Fugo affirmed with a small nod as he pried Narancia's grubby hands off of where he was clinging to his back, pretty much holding himself in the air atop Fugo. It was cute but he was too damn heavy to stay there.
"And you all…" Bucciarati turned to look at the other three curiously.
"I'm Giorno," Giorno said from Narancia's body, taking the initiative to start.
The click of a tongue sounded from behind Giorno, coming from Fugo's own body. "Abbacchio," Fugo heard the man say, as if it could be anyone else reacting to Giorno like that, and didn't miss the way Bucciarati's now-green eyes seemed to sparkle at him.
"Ah, I-It's me, Trish," the girl stammered out. It was weird to hear Mista sound so timid, even if it was someone else in his body. Especially when Trish didn't really act all that timid around the others.
"Well done, Bucciarati." That was Polnareff speaking from where he was held tightly in Giorno's hands. "You've already figured out this bizarre situation."
Of course he has, Fugo nodded in contentment. There was a reason why he'd made Bucciarati his goal, after all. The man may not have the wide breadth of knowledge that Fugo did, but his strategic thinking, cleverness, and his knack for catching onto things was unparalleled in their group. He was Fugo's ideal leader, and the model he'd set for himself for years now.
"That voice…" Bucciarati said, sounding shocked but not showing any sign of it on his features when he saw the animal the voice had come from. "Are you the man we were supposed to meet earlier?"
"Indeed," the turtle said with a small nod. "My name is Jean Pierre Polnareff."
As the man began to explain what he'd told the others already, Fugo turned his attention to the body still lying far off in the middle of the floor of the Colosseum. As far as he could tell, whoever's soul was now inside Bucciarati had yet to wake up. Of course, the possibility of playing dead couldn't be ruled out either. It would give an element of surprise if the Boss managed to catch them off guard that way; they needed to remain vigilant. Fugo only wished he could be the one to do that. He'd have to rely on the others now that he was stuck like this for however long it took to reverse the soul swapping, trapped in a near-useless body that simply felt wrong.
"Wait," Bucciarati said, sounding like maybe been thinking the same thing that Fugo was. "If our souls have been swapped, then the one in my body is-"
"He hasn't woken up yet," a feminine voice said. "He's still out cold."
"Are you… Mista?" Bucciarati asked, turning to face Trish's body from where it stood a few meters away, gun still out and at the ready.
"Yeah." Mista flashed a quick grin as he said, "Glad, you're safe Bucciarati. The Boss, Diavolo, who swapped minds with you is being watched by Number Seven of the Pistols. He hasn't moved an inch. He's completely out."
So Mista had been on top of it already. Fugo wasn't all that surprised; of the eight of them there, Pistols was best suited to monitor the body. Aerosmith was needed to watch the whole Colosseum and the rest of their Stands weren't long range. And though he always berated Mista along with Narancia for being a complete fool, the man's observation skills were far superior to Fugo's own.
There was a strange noise to Fugo's right and he heard Giorno yell, "Bucciarati!"
Following Giorno's finger in the direction he was pointing, Fugo could see that the shape of Chariot was moving in the distance from where it'd been knocked over after Bucciarati's initial attack that took its arm.
"Requiem's getting up!" Giorno continued, looking frantically at Bucciarati, who was closer than all of them to the Stand and the arrow. "We already know how to use the arrow. If we take control of that arrow, everything will be over!"
Bucciarati's eyes widened and he gave a sharp now before he broke into a sprint towards the berserk Stand, and Fugo couldn't help but feel a bit envious at how powerful Bucciarati's trust in Giorno was. The capo's arm was outstretched for the arrow when another noise pierced the air, this one familiar. Almost as if Sticky Fingers had activated, but surely it hadn't; Bucciarati hadn't called it out.
Fugo heard gasps of shock from the others and Bucciarati's strangled voice saying something that he couldn't quite make out. His capo's voice sounded wrong, and not just because he was in a different body. Narancia had stiffened beside Fugo, fingers digging so sharply into the fabric that he could feel the boy's fingernails scraping against Abbacchio's cool skin.
"Narancia?" Fugo asked hastily, worry and frustration welling up inside him that he couldn't fucking see. "What's going on?!"
"What? You can't…" Narancia sounded confused before he just shook his head and said, "It's Sticky Fingers! It just… grabbed Bucciarati. I don't know why!"
"What?!" Fugo's head swivelled back to stare in shock at the blurry scene. So he'd been right; that had been the sound of Sticky Fingers. But why had it attacked its own user so suddenly? Bucciarati had never lost control of his Stand before; none of them had. Except, of course, for Fugo himself.
