Disclaimer: JoJo's Bizarre Adventure and all equally bizarre concepts and characters belong to Hirohiko Araki. Original characters and other concepts (as noted) are copyright of me.
The stirring darkness enveloped him and brought him a motherly comfort. In the dark red mist he floated, an ethereal vessel containing inhuman wisdom and beauty, the egg of a God. Such were the delusions within Dio's dreaming mind, brought about by his own perseverance to create the world he always wanted. He looked around in his hovering shell of safety and saw the fleshy walls that gave him the widest breadth of movement. The clear fluid with the reflection of bloody red filled his lungs with an ecstasy he had always known and soon thereafter forgotten in his waking. He swam about in circles and made motions to pull himself along with his strong arms until he saw a light up at the peak of his world. Naturally, he obeyed his human curiosity and swan to that hole, bursting out of a liquid surface face first to look around.
He found himself afloat in an ocean of tossing blood and bodies, most of which he recognized through their rotted features as clones of his own father. Dio grinned and began swimming in wide, strong strokes toward shore. At the shore stood a figure, much like himself, standing in that haughty and godly manner of leaning back on the balls of his feet with one arm cradling the other at his chest, a hand in front of his face. A visage of death wearing the darkest black under the brightest gold. Dio was gleeful with envy. He wanted to meet a man who held such a form, and swam faster.
Once his feet touched the shore the dead arms of the corpses slapped against his perfect skin and attempted to drag him back into the tossing and churning waves just as the blood sea got violent. Dio shone like a god in the light of his euphoric little world, his skin reflecting the light of the heavens ten times greater than it was delivered. The beauteous god-man began a slow turn around around, keeping his hand in front of his face, while Dio stood and waited with an arrogant, expecting grin and posture to see his own face.
"We're dead, you know" the godly man said. Dio raised an eyebrow and lost his stance. His arms drifted down past his naked hips as the man made a full turn around to reveal his skinless mouth and skeleton teeth, steel colored and stained with blood. "We're all dead...on the inside." Dio grabbed at his head and held it in to keep it from bursting as his most sinister side pulled the carpet of his world out from under him. Now floating in darkness he looked up to behold the jagged maw and featureless face of his black Stand, System of a Down occupying his entire sky.
"You..." Dio growled, showing his forceful entity nothing but contempt. "You are the worst. You casually and passively obey me when I'm awake, but in my dreams you haunt and torment me with your constant games! I'm sick of this! Leave me be when I sleep!"
"No" SoaD denied in its hollow, raspy-screeching voice. "You get no sleep. You have work to do. Make your world a reality, already, or go and die. Rot away, Dio Brando!!!" Dio's own contempt of his father, his self-hatred for his stained blood, had manifested itself in an awful way. With a wave of its black, clawed hand SoaD sent Dio tumbling through the void of his own mind and into the dark reaches of his madness to wake him up with a startling shock.
Dio sat straight up in his bed and began panting, unaware of his surroundings or of himself. He looked at his arm and concentrated. There it was, ever humoring him, the thin black arm of his Stand echoing and shadowing his own. Dio clutched his fist and felt the blood rushing into his arm. He had been out for days, it seemed, as evidence by the I.V. Preserving his life and the ragged gown he had been dressed down into. It was already afternoon and he was awake with three days of energy stored up. It simply wouldn't do for such a regal monster as he to waste an entire day he could otherwise dedicate to his manic goals. He rose out of bed and let fall the gown as he stood and basked in the sunlight that graced his humble, human body.
"I'm not a god yet, it seems" Dio said to the wall. The wall agreed silently and he walked across the room to a closet. In no time he was dressed up again, this time in much more casual wear of jeans and a tight T-shirt under a sports jacket and fussy, unstyled hair, and he exited his suite room to the more common room that Starski commonly occupied. The strong, stern, tall black man was busy vacuuming with a contagion mask and nose clip on. He gave Dio a quick glance that was met with a disgusted snarl and went on vacuuming while Dio made his way outside.
"Lord Dio!" a pale, mohawked warrior exclaimed. "You're awake!" Dio raised a hand to visor the sun, prompting one of his subordinates to rush over and shade his eyes with their own long arms. Rosalisa, who sat writing in her diary without looking at the motions of her pen, turned to her Lord Dio as he walked forward. Monkey Business popped up from her side and scampered across her satin-gowned lap to crouch and leer at Dio. The subordinate immediately left.
"Lord Dio..." Rosalisa whispered. Dio was staring intently at the creature that stared fearlessly back at him. It was a defiant creature staring down its own personified defiance, and a connection was made instantly.
"What is that?" Dio asked in honest curiosity. Rosalisa followed his vision to Monkey Business and ceased writing. Monkey Business hopped down to the ground and skittered and pawed its way across the ground to Dio's leg. It stood there and stared up at the common-clad man with the uncommon face and tilted its head.
