"Yes, I suppose you might be right, Frau Brando," Stroheim said, briefly touching his throat with an amused expression. "Continue with the experiments! Open the door to the next chamber."
"Is that a vampire?" Jonathan demanded, having caught sight of the poor wretch that was, even as they watched, looking to the man that had emerged from the pillar with the mad, desperate hunger that Jonathan had only seen in those few vampires that he had been forced to deal with during his training to fully master Hamon.
"This one is only three days old, so it's nothing at all like your sister," Stroheim said, a calm smile on his face that nearly contrasted the madness dancing in his eyes. "We haven't given him blood him lately, so he'll be wanting to feed as quickly as he can."
Almost before Stroheim had finished saying that, the starving vampire leaped straight for the man who had been resting within the pillar. As the German soldiers behind him succumbed to their impatience and began disparaging the creature that had come out of the pillar, Jonathan narrowed his eyes in thought. It would not do, he knew, to be caught off-guard by anything this pillar man turned out to be capable of.
=BT=
Narrowing his eyes as he continued observing the Nazi soldiers manning the checkpoint that stood before the base that Joseph had interrogated that man Donovan about, Straizo narrowed his eyes. Seeing the crude, piggish behavior of the men there only served to bolster his determination to see them dealt with. Still, they had not injured any of the women they were harassing, so Straizo found that he could wait to deal with them until Joseph had formulated a plan.
"Pigs."
"Yes," he said, in response to the disgust he could hear in the young Joestar's voice. "Still, best to focus on getting inside, for the moment."
"True," Joseph said, and Straizo could see the grin beginning to spread across his face; the only warning most had before the young Joestar enacted one of his mad plans.
"What do you intend, Joseph Joestar?"
"You'll see."
He didn't like the grin that stretched the young Joestar's face, but Straizo was well acquainted with Joseph's propensity for getting his way; there was little point, he knew, in arguing methods when they were likely short on time.
=BT=
"When we pass through the checkpoint and enter the Nazi base, Joseph Joestar, I am going to throttle you."
Grinning in response to the vampire's subdued grumble – really, anyone else would thing his Auntie's retainer was as stoic as ever – Joseph reached out to straighten his bright yellow headscarf.
"What? I think you look rather fetching," he said, grinning deliberately in the face of Straizo's narrowed eyes. "I would never have expected canary yellow to suit you so well."
"You're insufferable, Joseph Joestar."
Holding back a laugh through sheer force of will, Joseph smiled widely; these getups might not allow the pair of them to pass under the eyes of those pigs without incident – save for, perhaps, in Straizo's case; truly, his Auntie's retainer had the most lovely eyelashes to compliment his pretty face – but they would certainly put them off balance long enough for he and Straizo to properly address the threat they would otherwise have posed.
Getting through the checkpoint was, of course, not nearly so simple as just walking through in their borrowed disguises, but the stupefied confusion on the thuggish faces of the Nazis he and Straizo were, in the end, forced to fight would be a sight he rightly treasured. Not to mention the chance to see Straizo in a dress. Of course, he wasn't about to mention that part of it.
Straizo really would throttle him, in that case.
Once the pair of them had taken the uniforms from the Nazi guards, he and Straizo took shelter under the shadows of a covered walkway to change into them. Leaving their borrowed dresses with a surprised trio of women who had been making their way up to the checkpoint, he smiled as asked them to make certain that Paula and Shania were both given back the spare clothes that he and Straizo had borrowed from them.
Needless to say, neither of them seemed to know quite what to make of him or Straizo; Joseph tried to suppress a grin, but knew from the disapproving look on the vampire's face that he hadn't quite succeeded all the way
=BT=
Madmen! He was surrounded by madmen! Trying to calm his racing heart, Robert looked to Alice and Jojo as the pair of them continued to observe the goings-on within that terrible room where the Nazis had isolated the pillar man in a vain attempt to exert some measure of control over the creature.
"Jojo, you and Alice," he started, then was forced to pause to swallow past a sudden lump in his throat. "You will be able to defeat that creature, won't you?"
"Well, the thing eats vampires, so that's going to make things interesting," Alice said, narrowing her eyes in thought as she looked down into the chamber of horrors that the Nazis had caused to be built.
"It also seems to have the intellect to speak," Jojo said, his gaze softening with what looked like pity; Speedwagon hoped that Jojo's gentle heart wouldn't come out of the impending confrontation too battered.
"Yes," Alice muttered. "We'll have to see how it reacts, before we can properly address it."
The pair of them looked down into the chamber, Alice's eyes narrowing as her agile mind went to work upon the terrible situation the four of them now found themselves facing.
