Senza Fine, part VIII
This section alone is 4,400 words. :0 Warnings for, um... Rohan-tasticness?
[ Parts I-IV. ]
[ Parts V-VII. ]
VIII.
He asked Giorno for the vacation time that same night. Intrinsically it was nothing that couldn't have waited, but-
Giorno paused and sat up, tucking a stray curl behind his ear. "When?" he asked.
"Ah... the 21st of next month, Boss." Giorno shifted further, and Mista slumped back into the nest of stacked pillows that passed for Giorno's bed. He wasn't winded. He wasn't. The night was young yet, and Guido Mista could outlast Vesuvius if he could only keep Giorno talking for a few minutes. How did Giorno do it? It wasn't human. Wasn't stamina supposed to improve with age?
Actually, if that were the case Mista's current trials would barely constitute the tip of the iceberg.
"The 21st? That's... a Friday, isn't it?"
"I think, yeah? It could be earlier but the show's going to close that weekend. I mean, I figured you wouldn't want me taking off in the middle of the week, so-"
"No, it's fine," said Giorno. He propped his elbows on either side of Mista's ribcage and rested his chin on his hands, for all as if he were thinking and Mista were a sturdy piece of furniture under him. Mista tried gamely not to twitch. "Tell you what - I've been meaning to have a face-to-face with some people in Rome anyway, so make it Thursday and we can take the Spider out for a spin. How about it?"
Mista blinked. "Er... really?"
"You don't want to?"
"No... yes! I just didn't think you'd be interested in Kishibe-sensei's paintings."
"On the contrary," said Giorno, "I'm very interested." He sat up, favoring Mista with a rare smile. It gave a cast of innocence to his features that under the circumstances was entirely inappropriate. "Now... where were we?"
***
The gallery was an unmarked brick façade just off Via Giulia, easily mistaken for the servants' entrance of a former palazzo - it most likely had been, once. Inside the space was sleekly renovated, with high ceilings and narrow doorways determined by the existing architecture. The exhibition occupied an L-shaped hall to the right of the main entrance, and a block of smaller rooms on the floor above.
Saturation was a basic tenet of Kishibe Rohan's colour theory; minimalist décor framed his paintings the way libraries frame klaxons. They were also larger and glossier than reproductions had led Mista to believe. He felt an entirely phantom urge to squint.
"Mista," Giorno said quietly, interrupting his contemplation of volume 21's cover (Gerald Wesley - no longer a boy, now - sprawled suggestively in the trunk of a black vintage sedan, fedora pulled low over his eyes. Silhouettes of palm trees criss-crossed the image, green on improbable orange-pink; the iconic Hollywood sign interrupted the telescoped distance). "In the reception area, beside the stairwell. Is that who I think it is?"
Mista turned, making it casual. "Yeah," he said, after a moment. "Yeah... I think it is."
Kishibe Rohan was holding court at the centre of a gathering crowd. He was taller than Mista had expected, almost stork-like in spats and high-waisted trousers and a mandarin-collared jacket with rows of fastenings down the front. He held a glass of white wine in one long-fingered hand, and the other was shoved carelessly into his pocket. He looked disdainful and conspicuously bored.
"You should go and say hello," Giorno said, a thread of amusement woven into his voice. "Tell him how much you like his manga." Mista noted the pronoun with alarm.
"Um..."
"I'll be upstairs," said Giorno. "Go on." He gave Mista a guiding shove in the small of the back. Mista started to cross the room, then faltered, even as Pavlovian obedience and physical momentum combined to carry him forward.
"Giorno," he said, "maybe-"
But Giorno wasn't behind him. There was a chime; Mista turned in time to catch a glimpse of gold hair - the rich violet-grey of Giorno's sleeve - then the elevator doors closed completely. The needle display moved to indicate the mezzanine.
He turned back and nearly jumped. Kishibe Rohan was looking straight at him, eyes narrowed. Balefully, Mista thought. The crowd around him was three deep and chattering.
Was that a gaggle of Japanese schoolgirls?
Mista sidled toward the stairwell, trying to look as if that were where he was originally headed.
***
The mezzanine was quieter; in fact there were no gallery-goers within sight or hearing. All of them must have flocked to the downstairs action. Mista ambled in the general direction of the elevator, taking in the exhibition as he went. The Pistols darted about in the air, pausing here and there as his (or their) interest shifted.
The artwork on display here were generally older works, some from before Kishibe had hit his creative stride, but striking nonetheless. Tables in the first hallway held reference materials: Kishibe's artbooks, manga magazines, the pamphlet accompanying the exhibition, and the entire set of Pink Dark Boy to date. The Japanese was up to volume 39. Mista picked up and flipped through volume 34 halfheartedly, but the miraculous feat of xenoglossia did not materialize, and he couldn't tell what was going on from the pictures alone. He wondered how well Kishibe Rohan spoke Italian.
Turn a corner: the next room contained more colour artwork, mostly acrylic and ink on posterboard. The room after that was black-and-white manga art. For the first two years of serialization Kishibe had worked in smallish formats. Then something had clicked, and the level of detail and ingenuity in his draftsmanship had exploded. The exhibition notes explained that he never worked with assistants, which seemed ludicrously improbable until Mista got to the room with the video. He watched it loop a few times, openmouthed, but despite his first impression it wasn't on fast forward.
He still hadn't found Giorno. He walked a little faster.
