Melone snapped the metal ball on the Newton's Cradle sitting on Dr. Florence's desk and watched it agitate the other balls. It began it's clicking routine as Melone breathed in the pink haze of the room. He relaxed as he exhaled.
"This should be a drug."
"It stimulates the production of Oxytocin and Serotonin in the brain. It's basically an antidepressant. It relieves anxiety and increases trust." She sat across the room in an armchair with her notebook in her lap. He noticed that Dr. Florence had been wearing heels last week and this week she was wearing Ugg boots. Aptly named because they were ugg-ly. He wondered if she wore them after his confession last week.
"Hm, sounds like something Ghiaccio could use," He mused as he grabbed both steel balls on the ends and lowered them back carefully to rest.
"Your partner, yes. We talked about not touching last week. How has that been going?" She inquired.
"I didn't touch him at all." Melone swelled at his accomplishment. Well, technically he had touched him two nights ago...but that was practically nothing to Melone.
"And?"
"Well, he definitely noticed. We actually had a talk about it."
"And how did that go?" She tapped her pen on the arm of the chair.
"He said it was okay for me to touch him. But I don't know..." Melone trailed off.
"What?"
"But then why does he yell at me all the time? I told him to tell me from now on when I'm making him uncomfortable. And he was like 'isn't it obvious?' I literally can't tell. I thought everything was fine. I never knew I was bothering anyone." He was getting worked up and his anxiety was increasing.
"Okay, so you're not very good at reading social cues. That's something we can work on," She spoke calmly. He noticed that the fog was getting thicker, she must have noticed his unease. He took a deep breath and felt reassured. He wished this woman would follow him everywhere. Or at least her stand.
"He also keeps contradicting himself. He tells me I'm gross, and then when I say I am, he tells me I'm not. And then tells me I am again later! Then I tried to point out that he's flip flopping and he just told me to shut up. I don't know what to make of it."
"Sounds like maybe he's not sure how he feels," She said and Melone huffed. "Maybe just give him some space and see if he doesn't start figuring things out."
"I guess, I mean I still have to work with him though."
"Have you tried using your stand on a man like we talked about?" She changed the subject.
"I haven't been sent on a mission yet, but I will." Melone fidgeted with the steel balls on the desk again. He pulled one and began the monotonous clicking. His mind came back to the same thought again, the one that kept him up the night he fought with Ghiaccio. "Can we...revisit something from last week?"
"Sure. What would you like to talk about?" She asked. Melone chewed on his lip as he thought about what he was about to ask. He was afraid of the answer and what it might mean.
"So...you said anything unwanted can be sexual abuse, right? Does that include women?" Melone didn't make eye contact.
"Are you asking if women can commit sexual abuse?" She crossed her leg but Melone tried not to look at her feet.
"Yeah." He swallowed dryly.
"Of course," she said without hesitation. "Abusers can be women just as much as men. It's statistically lower, but that might also be due to men not reporting such abuse because of feelings of shame or the thought that they can't be abused by a woman. That comes from a very dangerous ideology of men in our society, called toxic masculinity. It's a set of standards that often men feel required to adhere to, often being mentally detrimental to young men."
"Like every guy has to be big and tough?" Melone asked.
"Exactly. Showing weakness of any kind: crying, being emotional, that sort of thing. So when a man is abused, he is less likely to report it because it makes him feel like he looks weak in the eyes of his peers." Melone picked at a loose thread on his glove; he would need a new pair soon. There was a faint stain of blood on this pair from his last mission.
"Melone. You don't have to answer my question if you don't want to, but I need to ask, did a woman give you unwanted sexual attention at some point?" Melone took a deep breath trying to inhale as much of the fog as he could. He knew his inquiry would lead to this and yet still he hesitated. He knew he should tell her, but he felt so many emotions run through him whenever he thought about it. It was better to just block it out.
"Melone? Would you prefer not to talk about it?"