"Pick up the arrow!" Giorno's frantic cry interrupted the downward spiral of Fugo's thoughts. "Requiem's charging at you!"
The sound of a gun firing echoed through the heavy air, Mista's arms held up with his pistol pointed directly at Chariot. Fugo heard each one of the three bullets hit their mark, making strange glooping sounds as they hit the amorphous Stand and blew it away from Bucciarati and the arrow.
"I'm gonna knock the arrow away!" Mista explained, gesturing with his gun to the side. "Hurry and pick it up!"
No, something was wrong, Fugo thought, that wasn't the correct move, but before he could even attempt to stop Mista, another shot was fired through the air.
As the gunman fired, Fugo turned to watch Mista closely. If his hypothesis was correct, then that last bullet would never hit its mark. Not Mista's mark, anyways.
"Mista, stop!" Fugo cried just as something burst through the pillar beside the brunet, the sound of a tiny voice shrieking wild curses cutting through the air as the bullet whistled towards the gunman.
"The pillar next to you!" Bucciarati yelled. "Mista, duck!"
No good, it was too late, there wasn't enough time for Mista to react and Fugo wasn't going to reach him in time, the bullet rocketing toward the man's head-
Just as Spice Girl burst out and punched the bullet just before it collided with Mista's head, the soft shell bouncing off his temple and onto the ground. Fugo barely managed to catch himself from running into Trish, who'd stepped out at the last second to save Mista and stop the bullet.
The voice hadn't stopped though, and now that Fugo was close enough to see it, he could make out the form of one of the Pistols, golden form still suspended in the air beside Mista's head as it shrieked and kicked at its user.
"What the… number one?!" Mista cried. "Where the hell did you come from?! Hey, stop!"
Fugo watched as one of the Pistols flew close enough to knock One off of Mista, his mind racing as he tried to piece together why their Stands were reacting this way. As Fugo decided it was because of either Chariot or the arrow, as if waking from a dream, One rubbed its sore cheek and cocked its head in confusion before asking what was going on.
There were murmurs of confusion from around Fugo and he heard Mista yell. "H-Hey! It's going to pick up the arrow!"
Fugo couldn't really see the Stand anymore, just the dark gray shape and a golden blur that eventually turned away and began walking away from them after it picked something up from the ground, likely its own arm.
"What the hell just happened?!" Mista cried indignantly, glaring furiously at the others as if they somehow had something to do with this.
"This must be Requiem's Stand ability when it's in berserk mode!" Polnareff exclaimed suddenly, having reached one of the conclusions Fugo had drawn as well. "Requiem has carried on my wish and become a defensive Stand! To make sure no one gets the arrow!"
"Anyone who tries to touch the arrow gets stopped by their own Stand!" Bucciarati agreed, sharp realization in his voice, but Fugo had a feeling that wasn't all it was.
"The arrow has the power to control your minds… are you saying this is a part of that?!" That was Giorno speaking, questioning the idea as well but in a different direction than Fugo had gone.
"No, I disagree," Fugo spoke up, drawing the attention of the others to himself as he explained his own reasoning. "Think about it. While turning the Stands against it is indeed protecting the arrow, you could also say it's protecting the Stands themselves. Did this strange powerup come from Chariot's power after being pierced from the arrow, or is it the arrow itself? The inability to touch the arrow, the arrow which gives Stands life; surely that's also part of it? Can it really be said that Chariot is protecting the arrow? Or is the arrow perhaps protecting itself?"
"You might be right…" Bucciarati murmured. "We still don't understand its power fully, not the arrow or Chariot Requiem; it could be an effect the arrow has on the Stands itself?"
"Oi, we don't have time for this," Abbacchio interrupted before they could get too caught up in the semantics. "Now isn't the time to debate this; we gotta get the damn arrow away from Chariot somehow."
"So then, how the heck are we supposed to do that?!" Narancia yelled in frustration. At some point, he'd perched himself beside Fugo again, clutching Fugo's sleeve tightly as he cried, "Our Stands have powered up. B-but, I mean… if we try to get the arrow with that power…"
It would just turn on them. Narancia was right; this was a conundrum. If they couldn't get close to the arrow with their Stands, they would have to do it themselves but that posed just as many problems and, in Fugo's opinion, double the risk. And much as he wanted to help, with a Stand like Purple Haze, with his body the way it was right now, all Fugo could do was think. And there just wasn't enough time to do so.
