Jojo's Bizarre Adventure: Shadowed Suspicion Chapter 379

[madimpossibledreamer]

Main Points:
Jojo's Bizarre Adventure/Buffy the Vampire Slayer AU
Chapter Summary: They need to evacuate Rush's lab.
Word Count: 1391
Note: HERE THERE PROBABLY BE BUFFY/JJBA SPOILERS

        Buffy is a little amused to note that Giorno gestures for the monkeys to follow. A couple of them don’t seem particularly interested in taking orders until an explosion rocks the lab. It’s hard to tell if this is faster than Jotaro had expected or not—he had told them to run, with uncharacteristic urgency.
        When they return to the main area, though, it looks like the entrance is partially collapsed and on fire. They could go that way, maybe, but given the size of those barrels Buffy’s fairly sure it’s only going to get worse. Particularly as they step out into what looks like brackish water underfoot, and Jotaro had panicked about a color change. A few of the monkeys are crying and holding each other in a corner, what looks like a flashlight wavering in their less-than-steady hands, which is enough to give her a flash of insight.
        Okay, so maybe they didn’t find a map with an X ‘Rush is here’ on it. But mapping out the enemy is just as important, and Buffy’s starting to get a feel for Rush. She has no clue how these algae things work, but Rush is really good at traps, and she’d been wrong about there not actually being any. The clue that gives it away is the attempt to hide the base from being spotted—including against the Ripple. Something mixed into the concrete, probably. He’d known the Ripple existed, and wanted to make sure to keep them out. He probably didn’t need light to see; that was pretty common for demons, and she can’t think an uber-vampire thing would be any different. In fact it’d make no sense if an uber-vampire thing that mostly has to stay out of sunlight would be unable to see in the dark. Anybody using flashlights or other light sources, therefore, was going to be someone else. Anybody curious enough to be poking around in things without a warning would be an intruder. And that flashlight doesn’t actually have a visible beam of light. Maybe it’s UV. It wouldn’t be the first time Rush had used UV offensively, after all. She can double check that with the others later—assuming they’d even brought it here to begin with. It could also just be that they’d used the Ripple way too close, and this was an over-time thing. Or maybe these algae thingies reacted the same to any sort of light? No matter the exact cause behind it, boom.
        “We’re trapped!” Antonio yells, awfully loud against the echo of the walls.
        “Rush isn’t the sort of enemy that would design something like this without some sort of opportunity to escape,” Buffy disagrees. “What if he’d been working in his lab and someone else came in and set this whole thing off? He probably doesn’t make a move without an escape plan.”
        “I don’t believe there was anything behind us; we investigated the room fairly thoroughly, and Diavolo wants us alive long enough to take his vengeance.” Giorno’s thoughtful, apparently on board with at least that aspect of her analysis.
        “Which leaves something in this room,” Ivete agrees.
        Daniela says nothing. She’s already knocking on walls in the shadowy area they had basically glanced at and left alone because it didn’t look like there was anything there; the one opposite the entrance. Giorno’s snake slithers off his shoulders to come flick its tongue at the wall, and Daniela’s fist does end up hitting something hollow just as the snake finds something it thinks is interesting. Between the Slayers, they end up basically just tearing the panel off the wall just as they experience yet more shaking. Rush probably installed some kind of switch or something—sure, he was as strong as they were, supposedly, and could pull it off, but that doesn’t seem his style. They don’t have time for subtlety, though. Now is the time for the kicking in of doors and any attempt to hide the fact that they’d been here in the first place, because—yeah, pretty obvious, at this point.
        What lies behind is an extremely cramped ladder, but it leads up and it’s their only way out, so whether this is a trap or not, they have to take it. Buffy’s leaning toward ‘not trap’ here, anyway—an emergency exit by definition is going to be taken when something’s gone horribly wrong, so it’s a lot less likely for Rush to have set up anything here.
        This side does have...kind of...an air lock. It kind of sucks, though, and they end up getting soaked anyway—but they’re alive and kicking and are going to get checked over once they get back, so it’ll be fine. Giorno is slightly less than happy, but it looks like all his monkeys and the snake got through this in one piece, too, so that’s something. The ground starts sinking in, water collecting, and Buffy gets the feeling the explosions had damaged something structural. She wonders if that’d been the point, too—it’d be a pain to replace anything, and probably would make sure he couldn’t ever reuse the lab, but then, maybe that wasn’t a concern for Rush either? Maybe once a spot was burned, he never went back. That would fit in with everything else and honestly make it a whole heck of a lot harder for them to track him down. If they can keep him on the move, it might be easier to list where he would go—but it’s a big world, and they probably can’t keep it up that long. Nice as the thought is.
        “I gather you are familiar with this species of diatom,” Giorno states once they’ve set the call back up (which is shockingly faster than finding a roaming signal using a cell phone and Buffy kind of wants this on hand all the time), cool and collected and not at all out of breath like he’d just been running—or climbing desperately—for his life.
        “As far as I knew, I had discovered Attheya tephra,” Jotaro agrees gruffly, looking them over and determining that they’re unhurt. “A bunch of starfish ended up experiencing spontaneous combustion or exploding. I figured, a Stand, but they’d really been poisoned by the mussels and oysters they’d eaten, which in turn had taken up the diatoms. They’re not too dangerous normally, but expose them to sunlight and they start putting out deadly toxins to cloud the water.”
        Giorno nods like he’s fully following along. “Not a diatom that relies on phosphorescence, then.” Buffy only vaguely remembers that means something to do with sunlight, which would make sense, given that she’s pretty sure it probably doesn’t like the Ripple or sunlight, even though she’s still not completely sure how the two are connected.
        “Nah, a chemoautotroph.” Fancy Latin words. If Buffy didn’t know better, she’d say Jotaro was trying to summon something.
        “And for those of us that don’t speak biology, Jotaro?” His friend Kakyoin’s voice is teasing even as he hangs off Jotaro. Jotaro doesn’t flinch. Maybe it’s just being used to it, but that doesn’t seem quite like it—he wouldn’t just put up with something just to be polite. Nah, no matter what others might think, he does actually have friends and value his friendship.
        “It eats chemicals,” Giles explains. “I am glad to see you all unharmed.” Probably because he’s had so much experience re-explaining concepts to a bunch of teenagers who, very occasionally, pretended to be ignorant just to mess with him. She’d say they were terrible, but that’s kind of covered by the statement ‘they were teenagers’.
        Jotaro nods, hand on his hat. “Iron and sulfur, mostly.”
        “Which could very easily be formed in the presence of seawater into a pyrophoric compound—one that catches fire when exposed to air—or an explosive compound, such as the one we just experienced. I see.” Okay, that probably has to do with the mob stuff. Not that Buffy’s in much of a position to judge anyone else on their interest in the things that go boom, but hers is more on the applied than theoretical side.
        “We will probably require pickup. Our boat is probably either submerged or drifted away,” Daniela tells them when there’s a moment they’re not talking.
        “I believe that could be arranged,” Giles agrees.