fuck em up
okay so I went on a walk and my brain started rotating the Merstars AU SO hard so I'm just going to yeet a bunch of random bullet point thoughts that I came up with and see what comes out of it-
- the "world" the AU takes place isn't really like "real" life and is instead a super huge archipelago with hundreds of thousands of islands of varying sizes and kinds
- Mers and other various Sea Magics are pretty well known as A Thing That Exists. Is it accepted? Depends on the location and the people, and Mer Hunters are unfortunately a pretty common thing, but it's slowly started dying out. This is actually thanks to Speedwagon since after Jonathan's death he started trying to use his influence as a Very Important Wealthy Merchant to change public opinion, and it's actually been working
- Jonathan was a pretty well loved and very social member of the mers. He wasn't their leader by any means, but almost every mer in the archipelago knew about him, and his murder pissed a LOT of people off. Luckily thanks to Speedwagon, since then relations have gone from "it's on fucking sight" to "don't approach me and I won't approach you"
- Morioh is one of the more isolated islands and a bit of an exception to the above thing, being the most accepting island in the whole archipelago. Honestly, at this point like half the town has at least a little mer blood in them, but they are primarily human passing. There are a couple of full blooded or half blooded mers that hang around, but Josuke was one of the first ones born in the town in a long while
- currently debating how exactly the Morioh Trio are gonna be, since I want them to be a "full blood, half blood, human" trio for the funnsies, but other than Josuke I don't know which should be which. My current thought process is 1) Okuyasu is the full blooded and when he was younger he had a run in with Hunters which is where his scars came from since his dad more or less just fucked off and left him at their mercy at which Keicho had to save him which led to the two of the moving to Morioh, Koichi is the human and is Their Little Guy, is super familiar with how to work around mers and climbs them like a god damn jungle gyms, or 2) Koichi is the full blood and a really small mer but still Big for humans, he's a cuttlefish, got separated from his family when he was little which led to him being adopted by the Human Hiroses and Okuyasu is human and the resident Normie Guy, he's recently moved to Morioh and is getting used to how Positive human mer relations are here
- still trying to figure out how the Stand Arrows work, since Stands..... aren't really a thing now. Probably some kind of super powerful Sea Magic thing going on, maybe turn partial mers/humans into full blooded ones?
- the "Italy" of this world is a collection of islands that are under Passione's control, aka a group of pirates that have a literal fleet. Diavolo and Doppio are brothers, with Diavolo being a half-mer (maybe lion fish? I'm still deciding tho) and Doppio being a full human. Doppio is the face of the operation, but his brother is always lurking in the depths below the ship and even makes a couple appearances as the True Boss in human form. Trish is by extension 1/4 mer and they want to kill her so the truth about Diavolo won't get out
- Passione, despite all the shitty stuff they do, is actually a surprising area of Human Mer teamwork. There are a lot of hybrids and even full blooded mers to the point they're almost the majority. For the most part people don't care what you are as long as you get your job done, and honestly if what they did wasn't drug trade and trafficking, they'd be pretty cool
- the Bucci Gang don't have a whole lot of mer blood, and any they do have is pretty distant to the point they're almost human save for a couple little features (they also don't get full transformations), with the exceptions being Trish and Giorno. Trish I've explained, but Giorno is...... Really Really Weird with what he is. His birth mom was a mer, but Dio had mostly been using her to try and lure other mers so by the time Giorno was actually born she was killed. Giorno was then taken in by the Shiobana's, which obviously sucked ass, but he was able to pass as a human for a shocking amount of time because Sea Vampire Genes fucked with his aging, so he also looks a lot smaller than he should be. He's also been forced to stay in his "human" form for much longer than is strictly healthy which ALSO fucked with his size and health
- Giorno is gonna be a giant sea snake, because I think it'll be funny because That's The Traditional Sea MonsterTM. Maybe during the final fight with Diavolo he gets shot with the arrow and falls off the ship all dramatic and everyone thinks he died but SIKE he suddenly grows to full Absolutely Fucking ENORMOUS Size And Kicks Ass
- Jolyne is a siphonophore, I don't make the rules, she's Really Fucking Long
OOOOOOOOOOOOOO
I love the idea of Risotto having the power of Spiney. If I can throw my own two cents in, my first idea was to make him some kind of sea urchin, just to give him a little bit of poison, but the idea of combining that with some pufferfish is too goo to pass up. Maybe for some Extra Fucked Up Horror Bits, the spikes just kinda..... slide out of his skin. He doesn't puff up very much because of his size so just looks like hundreds of needles are sliding out of his skin (it wrecks absolute hell on his clothes though, which is why he prefers to wear loose fitting clothes if he has to (cough skirts and capes cough)). Maybe to get away with more bits of transformation, he could have some mer blood in her? Not enough to full transform, but enough to give him some of the abilities, and to explain why he's So Goddamn Tall
