Turning to watch his sweet sister as she continued with her work, Dio smiled. It was so fascinating, watching his dear Alice when she was truly in her element; whether it was altering the clothes she had purchased – adding those clever little hidden pockets that he'd developed something of a liking for, himself – painting one of her beautiful masterpieces, or even simply reading a book that she truly enjoyed. Reaching out in an effort to gently run his fingers through her long queue, Dio found his attention drawn suddenly to the sound of determined footfalls making their way through the large library.

"Dio," their sweet puppy of an adopted brother called softly, once he too had determined that he would not be causing too much of a disturbance to Alice when he did. "Might I speak to you for a moment?"

"Of course, Jojo," he, Dio, said as the pair of them made their way to another section of the library. "Now, what could you possibly be so interested in that it couldn't wait until Alice and I had left the library on our own?"

"I apologize if this brings up any memories you would rather not think about, but I feel it is a question that needs to be asked," Jojo said, clearly steeling himself for some confrontation or other; Dio wondered, for just a moment, what their puppy of an adopted brother thought he was going to end up facing. "Just how was it that Alice came to be a vampire?"

He paused, internally surprised to find Jojo asking him such a question. "I granted her the power myself, Jojo," he answered, seeing no reason to lie in such a situation as this. "I would have offered it to you, Jojo, but you seem so content with the sunlight that I could scarcely even consider such a thing."

It seemed that Jojo hadn't been at all prepared to hear a thing like that.

"Why would you do such a thing?" their puppy asked.

"Alice and I are quite a bit different than you, Jojo," he said; he'd not have bothered stating such obvious facts to his sweet sister, but as he'd stated previously, Jojo and his dear Alice were not remotely the same sort of people.

"Yes, I know," Jojo said, his eyes briefly darting towards where his dear Alice sat comfortably with her book.

For a moment, Dio wondered what their puppy was intending to do, before Jojo seemed to resolve himself to a new course of action. Raising an eyebrow as Jojo made his way over to where Alice was sitting with her book, Dio followed in his footsteps, curious to know just what it was that their puppy had planned.

=PB=

Gathering his resolve, Jonathan gently touched Alice's right shoulder, then waited for his and Dio's sister to turn her attention to him of her own accord. He'd no desire to be subjected to another lecture, and so he allowed time for his and Dio's sister to take note of his presence and put away her book.

"What is it, Jonathan?" she asked, turning her chair around so that she would be able to face him more squarely.

"Dio told me about what… happened to you," he said, not quite able to bring himself to speak the words to her at this point.

Truly, he didn't know if he ever would.

"Good to see he's not holding out again," their sister muttered, her expression slightly distant, before she seemed to turn the main focus of her attention to him. "What's on your mind, then, Jonathan?"

"I just wished to know how it happened, that's all," Jonathan said, and she almost wanted to laugh at the sheer incongruity of his current posture.

Really, attempting to make oneself look small just did not work on a man his size; Jonathan was too tall, and too thickly-muscled, to make such a posture look anything but ridiculous.

"You'd really have to ask Dio about that," she said, both for the fact that it was true, and because – petty as it might very well have been – Alice relished the chance to set Jonathan on her sometimes-thickheaded twin, at least under these kinds of circumstances. "I was unconscious for the first part."

"What?"

"Oh yeah," she continued, swallowing a smirk. "All I remember is waking up with the great-granddaddy of all headaches. And then, well, this."

"Trust me, sister dear, you wouldn't have wished to be conscious for such a process," Dio said, making his way over to the table where she and Jonathan had congregated around. "I was, and even Jojo could tell you that it wasn't what anyone would call a pleasant experience."

"It was horrible," Jonathan muttered, hunching his shoulders briefly, before standing up straight and turning his disapproving gaze on Dio. "Which is why I don't understand why you would ever do such a thing to our sister, Dio!"

Leaning back in her seat, Alice wondered for a moment if she was going to have to intervene if it came down to a fight between the pair of them, or if Dio was going to be able to keep a lid on things without her help this time. Not like he has the best record with that kind of thing, she mused with a resigned sort of annoyance. True, Dio had learned to be more discreet about his craving for power and domination, but that hadn't stopped him from being pretty open with his cravings for them around her.

Still, she'd at least managed to convince him of the merits of making people want to give you power, rather than attempting to take it; really, only a moron would ever think that the latter was anything but a stopgap for the desperate, the stupid, and the desperately stupid.

=PB=

Chuckling at the adorable expression of protective fury on Jojo's sweet face he, Dio, stepped forward to explain himself.