The next room contained the original of one of Mista's favorite colour spreads: Beatrix leaving Kei-Khusru's tomb, in the cavernous bowels of the Palace of Butterflies. The room after that was devoted to artwork from the "Thus Spake Kishibe Rohan" series. Mista went through the door to his left, into an alcove that displayed pages from the first Pink Dark Boy yomikiri. The door on the right-
"Mista," said #1. Mista nodded. He was already getting into position, gun out and in a two-handed grip, back against the wall.
He went through barrel-first, making the sweep, but the room was empty. It - or what he'd been able to glimpse of it - looked the same as it had from the other side of the door: paintings on the walls, a distinct lack of elevator. No flicker, no tingle, no hum. In fact it was too quiet. When he closed his eyes he noticed a muffled quality to his footfalls, as if the air pressure in his ears was wrong.
"Five, Six," he said, "stay close. The rest of you get hold of Giorno."
He was halfway across the floor when the first of them crossed a threshhold, and the unexpected wave of nausea nearly bent him double. Then it happened again. #1 and #3 paused, countermanding orders.
"Mista, what's happening?" #5 shrilled in alarm. Mista shook his head.
"Keep going! It's okay." It was, he knew instinctively: the reaction was plain vertigo. Senses conflicting with each other, the world not moving the way God intended. #2 and #7 weren't in the next room. Where were they?
He'd gone forward, forward, then left, forward, right, left. So either the inside of the building was bigger than the outside, or-
He walked into the next room and stopped. Kishibe Rohan looked over from where he stood, arms crossed and frowning, before tables piled with all-too-familiar artbooks and manga tankoubon. He was alone.
"You," he said, glaring daggers at Mista and his sidearm in turn. "Did you do this?"
Mista opened his mouth. He never found out what words were going to emerge, because Kishibe made an impatient gesture with the fingers of one hand, and suddenly he was looking at Pink Dark Boy. Drawn life-size, in full costume, on nothing in particular. The lines hung impossibly in the air, burning like afterimages on the backs of his eyeballs, and as they sped toward him the spaces in between filled with colour, with shape-
He opened his eyes and saw a flat expanse of white. It was a second before he realized it was the ceiling.
"You should've told me you're a friend of Koichi," Kishibe Rohan said.
"I should have?" said Mista. Then it hit him. He sat up, groaning. His brain felt like someone had drawn a stick figure on all its corners and flipped the pages very fast to watch it move.
"Pink Dark Boy," he said. "You."
"This does not, however, shed any real light on our current situation," said Kishibe.
"Pink Dark Boy is your stand," said Mista. "Why does this make sense."
"It has a name," Kishibe snapped, "it's called Heaven's Door. And if you're not the one doing this, who is?"
Mista considered the question, freeing one hand to rub his temples. The possibilities were unfortunately legion. "You wouldn't've happened to see my boss, would you?" he asked without much hope. "Skinny kid, about one-seventy, blond, purple velv-"
"Giorno Giovanna, I read," said Kishibe. "Secretly the de facto kingpin of-ah. The Families have a custom of employing stand users as assassins?"
"You have no idea," said Mista.
"Fascinating," said Kishibe. "I should remember this. It would make an excellent plot device for my manga."
Mista started to rise to his feet. Kishibe caught hold of the back of his sweater, one-handed, and pulled him down again.
"Sit," he said. "Don't charge around like a bull in a maze, that's what they want you to do. We have to work this through logically. The parts of your stand that aren't here, where are they now?"
Mista stared at him in disbelief. Kishibe quirked an eyebrow.
"It's not me," he said. "One ability per stand, as you're aware. I can incapacitate you and read your innermost self like a book, but that's about it."
"Oh, well, that's all right, then," Mista said, but by Kishibe's expression the sarcasm didn't dent the surface. He sighed.
"...They're close," he said. "Still on this floor. Not all in the same room, though."
"Can you see what they see?" Kishibe had conjured a fountain pen out of nowhere and was drawing on the back of a flattened-out pamphlet.
"Sort of." It was a diagram of the floor, he realized: complete with elevator and stairwell where they ought to have been, and two neat X's in the entrance hall where he and Kishibe currently sat. Eleven rooms, fourteen if you counted hallways; he remembered walking through eight. "One and Two are... are in the room with the video. Three and Seven are where you have that picture of Beatrix in the Palace."
Kishibe made more markings, not at all where Mista would have located them. "All right," he said, "retrace your steps. When you walked through that door-" he pointed to the far end of the hall- "what did you see?"
Mista told him. Kishibe drew abbreviated arrows that went in all directions. At length he held the pamphlet up to the light and frowned at it.
"My own experience corresponds," he said. "Hmm."
The only thing Mista could tell for sure was that none of the doorways led where they were supposed to. "Um..."
"This one," said Kishibe Rohan, tapping the '2' he'd drawn, "make it go through here. And this one goes through here. And this one there. At the same time. You can do this, can't you?"
Mista did it. #7 shot into the room and hovered above his head, squeaking; the other two went pear-shaped. "Urgh," he said, putting his head between his knees in an effort to stop the spinning. The idea of throwing up on Kishibe Rohan seemed ill-advised, though not without a certain appeal.
"Now where are they?" said Kishibe. Mista stabbed at the diagram wordlessly with his finger. Kishibe nodded.
"All right," he said. "The following deductions hold. Primo: the stand controls what lies to either side of a 'door' - an existing 'door'. The rooms themselves haven't moved or changed; neither have the quantity and positioning of the doors. Secundo... why, in your opinion, are you being led around by the nose like this? I leave myself out for the sake of simplicity."
"Delay," Mista said promptly. "To keep me away from Giorno while they... do whatever it is." Kishibe made a gesture of assent.