For Prosciutto, technically Fugo's already a reef stonefish, but the sea has no shortage of poinsonous animals to pick some, or we could even just. Make him a different kind of stone fish. And Ghiaccio is just one big fucking Y E S. This man is basically immune to any kind of cold and he's living for it. With Melone, I personally have a..... h u g e bias becuase I Fucking Love Manta Rays, and for shits and giggles I lowkey wana give him little antenae nubs Just Because. He's also the team naviagtor, but it took some time to figure out how to explain his Vibes to everyone else
With Formaggio I just had. The funniest idea, but in order for it to work he's going to need to be at least a half blooded mer: what if his mer transformation makes him smaller. With almost every other mer of his age, they would grow to at least some amount, but because of the kind of fish he turn into he ends up shrinking down instead. It's super helpful for sneaking him into places, but also a bit of a sore spot for him
And while I'm similarly lost to what to do with Illuso, you read my fucking mind with Pesci. Maybe he and Prosciutto were part of a family that specialized in hunting mers, but for some reason or another the two brothers ended up breaking off (Prosciutto thinks it's very ironic how things turned out for them). And despite his nerves and fears, Pesci is actually really good at hunting and knows a..... concerning amount of things about the subject
you know that one friend who knows Way Too Much about how to kill a person? Yeah that's Pesci but specifically with mers. For shits and giggles I like to imagine that he's surprisingly Calm whenever he talks about the best ways to hunt, corner, and secure various kinds of mers. Like, he knows the best ways to hunt one with spines vs snake like ones vs very fast ones, etc etc, which leads to exchanges like:
Pesci: *explains something or other about the specific of dismembering a mer to maximize how much you can carry back while still priotizing the best parts*
Risotto and Formaggio, the only blooded mers on the team who didn't know that there was a specific set of glands in their bodies that was worth more than they made in a year that MANY people would kill for because it makes really nice perfume: well okay then :)
it's a silly little inside joke in an au with me and mutuals about risottaro(risottto x jotaro) and I think it would be funny if my friend who's a big fan sees it on your blog for the pride asks (bonus if they're at the aquarium)
………..I completely blame @whimizera-me for this-
Actually, I do dare
I cannot remember if I had the last pic before but it's there Just In Case
(It was the toughest choice in my life who gets to wear the wedding dress)
whim
whim you can't do this to me
you can't drag me into this anymore you can't make me start pondering all the possible designs idea for wedding outfits you can't make me I won't I refuse to don't make me think of a hair hat bridal trail or a cool suit coat dress or risotto using metallic to make their wedding rings and a bunch of accessories or
………..I completely blame @whimizera-me for this-
@starry-blue-echoes you do not understand how much i had to restrain myself to NOT put Jotaro in a wedding dress to prove I have some shame left in my brain
no one shall understimate my la squadra obsession even out of this au
HBVHERSBCHVBSRVS
A M A Z I N G
should I ask Jotaro what he thinks of jotakak
H E L P (sorry for using you guys at the end part but i couldnt just say it was all me okay)
PLEASE
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
GUYS I ASKED HIM ABOUT JOTAHAN LMAO
the ranGE OF COMMENTS IS KILLING ME
@starry-blue-echoes heeeloooo there Esbee this one was one of your aus so I had to try it
I was so curious but I couldn't not do HAA
G I R L
girl. WHO WROTE THAT ONE
late night thinkenings again...
risotto is 28....jotaro is 30 in vento aureo......we have an au where they meet and get along....
rissotaro is real......
it's like 3 am here I dunno what im trying to say at this point but RISOTARO
HRJSVBHJRSBVBSDRVS OH GOD THAT BE HILARIOUS- (/pos)
Like. Jotaro, in all his divorced glory, is vibing and doing his Italy Missions Things, and then a few days in he almost gets killed by an admittedly very pretty assassin
so in all his disaster glory, when things finally calm down and they're not killing each other, he says completely dead pan without a pinch of emotions "I like your hat."
Risotto stares back.
"Thanks. I like yours too."
they now both dream of kissing under the moonlight
Risoppio?
Or Fugio
Risoppio is one of those ships where it's like "if canon were a bit different, yeah I could see it"
and Fugio is one that I won't go out of my way to look for, but it brings a smile to my face because they're very nice and the content is amazing and also I'm a sucker for that kind of Opposite Magic Power
Accidentally just found your honor amongst assassins au and now I need more AAAAAA
Like I’m just in love with the idea of jotaro and risotto vibing.
