Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

"Emporio...My name is Emporio!" he sobbed, using her sweater to shield himself as the rain relentlessly pummeled the Earth.

"It seems as if you have been through a lot," said Irene. "How about you come with us? We're going to Cape Canaveral. I hate seeing kids like you suffer."

Knowing it was better than being alone, Emporio accepted and got into the back seat of the car with Irene. Somehow, he knew that Jolyne was deep in there somewhere. He had seen the Joestar Birthmark on the nape of her neck when she gave him her sweater. It was much more than just a birthmark, the result of a force even more powerful than Made in Heaven.

As the car accelerated down the road, he almost cried himself to sleep until he heard Irene call out, "Hey, look! A hitchhiker!"

Her boyfriend, Anakiss, replied, "I'm not picking up another one…two strangers in the car is enough."

"You're the one who said that a storm was coming!"

"Stop the car, poor guy!" cried the hitchhiker, who, as Emporio noticed, looked suspiciously like ANOTHER of his acquaintances: the amnesiac prisoner known as Weather Report.

Anakiss reluctantly removed his foot from the gas pedal and placed it on the brakes, bringing the vehicle to an abrupt stop. "Ugh...fine, as long as he's okay with where we're going."

Emporio had yet to make sense of whatever cosmic shenanigans had just transpired. Everything that happened after he avenged his friends and his mother was a total mystery to him. All he knew for sure was that he was in a car with people who looked like his friends.

Anakiss rolled down the window as the horn-hatted nomad approached. "Hey, we're going to Cape Canaveral, if that's okay with you," he said to the man.

"Sure. I don't really care where I am going..." he replied, promptly getting in the front seat of the car and shutting the door.

"I must say," exclaimed the man as they drove off, "I did not expect you to even want to stop for me. Everyone in Florida only cares about themselves and their beach parties, but from what I can tell so far, you guys are a notable exception."

"Yeah, just don't wanna feel guilty..." Anakiss sighed with a forced smile, his hands firmly on the steering wheel.

Meanwhile, Irene felt a strange feeling that she had seen these people before, even though she had never met them before in her life, or at least, not in this life.

Suddenly, memories came flooding back to her. They were driving to Cape Canaveral, much like the present, but the most recent person to get in the car wasn't there, and the boy was at the wheel. She was giving him what appeared to be a DVD for him to look after. Come to think of it, she had experienced something similar back when she heard his name; it was her sacrificing her own life to protect him. And when the other girl came back with the jerry can back at the gas station, she remembered talking with her on a bus heading to some kind of prison--maybe Green Dolphin Street Prison just across the waters. It was almost as if everyone in the car at that moment had been friends--or at least, acquaintances--in a past life.

Irene's father, a marine biologist, taught her that it was okay for her to ask questions, even if people thought that she was completely delusional. Following this advice, she asked the traveller riding shotgun the obvious question.

"Do I know you from somewhere?"

The man turned his head to face her. "I think I should be asking you that question right now."

And that is when she knew that nobody in the car was a stranger in the slightest. Before she could question her sanity, she remembered that her father had told her stories about a trip to Egypt that he had gone on before she was born. During that journey, all sorts of things happened to him, such as his being turned into a child, gambling with souls, a pedophilic orangutan as the captain of a freighter, and the list went on. From listening to these stories, she came to the conclusion that literally anything was possible, and that of the things that had actually happened, "emerging memories of another life" was just checked off the list. She was now ready to, with all her trust, reveal her and her boyfriend's true identities.

"Okay then, I guess I can trust you, since I have been having memories of you, and you, and you, so I am just going to tell you the truth." She paused for dramatic effect. "Our names are not Irene and Anakiss, those are just pseudonyms used to hide our identities in public."

She took one more breath before the grand revelation: "My name is Jolyne Cujoh, daughter of Jotaro Kujo, and my boyfriend's name is Narciso Anasui."

Emporio's tears dried up. Something was telling him: he had won.

Chapter Text

Emporio was not too shocked to learn that his friends' identities had not changed one bit. He knew that there was no reason for their actual identities to change. The only thing that had changed was Pucci's existence. What he was confused about was the reason that they used these pseudonyms in the first place. Pucci never existed and DIO was dead. Who could possibly want to hurt them? Nobody, but he figured that they had to be cautious nonetheless.

Jolyne couldn't help but feel relieved after revealing her and Anasui's identities. She was having feelings she hadn't felt since she met Anasui: love, compassion, and trust. For the first time in, say, a year, she had met people that she, for some bizarre reason, could trust with her life.

Jolyne's father, Jotaro, told her about this thing called "Stand Energy," which attracted Stand users toward each other. Personally, she called this effect "Gravity". She'd had a Stand since she was a baby, and learned to control it when she was thirteen. She decided to name it "Stone Free," because its ability was to unravel her entire body into string, like a stone coming free from its hard and dense form. Anyway, she figured that because she met these people, they, like her boyfriend, also had Stands. Even if Jotaro told her that she needed to be careful around other Stand users, these strange memories were telling her otherwise.

"Sorry about the confusion, but I felt a certain energy coming from everyone, and I couldn't be too careful," she explained. "Long ago, my father went to Egypt, and he stopped at a B&B in Pakistan. This old woman was running it, and he felt suspicious of her, so he wrote his name in the guestbook as 'Qtaro'. Then it turned out that she WAS an enemy Stand user. It's strange, I know, but then again, so is everything in my life."

"Cool," said Weather. "By the way, my name is Domenico Pucci, nice to meet you."

Pucci…, thought Jolyne, Where have I heard that name before?

And then, she remembered: Pucci was the last name of Marco Pucci, an expert on Stands who had served as a high-ranking man in DIO's hierarchy of trust. After DIO was killed, Pucci revealed himself to her father as a victim of DIO's charismatic swindling and offered his help taking out the other DIO-allied Stand users that were still around.

"Your brother is…Marco, right?"

"Why, yes!" he replied. "We get along great, and one time, he even saved me from a major embarrassment. You wouldn't believe it even if I told you."

"What kind of embarrassment?" she asked with curiosity and a voice that signaled a feeling of "I've seen everything."

"Well," said Weather, "let's just say if I were to keep at it, people would think that I was from Alabama, not Florida, even though this state is almost just as messed up as Alabama, if not more."

"Let me guess, 'Skywalker Empire Syndrome?'" Jolyne guessed, referring to that one scene in Empire Strikes Back where Leia kissed Luke. The insinuation was strong with these two.

Weather dropped his jaw at her guess. "Umm…sure, if you want to put it that way," he replied. "Some crazy lady switched me out at birth with her stillborn baby, who was named Wes Bluemarine. Later, I met my sister Perla, and we…started dating."

Everyone in the car, even Anasui, was speechless.

"Come on, it's not like we knocked each other up or anything," he continued. "Marco told us the truth before things got bad."

Around this time, everyone just laughed. Everyone except Emporio, who was thinking, "I guess he did his research this time." Eventually, even he let out a little chuckle. A nervous chuckle, but a chuckle nonetheless.

"What about you, Little-Miss-Bus-Hater? How did you get here?" Jolyne asked, turning her head to Hermes.

"Well, It's Costello, Hermes Costello, thank you very much," she said in a snarky tone. "I guess I'm a bit of a wanderer, even though my sister thinks that I've been selling myself out, but I love her anyways."

Jolyne was itching to tell Hermes one of the fake memories that she was having. "Okay, so apparently, I have been having these memories just now of you, who I have never met before, telling me that your sister was dead. Maybe after that, we became sisters to each other."

"No, my sister is very much alive and well, thank you very much."

Jolyne changed the subject. "By the way, by Cape Canaveral, you meant Kennedy Space Center, right?"

"I guess so," said Hermes. "If we're going to spend time together, why not make it special?"

Meanwhile, in Weather's head, Today's Weather Report, from me, Domenico 'Weather' Pucci. The lesbian tension has built dramatically, and even though one of them is definitely straight and even engaged, I might start having impure thoughts about sweet…okay, I think that's enough. It is raining with a very slight chance of poison dart frogs, and that is all you need to know.

CURRENT LOCATION: FORT PIERCE, FLORIDA

DESTINATION: KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, CAPE CANAVERAL, FLORIDA

ETA: ONE HOUR AND THIRTY-TWO MINUTES

Chapter Text

About two hours after they had left Port St. Lucie, the party of five arrived at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor's Complex. For the next four hours, they went on all sorts of tours, visited all sorts of attractions, and enlightened themselves on the subject of mankind's journey to the stars.

Unbeknownst to the rest of them, Emporio was having violent flashbacks the whole time. Gravity changed, hearts turned inside out, Pucci achieved heaven, and finally, all his friends died. On the bright side, they were still with him even as he was having these flashbacks. Even if they had all lost their memories of him and everything that happened, they were making new ones right then and there, and from what he could tell, they were even getting the old ones back.

Before too long, Jolyne noticed a connection between Emporio's calming down and the end of the rainstorm. In cases like this, she went by a rule of thumb passed down from her father: if something is strange, it is probably the work of a Stand user. She already knew for sure that Emporio was a Stand user, but she waited to pop the question, because for all she knew, he didn’t even know what a Stand was.

That evening, the group left the Visitors Complex. They were all exhausted, as anyone would be from spending almost the entire day at an amusement park in Central Florida. As such, Jolyne thought that it would be logical for them to spend the night at a hotel. The only question now was, Where?

Obviously, a place on the way to her own would suit them best. She also wanted one that was of a reasonable quality (i.e. not a Motel, certainly not a Motel 6, or, God forbid, a Red Roof Inn). Finally, she and Anasui wanted a room to themselves. This meant that Domenico and Hermes would have to look after a visibly shaken Emporio. For a split second, she considered a suite, but there were two points against that idea: one, they were expensive, and two, they could simply have separate, yet adjacent rooms. She pulled out her new, state-of-the-art iPhone 4S and searched for hotels in the area.

In the vicinity of Kennedy Space Center, she found a Fairfield Inn and Suites in Titusville. It had pretty good reviews and suited her specifications. Despite being one of the two in charge, she did not want to make these decisions unilaterally, so she asked Anasui for approval.

"Hey Annie," she turned her head toward the driver's seat, "I was thinking of staying at a hotel in Titusville for the night. How does the Fairfield Inn sound?"

Anasui thought about it for a moment, and then responded, "Anywhere we can have a room to ourselves sounds good to me." The idea made him smile.

It would not surprise anyone to learn that Narciso Anasui was obsessed with his girlfriend. The two had known each other since junior year in high school, when they had strange flashbacks of things that never happened while walking in the hallway. They noticed that they had the same memories, at the same time, and in the same place. They knew, for some strange reason, that they knew each other without even meeting once prior. And since then, they were deeply in love with one another. Only Emporio knew of the chemistry that they had before, not to imply that they had less after Pucci was undone. If anything, they had more now, since they had been together for longer. It also helped that Anasui wasn't a complete SIMP.

After parking at the hotel, Anasui stretched his legs and yawned in relief, "Well, here we are." A long day of driving was finally over.

"And just in time for a good meal," Domenico chimed in, shutting his door. "I have been starving ever since we were at Cape Canaveral. As for the rain that I was in when you picked me up, I could have dealt with that myself. I was planning on hitching a ride anyways, but I just didn't care much at that point. More on that 'dealt with that myself' part later."

This was a signal to Emporio that at least one of them had kept their Stand, even when the universe did...something.

Jolyne took charge of the conversation as the group walked across the parking lot. "Okay, I think I have decided who should be in what room: Anasui and I will be in the same room, but that should have been obvious. Domenico, Hermes, and Emporio: you three are staying in the room next door. Two things: One, Domenico and Hermes, don't get any funny ideas with each other just because you’re in the same room; and two, it seems as if Emporio has been through a lot lately, so try to be easy on him."

"I have two things of my own," said Domenico. "One, we won't get any ideas with each other. We barely know each other, and she seems pretty rough. Second, I would kind of like it if you called me Weather. It feels like a pretty good nickname for me from people who I know kind of well. I know that we literally just met, but then again, these bizarre memories of everyone keep coming back to us, and I think that we might be even closer than anything any of us would have anticipated."

Jolyne was barely confused by what Weather was saying, so all she said was, "Okay, Weather. Just come with us, and we'll check in. This place seems pretty nice, so we shouldn't have too much trouble sleeping."

Emporio was feeling very happy that his friends were alive again, and not only that, but without the memories of the painful lives that they once had. The one downside was already going away. He already felt cooler; the warm Floridian night had subsided on him as the group entered the air-conditioned lobby of the hotel and walked toward the front desk.

"Good evening and welcome to the Fairfield Inn and Suites, how may I help you tonight?" said the receptionist as Jolyne and company approached.

Jolyne was not too sure how it would go, since she had literally just booked the room, and they might not be too recognizable.

