"Coming in, twelve 'o clock!" she called, pulling Caesar's arm to encourage him to move more quickly than he had been.

The three Pillar Men who had been preparing to charge them dove through what had been the center of their group, even as the six of them split up into groups of two in order to have the best chance they could of dealing with the three Pillar Men attacking them. Jonathan and Elizabeth had come together, pitting their longer experience against whatever ACDC – there were times when it was all she could do not to burst out snickering at the constant barrage of music references that the world as a whole seemed to live and breathe on – had up his nonexistent sleeves. Joseph and Caesar had naturally teamed up, and Wham had set himself against the pair of them.

Which, naturally, left her and Dio to fight Kars.

"I believe you have something that belongs to my sister," Dio drawled, eyes narrowed even as he tried to project an air of nonchalance.

He'd never quite seemed to get that down.

"Oh?" Kars echoed, an amused expression spreading across his face.

"It's no problem," she said, as the three of them continued circling each other, each trying to properly position themselves, while at the same time keeping their opponent from doing the same. "I already had a spare," she continued easily, wondering just how this latest dust-up of theirs was going to go.

She could get at least something of a read on him, but it was weird; like facing some kind of hybrid of herself and Dio, of all people. Kars had Dio's attitude down to the swagger, but he also seemed to have the kind of calm that she, personally tried to maintain. Time would tell if he had Dio's triggers, and would hence be relatively simple to deal with, or if he had her general sense of good-natured amusement at the world in general, and would perhaps be amenable to discussing another way to get what he wanted. Sure, it seemed that he was working on some kind of second-generation stone mask, but there wasn't really a pressing need to kill anyone to get the components he would need to finish it.

Of course, for some people, that kind of thing was more a matter of want than need; time would tell if Kars was one of those, however.

"So, you've already made more of these interesting devices?" Kars asked, the smirk on his face widening all the more as he looked directly at her; his eyes were slightly narrowed, mimicking the expression that Alice had often heard described as being on her own face those times when she had found something interesting to investigate.

"Not that I mind, but aren't we supposed to be fighting?" she asked, curious to know just how Kars would react to the idea.

Alice hadn't blinked, having trained herself not to do so in combat over the five-plus decades that she'd spent as a vampire, and she was only breathing enough so that she could speak, but almost before she'd finished her last word, Alice found herself staring into the wine-red eyes of the Pillar Man who she'd only caught the most cursory of glimpses of, back when she'd pursued Caesar and a fleeing Mario Zeppeli up to that alley in the shadow of the Coliseum not so many years ago.

"Fight?" Kars chuckled, deep in his throat; from the angle they were both standing at, the hooded Pillar Man seemed to tower over her, and from the look on his face, he seemed to enjoy that fact. Prick. "I think I would much prefer that we talk, pet. After all," he continued, reaching out to curl his right hand around one of the locks of hair she used for both enhancing her range of hearing, and sensing fine tremors. "We had such a promising first meeting."

The meaty sound of Dio's first set of finger bones being fired at Kars' head managed to distract the Pillar Man for those few, crucial seconds that Alice needed to twist free of his grip, compress the lower half of her body like an accordion, and spring back up behind the Pillar Man good as new. She sacrificed the hair he'd been fondling, of course, but under the circumstances it was a small price to pay. Hair grew back, after all.

"Keep your filthy hands off my sister, Kars!"

What he said, only with less vitriol, Alice didn't say, bracing herself for whatever it was that Kars was bound to do next; all other considerations aside, he didn't seem like the type to take being attacked well at all.

=BT=

He still couldn't believe it had worked, even now that he and Caesar were running alongside the Pillar Man named Wham, all of them searching for an underground lake. Of course, the whole thing had started when – after Wham had accused the pair of them of holding back, even with the Hamon-filled whips and blades made of water they had been aiming at him – he'd shouted that of course their prowess hadn't impressed him, it wasn't as though they'd had much to work with, considering the size of their canteens.

Wham had actually agreed with them, and now here they all were, looking for an underground lake so that the Pillar Man who had insisted on fighting them at their full capacity could have the battle he was so clearly longing for; it was just so bizarre.

"I can smell it, just up ahead," Wham's deep, steady voice echoed out from the darkness where he was, running along beside them; he knew that Aunty Alice or Uncle Dio would have been able to see through it just fine, and it looked like Wham was in the exact same position, the lucky bastard. "Soon, you'll both have enough water so that you might give me a proper battle, Hamon users."