"Mista!" Another Pistol's voice broke through the tense silence. "Number seven, the one keeping watch, is freaking out! Bucciarati's body… is awake!"
Fugo jerked around, and sure enough, he could see the lump that was Bucciarati's body moving, as if it was trying to get up.
"Diavolo?!" Trish cried in shock. "No way!"
Why? Why did she say no way, Fugo had to wonder. Surely, if the Boss was awake, then she would've known first? If Fugo's theory was correct, and the two could only sense each other's consciousness rather than presence, then when the man woke up, Trish would've sensed it. For her to react this way, what-
"We'll have to go after the arrow later! Position yourselves where you can see his body!" Bucciarati ordered, darting to the stone wall to press his back up against it. Fugo felt Narancia's grip on his arm tighten as the boy dragged him out of the center of the hallway towards the remains of a pillar for cover before leaping up onto the top of the arch to scan the surroundings.
"Mista! Shoot him now!"
Fugo thought he'd been prepared for that; it was the obvious choice, but it still hurt to hear the capo say it himself, especially with that tone. Fugo had heard that tone before, that time he'd ruined a weapons deal he wasn't even supposed to be at and Buciarrati had insisted that Fugo flee without him. Bucciarati would've died if Abbacchio had shown up just a minute later and Fugo had never forgiven him for that. Not himself, and not Bucciarati. It was as if Bucciarati's own body meant nothing to him at all.
"What are you doing?!" Bucciarati yelled. "Hurry up and shoot him!"
"B-but that body is yours, Bucciarati!" Mista protested, shaking his head in dismay.
"Bullet wounds…" Giorno cut in before Bucciarati could say anything, staring at their capo intensely as he continued, "Are wounds my Gold Experience can fully heal. We need to make sure he can no longer move. That's what you're saying… right, Bucciarati?"
No… no, that wasn't what he'd been saying. Fugo had heard that conviction in Bucciarati's voice before; the capo had always been the self-sacrificial type, and he'd had no intentions of returning to his body just then. Judging by Abbacchio's grim expression from where he stood beside Fugo, the man had recognized it too. Giorno, a newbie who had barely known them all longer than a week, wouldn't be able to tell. Or maybe he did. Maybe this was just a deflection. No, he realized, this was a deflection. Because it wasn't the first time Giorno had made excuses for Bucciarati. And it wasn't just because of loyalty.
There was something Fugo was missing and it infuriated him to no end. He was sure he had all the puzzle pieces, if he could just have a minute to think…
"He stood up!" Pistols cried and Fugo looked back to see Bucciarati's figure… standing? Perhaps it was just because of his vision but… that kind of stance, could it really be called standing?
As the man took a staggering step forward, Pistols yelled, "He's starting to walk!"
That was obviously all further encouragement Mista needed because next thing Fugo knew, two gunshots rang out through the air and embedded themselves into Bucciarati's body. It pitched backwards onto the ground, lying there seemingly motionless. There was no pool of blood that formed on the ground though, and judging by the locations of those two shots, although it wouldn't damage anything vital, they should still bleed profusely…
"He's convulsing!" Number Seven cried victoriously. "He won't be able to come at us anymore!"
The sound of feet thumping against the stone floor drew Fugo's attention and he turned to see that Narancia had leapt down from the arch where he'd been on look out once Bucciarati's body woke up to move to the entrance of the gated hallway.
"No one else is showing up on my radar. No one's coming to save him!" Narancia exclaimed giddily, a wide grin across his face as he turned to see Fugo had walked up beside him.
"We did it! Now, once we get the arrow back… it'll all be over." Narancia sounded so excited, more so than Fugo had heard in what felt like years. That smile, even though it was on Giorno's face, was so obviously Narancia that Fugo felt his heart skip a beat.
"Yeah," Fugo agreed, although he couldn't bring himself to truly believe that it could be this easy. Still, there was no sign of any allies of the Boss, Bucciarati's body was immobilized, all they had left was the arrow…
"Hey, Fugo," Narancia's voice had softened now and when Fugo looked back, he saw the boy was staring at him with a strange expression. Fugo had never seen that face on Narancia before.
"Once we get back to Napoli…" Narancia trailed off, clearing his throat, dancing around what he wanted to say for a few seconds before he exclaimed, "I'm gonna go to school!"
"You- you what?"
"Yeah! I wanna learn more, see? There's… there's a lot I don't know, and there's stuff that I want to know so I can- well-" Narancia's cheeks turned pink as he added, "A-and I wanna eat some piping hot pizza too! Authentic margherita from back home, where it's baked over an oak wood fire! I'll get some porcini mushrooms on it too!"