"Yes, I'm booked here for one night, under…" After this point, she lowered her voice to a whisper, as her father was somewhat well-known in the field of Marine Biology. "...I'm booked under Cujoh. It could be under C or K. You will know it when you see it."

The receptionist clicked her mouse a couple of times. "Cujoh, party of five, two rooms, one king, one double queen with pull-out sofa?"

"Umm…yeah." Jolyne finally realized how ridiculous her request was as she slapped down her credit card onto the counter.

After Jolyne received the card key, the group made their way to the elevator. Once they got in, Jolyne pressed the button marked "2." As the doors closed, everyone else exchanged glances with each other.

"So, I think we should get pizza from somewhere nearby," said Hermes, breaking the silence. She really wanted to show off a trick that she had known since childhood.

Anasui closed his eyes and exhaled in disappointment. He was being asked to drive again. "Fine, but we're getting takeout and I am not driving."

"I'll get it. I have a special way of getting places fast," said Weather. "It involves something that you may or may not know about."

"Well, you seem like you know a lot about this weird stuff, so you go right ahead," Jolyne smirked. Her hunch, while tangential at best, was a potent one. She just didn't want to divulge too much.

When they stepped into their rooms, they were greeted with a pleasant nostalgia the likes of which they couldn't really comprehend. A set of wooden doors separated Jolyne and Anasui's room from everyone else's room.

Jolyne went ahead and asked the rest what toppings they wanted on the pizza. They all said that they wanted plain, although Emporio said that he wanted chocolate milk with the order. After getting off the phone with the pizza place down the road, Jolyne said that the order would take ten minutes.

About seven minutes later, Weather got up from the bed and said that he was going to get the pizza.

"I am going to be using a rather unusual method of transport to go pick it up," he said. "It shouldn't be too noticeable; people are used to weird shit happening in Florida. Anyway, I'll see you in about four minutes."

Weather headed out the door and rushed down the stairs, because the elevator was too slow for his liking. Once he was out from under the awning, an unnaturally strong wind encircled him. Soon enough, he was levitating. The wind had lifted him off the ground as though he were flying. In all practicality, he was.

Unbeknownst to him, Emporio was looking out the window, and was now absolutely certain that at least one of his friends had kept their Stand, as he saw Weather’s Stand right beside him.

Four minutes later, Weather came back with the pizza, still as warm as it was when it came out of the oven. Jolyne and Anasui decided to go to everyone else's room for dinner.

"Well, there are eight slices and five of us," said Hermes. "No need to panic, I have a plan."

Hermes took only one slice of pizza from the box but declared that she would have two. She then proceeded to place a pink sticker that came out of her hand onto the bottom of the slice, which appeared to expand and split into two as if by mitosis. She then did the same with the copy before giving the original to Emporio.

Emporio was now very sure that just about everyone had kept their Stands. If Hermes still had KISS, which she awakened in the prison before Pucci was erased, he could only assume that Anasui still had Diver Down and Jolyne still had Stone Free.

Four out of the five people in that room already knew what a Stand was and how one worked. Weather had his brother tell him about them. Jolyne had her father tell her about Stands and even trained her to use Stone Free. Jolyne then met Anasui and told him about Stands, at which point Anasui decided to name his stand Diver Down. Emporio appeared to have two stands, Burning Down the House and Weather Report.

Hermes, however, grew up in the slums with her sister, Gloria, who ran a restaurant there. She was the closest any of them were to a normal person, as she had no idea what a Stand was. However, she did have KISS ever since she was born, and she had even evolved it throughout her life. Originally, when one of KISS's stickers were destroyed or removed, the objects would always re-fuse with each other, causing damage. Hermes had evolved her stand so that she could choose how the stickers worked. Now, she could make a permanent sticker, or one that causes no damage when the two objects come back together. She called this new evolution "KISS Act II".

It was now inevitable that one of them would say the words, and that person just so happened to be Emporio. "Correct me if I am wrong, which I know I am not, but that is your Stand ability."

Everyone except Hermes was silent. Jolyne thought that she would be the first to bring up the fact that probably everyone had Stands. Anasui knew about Stands from Jolyne, and Weather was educated thoroughly on Stands and even trained to use his Stand by his brother. They had simply assumed that Emporio knew nothing about Stands, just that he had a strange ability that allowed him to control the weather.

Hermes was confused, not shocked. "What's all the fuss about?" she asked, not knowing what they meant by "Stand".

After a few seconds of Jolyne and Anasui whispering to each other, which, to Weather, sounded like they were discussing whether they should get it on that night or not, Jolyne decided to explain to Hermes what a Stand was.

"Okay, Hermes, your ability is what is known as a Stand. It is the physical manifestation of your fighting spirit and it has a specific special ability and/or skill set. In your case, placing stickers on objects to duplicate them. Only Stand users can see other stands (except for when they can't), only Stands can hurt other Stands (except for when they can't), and any damage that a Stand takes is reflected onto the user (except for when it isn't)."

Hermes, despite gaining a little bit of knowledge on this subject, took it with an "okay." She had had the ability her entire life, but now, she did have questions. 

"I assume that all of you have these 'Stands' as well? What can they do?"

Weather, ready to open himself to more people, first responded to the question by smiling. "My Stand's name is Weather Report. Its ability is to control the weather. That's my secret to how I got to the pizzeria so fast. I manipulated the winds around me to help myself fly about half a mile east of here and back. To keep the pizza warm, I manipulated the temperature inside the box to an optimal level." He felt so happy to be among Stand users other than his brother. To clarify, he never hated his brother, but he was the only other Stand user that he had truly known for all his life.

"That could be very powerful," said Anasui. "Now, to demonstrate the abilities of our Stands, I want someone to try to punch my Jolyne and see what happens."

Hermes was not one to back down as she said, "Okay, that should give me a chance to further demonstrate the powers of KISS Act II!"

Act II? Emporio thought to himself. He knew nothing of Stand evolution other than what Pucci had done before the universe was overwritten, erasing his very essence.

Hermes placed a sticker on each of her shoulders, causing each of her arms to double themselves. It is worth noting that she now looked like a Hindu deity. Holding back, she threw a quick punch at Jolyne's heart, only for Jolyne's chest to become a hole, as if it were made of string. KISS's fist having only hit one string, Hermes was suddenly sent flying backwards across the room, but not breaking anything, although her back did end up hitting the door with a reasonable amount of force.

"Obviously," said Anasui, "we are all holding back because we have no reason to fight at all other than to demonstrate our abilities. But if we did have any reason to want each other dead, I would have used my Stand, Diver Down, to phase inside of you – it sounds dirty, I know – and reassemble your anatomy, or, in a defensive situation, absorb damage in the form of kinetic energy to be released later. In this instance, I sent Diver Down into Jolyne so that any damage that she sustained would be transferred back to you."

As Anasui was explaining his Stand's abilities, Weather sat on the bed taking notes as if he wished to give them to his brother for examination.

"As for my lovely fiancée's ability," Anasui continued, to which Jolyne smiled, "She will tell you about it herself."

Summoning her Stand, Jolyne elaborated on its ability. "This is my Stand, Stone Free. Its ability is that it allows me to unravel my entire body into string. I can use this to wrap myself around things, swing from objects like Spider-Man, et cetera. It's quite a versatile Stand. It can also beat you up, as can just about every humanoid Stand, but since we’re all friends, none of us will be doing that here."

"Well," said Weather. "That pretty much shows that around eighty percent of us are not…normal. I wonder if the kid can even see this."

Jolyne had no doubt in her mind that Emporio had a Stand as well. "I'm pretty sure he can. It seems as if when he started crying, it started to rain. Emporio, what is your Stand, and how does it work?"

Emporio knew that everything he said would surpass even their wildest imaginations, so he decided to break it to them gradually. 

"Okay," he said, with a nervous tone in his voice. "The truth is that I have two stands, at the moment, that is." As he said this, he began to tear up. 

"My first Stand," he sniffled, "is called Burning Down the House, and its ability is to interact with g-ghost objects, that is, an object which has been previously destroyed. How it works is a little complicated, but it involves cracks in the wall and...stuff."

If one were standing outside the hotel at this moment, they would feel a light drizzle. Emporio noticed this, and he calmed down, seemingly stopping the drizzle before revealing his "other" Stand.

"Also, my second Stand, for the moment, at least, is just the same as Weather," he said, wiping the tears from his face. "I have the same Stand as you because I put a version of it from a different timeline inside my head in the form of a disc which was created by a Stand known as Whitesnake, and that Stand's ability is to–"

"Wait!" exclaimed Weather, sharply, but not loudly. "My brother has a Stand named Whitesnake, and its ability is to…Oh my God. Either you somehow have a third Stand which allows you to copy other stands, or…you have come from an alternate universe!"

Jolyne then raised an interesting point: "If it was an alternate universe entirely, then why are we occasionally getting flashbacks to things that never happened? He must be from an alternate timeline, not an alternate universe. There is a distinct difference between the two: Each universe has different souls, and you can’t travel between universes unless you have a very specific type of Stand. Theoretically, there are only two in any given timeline that can do such a thing; I hear my dad talking about that all the time. Timelines, on the other hand, have the same souls, but different events."

Emporio's matured, yet still very juvenile mind could not handle all of this. Eventually, his eyes crossed, and he gave up trying to understand any of this for the night. He figured that he should just have his chocolate milk and go to sleep.

"Weather," he asked, "could you get me my milk?"

"Sure thing," said Weather, "By the way, how long have you been craving chocolate milk?"

"Since just before I met you guys."

"Have you been having headaches, dizziness, or loss of balance?"

"Sure?" Emporio replied, feeling like he was doing a study for side effects of a new drug.

"Agitation, depression?"

"Definitely depression."

"It’s this universe, different timeline," Weather deduced, clearly thinking himself one of the wiser people in the room. "These are all side effects of a temporal fracture, probably because someone was erased from existence. Whoever they were, they must have had a big impact on our lives."

"They did," said the boy, "and not in a good way. I know exactly who it is, but I think we should talk about that over breakfast tomorrow. I am aching for some rest right now. It's literally been years since I got actual sleep."

"Okay, then. If that's so, we're gonna head back to our room, which is just on the other side of this door," said Anasui.

"Anasui and I have been talking about it, and we think it's best if we, you know, had a good old night of intimacy, so as the old saying goes, if our room’s a-rockin', don't come a-knockin'," added Jolyne, desperate to get it on.

I knew it, thought Weather.

After Weather said goodnight, the two went behind the door connecting the rooms.

If you, the reader, have not noticed already, Domenico Pucci loved thinking about other people having sex. This began as a...coping mechanism for when he almost engaged in coitus with his own sister, Perla. Because the first time he even tried having sex was always associated with incest from then afterwards, he felt like he needed to imagine everyone who looked attractive and even liked each other in the slightest engaging in intercourse. Afterwards, it became a bit of a habit for him to just think about the whole experience. The only reason that Marco didn't take out his memory disc, edit out the memory of him almost banging his sister, and put it back in is because he simply didn't tell him yet. Why not? Because the thought simply never occurred to him.

As Emporio and Hermes started settling in for the night, Weather put his ear up against the wall and said to himself, "Dirty talk begins in 3, 2, 1…"

On the other side of the wall, the dirty talk began.

Jolyne was wearing butterfly-laden lingerie. She liked butterflies, as most stereotypical "sweethearts" do.

She started with, "Hey, Annie, If I were a gardener, you would be my hoe." 

Anasui, knowing exactly how to reply, asked, "Oh, and what am I going to till? You?"

"Precisely."

And then, they started frenching…intensely.

By the time that Hermes had turned off her lights in the other room, Emporio, who was sleeping on the pull-out sofa, could hear intense moaning on the other side of the wall. He could only assume what was going on, but he just went with it. And to think, for all his life, he had gotten used to sleeping inside of a piano that turned to ashes long ago. This was the best he had slept in years, and he could rest assured that Jolyne, Hermes, Anasui, and Weather would sleep easy. He wasn't too sure about F.F., but the rest of them were here, and that was good enough for him.

Chapter Text

Jolyne and Anasui had an amazing night on November 9, 2011 – at least when they were conscious.

When they were completely asleep, things were different. They had these...fever dreams, the weirdest they had ever dreamt, even post-coitus. The weirdest thing about it was that they had the exact same dream at the exact same time. 

It started with Jolyne in the prison that she always saw in the memories that she had ever since she met Anasui. This time, however, she was thrown into a concrete room with a single window, having been told that she was restricted to one meal a day, one shower a day, etc.

She crawled over to her "one meal," and the moment she reached for it, worms, maggots, centipedes, and every manner of disgusting creature spewed forth.

Later on in the dream, fictional characters came to life, but they looked very distorted and creepy. She made sense of it by believing that it was the effect of a Stand which she named Bohemian Rhapsody. Also, the Stand turned Anasui into a fictional character, forcing him to act out one of his favorite childhood stories-- or something like that; she couldn't really remember it that well.