"A reasonable hypothesis. Secundo, then: the stand is limited to a given area of effect, or you'd've found yourself outside the building with no way of getting in - better yet, you'd've landed halfway to Sicily. Tertio: one cannot 'exit' and 'enter' a given room simultaneously by a single door, or the user would have trapped you that way. Quarto: the value so-to-speak of a door is determinate at any given point in time, not an automatic decision based on who or what is currently passing through, although the user may modify it at will - and quinto, doors must be two-way, or your stand-parts would all have ended up back here. Given which..." He trailed off.
"Yes?" Mista prompted after a few seconds, despite himself. The ostentatious cascade of deductions had a familiar feel; he was abruptly reminded that the solutions as well as the mysteries of Pink Dark Boy were constructed by Kishibe Rohan.
Kishibe clasped his chin, tapping the blunt end of his fountain pen against the paper.
"I can't prove this," he said, "but from the evidence to date I'd say the stand maintains set-connectedness. If one of these rooms is reachable from the others under normal circumstances - and they all are - it should never be completely cut off. The only reason there are rooms we can't reach is that the doors are changing around us as we walk."
He drew a circle around the left side of the diagram.
"In particular, these. The elevator hallway and the rooms directly adjoining it. Three is the smallest subset of rooms required to confine a single person under the stated conditions, incidentally."
"Giorno," said Mista. Frustration collided with anxiety, roiling his stomach. "It makes no sense. How do you even use a stand like this to off someone?"
"You don't," said Kishibe. "Or at least, I wouldn't. I'd isolate the target and have someone else take care of the hatchet work."
"You mean there's two of them," said Mista. Kishibe tilted his head.
"I'm going to go out on a limb here," he said, "based on what I read in your memories. In a one-on-one fight with - an aggressive and highly dangerous stand user, let's assume - what odds would you give your Giorno as we speak?"
Mista opened his mouth. Then he shut it again, feeling suddenly sheepish. Kishibe raised both eyebrows.
"Quite," he said. "Now, how many members of your organization know the extent of his abilities? Apart from those you consider trustworthy?"
"None," Mista said, slowly. "No one knows anything." We didn't leave any of them alive long enough to talk.
"And what about your abilities?"
"Some of them would know," said Mista. "I've done work."
Kishibe nodded again.
"So let's imagine," he said. "You're the user of... 'The Doors'. Against expectations, your target has just eliminated your esteemed colleague, but he hasn't found you yet - and he won't if you can help it. What are your options? You could retreat, of course, unless the stakes forbade you. You could let the people you've trapped walk in circles until they die of hunger and thirst-"
"Giorno wouldn't," said Mista. "Trust me."
"-But you'd have to stay in control of your stand until they did, and now you don't know what the target is capable of. Maybe he can make his own food. Maybe he's complicating your life by making his own doors. You do, however, know what his bodyguard can do: bullets never touch him, and his gun never misses. There is also a bystander on the premises, a mangaka, but for all intents and purposes he's innocuous." Kishibe spread his hands. "What do you do?"
Mista thought it over, and sighed.
"All right," he said. "Figures. You can get him by eye contact, right? You don't have to be within a range of some kind?"
"As long as he's looking," said Kishibe. "He won't come to us, in any case. It would make the ploy too obvious."
"Right," said Mista, getting to his feet. "No use waiting, then."
***
Kishibe followed him out of the entrance hall. They ended up in the room with the colour art, identically to the first time Mista had unknowingly run the gauntlet. There were three doors, counting the one at their back. It was almost normal.
"Too narrow to run through side by side," said Kishibe. "You wouldn't happen to have some sort of cord on you, would you? A handkerchief?"
"Er..."
Kishibe looked pained. "Hold still," he said, and produced something from his pocket that looked more like a silk scarf than a handkerchief. He threaded it through the belt loop at the back of Mista's trousers, tied a knot, and wrapped the free end around his hand.
"This may not work," he said. "He'll be coming for you, not me. If we're split up I probably won't get within range - blind luck at best."
Mista nodded. "Take him when you can," he said. "We have to make him think we're trying to flush him out anyway. Hell, it might work. Fifty-fifty chance the way I see it."
"You'll shoot if you see him?"
"He'll know we're onto him otherwise. I'd like to see how fast he is."
"I can be instantaneous," said Kishibe. He was smiling, thinly. "Certain you can control the bullet?"
"No." Mista checked the clip of his gun. "I trust Giorno not to get hit."
Kishibe gave him both eyebrows at that, but mercifully elected not to pursue the obvious. "On the count of three, then," he said, "and try not to trip."
They ran left, and Mista sent the remaining Pistols right. Immediately it felt like someone had turned the room upside down and was shaking it like a snowglobe, except nothing was actually moving. Mista's stomach churned, and his eyes watered. He gritted his teeth and went left again, Kishibe a half step in his wake.
One second to cross the floor of the video room, and through the door in the facing wall. The Pistols had split twice. Speed mattered more than calculation: The Doors had to reconfigure every time one of them crossed a lintel, and if they all kept at it he was bound to screw up sooner or later. But then, he had to show himself to Mista in any case if either of them were going to end it. Mista prayed it would happen before he threw up. He could feel his double-edged luck, pressing like a hand on his throat. That fraction of a fraction of a second just when the nausea hit and he lost track of the bullet making the jump, could barely tell where he was-
He went right, and suddenly there was the familiar buzzing whine of bullets gone awry as the Pistols knocked them off their path - #1 and #2 were back, instantly, the way they always were if needed. Kishibe made a muffled exclamation, but Mista couldn't spare a glance to check if he was all right. He skidded to a stop in the centre of the room and swept the muzzle of his weapon up and around.
