Jotaro and Kakyoin step out of the space elevator, into –

He holds his breath. The white mist swirls around him, tugging at his hat – when did he put that on? – and making Kakyoin's long curls of hair float as if in water. And there, coming towards them, is –

"Star," he murmurs, forgetting that the atmosphere might be toxic. "Where's Green?"

"He can't –" begins Kakyoin, but Star has already raised a limb.

(Jotaro notices, vaguely, that the Heptapod is dozens of meters taller than he had assumed – there's a greater body above them, long and thin and impossibly upright in the less-than-gravity. He wants to take notes, but of course he forgot his notebook.)

The black cloud takes shape.

Green die.

"Oh," says Kakyoin. "I…" He pushes up his glasses. "There's so much I want to ask…"

Star shoots out another amorphous cloud of ink. This one doesn't form into words, but hangs there, as if –

Kakyoin frowns. "I suppose that's the most logical option. If I shape this…"

"I wouldn't touch that for too long if I were you," Jotaro whispers to him. "If they're as much like octopodes as I think they are, the ink might be harmful. Don't let it get in your eyes."

"I thought there were dishes with squid ink in them?" Kakyoin hisses back.

"Well, it depends on the species. I'd be careful regardless."

"Ah," Kakyoin nods. "Right."

Carefully, Kakyoin reaches towards the ink cloud and begin to wave it into place, into the same sentence they asked before.

Why pods on Earth?

And again, the same answer: Use weapon.

"Good grief," he mutters. "This isn't getting anywhere. Kakyoin, we need to ask what the weapon is and how to use it, it's –"

And suddenly, Jotaro isn't there anymore.

He reaches forward and strokes her cheek with the back of his fingers. "You've grown into a very strong and confident young woman. I – I'm proud of you."

"You shouldn't be," she mumbles. "I've been a real bitch to you. To you both."

"Well, sometimes," he admits. "But you're also very mature, intelligent, and fun to be around. Even if you do some unwise things, that's part of you growing up. You're still learning, and that's what's important."

She ducks her head and smiles. "Thanks, Dad. It's like you taught me: you gotta accept yourself before you can really live. So I did."

He blinks. "When did I ever tell you that?"

"Well, you know." She looks up at him with those wide bright eyes, the same that have shone from her face since she was a baby. "All those times you told me about how you met Pops."

He blinks, and suddenly he's back in the white chamber. Oh. Well. That's… different. All this time, he's dreamt of her and, perhaps, her mother, a mystery woman who was never quite clear in his mind. But this…

It makes a whole lot more sense. He's never really been comfortable with women, even Marina; has always sought out male friendship, and – perhaps it was more than friendship, now that he looks back.

It was Will Z in high school, an Italian transfer; in college, it was his gym buddy Messina; and even with Marina his eyes had always wandered to their weird mutual friend Mikitaka. And now…

Oh. Well. It's Kakyoin, of course. He wonders why he didn't see it before: it's always going to have been Kakyoin. Strange how he knows that already, as if he's done this before; déjà vu is nothing when compared to the mysterious powers of the Heptapods. And…

He knows, suddenly, that this is not a high school crush, nor even one of the brief infatuations of adulthood – it's obvious, now, what their future is going to be.

(Perhaps he knew all along.)

So the weapon… is this? The knowledge of the future? Or perhaps…

"The weapon," he says aloud. "It's their – it's their language. It doesn't just change the way they think – it's changing the way we think. Learning it gives us the ability to… to see the future, I guess. That's why it's a weapon."

Kakyoin blinks. "But… why give it to us?"

Star puts forth an answer: Pods help humans. Humans help pods.

"You… want us to help you?" asks Kakyoin, quietly.

3,000 years. Pods need help. Humans help pods.

He has to ask. Half-knowing the answer already, he reaches forward into the cloud of ink (gaseous, slightly tacky, but not unpleasant), and forms the blobs into some semblance of a circle – not nearly as carefully constructed as Kakyoin's, but perhaps more direct. He doesn't know the words for 'girl' or even 'female'; it's never come up in their discussions. But the pods know colours, because of Green. Star could answer –

Who blue green human?

