The door creaked open. They stepped inside, making sure keep the door a little open behind them in case they needed an escape.

The room was cool and white, oddly featureless apart from a set of coloured benches radiating out from a single central point, in broken circles like a failed ripple. Homura sat in the middle of the room in front of a small, circular black coffee-table that seemed to be at the centre, smiling at them with her chin in her hand.

There was something odd about the expression on her face, and Jotaro tried to figure out what it meant without catching sight of those glaring purple eyes: something different, perhaps, than what he had expected. It was – evil? The kind of evil that was happy to allow the good to spend its energy fruitlessly before effortlessly gaining the upper hand: an evil, perhaps, that had got a lot of experience in getting what it wanted. An odd, lazy kind of evil.

He tried not to shudder and looked away, at the light, bright, open room. Somehow it wasn't the sort of place he had expected a person like this to inhabit: big, white, clean, sterile. To be honest, he had half-expected to see a coffin and spiderwebs. Here… The lights were even brighter and more annoying than at school, and he was glad of the brim of his hat shading some of the light away from him. (Concentrate. Ignore the light. Focus on something.)

There were odd hologram-like things on the wall, floating up and down, showing vague and fuzzy pictures of things that didn't make sense. One of the cotton ball familiars from that first witch. A map of the city. A diagram of some woman with one of those big, flouncy dresses like he'd seen in a manga somewhere, but turned upside down for some reason so that she seemed to be falling. And… Mami. Or rather, pieces of Mami.

That was definitely her head.

Jotaro wondered how and when Homura had got her hands on all of these. He felt his skin crawl; beside him, Madoka was trembling quietly. Maybe she was feeling the same half-fear half-curiosity that he was.

It seemed to come merely with being in this girl's presence – shock, awe, nervousness, all blended in at once, rendering them both speechless. Not that Jotaro was much of a talker anyway.

Above them, the shadow of a large black pendulum made a dull, low thumm as it passed through the air. (That was going to get on his nerves, he knew it.)

"So, Madoka, Jotaro. Come to visit, hmm?" She hadn't moved, her gaze fixed on the two of them with the quiet intensity of a laser beam on full power. "I'm surprised, after I declared myself your enemy and all. Come to fight?"

"N-no…" Madoka took a deep breath, and stepped forward hesitantly. "We just want to talk, Homura-chan. Please, let us live while we ask you some stuff."

"Oh? Come to beg for mercy?" Her eyes, dark and purple and highly amused, dug into them, her long lashes fluttering over her face. (He tried to focus on her plain grey hair band.) "Very well, I accept. Though I can't promise I'll answer your questions. Neither of us –" she gestured towards her own head with her free hand – "particularly wants to give you any information, although we have different reasons for doing so."

"You're – oh! You're in control of her!" Madoka put a hand up to her mouth. "You're her codename personality!"

"Codename?" The girl opened her mouth a little, displaying those slightly longer-than-usual incisors. "You mean the personality that doesn't belong in this body. Mmm, yes. I realise you were expecting to talk to her personally, but… Her and I have an agreement which makes that completely impossible."

He blinked. Did the person called 'DIO' somehow have enough memory and control to separate his personality from Homura's? How was that even possible? There was something else going on…

"That's right, bitch, you don't belong together in this body." He glowered at her shoulders; the dark hair that rested on them was altogether too much like his own for comfort. It shouldn't be like this. "In fact, DIO, we'd like to ask you about your other body."

Thumm.

The face flickered briefly, the mouth closing and the head turning away before 'DIO' gained back control. Homura smiled again. "I'm sure I don't know what you mean. Things have always been this way – Stand users most often have a second personality beside their own. The two minds in harmony can often make a combination Stand that works to the person's advantage. I have no other body than Homura's here."

"Hm. Well, that's bullshit." Jotaro folded his arms. Fuck this. He had no idea what he was supposed to say next; luckily, Madoka was there to turn the screw.

She put her hands together, stepping closer to Homura with a light and cheerful smile; Jotaro could tell she was putting extra effort into looking even more cutesy than she normally did. Ugh.

"Oh, Homura-chan, please tell us! You know in your heart, you really do want to help us. Please!" She held a hand out to the dark-haired girl. "We could help you too, maybe!"

"The great and mightyDIOdoesnotneed—" Her mouth worked for a moment. When she spoke again, her voice was flat, cold, calm; he could barely see where she was biting at her lip. "Madoka-chan." A brief sigh. Her face lost the evil smile, and gained instead a neutral, almost bored expression directed at the door just behind them. "I would rather not tell you anything that could put your life in danger. Nor yours, Jotaro-kun, although I can't say I know you. I am opposed to the unnecessary wastage of human life, unlike my companion."

"That's… very gracious of you." Madoka's mouth twitched slightly; he couldn't tell why. "But… We're worried, because Jotaro-kun's mother is out there sick somewhere, and we want to, um…"

"Get out of here so we can find her," said Jotaro, bluntly. "But I can't right now, because this might be important. So, again. Where is your – DIO's – other body?"

Thumm.

Homura sighed. "There's no harm in telling them its location," she muttered, more to herself than to them. Her face remained blank and impassive. "The Crusaders already know the city, if not the house. There's no way they could…" She frowned, then addressed the two of them once again, her eyes not moving from the door. "As, in theory, you already know, DIO's other body is in Cairo. Although technically it's only his head and –" She stopped, her mental companion apparently deciding that that was enough. "Anyway, it exists and it's in Cairo, but you're never going to get to it, not right now. Not if you don't get out of –" She waved her free hand in a vaguely circular motion, and Jotaro wasn't sure whether she was referring to the room or… something else.

Cairo. So that's why 'Cairo Street' had sounded so familiar. More importantly, though…

"So, your consciousness is here while your body is somewhere different?" Madoka stroked her chin again, with a meditative motion that still looked odd on a teenage girl. "That must mean that it's possible that our codename personalities also have real bodies." She frowned. "Possession, huh? Or maybe it's a dream, or a hallucination, or…"

"No." Jotaro already knew what was going on, although he wasn't sure how he knew or even if it made any sense. "It's an enemy stand."

Thumm.

"Exactly so, Jotaro!" Suddenly the catlike grin was back, and the purple eyes refocused on their faces. (He had preferred it the other way, dammit.) "It is, indeed, an enemy Stand – for you two. For me, it is simply a training ground for my more difficult powers. This girl's talents and abilities have taught me quite a lot, you know."

"Who's the user?" Madoka turned her head from side to side, as if expecting to see a magical girl – or boy – just around the corner. "How does it work?"

"Can't tell you!" The girl chuckled, her teeth showing just a little more. "The user and I have a nice agreement. She's helping me, serving her Lord DIO and capturing my greatest enemies at the same time." She dropped the hand that had been supporting her chin, the better to gesture expansively at them. "Oh, this is so much better than any other Stand user! Imagine, I could have done this a month ago!"

Thumm.

"A… month?" 29, 30, 31. Fuck. Jotaro stared at her, his face suddenly feeling cold and pale under his cap. "You mean to tell me… that my mother has been ill for a month already?"

A shrug. "I couldn't care less about your mother. I have other goals in mind."

He felt his fingers clenching into fists again (had he ever really released them?) and tried to stay calm. There was still information this girl could tell them, if they got the right personality talking…