It was the alcove area. Just two doors here, the one they'd entered by and another straight ahead - and a blurred motion in the room beyond as something dived away from Mista's putative line of fire. Mista nearly pulled the trigger, then cursed. His bullets didn't travel in a straight line, but there was no way to make eye contact with someone who'd taken cover around the corner.
He pulled Kishibe behind a pillar. No sound came from the other room; it was perfectly, preternaturally silent.
"You have one shot before this devolves to stalemate or worse," Kishibe said under his breath. "I suggest you leave it to me."
"Hell with that," said Mista. Kishibe still had him by the belt loop. They peered around opposite sides of the pillar; Mista kept his finger on the trigger.
Nothing.
"Hey," Mista called after a few seconds had passed. "We know you're still there!"
Not a peep. Had they overthought this? Maybe The Doors had screwed up, plain and simple, and now he'd escaped elsewhere. In which case Mista should've fired when he had the chance.
"Give it up, asshole! It's over! Know when to fold! Drop your gun and maybe-"
Something dived into the rectangle delinated by the door and rose from a crouch, the black shape of a firearm in its outstretched hands. It looked young, and gangly.
Several things happened at once:
Mista pulled the trigger. Beside him Kishibe moved.
#1 flew straight at the doorway and-
he thought he saw Giorno
The room turned upside down.
-Through.
The knowledge of impact propagated through his body like a shockwave. Kishibe was saying something, but Mista couldn't hear it. Everything had slowed down. He held his breath, waiting for the hole to appear in his heart. He-
something went pop
-Let it out again.
He wasn't dead. He was still staring at The Doors. The other stand user stared back, frozen, but not at him: at Kishibe. He had lowered his gun.
Then he exploded.
It was like watching someone carrying a tottering stack of manga phonebooks step on a banana peel. Except man and manga were one and the same; it even made the same thump, thu-thump noise.
"Wretched philistine," Kishibe said in a tone of deep offense. He brushed past Mista, stalked straight into the other room, and bent over the crumpled newsprint-like mass on the ground.
"When you fire a gun in an art gallery, make damn certain you hit your target," he said. "You'll have leisure to regret crossing Kishibe Rohan."
Mista considered pointing out that he and Kishibe had been the target, but thought better of it. He crouched on his heels and waited for the contents of his stomach to settle.
Some time passed. Footsteps stopped within the periphery of his senses. He looked up.
He hadn't seen Gold Experience Requiem since that day in Rome, and had been inclined to view this as a positive. It was manifesting now, draped in a glittering halo around Giorno's torso and merging into him below the knees. The combined effect was that of a particularly improbable piece of rococo statuary. It was holding something between thumb and forefinger, in a delicate, gingery fashion. Giorno's own hands were shoved into his pockets; he looked stern.
Gold Experience tossed the object at Mista. It made a tinking noise as it fell on the tiles in front of him. He looked at it: his bullet, crumpled lengthwise like a stepped-on soda can.
"You shot at the user, I assume," said Giorno. "From another room. But you knew it was a setup."
"I knew it couldn't hurt you," said Mista. "Listen, Kishibe Rohan's right over there, it's crazy but he's the one who actually took the guy out, I just had to-"
"I caught it," said Giorno, "but if I'd been any slower it would have hit my stand. And that would have been a very different outcome for you, wouldn't it?"
"Oh," said Mista. "Well, that."
"It was luck," Giorno said. His voice had gone strange and soft. He reached down, grabbed Mista by the collar of his sweater and shook him gently.
"You're no good to me dead," he said. "Try to remember that."
Mista blinked up at him. In the overhead lighting Giorno's eyes were nearly true blue, eerily so. Not for the first or twentieth time he thought Giorno was really quite beautiful.
"I'm your bodyguard," he said, "this is pretty much the long and short of it. You hired me for this job."
"Did I?" said Giorno. He hadn't let go of Mista's sweater. "I have to make sure you're properly recompensed, then."
Someone coughed. Giorno straightened immediately and turned, releasing Mista. It took Mista's conscious thought processes a good second to catch up. His face felt incandescent.
"Sandro Nocciole," said Kishibe, leaning against the doorframe. He was holding the end of something that at first glance looked like a long dot-matrix printout, and at second glance made one wish one hadn't glanced. "Senior partner goes by Paolo Semifreddo, probably not his real name. They're professionals. Two weeks ago they contracted with a client through a middleman - no name either, but looks to be a skeevy balding fellow in his forties with a mustache, quite thin - fee amounts to nearly a million euros. I hope something in all this rings a bell?"
"Thank you," Giorno said. "That was extremely helpful." He retrieved a handset from his pocket, hit speed dial, and held it to his ear.
"Andrea," he said, "it's me. Your tip was right. They finally made their move today." Pause. "No, I'm fine. One of theirs needs an ambulance, though. ...Two. And have a word with the police; we're on a friend's premises and don't want to make trouble for him. ...Something like that. Yes. Yes, of course. Let me know. The address-"
He wandered off into the next room. Mista stared after him.
"Fascinating, your boss," said Kishibe. "Not at all what you'd expect. I wonder what his backstory is." Mista looked at him in alarm.
"Please don't," he said. "I'd really like to see the end of Pink Dark Boy one day."
"I'll ask Koichi," Kishibe said tartly. "What did you think I meant?"
"Um..."
"It's hardly idle curiosity," said Kishibe. "My art is contingent on research and observation for a sense of verisimilitude, and you never know what the telling detail might be. The rather interesting interpersonal dynamic the two of you have, for instance-"
He glanced at Mista and seemed to take belated pity.