they're just a pair of silly guys :D
they're like a pair of cats. They rarely talk to each other or interact directly, they just coexist silently near each other and so that makes them Besties. Out of everyone in the Squadra, Risotto is among the ones Jotaro trusts the most, enough that he'll even talk about his personal life on occasion
maybe he even brings up Polnareff. How the man was his best friend and probably one of the most important people in the world to him, and how he was either going to find him to bring home or kill whoever was responsible for making that not possible, which Risotto can definitely respect with everything that happened with Sorbet and Gelato
Because im a small little self indulgent silly guy, I COULD NOT STOP THINKING ABOUT THE RISSOTTO FIGHT if it was with standtaro
Imagine Stantaro just doing his job and taking the members away whenever needed, him being a Stand and almost no longer human makes this a WHOLE lot easier, but what he didn't expect was when he just zooped in and pulled Rissotto away he get BULLET BLASTED BY THIS TOY AIRPLANE-
ofc Jotaro just doesn't really care and continues with his job RIDDLED WITH HOLES and bleeding (?) and Rissotto is just ...confused... he's fine, yeah, but uhm...Doc your supposed to be dea-
Another way this could go is he could get donuted and just walk it off but I don't think I can explain properly what kind of microwaved la squadra stuff happening in my brain
Y E S S S S S S S S S S
Doppio ends up using the distraction to get away and unfortunately Jotaro is too busy blocking any bullets shot at Risotto to follow. And he's just. completely filled with holes, but what worried Risotto quite a bit is how Jotaro Doesn't Seem To Be Bleeding Much And Looks Completely Unbothered. Sure they'd made jokes about how the man wasn't human but uh...... yeah this is something else
the meeting with the Bucci Gang is. Awkward and Narancia nearly shoots him full of even more holes, but the second Jotaro realizes Doppio is heading down the mountain, their unprotected Information Guy is down there too, and he does something about it they start warming up to each other
Jotaro definitely gets a lot of questions
He doesn't answer any of them (or at least, not in a way that effectively communicates what he is)
Risotto can't sense the iron in his blood.
He uses it as a second sense to see people. Jotaro is utterly invisible in that second sense. Even a corpse or an undead has that, unless specifically drained. Pretty much any animal has that. Jotaro doesn't.
And Risotto doesn't know why.
Jotaro remains to be the only person who can sneak up on Risotto and he doesn’t even do it on purpose. He just forgets that he doesn't really have footsteps and is naturally a quiet guy
To Risotto, Jotaro is complete mystery. The second he leaves his line of sight, he has no idea where the man might be or what he might be doing, something that hasn't happened since before he got his Stand
while it's not quite frightening, it's definitely a bit eerie and he's dying to figure out why
Because im a small little self indulgent silly guy, I COULD NOT STOP THINKING ABOUT THE RISSOTTO FIGHT if it was with standtaro
Imagine Stantaro just doing his job and taking the members away whenever needed, him being a Stand and almost no longer human makes this a WHOLE lot easier, but what he didn't expect was when he just zooped in and pulled Rissotto away he get BULLET BLASTED BY THIS TOY AIRPLANE-
ofc Jotaro just doesn't really care and continues with his job RIDDLED WITH HOLES and bleeding (?) and Rissotto is just ...confused... he's fine, yeah, but uhm...Doc your supposed to be dea-
Another way this could go is he could get donuted and just walk it off but I don't think I can explain properly what kind of microwaved la squadra stuff happening in my brain
Y E S S S S S S S S S S
Doppio ends up using the distraction to get away and unfortunately Jotaro is too busy blocking any bullets shot at Risotto to follow. And he's just. completely filled with holes, but what worried Risotto quite a bit is how Jotaro Doesn't Seem To Be Bleeding Much And Looks Completely Unbothered. Sure they'd made jokes about how the man wasn't human but uh...... yeah this is something else
the meeting with the Bucci Gang is. Awkward and Narancia nearly shoots him full of even more holes, but the second Jotaro realizes Doppio is heading down the mountain, their unprotected Information Guy is down there too, and he does something about it they start warming up to each other
Jotaro definitely gets a lot of questions
He doesn't answer any of them (or at least, not in a way that effectively communicates what he is)
Ok but consider! lasquadrataro (loving that name) being like a HUGEEEE nerd in the au. Everyone just see's him reading marine biology books, dropping random facts, full out refusing going to a mission because the Aquarium has a really good event and so everyone just comes with him.
Also so big brain to have risotto (RISOOTS AUGH YES) and joots just stand there neurodivergently.
I would've loved adding this by rb on the la squara interactions post but alas! I am the 💅 anon! and too shy to rb :')
-💅
y e s s s s s s s s s
Jotaro has a sort of "guest room" in the Squadra's Base House for when he visits and it has an entire wall completely covered in just Sea Creature Things. He's got all of the local Aquarium events memorized and once he gets 100% Confirmation That They Will Behave Themselves he sometimes invites them to the Joestar And Co Family Gatherings
also just. yes. Him and Risotto are like a pair of cats sometimes. They don't talk much and just Vibe in the same general vicinity but they're basically Besties at this point
breakfast for today is porridge with a little dry wine
Almost forgot about it, but those were for the @risodoppiweek2020 as well)
Plus an afterbattle bonus:
So no idea where this AU came from but
AU where Giorno gets time travelled all the way back to when he was a small young child, freshly moved to Italy but with all his memories and stuff intact but with only regular Golden Experience
so naturally he starts trying to fix things preemptively and along the way ends up accidentally meeting and befriending everyone in the Bucci Gang long before he’s supposed to and long before they even met each other. Ofc, he doesn’t spend much time lingering on it because He Has More Important Things To Do And Getting Them Involved Will Mean They’ll Get Very Very Hurt, but meanwhile they’re all Concerned about this actual child who never seems to have a parent around and is WAY too smart
Also I feel La Squadra should get involved at some point. Just because
God the comedy potential of this. A 20-year-old Risotto staring, befuddled, at this 7-year-old who is standing in front of one of Passione’s meth labs, which is now somehow in the middle of a rainforest. A very… aggressive rainforest.
