Jojo's Bizarre Adventure: Shadowed Suspicion Chapter 277

[madimpossibledreamer]

As with Angel’s fight, part of the dialogue was written by Beta-senpai, and he also helped me brainstorm how the fight would go.  Thanks!
~Dreamer~

Main Points:
Jojo's Bizarre Adventure/Buffy the Vampire Slayer AU
Chapter Summary: Will Darling's plan work against the Lord of Death?
Word Count: 1152
Rating: Teen
Note: HERE THERE PROBABLY BE BUFFY/JJBA SPOILERS

 

        Darling’s plan isn’t going to go as easily as all that, though.  She can’t exactly stay exactly in place unless she wants to be cut to death, which she definitely does not want to do.  The Lord of Death isn’t exactly a non-moving target, and even for a master archer the haphazard setup might just not work out.  They have to try, though.
        Whisper is slightly reluctant to leave her on her own, but they’ve both grown as people and warriors, and they have to trust each other, so he unwraps from around her shoulders and practically flings himself across the room, dodging a few swinging blades along the way and having a few feathers clipped as he fails to dodge one that just came out of nowhere, to a separate ‘corner’ than herself, Mr. Brown, the Captain, or Panzermensch, just to really extend the number of different places targets exist and increase the amount of time it takes to glance somewhere else.  Buluc Chabtan turns to look, raising his spear slightly before shaking his head, jewelry clinking as he does so, and looking back to Darling, taking a few more steps in her direction, ducking out of the way of a blade aiming at chopping his head off and sidestepping another in the floor like he just…dances in this room sometimes.  Maybe he does, especially if he’s stuck down here like some of the others.  Lords of Death probably get bored sometimes, and if they’re not actually allowed to fight or maim each other, they might have to make their own fun.
        Panzermensch is encountering slightly more success than his User, making it clear that this particular Mayan god, at least, is having a little more trouble seeing most Stands.  Superficial wounds aren’t good enough, though, and he’s been blocking anything that would be more serious.  At least the slight pain seems to be distracting him slightly, too, if only in the way walking into something and feeling pain but not so badly you’re limping afterward has you curse a little and then move on.  Every little bit of distraction helps, though.  She’s hardly going to complain about that.  The blades—the smaller ones, at least—just seem to be sliding off the armor without cutting, which Darling has to guess the Captain really appreciates.
        “Is there honor in fighting someone who is not a warrior?” Von Stroheim ponders pointedly out loud, aiming deliberately at the charcoal smudge on his cheek, but delaying the shot for a moment as she has to dodge a blade that tries to cut her in half.  “It’s not as if she’s a sacrifice to your glory by one of your priests.” 
        At this point, he doesn’t even bother moving out of the way, simply throwing one of his arm bracelets in the way as he considers the question with the greatest amount of concentration she’s seen yet—which isn’t good and might mean it’s starting to wear off.  Usually, that’s not how Whisper works, but then, they really don’t tend to try to use his power on non-humans.
        He snorts, spitting on the floor and leaning on the spear, burying the point in the floor like it’s nothing.  A flash indicates that a blade tried to come out of the floor and had actually bounced off, possibly breaking the mechanism. 
        The Lord of Death might not want to answer questions in the place of fighting, it seems, but they’ve managed to intrigue him enough—or maybe he’s just confident enough—that he’s humoring them.  “You really should bother Akan with that shit.  He loves playing mind games.  In the end, though, does it really matter?  She signed up for this.  And if I kill her, she’ll be just as dead, so why do humans care?”  She…hates to admit it, but he might have a bit of a point.
        And then, casually, he bends downward and rips one of the blades that shoots out with his bare hands and throws it straight at Darling with the kind of force that says he’s scary strong.  From her practice with the throwing knives, too, she knows that the curved blade isn’t particularly aerodynamic, which means you have to throw that much harder to get it to go where you want it to go.  She’d known about the scary strength already, but to the point that it actually manages to pierce through the axe blade and leave it quivering from the force?  That’s a bit more data that, well, it’s good she has it, but she kind of wishes she didn’t anyway.
        He laughs, like he’s having fun, like this all a game.  “She seems to have a fighting spirit,” he finishes, still utterly amused, and Darling frowns from her hiding space peering around the corner, because she can’t tell if that’s a pun or whether it would be highly disturbing if it was, and if that was enough he takes another step toward her.
        Whisper desperately spreads his wings, in an audible swoosh, the flash of colorful feathers catching the deity’s eye, but they can’t keep this up for long—
        And then Buluc Chabtan staggers a bit from the force of the blow as an arrow buries itself deeply in his back.  Darling hadn’t even heard Robin fire the arrow, or the metal clangs as it was redirected from surface to surface—of course not, she realizes.  The sound was covered by the conversation and the Captain shooting her pistol and then Panzermensch doing the same, because one thing she’s learned, hanging out with Von Stroheim, is that guns are loud.  Really, really loud.  Much louder than a bow, which is the point, and both the Captain and Mr. Brown had figured out her plan and coordinated their own contributions together without making a signal.  At least, not one that she’d seen.  That’s some really cool teamwork, and she’s not quite there yet, but maybe she will be someday.  Sure, she’d managed something pretty cool anyway, but she’d needed to communicate out loud.  This is a step beyond even that, a level that says the two friends have fought together so much they’re practically extensions of each other.
        A whispered exhalation, much like a dying man's last gasp, escapes his lungs, and Darling dares to hope that he's at least knocked out of commission.  That her plan had worked out even better than she’d hoped.  Then, to her horror, Buluc Chabtan smiles.  “That's more like it.  And here I’d started to think the other Lords got rusty over the centuries.  If you're going to draw out the battle, at least make it glorious!”  He’d been waiting for this, humoring them until they finally fought him on his terms.  He reaches back, drawing the arrow out of his flesh with his hand, ignoring the now-rushing blood from the wound making the already slightly slippery cool stone tiles even slippier.