"-Though I doubt it. Weekly Jump is read by children, after all."
[ Part IX. ]
[ Parts I-IV. ]
[ Parts V-VII. ]
VIII.
He asked Giorno for the vacation time that same night. Intrinsically it was nothing that couldn't have waited, but-
Giorno paused and sat up, tucking a stray curl behind his ear. "When?" he asked.
"Ah... the 21st of next month, Boss." Giorno shifted further, and Mista slumped back into the nest of stacked pillows that passed for Giorno's bed. He wasn't winded. He wasn't. The night was young yet, and Guido Mista could outlast Vesuvius if he could only keep Giorno talking for a few minutes. How did Giorno do it? It wasn't human. Wasn't stamina supposed to improve with age?
Actually, if that were the case Mista's current trials would barely constitute the tip of the iceberg.
"The 21st? That's... a Friday, isn't it?"
"I think, yeah? It could be earlier but the show's going to close that weekend. I mean, I figured you wouldn't want me taking off in the middle of the week, so-"
"No, it's fine," said Giorno. He propped his elbows on either side of Mista's ribcage and rested his chin on his hands, for all as if he were thinking and Mista were a sturdy piece of furniture under him. Mista tried gamely not to twitch. "Tell you what - I've been meaning to have a face-to-face with some people in Rome anyway, so make it Thursday and we can take the Spider out for a spin. How about it?"
Mista blinked. "Er... really?"
"You don't want to?"
"No... yes! I just didn't think you'd be interested in Kishibe-sensei's paintings."
"On the contrary," said Giorno, "I'm very interested." He sat up, favoring Mista with a rare smile. It gave a cast of innocence to his features that under the circumstances was entirely inappropriate. "Now... where were we?"
***
The gallery was an unmarked brick façade just off Via Giulia, easily mistaken for the servants' entrance of a former palazzo - it most likely had been, once. Inside the space was sleekly renovated, with high ceilings and narrow doorways determined by the existing architecture. The exhibition occupied an L-shaped hall to the right of the main entrance, and a block of smaller rooms on the floor above.
Saturation was a basic tenet of Kishibe Rohan's colour theory; minimalist décor framed his paintings the way libraries frame klaxons. They were also larger and glossier than reproductions had led Mista to believe. He felt an entirely phantom urge to squint.
"Mista," Giorno said quietly, interrupting his contemplation of volume 21's cover (Gerald Wesley - no longer a boy, now - sprawled suggestively in the trunk of a black vintage sedan, fedora pulled low over his eyes. Silhouettes of palm trees criss-crossed the image, green on improbable orange-pink; the iconic Hollywood sign interrupted the telescoped distance). "In the reception area, beside the stairwell. Is that who I think it is?"
Mista turned, making it casual. "Yeah," he said, after a moment. "Yeah... I think it is."
Kishibe Rohan was holding court at the centre of a gathering crowd. He was taller than Mista had expected, almost stork-like in spats and high-waisted trousers and a mandarin-collared jacket with rows of fastenings down the front. He held a glass of white wine in one long-fingered hand, and the other was shoved carelessly into his pocket. He looked disdainful and conspicuously bored.
"You should go and say hello," Giorno said, a thread of amusement woven into his voice. "Tell him how much you like his manga." Mista noted the pronoun with alarm.
"Um..."
"I'll be upstairs," said Giorno. "Go on." He gave Mista a guiding shove in the small of the back. Mista started to cross the room, then faltered, even as Pavlovian obedience and physical momentum combined to carry him forward.
"Giorno," he said, "maybe-"
But Giorno wasn't behind him. There was a chime; Mista turned in time to catch a glimpse of gold hair - the rich violet-grey of Giorno's sleeve - then the elevator doors closed completely. The needle display moved to indicate the mezzanine.
He turned back and nearly jumped. Kishibe Rohan was looking straight at him, eyes narrowed. Balefully, Mista thought. The crowd around him was three deep and chattering.
Was that a gaggle of Japanese schoolgirls?
Mista sidled toward the stairwell, trying to look as if that were where he was originally headed.
***
The mezzanine was quieter; in fact there were no gallery-goers within sight or hearing. All of them must have flocked to the downstairs action. Mista ambled in the general direction of the elevator, taking in the exhibition as he went. The Pistols darted about in the air, pausing here and there as his (or their) interest shifted.
The artwork on display here were generally older works, some from before Kishibe had hit his creative stride, but striking nonetheless. Tables in the first hallway held reference materials: Kishibe's artbooks, manga magazines, the pamphlet accompanying the exhibition, and the entire set of Pink Dark Boy to date. The Japanese was up to volume 39. Mista picked up and flipped through volume 34 halfheartedly, but the miraculous feat of xenoglossia did not materialize, and he couldn't tell what was going on from the pictures alone. He wondered how well Kishibe Rohan spoke Italian.
Turn a corner: the next room contained more colour artwork, mostly acrylic and ink on posterboard. The room after that was black-and-white manga art. For the first two years of serialization Kishibe had worked in smallish formats. Then something had clicked, and the level of detail and ingenuity in his draftsmanship had exploded. The exhibition notes explained that he never worked with assistants, which seemed ludicrously improbable until Mista got to the room with the video. He watched it loop a few times, openmouthed, but despite his first impression it wasn't on fast forward.
He still hadn't found Giorno. He walked a little faster.
The next room contained the original of one of Mista's favorite colour spreads: Beatrix leaving Kei-Khusru's tomb, in the cavernous bowels of the Palace of Butterflies. The room after that was devoted to artwork from the "Thus Spake Kishibe Rohan" series. Mista went through the door to his left, into an alcove that displayed pages from the first Pink Dark Boy yomikiri. The door on the right-
"Mista," said #1. Mista nodded. He was already getting into position, gun out and in a two-handed grip, back against the wall.