He can’t exactly hurt the kid, there’s no proof he’s responsible. He ends up asking the kid if he has adult supervision to which he says yes. (Said adult supervision is a 12-year-old with white hair in a cafe half a mile away who is just as befuddled as Risotto.) (Giorno still has trouble remembering that Abbachio and Bruno aren’t Adults.)
WHERTKENGNDBFBD
Y E S
At some point Diavlo gets super pissed a Stand User keeps destroying all their drug labs with plants and animals they can’t destroy without being hurt themselves, so he ends up sending Risotto to look into it. And while he can’t find the User…… this one kid who he’d heard Gelato and Sorbet talk about is almost always there without parental supervision and it weirds him out because Why???? He knows from the two that that kid’s probably a Stand User, but he seems to heal things not make plants
just wait until a few years down the line when their overthrowing the Boss plans are in full swing and he finally reveals everything Gold Exp can do
Also just….. the mental image of Abbaccio having this mildly creepy kid occasionally following him around. He doesn’t know the kid’s name, who he is or where his parents are, and he doesn’t talk much beside a couple words and vaguely ominous sentences, but sometimes the kid will get closer and they have short talks. Maybe he even starts carrying around a small pack of candy to offer when the kid gets close enough. He still doesn’t know him very well, but he grows to be genuinely attached and looks forward to seeing Giorno out of the corner of his eye
Abbaccio looses track of how many times he notices the kid watching him. And these spottings only increase after he becomes a police officer, even when he’s patrolling well into the night and the kid should be at home asleep (he has ideas of why the kid isn’t though, and because of that Abbaccio can never bring himself to chase him away)
And for a pinch of angsty fun…… what if Giorno is there the night Abbaccio’s partner dies
or rather, the night his partner was supposed to die
What if Giorno was watching, waiting, for this exact night so he could intervene. What if he’s able to use Golden Experince to save that man’s life before he bleeds out
but also…… what if Giorno doesn’t quite get away unscathed. Maybe the man they were arresting panicked at seeing the sudden movement by the door, nerves through the roof and tension high at having shot an officer, and he fires at Giorno
it wasn’t a lethal shot. In his time as Don, Giorno had survived far worse, and it was simply a matter of filling in the pieces. And besides, it was a small price to pay for Abbaccio’s future. He’d done what he needed to do, prevented the tragedy which sent the man spiraling the first time. Abbaccio doesn’t need him anymore, so Giorno moves on while doing his absolute best to ignore just how badly leaving hurts
…….but in doing so, he accidentally triggers a different tragedy
Because Abbaccio doesn’t know what happened to Giorno afterward. All he knows is that the kid who’d been following him for years saved his partner, got shot, and disappeared without a trace
Abbaccio thinks Giorno died
Abbaccio thinks he got Giorno killed
He thinks that he’s never again going to be able to catch those blue eyes watching him from afar, never again going to get the faint prickle on his neck from being followed, never again going to sit on a park bench waiting for the boy to get closer so they can share a word or two
And he spirals almost as badly as he does in canon. Abbaccio still gets kicked off the police force for accepting the bribe and getting his partner injured, and once again he’s left drinking and drifting for Bucciarati to find
he never talks about Giorno. It hurts far too much. But if he stops by the same park to sit on a specific bench and keeps a small bag of Giorno’s favorite candy in his pocket, we’ll, that’s nobody’s business
and slowly, he begins to heal. Not in the sense things get better, but in how things finally stop getting worse. He’s able to stop himself from fracturing even more, is able to pull himself together into some semblance of a person so he can go about his day to day life and fulfill his duties under Bucciarati
But then of course, everything comes crashing down when Abbaccio spots a 15 year old boy with familiar blue eyes
But this time, thankfully, Abbacchio’s partner is there. They drift apart, and Leone still winds up in the mafia, but somehow his partner has the almost-supernatural ability to check in on Leone’s worst days and get him back to his feet. They gradually fall into a Detriot: Become Human / Disco Elysium-style dynamic; the quintessential Good Cop x Angst Cop, except one of them isn’t a cop anymore and the other may or may not be hiding a secret ability that manifested a few days after his buddy Leone got a boy killed.
Abbacchio’s partner has a passing familiarity with Bucciarati, but being on opposite sides of the law means they regard each other with vague hostility the one or two times they happen to meet.
The differing source of trauma and additional support would also grant Moody Blues a subtly different powerset. But it’s also affected temporally by the fact that this is an alternate timeline that Giorno has already changed tremendously.