"My sister," he finally said. He gripped the edges of the desk he was leaning against. He'd never spoken about this before and he wasn't sure what to do now that he was at this point.
"Okay. Do you feel comfortable discussing your sister?"
"I don't know," he said.
"It's okay. We have plenty of sessions to talk about it if you don't want to right now." He had never considered this abuse before but after Ghiaccio had said those things to him in the car last week, he'd been rethinking a lot of this. There was no penetration, so in his mind, it wasn't.... Her next words interrupted his thoughts.
"Melone. Did you know that stands can change over time?"
"They can?"
"Stands are an extension of your soul. Being a psychologist and a stand user myself, I have done a lot of study into this subject. A person's soul or essence is purely what makes you who you are. So if you follow a set of philosophies in your life, that can come through in your stand. I have always had a caring nature and wanted to make people feel at ease; that is reflected in my stand's ability.
"Training can make a stand stronger. This is possible not just by using the ability over and over like lifting weights. It's also through discipline of your mental capacities. Many people's stands don't change much because they are not aware of this, or refuse to change. The old joke of being 'set in your ways?' Well, it's true. You won't change if you aren't willing to. Change comes from a conscious mental decision. If you tell yourself something long enough, you'll believe it. Like that it's not abuse if it isn't penetration. We feed ourselves lies all the time. We tell ourselves what we want to hear, what we think is safe. The mind and soul are wondrously complicated mechanisms that we still don't fully understand."
"So you're saying I can change?" He looked up at her.
"That's all dependent on you, Melone." She held his gaze and her eyes felt safe, motherly.
"So how do we do it?" Melone wanted more than anything to make things right between him and his team, especially Ghiaccio.
"Well, that may take time. Unraveling the human psyche is a process. Think of it like this: you might be sick with a disease and as much as you treat the symptoms, the disease doesn't go away. It takes doctors doing tests to find the cause of the illness. Only then can you treat it at the source."
"Okay, well, Ghiaccio did say I was sick." He tried to chuckle.
"I don't think you're sick, Melone," she said in earnest.
"Really?" He looked up to stare into her pink eyes.
"Really, I don't. I think you're definitely troubled and need some help figuring things out." Dr. Florence put her notebook aside. "Which is something everyone needs, honestly. Therapy isn't just for people who are 'sick' but for anyone that is dealing with stress in unhealthy ways. I, myself, am guilty of this and actually see a specialist when my work gets to me."
"The therapist sees a therapist?" Melone chuckled.
"Of course. Like I said, everyone goes through tough things that they need to talk out. Including me." She sat back in the chair and gestured as she spoke. "I could probably see every member of your team and find something that they need to discuss."
"Oh shit, do they," Melone chuckled. Melone had never thought about things like this before. He'd always thought therapy was for people that were fucked up or broken. He didn't realize that even normal people needed it too. He felt more at ease realizing that he wasn't being singled out anymore as a strange case, but merely one of many normal people just talking through shit.
Melone looked at the nameplate on the desk: Dr. Isabella Florence. He'd been spilling his problems to this woman he hardly knew. He wanted to know something more about the woman he saw every Friday. How else can I tell her what no one else knows? Her stand only goes so far.
"Can I call you, Isabella?" Melone asked.
"If that would make you more comfortable, sure, I don't mind."
"What's your sign?"
"Huh?"
"Do you follow Astrology?"
"Not particularly."
"Humor me. What's your birthday? I don't need the year."
"March 15th."
"Ah, Pisces. Compassionate, easy-going, highly tuned into others' feelings. Yet, can be overly trusting, and fearful. Often are the victim or martyr type. Most compatible with Taurus, Cancer, Scorpio and Capricorn." Melone listed off everything he could remember.
"I mean, that can apply to many people. People see what they want to see in each sign. It's how fortune tellers have a business," said Isabella sceptically.
"Perhaps, and yet, it works marvelously for my stand," Melone chuckled. "Making a truly monstrous homunculus can be made by pairing two incompatible people."