"Alice, can you- Do you think you might be able to predict just how this creature intends to attack us?" he asked, feeling more chilled than ever at the thought of being trapped at the mercy of a creature that devoured vampires.
"I've some inkling, but I don't think you'd want me speculating about that," a thin, short-lived smile knifed its way across her face. "Wouldn't want to give our enemy ideas."
He swallowed another lump. "Yes," Speedwagon could feel his heart pounding in his ears, and wondered for a moment how well Alice could hear it…
The thick, heavy steel walls around them may as well have been paper reinforced with matchsticks, for all the protection they could provide from the creature that had once been slumbering within the pillar-!
"What?! Where did the pillar man go?!"
"Alice?" he muttered, as the vampire launched herself across the room, kicking off the far wall and landing neatly on her feet as a sheet of ice spread down across the wall behind her.
"How long do you think that will hold it?" Jojo asked, already taking his customary stance and beginning to gather his Hamon as Alice positioned herself next to him; carefully out of the reach of Jojo's hands.
"That was a fast-freeze," Alice said, gaze trained upon the far wall, where the sheet of ice she'd created seemed to be holding firm. "If he's really as strong as I am, he'll-"
The sheet of ice shattered inward, raining glittering shards down upon the floor; Alice was moving before the first of them had a chance to clatter to the steel floor beneath them, and Jojo was right behind. Forced to blink the dryness from his eyes, Robert allowed himself a sigh of relief when he saw that the creature's head had been frozen to the ground, and Jojo was bearing down upon it, fists charged with lethal Hamon. However, when the creature was able to force its own torso out of the way of Jojo's strike, Robert felt his body all but seize up in panic.
"Fast, strong, and flexible," Alice said, her stoic calm helping Robert to regain some of his own. "That'll make things interesting."
"Yes," Jojo said, narrowing his own eyes.
=BT=
The creature – Santana, Jonathan recalled, though it was almost easier to forget that he had a name – leaped backwards into the air, the ice that Alice had sheathed his head in shattering into useless shards and falling away in what seemed to be the space between one blink and the next. Still, he'd long since become accustomed to the way that Dio and Alice could move when the situation called for it, and so Jonathan was not caught so flat-footed as their current opponent might well have wished. So, when the creature made a flying-leap at the pair of them, arms outstretched as though to grasp both of their shoulders – one in each hand – he and Alice were able to dodge by leaping to opposite sides of their current battlefield.
"He ate part of my suit jacket," Alice said, sounding curious rather than afraid, as was her wont.
"What?"
But indeed, it seemed to be true: a chunk the size of a large hand had been torn free from the left shoulder of her brilliantly white suit, revealing to all and sundry the underlying layer of steel-and-titanium wire mesh that lent strength and durability to the armored cloth Alice had designed.
"Your clothes, they have metal in them," the creature- no, Santana; no one who spoke so coherently could be called a mere creature.
"Indeed they do," Alice said, narrowing her eyes as she and Santana faced each other.
"And you," Santana continued, inscrutable gaze focusing upon Jonathan himself for a long moment. "You are a member of the Hamon tribe."
Breathing deeply, Jonathan maintained the flowing Hamon that was the only thing protecting him from being devoured by Santana. Master Tonpetty had informed him of the history that bound those who practiced Hamon together; they were indeed the descendants – even if only in a metaphysical sense – of a tribe that had originally banded together in order to protect themselves from the depredations of the Pillar Men. According to what he had heard, there were indeed four of them… and yet, Jonathan would have been lying if he didn't admit that he'd held at least some hope that the four of them would have chosen to remain dormant for all time.
Forcing his attention back to Santana – pushing aside the frightened mutterings of the Germans all around him – Jonathan steadied his breathing once more. He would have sought to offer Santana clemency, since his two siblings were indeed vampires as Stroheim had said, but there was something about the Pillar Man that gave him the distinct feeling that any such offer was more likely than not to be ignored outright. Jonathan could not, therefore, afford to let his guard down.
The sudden rattle and crack of machinegun fire drew some of his attention away from the Pillar Man named Santana. It seemed that the Nazis, not content anymore with merely standing upon the sidelines of this battle, were attempting to aid the pair of them in their struggle against Santana. However, the manner in which they had chosen to do so could hardly have been more counterproductive if such had been their very intention in the first place.
"I'm bulletproof," Alice scoffed, as the pair of them slapped aside the veritable hailstorm of bullets that ricocheted around the small room where they had all been confined in, he with his Hamon and Alice with the sword that she had designed for herself.
Unfortunately, it seemed that Santana was also capable of the same sort of feat.