Feel free to discard whatever you want from this, but the following is tailored for maximum crunch with this AU:
- This new Moody Blues, apart from rewinding and replaying a person’s past over and over (like Leone does with his memories all the time), could also have a “channel switch” where Abbacchio can check up on what someone is doing at present in the original timeline (as Leone constantly despairs over what could have been but has more mental fortitude this time to handle the extra ability). For example, in the old timeline Mista could be fighting Rolling Stone, and if Abbacchio was at the same building at that exact time in this new “alternate present,” he’d be able to use Moody Blues to “livestream” the alternate Mista defending Bucciarati even when his Mista is standing next to him. The “channel switch” would disable the rewind and replay functions when active. In Abbacchio’s opinion this ability is tiresome and only circumstantially useful.
- Apart from decreased stats, the major trade-off would be that the person being replayed by Moody Blues gets the minor, unshakable feeling that they’re being watched. Say, if Abbacchio replayed someone from fifteen years ago, then fifteen years in the past they would get that nagging feeling, since Abbacchio is looking at them from the future. The very act of replaying someone with Moody Blues creates a stable time loop where the future affects the past, which informs the future, etc. On the other hand, Abbacchio’s teammates can recognize this weakness and know that this sudden feeling right now means there is something worth rewinding to.
Ooooooooo that’s a fun idea
The possibility of Abbaccio’s partner having a Stand could be so much fun to mess around with. What if he was a Natural Born User, and maybe it’s a Phenomena type Stand(doesn’t have an actual manifestation) so he never full realized what it was
I like the idea of it being some kind of empathic ability. Given what we know about the guy that lines up pretty well, and maybe to give it more Stand Vibes in being weird, he see the emotions and kinda…… not quite manipulate them, but influence them. Give them a bit of a nudge, if you will
Maybe at first he wanted to be angry with Leone. That he’d taken the bribe, that he nearly got shot, that a young boy got caught in the crossfire
But……. It’s so hard to be angry when he feels the grief and self loathing hanging around him like a cloud that only gets thicker and bigger the more time goes on. When he sees how Leone wastes away, drowning in the guilt with no reprove in sight
He’s still angry about what happened, but Leone is beating himself up more than enough for the two of them. So he does what he can to help. He makes sure to check in on him when he can, makes sure he’s actually eating and taking care of himself,
As for Bucciarati…… he doesn’t like the man. He’s mafia, and despite the positive whispers he’s heard, he can shake the slight discomfort and dissatisfaction whenever he’s there. But it’s been years since he last saw Leone like this, and he can’t deny the way the dark cloud grows a bit lighter the more Leone spends time with him. He may not like it, but he’s willing to be civil, for Leone’s sake
I love the addition of peering into the first timeline, that could open up so much chaos. Abbaccio probably wouldn’t even fully understand what the ability is at first, just that Moody seems to be showing him something in the past that didn’t seem to happen
And what if one time he goes back to the building where he thinks Giorno died. Just once he goes to see what this “alternative” past ability would show him (he could never bring himself to use Moody on it before, he didn’t want to see his failure recreated and witness this innocent boy die a second time)
And when he does, he’s not sure if it’s better or worse than what happened this time
he never uses Moody anywhere near that building after that
(also, for another fun reason about the feeling of being watched part: what if that feeling of watching comes from Abbaccio’s memories of a Giorno watching him)
After everything is done and over with and Diavolo is killed, Abbachio goes to visit his old partner because he needs a drink away from the everything. Because he is still trying to process what just happened in the past week.
Ooh, that reminds me, what will the interactions between Bucciarati’s gang and La Squadra going to be? Do they still come to blows? If not, will there be other stand users interfering with either group?
WELL ✨
By the time “canon” has rolled around, they’ve already gotten all the pieces in place. They’ve managed to track down Polnareff and the arrow, both of which are currently stashed away in their basement waiting for everything to be over. Giorno even went the extra mile and transformed the arrow into a small but very sturdy houseplant. Pol’s also been filled in on the plan and is sort of their Guy In The Chair(and also has the Speedwagon Foundation and Jotaro on speed dial in case shit goes sideways)
However, Giorno’s still going to end up joining to the Bucci Gang for two main reasons. 1) they’d rather have Bucciarati as capo then Polpo because that’ll make things easier for them in the long run, and 2) they haven’t made contact with Trish since they weren’t sure how to reliably interact with her in a way that wouldn’t get Diavlo’s attention on her early, which would just make things infinity more difficult
So they split up, each preparing for their part of the plan to lure Diavlo out and doing their damnedest to avoid anyone dying this time. They do still play the role of “traitors against Passione trying to get the Boss’s daughter,” however this time their attacks are less to cause damage and more to steer the gang where they need to go and keep things at least semi predictable. It’s less long fights, more hit and run tactics with some slight changes as to who fights who to make things easier and safer (Pesci ends up being really useful here and ends up hanging back so if things go poorly he can use Beach Boy to yank them out of danger)
And for the most part? Things on La Squadra’s end go almost perfectly. There’s a couple bumps and a couple injuries, but they’re alive so they consider it a win :D
Giorno though…… with him it’s a bit messier
At first it goes fine. He manages to not have to fight Bucciarati, takes the test, kills Polpo, and it’s all good and according to plan
But then things start to get a bit….. weird when he first meets the gang.