"What does it make if they are compatible?" Isabella asked. Melone cocked his head, he'd never tried that either.
"I don't know."
"I'm surprised you don't experiment more with your stand. Powerful users know their limitations and can use that to play to their advantage. I would think that would be very important to know in your line of work." Melone thought about how many times Ghiaccio had used his weakness, his air hole, to his advantage. However, Ghiaccio's stand was more powerful than his; it could face direct combat. If Melone didn't have a homunculus prepared, he was defenseless. Perhaps Babyface could do some sort of basic attack in close quarters, but again, he'd never tried because Melone was always removed from the danger and observing at a distance.
"I hadn't thought of that."
"See? Maybe your coworkers could benefit from seeing me too. Not that I'm trying to make the mafia anymore powerful here," she giggled. They concluded their meeting shortly after that without addressing anything else. He didn't tell her, but he knew she was right. There were more sessions to work through it.
He drove home on his motorcycle with his mind racing. Isabella had filled his mind with ideas that he'd never considered, things he didn't even know were possible. Not a lot of people he knew had their stands change at all. Most of them hadn't had it long enough. Very few were born with stands, many developed late in life as the mind matured. He and the rest of his crew had been stabbed with the arrow and developed stands. He didn't know that stands could change with time and grow.
Melone barely stopped as Illuso and Pesci greeted him; he went straight up to his room and locked the door. He rifled through his closet to find a box he'd saved from a previous battle. A user had attacked the base, one that had the ability to control others using their blood. Their blood was infected with the stand on a molecular level, much like Risotto's stand was inside his blood. There was much mistrust in the house after that until Melone took blood samples from everyone. Even upon death, some stand users had residual effects and everyone was paranoid that they could still be controlled and not know it. Everyone turned out clean, but now Melone had vials of each squad member's blood. He pulled out Ghiaccio's vial and looked at it carefully.
Ghiaccio's an Aries, that's a perfect match for Leo. He was interested in seeing if he could use his ability on a man, but he certainly didn't want to kill Ghiaccio. But I can't kill myself as the stand user?....At worst, nothing would happen. If it turned out the stand would try to cannibalize him, he would just cease. Like Isabella said, it's good to know your limitations.
He took a sample from the bottle and put it inside Babyface's sensor. He easily entered the information since he would be filling the mother role. Healthy, Leo, B blood type, reverse cowgirl. That was all the information he needed. He submitted it and it began calibrating. Moment of truth. He watched the information process on a loading screen for several minutes.
A green check appeared on the screen.
"Di molto!" He didn't think that was really going to work. He watched while the embryo formed. What would he do with it? He didn't need it for battle, it wouldn't be very helpful seeing as it would only be able to track Ghiaccio and not a target. He imagined it would be powerful regardless. Anyways, it was just an experiment.
The process finished and his heart raced. This was the part he was uncertain about, junior would latch onto him and grow while feeding off him. Once it was grown, then it would completely consume the mother. Junior shouldn't be able to do that since he was the stand user. A small blue junior with purple eyes sat in front of him on the bed. It had little cones on its head that reminded him of Ghiaccio's White Album. It had little pink swirls on its body. It looked cute, much less intimidating than past juniors. It crawled up to his neck and peeked out from behind. He pulled his pictures out to start teaching.
"This is your father. He's very angry and you should probably avoid being seen by him." He proceeded to show pictures of the rest of La Squadra so he knew who not to attack. He got out his animal book and showed him what it meant to kill as he always did. He had this speech memorized. He didn't give it any targets since the one that it would be targeting was Ghiaccio and there was no need for that. He spent the next two hours showing it things, way longer than he had ever spent on a junior before. By now, it would have absorbed the mother and grown to its adult form, but it was taking longer than usual now. He didn't feel any different, just a little tired. He decided to go to sleep early. Junior cuddled up in his neck and slept too.