Next, she found herself slowly transforming into a snail. Of course, these were only the highlights of her experience that night. All in all, she experienced four months' worth of events, all within the span of only eight hours of sleep. It ended precisely as it usually did, with her dying to protect the very boy that she had picked up the previous day in real time.

Everyone woke up at around the same time in shock. To recap, they had been staying at the Fairfield Inn and Suites in Titusville on the way to visit Jolyne's father, the esteemed Dr. Jotaro Kujo. It was 7:00 AM, Eastern Standard Time. Toto's "Hold the Line" was playing on the radio in both rooms.

Hermes slept in the bed that was closer to the door. She woke up, just like everyone, in extreme confusion.

"What the hell happened? That felt like four freakin' months!" She spoke in a tone akin to someone demanding to know what was going on. "I had memories that my sister was killed a couple years ago, but she's been alive for-freakin'-ever...Maybe I just couldn't bear losing her. Also, I went to prison on purpose to avenge her...So that's why that bus driver thought I was a prisoner at Green Dolphin..."

As anyone would be, Hermes was suspicious that it was fate that all this would happen. After seeing "The Matrix Reloaded" in 2003, she came to believe that if she had a dream like that, it was bound to happen in real life, and there was nothing that anyone could do to stop it.

"Thank God that was all a dream. There was a crapton more, including meeting all of you, but I think we should talk about that over breakfast."

Weather also had experienced the fever dream. "I had the same dream, too; it also felt like four months' worth of events. Didn't even remember who I was. There's a chance that this could be a Stand attack. In which case, we need to be careful. Having the most powerful Stand here, if anyone is going to face them, it should be–"

Before anyone could know Weather's plan of attack, Emporio interrupted him. "I don't know what's going on," he said, "but it's probably not a Stand attack. If it were, I think I would also have the same dream, since the user would be targeting all of us. To concur with Hermes, how about we talk about this over breakfast?"

Hermes and Weather silently nodded, acknowledging that this "boy" was not as naïve as most, and somehow knew very well about Stands and their capabilities.

The boy continued. "Just like I haven’t slept properly for years, I haven’t had a proper shower or bath for years. Luckily, this room has both, so I can do either. Sorry, Hermes, but since there are two of us, one of you, and zero room to get weird, I think that Weather and I should go in first."

"Sounds good," shrugged Hermes. How an eleven-year-old boy could comfortably talk about "getting weird" was beyond her.

In the shower, Weather wore a smirk on his face as he thought to himself: "Even if the water in the shower is too cold, I can make it just the right temperature using my Stand. Honestly, I can't wait to get to the lab. Once I'm there, I can show them the weirdest ace up my sleeve!"

Next door, Jolyne and Anasui, who had very much the same reaction to the "dream," were less concerned about a Stand attack. They just thought it was a weird dream, dismissed it as such, and moved on with their morning. Since they were the most involved non-married couple on the planet, they showered together, and of course, loved it.

Meanwhile, Emporio took the best bath that he had ever taken in his entire life. The water was nice and warm, the soap actually cleaned him, and his most disturbing thoughts had left his head. To think that he had settled for crap all his life (even though it wasn't that long).

After everyone had gone through with their routines, they took the elevator downstairs to have a filling breakfast. Breakfast was complimentary, as it is with many hotels.

The five sat at a table next to a window overlooking the parking lot. It doesn't matter what they had, all that matters is that it was good. Everyone was feeling good about everything, especially Emporio, who was happy to see all his friends alive and well again, this time without the influence of Pucci (even though part of him still doubted that it was really them and that he was in another universe entirely). He was also happy to be alive and well himself, having been the one to lead his friends to this new salvation.

After a relatively short awkward silence, Hermes spoke up. "So...I had a very weird dream last night. We were all in this prison, and this priest wanted us all dead because we were going after his plans to achieve 'Heaven'. There were also all these other 'Stands' that you were talking about yesterday - like the ones we have - and they were unbelievably surreal, like...'acid-trip' surreal."

"We had the same dream," said Jolyne, knowing the bizarre circumstances of the fact that she felt partially conscious in this dream, as if it were a memory.

"No kidding," said Weather, "It felt like it was a Stand attack, but it probably wasn't, because Emporio over here said that he didn't have the same dream."

Because he was the odd one out, Emporio's situation intrigued the other four.

"What dream did you have?" asked Jolyne.

Emporio knew that something weird was going on, and while he couldn't quite comprehend it, he told everyone what happened to him the previous night.

"I saw something that might sound even weirder to you, but to me was it perfectly normal," he said, thinking that nobody would believe him. "You see...I come from a timeline where all of you died."

The others listened intently as he continued.

"So, I saw all of you, dead, your corpses floating in the water. It is very saddening for me to have to remember that everyone that I know is dead, even if you are here and alive right now. Anyway, Jolyne quietly came back to life to reach out to me."

Emporio started sobbing, but it did not start raining, as if he had learned to control the copy of Weather Report that was inside of him.

He looked at Jolyne. "Then you said, 'You did it. When you killed Pucci, the flow of time surpassed what had been overwritten, and everything came back here, except, of course, him. It's us that you met today. It really is. Sure, we may not remember anything that happened, but that's probably for the better. I mean, we got turned into snails. SNAILS. Anyway, rest easy, kiddo, you’ve earned it.'"

Everyone was baffled. They knew that something strange had occurred, but they had no idea that Emporio experienced it well before they did.

"So that's what he was crying about..." thought Jolyne. "He was in the dream before us. That's why he didn't have it again." This led her to suspect a potential Stand attack.

"You know what I think happened?" she proposed, chewing her muffin as she spoke, "You may have come from a previous version of this timeline after something happened to it. Before the timeline was changed, we were all prisoners and died horribly four months from now. Meeting you might be part of why those memories keep coming to us. It must be really complicated, so I probably shouldn’t go into much detail."

Jolyne was confident that she was right. Again, she knew that weird things happened all the time, and they were mostly incomprehensible, so she never questioned them because she always found herself going in circles.

"So, Mickey Mouse being missing from a guidebook for Walt Disney World because he came to life and me complaining about it really happened?" asked Anasui, shocked beyond belief.

Weather stood up. "I believe that the answer is yes and no. Let's get going. We’ve got a long road ahead of us," he answered, anxious to get back to the room at that point.

As everyone returned to their rooms to pack up and head out, Jolyne thought about the dream from the previous night. She wondered if the events she experienced within said dream really happened. Like anyone that tried to understand such a phenomenon, her head was spinning with questions.

"Was it really a dream?" she thought. "I felt like I was making conscious decisions. The dream wasn't telling me what to do. Did this really happen? Was it really a Stand attack? Who was the user? Should I care about these events at all? ARE WE ALL DEAD AND IN THE AFTERLIFE?! Okay, I am overthinking this. When I overthink things, I fail to understand."

Thirty minutes later, with everyone in the car, Jolyne was the last one to close her door. Anasui turned the ignition key and drove out onto Florida Route 50. Their next destination was the Kujo Mansion in Windermere, a suburb of Orlando.

However, Anasui noticed that the gas meter was low and realized that he would need to refill his tank again. At least this time, they didn't just break down, and he was able to pull into a gas station in time.

Anasui and Jolyne stayed outside to fill up the car while the other three walked inside the store typically found at a gas station so they could get snacks for the road.

When they walked in, the smell of gas station pizza, coffee, and other delicious and irresistable goods filled the air. Temptation after temptation after temptation, and they just ate. There were even hot dogs on a roller, with ketchup, mustard, and even relish packets in bins just next to it. Every aroma was competing against the others, but none of them would tempt Hermes, Weather, or Emporio.

As Weather made for the coffee machine, selecting the perfect blend for himself, he contemplated how his brother could be such an evil man in this "alternate timeline." It just didn’t seem like him to submit to such an evil being as DIO. It then occurred to him: he had this dream before. It was long ago, but he, his brother, and even his sister all had the same dream one night back in the eighties. It was what inspired Marco to ally himself with the Joestars in the first place.

As for Enrico, that priest was not his brother. The brother who he saw in his dream had a weak soul that was susceptible to permanently submitting to evil. Marco would at least realize the wrong in his ways and adapt. Enrico believed that killing in the name of God was perfectly normal, even necessary. If this was an alternate timeline, then HE had to be the difference between their timelines.

Within two minutes, everyone had bought everything that they wanted. Weather bought his coffee, Hermes bought herself a bag of potato chips, and Emporio bought even more chocolate milk. As the three walked out of the building, Hermes felt like she wanted to show off.

"Hey guys, check this out." She put a KISS sticker on her bag of chips, causing it to duplicate much like the pizza from the previous day.

"Bam. Two for the price of one," she said with a smug grin. The bus driver from the previous day may have mistaken her for a prisoner, but there were no laws regulating the use of Stands for non-combat purposes.

Everyone got back in the car and onto the highway. Jolyne, riding shotgun, was making some major realizations. Specifically, she concluded that the events which happened in her dreams the previous night were real, and that she had experienced them in real life, no matter how weird they were. She knew because she felt genuine feelings when she was inside the dream.

"This WAS me," she thought. "These people…were my family, and they died for me. If that's so, then there must be a reason why we're all together right now." There were other reasons for her belief that she lived through all the pain and suffering that she had dreamt of, but she couldn’t possibly grasp them at that moment. Simply put, the dream felt less like a dream, and more like a memory of the past.

Emporio didn’t know how to grasp it either. He could believe that all of his friends were dead, and that these were no more than shallow clones. The road of ultimate despair. Alternatively, he could believe that for WHATEVER reason, the universe just up and did a complete one-eighty on everything, and that he was back in the original timeline, overwritten.

"No," he thought. "It has to be them. Time is cyclical. The flow of time exceeded Pucci's overwrite and came back here! I woke up naked in his universe, but my clothes were on when I woke up! Their Stands are the same, and Stands are the physical manifestation of one's soul. Therefore, their souls are the same. They're alive, they really are!"

He decided that he would take another sip of chocolate milk to ease his already sated mind, taking care not to accidentally grab Weather's coffee.

As the car left Titusville, everyone was happy. From Hermes, having met some new friends, to Weather, having met a member of the legendary Joestar family that his brother always bragged about. Anasui was just happy to be with Jolyne as always, and Jolyne was happy that a four-month-long adventure had come to an end in the span of a single night.

But most of all, Emporio was happy that he could finally "grasp the ungraspable", and that everyone was beginning to remember each other. He just couldn’t understand why this was happening, though. Was it him? Was it another Stand ability? Before all these questions could disturb his peace, he decided that now was not the time to ask them. He would do so when they arrived at the Kujo Mansion.

<--TO BE CONTINUED|\|

Chapter Text

At around 10:30 AM, Eastern Standard Time, on November 10, 2011, Jolyne, Emporio, Hermes, Anasui, and Weather were all en route to the residence of the famous Jotaro Kujo.

Emporio, who was sleeping in the back of the car, was questioning the words that he chose when he was using Weather Report to kill Pucci.

"Walking the path of justice is true fate?" he thought. "That made NO SENSE! What the hell was I saying? If that was true, Pucci wouldn’t have been able to kill any of us in the first place. Not that it matters now…"

He wondered about the wording that he could have used instead. His mind was going along the lines of “All those who stand in the way of fate will lose, no matter how immune they think they are. By the way, this is for Mom. I’ll see you in hell.” Of course, this was just his still developing mind trying to sound cool, like Jotaro. The two had barely spoken, but Jolyne had told him about Jotaro back in prison. Part of Emporio had looked up to Jotaro and wanted to be like him.

In the front seat, Jolyne was re-experiencing part of her "past life". This time, Anasui was talking about proposing to her. This was just before the battle where she lost her life, the one that she would wake up after.

"Proposal…" she thought. And then, she remembered. How could she have forgotten?! Anasui had proposed to her a couple of days ago, and her father didn’t know. She needed to break it to him somehow…

"BINGO!" she thought. "I'll just cover the engagement ring with a bandage and say that I cut my finger!" This seemed like an easy solution, seeing as the engagement ring was a simple gold ring with no outstanding aspects.

She quickly took out her phone and typed "pharmacy" into her maps app. She found a few results, but chose a CVS on the way to her house. After consulting with Anasui, she made the announcement to everyone else in the car.

"So you know how we've been engaged?" she said. "I want to surprise my dad by hiding the engagement ring by putting a bandage over it and pulling it off when I want to reveal the news. We need to stop at the drug store so that I can get said bandages. Before I go in, does anyone want anything?"

Everyone shook their heads. Hermes had duplicated everything that she, Weather, and Emporio had already bought at the gas station back in Titusville, so they were all content with what they had.

Jolyne simply nodded and Anasui made a left into the parking lot of CVS. Before closing her car door, Jolyne said that she would be going alone, reassuring everyone that they would all be okay, since they were all Stand users. She didn't say anything about herself being okay, however.

The time she spent inside the building was minimal. All she did was find the bandages section, pick up a pack of BAND-AIDS®, pay with her credit card, and walk out the door.

