Jojo's Bizarre Adventure: Shadowed Suspicion Chapter 81

[madimpossibledreamer]

Main Points:
Jojo's Bizarre Adventure/Buffy the Vampire Slayer AU
Chapter Summary: The two new members of the team sit down to eat and strategize with Jojo, Fitz, and Darling.
Word Count: 1364
Rating: Gen
Note: HERE THERE PROBABLY BE BUFFY/JJBA SPOILERS.

        “So, your Stand is…” Xander asks, mouth full, because actually fitting some of Fitz’s expectations is probably good for his morale, right?
        Or, given the expression he’s making, maybe not.
        “Panzermensch.  I have access to a number of weapons, and my Stand is a robot or cyborg,” Stroheim answers before taking another forkful of whatever pastry she seems to have ordered.
        Johan considers mentioning that that sounds a little like the other Stroheim, but as proud as she is of her other grandfather, he’s also a little bit of a touchy subject, and he does, occasionally, have the ability not to just say every dumb thing on his mind and a sense of self-preservation.  “Do you know anything about your grandfather Kaulitz’s Stand?  Is it the gargoyle thing?”
        Hopefully the look of disgust isn’t a remark on the food, but he’s enjoying whatever he ended up ordering.  He wasn’t paying attention, mostly, because Fitz was still upset and Darling’s still being really quiet and he hopes it’s just shyness.
        “I don’t believe so.  A few dozen civilians have been slaughtered.  We only briefly saw the dragon statue.  It was large enough it wasn’t from one of the buildings.  I was trying to scout around it, to see if the User was following on the ground, but there was no sign of one, and I lost track of the dragon.”  She sighs.  “I have a hard time believing Opa has the will to kill others.”
        Johan grimaces, before a thought occurs to him.  “Well, that’s certainly true.  A Stand User has the will to fight, or they couldn’t control their Stand, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they actually want to kill anyone, right, Darling?”
        She starts, distracted from listlessly picking at her food.  “What?”  That look of hope, of gratefulness in her eyes, like she’s shocked anyone would include her in the conversation…
        Just treat her like she’s Dawn.  I mean, not quite, ‘cause they have different issues and history, but I should’ve remembered to include her before now.
        “Oh!  Oh yeah.”  She’s smiling, wide and happy, now.  “I’m a thief.  I don’t want to actually hurt anyone.  Your grandfather’s probably like me.”
        Actually, it’s slightly less likely, given the will to fight that’s required to survive being hit with a Stand Arrow, and that an extremely peaceful person like Holly would get Stand Sickness instead.  As far as he knows, either Darling was a lot more violent when she was younger, or she was born with the Stand.  Which…wait, means that one of her birth parents probably had a Stand.  Still, given the statistics of Stand User death, means that a Stand User orphan isn’t the most unbelievable thing he’s heard, and even if it was, he’s seen a lot of unbelievable, very clearly true things.  But he doesn’t want to bother her with that, either, so he doesn’t say that, either.
        “You probably shouldn’t be declaring your criminal status so loudly to the restaurant,” Robin chuckles.  “Do you want one of these octopus appetizer things?”
        “Sure, I want to try!” she agrees shyly, and leans forward, fork in hand, which makes Xander realize…
        “Oh, hey, you were watching us way back when Fitz was telling his story.”  He senses the movement and only ducks out of the way enough to lessen the pain from the Brit cuffing him.  “Ow, what.”
        “It really took you that long to notice, Jojo?”  Speedwagon sounds annoyed, but with a glance over, Johan sees the fond expression in his eyes.
        Robin laughs again, and even Darling giggles, and if nothing else, that’s good, that Brown might be able to get her to relax a little, because the Captain clearly isn’t going to do that.
        “Whatever, Mr. Observant showoff.”  He steals Fitz’s hat and promises to himself that he’ll play keep-away for as long as he can during this strategy meeting.  It’ll be good training for multitasking.  “So, we’ll have to check how efficient we are at fighting gargoyles.  I’d guess that they’re still not actually alive, so our mysterious Sendo ways probably won’t do much, but it’ll be good to know that.  Given the lack of statues and gargoyles I saw outside when we were walking here, the unknown Stand User probably has an army of them, so any way we can cut down on their numbers would be nice on the scale of knowing.”  He switches the hat to his other hand and twirls it on one finger.  The blond stops reaching for it, looking frustrated.  “I might, possibly, be able to control a few, too, with Mirroring Your Stand, but I kinda have the idea that I have to have some clue of the User’s character before I can get in their heads like that.  Pretender’s got the usual Tora rush punch, so I can, maybe, dust them normally, assuming the enemy Stand doesn’t give them extra durability.”  He carefully transfers the hat to his elbow, trying to decide whether keeping it on the left side of his body is kind of cheating, since Fitz doesn’t have much of a chance to try to retrieve it unless he reaches further across the table than a private, personal space kind of person like the Englishman is willing to go.  He suspects Captain Stroheim is letting him just ramble on to test his strategy-making skills.  “I don’t know how involved you want to be, Darling.  If you want to step out entirely, I wouldn’t hold that against you.  We’d probably have you doing something sneaky, but I’m not sure what.”
        Darling and Robin exchange glances.  “We’ll figure out some way to help,” they decide in unison, and Xander nods at them, trying to stay solemn despite the smile that wants to break out.
        “Well, it might not be the glamourous bit, but I spent years doing civilian rescue, and don’t discount it.  Anything to minimize casualties is good.”  A thought occurs to Jojo, and this time he doesn’t bother to hide the grin.  “Actually, in addition to being our healer—which he can’t heal anybody back from the dead, so don’t get yourself dead—maybe Fitz could do something with LJ’s water stuff and Robin’s arrows?”
        “I see they don’t have thesauruses in America,” Fitz responds with an eyebrow raise, but he’s smiling, which means he sees exactly what Johan’s getting at and just doesn’t want to acknowledge that out loud.
        Or this is still payback for earlier.  Given Giles and Ethan, maybe Englishmen just don’t let go of grudges easily, and deal with them in a different way than everyone else.  It’s not like he knows; he hasn’t been here all that long, and he suspects Jonathan’s and Joseph’s memories aren’t the most reliable of survey groups.  Also, that maybe Dio isn’t the most representative member of the United Kingdom, either.
        “They do.  We just don’t read them unless we’re stuffy old librarians.  Who I think you should meet, besides putting him to sleep.  I think you’d get along.  I’m still a little surprised you’re not wearing tweed.” 
        What feels like a spray of water hits his arm and knocks the hat straight onto Fitz’s head.  He now looks insufferably smug.  “What can I say, I’m not a tweed sort of bloke,” he responds.  If he’s not going to talk about how he just used Lotus Juice to get his hat back in a move that was…actually not cheating, given that your Stand is an extension of yourself, then Jojo isn’t either.  “That leaves you and the Captain as our front line offensive.”
        They all nod, and it becomes a more normal meal and conversation, with mostly Fitz and Robin speaking the most and occasional interjections from Darling.  It’s kind of fun listening to them bond, and Xander’s hungry.  He suspects Stroheim rarely talks, which makes the choice of Brown as her partner make some kind of sense—someone who can fill the silences like Willow but with the calm of Oz would be invaluable for a person like that.  He’s still not sure how they met or why an American is working with a German army officer, but they’ll have time for more stories later.