Jojo's Bizarre Adventure: Shadowed Suspicion Chapter 364

[madimpossibledreamer]

Main Points:
Jojo's Bizarre Adventure/Buffy the Vampire Slayer AU
Chapter Summary: The Speedwagon Foundation pilot takes Giorno, Buffy, and another Slayer out to the Amazon Rainforest.
Word Count: 1181
Rating: Teen
Note: HERE THERE PROBABLY BE BUFFY/JJBA SPOILERS

         “Have you ever seen an area so green?” Antonio asks proudly as they fly over. He’s a local Brazilian recruited to join the Speedwagon Foundation after some incident that happened there in the eighties, but he’d somehow assumed that Giorno and Buffy already knew all about it, and neither of them feel like breaking that illusion.
         She shakes her head, smiling. “It’s beautiful.”
         “While the circumstances for visiting your country are less than ideal, I am very glad to be here,” Giorno agrees. It’d be easier to dismiss the comment as just being polite if not for the fact that he’s practically glued his face to the glass window and barely glanced anywhere else since they’d taken off.
         She’s definitely more of an ocean person, but the river and trees both are so vividly green, and merely sitting here and sensing for life is almost overwhelming. And it’s not even just like there’s one type of tree out there—they’re different colors and heights, and it’s not all the same. It’s not like she’s been in many forests, at all really, but even then she’d gotten the sense that forests in America tended to be more like one, two, maybe three types of trees. It’s one thing to read in a textbook that the Amazon Rainforest has more life packed into the area than anywhere else in the world, and another to feel it. It does mean her Ripple senses and whatever Giorno uses in conjunction with his Stand are going to be limited in use, but she’s still happy she gets to experience this after gaining them—and who knows, the fighting skills might still come in handy.
         It was certainly, they were informed, possible to just teleport in, which is what Buffy would have preferred. That method was just not recommended, because they’re trying to keep a low profile, and after one particular group of developers had attempted to teleport in bulldozers in order to “tame the jungle”, magical teleportation had been monitored more closely in the area and was largely restricted to locals. To warn them (and convince them that they were as a matter of fact not here to cause trouble) would take time that they don’t particularly want to take. Besides, their reasoning continued, it’s impossible to avoid teleporting into traps if you don’t know where they are, exactly. Better to scope it out the old-fashioned way. It’s probably more promising just from being such a remote location, and for that reason also likely better protected.
         She’s also not particularly a fan of having to wear the big bulky noise-canceling headphones, but is definitely even less fond of losing her hearing for a while (or permanently) due to the sound of the propeller, so has resigned herself to a bad hair day.
         “You know where the Amazon got its name from?” Ivete, it turned out, was a Bahia native, but she’d been stationed with the Amazonas Slayers for a little while now, coordinating efforts against deforestation. Details hadn’t been offered and Buffy hadn’t asked for any, mostly because she didn’t want to know anything in case she was asked later.
         “I mean, being a Slayer, I’ve heard of the Amazons before, but I don’t know if that’s related.” Because that was just one of the alternatively insults and compliments that get thrown at this particular Slayer over the years.
         “It is, actually.” Ivete smiles proudly. “Our sisters would fight alongside the men to protect the people and the land, and that so caught the conquistador by surprise that he named the area after a myth.”
         Buffy laughs and shakes her head. “Of course.” She knows the type. Unfortunately, one that used to be pretty common among the Watchers, among a bunch of other assholes she’s had to deal with over the years.
         Buffy’s slightly surprised (and also slightly disappointed because it would’ve been really, really cool) that they’re not taking the dragon. On the other hand, it kind of makes sense, since they’re taking four of them. She’s not sure how many people can fit on a dragon, especially given that she’s barely even gotten a glimpse of said dragon, but at some point she’s gotta assume ‘can’ doesn’t necessarily mean ‘should’. At some point being able to carry, say, ten people might be doable, but it’d be pretty uncomfortable, and given that their mount happens to be a dragon that could eat someone if he thinks he’s being taken advantage of, it’s probably better not to make him mad. And she saw Giorno pause before boarding, giving more validity to the whole ‘Joestar curse’ thing, if even he is taking it seriously.
         The rest of the local Slayers aren’t heading to the second location with them. Buffy had found that surprising, but had been laughed at—and honestly, for good reason. She’s, once again, been thinking more as the Head Slayer, not a local Slayer. It’s not like she’d left Sunnydale when stationed there, either. She’s just been stuck in admin mode too long.
         The new system, for the most part, involves being taught at one of the various schools they’d set up across the world, mostly because there’s no way they could recruit enough Watchers to cover the new number of Slayers, but it’s not like they tried to encourage a lack of attachment, and they got to visit. Given the fact that making portals to set locations is pretty easy if you know what you’re doing (according to Willow, and she’s one of the most powerful witches anyone had seen, so Buffy’s taking that with a grain of salt), it’s probably easier for them than even your average international student. Afterwards, you got to choose where to be stationed, but plenty went back home.
         So sure, travel might be more common these days (and someone even had the unfortunate job of ordering plane tickets and such, when they wanted to officially be somewhere and it wasn’t urgent), but that doesn’t mean that it’s something that every Slayer does, either. She’ll miss them a little, but they’d been sent off with yet another feast, where she’d gotten to talk techniques and feel normal and Giorno had entertained the kid with sleight of hand tricks. She’d have thought they’d bring a lot of supplies, too, but they couldn’t fit everything in the plane, and they weren’t going to be taking the plane all the way there, either.
         Antonio explains, still not looking away from the controls. “We can’t land a normal plane. Nowhere’s cleared out close enough, and we’re not going to start destroying things just for our own convenience.” Buffy doesn’t correct him that he’s mostly speaking for himself, though she agrees that she’ll make an exception in this case. “You probably guessed, since you boarded at a dock, but that’s our destination, too—an old dock a little downstream of our ultimate goal. I’m told the Slayer we’re meeting is an expert fisherwoman and hunter, and has taken the Amazon many times.”
         Well, it’s definitely going to be an adventure, that’s for sure.