However, upon leaving the vestibule, she found herself face to face with a very suspicious looking man who gave off a very menacing aura. His green eyes did not complement his pitch black hair and eyebrows, and he looked a little skinny. On top of this, he wore all black, with a leather robe that went all the way down to his ankles.

"Jolyne Cujoh…" he said quietly, "I must avenge DIO by erasing your father's bloodline." His voice suddenly became louder. "That means you!"

"Stone Free!" Jolyne quickly brought out her Stand, which promptly appeared by her side, ready to defend her.

In response to such a defensive gesture, the man smiled and said, "Want to turn into solid ice and break?" before bringing out his own Stand. It was nothing special: a bald, masculine figure, colored blue with a white tint. It bore a blank expression on its face and wore a parka which said "VIVA LA VIDA" on the front in all capital letters. A Stand fight had begun.

Jolyne shot string from the tip of her right pointer finger in an attempt to ensnare her opponent within, but his Stand snatched it with a quick motion. Within seconds, ice started to travel along the string, coming close to her body.

The moment before the ice could reach her finger, however, the enemy Stand user heard a sound behind him: "HEY BUDDY! OVER HERE!"

The man withdrew his Stand, reversing the effects of its ability before turning around to see, to his surprise, another Stand about twenty feet away.

This Stand's skin was bleached completely in white, with darker stripes running horizontally around it. These stripes had lettering inside of them, but at this distance, he could not make out what they were. As for attire, it was sparsely clad in black, complete with a crown-like leather mask.

When Jolyne first saw it, her heart dropped for a split second. This was the Stand of the priest who she’d tried in vain to stop in her dream - but then, she remembered the truth: the cavalry had just arrived.

Angered by this other Stand's interference, DIO's underling charged for it and used his Stand to successfully turn it into ice before turning back for Jolyne. At this point, one would assume that all hope was lost.

Of course, it wasn't. The interfering Stand appeared to melt away into a white goo before the real Stand appeared behind Jolyne's opponent.

"Do you know what you are, Mr. Clearwater?" it asked.

"A follower of the one true path to salvation?"

"No, you're a bitch."

The mysterious Stand then grabbed Clarence Clearwater by the neck, reached for his head, extracted two discs, inserted one, and let him go. Clearwater's body collapsed to the ground, seemingly lifeless.

Hearing the commotion, Anasui got out of the car. Jolyne ran out from under the awning and toward her savior, who came out from the other side of the building.

This man was not too dark-skinned, but was quite tan. His white hair made him appear almost bald if one looked at him from the front. If one looked at him from the back, however, one would see that he in fact had three ponytails. He wore Wayfarers, jeans, black loafers, and a white coat that had a wheel-like emblem and the word "SPEEDWAGON" inscribed across the back.

Emporio shuddered at the image of the man whose blood was on his hands. His heartrate skyrocketed. Sure, this was a different person now, but the resemblance was still there. He had suffered about three lifetimes worth of trauma at this point, and he shuddered to think of the words that Pucci said to him, even in death. However, for everyone else, this was no man to be feared.

"Is that you, Domenico?" asked the man upon seeing Weather.

"Marco! You bet it is, my good brother. I guess there is a god that controls fate after all!" replied Weather.

"Come on, I don’t believe in that nonsense- at least, not anymore."

"Oh, you!" As the twins approached each other for a hug of reunion, Emporio ran back towards the car, adrenaline racing through his body. For as long as he had known, Weather had hated his twin brother, but here, they seemed to like each other a lot.

Domenico and Marco Pucci were born in 1972 to the wealthy and influential Pucci family in Windermere. At the time that they were born, a random woman switched out her dead baby, named Wes Bluemarine, with Domenico. The young Marco was simply told that Domenico was the dead child when he was five.

Wanting to investigate how he could live while his brother died, Marco became a genetic scientist, suspecting a hereditary disease to be responsible, curious as to how he survived, but his twin didn't. At age 14, he went to Egypt to eventually get his Ph.D. 

That was where he first encountered DIO. One day, Marco had finished running a test, and was ready to leave the lab for the day. On his way out the door, he tripped and fell over DIO's foot. Ever the charismatic being, DIO, who was hiding in the laboratory for the day, grasped onto his disfigured left foot and healed it. For clarification, what DIO did was transfer a tiny bit of his own blood into the boy. Afraid of DIO, Marco pretended to be enticed by his words and walked back to his hotel room.

The next day, he was examining the DNA samples of his younger sister, Perla, and her boyfriend, Wes Bluemarine, for an assignment. That was the day when he would discover an unpleasant truth: Their chromosomes were remarkably similar, and he could only conclude that Wes Bluemarine was his long lost brother, Domenico Pucci.

After completing most of his work, Marco rushed back to America to inform both of them of his discovery. Both were shocked, but the long lost brothers quickly reconciled as Domenico broke up with Perla and accepted their relationship dynamic as siblings.

Marco also declared that he would meet with DIO to sabotage his entire legacy, because he knew that DIO was up to no good. With that, he spent the majority of the summer of 1986 with DIO, learning each and every intricate detail of his plans and pretending to sympathize with him. He also got stabbed with one of the Stand arrows and awakened Whitesnake, born out of both his newfound desire to explore the world of Stands and his long term goal to destroy DIO's legacy.

After DIO died, Marco met Jotaro Kujo. Admiring the Joestars for their steadfast opposition to DIO, he and Jotaro formed a partnership which involved him joining the Speedwagon Foundation and fighting DIO's allies around the world (especially in America), so that Jotaro could spend more time with his daughter.

"Well, what were the chances, Marco?" asked Jolyne, relieved and happy.

"I would say about…four out of five, Ms. Cujoh, but I’m not the one to judge."

"Annie, Hermes, this is Dr. Marco Pucci, a close acquaintance of my father," said Jolyne to her friends and companions, who didn't know about him. "He is the reason I got to spend so much time with him. My father, that is."

"It's very nice to meet both of you," replied the man as he shook their hands. "Now, I’m just wondering; I know he’s your boyfriend, but who is she?"

“Oh, this is Hermes. I met her on the highway after some bus driver kicked her off. At least they had the courtesy to give her back her luggage.” As someone whom she had known since her youth, Jolyne trusted Marco more than anything.

As they talked, and as Marco questioned why the hell Weather decided to take a hike in the rain, Emporio struggled to convince himself that Enrico Pucci had not come back, and that this was a man allied with the Joestar lineage.

After wiping his tears away and getting out of the car, he figured that it was best to talk to Jolyne in private.

“Jolyne, may I speak with you privately?” he yelled, unaware of the irony.

Jolyne ran over to Emporio after asking everyone to excuse her. “Are you upset about losing your friends again?” she asked, crouching down to meet Emporio eye to eye. “If it makes you feel better, I came to a realization on the way here: I lived through all that shit too, and even though I technically died, I got through it, and never had to have really experienced it.”

“…”

“It’s me, Emporio. I survived, thanks to you. That 'dream' was the time that we spent in prison. That was our bizarre adventure, and we all survived.”

After a brief moment, Emporio hugged Jolyne as hard as he could, and she felt no other option but to hug back.

“Thank you, Jolyne,” sobbed Emporio, the most that he ever had since the day before. “But...I was not calling you about that, I was calling you about–”

“Oh, him? I know, his stand worried me a little too for a split second, but you can feel safe around Marco. He is not the same person as that priest. I've known him since I was a baby, and to put it lightly, I don’t think he likes DIO at all.”

The conversations wrapped up and everyone got in the car. Marco sat in the back while Jolyne decided to have Emporio sit on her lap for the duration of the trip. There really was no other space.

The “it’s really me" moment was exactly what Emporio needed. For all of what he had perceived as twenty-four hours, there was a shred of doubt in his mind that his friends would ever be the same again. But now, he knew without a doubt in his mind that, with everything happening recently, his friends never really died in the first place. Thinking the happiest thoughts that he ever had since before his mother died, he took a sip of his KISS-duplicated chocolate milk.

Five minutes later, Anasui parked his gray 2011 Nissan Maxima just outside the imposing Kujo mansion. The courtyard in the front was surrounded by three sides of building, with a fountain in the center. Jolyne walked toward the door as everyone else waited by the fountain.

Inside the mansion, one could hear three distinct knocks; contact between knuckle and wood.

"What’s the password?" asked a voice from inside.

Jolyne knew that her new friends would be confused by that which she was about to do, but she did it anyway.

"SHUT UP! YOU’RE AN ANNOYING BITCH!" She screamed the password loud enough to hear about a quarter of a mile away, but somehow quiet enough so as not to disturb too many people in the area.

Contrary to what everyone thought would happen, the man behind the door actually opened it- the password was correct. Although seemingly a twenty year-old at first glance, he was actually forty-two. He wore a long purple coat, a white t-shirt with a green star in the center, and a gold chain on the left side of his collar. As for his hat…it’s hard to explain- It’s almost as if his hat was always part of his hair and grew from it. Make no mistake, this man was Jotaro Kujo.

<--To Be Continued|\|

Chapter Text

"It's always good to see you, Jolyne," said Jotaro as they hugged tightly.

"You're an amazing father," she said, hugging back. "It's not like you aren't worth my time."

"Aww…try not to melt your old man's heart."

"Ha ha ha…It's funny because you don't look old at all."

A moment of silence. Jotaro had just walked right into that one.

"Listen, Dad, I brought some…stowaways on the way here." Jolyne was trying to find a polite way to refer to everyone that she had met on her road trip: Hermes, Weather, and Emporio-- Weather less so than the other two, as Marco had introduced him a couple of weeks back. "Do you mind if I bring them in?"

"Not at all," replied Jotaro.

After everyone came inside and the door was closed, Hermes, Anasui, and Weather shook hands with Jotaro. Emporio just held back tears. Marco was the last one to shake hands with Jotaro before everyone left the foyer and ventured further into the expansive Kujo Mansion.

They all sat in the living room area of the house. As they nursed their beverages, whether they be tea, coffee, or chocolate milk, a very significant conversation began to take place.

"So, I had this dream last night…" Jolyne began. "It was spectacularly surreal. There were all these Stands, and we were all in prison, and we all died at the end, and it was all one giant mess. Actually, it was more like a memory, kind of like the ones I had when I first met Anasui."

Jotaro was shocked. "Dear God, I have been having the same dream for years, but it was abbreviated and, obviously, from my perspective. Marco was a priest who followed DIO and stole my memories."

Jolyne snapped her fingers. "That's it. That's the memory."

"Wait a moment," interjected Marco, "If we all know each other, why haven't I been getting these memories as of late?"

Emporio felt that he already had the answer as to why, but he didn't want to tell anybody yet, and he wasn't even sure.

"One of us might have a Stand ability that we don't know about yet," reasoned Weather. "If I were to point fingers, I would start with the kid in the baseball outfit."

Emporio scoffed at the accusation. "Actually, you may be right, Weather. After all, I am the only one to remember killing 'alternate' Pucci as I told you at breakfast. After that, the flow of time surpassed what was created, and so the strands of time unwound, taking everything back here. By that logic, nobody should remember, right? Wrong. I did. Why?"

Marco, being an expert on Stands, felt inclined to reply. "You saw all of your friends, everyone who's here right now, die, right? Maybe all of that trauma created a new Stand ability that…gives other people dreams, I guess? I don't know; we never do until it's proven. Thankfully, we can prove it right now."

"Right now?"

"Sure, but we're going to have to go downstairs."

"Downstairs?" Emporio considered the possibility that this was a trap.

"Yes…downstairs. Jotaro?"

"Follow me, everyone." Jotaro stood up and started walking towards the back, with everyone else following suit.

He led them to what most people would believe was just a regular wall. Next, he summoned Star Platinum and pushed the wall in, revealing a secret passage. The door must have weighed about a thousand kilograms.

Within this passage was an elevator as large as a room of its own, made entirely of glass. After everyone shuffled in, Jotaro pressed the button that read "8". The doors closed, and the elevator accelerated downward at a maximum speed of about ten miles per hour.

At the bottom, when the doors opened, everyone stepped out to a penthouse-like view of a large atrium area, similar to those that one would find when staying at an "Embassy Suites" hotel. All of the flat-screen TVs were showing various commercials for Speedwagon products that would change the future of mankind, such as cars, medicine, and household products. The many people in lab coats walking around in that "basement" were employees of the Speedwagon Foundation, stationed at this secret research facility.

"My office is this way," said Marco, leading the rest to the right of the elevator exit. "Once we find out what's going on, we may be able to use this ability effectively, or partially seal it before it reaches the entire world."

Marco Pucci's office was fairly simple: a white room with a glass wall acted as a window into the hallway. A swivel chair that leaned back so far that whoever sat in it would be practically lying down when adjusted correctly stood behind his desk. His diplomas, from the American University in Cairo, hung on the left wall to the door.

