Jojo's Bizarre Adventure: Shadowed Suspicion Chapter 367

[madimpossibledreamer]

Main Points:
Jojo's Bizarre Adventure/Buffy the Vampire Slayer AU
Chapter Summary: The first approach to Rush's second property is still a little unexpected.
Word Count: 1301
Note: HERE THERE PROBABLY BE BUFFY/JJBA SPOILERS

        Giorno is very careful when he lightly and gracefully gets off the boat. He doesn’t offer to help them with the supplies, or the boats, but strength doesn’t seem to be his strongest suit anyway (and he might have expected the answer would be no, anyway, given what happened with her offer to help with the paddling). Instead, he spends the time turning a few fallen branches and vines into snakes and other animals. He really seems to have an, uh, affinity for reptiles, doesn’t he? Buffy would ask if he has anything against changing things into, say, a cute dog, but supposes that wouldn’t really be appropriate in the Amazon anyway. It’s probably the best idea to have an animal who knows the territory and can navigate as well as the native wildlife, anyway. She keeps an eye out as they go back and forth getting the equipment to a safe spot where it’s not going to just slide back down into the water, and none of the animals are obviously dying or floating up to the surface of the water or being blown up or falling dead from the trees or turning up dead underfoot, so she’d guess so far so good. Giorno’s doing the same, if a little more consistently, since he’s not helping out with the rest of it. The others might be wondering about why he’d even have to watch, but she’s also fairly certain that if they’re independent enough to not be controlled, he probably can’t sense them directly, either, even if he did create them.
        He did at least at some point create a really cute parrot—well, not that she’d seen him do it as she helps out, but she’s pretty sure that’s why it’s circling them. It’s good thinking, actually. It might not feel like warning them, but it probably could, ineloquently, if it felt like it, and as much as Buffy feels like the natural habitat of the parrot is a pet store just because that’s where she’s seen them, that’s not true at all.
        Daniela seems a little more confident that they’re not wasting their time after all after they carry the boats onto the shore and hide them under some vegetation on the riverbank. She points out gouges in the ground and a scuff on the tree that Buffy’s guessing she thinks mean that somebody else did the same thing she did in the past, rather than them just having owned the property and done absolutely nothing with it. It’s not a given that it was Rush, but Buffy’s not really an expert in tracking, given that she’d been stationed in a city, so if Daniela, a Slayer who’s been doing this for years, says it’s likely then maybe it is. It does explain the missing dock—no reason to have it if you’re hiding the boat on land, and it’s better security if you make it look like nothing’s here.
        She’s not sure when it started raining, but it is—that, or the trees are just dropping more rain on them. Not like she’s expected. Knowing how much it rains annually, she’d expected a downpour, but as of right now it’s light, mostly just making it feel even more humid and damp.
        Antonio had been prepared, not taking too many electronics, and those he did take are in cases or protective plastic. She doesn’t know all of them on sight, but they’re probably not for her. (She does recognize the camera, probably for taking photos and maybe video of whatever they find.) But eventually the boats and any equipment they’re not directly taking with them is hidden and they can continue on.
        From there, they head down a track that Buffy can barely see, having divided up the Speedwagon Foundation supplies between them. Every so often Ivete or Daniela will point out another sign Buffy missed and would have absolutely no chance on spotting on her own. Here and there Giorno touches some other vegetation, flashing his Stand long enough to change them. He’s also wearing an actual boa constrictor like a feather boa (is that where the name came from? She’d never really thought about it), but as long as it doesn’t spontaneously decide to strangle or crush him, Buffy’s going to let him do his thing.
        Nothing comes up with the Ripple, either. Honestly she’d prefer finding something to this complete seeming lack of anything. She’d fought—technically not Rush, himself, but all the traps he’d set up, when he’d had time to do so. And he’s had this property for who knows how long, and thus plenty of time to set up the kind of traps that would be a problem for visitors and not him. So the fact that they haven’t found anything yet probably just means that the traps are really well hidden and they haven’t found them yet, rather than there aren’t any.
        When the place comes into view, Buffy is...honestly, a little underwhelmed, if not just straight up whelmed. Pretty much the only thing that even vaguely stands out is some sort of transmissions tower, but she doesn’t identify it immediately, it’s so choked up in vines and a few actual trees. She just kind of...blinks in confusion at those.
        Antonio makes a beeline over to a black box beneath it, though he’s staying at a possibly safe distance. He hasn’t exploded or started screaming, so it might be fine. Ivete hurries over to join him, probably on the assumption that she’d be better at protecting herself from any attacks, which is not entirely wrong, but not necessarily entirely right, either. It’s covered in vines and vegetation, too, at least. So if something gets triggered, they might have a warning. Most traps would at least disturb something when set off.
        Giorno, still cool as a cucumber, soon has a dozen snakes slithering to check out both that and something that it honestly took her until now to identify as the actual house. It had been so choked with vines she hadn’t realized.
        “He’s really dedicated to this anonymity thing, isn’t he?” Buffy observes out loud. She would’ve expected out here, with no neighbors other than your occasional monkey or snake or parrot or butterfly or whatever else lives here that Giorno hasn’t made, he would’ve let himself really cut loose. A mansion. A compound. But he hadn’t even bothered with too much of the upkeep, it looks like, letting the water drip down through what looks like cracks in the wooden ceiling, letting the jungle creep in and start to reclaim the territory once taken from it. It’s a small wooden house, not too much different from the one on the water, aside from being a little bigger. Even on stilts. It’s not on the water, but maybe that’s a flooding precaution? This one has stairs, though, given that you can’t just walk in from the path (not that there’s much of one, now; making it through with the equipment was a pain). The area around might have once been a clearing, but that’s quickly becoming overcome, too.
        “Traps might have confirmed something was here; he may have been relying on the abandoned appearance to keep outsiders from poking around.” Daniela, it sounds like, has been considering this carefully.
        Antonio laughs, wiping some of the accumulating rainfall off the folds in his raincoat. “I wonder if he’s ever heard of urbex. Though this might not count, since it’s not ‘urban’.”
        “The rain’s getting heavier. We should at least move the equipment inside,” Ivete interrupts, and none of them want to respond immediately. A feeling of dread, perhaps.
        “Safe, safe!” the parrot calls, flying back from the wreck of a house.
        Giorno turns to them, self-satisfied smile on his face. “Shall we?”