20 kilometres up
Venice
Midday
? ンナᆬ? - It's Raining Men by The Weather Girls
Viale was, of course, panicking. Thunder and lightning coalesced in front of him. It was a deafening and blinding cacophony of lights and noise.
"WHAT THE ACTUAL SHIT?!"
He was breathing at an alarming rate, both trying to catch the air as he fell past it, as well as the lack of oxygen this high up.
His panic was short lived, as he quickly steeled himself.
He managed to flip himself around so he was facing the way gravity was pulling him. He recalled that cumulonimbus clouds typically sat at around twenty thousand metres away from the earth's surface, and judging that he was wet, freezing, and damn near suffocating, he had around a minute to figure out how the hell he was going to avoid becoming a Viale-shaped puddle on the pavement.
He started by pulling out his 20-sided die. There should be something in here that could help him out.
Mannequin? No. Air horn? Maybe if he was on the ground, he could use it to get some help. Teddy bear? No, but keep it, just in case. Sleeping bag and a length of rope? Now that's something he could use.
He brought out 「Mr. Blue Sky」 and had him rip a few holes in the now unzipped sleeping bag, and thread the rope through.
By the time he was done, fifteen seconds were gone, and he had a barely-functioning parachute. It was slowing him a small margin, but parachutes are made out of canvas, kevlar, and nylon, while the sleeping bag was made out of polyester.
The sleeping bag was quickly falling apart, and Viale's momentum was slowly building again.
"Shitshitshitshitfuckshit—"
As the rope fell out of the makeshift parachute, the knapsack was falling slower than Viale, despite being larger.
'That's right!' he thought as he began freefalling again, 'Things with more surface area fall slower! Like a kilogram of rocks versus a kilogram of feathers! The rocks fall faster, not because they're heavier, but because feathers catch air more!'
Unfortunately for the falling man, this logic prevented him from reclaiming the sleeping bag that was flying away from him. He swore aloud, as that was his only large-surface item.
'I do have a set of spare clothes, but they'd just get wet and weigh me down.'
As he turned his attention to the rapidly approaching surface of Earth, he quickly found Accademia Magistrale, its large open fields and swimming pool easily visible with Mr. Blue Sky's enhanced eyesight.
'The pool! I could just fall into the pool and have my Stand take the force.'
He'd already considered just using his Stand to enter one of the thousands of rain drops around him, but he wouldn't survive that.
Surfaces Viale entered acted as his body when he was inside of them. If the surface broke, Viale did too. If he were to go through with that plan, the second he hit the ground, he'd be shattered into a million pieces.
The ground was approaching fast. He needed a solution.
What falls slowly? Something light, like a feather. But no, birds were hiding from the rain, so that wasn't an option—
Wait a minute.
'Can I… do that? Can I enter something so small?'
Nearly one hundred metres from the ground, Viale experimented. He grabbed the item in question, and tried to enter it with Mr. Blue Sky.
"What a great day to be alive."
Maria Pioggia was living the high life. She was promoted to a personal guard of the Boss, she'd gotten revenge on Giorno Giovanna by presumably killing his oh-so-precious son.
Maria had a difficult life – a tough childhood. She never had much as a kid. Sure, she had loving parents, stability, a mansion, and a thriving shoe manufacturing empire to inherit. Useless crap like that. But then, in her late teens, she got her Stand.
Giorno Giovanna was the only person in the world to survive 「It's Raining Men」, and that was by turning all of his clothes into five goddamn harpy eagles, which were able to stop his descent before he hit the roof of the airport. She then, predictably, had her ass handed to her.
She held that grudge for years, until about a minute ago, when she sent Gioviale Giovanna into the upper atmosphere.
Right now, she was just waiting for Viale to land. Maria had been doing this whole song and dance for about thirteen years by that point – she knew how people tried to get around her ability. So she watched the pool. The wind made it choppy, choppy enough, she assumed, to break the fall of someone falling from a really high place.
So she waited.
And waited.
Before…
SPLASH!
She shot up from her leaning position, and jumped out the window, using her Stand to glide down to the pool.
She landed to see a figure floating on the surface of the water, and from the looks of it, it was Giovanna. It even had his clothes, and a body shape that suggested it definitely wasn't just a bundle of rags.