"Now, Emporio," said Pucci, "I'm going to have to ask you to stay still for just a moment so that I can extract your discs. I promise that I will only make a copy, and not take it." 

"Just so you know," replied Emporio, "I have two known abilities at the moment. One of them is your brother's. It's complicated, but I used your brother's ability to defeat evil you." 

Dr. Pucci then extracted one disc from Emporio's head. "That's strange- You just said you had 'Weather Report', right? I don't see it in there…"

When time returned to the original universe and surpassed the "new universe", the strands of time unwound, causing everything to be put back into place, including Weather's Disc, which went back to him. Nobody on Earth remembered what happened. For all but one, it was just another day.

The previous night, when Emporio seemed to have Weather Report in his head, it was actually Weather himself playing a small prank on Emporio. Thinking about it, it was probably not a good idea.

Either way, Pucci inserted the disc into his computer, as Whitesnake's discs were made to fit easily in DVD and Blu-Ray players.

Emporio was amused, albeit a little freaked out and scared of the soul that had superseded the man responsible for all of his suffering. First, Father Pucci had killed his mother, and then he killed his friends, who he had called family. All in all, Emporio Alniño was a victim of about three lifetimes worth of trauma. When he cried at the sight of Jolyne (who had called herself Irene until she could "trust" him), his tears were of joy and sadness. He was happy because he knew it was actually them. How? First, he saw Hermes and Anasui's faces, and he knew that if they looked the same, they were the same souls. He didn't know how on Earth he came to this conclusion, just that he did. The Joestar birthmark was just solidification of this mental state for him.

Using special software developed by Whitesnake's abilities, Dr. Pucci was able to examine what a Stand's ability was, among other aspects of a Stand's history with its user.

"Let's see…" he said, beginning to read off the screen: "'Stand Codename: 'Burning Down the House.' Original User: Emporio Alnino. Ability: Is able to recreate destroyed objects, which effectively become ghost objects. These ghosts give sensations, but not effects in the real world.' Ghost objects…What exactly does that imply?"

"Well," Emporio took a pencil from the mug on Marco's desk. "If you don't mind, for demonstration purposes, I will take this pencil here and snap it in half."

He then did what he said he was going to do, and snapped the pencil in half, breaking it.

"Then," he continued, "I go through this crack in the floorboards and bring it back."

To everyone's astonishment, Emporio vanished through the tiniest crack in the floor, only to emerge with a full version of the pencil that he had previously snapped in half.

"Now, if I try to write my name on this piece of paper, it won't actually show up."

He then picked up a notepad and attempted to write "Emporio Alniño" on it -- just before he dropped the pencil and his jaw. There was no way that it could have been possible, but clearly inscribed on the notepad in very real graphite was the name "Emporio Alniño."

"What the hell?" he exclaimed, his heartbeat racing. "Has my Stand's ability evolved? Am I seeing things?"

As always, Marco was always one to explain: "Well, I was just reading, and it seems as if your Stand has…evolved…in multiple ways. It says here that you have two new abilities, the first being 'Dream Creation.'"

"Dream Creation?"

"'This ability was born out of a sense of tremendous loss for the user. First, it gives the user a 'dream', which is actually an alternate timeline. This timeline will share the same people, some of the same events, et cetera, but it will always end with the user overcoming what sent them into said dream. If the user meets new people in this alternate timeline, then those people will become fated to meet each other in the user's original timeline, and they will also get the dreams that the user was given in the form of memories.'"

"Well, that answers one question: All that really never happened, at least not here." Emporio took a sip of his chocolate milk. "Thinking about it, I'm not that shocked that it was all a dream. The problem is that I got too attached to that dream. I don't even know what my real backstory is. I'm sure that I will learn soon enough. What about the other one? It seems like that's what caused that ghost pencil to become real."

"Apparently, this new ability is the true form of your 'ghost object' ability, and it is listed as 'Interdimensional Access: If any part of the user is caught between two objects, then the user can move to an alternate timeline, universe, or dimension.'"

Jotaro's eyes widened. "Oh my God, this could be one of them!"

"One of what?" asked Emporio.

"Theoretically, there are only two Stands in the multiverse that can move between alternate realities. Even we don't know what they are. This could be the biggest discovery of the entire century!"

"You know what? Let me try it," said Emporio, wanting to learn more. "I'm going to go to a world where…all of you are…uh…alien clowns, and then I am going to come back." He stuck his finger between the bottom of the glass wall and the carpeted floor and simply willed himself to go to the world that he spoke of.

When he got up, he found himself in an identical office, but surrounded by six very creepy-looking clowns in full makeup and rubber shoes, wanting to "give him a hug." Full of both terror and regret, Emporio screamed and quickly made a mad dash for the space between the couch and the floor, returning to his timeline.

As Emporio hyperventilated, surrounded by his versions of Jotaro, Jolyne, Anasui, Hermes, Weather, and Pucci, he said, "That…was the biggest mistake of my life…but…it was also amazing. I-I feel like I have all the power in the world at my fingertips."

"I think that his Stand should be renamed," suggested Jotaro. "'Burning Down the House' seems a little tame for a Stand that can transcend realities and time itself, don't you think?"

"You do make a good point, Jotaro," said Pucci, turning to Emporio. "Try bringing out the physical form of your Stand, let's see what it looks like. Given that it is so powerful, it should have one, no?"

Emporio was skeptical of his ability to materialize his yet-to-be-renamed Stand, but, as he had done for the past perceived four months, he tried it anyway.

As soon as he had willed it, the new form of "Burning Down the House" manifested for the first time. It was about as tall as Emporio. It was colored blue and pink, and it bore a very mechanical look. It had the ears of a leporid, a face mask covering its mandible, eyes with no pupils, and a cold gaze.

"Very interesting…" said Weather, taking a sip of his duplicate gas station coffee. "I think his Stand should be renamed something along the lines of…maybe…'Filthy Acts at a Reasonable Price?'"

"Good choice, brother, but my personal naming convention is to name Stands after songs."

"You should feel lucky, kid," said Jotaro. "I wanted to name my Stand 'Ocean Man', but the tarot system still existed, so…I have an idea, how about 'Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap' or 'D4C'?"

"It's a mouthful, but I'll take it," answered Emporio. "It might be fate that I chose to rename my Stand like this."

"I'm glad you like it," said Jolyne. "Speaking of liking things, I have an announcement to make."

"If she is pregnant, I will ORA ORA that pink-haired son of a bitch into oblivion," thought Jotaro.

"So, you know how you saw this Band-Aid on me when I came in?"

"Oh my god! Hopefully, you turned a part of yourself into string and sowed that back together!" Jotaro knew the truth, but he played along for the sake of his daughter.

"There is actually no cut at all, just…this." She swiftly tore off the Band-Aid, revealing a gold engagement ring.

"Congratulations!" said Jotaro, smiling with extreme pride. "I-I'm glad my little girl has grown up so fast!"

Anasui was confused. This was the first time that he had met Jotaro since their first "meeting her parents" date. In the last "dream" that he had, Jotaro rejected the engagement shortly before he died in the dream and woke up in real life. To be honest, he found his memories of the past to be a little…concerning, to say the least. He was just glad that he met Jolyne at the right time.

"Wait," he said. "I thought you were going to be mad at me!"

"Why would I be mad at someone that my daughter loves and trusts?" Jotaro was laughing and even smiling, something that he didn't usually do unless it was exclusively in front of his daughter. "Jolyne, all I have ever wanted for you was to be happy. These dreams that I have been having night by night…" He paused, beginning to cry at an exponential rate. "They constantly show me the consequences of trying to 'protect' you by leaving you. I've seen it all, and I'm sure you have, too. I want you to know that I would never do that."

Jolyne's heart melted at the notion. "Aww…Dad."

"And as such," continued Jotaro, his face gushing with tears, "I approve of your engagement, and even though I have divorced your mother, I feel like I have more in my heart for the happiness and safety of my beautiful little girl than for anything else on this planet."

As for everyone else, they couldn't look at such a "horrific sight" as said by Hermes. Obviously, she was being sarcastic; she had developed a special bond with these people and was now testing the ropes of friendship. As for Weather and Whitesnake (the nicknames of the Pucci brothers), they simply looked on in delight as the lovebirds kissed in each other's arms.

Meanwhile, Emporio began to believe that the "dream" that he had and gave to most of the people around him was something that changed their lives for the better.

Conveniently just after the moment of wholesomeness, the announcement system, which was somehow unheard in the house above, came to life: "DOCTORS KUJO AND PUCCI, PLEASE REPORT TO FIRST FLOOR LABORATORY FOR PLANKTON HUMANIZATION DEMONSTRATION."

"Ah, right," exclaimed Pucci, gathering his belongings. "We had best be off."

"You can wait here, unless you want to come with," Jotaro elaborated, smiling while wiping the tears off of his face. "You know, as an engagement present."

"Guys, how about we watch the demonstration?" said Emporio, who had a hunch that he knew everything about what the demonstration was. "It could be fun, and even interesting."

"Sure," said Jolyne. "Let's go; it could be fun."

Soon enough, everyone got up, grabbed their things, and headed downstairs. Everyone except Jolyne and Weather used the actual stairs. Jolyne created a rope to rappel down and Weather manipulated the wind to help him slowly descend to the bottom floor.

The "First Floor Laboratory" was to the right of the elevator on the way off. Like the rest of the facility, it was composed of a white and glossy material. It consisted of two rooms: the observation room and the actual laboratory. There was only a wall with a window separating the two, with a speaker on the observer's side for anyone doing the demonstration to give commentary.

Jolyne and company entered the room and sat down among representatives of the press. It was 2011, and the world had been used to bizarre happenings like this ever since ten years prior, when an incident at the Colosseum in Rome occurred. Meanwhile, Jotaro, Marco, and, for some reason, Weather, entered the laboratory and began the demonstration.

"Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen," said Jotaro. "It is a pleasure to have you here today. We are about to take a leap forward in closing the gap between humans and lesser forms of life."

Everyone perked up at such a revolutionary statement.

"As a Ph.D. holder in Marine Biology, I have teamed up with Dr. Marco Pucci, an expert in the fields of genetics and, more relevantly, Stands, to work on the potential of a colony of sea plankton taking control of a human corpse, as well as its ability to control the process of homeostasis within said corpse."

Pucci continued the introduction. "We found that we could do this through a Stand that I have taken from one of DIO's followers, which has been codenamed Foo Fighters. Its abilities are water absorption and control of plankton colonies. If a human can control it, then surely a plankton colony will be able to control itself, right? Let's find out."

He then turned his head to Weather. "Domenico, the colony?"

Weather placed a bag on the table and pulled out a jar of dirty-looking water, which apparently contained the plankton colony. When Weather was in Port St. Lucie, he conducted the task of taking a colony of plankton from the waters around Green Dolphin Street Prison, which was owned and operated by the Speedwagon Foundation as a prison for malevolent Stand users. It was raining because Weather wanted the plankton to have plenty of water.

Emporio knew that this plankton would become none other than the F.F. that he knew back in the "dream" timeline. He wanted her, like everyone else, alive again, so he started to focus his newly realized memory transplant powers with D4C.

Without further ado, Dr. Pucci inserted the Stand disc into the jar containing the colony of plankton. Surprisingly, the plankton absorbed the disc as though it were eating it. Within 10 seconds, the plankton began to multiply rapidly as it came free from the jar, transforming itself into a humanoid form.

"As you can see," continued Pucci, "The plankton can handle the Stand 'Foo Fighters'. Now, as for corpse reanimation, we have a rather morbid volunteer, please try not to record any video of this or take any pictures, as it may be disturbing for children." The last sentence was directed at the press, who lowered their cameras as Jotaro unveiled the corpse of a woman, late teens/early twenties, with short, green hair and a gray, sleeveless prison uniform.

"Everyone," said Jotaro, "Meet Atroe. She was a prisoner at the Speedwagon Foundation's Green Dolphin Street Prison who recently tried to escape and was shot down by the guards. We are going to try to--"

At this point, the sentient plankton had already snaked across the floor and taken control of the prisoner's corpse, which was already looking less…dead.

Unbeknownst to Jolyne, Hermes, Anasui, Jotaro, Weather, Marco, and the rest of the press, FF had experienced half a lifetime's worth of memories within just ten seconds. She unstrapped herself from the board that she laid on, walked over to Weather, and wrapped her arms around him for a very tight hug. Emporio now knew that his trick had worked.

Chapter Text

As the colony of sentient plankton inhabiting a human body wrapped its arms around Weather, all the people on the other side of the wall clapped, cheered, and started taking pictures. They had just witnessed a colony of plankton, the lowest species in the food chain, instantly become human right before their eyes.

Emporio knew that he was partially responsible for the mass acceleration of this achievement and took a massive gulp of his chocolate milk. His only problem was that the Chicago Cubs hadn't won the World Series for over a century, and he didn't even care that much.

