There were few things that phased the mafia don of Passione these days. Stands had by and far sapped his ability to be surprised by the large majority of bizarre happenings around him, but this...this situation was concerning. And confusing.

What made Giorno Giovanna so was the fact that he was now residing inside of his baby self.

Ignoring the strange events he remembered prior to this, there was no explanation for how this could be happening. Then again, it could be some kind of Stand ability that reverted his age or something...but that didn't seem likely, for a multitude of reasons. Mainly for the fact that his baby self was communicating with him via thought.

Cold! Hungry! The child wailed, writhing and chilled.

It was Giorno, but not at the same time. It...was Haruno. A him without his adult memories.

Then where am I? He wondered, but was quickly distracted by the sight of a midnight blue woman hovering above Haruno, curiosity glimmering in star pupiled eyes.

A Stand, clearly, but whose? A high pitched wail echoed into his left ear, making Giorno subconsciously cringe and Haruno join in on the chorus. A twin. He somehow had a twin with a fully matured Stand of their own, and judging by the way he could almost flex his way out of the baby Haruno's body with Gold Experience, Giorno did as well.

He felt his own curiosity pique. How did this happen? How had they ended up in their Stands? Judging by the maturity, the User was mentally an adult, so what kind of person were they?

Some observation was needed.

Haruka, Giorno decided, was a good person. If easily irritated and prone to an explosive temper.

It showed in the facial features and body language that she was prone to using, especially since she was so expressive and unguarded. Cringing at noisy children, the child tugging on her hair incident, and her visible regret when she did lash out unintentionally were only a small portion of the things that convinced him of this.

Doing the occasional diaper when no one else was looking helped her case, of course, though that may have only been to quiet one of the twins down.

But when not observing and compiling a file on his new sister, the mafia don was...less than okay. It began with a sobering realization that if he were somehow stranded back in time, Giorno's friends were gone. The Trish that had finally gotten with Mista, after such a long period of pining? Now just a squalling baby not unlike Haruno. Mista would be in the same boat.

The only friends he had ever had were now swept away by the winds of time, reduced to naught but the memories Giorno Giovanna carried with him. A small urge to cry out at the unfairness of it all tugged at his heart. But that was only something Haruno did. It was useless to cry.

The only consolation was the fact that those that had died in the struggle against Diavolo were alive once more. Bucellati was still alive, not a literal dead man walking. Narancia and Abbacchio breathing, not done in by a Stand attack or...or punctured completely through in Giorno's own body and those eyes unseeing and the glimmer of Narancia's Iife flickered out like a candle, Giorno being too late, too late, always too late to save them like the utter useless, useless USELESS scum he is-

And his inner turmoil bled over to Haruno, and then the child began to cry again. He forced the well of negative emotions down, down down and instead sent the baby a wave of calm over their link. It worked, the wails dying down into sniffles and teary eyes instead.

It was useless to think about the past now. The only thing Giorno could do was learn from it and never repeat the same mistakes again. His mask was steeled, his will unwavering and determination burning.

The reveal of himself had gone ...less than smoothly. Giorno hadn't anticipated the idea that his sister had died in order to get where she was now, although now it seemed like a fairly obvious thing in retrospect.

Hindsight is 20/20, as they say.

Jen hung limply in his arms, deep in slumber. An American by her accent, and a reincarnated soul. At least that was an explanation for the fully matured Stand, with it in both their cases serving as a repository for their memories until the brains of the child selves grew enough to house them.

But something was incredibly off about her reaction to Giorno's reveal. When Gold Experience appeared, Jen had recognized the Stand, a look of shock and horror crossing her face before settling on tentative disbelief and weariness. How could she have come across him before? She knew no Italian, and so had probably never been to Italy, and Giorno had never set foot on the American continent.

It was all very odd, but he chose to let it go for now. At the moment, a fragile new sibling of his needed support, and Giorno was loathe not to do it. A childhood with a neglectful mother had ensured that he knew what loneliness and terror felt like, and he wouldn't force another good soul to go through something like that.

Even more, anyway, given that Jen had been alone the past months. A wave of guilt threaded through him. That action probably could have been better thought out.

Eyelashes fluttered open as Giorno ruminated on his thoughts, star marked pupils blinking as they met the hard robotic ones of his Stand. Her eyes widened and she squawked, backing away from him in a hurry until she was a respectable distance.