How lovely, he mused, rolling his eyes. Still, it wasn't like they were going to be getting a better deal; having a lake at their disposal would only serve to enhance their water-based Hamon attacks. Hell, they might even have enough water for that depending on how big the lake they were being taken to actually was. He'd have turned to share a word with Caesar, save for the fact that he already knew how good vampire senses were.

Given the way these three had been acting, Pillar Men had the same degree of sensitivity.

When the three of them finally made it to the shore of the underground lake that Wham had been leading them to, Joseph found himself smirking almost involuntarily.

"I guess this will do," he said, feeling Caesar's gaze on him, and turning back to grin at his friend and fellow Hamon user; this would be more than enough to use it, really.

"Wham, if it's a fight you want, it's a fight you're going to get!" he heard Caesar shout, just before the pair of them turned to run out onto the surface of the underground lake that Wham had been obliging enough to find for them.

Synching his breathing with Caesar's, Joseph grinned when he heard the sloshing of water as it rose up around the pair of them. He wondered, just for a moment, what Wham would make of what he had to be seeing. The feel of Caesar settling in behind him as their Hamon-and-water construct fully formed brought a smirk to Joseph's face.

Whatever Wham had been expecting, he was definitely in for a surprise.

Breathing steadily and deeply, following the rhythm that Caesar had established for the pair of them when they had worked to perfect this particular construct, Joseph grinned as he felt the Hamon-charged water that made up the lower set of appendages of the construct that he and Caesar had made and refined together wrapping around both of his hands.

"Now Jojo, let's see how this Pillar Man likes my Hamon Bubble Shot!"

Grinning, even as he maintained the steady breathing that would allow him to maintain control over the long water-whips that he'd worked so long to construct, Joseph felt one of his eyebrows begin to twitch as he caught sight of what Wham was actually doing. Is that Pillar Man laughing at us?!

=BT=

Leaping out of the path of a barrage of Hamon-infused bubbles, Wham laughed in delight. Truly, this was what he had hoped for when he had allowed that pair of Hamon users to follow him while he found a suitable body of water for them to utilize.

"A magnificent construct!" he exclaimed, throwing himself out of the path of one of the water-construct's long, Hamon-charged appendages, as it buried itself deep into the stone where he'd previously been standing. "In return for showing me such a marvelous technique, I will show you one of my own! The Divine Sandstorm!"

=BT=

"Oh My God! He just threw a tornado at us!"

"Control your breathing, Jojo!" he shouted, even as one of the Pillar Man's tornados slammed into the surface of the lake, throwing up huge waves and further disturbing the surface of the lake that he and Jojo were fighting on, causing the large bubble that he and Jojo were using to shield themselves from whatever kind of attacks that the Pillar Man in front of them was capable of using.

And yes, he hadn't been expecting a tornado, but if he didn't get Jojo to calm down, both of them were going to be in serious danger when the only thing holding back Wham's tornados was his own Bubble Barrier.

"Oh come on!" Jojo shouted, as Wham leaped up and tried to slam another of those tornados down on them. "That's not even fair!"

"Keep breathing, Jojo," he reminded the pair of them; because yes, while he hadn't been panicking nearly as much as Jojo, the sight of Wham falling down towards the pair of them with yet another tornado sprouting from the end of his huge arms hadn't been good for his equilibrium, either.

=BT=

It was all Jonathan could do, after splitting off from the other members of his extended family, to keep his mind focused upon the task he'd taken up. Even having Elizabeth fighting at his side, her Hamon skills reinforcing his own, did not grant him so much of a reprieve as Jonathan had been hoping for. However, as matters presently stood, it was not any lack of skill on their parts that prevented himself and Elizabeth from overcoming the Pillar Man standing before them.

It seemed as though, in rather a complete contrast to Santana, ACDC possessed more esoteric abilities than simply being able to contort his body in ways that Jonathan had long since become accustomed to after so much time spent living with Dio and Alice; to say nothing of the regular visitations from Straizo.

"Well, it seems like the pair of you do know what you're doing," ACDC said, a wide grin spreading across his dusky-skinned face; Jonathan wondered about that, since it looked as though the Pillar Man's skin had been browned by the sun, and he was fully aware that nothing unable to withstand Hamon would ever be able to walk unprotected in sunlight. "Good," the Pillar Man standing before them grinned all the wider. "I haven't had a fight this promising in two-thousand years!"

