Bucciarati glanced at Jake once the story of the encounter with the Helmacrons was complete.
"You did very well," he said. "Thank you for leading my team back there."
Jake wasn't expecting that kind of reaction. "You're welcome." Perhaps Bucciarati saw how urgent the situation was and knew that Fugo's stand had been necessary for getting out of it. Of course, he was a capo, he knew how to handle his team. Maybe he would have done the same thing Jake did.
Jake glanced at Fugo, but Fugo wasn't looking at him.
"Oh, and Marco," Bucciarati added. "I didn't get the chance to thank you for saving my life on the train. If it weren't for you, I could have been dead."
Marco puffed out his chest with pride. "No problem, capo!"
"He's not your capo," Fugo muttered.
The room fell into silence. Bucciarati was on his laptop. Sometime later, the silence was broken. "We have another message from the boss," he announced. "Abbacchio, come here."
Abbacchio glanced at the animorphs. "This is mafia business, not nosy American teenager business," he said harshly.
Marco put his hands up in the air jokingly. "Alright, alright, we'll go wait in the closet or something. No need to get snippy."
"Just turn around," Mista suggested.
"I don't see why they can't be let in on this. They are helping us, after all," Narancia pointed out.
"We'll settle that later. Let's read the message now," Bruno said.
The animorphs turned around and faced the wall.
"Abbacchio is such a buzzkill," Rachel mumbled.
I think it's stupid that we can't witness the message since we'll be told about it anyway, but I'm not arguing, Tobias said.
It does seem rather backwards. Bucciarati did say we were supposed to be one big team, Ax agreed.
The animorphs waited. Narancia yelled out "Holy shit!" and several gasps were heard. Horrified silence followed.
"You can turn around now," Abbacchio said, sounding a little shaken up.
What happened? Ax asked.
"One of the capos gave us the information we need," Bruno said. "But he….offed himself."
Oh, Tobias said, sounding shocked. That's horrible.
"Indeed," Bruno agreed, his eyes glazing over the slightest bit.
Once again, the air was filled with the tension of awkwardness, no one knowing what to say. Fugo's arrival in the turtle cleared the awkward air. Cassie offered to take his place in the seat next to Giorno.
"Are you okay?" Cassie asked him.
"I'm fine. My stand healed my wounds," Giorno responded.
"I'm sorry I couldn't do anything to help you during the fight back there," Cassie said.
"It's fine. Without a stand, you wouldn't have been able to do much. I'm not going to have you risk your life for the mission. It's my job to do that, not yours."
"I guess so," Cassie said.
"What is it like, being an animal?" Giorno asked suddenly.
And so a conversation about morphing and stands began.
Much later, Giorno was driving down the bridge to Venezia. The others had separated with the turtle and Cassie opted to stay with Giorno and Mista.
"No one is following us," Mista reported from the backseat.
"Good. The city is still asleep. We're the only ones on the road," Giorno said.
"These windows keep fogging up though," Mista commented.
Cassie turned her head to look. "Fogging up?" Alarm bells were ringing in her head.
It was at that moment that the car swerved. Mista, who wasn't wearing his seatbelt, was thrown to the other side of the car and hit his head. "Ow! Are you trying to kill me?"
"I'm sorry. I guess the tires are skidding a little bit," Giorno replied. "Are you okay, Cassie?"
"My neck hurts but I've felt way worse," Cassie answered, rubbing the spot.
Giorno cracked the window. An icy breeze came rushing into the car. "What the hell is with this wind?!"
Suddenly, a picture of the spot they were going to came blowing through the window.
"The thought of losing that chilled me to the bone," came a voice from the top of the car. "Luckily, we ran a computer analysis on the ashes, and piecing together the photo Pericolo burned was surprisingly easy."
"Mista, start firing through the roof!" Giorno yelled.
"I can't. I'm frozen to the car. It's so cold my little finger broke clean off and I didn't notice a thing. If I stay here my brain will be frozen over, but I really don't want to try to pull away and live life with half a face," Mista said.
Cassie turned her head and saw that the right side of Mista's face was frozen to the car window.
"I don't see a reptile anywhere," growled the guy on the roof. "So you aren't traveling with Trish and Bucciarati? It must be pretty important if he gave you the mission to go alone. Who is the girl with you? A new teammate?"
Mista aimed his bullets and fired at the roof. The new guy deflected the attack by freezing the roof.
"My bullets are frozen!" Mista cried out.
Cassie concentrated on the DNA inside her. Her morphing clothes were replaced with thick white fur. Her hands melted into paw pads with sharp claws.
"What are you morphing?" Giorno asked, squinting as the ice began to freeze part of his face.
"Polar bear," Cassie answered just before she began to grow. As she grew her ears slid to the top of her head, her feet became paws, and her mouth and nose pushed out into a muzzle with sharp teeth.
"I blinked and now my eyelashes are frozen together!" Mista cried out.
"I can only use Golden Experience with warmth," Giorno said. "And there's nothing I can turn the car into that can survive these temperatures."
Cassie picked up the bullets with her paws.
"Yes! Get them as warm as you can, Cassie," Mista said. "Then hand them to me."
Okay, Cassie said.
"Wait, let my stand do something too," Giorno managed to get out, touching the bullets.
Mista put the now-warm bullets in his gun and shot at the roof again.
"What?!" The enemy stand user cried out as the bullets shot him.
"Bullets retain heat when they're fired," Mista said. "So if I fire the ones Cassie picked up, I'm packing literal heat. Now Giorno over here can't really talk, so I'll do him a solid just this once. Get rid of this guy, Golden Experience!"
The guy flew off the roof of the car. "Good thing those plant roots are so tough," Mista muttered.