She approached triumphantly and got out her phone. After a few clicks, someone answered.
"Yeah, Boss, yeah he's dead. I'm looking at his corpse. Dead on impact with the water. Yeah. Yeah okay. See you soon."
"You BITCH!"
Maria whipped her head around at the sound of the voice. But she didn't see its source. Was she just hearing things?
"This is your conscience, and you've screwed up." She frantically looked around and readied her umbrella. "It's raining; why aren't you using your umbrella, I wonder?"
She lunged her umbrella in a random direction – where she thought the sound was coming from, but only hit air.
"You really have no clue. Did you even research me before getting here?"
"Who are you?!" she yelled. A million thoughts were going through her head. 'Is it Giovanna? It couldn't be, he's dead in the water! Does he have allies?'
"I told you, I'm your conscience, and as your conscience, I say you're a horrible person." A technicolour arm shot off her shoulder, appearing as if it came out of nowhere. It punched her smack-bang in the face, with enough force to send her flying.
From nothing, Viale Giovanna manifested, visibly angry and defiant.
"I used Mr. Blue Sky to hide inside one of my own hairs, which falls really slowly and has high tensile strength." He was still breathing hard – a result of falling six kilometres. "I used a mannequin and my spare clothes to make it look like I landed in the pool."
Maria hit the floor, recovering quickly. "YOU CREEP!" Her hand moved to her umbrella, a few paces away from her on the ground.
But Viale was faster, sending out his Stand to mercilessly stomp on said item.
"That's your Stand, isn't it?" Mr. Blue Sky's foot landed on the umbrella's shaft, and Maria cried out in pain as she was slammed to the ground by the equivalent force.
"You– you're just like your father. You're a fake and a fraud!" she cried out in raspy breaths, pinned to the ground by her connection to her Stand.
Viale commanded Mr. Blue Sky to stop, freeing the umbrella, and in turn, Maria. She felt the weight be lifted off her. Seeing her opportunity she reached out and managed to grab hold of her Stand.
"It's Raining M– gah!" She was cut off by a fist to the mouth. A real one. Viale's fist. Not his Stand's. His jab hit dead-on, knocking at least two teeth down into her mouth. He followed up quickly with a left hook, causing her to spit blood. He grappled around her neck to knee her in the stomach, her skull-and-crossbones pin flying off her. This left her winded and discombobulated, but still she tried to open the umbrella-Stand.
Viale responded by ripping the Stand out of her hands, and snapping it across his knee. He managed to break a few of the 'ribs' of the Stand, translating into three or four broken ribs in the user.
As she tried to stand up, he proceeded to whack Maria over the head as hard as he could with her own Stand, resulting in another broken rib, and a passed out woman.
As he dropped the quickly fading Stand, he found himself stumbling over himself. "I'm so tired."
He decided a rest was in order, so he sat down, on the soggy ground, and let the rain wash over him. His ragged breathing slowly turned more composed.
He sat there for a while, arms crossed over his knees, and contemplated everything that had happened that day.
Therapy, remembering things he'd forgotten, remembering his younger self's talent for fighting, and just now, revelling in relief. Not victory, relief.
His golden locks ran down his face alongside the rain. His favourite weather was rain.
But he could not help but wish for the blue skies.
Sana Rossi was having one of those days.
Ever since her fight with Free Bird she'd been holed up in her room.
While she felt no guilt for that man, she couldn't believe she was able to do that to anyone.
Viale had tried to help, the therapist tried to help, hell even Beneficci tried, but she felt she had to deal with this herself.
Currently, she was wandering the halls of the dormitory. There were people around, but they weren't really there. She was walking to wherever she got to.
That place, as she soon found, was Amicio and Viale's door. She sighed, letting out the grievances she had with the blond, and knocked.
But the door was cracked open already.
Sana pushed the door further open to find a woman inside, sitting cross-legged on his bed, holding the turtle in front of her face.
A somewhat short and athletic figure, her raven locks reaching down past her shoulders. Her green eyes were hidden behind the dark lenses of her star-shaped sunglasses, her seemingly professional outfit hidden by her varsity jacket. A green vest with snow white sleeves, the back emblazoned with solid silver letters: J✪ ~ J✪. It was obvious that Joestar Fashion was the common choice for this woman. She looked like she was in her late twenties, maybe early thirties.