There was no true signal for the resumption of their mutual hostilities – there very seldom was, when one truly entered combat – but resume them they very well did. Alice was the first to truly strike a blow against Santana, freezing his right foot solid and shattering the afflicted appendage into brittle shards, and for that Jonathan found himself grimly pleased. If nothing else, reducing Santana's mobility would aid them in ending this battle before any of those they had chosen to stand in defense of could be harmed.
As though he'd plucked those very thoughts from their minds, Santana lunged forward, momentum off-balanced from his missing extremity, directly in the direction of-
"Stroheim!" the shout burst from his throat, as Jonathan himself lunged to block Santana's path.
Hate the man though he might, no one deserved the horror that Santana inflicted upon his victims; even being devoured by a vampire was a kinder fate…
When Alice twisted around, positioning herself between Stroheim and Santana, Jonathan allowed himself to smile slightly; while he'd little doubt that his and Dio's sister would happily cuff the man about the head and shoulders – severely, in fact – she was also not about to simply allow the man to be devoured alive if there was even a small chance that she could prevent such. Feeling distinctly more settled as Alice's sword spread a patch of fast-frozen ice from the midpoint of Santana's chest to just underneath his brow, Jonathan gathered his Hamon and slammed his fists into Santana's back.
The Pillar Man screamed, flesh charring and crumbling away even as he threw himself out of Jonathan's range, desperation clear in every line of his body. Knowing that he could not allow the Pillar Man the time he would need to heal himself, and that even with Hamon still within his body, Santana's regeneration was clearly working to reverse the damage that Jonathan had inflicted upon him; the Pillar Man having long since shattered Alice's ice. Santana's eyes were the worst: the understanding, shading into fear as he was steadily driven back into the center of their battlefield and away from any of the helpless Germans he would have otherwise used to replenish himself.
It was a terrible thing that he and Alice were being asked to do, yet it was clear that Santana – and perhaps the other Pillar Men, as well – was both starving and had little regard for human life; he was nothing like Alice, or even Dio, who had both learned to temper their vampiric hunger. There was no hope for reconciliation in a situation such as this; only the knowledge that he must fulfill his duty as a Master of Hamon. Jonathan hated such moments.
Still, hate them though he might, Jonathan knew that there were few others who would not falter under such a responsibility, thus in the end it fell to him.
As Alice froze Santana's remaining foot, binding the Pillar Man firmly to the floor, Jonathan breathed deeply to gather his Hamon a final time, and then lunged forward. His left fist slammed into the small of Santana's back, his right into the back of the Pillar Man's head, and Jonathan unleashed the energies that he'd been gathering. The Pillar Man named Santana died with barely a scream.
"If you'll pardon me, Jonathan, I've some business to conclude with Stroheim."
"Yes, I expect you do," he said, following in her wake as Alice crossed the remaining distance between herself and the Nazi Major that had escorted her, himself, and Speedwagon into this terrible place.
"Gramps!"
"Joseph!" he exclaimed, turning at the sound of his grandson's voice to see both Joseph and Straizo making their way over to stand beside him.
The pair of them embraced for a long moment, Jonathan taking brief note of a soft exclamation from Stroheim and then the whip-crack of Alice's voice as she gave the man a proper dressing-down.
"Well, it seems we came just in time for the wrap-up," Joseph said, grinning widely.
"I suppose you would be pleased about that," he said, amused as exasperated at once.
Truly, if there was one area that his grandson seemed to have inherited from Dio, it was a firm rejection of any sort of work-ethic.
=BT=
"So, what's been going on?" he asked, since Gramps wouldn't have been this grim if there hadn't been some reason for it; not to mention the fact that Aunty Alice was far too even-tempered to punch a man in the stomach and then proceed to read him the riot act for no reason.
Even if that man was German.
"There are three more of these creatures in Rome," Gramps said, the main thrust of his attention clearly settling back upon whatever it was that he and Aunty Alice had just finished fighting against; then he seemed to come back to himself, his gaze sharpening until Joseph had the feeling he knew just what Gramps was about to ask him; he didn't like it much, and he knew that Gramps wasn't going to be happy when he heard Joseph's answer. "Have you been keeping up with your Hamon training?"
"Uhm, well," he scratched the back of his head, knowing that he was in for it. "Maybe a little? Off and on?"
"More off than on, I expect," Aunty Alice said, having made her own way over to the pair of them with Straizo trailing slightly behind. "Anyway, considering our present circumstances, I think we'd be best served heading to Rome."
"Yes, I think that would be best," Gramps said, shooting him a disapproving frown as the four of them all fell into step with one another on their way out of the base. "We're going to discuss this later, Joseph."
He sighed. "Yes, Gramps."
=BT=
She could practically hear the lecture that Jonathan was preparing for Joseph, and so Alice turned her attention to the travel-preparations she was going to need to make before they began making their way to Italy.