Unfortunately for them, the enemy stand user was still chasing them. Mista sent Sex Pistols out and they sent the guy flying.
However not even that deterred him. He froze the exhaust pipe of the car and held onto the large icicle.
"Stop the car, Giorno!" Mista yelled. The guy was on the car again, and he reached through the broken glass of the side window to grab Mista's arm, freezing it. Golden Experience punched the guy, cracking his helmet. It was going to take a lot more to kill the guy.
"Giorno get your stand away him! He's freezing it!" Mista yelled.
"I can't! Not just yet!" Giorno answered, turning the wheel. The car swerved across the divider and into the opposite lane, and Cassie silently thanked the heavens that the road was deserted. "We made it to Venezia! Hang on, we're going in now!"
The guard railing broke, and the car plunged into the water. They landed and Golden Experience punched the stand user, sending him flying.
Giorno, your hand! Cassie cried out, seeing that one his hands had broken off from the ice stand's freezing.
"I'll be fine. One of you just go retrieve what we need. The statue is just over there!" Giorno said.
"Cassie, you watch Giorno. I'll be back," Mista said.
Cassie pressed herself against Giorno's body, trying to warm him with her fur. Mista knocked out the windshield to the front of the car and prepared to swim.
"This bastard's ice attacks are too fast," Mista called a few moments later. "He froze my fingers right off! Giorno, turn the car into a plant! There's still a section where the hood hasn't completely frozen!"
Giorno grew vines but the enemy froze them. "The only thing that can survive is tundra grass," he said.
"Grow it then," Mista said. "That's all I need!"
Unsure of what Mista's plan was, Giorno complied. Mista used the tundra grass to make a snowboard and slid across the ice. The enemy unfroze the ice and Mista fell into the water, his makeshift snowboard falling apart. The enemy began to swim after him. Seeing this, Cassie began to swim toward him.
"Cassie, what are you doing?" Giorno called.
Helping you, she called back. I couldn't do that earlier when you were fighting the cube stand, but I can now!
Cassie took off, easily catching up with the enemy. She bit into his shoulder, tearing his protective armor. He screamed in pain as her jaws sank deeper into his skin. Flinging his hand back, he shot ice right in her face. Her nose froze, and she fell backward in the water, off guard from the attack.
"Cassie!" Giorno yelled.
I'm fine! She shouted back.
"Mista, shoot at the grass!" Giorno yelled.
Mista obeyed. The grass turned back into car parts and a screw embedded itself in the enemy's helmet. A few more shots and the screw was pushed deeper. The enemy fell back.
"Get the disc, Mista!" Giorno yelled.
Hurry! Cassie added. I'll swim underwater and find him!
Mista pulled himself up onto land. Cassie dove underwater. She found the enemy floating there. He came up for air a few moments later. Noticing the breathing hole on the back of his suit, she struck! Her claw caught it, and she ripped part of the nail off pulling the paw away. Mista shot at the enemy as well. A high-pitch screeching emulated from the suit.
Ah! Cassie cried out, covering her ears with her paws.
"You just did me a favor, Cassie," laughed the enemy. "Subzero temperatures bring everything to a halt. Gasses become liquids and liquids become solids. Now I'm protected by the layer of ice!"
"Get out of the way, Mista! It's a bullet! The sound is-" Giorno's warning was too late. The bullet ricocheted back to Mista, striking him. He collapsed.
The enemy began to make his way toward shore, leaving Cassie unable to follow him unless she wanted to freeze. Even the polar bear morph didn't protect her from temperatures that cold.
Giorno was almost finished healing his frozen off hand, regenerating a new one. Noticing the enemy closing in on Mista, he stopped. The car had floated toward the location of the statue by sheer luck. Giorno flung his hand up, spraying some of his blood in the air. The blood settled on the frozen air, creating a path for Mista's bullets. Sex Pistols guided the bullets to hit him, but ricocheted back to Mista. Mista sprayed his blood over the enemy's helmet, coating the window. A few more shots and the enemy stumbled back, his breathing hole on his suit impaled on a sharp piece of a metal pole that had been reshaped by a bullet.
Cassie could see that Mista was weakening as she crawled onto the pavement near him. He shot more bullets at the enemy, and before the bullets could ricochet back and hit him, she jumped in front of him, taking the hits. The enemy invoked his stand power as Mista's last bullet was in course.
Cassie wanted to run, but she was brave. The last bullet hit her in the head as she charged the stand user, and she felt a surge of panic.
"Cassie!" Mista cried out. "Demorph!"
Her vision was starting to go fuzzy, and she felt like she was going into some kind of shock.
"I'll kill you," Giorno said to the enemy, now on land.
"Too bad your friend was too close to me. If she was further away that wouldn't have happened," the enemy stand user said.
Giorno killed him, punching him with his stand so that his throat was impaled on the pole.
Cassie was already demorphing. Giorno stared worriedly at her head wound, noticeable relief on his face when he noticed it was healing and the bullet in her brain dropped to the ground as she became human again.
"I'll go look for the disc," she offered. "You heal Mista."
Walking toward the statue, she found the disc hidden in a crevice. When she brought it back to them, Giorno was still healing Mista. "Found it," she reported.
Giorno smiled at her. "Good work," he praised.
"Thank- ow!- Thanks for taking those bullets for me back there," Mista said.
"I just did what I could," Cassie replied.
"No," Giorno protested. "You risked your life for Mista. And you risk your life all the time in the war against the Yeerks. You've probably almost died more times than anyone on our team put together. You're brave. You have determination."
Cassie smiled. "Thank you. You guys are definitely brave and determined, too. Maybe that's why both our teams are working so well together."
"Maybe," Giorno agreed, his voice thoughtful.
The early morning sun shone and day three of the animorphs' Italy trip had begun.