In which things get complicated

It was at that point when he realized that the Speedwagon Foundation might not be the lifeline he had expected.

He sat in a small, dimly lit waiting room, fingers tapping restlessly against a faded brown folder while in the background, a bespectacled secretary loudly typed something into a form, occasionally casting mildly disapproving glances in his direction. She had already offered him some coffee which he had declined and then, in the same polite voice, reminded him that the Head of Research was a very busy man and that he was better off trying to reschedule his appointment. Kakyoin had calmly assured her that he would consider doing so if his two previous attempts hadn't been met with the same response. In the end, she had given up trying to dissuade him and went back to her work, pretending he was just a figment of her imagination. Her watery eyes, however, still darted across the room every once in a while, something that Kakyoin had come to expect. Not being able to see his stand set people on edge and most of the Supernatural Department was already slightly paranoid before he came along. Sometimes, he wondered if coating Hierophant in flour every morning would make them feel better.

He shifted in the uncomfortable plastic chair and flipped through the contents of the folder on his knees. By now, he knew the whole thing by heart and had run this scenario in his head a thousand times which made the long wait especially frustrating. It all felt like a test to see if he would keep pushing after weeks of dodged meetings and ignored phone calls. A fellow researcher, who had spent nearly two years digging into the undiscovered potential of what remained of the Red Stone of Aja, had once joked that the Supernatural Department didn't really have a Head of Research and Taro Yoshida was just a mannequin with a budget-approving stamp glued to his hand. Kakyoin had merely laughed at the suggestion but now, he was beginning to understand what his colleague had meant. There were people in the Supernatural Department that were considering learning to walk through walls to talk to him before their hair turned gray, which is why it was important for him to remain calm and collected even though every fiber in his body was now vibrating at a different frequency.

The sleek black phone on the secretary's desk sprung to life with an ear-piercing ring. She picked it up, listened intently for a few moments, then slammed it back down.

"Mr. Yoshida will see you now," she said in a dull monotone, before readjusting her glasses and going back to the form on her screen. He let out a long breath, walked across the room and pushed open a tufted black door.

There were wild tales of dribbly candles and skulls when other departments talked about this office but to Kakyoin, it looked exactly like he had imagined it. It exuded an almost deliberate plainness, with bare off-white walls and a single desk made out of red oak that was equally bare except for a computer monitor, a small globe and a neatly organized paperwork tray. He had heard that the key to being taken seriously by his peers was to make your job as mundane as theirs but the Head of Research of the Supernatural Department took it to a whole new level. Even his co-workers sometimes glued colorful stickers to their monitors or had pictures of their spouses and children in their workspace. The room he had stepped into looked sterile, as if its occupant was afraid of leaving any imprint upon it before it was taken over by his successor. Either that or he had gotten rid of every personal touch his predecessor had left and just never bothered to fill in the empty space.

The man behind the desk glanced up from his work and gave him a long appraising look. Blue eyes narrowed under the bright fluorescent light as he drummed a fountain pen on a thin stack of recycled paper that bore the same rejected stamp as the folder Kakyoin was holding in his suddenly very sweaty hand.

"You are Noriaki Kakyoin, aren't you?" he said as he pushed the rolling chair back and stood up, the corners of his mouth rising ever so slightly. "Mariko tells me you are a very persistent man."

"Only with things that matter, sir."

The eyebrows over the blue eyes rose for just a split second as the man's face settled into a politely blank expression. "I see. How can I help you then?"

Kakyoin shot a quick look at the envelope on the shiny wooden surface, then placed his own folder on top of it. "Sir, I understand that a hundred applications cross your desk every day," he paused trying to check the man's reaction but his face remained unchanged so he went on, "I wanted to make sure you had read mine to the end before rejecting it."

He felt a stone drop in his stomach as he had finished speaking. The words had come out harsher than he had intended but at least they had served their purpose. If this was indeed a test, he had definitely reached the benchmark expected of him. His only hope was that he hadn't overreached it.

To his relief, the man just shrugged and leaned back in his chair. "I wouldn't be sitting behind this desk if I could get away with not reading everything that crosses it. Don't let the people in this building let you think that they are the only ones working hard." He skimmed the content of the folder before he slammed it shut and slid it across the desk towards Kakyoin. "You ask us to grant you the funds for a program to find stand users and help them develop their abilities. Maybe even create a school if enough people are willing to sign up. Am I correct?"

Kakyoin held the scrutinizing blue stare wondering if whatever test he was supposed to pass was still going on. There was something in the man's look, something elusive that only flashed up for a millisecond, like a well-hidden subliminal message on a movie screen. He was used to people in his department constantly glancing behind him, hunting for things their eyes could not register but this was different. He watched the man's fingers drum a repetitive, telltale rhythm on the desk and frowned. Taro Yoshida was uneasy in his presence, which was highly unlikely for the man who held all the cards and even more unlikely to play in his favor.

He turned the folder around, making the bright red stamp of rejection face Yoshida. "Yes, sir, it is a great chance for our department to make a difference. Which is why I am really having trouble understanding why you turned it down."