All of a sudden, the test subject let go of Weather and bolted aggressively toward Marco. Jotaro had to use Star Platinum to restrain her. All that the reporters could see was that she was being held down by an unseen force and was struggling to get loose from it.

"He killed me…" she groaned, "How could you have teamed up with him?! You really believe his heaven bullshit, don't you?!"

Weather came over to the other side of the lab to get a grip on the situation; he was the only one on that side of the glass who had memories of FF from the dream.

"FF, calm down," he said. "He's not who you think he is. By the way, welcome back."

Marco, through Whitesnake, whispered something in Jotaro's ear before extracting a disk from F.F. This disk contained any memories of Father Pucci from Emporio's "dream".

"Who are you?" she asked, Marco being the only person in the room that she didn't know. Star Platinum slowly let go of her body and let her stand up.

"I believe we have not had the pleasure. Marco Pucci, Ph.D. Nice to meet you."

"He's my brother," Weather interjected, wanting to signify the relationship.

"I don't think we've met, either," said Jotaro. "I'm Jotaro Kujo, Jolyne's dad. I'm a marine biologist, so I'm kind of interested in creatures like you. Understandably, you remember everyone else; I suspect that you might have been affected by Emporio's Stand ability."

"I only recall that 'Burning Down the House' can create ghost objects, not…memories," she said. "Look, I just saw almost everything, and I know exactly who I am. I'm sorry for lashing out, but I was literally just born, and I am more confused than ever."

"Okay, people," spoke Jotaro in a brisk, commanding manner, "First, I need ten gallons of water stat; plankton don't last long without it. Second, I need the press out, but my daughter and her friends can stay. Finally, I need the test subject to have a physical before she is allowed anywhere outside this facility."

"Yes, Dr. Kujo!" Every assistant got to work so as to see their boss's orders through; after all, it was their paycheck on the line.

Six hours later, everyone was back upstairs and having dinner. Marco sat at one end of the table, Emporio at the other. Emporio had Chicken Parmesan with a side of spaghetti and sauce as he sat across the table from Marco.

"So, Dr. Pucci," he asked, "What is your impression of DIO?"

The man shuddered at the mere mention of the name. "What a terrifying presence he was," he mused. "It's almost as if he stared into my soul every time we spoke. That's why Whitesnake looks like that, because I guess I wanted it to outstare DIO." He chuckled, briefly breaking tone. "Seriously, I knew from the moment that I first met him that there was something strange about him. This man was not human, he was something else.

"After he healed my foot of an ailment that I'd had since I was born, I thought, 'Is this his attempt at charisma? If he is willing to help me, I'll take all the help I can get, but I cannot give in to his goals.'

"Then he told me that he was 'allergic to sunlight'. I knew that there were actual medical conditions like that, but never to the degree that you would have to wait until nightfall to move between shadows, so I knew right away that he was a vampire.

"Now, I was wondering what to do next: I could either become the boy who cried 'vampire', or I could act sympathetic and possibly avoid being killed. Being afraid of the total oblivion of death, I went with the latter option. Just because I believed him, he let me have this mysterious arrow, which I would later find out was a Stand arrow. I took it; again, out of courtesy.

"In 1987, when I began my quest to sabotage DIO, I took up the truly insane task of acting like a total zealot for six long months. When he tempted me to pull his Stand disc out of his head as a loyalty test, I simply let go, and lied about even thinking about betraying him. I told myself that that was the best thing to do in any tough situation. For the next couple of years, I pretended to look after the North American wing of his Stand user network. After I heard that he had died, I got in contact with Joseph Joestar and met Jotaro in 1988. I'll tell stories about him and me later.

"In conclusion, DIO was a man who soothed me, and that is why he scared me."

"When you said, 'he scared me because he soothed me,'" replied Jotaro, who sat to Marco's right, "that reminded me of an old friend of mine that was killed by Vanilla Ice, DIO's right hand man, on the night that he died. His name was Avdol, but I believe I told you that already."

"Oh, please, it's fine. We've known each other for, what, twenty-two years now? I can forgive redundancy."

The two men laughed. Obviously, they were having a good time, as was everyone else.

A few seconds after the laughter died down, Jolyne asked, "So, Dad…when would be a good time to schedule our wedding?"

"Well, maybe we should go for the beginning of spring; it's the perfect time to be in Florida before things begin to scorch. Plus, it gives us an ample amount of time to plan things out."

"Sounds good," said the ravenous couple in unison. After the brief moment, they simply looked at each other, smiled, and laughed.

"By the way, we can stay here, right?" asked Anasui.

"Of course," said Marco. "We do have at least four guest rooms, only one of which is occupied tonight, and that would be mine," he continued, smiling a little. "Weather, do you want to maybe bunk up with me, like the not-so-old days?"

"Sounds…good."

A little while later, Hermes, Weather, Marco, and Emporio all made way for the guest rooms. Jotaro, Jolyne, and Anasui went to their own rooms, Anasui staying with Jolyne, obviously.

As he went to what was essentially his brother's permanent bedroom, Weather began to reminisce over the time he first got his Stand.

January of 1989 was a very weird month for Domenico Pucci. He had just turned 16, and was waiting for his brother to come back from Egypt, on his quest to learn more about the vampire named DIO for an eventual sabotage. In the meanwhile, he was also feeling weird about his ex-girlfriend-no, sister.

On the 15th, he felt as if he would rather watch two snails having intercourse than have to go through another relationship with a long-lost sibling of his. A moment after that thought lapsed, he began to see snails everywhere he went within his new mansion in the outskirts of St. Augustine, Florida. In an attempt to escape, he ran outside, only to see snails torrenting down from the skies and pummelling the ground.

And then, Domenico knew it: he was the one doing this. It was a paranormal ability that he had gained somehow. Maybe it was something that his brother did. Either way, he was desperate to seal the ability, so he attempted to jump off the cliffside. Fortunately for him, fate had it in store for him to live, so the winds seemed to lift him from the waters after he jumped and deposited him straight back onto the shore.

He instantly knew that that was the worst decision of his life, so as soon as he could, he stopped thinking about snails, sealing away his own ability and turning the rain back to normal.

The next day, Domenico waited at Jacksonville International Airport for his brother to come home from his little "espionage mission".

As Marco exited the gate and saw Domenico, he asked, "Did you feel anything weird while I was away? Gain any abilities, perhaps?" He raised his eyebrow.

"Yes, actually," said Domenico. "I'll show you after we claim your baggage and get outside. By the way, you may want to brace yourself."

After the fraternal twins left the terminal, Domenico held onto his brother as a spectral being appeared besides him and a wind began to move them upwards, above the awning, and about five hundred feet in the air. It felt divine, as if God himself were lifting them up. Before they knew it, they were flying. Not exactly flying, it was more like gliding on an artificial wind.

"I think I should mention!" Marco tried to overcome the sound of the heavy wind in his ears, "This ability is known as a Stand, and it is physically represented by the thing right next to you! I just got one, and that is why you have one as well!"

Marco knew that this was not the work of God, but the work of his brother and his Stand. From that moment, he knew that his brother's new Stand ability could, at the very least, control the wind. Ever since he stabbed himself with the arrow just a few days back, he had found himself to be very fascinated with the world of Stands, and wanted to learn more. That is what science is all about; learning about the world around us and how it can be used to our advantage.

After the two landed at their doorstep, they went inside and sat down in their living room. It was anything but modest; a chandelier clung to the ceiling high above, while a fireplace crackled, and a color TV with cable sat against the wall.

"So," asked Marco, "Have you found yourself able to control the wind? I know I'm stating the obvious, the answer is yes."

"More than that. Apparently, I can make it rain anything and everything. It was raining snails earlier just because I thought about them mating."

Marco contorted his face in disgust. "Snails? Mating? I'm not a psychologist, but that seems a little on the weird side," he replied. "Controlling the weather is a very powerful and potentially dangerous ability to have. Because we are young, I dare you to make it rain right now."

Domenico shifted in his seat. "Dare taken. Let there be rain."

All of a sudden, the pair heard a distinct "pitter-patter" sound on the window. Keep in mind that the forecast just said that there would be sun all day. After all, Florida was the "sunshine state". Marco went to look out the window, and sure enough, it was raining, just as he had dared his brother to make happen.

"Oh, my God." He turned around, looking back at his brother. "I don't believe in God that much, but part of me feels inclined to say that you are a god. That is, of the weather."

Domenico shrugged, "I guess I am." The next thing they knew, the rain cleared up, and a rainbow stretched from one end of the Earth to the other. This rainbow did not turn anyone into a snail. Yet.

Marco was intrigued and wanted to show his brother his own new ability.

"Now, I want you to meet someone," he said. As he sat down, a figure began to materialize beside him. This figure was his Stand, as described earlier. It should be noted that the letters inside the stripes read "GACT" in a repeating pattern.

"Woah!" Slightly terrified, Weather got up and ran behind his chair. "That's your Stand, right?"

"Indeed, it is. You don't have to be scared. What it does is it removes certain properties from living beings in the form of discs."

The figure walked over toward Domenico and swiped at his head, retrieving one disc.

"Try using your ability now."

"I can't."

"Exactly," said the Stand, which had seemingly developed its own personality.

"Anyway, its abilities haven't been fully tested yet, so I'm going to need some test subjects." At Marco's silent command, his Stand inserted the disc back into his brother's head and disappeared. "I hate to have to hurt innocent volunteers, so I have an idea."

"What is it?" asked Domenico, barely detecting the loophole in his brother's speech.

"Okay, so get this: I have a bodyguard, who was sent here by DIO; his name is Johngalli A. As soon as DIO is dead, I am going to incapacitate him and run some tests. This is where you come in: I want your help, as my brother, to take him out."

"Sounds…good." Weather was not too enamored with the idea of combat. He was worried that he could lose control at any moment and endanger every living being within a two mile radius.

"Don't worry," assured his twin, "I'll try to make it fun."

"Sure…this should give me a chance to let off some steam."

"You made a good choice." Marco stood up. "Now, I am going to need to keep up appearances with DIO, so if any of his agents come your way-"

At that very moment, the ringing cell phone on the coffee table interrupted him. After holding up his index finger so as to signal Domenico to hold on a moment, he went over and picked it up.

"Yes, this is Pucci."

"…"

"I see." Marco's voice sounded somber, but the side of his mouth furthest from the receiver curled upward slightly.

"…"

"Kujo…"

"…"

"I'll try to take him out. Uh…tell you what, meet me in the marshes outside the city at midnight, and we'll discuss a plan."

"…"

Marco hung up the phone before delivering the "glorious" news.

"Just got off the phone with Johngalli A. DIO is dead," he announced bluntly. "I want you to come with me at midnight to 'meet' Johngalli A. Now, a word of warning: he may be blind, but he is extremely adept at sensing everything around him. My plan is as such: While you create a heavy wind and rain that will overwhelm his senses, I will go talk to him. This way, he won't notice my Stand walking behind him and incapacitating him."

"Got it!" Domenico's face exuded enthusiasm akin to a nine year-old waiting for his tenth birthday. He just couldn't wait to snuff out the supporters of his brother's worst enemy one by one.

Five hours later, the Pucci brothers drove to a nearby marshland and hid in the grass. They would wait one hour for Johngalli A. to come.

"Before you say anything, Marco, I know the plan, but I feel like more wind will just help him know what is where," reasoned Weather. "I think we should just have rain, that way, he won't know anything by touch or wind."

"You do know that within your first couple days as a Stand user, you have become a more cunning strategist than me, right?" The two laughed, as torrents of rain fell out of nowhere from the pitch-black sky.

The rain would continue when an hour later, a man with red hair and milky white eyes was spotted walking among the tallgrass.

Marco made himself known, ready for anything.

Through the rain flooding the marshes, the two men walked toward each other as if they were two spies meeting in secret.

"You must be tough," said Marco, "coming here on such a rainy night."

"You know well that I always keep my promises, no matter what, Mr. Pucci."

Marco's Stand silently emerged from his person. "So, I have a plan to take out Jotaro Kujo, avenge DIO, and carry out his will. First, we kidnap someone he cares about, and that should lure him in. He will try to protect this person and I will take his discs. Now, we want to look ethical, so it would be a good idea for me to take a job at a prison near where they live, and frame someone he cares about so it looks like we are trying to kill them..."

At this point, he kept droning on as his Stand took advantage of the sniper's blindness, slowly walking behind him before tapping the back of his head.

The rain poured so hard that the blind man thought it was just another raindrop. Before he could think, the discs for his memory and his Stand, Manhattan Transfer, slipped out of his head like swords from their scabbards. As soon as he realized what had happened, he swiftly pulled out his gun, aimed forward, and pulled the trigger. Whitesnake, as it would later be known, was late to catch the bullet, but there was none to be caught. The silenced Glock 17 jammed with water whilst Marco walked up to the sniper and sneered.

"I'm just screwing with you," said Marco. "Here's the real plan: I have a little talk with Jotaro Kujo, and he and I team up to destroy whatever is left of DIO's legacy. My brother is the reason why it's raining so hard right now."

