~Battle Tendency: begin~

Looking out to the horizon, Robert smiled widely as he caught sight of the approaching planes. He and his own people had arrived some time ago, and considering what his Foundation had discovered… Well, there couldn't be any harm in having more than one way of dealing with the… creature resting inside that pillar. Breathing a bit more easily when he could hear the engines of the planes drawing ever closer, he gave the signal to his own pilot to keep the engine running.

He wasn't going to waste time once they arrived; at least, not for anything so trivial as waiting for the plane's engines to warm up again.

When the planes finally landed, Robert sighed in relief. Here, now, was his chance to be rid of that terrible creature at last. One might have asked, since three of his close friends were vampires, why he did not have more charitable feelings toward the creature within the pillar. And yes, he'd once thought it possible to awaken the creature peaceably, and perhaps to speak with it about… whatever matters such a being would have considered of import.

But that had been before he'd been forced to watch in helpless horror as Marty Balin – a good man, and all the more tragically, one of the youngest members of the expedition that had discovered the creature within the pillar – had been pulled, screaming, into the very stone of the pillar.

It had become more than clear, at that moment, that the creature within the pillar – whoever or whatever it had been prior to end up as he was – had long since succumbed to the maddening hunger that any starving creature would have been prey to. Truly, it could even be said that he was offering that poor creature mercy, destroying it before it could unite the world against itself and so end up drawing the attention of those who would not nearly be so kind about destroying it as Robert and those who he had called to his side.

Making his way over to the pair of planes that had just settled to the ground, even as he felt the wind from the propellers buffeting him, Robert smiled with a sense of fond nostalgia as he saw the doors of both planes opening wide to allow his long-absent – though not so long, in the case of dear Alice – friends to exit their respective transports at last.

"Speedwagon!"

"Jojo," he said, smiling all the wider as his old friend rushed forward to embrace him. "It's been fifty years since we last saw each other, but you look as young as ever."

"I certainly hope you remembered to bring along enough water this time," Alice said, before either he or Jojo could say another word to one another.

He laughed, nostalgic and rueful at once. "You're going to hold that over me for the rest of my life, aren't you?"

"I offer to supply your expedition into the Texan desert, and you refuse even after I offer to make it a loan rather than a gift. And, after you go haring off like some desperate madman, I find you half-dead of heat exhaustion not three weeks later," Jojo's sister said, spearing him with a thoroughly unimpressed expression. "So yes, Robert, nearly getting yourself killed is something I fully intend to hold over your head, you stubborn old goat."

She might have the face of an angel, but Alice Brando is not a woman to cross lightly, he reflected, smiling gently as Jojo stepped back and the pair of them were able to face one another again. "All that aside, I called the pair of you here so that you might see something that I'm sure will be of great interest."

"Oh?" Alice asked, as Straizo stepped out of the plane and took up position behind her; he was wearing what looked like a sword, strapped to his back.

A thing that Robert found more than a little odd, since he and Alice were both carrying the sword-concealing umbrellas that Alice had designed as both a means of defense from the sun and also as a means of protecting their persons without resorting to the use of their vampiric abilities.

"Come," he said, deciding that he would speak to Alice about the other sword that she had given to Straizo while the three of them flew to Mexico. "We should get underway as quickly as possible."

Jojo laughed softly, as the four of them boarded the plane that he had had transported to this place so that they would be able to undertake this last leg of their journey. "I find that, no matter how many times I step aboard one of these fascinating contraptions, I've never become tired of it."

"They are fascinating devices," he said, smiling as he followed Jojo, Alice, and Straizo into the cabin of his plane.

"Indeed," Jojo said, smiling brightly as he looked up at the ceiling of the cabin above them. "Still, it's not quite so exciting as flying upon the back of Alice's Quetzalcoatlus."

"Yes, I suppose it could hardly compete with that," he said, laughing softly in amused reflection.

And it was true: being confined on all sides by the steel skin of an airplane could hardly compete with riding upon the back of a reborn ancient beast; feeling the wind in one's hair as the creature raced through the skies. Of course, considering the beast's nature as a zombie, they could hardly have relied upon it to carry them all to Mexico in anything resembling a timely manner. Still, Robert could hardly have denied his own exhilaration when Alice had offered him the chance to ride upon the creature's back.

Still, at present they all had more pressing concerns than far-distant memories, exciting as they may very well have been.

"Alice, if you wouldn't think me too forward, why does Straizo have another sword strapped to his back?" he asked, once their small group had gotten fully underway.

"That isn't a sword, Robert," she said calmly, reaching back and giving a signal to Straizo. "It's my steel-bow."