"That is Monkey Business" Rosalisa explained. "He's a Stand User who can see into other people's thoughts and display them visually. He is your new pet. Do you dislike him?" Dio still hadn't decided that yet. Starski leaned out the doorway, watching closely the interaction between Dio and the little shit critter from hell, waiting for one of them to get hurt for his own amusement. Dio lowered his arm and jerked his wrist with a grin.
"Monsters like us" he said "need to stay close together." Monkey Business climbed up his arm and settled on his shoulder. Dio reached over, keeping his shoulder stiff, and scratched at the creature's scaly belly. Monkey Business hooted pleasurably to it. "I like him. He'll definitely prove useful to us in the future." Rosalisa, sufficed with an answer, turned back around to continue monitoring her writing. She looked down while Starski, off in the distance scowled and reentered the newly dusted room, to discover that she had written down each detail of the dialogue and concurrent actions within it. She blinked at this revelation, then continued writing casually.
The day wore on into the early evening, a time when Dio's men exhibited their unnatural insomniac energy and began stirring with a fervent anticipation for things and events to come. Dio lounged in the common room that had been so egregiously redecorated that he barely recognized it. In with him, staying a wide enough breadth from his selected throne against the farthest wall, were Starski who went about some mundane but constant business and Rosalisa who manipulated her Stand to control many of the inanimate objects in the room. As Evanescence clutched one of the stolen vases in its wide, paper-like finger tendrils Rosalisa wrote its commands in rapid scrawling while controlling the other nine objects at once. Dio watched her subjectively.
"Starski" Dio said, suddenly catching the old thug's attention. "Have we heard anything from Joestar and his inevitable ilk?"
"That Jojo kid?" Starski asked. "A day ago he was sent to the hospital. Got in a bad Stand fight, I think. Our informant couldn't get all the info, no background clearance past the first floor of the building." Dio lazily leaned his head into his fist and crossed his left leg over his right while Rosalisa began to struggle and sweat in her effort.
"Perhaps we should pay him a visit" Dio said, forming a spontaneous plan.
"You shitting me?" Starski asked. "How're you gonna find him? Even if you can fly and stab through solid glass and concrete with those claws of yours, I know you ain't looking in every window of the hospital, one by one, without stirring up some huge panic over a blonde-haired kid that can fly!" Dio grinned.
"I don't need to do that" Dio said. "I have the ultimate permissive force." Starski followed his gaze to Rosalisa who was now in a purely trance-like meditative state, controlling everything with only a few simply words.
Float. Float. Stay there and Float. She wrote, commanding her Stand through its own convoluted method of working. Everything was calm and the objects were placed back on the display shelves and dressers and expensive desks recovered from some unguarded little shop one night while Dio was bed-bound. Rosalisa let out a long breath and de-summoned her Stand, noticing the gaze that was set upon her.
"Yes, Lord Dio?" she asked, turning right to him. Dio closed his eyes, stomped his feet to the floor and stood up.
"Put on something common" Dio commanded. "You and I are going to visit Jojo."
"Very well" she agreed. Starski looked back and forth between them, awed by the fluid exchange of orders, and went right back to turning a dial on the wall. What he manipulated looked like a thermostat with no readable gauges or visible dials aside from the tiny notched wheel that stuck out of the corner just enough to be moved along its set track. Dio watched him for a moment with a grin before turning around and heading out the door.
"I leave this place to you" Dio said.
"Sure" Starski said. Monkey Business came crawling into the room and took its place on Dio's seat. Starski didn't know but Dio had passed his position on to the monkey who brought in with him a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. Starski continued working the dial on the small box, absorbed in the task, while Monkey Business smoked like a French villain that had a curling scaled tail.
Dio waited outside, slowly walking to the designated area where his main casual transport waited. Rosalisa caught up with him in an outfit of tight jeans, a black-leather belt with a black rose at her hip, a short pink tee and a choker. Her hair was down and rolled onto her shoulders in waves. They never looked at each other when they marched to their tandem transport which Dio always let her drive. He liked leaning out the window and watching the human race pass by as insignificant blurs and she loved pandering to his whim.
"I have a premonition" Dio began, leaning back into the casual little car. "Jojo is a man of immense wealth and fame in this city. With the limited resources and disrepair befalling an inner-city hell such as this, the slumlords that take him in will undoubtedly be unwilling to part with him. I have a feeling we will need to go past the tenth floor to find him, but with his family curse of rotten luck he may end up somewhere close to the thirteenth floor."
"What makes you assume that, Lord Dio?" Rosalisa asked.