"How…could you…"

"You know, DIO actually told me to leave behind all traces of my past. Well, guess what: I am PROUD of my past, and I would do anything to protect it. Johngalli A., deluded follower of the monster named DIO, I shall deliver you to justice, the way of true fate."

These were the last words that the sniper heard before his blare eyes closed and he passed into unconsciousness.

"Well, that certainly turned out easy," sighed Marco, turning his attention to his brother. "The only question now is, How do we get this guy home in a discreet manner?"

"Yeah, I've thought about that, and I think I have a solution." Domenico eased up on the rain and condensed the air around Johngalli A's soulless body, forming a cloud which enveloped him as if it were a garbage bag.

"I get it. It's because he's trash, right?"

After the pair drove home, "garbage" bag in hand, they opened the door, only for their hearts to drop. Their sister lay unconscious on the living room floor, just barely breathing. Marco dashed over and placed his hand on her forehead, finding that she had a fever.

"It's probably Stand related," he said, picking her up and carrying her upstairs to her room. "I'm sure it will be fine."

"Brother, what of the zealot?" spoke Domenico in a Shakespearean tone as the "garbage bag" plopped down on the ground.

Playing along, Marco replied, "I pray that thou takest him to the basement. We shall deal with his ilk later. I must tend unto our sister."

The brothers walked upstairs, their sister in the darker one's arms. They had shared a bedroom ever since Domenico had moved in. Once they got to Perla's bedroom, Marco laid her in bed and summoned his Stand, which pulled her Stand disc out of her head. 

"I never did this before, so let's just see if this works," said Marco, clearly flying by the seat of his pants.

The next thing that happened was very peculiar: his Stand literally sunk its teeth into the disc, closed its eyes, and calmly spoke, "THIS IS A STAND THAT CAN CREATE A SPARK NEAR ANY MATTER THAT IS EVEN REMOTELY FLAMMABLE WITHIN A TWENTY METER RADIUS."

"Hmm…that is pretty powerful. Until her willpower becomes more apparent, we should keep this out of her." The disc left his Stand's mouth.

"Well, time to hit the hay." Domenico started walking backwards towards the other end of the hall: The twins' room.

Domenico and Marco Pucci shared a bunk bed, with Domenico sleeping on top. Neither of them cared who slept where, but it just felt right.

"Good night…Weather." Marco grinned at the new nickname he had created for his brother.

"Good night." Weather slowly drifted away from consciousness as the ambient rain of his own creation surrounded the mansion.

Chapter Text

On January 17, 1989, at around 8:00 AM, every member of the Pucci family woke up in a cold shock. They had all experienced a nightmare which they couldn’t possibly comprehend. Marco was worried about what could have become of him, Domenico was worried about his memories (and his brother turning evil), and Perla was worried about the KKK lynching her brother. To be blunt, what they had all experienced that night was their literal worst nightmare. In particular, Marco had seen himself become what he hated most: pure, unadulterated evil.

Over breakfast, each member of the family (who lived alone most of the time) discussed their dream.

“So...” Marco took a bite out of his pancakes. “We all woke up in a bit of a cold sweat, didn’t we?”

“…”

“It’s okay if you don’t want to tell me; I feel bad about it too.”

“…”

“If this was a past life, I sure made some horrible decisions in it. For starters, I am sorry for calling the KKK on both of you, especially you, Domenico, who I didn’t even know was my brother.”

“…” 

“I am sorry for following a murderous, narcissistic vampire and carrying out his plan to bring everyone on Earth to a twisted version of 'heaven.'” The young man was crying at this point.

“…”

“Even so, I am grateful that I found out about the ‘embarrassment’ myself and didn’t hire a Klansman, causing my life and the lives of countless others to spiral into ruin. I’m...glad that I don’t have a priestly obligation to keep my mouth shut about confessions.”

“It’s okay, Marco.” Domenico put his utensils down and tried to reassure his brother. “Everybody makes mistakes, and we can all redeem ourselves.”

“You’re right.” The tears slowed down after a few moments. “I am going to name my Stand ‘Whitesnake’, because there is a song by that band about redeeming oneself. Starting today, I am going to redeem myself the right way: by making this world a better place!” The mood changed from one of sorrow to one of hope very quickly.

“I’ve come up with a pretty cool name for my Stand, too," said his brother. "Since the forecast is inaccurate whenever I use my Stand, I might as well BE the ‘Weather Report!’” After Domenico (from now on referred to as “Weather”) said the name, lightning struck the sea outside the mansion.

“Well then, Weather and Whitesnake. Sounds like a good combo name. But first, I have some amends to make.”

Marco stood up and walked over to the phone on the coffee table. He took the receiver off the hook and dialed 1-800-563-7827; the number for Joestar Real Estate in New York.

“It’s probably futile to call Joseph Joestar directly, but so be it.” The dial-tone sounded, and a man on the other end picked up.

“Hello, this is Joestar Real Estate, how may I help you?”

“Could you patch me through to headquarters, please? It’s about Delta India Oscar.”

Unbeknownst to Marco, he was speaking directly to Roses, Joseph Joestar’s personal bodyguard. Joestar didn’t believe in call centers, inconvenient as they were, so every call to Joestar’s company was directed not to a call center, but directly to Roses.

“Very well. Mr. Joestar is in Japan right now, but I’ll try to patch you through to him.”

After about a minute of elevator music, a voice on the other end answered.

“Hello? Who is this?”

“Do you, by any chance, know about DIO?”

The man on the other end spit onto the carpet at the Kujo household. “Yeah, he’s dead as dirt. How do you know him?”

“I know him too well, and I hate him as much as you do.”

Marco was talking to a teenage Jotaro, who had just come back from Egypt. “Yare yare, I thought I was going to have to deal with yet another piece of shit.”

“Well, I’m sorry for being too mysterious. Listen, I need to talk to you about the plans that he had.”

The two then talked about the world of Stands and users thereof, and after talking for about fifteen minutes, they formed a partnership and agreed to meet at a hotel in Calgary.

“36, 14, 28, 24, 80, 36. His plan by the numbers.” Jotaro spoke slowly and quietly, nursing his Tim Horton's coffee as he talked to a mild-mannered Marco in a Calgary hotel room.

“Yes, that’s basically it. You could make a passcode out of it and nobody would know.” Marco sat in front of the heater (which was the closest thing that one could get to a fireplace in a hotel), also enjoying his coffee.

“So, how did you infiltrate his ranks?”

“Simple. I pretended to be nice to him, listened to him, pretended to agree with him, endured his ‘tests’, and I survived.”

Jotaro spit out his coffee, threatening to partially burn the rug. “How on earth were you able to do that?”

Suddenly, Marco's image faded away to reveal his newly named Stand, Whitesnake. Jotaro got up to check where he was, only to hear a flushing toilet and a running sink, followed by him coming out of the bathroom.

“That’s simple; I’m a master of deception,” he explained. “I recently discovered that my Stand could create illusions, such as the one you just saw. I needed to use the bathroom, but I wanted to be polite, so…”

“…”

“What? You can’t trust me now? I-I’m sorry, I want everyone I meet to feel comfortable around me-- besides my enemies, of course.”

Jotaro summoned Star Platinum. He didn’t like people who were cryptic in their wording; it traumatized him.

“DIO was one of the worst people I met. I hate him for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and if necessary, dessert. I want to destroy his legacy just as much as you do, so I need you to trust me.” Marco shed tears in desperation.

“…”

“Every night, I, my brother, and my sister have these…nightmares. They show me everything that would have happened if I actually joined him and carried out his twisted agenda. Because of him, I don’t know if I can trust anyone that I meet ever again, but you...you KILLED him. You set me free, and I need you to help me redeem myself once and for all.”

Jotaro recalled Star Platinum. “Alright Marco, I can trust you, but I need you to prove that trust with an action.”

“I’ll do anything. What is it?”

“Scratch that. Two things, actually. First, I want you to take that bone that you showed me and put it in the sunlight for an hour; that should dissolve it completely. Second, I want you to come have a drink with me tonight at the hotel bar.”

Things can be perfectly explained from here. DIO’s final remnant, his bone, was disintegrated in broad daylight, and the two men had a few drinks that night and got to know each other. Until Jolyne’s birth in 1992, they shared a partnership in hunting down the remaining agents of DIO.

Everyone was eating breakfast on November 11, 2011, the day after “Operation Foo Fighters” was successfully completed. There were 131 days until the wedding of Jolyne Cujoh and Narciso Anasui. Marco was recalling the story of a fight with a cult leader named Kenzo, who practiced a “silly little technique” named Feng Shui.

“So, Feng Shui literally means ‘water and wind’. The problem for him was that Domenico manipulated both wind and water, making his Stand’s predictions useless. And that made it all the easier for me to take him out. So much for fortune-telling.”

Everyone laughed. Everyone was having a good time. Everyone except for Emporio. He was eating his food slowly, bearing a grim expression on his face.

“What’s wrong?” asked Jolyne, who was the only one that Emporio really “knew” much about. “I said that we’re not dead. Even FF is here.” She pointed to Foo Fighters, who sat across the table sipping a gallon of water, having been medically cleared to be around humans.

“…”

“Remember when Weather turned us all into snails?”

“Yes, but I think I’m doubting myself more than ever. I need a shrink.”

Chapter Text

Two men were on the floor, one young, one not so young, both bleeding from nearly every orifice in their body as the effects of oxygen poisoning took their toll on their bodies. The young one was the cause of the toxin, even though he bluffed that it wasn’t him, just to look tough.

“Don’t you understand? You’ve lost to fate! Walking the path of justice is true fate!”

All of a sudden, the priest began to laugh. Emporio knew that fate was on Pucci’s side. Hell, Pucci was IMMUNE to fate. Obviously, he lay back and got ready to die by whatever trick the priest had up his sleeve, but the priest suddenly let his guard down.

“Well?” he exclaimed, “You were going to kill me?”

“You had a trick up your sleeve, right? YOU were going to kill ME. Besides, avenging my friends won’t bring them back, right?”

The priest chuckled even more. “That WAS the trick up my sleeve! To make you realize that it is pointless to kill me. By the way, another one is that I can still use C-Moon since Made in Heaven alters gravity. Because of that, I know just how to kill you. Goodbye.”

The boy felt his heart pop out of his chest as the priest burst into the most maniacal laughter that he had ever heard. And then, he screamed…

All for nothing, as he woke up in the Kujo Mansion. This must have been another alternate dimension that he was shown by his Stand’s newly discovered abilities. He was glad that he wasn’t permanently a part of it, but nonetheless, he knew he needed help; both mentally and to control his powers.

Emporio Alnino was born in the year 2000 to a female inmate at Green Dolphin Street Prison. Sometime shortly thereafter, his mother was killed by Whitesnake’s digestive mist. Eleven years later, he would end up dealing the final blow to the man behind Whitesnake: Father Enrico Pucci. Not only would he kill the man responsible for killing everyone he knew, but he overwrote the timeline, making it so that they never died in the first place. He even awakened the ability to bring back their memories.

With all this good karma coming his way, one would think that it would be easy for him to feel good about himself. Unfortunately, this was not the case. Emporio couldn’t possibly comprehend why he went back to the original timeline. Keep in mind, he probably had an IQ of 130 by now. Sometime in December of 2011, Emporio saw the therapist that he had needed to see for all his life. Little did he know that he was about to learn about his true past.

“I just feel like when I killed him, what I did had even worse implications for me. Where am I now?” asked the boy.

“Relax. You are where you have always been, even if you haven’t fully adjusted to it.”

“Why do I feel like what I did was just as meaningless, if not more than him? How was I able to get him to push that disc into my head when fate wouldn't let me hold it up in the first place? Why do I feel like what I said to him was pure and utter bullshit? Why was I crying when I should have been happy? Why do I get the false feeling that this is another universe entirely, everyone I know is still dead, and I’m just in denial? What if I am dead? What is my REAL story? Nothing adds up, yet I feel like it is supposed to. It’s ridiculous; I am eleven, and I have seen way more than anyone should have seen.” Emporio was VENTING all of his unanswered questions at this point.

“Your friend, Domenico, told me that you were feeling absolutely okay until a little over a month ago. What pushed you to these feelings?”

Emporio then described how his nightmare had played out, divulging every disturbing detail.

“How do you think that this…half-man, half-homunculus was right?”

“My actions were meaningless. They were meaningless then, and they are meaningless now. I now know that this man has meddled in more lives than I can count. It’s amazing how he could ruin the lives of so many and never suffer for it. He might as well have gone to heaven after all. He has no afterlife, yet he should have one of eternal suffering. I said that true fate always sided with justice, but it seems like he got away scot-free. My point is that time can’t go backwards, right? So why am I back here? I’m probably dead.”