Without any warning, the man stood up from his chair and took a few slow steps across the room. "You've only been with us for a year?" he asked and let out the smallest smile as Kakyoin nodded in agreement. "Word of advice, don't let the people in this building distract you from the big picture either. I've been in their shoes and sometimes we get so wrapped in our own research, we fail to see how it might affect others."

Kakyoin sighed as he scanned the index page for the section where he had painstakingly charted out the costs. "Sir, I have taken our funds into account and we could easily spare some budget. If no one turns up for the program, we will not even have to spend a dime. All we need to do if put the word out there and…"

"You thought this was about money?"

The sudden steely tone in the man's voice left him speechless for a second. When he found his voice again, it was frustratingly monosyllabic. "Sir?"

Yoshida's hands folded behind his back as he faced the only window in the office, turning away from Kakyoin. "What do you think will happen if aliens land tomorrow?" he asked.

For a few seconds, Kakyoin could do nothing but blink at the question. "With all due respect, how is that relevant?"

Yoshida just shook his head, his eyes fixed on the bustling city below. "Come on, Mr. Kakyoin! You're a smart man or so I keep hearing. Give me your best guess; what will happen if aliens land tomorrow?"

Kakyoin ran a hand through his hair, trying to gather his thoughts. The conversation was quickly veering into a direction he hadn't anticipated. He paused, his mind suddenly treading lightly to avoid a hidden tripwire. "Well it's difficult to know but if I'm perfectly honest… people would be nervous."

There was a slight scoff before Yoshida turned to face him. "'Nervous' is putting it mildly, don't you think? I would have gone for 'scared out of their minds'" He pulled the curtains closed in one sweeping motion and turned to face him. "Now, what if we tell these same people that aliens have been living among them for quite some time and not only that, but they are invisible and have supernatural abilities beyond their understanding. What do you think will happen then?"

In Kakyoin's mind a tripwire snapped. The world around him grew blue, ice-cold and very still while somewhere inside him, Hierophant opened his eyes and tensed like a spring.

He felt the blood drain from his face as his words turned to steel in his mouth. "Stands aren't aliens, sir! They belong to real people who deserve to know what is happening to them!" He stemmed the anger flooding every corner of his mind and went on a calmly as he could. "There are stand users out there who are scared out of their minds already. Shouldn't we let them know they're not alone?"

Yoshida shrugged as he fished out a cigarette pack from his breast pocket and turned it over a few times. When he looked back at him, the subdued flicker in his eyes was back. "I'm sure they will manage just fine." He stopped to fiddle with his lighter and nodded at the globe on the desk. "You had people trying to track down the device that awakens those powers, right? An arrow of some sort?

Kakyoin thought of his two best friends and almost laughed at the notion that they answered to him in any way. If anything, they had been the ones helping him, doing most of the heavy lifting while he just shed light on their findings from the comfort of his own apartment. Familiar guilt pecked at his heart again before Yoshida lit up a cigarette and sucked in a long, shaky breath.

"Once it is located, we will be able to control its influence and the problem should be solved very quickly" he said opening up Kakyoin's folder again and casually exhaling a cloud of ashen smoke over the pages. "There's no need for this program, there never was. You're talking about reaching out to statistical anomalies here. There's more people with psychopathic tendencies out there than people with stands. We are better off focusing on the damage they do, don't you agree?"

The cold fury in Kakyoin's mind snarled and struggled against its restraints. Behind his eyes, Hierophant stirred like a wounded beast and rose behind his master's back, silent as the smoke drifting from the cigarette. As he fought to calm his racing heart, he considered the irony of his current predicament. Here he was, alone in a room, with an invisible trump card that he couldn't even use without effectively burying all his years of hard work. He thought of Jotaro and for a brief moment, envied him. At least, Star Platinum could always punch its way out of a problem.

"When we went to Egypt to save Holly Kujo, four out of the six of us were born with their stands", he replied as his mind shifted gears into a non-violent track. "One of those four was only aware of his powers after a personal tragedy, he never even got close to any arrow." He took the folder from the man's hands and flipped over to the figures of stand users at the end of the report. "According to my most conservative estimates, the number of potential stand-users could be as high as one in a thousand in Japan alone."

He could tell Yoshida's breath was caught in this throat by the way the gray smoke hovered still before his face. His gaze followed the data on the page for a while and Kakyoin's heart leapt to his throat. Maybe he wasn't all that different from all the other researchers who mocked him all those years ago. After all, the man was a scientist, just like him. He could be reasoned with if he could only compel him to actually listen.

He took advantage of the stunned silence and went on, "Sir, I know it's not what we normally do here but what's the point of our research if we don't use it for the greater good? Think about it, we're in such a privileged position…!"

"No, you are!"

Blue lightning flashed in Taro Yoshida's eyes and Kakyoin knew immediately that he had overplayed his hand. His last words had dented some sort of armor, clamped tightly around the man for the entirety of this conversation. He remained silent as his mind flailed trying to find, something, anything that would make him understand where he had misstepped and how to fix it.

It grasped at a random fact about how the most common eye-color for German people was blue.