He was about to ask just why in the world anyone would want a steel bow, when he remembered just what kind of inhuman strength Alice and Dio were capable of summoning by their very nature. Truly, while a bow made of steel would be impossible for a human to wield in any but the most diminished of capacities, a vampire such as Dio or Alice would be able to use such a weapon to devastating effect. The thought would have been rather terrifying, if he'd not known Alice so well as he did.

"Speedwagon, you said that you were going to tell us about what your people found?" Jojo prompted, turning toward him with an expression of interest.

"Yes," he said, nodding and drawing himself up. "First, however, I feel that I should inform you of the particulars of our present circumstances. It's been quite some time since you succeeded Tonpetty, after all."

"Yes," Jojo said, a wistful expression spreading over his still-youthful face. "I spend so much time away in Tibet that I've barely had the chance to speak with Joseph. And now, with Elizabeth in Venice to guard the Red Stone," Jojo sighed, turning an expression of such touching concern upon him that Robert felt his heart go out to the man. "How has Joseph been doing? Is he getting on well?"

"He and Erina are both doing well," he said, smiling for Jojo's sake as well as his own. "If nothing else, her friendship with Grace and Darby has helped the both of them to cope with your frequent absences," he continued, smile beginning to slip a bit. "Still, however much he might resemble you in other areas, Joseph is hardly a gentleman."

"What do you mean?" Jojo asked, turning to him with a look of frank apprehension on his face.

"It's nothing too serious," Robert rushed to reassure his old friend, knowing that Jojo – without the benefit of knowing Joseph so well as he did – would, all wishes to the contrary aside, easily come to fear the worst. "He just has a tendency to be… Rather a bit overzealous when provoked."

"What do you mean, Speedwagon?"

With a rueful sigh, Robert leaned back in his seat as he began to tell Jojo about the various incidents that his grandson had been involved with. Truly, it had become quite the list…

=BT=

Sitting back in her seat, light-shrugging white hood pulled over her head to block out the sunlight coming in through the cockpit of the plane, Alice closed her eyes and tried to concentrate. She might not have known much about JJBA Part 2, as opposed to what she knew about Dio in particular and Stardust Crusaders in general, but she might know just enough to help her and hers dodge the worst of the pitfalls that were inevitably going to be coming their way.

Too bad it hadn't been made into an anime before… Well, Before, she mused, smiling with the blackest sort of humor. Still, I guess it wouldn't be quite so fun if I could skate on everything, now would it? Really, there wasn't much point in wishing for things you knew you couldn't have, so Alice put those thoughts out of her mind.

Of course, without her faded memories of a past-future that only she remembered to occupy her mind, Alice naturally found herself wondering just what Rob thought he needed two vampires – though Straizo had insisted on coming, rather than being invited the way she'd been, herself – and a Hamon Master to deal with. And in Mexico, of all places. The only thing she could think of were some kind of dinosaur zombies, and since vampires were the only ones who could create zombies in the first place…

A Mexican vampire cult, maybe? But then, that still wouldn't explain what Rob had wanted her along, since Jonathan could have handled pretty much any vampire he came across. Well, any vampire who didn't have prep-time and a good set of tools, she mused, crossing her legs at the ankles as she continued to mull over the odd circumstances that she'd found herself facing on this little sojourn to Mexico with her adopted brother, a man who'd all but openly declared himself her retainer, and an old friend from London she'd met while cross-dressing.

"Alice, we've arrived," Rob said, and she felt a light hand on her right shoulder, pressing down just hard enough to draw her attention without being unpleasant.

"All right," she said, rising from her seat and making for the plane's exit hatch. "Thanks for letting me know, Rob."

As the four of them fell into step, making their way through a jungle that looked like it would have fit perfectly into the terrain of South America; though she'd be the first to admit that she didn't know much about Mexican geography as it compared to South America's. Still, considering what the four of them were approaching…

"So, two vampires, an oil tycoon, and a Hamon Master walk into a cave," she turned a sidelong look on Rob as they all continued on their way up to the gaping mouth of the cavern. "Should I be glad this isn't a pub?"

"Alice, this is hardly the time for levity," Rob said, just loud enough to cover Jonathan's sudden attack of the giggles. "Even you might find this place overwhelming; what we found here… It's enough to make me glad that you and Dio, and even Straizo, were all able to retain your essential humanity. I can hardly say the same for this creature."

"Creature?" she echoed, raising an eyebrow. "There's something alive in here?" she sniffed the air again; it was just as stagnant as it had been the first time she sampled it; and growing steadily worse, the deeper they continued into the cavern.