And she was having an intense conversation with Viale's pet turtle. She didn't know what kind of relationship he had with the turtle, but he cared a whole lot about it apparently, so seeing this stranger with him put Sana on edge.
"No way that's you. I refuse to believe you died and came back as a turtle."
"That's not what happened. Also, who are you? I didn't know Joseph had another daughter! And at his age, I don't know how either!"
The woman sighed, "I'm obviously adopted. And I have been since 1999; where the hell have you been?"
To Sana, the conversation was as confusing as late-night algebra. Pressed up against the door frame, she decided to intervene.
"Hello?" she asked unsure.
She heard a small "shit", and when she entered the room proper, she was gone, the turtle looking around just as shocked.
"Polnareff? Who was that? Where did she go?"
The turtle's head was swinging around as fast as a turtle would be able to, trying to find the vanishing girl. She walked further into Viale's room.
"She must have some kind of Stand like Mr. Segnaposto—"
"You must be Ms. Rossi."
Sana whipped around and saw the door close, before the woman materialised out of thin air, an obsidian and gold figure disappearing behind her.
"My name is–"
Viale noticed the phone on the ground next to the crumpled form of the Stand user he just beat.
His eyes turned to it, and remembered that the woman was on the phone when he made it to the ground, to someone she called "boss".
He picked it up and, wow, there was no password. Some bodyguard.
'Now that's just lazy writing.'
A quick look through the phone revealed a text conversation between this lady (Maria, as revealed by her Facebook page) and someone called "boss". There wasn't much — it made sense that they'd only talk in person or on a call — except for what seemed like a mistaken text on Maria's part. She'd asked the boss what kind of coffee he preferred, to which he responded simply with 'hot chocolate'.
Viale could not disagree more.
The rain was letting up by the time he'd finished digging through the phone. He realised, during the intense snooping session, he'd missed the vibrating feeling in his pocket denoting a call from Esposito.
Scratching the back of his head, he redialed.
Brrrng!
Brrrng!
The principal picked up, but didn't speak.
"Hello?" he initiated.
"Hello? Who is this?"
"It's Viale—"
"—sorry, you must have the wrong number."
Viale quirked an eyebrow, and picked up a distant voice from presumably the principal's office. The other person – a man – was yelling something fierce at Esposito. Viale didn't even bother to listen. Instead, his face hardened, as he realised the principal was in danger.
Principal's Office
He was a large man. Standing tall at one hundred and ninety six centimetres tall, he was a tall reminder to many people how insignificant they were. Now, shortly after finishing his phone call with one of his bodyguards, he felt no threat in recruiting Principal Esposito.
Unfortunately, the principal had other ideas.
"You have no idea how hard I've worked for this! You're still getting in my way?!"
"Diero, you can't expect me to go along with this– this conspiracy!"
"This is not just a conspiracy, Espie. This is us, this is our people! Can't you see that?"
"You're working with gangsters, a-and mobsters! How can you not see—"
"Don't give me that shit, Espie. I know you're working with Passione. Giovanna was right here in your school."
He paused. "Was? What do you mean 'was'?"
"…one of my guards had some prior conflict with his father. I do too, and you understand why, but your cooperation is more important than my personal feelings."
Esposito was much, much shorter than the other man. The height difference was around one and a half feet. Despite this, he held his ground.
"I know you like the kid, Espie. I'm sorry it has to go this way, but it has to be this way."
Esposito's phone rang. Unknown number. "I have to take this." He glared daggers into the towering man as he brought his phone to his ear. "Hello? Who is this? …Sorry you must have the wrong number." He hung up.
He returned his focus to the oppressive man, who was also taking his phone down from his ear, getting off a call of his own.
The two stared, each knowing what the other had just done. Another man walked up the stairs into the office, and nodded to the tall man. Esposito acknowledged him before returning his initial focus.
"You won't get away with this."
The man's wine red hair fell over his eyes as he leaned on Esposito's desk, whitened knuckles bearing his weight.
"Oh, mio amico, I already have."
To Be Continued ===