Mista, Narancia and Fugo, while they did know Giorno, don’t fully recognize him at first because of his hair. And besides, even if they did most of their interactions had been in passing, usually him offering them a bit of help and such. They were kind of friends and did like him, but they weren’t that close (which was purposeful on Gio’s part)
But Abbaccio? He’s had those eyes haunting his every waking and resting moment for the last couple years so he recognizes him IMMEDIATELY
However, he doesn’t say anything about it. The way he’s not fully able to hide things is enough to tip off the others that there’s something going on, but he refuses to elaborate (for now at least)
And while Abbaccio is arguably more suspicious of Giorno than in canon, he’s not as cold. If anything, by Abbaccio Standards he’s almost being nice, if a bit skittish. And naturally this confuses the hell out of everyone, Giorno especially, because Abbaccio doesn’t just act like this, especially not to someone he just met. Maybe somewhere down the line Bucciarati ends up pulling him off to the side to ask what’s up
there’s also going to be the fun terror when time starts being weird and Giorno just goes barreling in, GER ready to k i l l
But yeah when this is all over and Diavlo’s dead, Abbaccio’s going to need a good chunk of time to process all this because that entire week was both the best and worst thing to have ever happened to him and he really needs to just. Process
(also kinda off topic but merging this with Corpse of Gold would create SO many more issues for Abba to deal with drfhdjfvd-)
I just thought of ways that Giorno could try to intervene in the tragedies of the other 3 members of Buccis gang (minus Bruno himself for obvious reasons) and yeah all of them would probably make him less memorable than for Abba, but still impactful.
- Mista’s the only one other than Abbachio who directly sees Giorno intervening, and even then it isn’t as direct an intervention at first. Giorno is just a kid testing out this new camcorder he
stolegot for his birthday who happened to catch the shootout on camera, providing some definitive evidence that would either help clear Mista’s name or make it clear to him that the reason he was arrested wasn’t due to bad luck, it was due to a corrupt court condemning him for angering the mafia, depending on how you read that situation. If the former, he you could bring in that one idea that Mista had a dormant stand that was stunted by either his experience or the stand arrow, possibly giving him a new stand entirely, and being pressured into Passione because of his stand. If the latter, Mista now has a definitive grudge against the mafia and could already be planning on betraying them. He just didn’t expect that he wouldn’t be alone. - Narancia’s situation is… tricky. Honestly, I’m not sure if Gold Experience can heal an infection. It can deal with the symptoms, but the root cause is in itself a lifeform, so at best Giorno can bolster the immune system and at worst he can only prolong the inevitable, and since Narancia’s mother’s death is such a huge part of his story her surviving could change things immensely. If she does still die, and Narancia does still fall in with the street kids, I could see Giorno keeping the blonde kid from committing the crime that Narancia was framed for… inadvertantly making the street kids think Narancia was a snitch and abandoning him. Oops.
- Fugo… I’ll be honest I can’t think of any solution that would help Fugo while still giving him reason to join Passione. I could however, see Girono fail to lure the professor away so he can deal with him himself, with this failure steeling Giorno’s resolve to help his other friends.
YESSSSSSSS
(going in chronological order because my brain managed to tie some of them together)
For Fugo, I’ll admit, the best I could come up with was still pretty suspicious, but who knows maybe we could use that suspicion to help him connect a couple dots later down the line
with this one…… what if Giorno straight up sneaks into the college. It would’ve been practically impossible to get close to Fugo in the traditional social sense, and Giorno sure as fucking hell wasn’t letting this repeat, so at age 12, still tiny from his years of malnutrition, he sneaks into the college to try and change things
……..to say they go poorly is an understatement
the plan had been simple. Hide in the room behind some bookshelves, record the professor being Very No No with Fugo, then use Gold to intervene before anything actually happens and make it so Fugo won’t get blamed and the professor gets put behind bars (and maybe he could even use the footage to get his new guardians to make sure the man is dealt with)
only…….. well, seeing these things on paper is one thing
seeing it in person? seeing it done to someone you care about?