Star doesn't reply.

"Ah, yes," he nods. "I remember now."

She smiles. "It's that story that made me realize – it's always good to know who you are. And so I… thought about it, and I thought, it's not a guy I'm gonna be with. It's always gonna be a girl, you know?"

"That…" He shakes his head in disbelief. "I'm not sure that's the best lesson to get from it."

"Why?" She grins, that sassy devil-may-care smile that's more adult and intelligent than her cutesy little-girl phase. "You lived, didn't you?"

"Well, yeah, but…" He sighs. "It was a bit… difficult."

She nods. "Yeah, I know."

By the time he and Kakyoin get back to the base, the shitstorm has become a shit hurricane, with soldiers running back and forth and shouting at each other, with cars driving into and out of the camp, with spotlights moving lowly over the ground: it's chaos, and they barely make it back into the comms room in one piece. Stroheim is alternating shouting orders into his radio and yelling at a selection of cowed-looking underlings.

"Stroheim, wait!" Kakyoin dashes forward and grabs Stroheim's arm roughly. "You're making a terrible mistake! Don't attack the pods, please!"

Stroheim turns. "Why the fuck not? China's ready to blow at any minute! We're all gonna get caught in the crossfire, unless –"

"Please, sir!" Kakyoin begs. "They don't want to hurt us!"

"Do I look like I give a shit?" yells Stroheim. "I'm busy, okay? Don't get in my way and don't fucking touch anything!"

"Fuck's sake…" Kakyoin turns. "Come on, Jotaro, we need to stop this somehow, we –"

The president of China comes up to him and the other person, and bows. "My thanks," he says. "You were instrumental in my decision not to annihilate the Obelisks."

"I don't believe we've met, sir."

"Pardon?" he asks. "But you knew my personal phone number."

"Your phone number?"

Kakyoin gasps. "Do you have a mobile?"

"Yeah, but –" he takes it out and shows Kakyoin the screen – "no signal."

"Fuck," breathes Kakyoin. "Fuckfuckfuck –"

"There's a satellite phone near the decontamination chamber," he interrupts. "Come on –"

Kakyoin swallows, nods. "Right –"

"Wait!" Stroheim yells. "Don't you dare –"

But they're already running off.

"After them!"

"Do you have a bucket list, sweetheart?"

She frowns. "A bucket list?"

"Well. You know." He bites his lip. "Anywhere you want to go, anyone you want to meet, anything you want to do…"

She looks at him with a pained expression. "I want to live, Papa."

"I know, sweetheart. You still might." He reaches out and takes her hand. "You know we'll do anything to make this easier for you."

She sighs and rests her forehead in her free hand. "I… I just want to forget about this all and live like normal. The way we always have done. I want to spend it with you two and with Herm. If… if I can."

"Of course you can." He squeezes her hand gently. "We'll be here for you, and I'm sure Hermes will be, as well."

"Thanks, Pops," she sighs. "Love you."

"I love you too, sweetheart."

Kakyoin punches a series of numbers into the satellite phone as fast as he can – it's going to be close – Jotaro can hear the soldiers getting closer –

"Hello?" Kakyoin looks back out at Jotaro nervously from inside the plastic chamber and gives a thumbs-up. "Yes, is this…?"

A pause, and Kakyoin bites his lip, listening. "Yes… Mister President? No, this isn't a prank… Prove it? But how –"

"But how could we have known that?" he asks. "We don't know anything about you."

"But when you called, you knew my deepest secret," the President tells them, surprised. "You told me the last words my wife spoke to me before she died, which no one else could possibly know."

"Remind us," says the other person calmly.

The president leans in to whisper in their ears: a Chinese phrase which he doesn't understand, but which has a certain rhythm and music to it that he can't possibly forget, even in the past – or is it the future? The present? –

He gasps. "Tell him that phrase, Kakyoin!" he shouts. "It goes like 'Jiānchí bùxiè, jíshǐ zài' –"

"I got it!" yells Kakyoin. Then, into the phone: "Mr President! Jiānchí bùxiè, jíshǐ zài zuì…"

"…hēi'àn de shíkè!" supplies Jotaro.