Most people outside of the Supernatural Research Department were unaware of the fact that Taro Yoshida's grandfather was German. Even less people remembered that the man had been a major player in founding the Supernatural Research Department after defecting from his country during World War Two. He had been part of the team that fought alongside the German army against the Pillar Men and some claimed what witnessing Kars' destruction firsthand was what drove him to keep the Supernatural Research in the Foundation on par with everything else and not just a bizarre addition of an eccentric billionaire long after Robert Speedwagon passed away. He was also the one who established the branch in Japan, after moving there with his Japanese wife in nineteen forty five. He had dedicated his life to his work and much like the Joestars, was bound to pass on this duty to his descendants.

One after another, the puzzle pieces fell into place in Kakyoin's mind as he felt another cold stone drop to the bottom of his stomach. The shifty, distrustful flicker in the blue eyes since the moment he had stepped inside the room now made too much sense now. Little Taro Yoshida was raised as a mere human in a world where vampires, ghouls and all kinds of dark forces were real and not the fictional, easily defeated enemy that people dreamed up as a twisted reflection of their own minds. He had grown up very aware of the fact that he was a small and defenseless being whose only real weapon against the overwhelming threat of the supernatural was knowledge that he wielded like a sword.

And so, he studied every supernatural event without exception like a knight studied a dragon while other, mightier knights who held the power of the sun in their hands had all perished long ago. And now, after the biggest dragon had been scattered to dust in Egypt and everyone could rest easy, another smaller, friendly dragon had walked up to him and asked for a chance to train more dragons.

There was no way he could win this, not now, not ever. Taro Yoshida had never doubted his report or the science behind it. He believed every word and he was absolutely terrified by it.

Still, he couldn't walk away without giving it one last shot.

He slid out a file from the folder and placed in on the desk. Its front page was almost entirely occupied by a large photograph of a gaunt, brown face with milky, unseeing eyes.

"Shortly after we reached Egypt we were ambushed by a man called Oumar N'Doul", he said softly as Yoshida's eyes continued to stare him down. "He had been a common criminal on the streets of Cairo until he crossed paths with Dio Brando who turned him into something much more dangerous. His last words before he killed himself to avoid capture were 'Even evil needs a savior.'" He flipped to the second page where N'Doul's rap sheet unfolded. "I think people like him deserve to have a savior that isn't another Dio."

Yoshida barely glanced at the document, his lips curving into a venomous smile. "I see, is that what you see yourself as? A savior?"

For a moment, he felt like the world had been snatched from under him. His carefully constructed rhetoric teetered in his mind like a tower of cards ready to collapse. The word had sounded bitter when Jotaro had relayed the story to him in the hospital room in Aswan but in Taro Yoshida's mouth, it stung like an open wound. It brought forth a picture of a pathetic man with a big ego who thought himself a messiah to his own kind. A man exactly like Dio Brando, a man that Kakyoin swore he would never become.

He quickly snatched the file back from the desk and muttered "Sir… I see myself as someone who can help."

The man's blue eyes gave him one last cold glare before he sat back behind his desk indicating that the conversation was over. "With all due respect, Mr. Kakyoin, none of these people asked for your help."

But that had been a long time ago and this was now.

The rain was gradually dying down by the time he turned the corner that led him to his street. He folded his umbrella and let the water trapped in its folds trickle on the pavement as a long yawn escaped him. The long walk had been a good opportunity to get his mind on the right track but it had also drained him and now, a warm shower and a good night sleep beckoned him more than ever. He shook the stray raindrops out of his hair, fumbled with his keys and froze.

Someone was standing next to the front door of his apartment block.

Whoever it was, it was clearly a woman, though her age escaped him until he saw a backpack with a high school logo slumped at her feet. She pressed herself tightly against the wall hoping for the narrow eave to protect her from the rain but long, dark hair still hung in stringy clumps in front of her face and all the way to her shoulders, leaving damp stains on her clothes. Behind her, a shapeless blue mist swirled in the darkness that pooled around her despite the weak yellow glow of the streetlamps. It coiled around the girl's ankles and wrists for a moment, then drifted away.

Kakyoin stopped in his tracks as a familiar feeling washed over him again; two unique animals meeting each other in the wild, waiting for the other to make the first move. He stood still for a while, letting the alarms in his head quiet down. Egypt had taught him not to underestimate the power of a stand-user based on their youth but if the blue stand had been hostile, it would have sniped him in the dark, way before he had even spotted it. He looked at the girl, shivering in the night air and reminded himself that this was not Egypt. This was someone who had thought it worthwhile to stand under a thunderstorm to wait for him.

He had to proceed carefully, though. The last thing he wanted was to scare her off before she had even opened her mouth.

He walked closer, his moves slow and deliberate and watched the girl stir, as if awoken from a trance. Moving equally slowly, she brushed her soaked bangs aside to reveal a pale face with dark, deep-set eyes. As she took a tentative step forward, he watched her fingers wrap around a protection charm wrapped in teal cloth that hung from her neck.

"You see it too, right?" she asked.

He gave her a small reassuring nod and replied, "Yes."

Next chapter drops in March. Meanwhile, save a writer, leave a comment.