"…I thought you didn't like mushrooms?" Fugo teased, ignoring the pounding in his heart. Narancia grinned widely before reaching out and grabbing both of Fugo's hands in his own, clasping them together tightly.
"And then… once we get past this… I don't think I'd mind you calling me dumb either."
That… what did Fugo say to that? Being called dumb, an idiot, a fool, that had always been the one thing Narancia absolutely hated more than anything else, although Fugo never really cared about it before. It had been the thing to start so many of their fights and arguments, the reason why Narancia always proclaimed he hated Fugo. In fact, they'd called each other idiots so often that Fugo equated calling his friend an 'idiot' to showing his 'affection' for Narancia at this point. He'd always believed Narancia just tolerated Fugo calling him that because the boy understood what Fugo meant by it. But if Narancia just let Fugo call him that, without getting upset or angry or- or… that couldn't possibly mean what Fugo thought it did, right?
Narancia let go of one of Fugo's hands so he could turn to the others, who must've still been surveying the situation, and honestly, Fugo was glad because if Mista had seen that whole interaction just now, he would've given Fugo hell for it later. Although maybe Fugo would still get that; Narancia was still holding Fugo's left hand tightly in his own free one.
"Trish!" Narancia said, waving at the girl to get her attention. "I'm going to protect you until the end!" Narancia paused for a second, flashing a cheeky grin at Fugo before swinging their clasped hands into the air as he cried, "We both will!"
Luckily, Trish just sounded touched at his words and unfazed by the position the two boys were in as she murmured, "Narancia…"
"Oi! Let go of him!" Abbacchio snapped, glaring dagger at the pair and Fugo remembered whose bodies they were both in. "Don't grab onto me looking like that!"
As Bucciarati hissed, "Abbacchio, not. Now," Fugo noticed how Narancia just stuck his tongue out before squeezing Fugo's hand again. This wasn't good, his heart kept skipping beats; Abbacchio's body must be worse off than Fugo thought.
"Mista," Bucciarati commanded. "Just in case, shoot both of his legs too."
Again, that same tone, four bullet wounds was nothing to laugh at and if this fight took longer than they planned, then it was entirely possible that Bucciarati's body would give out before Giorno had a chance to heal it. And Fugo didn't know what would happen to a soul without a body. He didn't think it was anything good.
Fugo felt Narancia stiffen at his side and offered the boy's hand a quick squeeze. As hard as this was for Fugo, it had to be worse for Narancia. The boy adored their capo.
"R-right!" Mista agreed, turning to Trish beside him as he quickly said, "Trish, you have my bullets. Give them all to me. They're inside my boot."
"S-sure…"
Fugo watched as Trish reached down to Mista's boot, wondering if there was a compartment for the bullets somewhere inside them or if they were just rolling around in it and how uncomfortable that would be.
As Trish offered a handful of them to Mista, Fugo could've sworn he saw her arm instantaneously. He blinked a few times, shaking his head in confusion. He must be seeing things; his vision wasn't good right now anyway.
"Hurry up, would you?" Mista demanded impatiently, his pistol opened and waiting for a reload. "Come on, hand over the bullets!"
"M-mista, I…"
Fugo heard Trish's confusion but couldn't tell what it was that was bothering her. Beside him, he felt Narancia's hand go lax in his own. Ignoring the little sting of disappointment that Narancia didn't want to hold hands anymore, he let go so the boy could go do whatever it was that he wanted to do.
There was the sound of something metal rolling around just as he heard a soft thud from beside him.
"Time just skipped ahead a few seconds!" he heard Giorno cried.
Fugo looked to his right where Narancia had been.
The frantic voices of his friends began to dull as his vision focused in on something on the floor next to him. He could see things clearly at close distances and this was only a meter or so from him. There was no mistaking it.
Polnareff was explaining the situation, Bucciarati was yelling about King Crimson, Giorno was questioning Trish about the Boss, and there was a hand next to him.
A severed hand lying on the ground with the remains of a purply-pink cuff hanging around it.
Something wet dripped onto Fugo's cheek.
His fingers came away blood red when they smeared the liquid across his pale skin.
The world slowed around him as Fugo lifted his head up, numb to his surroundings except the severed hand he'd been holding a second ago and the fresh body suspended a meter in the air above him, dripping crimson red blood onto where he stood.
Fugo couldn't help himself.
He screamed.