"Eh…?" She muttered in disbelief, before deflating as the woman seemed to remember. "Oh, right. Yeah. That happened."

He nodded. "It did. And I am sorry for causing you distress like that. I apologize."

"It's...it's okay?" Jen spoke softly, but then shook her head. "No. It's not." She curled in on herself, whispering. "I'm not okay."

She was withdrawing like a purple and blue hermit crab into its shell, trembling lightly. Truth be told, Giorno felt a tad awkward in situations like this. He'd never really comforted other people, only observed the way others would do it. Earlier had been out of impulse, if nothing else.

But she was still shrinking in on herself, so he reluctantly brought his arms around Jen again. She noticeably stiffened at the touch, but didn't move away again, so he supposed that was as good as he could get right now.

"Signora, me dispiace," he muttered again.

His suspicions could be let go for now. Right now what Jen presumably needed was a show of trust, given that she'd made herself so vulnerable for the sake of it.

"I suppose I should share something of my own, sister." Giorno paused for a brief moment on that word. He'd never thought he'd ever have a sibling. "I don't know how I came to be here, to be honest. The events prior to this may have had a hand in it, however."

She stilled in his arms, clearly listening intently.

"Time was seeming to accelerate, destroying anything that wasn't alive…"

...The Passione headquarters was being rapidly worn away with the passage of sped up time, wood rotting and stone eroding. Giorno could only watch in barely controlled horror as the Earth itself began to age without the human race, approaching the point of total decay. His breath hitched, clothes wearing away as everything was just gone...

But the one thing that seemed unaffected was the golden Arrowhead gripped tightly in his pale fist. The insect engraving glinted maniacally in the light of the sun, the star itself zipping across the sky every couple of seconds like a crazed racer.

Giorno Giovanna knew what he must do. He called up Gold Experience, and without another thought, thrust the tip into the Stand. A brief flash, and then the Requiem Stand gazed down at the devastation wrought upon the planet.

The air was rapidly dwindling. "Do something...please!" He commanded, breath coming in shorter and shorter gasps.

It looked back at the Stand User with an impassive stare, gestured, and then there was a blinding white light consuming Giorno…

"...and then my Stand used an ability, but I don't know what the effects were, beyond this."

And he hoped to never need it again. One could only take so much of needing to watch everyone in your life forget about you.

Giorno looked back down at his sister, suspicions returning full force as an expression of distinct familiarity crossed her face, starry pupils shrinking with a hint of fear. Perhaps she'd experienced the same before her untimely demise?

But no, she'd made absolutely clear that nothing was off about her death in that way. It was something more.

"Pucci," Jen muttered absently, eyes wide and unseeing. "This is his fault."

The mafia don abruptly backed away, fists raised and posture tensing. "What do you know?" He quietly demanded, an undercurrent of anger rippling just below the surface.

She straightened up to look Giorno dead in the eyes. "Enrico Pucci. A Stand User, fanatic follower of the late Dio, and someone who wanted to achieve 'heaven'. A person, who through unorthodox means, managed to evolve their stand to the point where it could accelerate time itself, bringing about a new universe, a 'heaven', by accelerating the old one to the point where it collapsed."

His mind blanked, then kicked into high gear as Giorno slumped with a sigh. "Of course if was a Stand. But how do you know this?" He wondered out loud, slight frustration coloring his words.

A grimace crossed her face. "Do you know the concept of the multiverse theory? And it has everything to do with this."

"Multiple universes that exist at the same time, yes."

"Well…" Jen paused for a moment. "Take a novel for instance. In this reality, it may just be fiction, nothing special beyond a story. But somewhere out there in the multiverse, that concept exists as its own separate world, perhaps with this universe existing as a sort of story in that one."

A realization began niggling at the edges of his mind, but Giorno pushed it aside to focus on the conversation. "So fiction is realized as its own reality among all the possibilities of universes?"

"Exactly." At this, the Stand User took a deep breath to undoubtedly calm her jittery nerves. He could see her blue hands shaking from the stress. "And I...read about Pucci in a Japanese manga. Before I died."

Everything seemed to stop abruptly, like time itself was frozen. The realization was on the tip of his tongue now, and then it finally slipped free of its confines. "This world was a manga in yours. That was how you recognized my Stand."

Jennifer Nasino, traveler from another universe, choked slightly on her words, lowering her head to hide. "Yes."