"Jojo, you know very well that I, Dio, would never do anything to endanger the members of my dear family," he said, making his smile more gentle so that he would be better able to appeal to their puppy's protective instincts. "Aside from the initial pain, which even I will admit was rather terrible, this transformation that your Mr. Zeppeli so decries has provided nothing but benefits to Alice and I. We'll be eternal, Jojo. We won't have a mere human lifetime on this world, but an infinity of them."

"You'll never be able to stand in the sunlight again," Jojo said, his face taking on an earnest, pleading expression.

Dio laughed softly; truly, their puppy concerned himself with the most absurd things. "We still have our memories, Jojo. And, with the proper preparations, we can enjoy a day in the sun."

Jojo sighed, shaking his head. "I suppose, if you truly are happy…"

Smiling as his sweet sister embraced Jojo from his right, causing their adorable puppy to trail off into silence, Dio embraced their adorable puppy's opposite side. For a handful of moments, he could all but feel the hesitation in Jojo's entire body, but soon enough their adorable puppy was embracing the pair of them in turn.

=PB=

The three of them separated again, and Jonathan found that he felt slightly at odds with himself; on the one hand, Dio and Alice still seemed so perfectly happy with what they were, but the memory of Dio's screams as the spines hidden within the stone mask pierced his skull and the knowledge that Alice had suffered in the same thing… No, he could not quite bring himself to be so blasé as they continued to be. Perhaps Mr. Zeppeli cannot cure them of such a condition as this vampirism of theirs, but he seems to have far more experience in these matters than I.

Bidding his dear siblings good night, Jonathan turned and made his way to his room. He didn't know just when he would have the chance to speak with Mr. Zeppeli again, but this seemed just the kind of thing that he would wish to know. Still, Jonathan was perfectly aware that he would need to broach the subject carefully.

All other considerations aside, he'd no wish to cause further strife for his siblings.

Rising the next morning, Jonathan made himself ready for his return journey to the university dorm once more. Bidding the members of his dear family a fond farewell for the new semester he would be spending away from them, Jonathan boarded the carriage that would return him to the grounds of the university where he now spent a great deal of his time. During the journey, however, Jonathan found that he could not quite manage to banish the thoughts of how his dear siblings were ultimately going to fare.

For all Dio's talk of eternity, it had become clear that his dear brother – even for all his obvious intelligence – did not truly understand the concept.

=PB=

As she continued to watch her children – her dear Dio and sweet Alice – continuing about their lives after that odd stone mask had changed them, Charlena Brando was forced to admit that, while her children had indeed been changed by the strange artifact, their souls had remained intact. Dio was still the same kind, charismatic boy he had been, and Alice remained the cheerful, gentle girl that she had been since the two of them were born.

Even the fact that they now subsisted in the main on the blood of beasts was well and good; humans, after all, ate of their flesh and their souls weren't harmed by the act.

Still, it must be very difficult for them; they'll never be able to go to Heaven with those immortal bodies of theirs, she reflected sadly. However, Charlena knew that it was her duty as their mother to support them during such a difficult time. She would strive to comfort and succor them during this trying time, and all the moreso since it appeared that – while their relationship with Mr. Joestar was reasonably cordial – the only Joestar in the house they had truly connected with in any lasting way was young Jonathan.

And, while Jonathan Joestar would surely go to Heaven for his kindness, well… Charlena could not help but see a reflection of the girl she had once been in the purity of his heart. My own purity didn't seem to be able to protect me from Dario…

Shoving away that horrible thought only served to bring another – more subtle, and all the more terrible for it – to the forefront of her mind: she'd seen what her precious children had done; seen them willingly sacrifice their own innocence, staining their own beautiful souls so that she, fool that she had been, could live free of Dario. None of them had spoken of such things to George Joestar; let him hold to the illusion of Dario as a good man; the same illusion that she herself had wished more than anything else to believe in. Though the both of them would be safer now than she had been then.

However, the reason for their safety had and would remain a Brando family secret.

=PB=

When he had next been able to speak to Jonathan Joestar, William found his remaining suspicions about the vampire who had once been Dio Brando confirmed: whatever protectiveness the young man had once felt for his twin, the stone mask's evil had poisoned it. It had clearly been twisted into the kind of possessiveness that had lead the vampire to murder young Alice Brando with the same wicked artifact that had stolen the life of her twin. It was a horrible situation, and more than that it was one that he could not allow to continue.

He would lay those wicked, cunning vampires to rest, so that the remains of their families could grieve their lost children properly; even if they hated him for it, William Zeppeli was willing to bear that for the sake of his duty.

