Jojo's Bizarre Adventure: Shadowed Suspicion Chapter 371

[madimpossibledreamer]

Main Points:
Jojo's Bizarre Adventure/Buffy the Vampire Slayer AU
Chapter Summary: Buffy and the others enter Rush's lair.
Word Count: 1365
Note: HERE THERE PROBABLY BE BUFFY/JJBA SPOILERS

 

         The first thing that Buffy notices immediately is the hissing sound when they descend the ladder to a small room and they close the door. Her immediate reaction is to assume it’s some kind of trap—maybe a gas or air-distributed virus. She doesn’t smell anything, but doesn’t necessarily mean anything at all. She doesn’t remember the names—Jotaro probably would—but while she doesn’t remember the specifics she does know that there are some deadly gases you can’t smell, and Mr. Trap For Every Occasion would absolutely know all about those and which would be the best to deploy as a surprise gift for any unexpected guests. The monkeys and several of the other animals that followed them panic as well, though she’s not sure if they’re smart enough to sense the danger of traps or just don’t like being locked in and confined. “We need to get back out—did you bring gas masks?” If necessary, she and the other Slayers can probably just break their way through even metal, if they can just find the right angle on the ladder.
         But Antonio shakes his head, pointing at the steering wheel-like door handle in a circular door on the wall. “It seems like Rush had the same idea. This is an airlock, too, if a far less mobile one.”
         Ivete glances at the floor, a little nervous at the loud sound that starts up. It does kind of sound like the one before, only maybe even a bit louder—maybe because there isn’t any actual water to remove. She actually has to shout to be heard over it. “But why would he bother? It doesn’t matter if he’s a demon or a Pillar Man; it’s not like he needs to breathe oxygen to live, and having a bunch of water around he could manipulate could be even more of an advantage. Why would he care if entering this place brings with it a bunch of water?”
         Giorno seems like he’s naturally posing without even intending to do so, staring at the door thoughtfully. He also manages to make raising his voice to be heard not sound like he’s shouting, too, even though he absolutely is. “He’s attempting to avoid damage to whatever he has down here. It would not affect him, true. But why would he take the same chance with any of his possessions? He probably can replace any of it, abandon safehouses at will, but having to replace anything here would, at least, be difficult and time-consuming. If he can avoid that with a simple installation, he would.”
         He might just be judging based on what he’d do, but it’s sound enough logic. As the sound begins to die down, he smiles and gestures at the door. “After you.”
         Like he’s being a gentleman, and not just letting someone else do the work to turn the handle (which she could swear is jammed, a little, though to be fair she hasn’t attempted to get in a door she couldn’t just literally kick off its hinges in a while) and wrench the massive metal door open. He’s not the strongest Joestar, sure. They’re Slayers. But come on, he doesn’t need to make such a production out of it.
         ...Actually, she doesn’t know where she was going with that thought, because it’s quite possibly one of the most ridiculous things she’s ever thought, and that’s some pretty stiff competition.
         What lies beyond is another small room, with another hatch, descending down into the dark. How deep does this go? They didn’t even get this deep in Sunnydale. They’d had magic to help with the construction and she’s not entirely sure Rush does. He might’ve been faking, but when he was pretending to be a paramedic he’d acted like he hadn’t seen it in person; given how he acted since she gets the feeling that maybe he’d heard of it but was eager to learn more about how it worked. Either way they’d had to deal with the same problem—this close to a body of water, even if it wasn’t half-flooded all the time, if you dig too deep you strike water. Building under those circumstances must’ve been hellish—but then, whatever he is, he probably wouldn’t have exactly cared. Rush is definitely (unfortunately) one of the more patient enemies she’s had to fight.
         They finally arrive at the bottom of the second ladder, and it’s still pitch darkness. “How do you think he built this?”
         “I have no idea, but I’d love to find out—that, and how he’d managed to shield this from being sensed in the first place,” Antonio admits quietly, like they’re going to be overheard at any time, excitement actually starting to overtake the worry. They all blink a little at the sudden torch—er, flashlight, she’s been living in England for too long apparently—to find a tunnel leading away further than the flashlight can reach. At least it looks like there’s an amount of dust built up that Buffy’s actually vaguely happy about. He’d been here recently—maybe gearing up for the raid on Wolfram & Hart—but not recently enough that he’s waiting around a corner to ambush them. “How did you know where to look?”
         “We might learn,” Daniela points out as they take a breath of the slightly stale air before continuing to venture on.
         “To answer your question, the area under the stair was the only place hamon wasn’t giving back any ripples at all. I’d say absorbing it, but I don’t know that that’s quite the right word,” Ivete fills in without hesitation.
         “Soundproofing absorbs sound. It doesn’t store the energy,” Giorno points out, shrugging his shoulders to readjust the snake (actually, it’s only now occurring to Buffy that it’s probably pretty heavy to be carrying around a huge snake on your shoulders this long) and petting the scales like one might pet a cat. Going on the whole supervillain line of thinking, she is very carefully not thinking about why he would know about soundproofing.
         Curious, Buffy reaches out a hand to touch one of the concrete walls—and they’re right about concrete dampening the feel of the Ripple, but it’s not just that. Obviously. Concrete underground structures tend to be easy to find, as far as she knows from having talked to a few archaeologist friends, unless—
         There’s, like, the President’s safety bunkers. Sure, the ISWC has precautions of their own, but those are mostly magical, and her best guess is that Rush doesn’t have that—yet, anyway. She’s never had to locate one to save his life or anything, so she doesn’t know what they use to keep people from finding them, but she’d bet that Rush deployed something similar, but even worse is using something to try to hide from the Ripple, and that’s something they’re going to want to get on top of (metaphorically) as soon as possible. And also...doesn’t actually narrow down what he is, too much, other than the fact that whatever he is he is very dangerous and very old (which almost always translates to dangerous because it means he survived), because from what Josuke had said, Ripple Warriors hadn’t been an actual organized thing in a long, long time, with just one dojo (basically) even training and not using it too much in the past couple centuries. So him assuming that Ripple Warriors were something that might possibly be looking for him to hunt him down? That’s a big deal, and something they’re going to have to figure out sooner rather than later. And it’s concentrated on one of those big wooden barrels lining the corridor, because she’s having a hard time feeling those.
         “Ivete, help me take the lid off that. Giorno, Daniela, be ready to fight something off—like maybe the eyeballs everyone keeps reporting.” Time for the Head Slayer to show her stuff.
         Giorno nods, shrugging his shoulders again, and a few of the monkeys chatter at each other before picking up rocks and looking ready, while the boa slithers off his shoulders and approaches the barrel, hissing at it. Antonio swallows and backs up. Well, no use delaying.