"I'd hardly say it's alive, Alice," Rob said, beginning to sound distinctly jittery; and sure, while the man did tend to over-exaggerate, he had a good head on his shoulders and had been reliable enough to offset his more bone-headed moments. "Still, you'll see what I mean when we arrive in the main chamber."

She hummed softly, still curious about what might've been hidden away in this strange cavern, but also wondering if Rob's habitual paranoia was getting the better of him in this case.

=BT=

There was a terrible, blackened aura that clung to this place; one that he and Speedwagon seemed particularly aware of, while Alice and Straizo seemed perfectly immune to it. And yes, he was fully aware that his and Dio's sister's most common response to danger was to attempt to poke it with a stick – sometimes entirely too literally for his peace of mind – but Jonathan could not help the thought that such a thing would not serve her at all in the situation they were about to find themselves in.

"Well, someone's been busy," Alice's voice broke the quickly-becoming-oppressive silence, and Jonathan was not entirely certain if he should be grateful to her or not.

"What do you mean, Alice?" he asked, feeling almost as though he were forcing himself to speak into the silence; a thing he rather doubted his and Dio's sister had been afflicted by.

It seemed to be against her very nature, to respond to fear with anything but a determined sort of curiosity; Jonathan could only hope that such a thing would not cause either her or Dio any undue grief.

"The walls of this place are covered in Stone Masks, and unless these ones were drop-forged – which I kind of doubt, given the detail-work on each of them – someone had to spend a lot of time hand-carving these."

One of Speedwagon's people, carrying a light for the benefit of those of them who needed light in such a place, shined it upon the wall near where Alice had been standing. Just as she'd stated, the wall was indeed covered with Stone Masks of varying designs. Such a sight left Jonathan with profoundly mixed feelings; yes, as a Hamon Master he was bound by the oaths he had given to Master Tonpetty to destroy the Stone Masks and those creatures born of it, and yet… Looking to Alice, even as she stepped out of the light cast by the lamp, continuing to study the walls and those Stone Masks that were within the range of her eyes, Jonathan felt his resolve renewed once more.

If those who had been touched by the Stone Mask were indeed wicked, then Jonathan would dispose of them swiftly and without hesitation; but, if they were of the same temperament as Dio and Alice – though, truly he would much prefer that any other vampires were more akin to his level-headed sister rather than his irrepressible rapscallion of a brother – then he would let them alone, though he would advise that they sought out his sister in such a case.

"This is what I brought you all here to see," Speedwagon said, and Jonathan turned, catching sight of… the more-than-life-sized carving of what was clearly a man, within the very stone of the pillar itself.

He was just about to ask just why in the world Speedwagon would be so concerned about a carving, ominous as it so clearly felt, when Alice broke the silence; what she said was one of the most unexpected things that he had ever heard.

"You found another one of those things?"

"You've seen something like this?" Speedwagon asked, before Jonathan could articulate that selfsame question.

"I have; back in Rome, Caesar and I ended up chasing after a man that turned out to be his father, Mario Zeppeli," a far-away expression passed briefly over Alice's face, before she shook her head slightly, bloody crimson eyes becoming clear and focused once more. "The three of us ended up in front of a wall with three carvings; they didn't look too much like the one we're standing in front of, but they weren't too far off, either. Anyway, there was clearly a bit of a scuffle before I got there, but Caesar was on the ground, and Mario was actually being pulled into the stone itself," Alice narrowed her eyes, her gaze taking in the form of the man within the pillar. "I lost a sword to the one on the right," she turned back to them, clearly realizing that she had just spoken of something neither one of them could have had any way of knowing about. "There were three of them, in the wall; each of them posed a different way. I wouldn't have thought much of it, Roman art being what it is. But, considering what happened to Mario… Well, I couldn't exactly overlook something like that."

"I should say not," Speedwagon exclaimed, turning a glance back on Alice, before returning his attention to the man in the pillar.

As Jonathan turned his own attention back to the man in the pillar, he heard Alice call to Straizo, and out of the corner of his right eye he watched his sister be handed her steel-bow. He watched as Straizo bent the straightened metal shaft – it almost looked like a pipe, but with the back third cut out; or perhaps just never forged in the first place – and Alice strung it with what looked like a braided coil of wire. This was only the second time he had gotten a glimpse of it, but the first that he'd seen his and Dio's sister preparing to use it.

This was, conversely, the first time he'd had the opportunity to see that, far from just holding the unstrung form of the bow, what he'd at first taken for the sheath of a sword was in fact a combined quiver and a method of holding Alice's steel bow. Just as his and Dio's sister looked about to draw back the string of her bow, she paused, shifting her weight slightly, as though something had just caught her attention.