"What troubles you so much?"

Smiling gently at the concern his last remaining friend and fellow student under Master Tonpetty was showing him, William allowed himself to relax from the tension that had crept up on him all unknown.

"Just considering what we might do next, old friend. Those vampires have proven to be far more clever than I would have ever given the beasts credit for when we began this hunt," he said, narrowing his eyes as he settled down into his chair.

"I suppose not every vampire can be as dull-witted as those we have faced in the past," Straizo said, his tone sounding rather more wistful than William would have expected.

It seemed that their task was fated to take a great deal longer than either of them had been expecting when they had first followed rumors of the stone mask to this place.

=PB=

She'd been getting increasingly frequent reports of Zeppeli and Straizo skulking around their various holdings, and so she had pulled Dio aside to plan their response to what seemed to be an inevitable escalation in the conflict that those two seemed intent on bringing down upon themselves. Dio was, of course, completely in favor of launching an all-out assault using every zombie they had at their disposal. Which, in the end, would amount to what corpses they could gather from the local graveyards.

While she didn't disapprove of the plan in general, there were still some refinements that needed to be made…

"Why do you want to use humans for this?" she asked, raising an eyebrow as Dio finished detailing just how he'd intended to deal with the pair of stubborn idiots who seemed bound and determined to make a nuisance of themselves.

"I don't want humans to be our main force, sister dear," Dio said, clearly having misunderstood the intent behind her question. "While it's clear that those fools have a pronounced distaste for attacking the humans we have in our employ, the fact remains that mere humans are still not a match for anything those troublesome Hamon users can bring to bear against us. Even Jojo could only manage to turn their own tricks against them, those few times they actually deigned to fight him."

"Yes, I know all of that," she said, making brief note of the pair of heavy footfalls her almost newly-developed tremor-sense had picked up; they felt more deliberate than any of the others that she'd become aware of since she'd started developing this particular refinement of her enhanced tactile senses. "What I want to know is why you're so interested in human zombies. Zeppeli and Straizo seem perfectly capable of fighting through any number of those kinds of zombies."

Alice was starting to get the feeling that this particular pair – she'd known that there were two of them once they'd obligingly held still long enough for her to map them out with the echoes of a couple particularly vigorous taps of her right foot – was familiar, both from their light stance and how heavy they seemed to be. Well, if there was ever any doubt that we needed to get some breathing room, this pretty much puts paid to it; what a mess, she sighed, annoyed all over again.

"Of course, if you truly want to insist upon bringing more zombies into our happy little family, I can think of a much better place than this tiny burg." On the scrap of paper she'd fetched with her extendable veins, Alice wrote Play along with the piece of charcoal in her right hand.

"Oh?" Dio asked, his eyebrows raised, and a smirk growing on his face as he read her note. "Wherever would you suggest, sister dear?"

"New York has a rather large population; crowds enough to get lost in, so I'd imagine they'd have quite the choice of potential zombies." We need to head to Montana. If there's anywhere I'd be able to find what we need to handle these peons, it'll be in Montana.

"New York," Dio said, grinning as he read the real message she was trying to communicate to him. "Yes; it does sound as though we would be better suited to our purposes than this tiny burg we've stationed ourselves in."

Grinning as she folded up the paper she'd been using, tucking it neatly into an inside pocket of her vest as the pair of them fell into step with each other on their way out, Alice turned her attention to the next phase of her plan.

"We'll need to book ourselves passage, if we're to begin properly establishing ourselves in the city," Dio said cheerfully, slinging his right arm around her shoulders as the pair of them made their way out of their boarding house's office.

There were quite a few other things they'd have to take care of before the pair of them could start making their way to Montana, but all of that could start right at this very moment.

=PB=

Finding that Mr. Zeppeli was still pursuing his siblings, even after the pair of them had been shown to be even less of a threat to the people who lived in their city than some of the humans living there had been bad enough, but to hear that Mr. Zeppeli and his partner wanted him to come with them… Jonathan couldn't approve of their methods at all, but he had volunteered to come with them, if only to make certain that the pair of them would not continue along the rash course of action that they had clearly been on even after Dio and Alice had displayed prudence and good sense both.

It was infuriating, and Jonathan was determined to put a stop to it, but in order to have even the slightest chance of that he would first have to follow them to the city of New York, in North America. There was, naturally, a part of Jonathan that relished the chance to make a foray into the Americas, even if the reason for such a thing was not what he would have wished. He tried not to dwell on that part, of course.

Even if he did not share his true thoughts with anyone, such selfish motives were completely unsuited for a gentleman.