Leaping to the opposite side of the room, as Elizabeth did likewise, Jonathan just managed to avoid the spray of blood that coated the floor between them. It was yet another thing that, while he'd some experience from his dealings with Dio, Alice, and Straizo, made yet another point of contrast between vampires and Pillar Men. Because, while Alice, Dio, and Straizo all possessed the ability to draw in various liquids through their elastic veins, ACDC clearly possessed just the opposite ability.

Combined with the fact that ACDC's blood had a marked and unpleasant tendency to melt through the very stone they were standing upon, and Jonathan could not help but find himself concerned as to just how in the world she and Elizabeth would ever manage to defeat the Pillar Man who had set himself against them.

"That was a very good use of your surroundings," ACDC said, his tone actually sounding genuinely complimentary, as Elizabeth picked up one of the stay bits of rubble that lay on the floor of the cavern they were fighting within – if he'd had the time, Jonathan would have truly enjoyed exploring this place, considering how much of history such a cavern as this was bound to have borne witness to – charged it with Hamon, and threw it at ACDC's head with all of the force that she could manage to impart. "I'm enjoying this more and more!"

Jonathan wondered, as he scooped up another piece of rubble, charged it, and hurled it with all of his might towards the Pillar Man, if this was how William Zeppeli had felt, all those decades ago. If, every time one of Alice's new inventions – the spice packets that she'd thrown to disrupt Straizo's Hamon, the explosive nets that she'd woven once she and Dio had made it to America under his very nose, and finally the titanium armor that she had constructed after fully establishing herself and Dio as a fixture within the American state of Montana – had been deployed against him, the elder Zeppeli had felt a flash of the same, smothering despair that Jonathan felt clinging to him as he and Elizabeth attempted to stand their ground against ACDC.

=BT=

The ceiling in front of them cratered deeply, because of course Kars would be able to jump to the ceiling with the same ease as she and Dio had been able to, and Alice leaped back and out of the way of the Pillar Man's charge, all the while gathering another handful of ice-needles up in her hands. Edging back around Kars, as the Pillar Man stood up on the ceiling with them, Alice ground her teeth as he whipped around to face her again. Everything she'd been seeing from the moment that Kars had awakened from his stone slumber – however long that had been – seemed to indicate that Kars had some particular kind of infatuation with her.

And, while it was more than a bit annoying, it was also clearly something she could have used to her advantage in their current battle. That was to say, she could have, if Dio had been something less than rabidly antagonistic to the Pillar Man on pretty much every level that she could have conceived of. Really, it was kind of funny; the pair of them were so similar in temperament, but she was almost completely certain that both of them would have denied it vehemently if she were to bring the fact up in conversation.

Well, Dio would have, anyway; Kars was still enough of an unknown quantity that she couldn't predict anything he'd do with any real degree of accuracy.

Still, that was something that this preliminary engagement was good for: more than anything else, she needed information. She needed to know not only what he was physically capable of, but what degree of mental flexibility he possessed, as well. Fighting Zeppeli had been so much easier after she'd gotten a good read on him; since, even with his skill in a combat art that had been expressly designed to exterminate vampires, the man's sheer mental inflexibility had allowed her to not only surprise him with every new invention that she'd brought to field against him, but also to draw goad him into fights that any sensible person would have known were untenable to begin with.

Still, here and now she was back at square one, and on top of that it seemed that Kars was just as interested in her as she was in him; and potentially for the same reasons, as well.

Given the fact that the Pillar Man could see everything she was doing, the two handfuls of ice-needles she flung at his head did pretty much jack and shit, but the expression of amusement that spread across his face in the wake of her failure to so much as scratch him with the ice-needles that she'd pulled from the moisture lingering in the air so far underground gave her at least something to go on: whatever else one could say about Kars, he certainly had an ego.

=BT=

It was such an amusing thing, the way the little vampire tested him; she had to know that he could have destroyed her with the merest flick of his wrists, or else reached out to consume her with hardly a thought. And yet, she still insisted on testing him, launching attacks that he swatted aside, merely to determine what he would ultimately react to; what would draw his attention, in the end. He knew that Wham would have thought it the gravest of insults, that he was not being taken seriously by a mere vampire, but Kars knew that – above all other considerations when one was attempting to fight a previously unknown opponent – information was key.

In all of my centuries walking this world, I'd have never thought to see a vampire with eyes like my own, he mused, smile still firmly in place as he watched the young vampire leap lightly down from the ceiling once it had become clear that – with gravity now working in his favor just as much as hers – she would be best served by abandoning the high-ground that no longer served her purposes. Watching as she did so without the slightest hesitation, Kars felt himself smiling all the wider.