it’s something entirely different
And Giorno……. well…… he snaps
In an instant the plan he’d spent years crafting was no more, nothing but hot, protective rage left in its wake. And Fugo…… he honestly couldn’t explain what happened that day. He remembers a boy smaller and younger than he was jumping out from behind the bookshelves, remembers his professor bleeding and being thrown across the room like a ragdoll, remembers a sudden cascade of every kind of horrid, disgusting, terrifying creature he could think of covering the man, all before being dragged out of the room with boy running ahead and being taken far, far away
but no matter how hard he tries to remember, he could never recall seeing the boy touch him or his professor
and he doesn’t have time to ask questions either, as the second the boy looks back at him, the amount of terror that flits across his eyes is enough to make Fugo flinch. The boy stutters, hands shaking as if he’d only just realized what he’d done, before he blurts out “I shouldn’t have done that” and then he’s gone
Fugo still gets arrested and disowned afterward. Apparently the police found the strange kid’s recording device which just served as more evidence against him. The fact the professor was now in a coma of unknown cause didn’t help matters either
But he’s too busy thinking to be properly angry. Why did the kid have a camera? Why was he in that room? How did he do what he did? What did he mean by “I shouldn’t have done that”? Did he mean he shouldn’t have intervened, or that he shouldn’t have hurt the professor, or that he shouldn’t have done whatever he’d done, or that he shouldn’t have run, or-
Hundreds of theories swirl in Fugo’s head and he unfortunately isn’t able to find many answers
(what he doesn’t know is that what Giorno regrets was failing to help Fugo. That because of his emotions, because of his reaction, because of his impulsiveness, things have barely changed from the first time and that in his eyes that was seen as a failure)
For Narancia, I unfortunately don’t think Giorno would be able to save his mom, but Giorno would definitely try helping in other ways. He might even slightly befriend Narancia, but keep him at a distance in order to prevent getting too close. And he does do what he can to try and alleviate Narancia’s symptoms (not that the other boy knows it), but he needs a doctor which Giorno unfortunately can’t provide. Not without risking things worse than they already are
Although it’s faint because of the sickness and his mental spiraling, Narancia vaguely remembers someone. Someone who spoke in soft tones and brought him food, how when he was with him his eye always hurt less and he felt warm, who promised that he would get better and the future wasn’t hopeless
He never got their face, name, can’t even remember what their voice sounded like…… just that they were there
and……. what if one day was a bad day. The day Fugo was supposed to find Narancia, and for the first time in over a year Fugo and Giorno meet again. Fugo recognizes him almost instantly, but his infinite questions die on his tongue seeing the sick boy he’s holding
he doesn’t meet his eyes. If any, it seems like he’s doing everything in power to avoid meeting his. He’s bigger than when he had helped Fugo, but not by much and it’s clear he’s struggling to support the sick kid’s weight
“help him.” he whispers “please”
Narancia is……. a little confused and mostly going through the motions when Fugo takes him. He mourns the loss of his Warm Friend, but is too sick to respond much. He’s even more confused when he wakes up in the hospital
Narancia sometimes wonders is his friend was even real or just something his sick, lonely brain conjured up to make things a bit easier
(what he doesn’t know is that Giorno left him flowers every day he was in the hospital and watched from afar to make sure he healed correctly)
and then Mista. How boy Mista. While his isn’t very connected to the other two’s, I had no less fun coming up with it
I’m loving the idea with Mista planning to betray Passione. Just. imagine Mista standing there in court, watching this brave 14 year old kid hold his ground and stand up for him. They never talked nor had any time to interact outside of the court proceedings, hell Mista never even had a chance to get the kid’s name, but he cares for and respects that kid who tried to help him more than anything
But of course, this respect and admiration is only dwarfed by Mista’s fear, because yeah this seemingly random kid just went against the mafia for him. There’s no way he’s going to get away from this unscathed and the thought of this innocent kid who just wanted to help being put in danger makes Mista’s blood boil
And what if…… what if when he spends that one night in jail before Bucciarati picks him up, Giorno visits him. Using Gold he manages to grow something to hold him up to the window and he manages to peak in and with Mista a few words
And Giorno…… while he didn’t realize it, seeing this kid who already risked everything to help him apologize for not being enough, trying and give him words of encouragement, telling him that everything would be okay……. it helps give Mista back his resolve. Before he was terrified and calmly accepted prison, and now….. well, he was still terrified, but now he had something to look forward to. He has something to hold onto, a purpose to cling to, someone to remember and hope to meet again when he gets out.
That night, Mista decides the first thing he’s going to do when he gets out of prison is buy that kid an ice cream
……..but then he doesn’t go to prison. Instead, a well dressed man who’s clearly mafia ends up making him an offer. Join his team and Mista could be a free man, and he almost doesn’t accept it. After all, the mafia’s the whole reason he’s stuck in here to begin with……. but once again, Mista thinks back to the kid. Remembers the danger he could be in, realizes that with an in he could possibly do something about it, could protect the kid the same way the kid tried to protect him
so he does. He takes Bucciarati’s offer and becomes their gunman…… but no matter how hard he looks, Mista never manages to track him down
In between his revenge plots, Mista has spent many nights worrying about Giorno’s fate
(what he doesn’t know is that Giorno has a VERY protective family of assassins watching his back, all of whom are much higher up on the pecking order than a couple foot soldiers with a grudge)
And for all three of them, as the months and years pass, already vague details about Giorno grow fuzzy, loosing the clarity they once had. They never forget, but it becomes harder to remember the strange boy who did what he could to save them
so when a confident blonde boy with careful word walks in with Bucciarati on that faithful day, seemingly the boy’s opposite in nearly every way….. well, it’s only natural they didn’t recognize him at first
Ooh, I had a thought, what if Fugo saw Giorno accompanied by one of La Squadra (let’s say Illuso) and he assumes that Illuso is a student and Giorno is a younger relative, and that’s why he sees Giorno wandering around the campus?