He went through barrel-first, making the sweep, but the room was empty. It - or what he'd been able to glimpse of it - looked the same as it had from the other side of the door: paintings on the walls, a distinct lack of elevator. No flicker, no tingle, no hum. In fact it was too quiet. When he closed his eyes he noticed a muffled quality to his footfalls, as if the air pressure in his ears was wrong.
"Five, Six," he said, "stay close. The rest of you get hold of Giorno."
He was halfway across the floor when the first of them crossed a threshhold, and the unexpected wave of nausea nearly bent him double. Then it happened again. #1 and #3 paused, countermanding orders.
"Mista, what's happening?" #5 shrilled in alarm. Mista shook his head.
"Keep going! It's okay." It was, he knew instinctively: the reaction was plain vertigo. Senses conflicting with each other, the world not moving the way God intended. #2 and #7 weren't in the next room. Where were they?
He'd gone forward, forward, then left, forward, right, left. So either the inside of the building was bigger than the outside, or-
He walked into the next room and stopped. Kishibe Rohan looked over from where he stood, arms crossed and frowning, before tables piled with all-too-familiar artbooks and manga tankoubon. He was alone.
"You," he said, glaring daggers at Mista and his sidearm in turn. "Did you do this?"
Mista opened his mouth. He never found out what words were going to emerge, because Kishibe made an impatient gesture with the fingers of one hand, and suddenly he was looking at Pink Dark Boy. Drawn life-size, in full costume, on nothing in particular. The lines hung impossibly in the air, burning like afterimages on the backs of his eyeballs, and as they sped toward him the spaces in between filled with colour, with shape-
He opened his eyes and saw a flat expanse of white. It was a second before he realized it was the ceiling.
"You should've told me you're a friend of Koichi," Kishibe Rohan said.
"I should have?" said Mista. Then it hit him. He sat up, groaning. His brain felt like someone had drawn a stick figure on all its corners and flipped the pages very fast to watch it move.
"Pink Dark Boy," he said. "You."
"This does not, however, shed any real light on our current situation," said Kishibe.
"Pink Dark Boy is your stand," said Mista. "Why does this make sense."
"It has a name," Kishibe snapped, "it's called Heaven's Door. And if you're not the one doing this, who is?"
Mista considered the question, freeing one hand to rub his temples. The possibilities were unfortunately legion. "You wouldn't've happened to see my boss, would you?" he asked without much hope. "Skinny kid, about one-seventy, blond, purple velv-"
"Giorno Giovanna, I read," said Kishibe. "Secretly the de facto kingpin of-ah. The Families have a custom of employing stand users as assassins?"
"You have no idea," said Mista.
"Fascinating," said Kishibe. "I should remember this. It would make an excellent plot device for my manga."
Mista started to rise to his feet. Kishibe caught hold of the back of his sweater, one-handed, and pulled him down again.
"Sit," he said. "Don't charge around like a bull in a maze, that's what they want you to do. We have to work this through logically. The parts of your stand that aren't here, where are they now?"
Mista stared at him in disbelief. Kishibe quirked an eyebrow.
"It's not me," he said. "One ability per stand, as you're aware. I can incapacitate you and read your innermost self like a book, but that's about it."
"Oh, well, that's all right, then," Mista said, but by Kishibe's expression the sarcasm didn't dent the surface. He sighed.
"...They're close," he said. "Still on this floor. Not all in the same room, though."
"Can you see what they see?" Kishibe had conjured a fountain pen out of nowhere and was drawing on the back of a flattened-out pamphlet.
"Sort of." It was a diagram of the floor, he realized: complete with elevator and stairwell where they ought to have been, and two neat X's in the entrance hall where he and Kishibe currently sat. Eleven rooms, fourteen if you counted hallways; he remembered walking through eight. "One and Two are... are in the room with the video. Three and Seven are where you have that picture of Beatrix in the Palace."
Kishibe made more markings, not at all where Mista would have located them. "All right," he said, "retrace your steps. When you walked through that door-" he pointed to the far end of the hall- "what did you see?"
Mista told him. Kishibe drew abbreviated arrows that went in all directions. At length he held the pamphlet up to the light and frowned at it.
"My own experience corresponds," he said. "Hmm."
The only thing Mista could tell for sure was that none of the doorways led where they were supposed to. "Um..."
"This one," said Kishibe Rohan, tapping the '2' he'd drawn, "make it go through here. And this one goes through here. And this one there. At the same time. You can do this, can't you?"
Mista did it. #7 shot into the room and hovered above his head, squeaking; the other two went pear-shaped. "Urgh," he said, putting his head between his knees in an effort to stop the spinning. The idea of throwing up on Kishibe Rohan seemed ill-advised, though not without a certain appeal.
"Now where are they?" said Kishibe. Mista stabbed at the diagram wordlessly with his finger. Kishibe nodded.
"All right," he said. "The following deductions hold. Primo: the stand controls what lies to either side of a 'door' - an existing 'door'. The rooms themselves haven't moved or changed; neither have the quantity and positioning of the doors. Secundo... why, in your opinion, are you being led around by the nose like this? I leave myself out for the sake of simplicity."
"Delay," Mista said promptly. "To keep me away from Giorno while they... do whatever it is." Kishibe made a gesture of assent.