"Just a guess" Dio admitted. "I don't have the premonition abilities that you and Monkey Business seem to possess, I can just take guesses based on experience."
"I would agree with you" Rosalisa said. "I suppose we will just have to see where he is when we get there, assuming they let us see him."
"Of course they will" Dio said. "As long as you word yourself properly, there should be no problem." Rosalisa finally caught on to why she was going with him. She was a tool once more instead of a companion. Still, with the chance to prover herself even further to her gracious lord, she hadn't the reason to exactly complain. Besides, it was nice to be away from the men of the headquarters who avoided her like a plague due to her powers...
"What about other Stand users?" Rosalisa asked. "It is possible that we are not the only ones after Mr. Joestar. Starski said he was hospitalized in a Stand fight, after all."
"True" Dio granted "but that also means that his Stand has developed enough for him to engage in a Stand fight. It's only been a few weeks since he visited us and he already has a Stand...I want to see the results of his tremendous growth first hand." His intent, while not entirely villainous, certainly peaked her suspicion.
"My Lord" she began, "are you going to kill him?" Dio stared straight ahead as they stopped in a construction zone, waiting to be flagged, the machinery loudly whirring as the lifts and cranes that were brought on sight lifted the downed streetlights from the street with great ease.
"We'll see" Dio said. "If it comes down to it...I may..." He draped his muscular arm out the window and summoned his Stand to lower its own black arm down and drag it just barely above the surface of the road. Its razor-sharp nail occasionally skid across the asphalt and hopped up from the force of the pebbles and loose debris that scattered around the road. He grinned and glanced out the side window. Rosalisa's hands tensed up on the steering wheel and she straightened up to glare ahead. They both felt it. The eyes of monsters at their backs.
Someone was watching them...
Upon their arrival to the civilian parking in the hospitals adjacent, connected parking garage, Dio and Rosalisa took the dark advantage and used SoaD to scan the surroundings for any traces of human presence. He used heat vision, night vision and a sight that tracked residual Stand-based energy. Nothing at all. The air and the floor was as clear as it was to his own eyes. Not a soul was looking in their direction with contempt. Few people looked at them at all, assuming nothing.
"Looks like they stopped" Dio said. Rosalisa set the car's alarm, being useful enough for transport that she wouldn't want it to get stolen once more, and began walking to the hospital entrance behind Dio. "Still...I suppose it is possible that they are already inside and waiting for us. I have a plan. I'll need you to discretely work on the receptionist to get us to Jojo's room while I try and weed out our potential stalker."
"Yes" she agreed. She took out her pocket-sized book and quickly fanned through the pages. "Oh no..." she said dejectedly. "I only have six pages left to write on."
"Write on the front and backs of the pages then" Dio said. That way you'll have twelve."
"That's what I do normally" Rosalisa explained. She had only three pages left to write on. Dio glanced over and scowled.
"You should have checked that before coming here" he said. "If worse comes to worse we can steal some lined paper to write on. It's a hospital, after all. It's unlikely that we won't be able to find some kind of paper to write on anywhere." Rosalisa silently agreed and went on with her quiet, methodical planning. The lobby they entered was full of depressed people sitting and waiting. A short line of three people stood between Dio and his goal. He lined up nonetheless and let Rosalisa prepare her ability. Evanescence stealthily extended a controlling, paper thin finger under the large, round reception desk station and reached the ankle of the jaded, bag-eyed nurse who worked as the receptionist.
"I think I have a Cancer sore on my cheek!" a manic bald man complained. "I need chemotherapy right away!" The nurse sighed and pointed him to another desk that would help him, though in reality she was trying to point him out the door. A middle-aged woman came up next while Dio and Rosalisa waited behind, Rosalisa at the ready to begin writing.
"I'm here to visit my mother" the woman said. "She's in room 1220." The nurse picked out a small clip-on tag and slid it onto the desk with a pen. The woman filled out her name on the tag with the pen and took it. Then the nurse gave her a short chart to read through and fill out which she did off to the side so Dio and Rosalisa could go next.
"Hello" Dio greeted in his most empathetical human voice. "I'm here to see my friend from college. I heard he was in some kind of fight. His name's Johnathan Joestar." The nurse stared blankly at him. Even the lady filling out her disclosure and liability form looked over at him.
"Joestar?" the nurse asked skeptically. "As in that billionaire? Just who are you to go and see him?" Rosalisa was writing away and the commands were sliding slowly down the finger and into her ankle.
"Like I said" Dio began, placing his fingers against his chest, "I'm his friend. You think he doesn't have any friends just because he's rich or something?"
"Did someone send you?" she asked.
"I came on behalf of our professor" Dio said. "He wants to know the seriousness of Jonathan's condition for himself. He's rather skeptical of a student's illness this early in the semester."