"Did you order a convoy out here?" Alice asked, indirectly answering his question before Jonathan could manage to articulate it.

"A convoy? No, of course not," Speedwagon said, looking surprised at the suggestion.

Alice narrowed her eyes, a thoughtful expression spreading over her face, even as she unstrung her steel-bow and tucked it away within the combined quiver and holder. The three of them, he, Speedwagon, and Straizo, all turned to watch as she stepped to the back of their group.

=BT=

Robert was just about to call out to Alice, wanting to know just what in the world she was doing – he'd thought that her plan was to fire one of the arrows from her steel-bow into that creature in the pillar, which would then allow Jojo to channel Hamon into it without risking himself by getting dangerously close, the way that poor Marty Balin had – before she raised the two locks of blonde hair he'd seen but not taken much note of.

"There are eight of them; heavy transport trucks, given the sound of the engines I'm hearing," Alice said, her eyes half-closed and unfocused.

"You can hear them from in here?" he asked, startled once more at having underestimated just what vampire senses were capable of.

"This is something Alice showed me," Jojo said, turning away from the creature in the pillar. "See those long hairs she has? Those act like a cat's whiskers, allowing Alice to hear sounds much fainter and farther away than even an ordinary vampire would be able to detect."

"They can even pick up changes in air-currents, so I might even be able to tell you if a storm is coming, with some refinement of the technique," Alice said, her tone sounding rather amused. "Anyway, those transports I heard earlier are definitely coming this way."

"Speedwagon, if you weren't the one to bring these newcomers in, then I rather doubt they could mean us well," Jojo said, his tone concerned.

"Yes, I fear you're right, Jojo," he said, swallowing harshly.

=BT=

Grumbling words that would have had both Granny Erina and Aunty Grace wanting to wash his mouth out with really bad-tasting soap, Joseph Joestar hurried after the pick-pocket who'd just stolen his wallet. It might've been filled with just the few pounds he'd taken with him on this particular excursion into the more interesting parts of New York, but those were his pounds and that was his wallet, thank you very much. When he finally came to the alley where the pickpocket he'd been tailing had turned off, Joseph found something he very much hadn't been expecting.

Really, he'd figured that Aunty Alice would have dealt with this kind of trash already. Still, the New York branch of Brando International was only a few years old at this point, so maybe she just didn't have the leverage to implement any proper reforms. It looked like he was going to have to handle things, just until she returned from her expedition with Speedwagon, Straizo, and Gramps.

"Hullo!"

"Hey, it's the pigeon what got his wallet lifted," the fat man – really, Aunty Alice would have had the man running laps before he could have even thought of joining the police force in Montana – called back to him, holding up the very wallet that had been taken from him not a few minutes ago. "This is evidence, so I'm gonna be keepin' it!"

"Well now, how shall I put this?" he mused aloud, more for his own benefit than for either of the oafs he was faced with. "Here's what happened: there actually is no crime, since that wallet was a gift, Constable."

The pair of oafs looked in askance at him, but Joseph's eyes drifted back towards the bloodied form of the pickpocket, still pinned against the wall of the alley. It seemed that even he was surprised by the action. Still, if there was one thing that Gramps and Granny both agreed on, besides keeping his Hamon skills sharp through constant training, it was that one should always show kindness to the less fortunate.

"So, then, sir. Would you please return both wallet and boy?"

"What'd you just say?" the fat one – clearly, his partner wasn't much for speaking – demanded.

"As I told you: it was a gift," he reiterated, which seemed to shock the pickpocket and annoy the oafs in roughly equal measure. "He and I are good friends. Let him go, please."

Narrowing his eyes as he saw the fat oaf hurl the pickpocket roughly to the ground, Joseph curled his lip in almost instinctive disgust as the man began picking his nose as he came closer.

"A good friend, huh? Why don't you tell me what your good friend's name is?" the fat oaf demanded, holding out a bogey-covered finger before his face; Joseph stuck his hands in his pockets, searching for the tissues he'd brought with him; if that oaf was actually going to do what it seemed he was going to do… Well, he'd much prefer to be prepared for it, rather than not. "What's the matter, limey? You want to see what a New York pokey is like? Here's a present for ya!"

The feeling of the fat oaf pressing his finger into Joseph's right cheek was disgusting enough, but it was all the moreso since he knew what was on that finger. Still, might as well give the oafs a chance to dig their own graves.

"That's curious," he said, not bothering to suppress the thread of annoyance in his tone. "Help me understand: why would you do something like that? It's just such an unsavory thing to do."

"There ain't no reason!" the fat oaf shouted, finger going right back up his nose; it would be the last time, Joseph decided. "I do what I like whenever I feel like it, ya fool!"