After thoroughly discussing their next course of action, the six of them had unanimously decided that it would be in their best interests if they returned to Air Supplena Island, both to regroup, and to train themselves for the next inevitable confrontation with the Pillar Men. Joseph, of course, had not been best pleased by the thought of further training, but even he had to admit that their dismal showing against the three of them – even with their clear advantage of numbers – necessitated either a more strict dedication to their training, or some burst of sudden genius.

Both of which would, of course, be given time to flourish in the peaceful environs of Air Supplena Island.

Once their helicopter had landed upon the pad at the west end of the island, Jonathan swiftly followed in Elizabeth's footsteps as she debarked from it, and sighed with relief as he heard the others doing likewise.

Air Supplena Island felt much as it had, back when Jonathan had first set foot upon it, decades ago when he and Elizabeth had first come to the island in order to refine their Hamon abilities. There was the same air of peace and tranquility that he had come to appreciate all the more greatly during the more tumultuous times that their family had lived through.

"Plank! Brick! So nice to see you again!"

"Watch what you call us, brat," Loggins growled, his tone far more exasperated than threatening; Jonathan could fully sympathize.

Grandson or not, Joseph was quite the trial when he put his mind to being so. Messina and Loggins, for their part, were quick to fall into step with their group as they all made their way into the compound.

"Joseph," he called sternly, just before his grandson could make his swiftly-becoming-habitual rude gesture toward the building that housed the Hell Climb Pillar.

"Come on, Gramps," the boy returned, more than a little exasperation coloring his tone. "I was stuck down there for two days!"

"Yes, and I believe a great deal of that time was due to your own stubborn insistence upon using the lake of oil at the base of the Pillar as a trampoline," he said, turning a solidly unimpressed expression upon his wayward grandson; truly, Joseph and Dio had entirely too much in common for anyone's peace of mind. "As I recall hearing from Elizabeth, you fully intended to leap the entire length of the Pillar, solely using the momentum and Hamon you had imparted to the oil. Which, while indeed a rather ingenious method of escaping the pit the Pillar stands in, was quite far from the point of the exercise you and Caesar were participating in."

"Oh, but doing it the normal way is so dreadfully boring," Joseph groused, an expression that was an easy match for Dio's at its most plaintive, and in the veritable blink of an eye, there was Dio himself standing behind Joseph, arms wrapped around his grandson's waist, grinning unrepentantly at him.

Jonathan sighed. "The pair of you are entirely impossible."

Said pair turned their unrepentant grins upon each other, and then – simply because both of them knew very well that he didn't approve of such things – they shared a noisy kiss directly upon the lips.

"Careful, Jojo," Dio said, grinning as Joseph silently cackled with mirth; truly, the both of them were utterly incorrigible on their own, and only became moreso when in such close proximity. "If you keep acting that way, I just might end up finding a new favorite."

"Aww, but you're already my favorite uncle, Dio!" Joseph said, a sly sort of enthusiasm in his tone, just before he planted yet another noisy kiss upon Dio's right cheek.

Sighing in a resigned sort of fondness as Dio and Joseph began playfully wrestling with each other, Jonathan continued on his way into the main building of Air Supplena Island's compound.

=BT=

She didn't know just what it was that Alice Brando was planning, but there could be no question that her Aunt-in-law – the vampire who had not only survived the attentions of a Hamon master of William Zeppeli's caliber, and not only triumphed over him, but who had also managed to build and protect the foundations of an international corporation while she was doing so – had something in particular occupying her thoughts. She'd come to know very well the way Alice's mind worked and so knew that, even as the vampire entered the code to allow herself to pass through the house's security system, she was already considering ways and means of dealing with the Pillar Men who had emerged to threaten them and everything they cared about.

Elizabeth was pleased to know that humanity as a whole had such a mind on their side, even if Alice was no longer human herself.

Once the eight of them had made their way into the main house, the security-system resetting itself after the last of their passcodes had been entered, Elizabeth made her way up the main stairs to her room. While she did fully understand the necessity of planning for their next inevitable encounter with the three Pillar Men, Elizabeth knew that she didn't have the same tireless nature as either of the vampires staying with them, and so the best thing that she herself could do was to get some rest. After a good night's sleep, she would be of much more help than she would have otherwise been.

=BT=

As he watched Kars, his fellow Pillar Man hard at work sorting through a small pile of Aja stones that they had collected and brought to this place before going into their long sleep to wait for the Hamon tribe to die out, ACDC looked down at the block of stone that their leader had so carefully selected as the basis for his latest work.

"So, this vampire of yours is truly that interesting, is she?"

Kars grinned, looking down at what was clearly to become the latest of his Stone Masks; one with a rather singular effect, if the care his old friend was putting into its creation was any kind of indication.

"She's unique," his old friend – the pair of them had outlived most human civilizations given their respective ages, but considering how short-lived those creatures were, ACDC didn't consider that kind of thing any real accomplishment – said, grinning all the wider as he extended his wrist blades and began making the primary incisions into the stone slab in front of him. "A unique existence; comparable to only one other."