“Emporio, you’re not dead.” The therapist shifted in her seat. “If you were dead, Jolyne would not have had the capacity to lie. Also, if you get caught up on little details like that, you lose sight of reality. So, tell me, how do you think you can put a positive spin on what happened to you?”

“Well, the good news is that I USED to think that everyone I knew was dead, but it appears that I have developed a Stand ability to bring back their memories. The problem is, I already saw them die, so what’s the point? Once they’re dead, they’re dead.”

“You are going to need to rethink that rule. Anyone who tells you that they are still dead or that you are in a new universe or anything like that…I don’t know what their goals are, but they are some of the most toxic people on the planet.”

“You’re right.” Emporio sat up, coming back from lying down on the couch that whole time. “Seeing isn’t always believing; also, I have to avoid those types of people. There is just one more question that I have.”

The shrink leaned forward with interest. “And that is?”

“Now that I know that what I remembered about my past was false, where did I really come from?”

The shrink sighed. “I’m not a historian,” she said, “I CAN, however, refer you back to an incident which happened a month ago, back when you were picked up. I may have to speak with Dr. Pucci about the whole thing; he may have some information.”

“Whitesnake’s abilities can extract ANYTHING as a disc from any living being,” explained Marco, who brought out his Stand. “If that’s true, it should be able to extract memories that have been sealed away. I’m going to try to see what REALLY happened before November 9th.”

Soon enough, a disc slipped out of Emporio’s head and into Marco's hand. Marco then inserted it into his computer, which played out Emporio’s suppressed memories.

In addition to Emporio himself, Jotaro, Hermes, and Weather stood in Marco's office in the basement of the Kujo Mansion, waiting for these secrets to be revealed. What they saw from the first-person footage on the monitor shocked them.

Emporio Alnino was born in the year 2000 to a female inmate named Maria at Green Dolphin Street Prison, a private correctional facility under the ownership of the Speedwagon Foundation. When Maria was found to be pregnant, her ex-boyfriend framed her for murder and had her incarcerated for life. The reason she was incarcerated at Green Dolphin was that she was suspected to have committed the murder using her Stand. As such, she was tested for Stand virus antibodies and tested positive.

She was so overcome with a desire for revenge that for the next eleven years, she developed a dark determination to get herself and her son out of prison to seal the deal. Unfortunately, a push had to come to shove, so when Emporio’s life was under threat during the escape, she decided to go and hold off the guards. The Speedwagon Foundation reported three casualties that day: two women and one man. One was Maria, one was a young woman named Atroe, and one wasn’t even a prisoner, but a "pink-haired shirtless man" who just so happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. 

Thanks to his mother’s noble sacrifice, Emporio made it out alive, albeit scarred for life. Due to this traumatizing event, he subconsciously awakened his ability’s full potential, and fell asleep on the shoulder of Green Dolphin Street, phasing into another timeline. When he came back, he brought another life with him, having completely forgotten his past until now.

“Oh dear,” exclaimed Marco, pressing the eject button on his computer. “On behalf of the Speedwagon Foundation, I apologize for any trauma that we have caused you. I will have your criminal records expunged as soon as I can.”

“With all this parental love fresh in my head, I might as well go check on Jolyne,” said Jotaro, pulling his phone from his pocket.

“Hello?” asked Jolyne on the other end.

“Jolyne! How’s your trip to great-grandpa Joseph’s?”

“It’s going great!” she said, refreshed from her escape from the Floridian heat.

Jolyne and Anasui had decided to go to New York City to visit Joseph Joestar, Jolyne's great-grandfather, for Christmas. Unbeknownst to them, Joseph had been drinking something other than wine from his wine glasses lately. Either he was more delusional than ever, or something even more mysterious was happening…

Chapter Text

Snowflakes accumulated on the rooftop of the building which housed the headquarters of Joestar Real Estate LLC in the Upper West Side of Manhattan. On the fiftieth floor, Jolyne slipped her iPhone 4S into her pocket. She had just gotten off the phone with her father; all was well down in Florida, save for a certain eleven year-old having to trivialize what he thought was his past.

"Anything interesting?" asked Anasui, gazing at the distant skyscrapers on the other side of the snowdrop-studded window.

"Not really," said Jolyne, "just that Emporio found out that his mother was a prisoner at Green Dolphin." Anasui turned his head toward hers, confused.

"I thought he already knew that."

"He knew that in the dream, he didn't know a thing about his life here."

Jolyne's fiancé struggled to understand what she meant by "here" until he took himself back to the conversation from over a month ago; then he remembered, "Right, he's not from our reality, or something like that."

"No, babe," sighed Jolyne, "he is from our reality; he just went to another one for a long time when he fell asleep on the side of the road; that's what Marco told us." She gestured Anasui away from the window and through the hallway leading toward the expansive office of her great-grandfather. The next thing he knew, there was a voice headed in his general direction.

"Next thing you'll say is, 'How are you, you hopelessly lazy old fool?'" said the voice.

"How are you, you hopelessly lazy old fool?" said Jolyne, quickly realizing the futility of even tiptoeing around thinking about considering attempts to fool her great-grandfather.

"I assure you, Jolyne, I may be old and hopelessly lazy, but I am no fool!" Joseph's voice seemed old and gravelly, with the odd cough or wheeze every now and then. But with Joseph Joestar, nothing was ever as it seemed. For instance, the wine glass in his hand - his right - contained what was ostensibly a red wine.

But Anasui noticed something...weird...about the wine. It was a little too viscous for wine - Wait, he wasn't a wine expert; he couldn't prove that something was fishy. It was only polite to shake the man's hand. "Hello, Mister Joestar, I'm..." Nervousness crept through his arms like a shock through his blood vessels. If Jolyne's father was pissed about the engagement, then surely her great-grandfather must be absolutely infuriated - no, that was the dream. This was reality. Jotaro was perfectly happy about the marriage.

"...I'm Jolyne's fiancé, Narciso Anasui. It's nice to meet you." Ripping off the Band-Aid, Anasui put out his left hand for the 91 year-old man to grasp. When their hands connected, the grip was far firmer than Anasui expected, and he heard a faint mechanical whirr coming from the other hand. "Is that a-"

"Robotic hand?" interrupted Joseph, "I'm a little surprised you didn't know that already!" The old man took off his glove to reveal the rather fantastic piece of machinery that was his left hand. It wasn't a hook, like a stereotypical pirate, nor was it anything else particularly fancy or exotic. It was just a mechanical hand that functioned almost exactly like a regular human hand. The state-of-the-art German design had seldom changed since its first installation in 1938, except for a couple years ago, when the design was adjusted to allow for more Hamon usage without slowly melting the hand.

"Wow," said Anasui, leaning in for a closer look, "you know, I'm really into tinkering with things. Can I take apart-"

"NO," choired Joseph, Jolyne, and another woman who was old enough to be Joseph's wife, the latter having a moderate Italian accent.

"Okay, backing off." Having been instantly shut down, Anasui put his hands up and took one step backwards, only to take a single sniff - probably induced by the cold - and inhale the faintest hint of metal coming from the wine glass on the desk. "Wait, what's that smell?" he asked, his extended index finger pointed directly at the wine, though twitching. Joseph leaned closer to Anasui.

"What?" he yelled, "Did you say 'Mutts that spell'? My hearing isn't as good as it once was, you see..." Anasui was a little infuriated, but Jolyne knew deep down that any claim that Joseph made about his own hearing was always dubious at best, no matter his age.

"Let me make myself more clear," said Anasui, clearing his throat before slowly and loudly saying, "THAT WINE SMELLS LIKE METAL!" He was no chemist, but he was pretty certain that the smell of metal plus thick(ish) red liquid equals blood. "Mr. Joestar, with all due respect..."

When he woke up that morning, Anasui had no idea that that day, a sentence that would come out of his mouth would be, "...are you drinking blood?!"

With as much care as possible, the patriarch of the modern-day Joestar family grasped the left temple of his glasses with his mechanical hand, and slowly placed them on the table before sighing and rubbing his eyes, as though he were preparing for something. After a few solid seconds, he said with the voice of someone who he could plausibly pretend not to hear, "I knew this day would come. Now poor, innocent, little Jolyne has to know my dark, dark secret." At the first "dark", Joseph's exasperated expression morphed into a slightly devilish grin. Again, nothing was ever as it seemed with Joseph Joestar.

"Jiji," exclaimed Jolyne, "what's gotten into you?" Seconds later, without answering his great-granddaughter's question, Joseph pressed his metallic index finger to a plastic button on the desk phone. "Slash," he said, "send some people from my legal team to my office. Tell them to bring the NDA forms, code: Spider-monkey."

"Mr. Joestar," answered a voice on the other end, "Sir, are you sure you want to tell an outsider...THAT?"

"My memory may not be as sharp anymore, but I really don't recall stuttering, Slash."

"Alright, sir, as you wish." The line went silent after that. Now, the call was about telling an outsider this secret, but Jolyne? Not even she had any idea what potentially damaging information was about to be revealed.

The outsider in question was quaking in his boots, chittering his teeth even faster than when he was outside in the cold. His whole body was trembling and he had no idea why. "JoJo...," he muttered, "I'm scared."

That name. JoJo. Anasui hadn't called her that in a while. The last time it happened, it was when they were at a magic show in Miami and there was a Stand user who made it so that the magician actually killed his assistant instead of displacing her body parts. Thankfully, his Stand was otherwise useless, so when Jolyne made several lengths of rope out of herself and tied him up, he was completely defenseless when the Speedwagon Foundation team arrived to apprehend him.

"It's okay, Annie," said Jolyne, pulling him in for a reassuring hug. Usually, it's the male who comforts his girlfriend, not the other way around. But things were different here. Quite different.

A couple minutes of uncertainty later, a couple of white men in their thirties-ish wearing suits with black ties and seemingly opaque sunglasses strode into the office. One of them carried a single sheet of paper, upon which were written three words in bold large print: NON DISCLOSURE AGREEMENT.

"The NDA you requested, Mr. Joestar," said the one carrying the form.

"Very good, Simon; just put it on my desk. Garfunkel, I need you to notarize this." Joseph's voice was gentle, but commanding. "Please, Mr. Anasui, read this carefully and sign it."

Anasui took a closer look at the piece of paper printed in an intimidating serif font, with the occasional ALL-CAPS hyper intimidation. There was so much text that it made his eyes blurry just glancing at it, but he could definitely read, "I, the undersigned, agree not to divulge any and/or all of what I am about to hear to anyone other than descendants of JONATHAN JOESTAR, 5TH BARON JOESTAR; their spouses; employees of REO SPEEDWAGON PETROLEUM CORPORATION, dba THE SPEEDWAGON FOUNDATION with clearance level 5 or higher; and/or other such persons that JOSEPH JOESTAR or JOTARO KUJO may appoint at any time, until such a date that JOSEPH JOESTAR shall appoint in the future. If any part of this agreement blah blah blah..."

"Just sign it," said Jolyne, putting her hand on his shoulder, "What's the worst that could happen?"

"As unpredictable as I may be," said Joseph, "The information you are agreeing not to divulge poses no danger to anyone."

Anasui looked up from reading the NDA. "Alright, pen?"

"Right here." The elder Joestar grabbed a pen from the mug to his left and placed it diagonally over the paper. Anasui picked it up, and with no more than five strokes, his end of the paperwork was complete.

"I'll take that," said Garfunkel, the notary. Once he had put down his own signature as witness, the two lawyers, one with the form in hand, strode out of the office, stoic as they came in, and closed both doors.

"Okay," began Joseph, "I am going to start with something that you already know, Jolyne." With a deep inhale, the story began. "A little over twenty years ago, your father and I, as well as a few friends and tag-alongs, went to Egypt to kill DIO, a task that your father ultimately succeeded in doing." Joseph turned to Anasui. "You may have heard bits of conversation here and there, but you probably don't know who DIO was. In short, he was a vampire and a Stand user, evil incarnate, bent on taking over the world, and possibly even more. His ambition was without end and without limit, and the Joestar bloodline was the only thing standing in his way."

"Now," he said, recentering his gaze, "What I am about to tell you is something that neither the both of you, nor the public, knows." Another inhale. "Before Jotaro fought DIO directly..." A dramatic pause. "DIO killed me in stopped time - that was his Stand ability, to stop time, just like your father - and he sucked my corpse dry to strengthen his abilities. Why that makes sense is a story for another day. Next, one of you will ask, 'If DIO killed you, how are you alive right now?'"

"Mr. Joestar," interrupted Anasui, "If DIO killed you, how are you alive right now?" Eyes shot wide open, Anasui instantly learned from the mistake that he made.

"Well, Mister...Anasui, that's the thing." It was then that ever so slightly, the wrinkles on Joseph's face began to fade. "Ever since that night, I haven't really been human." Anything could be left to the imagination, but that didn't mean that it would. In fact, it wouldn't.

"...Jolyne, I knew I'd have to tell you this eventually, but...I am a vampire."

<--TO BE CONTINUED|\|