Jojo's Bizarre Adventure: Shadowed Suspicion Chapter 369

[madimpossibledreamer]

Main Points:
Jojo's Bizarre Adventure/Buffy the Vampire Slayer AU
Chapter Summary: Stuck in the house in the Amazon, investigations and a plan are made.
Word Count: 1247
Note: HERE THERE PROBABLY BE BUFFY/JJBA SPOILERS

         Antonio starts unpacking some of the equipment, but not all of it. Probably anything to help investigate the house, anything they’ll be using at this moment. It makes sense—even if the monkeys had taken some measures to try to stop the roof from leaking, it’s still really damp and that’s probably not going to last forever, so it’s probably good to try to avoid exposing the electronics to the water. She didn’t bother paying attention to everything they’d brought, but she’s not the gadget lady. Buffy only learns that they actually have towels when some of the monkeys start stealing them. She makes sure to snag one before they’re all gone. She’s getting glared at by one of the monkeys as it tries to steal it right from her hands, but it is far from the most intimidating presence she’s had to face, to the point it doesn’t even register. Slayer Glare beats Monkey Glare any day.
         There had been a front door at one point. It’s lying half through one of the missing floorboards. She’s had to smash through doors before but she’s never exactly seen one just look kind of like a crumpled up piece of paper even after she’s been through with it. She crouches down to look at it, using the towel to fluff her hair, starting to warm up a little. “There’s something here. We’re not wasting our time,” she announces, and ignores the incredulous look from Antonio.
         “Explain, please,” Giorno invites her to talk. Not demands, though from anyone else it would be a demand. He really likes to use the charisma, but then, he’s probably used to using all the tools at his disposal to achieve his ends.
         Maybe she should qualify this. She didn’t used to do that, but she used to be younger at one point, too. “I could be wrong. It’s really well done. But I feel like this door was purposefully broken.”
         “That...doesn’t prove anything,” Antonio shoots back, baffled. He doesn’t look like he thinks it’s broken on purpose, either, but he probably hasn’t had to break down a door in his life, so she wouldn’t call him the expert on this or anything.
         Daniela shakes her head. “It’s useful for camouflage.”
         “Like keeping a fake storefront on top of a casino, for instance. Most just see the exterior and never look further.” Giorno nods, wandering over to the rotting desk, having made the concession of admitting he’s a mortal who needs to dry his own hair. He didn’t even have to use the glare method, though...when the monkey came for his own towel, the boa lazily stretched, and the monkey quickly decided that maybe it wouldn’t push its luck. She’d laugh if she’s not doing the same thing, not asking for details about why he would have that specific example. Mostly because she likes being alive and not caught up in all the shady mob shenanigans. If Xander wants to deal with that kind of thing, let him. It’s his cousin. Or...whatever. She’s not going to try to wrap her mind around the whole Joestar family tree.
         “Or our demon mayor. He liked keeping up appearances, too,” Buffy adds, as Antonio just forgets to even keep unpacking the equipment.
         “I’d like to hear about that story, at some point,” Giorno states mildly, not showing a moment of the surprise he’s probably feeling on his face. He’s still focused on his task, though, continuing to rifle through the desk.
         “Future-stuff, for the future,” Buffy agrees, shrugging. “Anything interesting?”
         This box-thing on the side was probably some kind of medicine cabinet, but it’s too choked with vines to even open. What she can see are a warped bottle of some kind of pills that might be painkillers, but the label’s far too faded (and, like, seriously ancient, the kind of stuff you saw as antiques in the university’s chemistry ‘history’ cabinets that they just kind of left there) and what might have been cloth bandages, at one point. Now, it’s just a moldy, musty mess.
         “Notes on the local environment. Like this is just the habitation of some sort of biologist. Amount of daily rainfall, wildlife sightings, characteristics of plant life cuttings, and such. A few notes about deliveries, but likely useless—if not fake or something innocuous, I’d guess they’re encrypted in a way that is not useful to us. I’ll have Fugo analyze it. If we can connect even one company to Rush, that might be advantageous.” From the sound of it, he thinks they wouldn’t be the useful kind of companies, the ones where Rush wouldn’t or couldn’t abandon it at a moment’s notice. Then again, that seems to be true of a lot of what he does; he specifically designs it so he can just excise anything that could lead to him at a moment’s notice. “That’s probably spoiled, if not poisoned,” he adds, just as softly, as two of the monkeys start to walk by carrying what Buffy’s guessing is a crate of food. They glance at each other and promptly drop the crate, the wooden floor creaking ominously underneath, which makes them spring away. And yeah, that’d be virtually undetectable, as traps go—just some random tourists wandering in and eating the wrong thing might never get discovered, and if their bodies did get discovered, people probably wouldn’t think to look for foul play, just assume they’d picked the wrong food to eat or ate spoiled food or something.
         “Well, enough of this monkey business,” Ivete states definitively, ignoring the sudden scandalized noise from certain quarters of Giorno’s animal followers. “If something is here, it’s obviously not in here. What does your equipment do, Antonio?”
         “I have three different types. One uses differences in the electromagnetic field to look for tunnels—tunnels have higher conductivity. If there’s any equipment down there, thermal imaging might capture it. I’ve also got radar, but they didn’t find the pyramid underneath Ixtepete with that, so I’m not relying on that. Of course, all of these need to be used as close to the earth as possible, but that’s not happening until the water goes down a little.” He’s a lot calmer about that and isn’t condescending about it, explaining in terms that aren’t too complicated or simplistic.
         Daniela walks over to the entrance, glancing outside. “We may have to adapt our strategy.” Buffy hadn’t realized until now that they hadn’t even had to raise their voices to be heard above the rain for a bit now. “This isn’t one of the worst floods, but it may take some time to drain naturally. We were prepared for this, but Antonio should stay here, along with someone else.”
         Apparently one of their boxes has scuba gear, and as much as Buffy would love to have that one-of-a-kind experience, she’s also gotten a lot better about the whole ‘ego’ thing. It’s been way too long, and she’s out of practice. Better not make them have to rescue her, too, on top of everything else—not that it’s far down, but with that kind of visibility it’d be way too easy to get tangled in a vine or something. “I’ll stay back, but here’s a thought—think this Ripple stuff could be used to test for those electromagnetic field things?”
         Ivete crosses her arms as she’s getting the gear on, but at least Daniela gets that it’s equally a joke and a genuine suggestion and smiles a little.