"Really?" she said, still skeptically and dryly. Dio smirked and summoned his Stand, letting it float up above his head with its arms outstretched and nails drawn out as blades and tattered black wings unfolded wide. The horrible, dagger-toothed mouth of SoaD gnashed and clacked with voracious rage, letting out unhearable sound as it hissed and growled in its ethereal tone. If anyone could see it they would surely make a move and the eyes on the back of its domed head would catch them as SoaD monitored the room and the fearful reactions of all the waiting people like a sentry.
It saw nothing yet while Dio only saw words flashing through the nurses mind. Not thoughts, but words. She reached down and retrieved the necessary files for Dio and gave him two slips. The middle-aged lady looked at him curiously, unsure as to how he was able to manipulate the infeasible system so quickly and without identification, but in the end her mother wasn't getting any better and she made her rushing way for the elevator. After a brief minute of filling out their papers while Rosalisa continued to control the nurse, they clipped on their name tags and turned to her as she stacked the papers in a file.
"He's in room 1211" she said "on the twelfth floor."
"Thank you" Dio said. He and Rosalisa departed, and upon entering a lone elevator they shared a sense of domination and triumph as he grinned nefariously and desummoned his Stand.
"That went well" Rosalisa noted. "I'm surprised we weren't stopped by someone else."
"I am too" Dio said. He brought his hand up to cup his chin in thought. "I suppose Jojo isn't as well guarded as I thought...at least not first-hand."
"First-hand?" Rosalisa asked.
"I didn't notice anyone reacting to my Stand" Dio mentioned "but there were people giving me some rather heated glares. I didn't recognize them at all, but it seemed that they had recognized me. Like I was some nostalgic nightmare of their they wanted to stare down and destroy, people who are seeking me based on descriptions and speculations of my features..."
"So we are still being hunted" Rosalisa said. "I used up an entire page of my book to get us this far. Now I only have five pages left."
"Conserve them" Dio said. "Don't act without my order from now on, alright?"
"Yes, my Lord" she agreed.
"It's just a premonition of mine" Dio began, "but I can sense a sinister force waiting for me in ambush. There are definitely some hostile forces hiding in wait for us to come along, ready to leap out with cloaks and daggers to keep us from leaving. Be on guard. Take all suspicion as hostility and avoid people no matter what. Cut corners sharply, don't let anyone get within an arm's length of you; be cautious but don't show it." Even to his rushed and cryptic orders Rosalisa was able to flawlessly interpret it into a precise and detailed list of commands to follow for her own safety. Dio was getting anxious as the elevator neared the twelfth floor. He could feel the despicable, resonating energy already, as could she...
On the fourteenth floor, above the twelfth as the thirteenth floor had been sealed off and unused due to the regular levels of superstition in this building, a young female doctor made a duteous march for the supply closet for a procedural bag of equipment. She needed to do a lengthy blood drawing from an infected patient and all that she required was in a clear, plastic bag somewhere in that corporately organized closet that she entered.
"Let's see" she said, pondering with a finger to her thin lower lip, "which one is it again? This one?" She palmed and lifted a bag while, in the corner, a raspy breathing resounded. She hadn't noticed the human presence until just now and jumped as she saw the white-coated figure bent over and scanning the lower shelves in the corner. "Holy shit! I,'m sorry, doctor, I didn't see you there. You scared me." No response. The asthmatic doctor seemed enveloped in his work of finding something.
"Can you help me, please?" she asked. "I just got here today, and I'm still not used to this layout. I'm trying to find a transfusion kit?" The doctor straightened up, standing six-foot something tall, and raised up his smooth head wrapped all in gauze. She was stunned and speechless. He seemed to be getting taller each second she gazed at him. Then he turned around, his face totally covered in bandages with only a slim clearing for his flat teeth to show through. They were covered with blood and grease, some disgusting mix of inhumane material gatherings that stained his pure-white gauze with a fleshy rot.
She nearly teared up in fear as he stomped forward, his heel at her head, and grabbed her hair to push her down through the floor where she sunk like a stone in quicksand. "You will make a fitting meal" he hissed in a whispering, worn-out voice cracked and aged with years of practiced shouting and roaring. "...the seal shall be broken. It only needs four more gallons." This ominous warning gave the girl a final sink down to floor thirteen, a floor long ago closed off, where her destiny ended. That girl disappeared that day, and the man who sent her to her doom sank down through the floor soon after, breathing raspily and hissing the whole way.
Just as he vanished, an old and significantly more peeved nurse came into the room and grabbed a kit without a moment of searching or confusion. "Where is that little bitch, Rachael?" the nurse wondered. "She said she was going to do this alone once she got the fucking thing. I guess she's just all talk..." The door closed with a harsh click.