"Alright." So they both had knowledge of the future, although hers may be more complete than Giorno's. His mind kicked into overdrive, plans whirling about in his skull. "First of all-"

"-we need to wait until our memories are able to assimilate into our bodies. We can't do anything much until then."

My head jolted back up to stare at the gold and violet Stand, no sign of emotional distress or anything in his glassy purple eyes. "Wait!" I babbled, thrown off completely by his behavior. "You're not concerned at all that some random person knows so much about you?"

"Not particularly. I don't believe you would, or could use any of that against me. We are in the past, and a great majority of the things you hold knowledge of are undoubtedly in the future."

I gaped, dumbfounded at his logic. "But, but-" I sputtered.

"In addition," he raised a finger from the hug we'd been locked in, "I don't believe that you would do something like that. You are a good person, Jennifer."

I'd never claimed to be good. Heck, I felt like I was sometimes one of the furthest things from that, with my tendency to hurt people in a fit of rage. But to be hearing something like this from one of my own favorite characters, however, made it seem more real instead of a distant concept sometimes applied to people. And Giorno meant it too, as I could see the sincerity reflected from his Stand's violet eyes.

My expression collapsed into a small, defeated smile. "How can I argue against that?"

The orphanage nursery was noisy as usual, babies wailing in the middle of the night for sustenance or in the middle of the day and all that jazz. Just the same old song and dance as always. But now, there was the addition of Giorno Giovanna to distract me. Namely, with stuff like learning Japanese.

"So that word means 'to cry'?" I muttered, trying to parse out the meanings of the words Giorno was teaching me today.

Workers and volunteers busily swarmed about us this morning, attending to various kids. I was trying my hardest to focus on the lesson, but my patience was close to snapping with the wailing of random balls of human infant.

I gritted my teeth in annoyance as the two toddlers below us began to babble incoherently as they listened to us. Haruka's chubby face was splayed wide in a funny smile, spouting a mangled version of the word I was trying to learn.

"Nnana-uu," she burbled happily, slapping her palms against a Haruno that shrieked incoherently in response.

"Yes, but naku is only one of many synonyms," Giorno admitted, crossing his legs midair. "I left Japan a while before I was able to learn much more, and I am admittedly very rusty even with what I know."

"Eeee!"

I grunted, glaring down at the noisy baby duo below us. "Sometimes I can't believe that tiny kid down there grows up to be you, Giorno."

The baby Haruno only looked back up at us with seafoam eyes, giving a gummy smile and shifting the tuft of gold atop his head. That had been a surprise, newly blonde locks coming in seemingly overnight after Giorno popped out, confusing anyone who came in the next day.

"Back to the lesson," he chided, making me give a sheepish smile. "Mother is sometimes referred to as mama and father papa, so there isn't a great difference between English and Japanese in some respects."

I blinked at that. "What about the terms okaa-san or otou-san? Aren't those some of the more common ways?"

Giorno took his turn to blink, then laughed lightly. "I may have forgotten those. My family wasn't especially formal, and when I was young we shifted more towards Italian before moving."

A slight frown curled my lips. I'd nearly forgotten that he hadn't had an especially nice childhood. Better not bring that up. But then my stupid mouth decided to open up and ask, "What about your biological father? Dio? What would you have called him?"

Stupid, stupid stupid! Baka idiot insensitive Jen! Giorno seemed startled at the topic, and of course he would be, I just brought up his freaking vampire dad. Who was also my vampire dad by default, but let's not think on that too hard.

"No, sorry, dumb question!" I squeaked, cringing and hiding my face.

There was nothing I heard aside from the burbling of babies and the muttered Japanese of the workers about us. Slowly, I parted my hands to glance at the other Stand User. He had a contemplative look on his face, no rage induced or anything.

"You know of my real father then?" The mafia don asked softly.

"Yes…?" I offered meekly. "I mean, he was a pretty big deal in the stories in my world. You wanna know about it?"

An almost hungry look entered his eyes. "Please. Be it good or bad, I have to hear this."

I suppose he would be, after going his whole original life without the knowledge of his own father. Family was something Italians were all over, priding themselves in their bloodlines and big families. Growing up in a place like that without such would've been even more stigmatizing, probably.

"This'll take a while, just warning you. At any rate, Dio Brando was the adoptive brother of Jonathan Joestar and stuff. The real shocking thing about him though, was that he was a vampire from the 19th century...