Jojo's Bizarre Adventure: Shadowed Suspicion Chapter 267

[madimpossibledreamer]

Araki you didn’t need to resort to snails.  Weather is scary enough on its own.  just saying.
~Dreamer~

Main Points:
Jojo's Bizarre Adventure/Buffy the Vampire Slayer AU
Chapter Summary: Darling, Robin, and Captain Beefheart learn why this is called 'the House of Rattling'....
Word Count: 1204
Rating: Teen
Note: HERE THERE PROBABLY BE BUFFY/JJBA SPOILERS

        Darling hadn’t considered before that nature could be as scary as people.  Of course, she’d known that she couldn’t just stay outside, that she needed to get somewhere safe to sleep.  She’d spent a lot of time at public places like libraries, and breaking into abandoned buildings, but she’d thought the true danger in a place like this would be the Lords of Death.
        But they still haven’t spotted any sign of shelter, so they get under the trees in an area that’s at least higher on the hill.  The Captain makes sure that they’re out of the way before she uses Panzermensch to cut down one of the trees and begin shaping it into the best makeshift shelter they can manage.  It had been a question why she hadn’t used the lasers against various enemies if she’d had them this whole time, but that’s soon answered.  Frequent breaks are needed for the laser to cool back down, so it’s not very practical.  They stay close, but not too close, so they don’t get in the way of the laser.  Still, it makes sense to not get too far away just in case they have to make a dive for cover.  Darling isn’t sure what they need it for, except maybe clutching on so they’re not blown or washed away, but she trusts the other two to know what they’re doing.
        She’d always found rain comforting.  Perhaps she’d had a lot of it living in London, and she knew others who found it depressing since it blocked out the sun or other things.  But something about it hitting the roof always made her feel better.  It helped that she heard it best when she was somewhere else, one of the abandoned buildings where she slept closer to the roof.
        She’d never experienced such ominous rain.  Not much was different about it than usual, other than, perhaps, the fact that it was falling a little harder and stung a little more on the skin due to how cold it was.  But another downburst (not as strong as the first, in that it didn’t immediately knock her down but instead made her stumble) had already put her on edge, so the rain following it only makes her feel more dread, particularly with the sky so eerily dark and green.  It’s not the rain itself, but more the rain as an omen of things to come that has her on edge.  She was ready for an attack, for the Lords to try to kill or at least torture them, but somehow this is worse, because she can’t fight it.  She can barely help, because she has never even been camping.  She feels useless, again, and even if they’d be nice and say she wasn’t, it doesn’t feel that way.
        And then Whisper, staring anxiously at the sky, just like she is, sees movement.  The sound she’s hearing through the pouring rain might just be wind, but it feels like something else, and while she’s made progress hollowing out a bit of the tree so they can hide underneath it’s still not much.
        “What is that?” she yells.  Mr. Brown doesn’t look like he hears her, but between the wind and the rain it’s loud enough it’s drowning out her words.
        She doesn’t miss the way Mr. Brown yanks her close, shielding her head with his body, though.  Or the image of the Captain putting her hands over her head, only for something to smack her arm, and suddenly something looks funny in a way that says it broke.  Whisper stretches out his wings protectively over her head, even though as Stands go he’s not particularly strong when it comes to such things, and she feels more than sees or hears the crunch that says she got hit, too.  What falls at their feet looks like a chunk of ice, which suddenly makes everything make more sense through the excruciating pain.  It’s a hailstorm.  She’s seen a couple in her life, but none this dangerous.  Usually it just involves getting soaked, and she doesn’t worry about that specifically.  With the sudden decrease in visibility, she can’t even see von Stroheim anymore, and there is no way she can go rescue her friend, no matter how much she wants to do so.
        And then, suddenly, she can see Mr. Brown again.  It feels like he’s holding an umbrella above their heads, except an umbrella wouldn’t stand up to hail.  She glances up, and there’s a wall of ice above their heads.  Hamon crackles over the surface, coming from her friend’s hands as he concentrates on keeping a solid surface between them and the falling hail.
        He motions with his head toward where she vaguely remembers the tree, since his hands are a little occupied.  She understands what he’s trying to say, which is good because there’s no way they could hear each other above the roaring of the hail anyway.  Together, they crawl the few steps toward the tree, the ice shield visibly cracking above them, as Darling tries desperately not to think of the same thing happening to the Captain’s head.  She has Panzermensch, she thinks desperately, as her brain tries to convince her of the worst.  Darling understands why he’s choosing to save them first, even if she hates it.  It’s the same practical if painful choice they’d made before, abandoning Mr. Speedwagon, only it was even more justified, because unlike last time he was actually making a choice to save two people over one, rather than just a question of getting slowed down.  It hurts a lot to put any weight on her arm, so she bites her lip until it bleeds.  It doesn’t actually help all that much, but it gives her something else to concentrate on, distracting her from the pain of her arm.
        And then, when she can make it to the slight hollow in the tree and huddle beneath the shelter, Mr. Brown reverses direction immediately, going right back out to get the Captain, which is good, because something can’t happen to her.  They all have to be fine.  She’s actually glad he doesn’t heal her, either, because he needs his energy to make sure the Captain’s okay, and she probably needs healing more than Darling.
        And then it’s pretty much all gone.  The sound.  The loss of visibility.  The sudden hush actually scares her more than the thunder or rain or hail, because that’s definitely not natural, and that can only mean one thing.
        She’s not too surprised, just horrified, when she sees the Lord of Death appear out of nowhere, right in front of her friends.  She remembers the fangs framing the face, and should have put it together when she’d seen the glimpse of something that looked like snake scales.  This would be Tohil, the one who controlled the weather and was uninterested in bragging or showing off, unlike most of the others, and in this case, he’s probably doing the same thing, only stepping in because his usual efforts seem to have been ineffective.
        “Die.”  She watches in silent horror as Mr. Brown disappears in the light of another strike, and von Stroheim screams in anger and fear.