"I do believe we've had quite enough of your hospitality," she heard Robert snap, in response to an offer made by Stroheim to arrange transport to Rome for all of them.
"I'll be arranging our transportation," she said calmly, still rather annoyed to have to be working so closely with Nazis; sure, she was doing everything superhumanly possible to cut down on the casualties that would have otherwise – and had been, back on her old Earth – been caused by the Holocaust, but having to stay so determinedly civil while dealing with this bunch of assholes…
"We'll send a transport for you when you arrive in Italy, then," Stroheim said, seemingly perfectly amenable after she'd punched him in the stomach and all but called him a narcissistic, sociopathic jackass to his face. "Our people have been maintaining a constant presence to guard the three other Pillar Men, after you and yours did us the courtesy of properly turning them over."
Shaking her head as she and the two other members of her family, plus Straizo, all made their way out of the Nazi base, Alice turned her attention back to what she was going to need to do once they'd all departed from this place. Considering their little punch-up with Santana, it was more than obvious that they were all going to be called on to deal with those other three Pillar Men if or when they started waking up. Here's hoping those Nazis aren't as stupid as the ones over here, at least, she mused, not feeling particularly charitable so far as the general intelligence of Nazis was concerned.
When the four of them managed to make their way out of the Nazi base, Alice found that the very transport she'd called from the first phone she'd had the chance to lay her hands on had just arrived to pick their group up. Not a one of them waved goodbye as they left, and Alice hardly needed to wonder why such had been the case. Once they were back on the road again, Alice let herself relax.
It'd still be some time before she and hers all made it to Italy, of course, particularly since they also planned to meet with Dio and Erina in order to reassure the pair of them that they were all doing all right. Sure, they'd all taken turns talking when she'd called them up at the hotel they were staying at, but nothing could really match the relief of a face-to-face meeting when one particularly wanted to reassure family or close friends that they were indeed all right. Erina and Dio being both, said meeting was all the more eagerly anticipated by her and hers.
Leaning back into the well-cushioned seat of their transport plane – Robert had had to firmly talk Stroheim out of lending them a plane, citing the fact that, as they were returning to America, anything bearing Nazi symbols wasn't remotely likely to be welcomed with anything but armed weaponry – Alice considered what she was likely going to need, in order to properly address the threat posed by the three remaining Pillar Men. A new, bulletproof suit of clothing had to be first on the list, of course, since she didn't want to go revealing her preparations to all and sundry while they were in the midst of combat the way Santana had forced her to do.
And, while she was at it, she'd secure some of the same make for Jonathan and Joseph as well, since they were both clearly going to be getting into it with those three as well; Caesar, being the Head of Security for Brando International's Italian branch – though he'd taken a sabbatical, once the pair of them had heard the final words of Mario Zeppeli – already possessed a pair of such, one for business purposes and one for his off-hours. Because, as they both knew well, just because he wasn't officially acting in his capacity as her Head of security didn't mean that some unsavory type wasn't going to try to make an attempt on his life. If only to say they had, before her remaining security forces hunted them down.
Still, her bulletproof suit jacket had proved its worth, even if it'd been in a way that she hadn't particularly been anticipating; best she had more of them prepared, considering what they were going to be dealing with sooner than later.
=BT=
When the four of them made it to the New York estate that their family had established some time ago, Jonathan felt more than prepared to have a light supper and then head off to bed. This day of all days had been particularly exhausting. So, when the front doors were slammed open and Dio attempted to leap out and tackle him to the ground in a fit of what the blond was entirely too likely to term simple brotherly enthusiasm, Jonathan was all the more grateful to Alice when she arrested their brother's motion in midair with a strong grip on the back of his belt.
"Not the time, peacock," she said, her tone holding the same fond exasperation that Jonathan felt, himself.
Sighing, Jonathan thanked his and Dio's sister for her quick action and continued on his way into the home that he and his family had made for themselves in New York. Dio and Alice's holdings in Montana, while they were quite a bit larger than this place, always had the feel of hustle and bustle about them. Jonathan supposed that such a thing was only natural, as Montana was where Brando Incorporated had first been established.
Before the company had blossomed to become Brando International, of course.
"Jonathan."
"Erina," he said, smiling gently in response to the expression of fond relief that spread across her face as the pair of them beheld each other once more. "I'm so glad to see you again."
"I'm glad to see you, too," she said, smiling gently as the pair of them embraced for the first time in entirely too long. "I was so worried, when I received the news from Mexico. Dio, of course, was beside himself with fury, wanting to rush down there, attacking any and every German soldier he might've chanced to meet."
He chuckled softly. "Well, you know how Dio is, when something happens to anger him."