"- hēi'àn de shíkè," confirms Kakyoin, into the phone. "Yes, that's right. I want to help. Please, Mister President… Don't press that button."

Someone else's fingers take a hold of her hand; carefully, the other person takes the bracelet in their hand so that the small metal plaque is in full view. Their thumb traces over the half-worn engraving, blurred by (more than) a century of age and friction.

JoJo, it reads, in the large, flowing script of another time. She stares at it solemnly, not wanting to break the silence by asking the other person a question.

"There's something interesting about the name JoJo, you know," the voice says to his girl. "It's the same sound over again, repeating itself. That's called reduplication. Can you say that?"

He doesn't dare to turn his head to the side, but still catches a glimpse of red hair out of the corner of his eye. He realises that he used to be called JoJo, too.

It all blurs together then. Suddenly everything has stopped; the alarms shut off, one by one, and the people with guns surround their little phone booth. He recognises Captain Lisa-Lisa, with a smaller, blond woman; on another side, he sees Private Okuyasu, looking a little apologetic for pointing a gun in their faces. And Stroheim stands there too, fuming, but can't do anything: what's done is done.

The two of them come out with their hands up, looking into the torches and the barrels of the guns, and Jotaro looks at Kakyoin out of the corner of his eye and grins. Kakyoin grins back, a quiet pleasure on his face – for good reason. It's over, at last. One way or another.

It's over, and they've saved the world from a nuclear apocalypse.

Somewhere in the crowd of guns, one of the officers drops his weapon and gasps; at first, Jotaro thinks it's because of them, but then –

"Look! It's – disappearing!"

Then everyone is turning to look at where the Obelisk hovers over the water: it turns silently, onto the concave side, slowly transforming from a jellybean into a beret. (He's pretty sure there's more poetic words for that, but… well, he's not the linguist here.)

And then… it starts to dissolve into the air, melting away into the early-morning light like a cloud on a hot day; on instinct, he reaches out and takes Kakyoin's hand in his own.

"I didn't know you were into men, Kujo," murmurs Kakyoin teasingly.

"Neither did I," he mutters. "Until I met you."

Kakyoin smirks. "That's sickeningly adorable. Want to get together?"

"God, yes." He strokes the back of Kakyoin's hand with his thumb. "Let's have a family together."

"Alright," Kakyoin smiles. "Let's."

The Obelisks disappear into the ether, leaving no trace, as if they were never there at all.

"Papa, Daddy, look! I dwew a picture – that's Papa, and that's a nailien, an' that's –" She waves the picture in the air excitedly, and the other person laughs.

"Hold still, you little rascal," says Noriaki, leaning over in his chair, "Let me see."

"I dwew you an' Daddy talkin' to the nailien, see? See?"

Noriaki looks at the picture. "Oh, my, that is a very impressive alien! Don't you think?" He gestures to one of the clusters of squiggles.

"That's not a nailien, Papa, that's you! That one is the nailien!"

"Oh, I do beg your pardon, sweetheart, of course it is." Noriaki nods sagely. "I should've known from the red hair."

"Yeah," says JoJo. "You should've."

He's the first person in the world to complete a doctorate on the biology of a completely alien species; the achievement is somewhat dampened by Kakyoin also receiving a doctorate, on the study of the alien language that they learnt. At any rate, he can say that he's the only marine biologist in the world – possibly the universe – that ever communicated with them. Who knew being bilingual would be so useful?

He asks Noriaki to marry him only a year after the Heptapods threw their lives together. For the first time in his life, he feels a sense of peace. He knows who he loves. In a way, he'd known it all along. Funny how the Heptapods have predicted that. Or, well, how the Heptapods have remembered it.

The two of them stand together early one morning outside his house – their house, now, and a little less enormous and forbidding – and watch the sun rise.

"Is it worth it?" Kakyoin whispers, so small he can barely hear it. "Knowing that she'll die either way?"

"Of course it's worth it," he says. "For her, anything is worth it."

Kakyoin nods; carefully, he reaches out and takes Jotaro's hand. "Come on, then," he replies. "Let's do this."

And JoJo arrives –