Heck, we could extend these cameos to the others as well, have them see Giorno with the La Squadra members they fought in the other timeline. Narancia sees Giorno being led around by a man in an orange shirt and a man who has to be wearing contacts that make his scaleras black, and Mista sees that Giorno was escorted to court by a man in a vey formal, black suit and a man with curly, cyan hair.
Also, I love the idea of their stands possibly being slightly different. Aerosmith would probably be mostly the same, but the other two? Sex Pistols could have a more defensive focus, since Mista both saw someone come to his defense and wants to keep them safe in turn (and also he might not be as superstitious about the number 4 so there’s that). And Purple Haze… oh boy. Purple Haze’s virus could cause less direct harm since Fugo isn’t as concerned with his rage, but as a tradeoff could cause hallucinatory effects or dull their reaction speed, to reference that one pivotal, confusing movement where Fugo couldn’t process what was happening fast enough.
Y E S S S S S S S S S
ooooooo I love the idea of Giorno secretly getting the Squadra to help him, even when they don't realize it
maybe Giorno asks Illuso if he could take him to the college because "he heard they had a really good encyclopedia on rare bugs which wasn't at the public library and he kinda wanted to check it out but didn't want to waste money and buy it" and of course Illuso agrees, Giorno never asks them for anything, he can't fuck this up besides the others would kill him is he did-
And getting into the college was easy enough. All it took was a couple well placed mirrors and they were in, and Illuso looks about college age. Besides, you just need to look confident and like you belong there and most people won't look twice. There was a small hiccup when Giorno disappeared, but no biggie. The kid probably went off to find his book or something, the kid was determined to be independent after all. Finding him would be easy
.........naturally he gets a pinch more worried when the police show up dragging away a kid barely older than Giorno coming from the direction Giorno said the library had been
And what if when Illuso does find Giorno at least an hour later sitting alone in a small tucked away area he immediately starts with the questions. Are you okay, did you see the arrest, did anything happen, why did you run off and Giorno just
Cries.
Now, he internally justifies this as getting Illuso to stop asking questions. After all, questioning a crying child is very uncomfortable and is the most surefire way of getting Illuso to not press (definitely not because he's been stewing in his own failure and emotional unease and general disgust of what happened nope definitely not)
And it works, but also Illuso is now REALLY freaking the fuck out because one of the first things they learned about Giorno was that He Doesn't Cry Or Seek Comfort Unless Shit's Absolutely Fucked and decides "okay, I can come back for the book later I'm taking him home" and he does
(Maybe Giorno does eventually explain what happened, but very vaguely and like what he saw was sheer coincidence. That professor guy is absolutely going to die though, so that's nice at least :D)
With Riz and Formaggio, what if that had been just. General walking around town things. Groceries, taking Giorno to school, going to the park, that kind of thing, all of which Giorno uses to keep an eye on things and sometimes sneak off to check in on Narancia
The court thing....... that's gonna be fun. The Squadra are definitely not happy Giorno got involved in this, but they also know that if they try to stop him he'll just go it alone which would be even worse. Right now the best thing they can do to make sure Giorno stays protected and safe is help him. They all probably wanted to go but knew that...... probably wouldn't go very well, and sending Risotto would probably bring ALL sorts of attention given the fact he's the Squadra leader. But at the very least while Prosciutto and Ghiaccio are with Giorno at the court proceedings, the rest of the Squadra are making sure that regardless of the verdict (which they're honestly pretty sure isn't going to be in the guy's favor but weren't sure how to break that to the kid) Giorno wouldn't be hit with any backlash
They also prepare some things they know make Giorno happy like his favorite movie and snacks and plushies so he'll have some comfort when this inevitably doesn't work out
Mista is also probably the most likely to recognize any of the Squadra because he ends up fighting both Prosciutto and Ghiaccio AND his meeting with the two of them had been the most recent. Maybe this could lead to Mista starting to see some of the dots, but without knowing Giorno was the kid he can't quite connect them
and YESSSSSS with the slightly shifting Stands. For the Pistols, what if they're a tad flipped from canon in how instead of it being easier to do offense, it's easier for them to do defense. They still can, it just takes a lot more to pull off and takes practice. Haze being hallucinatory is such a fun idea to play around with, but what if it's still also pretty deadly. It's not an instant KO, and it's still as fragile as in canon, but it can still do some MAJOR damage if given enough time. Also I think Purple Haze should still be difficult to control, this time because of how Fugo had none when everything was going down with Gio
and for Narancia, a possible idea could maybe be that instead of seeing carbon dioxide, he could track heat. He still has the ability to adjust the sensitivity, but this could tie into how with Giorno for once he wasn't cold and was just pleasantly warm
alternatively
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I CA N Y B R E A T H GNDRJDJDJSKDKSN
I JUST WOKE UP WHIM AND THIS IS WHAT YOU CURSE ME WITH /lh