Clearly, pride was not something that hindered her in the slightest; yet another thing that the pair of them held in common.

He'd seen it in her the first time they had met, in that darkened street where feasting upon that unwary human had given him the strength to look out through his own eyelids, even if only for a passing moment. That sharp, pointed curiosity, even as she'd made her ultimately futile attempt to sever his extended veins and thus prevent him from feeding. The way she'd not even balked at tossing aside the sword she'd been holding rather than cling to it and be devoured like so many of the foolish humans he'd consumed over the many centuries he'd walked the world had impressed him, and Kars found himself hoping that the pair of them would meet again.

Now that they had, Kars could see that the calculating, assessing curiosity that he'd seen in her eyes the first time he'd glimpsed the young vampire had not merely been a reflection of his own when he'd seen what she was and how that other human she had been with deferred to her.

It was clear, seeing the way she prodded at him, that this young vampire possessed every measure of the curiosity that had drawn Kars himself to ascend to the lofty heights that his advanced biology had made possible. And, while the others might have easily dismissed her as a mere vampire, Kars knew that there was nothing mere about her. She would cut open the very world, just as he had, simply to find out how it functioned. Her brother was of no true consequence, just another arrogant vampire who'd clearly come to think far too much of himself in a world merely composed of humans.

Kars paid him as little mind as the creature deserved, a fact which plainly and rather amusingly served to infuriate him.

=BT=

As one more tornado in a long line of them slammed into the surface of the lake they were still standing on top of, Joseph braced himself as he and both Caesar tried to keep the bubble they were riding in steady, even as they tried to escape from the churning waters buffeting them. Their best bet, it was starting to seem, was to use bursts of Hamon-charged water to skip their bubble across the surface of the lake, and then making a run for it once they were back on land. Beyond that, Joseph couldn't say.

It seemed like he and Caesar were going to have to figure the rest out when – not if – they made it back to land.

=BT=

Infusing his Hamon into the stone dust underneath his feet, Jonathan whipped it into the air, even as Elizabeth did the same beside him. Once it had become clear that – even for all of their prowess and skill – the pair of them simply lacked the sheer speed to outpace ACDC's veins; to say nothing of the boiling blood that the Pillar Man could eject from each and every one of the openings.

The cloth that he'd pulled up over his mouth and nose enabled Jonathan to make his way through the cloud of Hamon-charged dust that he and Elizabeth had raised to cover their escape without the worry of disrupting the Hamon they would need to maintain to make such a thing possible.

Running footsteps that didn't sound quite like his and Elizabeth's own, as well as the sight of darkly-clad figures running across the very walls draws his attention briefly, and Jonathan allows himself to relax slightly when Dio and Alice appeared beside him. The four of them, now having the benefit of his siblings' enhanced powers of perception, were far more easily able to evade the Pillar Man that had to have been tracking them even through the clouds of stone dust that he and Elizabeth had been raising.

After he and Elizabeth had met up with Dio and Alice, it was not so long after that that they encountered Joseph and Caesar once again. Four out of their group of six – those who could use Hamon without the risk of destroying themselves in the process – took up a diamond-formation around the pair in the center, and the lot of them fled as fast as they could manage. Subtle flicks of Alice's fingers – the sign-language that his and Dio's sister had developed for those times when they couldn't risk being overheard, but needed to communicate all the same – directed their group back to the entrance of the tunnels, but by a more roundabout route that enables them to escape the notice of the Pillar Men that still presumably stalked the caverns in search of them.

Once the six of them had successfully made their escape, meeting up with Simon and Marc in the same armored car they'd originally come to this place in, Jonathan finally allows himself to relax fully; they may not have struck any kind of decisive blow against the Pillar Men, but he could at least be content that all of his family – blood related and not – had made it out alive.

=BT=

While he, ACDC, and Wham swiftly departed from the caverns they had awakened within, Kars was only too pleased to allow his mind to linger upon the little vampire who he'd met for such a short time; the one with eyes that Kars had only seen before in mirrors. He wouldn't have been at all averse to meeting with her again, Kars decided. However, having to deal with those Hamon tribe members who had attached themselves to her – to say nothing of her male counterpart – would be nothing more than an annoyance. Clearly, he would need to find a way to isolate her, if the pair of them were to ever have the chance for a proper conversation.

Smiling slightly, Kars reflected once again upon the Stone Mask that he had created for the last remnants of his race – those who had not allowed themselves to be foolishly blinded by fear and tradition – to use upon themselves. Perhaps I should look into creating another, he mused, feeling a pleased grin stretching his lips.