=PB=

He, Dio, hadn't known entirely what to expect, once his sweet sister had duped those fool Hamon users into chasing a false trail all about New York. Yes, he was fully aware that his dear Alice was a thoroughly brilliant woman, but watching her as she effortlessly arranged for those fools who would be following in their footsteps to be delayed, misled, and steered astray… it was a thing of beauty.

Yes, her method was rather costly – as a proper bribe was, she had explained – but considering the greed of the great mass of humanity, such a thing had indeed been necessary.

"So, we've arrived in Montana, sister dear," he said, as the pair of them stepped down from the loading platform and began to make their way out of the station. "Where do we go from here?"

"We'll need to start heading north-east," his dear Alice said, her tone thoughtful and her gaze clearly focused upon the future; it was such a fascinating thing to witness. "To a place called Hell Creek."

He chuckled. "What an amusing name."

Pacing his sweet sister as she arranged transportation for the pair of them, Dio wondered once more just what his sweet sister could have planned; just how, in the end, she would upend the world and create something new and fascinating from what she found in the rubble.

=PB=

As it turned out, the small town of Jordan hadn't truly been established yet – hell, Montana itself wasn't even a real state – so Alice couldn't just tell someone to take her and Dio to Jordan and expect them to know what she meant. However, Hell Creek was at least reasonably known even now, and there was in fact a settlement close to it. It just didn't have a name at present, but that didn't matter so much, considering she could just say that she wanted to be taken to "the settlement near Hell Creek", and people knew what she was talking about.

And so, she and Dio were able to make their way to Hell Creek.

Half-closing her eyes, Alice directed her tremor-sense into the ground so that she would be able to find a reasonably intact skeleton to work with. Dio had been rather quiet while she was searching, which had been all to the good as far as her efforts at finding what she'd come to this place for, but was still just a tad bit out of character for her boisterous, flamboyant brother. She'd have to ask him about it, once she'd found what she was looking for.

If he didn't end up telling her on his own, anyway.

Opening her eyes as her tremor-senses mapped out a large, near completely intact skeleton, Alice smiled as she knelt down to place her hands on the ground, humming deeply to transmit more powerful sound-waves through her body in an effort to loosen the rock and soil surrounding the skeleton. Tapping the ground to better determine just where she should begin her excavation, Alice could almost feel Dio fidgeting away behind her. Chuckling softly at the impatience – really, they had all the time they would need for this kind of thing, what with Zeppeli and his fellow idiot chasing their tails back in New York – Alice turned her attention back to her excavation.

That old fossil was hardly going to dig itself up, after all.

=PB=

Shifting his stance as his sweet sister continued peeling away the layers of rock, soil, and rocky soil that lay between her and whatever strange prize she was seeking, Dio decided that he had to say something.

"Sister dear, if you merely-"

The remaining words stuck fast in his throat, however, when the immense skull of what could have easily been the inspiration for every story featuring dragons that he and Jojo had ever read began to become plainly visible at the bottom of the pit his dear Alice had hollowed out. Licking his lips at the sheer size of the skull being slowly revealed – if a mere skull was nearly a match for his own height when standing, the creature in its entirety must have been immense – he, Dio, stepped forward to look down into the pit that his sweet sister continued to carve out of the landscape around them.

As his dear Alice lifted up the skull of the great beast whose remains she had at last exposed to the light of the moon and stars they were currently standing under, tipping it up so that the palate was exposed once more, Dio marveled at the sheer size of the teeth. Slipping down the side of the hole, Dio grinned as his sweet sister lowered the skull – merely the top half of the skull, he realized – back down to the ground, he was able to get close enough to measure the teeth. They were nearly larger than his hand.

The sharp, earthy smell of the soil all around them might not have been the most well-appointed of places, but he, Dio, wrapped his arms around his sweet sister's waist and moved with her as she continued excavating the skeleton of the magnificent beast she had unearthed. They had done such a thing before, when the pair of them were younger, and his dear Alice would assist their mother in the kitchen. Truly, it was as though they were dancing together.

"Dio, you have more experience with this kind of thing than I do," his sweet sister said, her tone becoming thoughtful as she looked upon the work she had done thus far. "Are zombie skeletons generally capable of reassembling themselves?"

"Sister dear," he paused for a moment, savoring the taste of this new victory that his dear, lovely Alice had granted to him. "I, Dio, am more than willing to find out."

Slashing open his palms, he dug his nails into them and forced out as much of his vampiric essence as he could; truly, a beast so mighty deserved all that he could spare.