"A reasonable hypothesis. Secundo, then: the stand is limited to a given area of effect, or you'd've found yourself outside the building with no way of getting in - better yet, you'd've landed halfway to Sicily. Tertio: one cannot 'exit' and 'enter' a given room simultaneously by a single door, or the user would have trapped you that way. Quarto: the value so-to-speak of a door is determinate at any given point in time, not an automatic decision based on who or what is currently passing through, although the user may modify it at will - and quinto, doors must be two-way, or your stand-parts would all have ended up back here. Given which..." He trailed off.
"Yes?" Mista prompted after a few seconds, despite himself. The ostentatious cascade of deductions had a familiar feel; he was abruptly reminded that the solutions as well as the mysteries of Pink Dark Boy were constructed by Kishibe Rohan.
Kishibe clasped his chin, tapping the blunt end of his fountain pen against the paper.
"I can't prove this," he said, "but from the evidence to date I'd say the stand maintains set-connectedness. If one of these rooms is reachable from the others under normal circumstances - and they all are - it should never be completely cut off. The only reason there are rooms we can't reach is that the doors are changing around us as we walk."
He drew a circle around the left side of the diagram.
"In particular, these. The elevator hallway and the rooms directly adjoining it. Three is the smallest subset of rooms required to confine a single person under the stated conditions, incidentally."
"Giorno," said Mista. Frustration collided with anxiety, roiling his stomach. "It makes no sense. How do you even use a stand like this to off someone?"
"You don't," said Kishibe. "Or at least, I wouldn't. I'd isolate the target and have someone else take care of the hatchet work."
"You mean there's two of them," said Mista. Kishibe tilted his head.
"I'm going to go out on a limb here," he said, "based on what I read in your memories. In a one-on-one fight with - an aggressive and highly dangerous stand user, let's assume - what odds would you give your Giorno as we speak?"
Mista opened his mouth. Then he shut it again, feeling suddenly sheepish. Kishibe raised both eyebrows.
"Quite," he said. "Now, how many members of your organization know the extent of his abilities? Apart from those you consider trustworthy?"
"None," Mista said, slowly. "No one knows anything." We didn't leave any of them alive long enough to talk.
"And what about your abilities?"
"Some of them would know," said Mista. "I've done work."
Kishibe nodded again.
"So let's imagine," he said. "You're the user of... 'The Doors'. Against expectations, your target has just eliminated your esteemed colleague, but he hasn't found you yet - and he won't if you can help it. What are your options? You could retreat, of course, unless the stakes forbade you. You could let the people you've trapped walk in circles until they die of hunger and thirst-"
"Giorno wouldn't," said Mista. "Trust me."
"-But you'd have to stay in control of your stand until they did, and now you don't know what the target is capable of. Maybe he can make his own food. Maybe he's complicating your life by making his own doors. You do, however, know what his bodyguard can do: bullets never touch him, and his gun never misses. There is also a bystander on the premises, a mangaka, but for all intents and purposes he's innocuous." Kishibe spread his hands. "What do you do?"
Mista thought it over, and sighed.
"All right," he said. "Figures. You can get him by eye contact, right? You don't have to be within a range of some kind?"
"As long as he's looking," said Kishibe. "He won't come to us, in any case. It would make the ploy too obvious."
"Right," said Mista, getting to his feet. "No use waiting, then."
***
Kishibe followed him out of the entrance hall. They ended up in the room with the colour art, identically to the first time Mista had unknowingly run the gauntlet. There were three doors, counting the one at their back. It was almost normal.
"Too narrow to run through side by side," said Kishibe. "You wouldn't happen to have some sort of cord on you, would you? A handkerchief?"
"Er..."
Kishibe looked pained. "Hold still," he said, and produced something from his pocket that looked more like a silk scarf than a handkerchief. He threaded it through the belt loop at the back of Mista's trousers, tied a knot, and wrapped the free end around his hand.
"This may not work," he said. "He'll be coming for you, not me. If we're split up I probably won't get within range - blind luck at best."
Mista nodded. "Take him when you can," he said. "We have to make him think we're trying to flush him out anyway. Hell, it might work. Fifty-fifty chance the way I see it."
"You'll shoot if you see him?"
"He'll know we're onto him otherwise. I'd like to see how fast he is."
"I can be instantaneous," said Kishibe. He was smiling, thinly. "Certain you can control the bullet?"
"No." Mista checked the clip of his gun. "I trust Giorno not to get hit."
Kishibe gave him both eyebrows at that, but mercifully elected not to pursue the obvious. "On the count of three, then," he said, "and try not to trip."
They ran left, and Mista sent the remaining Pistols right. Immediately it felt like someone had turned the room upside down and was shaking it like a snowglobe, except nothing was actually moving. Mista's stomach churned, and his eyes watered. He gritted his teeth and went left again, Kishibe a half step in his wake.
One second to cross the floor of the video room, and through the door in the facing wall. The Pistols had split twice. Speed mattered more than calculation: The Doors had to reconfigure every time one of them crossed a lintel, and if they all kept at it he was bound to screw up sooner or later. But then, he had to show himself to Mista in any case if either of them were going to end it. Mista prayed it would happen before he threw up. He could feel his double-edged luck, pressing like a hand on his throat. That fraction of a fraction of a second just when the nausea hit and he lost track of the bullet making the jump, could barely tell where he was-
He went right, and suddenly there was the familiar buzzing whine of bullets gone awry as the Pistols knocked them off their path - #1 and #2 were back, instantly, the way they always were if needed. Kishibe made a muffled exclamation, but Mista couldn't spare a glance to check if he was all right. He skidded to a stop in the centre of the room and swept the muzzle of his weapon up and around.
It was the alcove area. Just two doors here, the one they'd entered by and another straight ahead - and a blurred motion in the room beyond as something dived away from Mista's putative line of fire. Mista nearly pulled the trigger, then cursed. His bullets didn't travel in a straight line, but there was no way to make eye contact with someone who'd taken cover around the corner.
He pulled Kishibe behind a pillar. No sound came from the other room; it was perfectly, preternaturally silent.
"You have one shot before this devolves to stalemate or worse," Kishibe said under his breath. "I suggest you leave it to me."
"Hell with that," said Mista. Kishibe still had him by the belt loop. They peered around opposite sides of the pillar; Mista kept his finger on the trigger.
Nothing.
"Hey," Mista called after a few seconds had passed. "We know you're still there!"
Not a peep. Had they overthought this? Maybe The Doors had screwed up, plain and simple, and now he'd escaped elsewhere. In which case Mista should've fired when he had the chance.
"Give it up, asshole! It's over! Know when to fold! Drop your gun and maybe-"
Something dived into the rectangle delinated by the door and rose from a crouch, the black shape of a firearm in its outstretched hands. It looked young, and gangly.
Several things happened at once:
Mista pulled the trigger. Beside him Kishibe moved.
#1 flew straight at the doorway and-
he thought he saw Giorno
The room turned upside down.
-Through.
The knowledge of impact propagated through his body like a shockwave. Kishibe was saying something, but Mista couldn't hear it. Everything had slowed down. He held his breath, waiting for the hole to appear in his heart. He-
something went pop
-Let it out again.
He wasn't dead. He was still staring at The Doors. The other stand user stared back, frozen, but not at him: at Kishibe. He had lowered his gun.
Then he exploded.
It was like watching someone carrying a tottering stack of manga phonebooks step on a banana peel. Except man and manga were one and the same; it even made the same thump, thu-thump noise.
"Wretched philistine," Kishibe said in a tone of deep offense. He brushed past Mista, stalked straight into the other room, and bent over the crumpled newsprint-like mass on the ground.
"When you fire a gun in an art gallery, make damn certain you hit your target," he said. "You'll have leisure to regret crossing Kishibe Rohan."
Mista considered pointing out that he and Kishibe had been the target, but thought better of it. He crouched on his heels and waited for the contents of his stomach to settle.
Some time passed. Footsteps stopped within the periphery of his senses. He looked up.
He hadn't seen Gold Experience Requiem since that day in Rome, and had been inclined to view this as a positive. It was manifesting now, draped in a glittering halo around Giorno's torso and merging into him below the knees. The combined effect was that of a particularly improbable piece of rococo statuary. It was holding something between thumb and forefinger, in a delicate, gingery fashion. Giorno's own hands were shoved into his pockets; he looked stern.
Gold Experience tossed the object at Mista. It made a tinking noise as it fell on the tiles in front of him. He looked at it: his bullet, crumpled lengthwise like a stepped-on soda can.
"You shot at the user, I assume," said Giorno. "From another room. But you knew it was a setup."
"I knew it couldn't hurt you," said Mista. "Listen, Kishibe Rohan's right over there, it's crazy but he's the one who actually took the guy out, I just had to-"
"I caught it," said Giorno, "but if I'd been any slower it would have hit my stand. And that would have been a very different outcome for you, wouldn't it?"
"Oh," said Mista. "Well, that."
"It was luck," Giorno said. His voice had gone strange and soft. He reached down, grabbed Mista by the collar of his sweater and shook him gently.
"You're no good to me dead," he said. "Try to remember that."
Mista blinked up at him. In the overhead lighting Giorno's eyes were nearly true blue, eerily so. Not for the first or twentieth time he thought Giorno was really quite beautiful.
"I'm your bodyguard," he said, "this is pretty much the long and short of it. You hired me for this job."
"Did I?" said Giorno. He hadn't let go of Mista's sweater. "I have to make sure you're properly recompensed, then."
Someone coughed. Giorno straightened immediately and turned, releasing Mista. It took Mista's conscious thought processes a good second to catch up. His face felt incandescent.
"Sandro Nocciole," said Kishibe, leaning against the doorframe. He was holding the end of something that at first glance looked like a long dot-matrix printout, and at second glance made one wish one hadn't glanced. "Senior partner goes by Paolo Semifreddo, probably not his real name. They're professionals. Two weeks ago they contracted with a client through a middleman - no name either, but looks to be a skeevy balding fellow in his forties with a mustache, quite thin - fee amounts to nearly a million euros. I hope something in all this rings a bell?"
"Thank you," Giorno said. "That was extremely helpful." He retrieved a handset from his pocket, hit speed dial, and held it to his ear.
"Andrea," he said, "it's me. Your tip was right. They finally made their move today." Pause. "No, I'm fine. One of theirs needs an ambulance, though. ...Two. And have a word with the police; we're on a friend's premises and don't want to make trouble for him. ...Something like that. Yes. Yes, of course. Let me know. The address-"
He wandered off into the next room. Mista stared after him.
"Fascinating, your boss," said Kishibe. "Not at all what you'd expect. I wonder what his backstory is." Mista looked at him in alarm.
"Please don't," he said. "I'd really like to see the end of Pink Dark Boy one day."
"I'll ask Koichi," Kishibe said tartly. "What did you think I meant?"
"Um..."
"It's hardly idle curiosity," said Kishibe. "My art is contingent on research and observation for a sense of verisimilitude, and you never know what the telling detail might be. The rather interesting interpersonal dynamic the two of you have, for instance-"
He glanced at Mista and seemed to take belated pity.
"-Though I doubt it. Weekly Jump is read by children, after all."
[ Part IX. ]