He knew the many and varied expressions on Kars' face, subtle as they would have seemed to any outsider who might have been privileged to stay in the same vicinity without being devoured for their insolence.

"Would you like me to go and collect her for you?" he asked, his own curiosity swiftly coming to the fore; after all, anyone who served to remind his old friend of himself clearly had to be interesting in all the right ways.

The pleased smile that Kars turned upon him was all the answer that ACDC truly needed.

=BT=

It was more than clear, given everything that she'd heard about the various running battles against the three Pillar Men that her family had all been involved in, they would all be best served if they acquired some long-range weaponry before their next engagement. It was also obvious that, with Hamon being their best means of defense if not attack, she and Dio were going to need the second-generation armor that she'd developed. She'd been in the process of calling in to have the suits prepped and shipped out to Air Supplena Island, when the distinctive double-flash of the house's silent alarm went off.

She wasn't worried, at least not at first, since she knew that Suzie Quattro – Elizabeth's housekeeper, who's been taking more and more notice of Joseph every time her and Dio's nephew showed up for a visit – had a bad habit of tripping the security system through sheer absent-mindedness. Really, if she didn't know that the woman didn't have a malicious bone in her body, Alice would have begun to suspect her as some kind of plant awhile ago. Already preparing the lecture she was going to give on the importance of maintaining proper security, particularly when they were faced with enemies like the Pillar Men, Alice made her way over to the main monitoring console.

Once she'd fully activated the thing, however, Alice swore softly and creatively in Italian and Japanese.

Picking up the emergency line, she hit the button that would connect her to Elizabeth's room – as that was the other one down the hall that their unwelcome guest had appeared in, aside from Alice's own – and paused to wait a few, long moments for her niece-in-law to pick it up.

"Alice?"

"We have a visitor," she said, narrowing her eyes as she watched ACDC stride brazenly down the hallway that would take him to either her own room or else to Elizabeth's, depending on just which turn he took down the upcoming fork in the path ahead.

"How many?" Elizabeth asked, her tone letting Alice know that the other woman fully understood the inherent risks of their present situation.

"Just one, but under the circumstances," Alice paused, narrowing her eyes as the saw the Pillar Man pause almost in mid-step, head cocked as though he were listening to something far-off.

Vampire hearing being what it was, Alice wasn't particularly eager to test the limits that a Pillar Man might have had. Pushing the small, recessed black button that would send the signal to begin evacuating the house.

"Alice?"

"We'll talk later," she said, narrowing her eyes as ACDC paused for just a moment at the intersection between the hallway that continued on to her room, and the one that split off towards Elizabeth's. "There's no point in shooting the breeze here."

Just as she'd been starting to expect, ACDC turned his path down what Alice had come to think of as her hallway only a few seconds after Alice herself had finished speaking. Still, Elizabeth knew that their personal line wasn't entirely secure anymore, and she'd sent the signal for a full evacuation of the premises. So, all that remained to be done was to get herself the hell out of Dodge.

=BT=

"Jojo!" Caesar called, just as Joseph had been preparing to unleash his Hamon Water Whip against his fellow student's Bubble Launcher.

"The silent alarm?!" he exclaimed, having just caught a glimpse of the place where Caesar had been looking.

The light was a bright red, instead of the white Joseph had seen on every other occasion he'd been dubiously privileged to see it, but he still knew what it meant. This wasn't a drill, and it wouldn't be an enemy that they could actually stand against who'd invaded his mother's home-away-from-home. Joseph ground his teeth, even as he fell almost instinctively in behind Caesar as the pair of them grabbed their emergency bags and hurried out of the training hall.

Sighing as he caught sight of Gramps and Uncle Dio, neither of them looking particularly happy about being forced to leave on such short notice, but it also looked like Gramps had managed to talk him down. Or at least get him moving, since Uncle Dio still didn't look particularly happy about being forced to leave so quickly. Not like he was either, but Auntie Alice would drag anyone still inside out by their ears, and give them a thoroughly scathing lecture after she'd thrown them into the hydro-foil.

Still, even as he was mentally grumbling to himself about being forced out of the place he'd currently been calling home, Joseph continued on his way; making for the disguised launch site that had been designated as their meeting place in this kind of situation.

=BT=

It had been a rather novel idea, that the vampire his old friend had taken such an interest in might have devised a way to observe him from a distance – even through the walls that had stood like such flimsy sentries between the pair of them – but given what he'd heard her saying, just before she'd fallen silent in what had clearly been an adorably futile attempt to convince ACDC that she was no longer inside the room where she had foolishly trapped herself. This little vampire might very well have reminded Kars of himself, but it was plain that – for all she'd impressed the leader of their small group of remaining Pillar Men – this little vampire was still young.

Really, that could only make things more interesting; after all, if this little vampire of theirs had already managed to catch Kars' attention at her age… Well, that was certainly something to take note of.

=BT=

After diving out of the large window she'd used more than a few times during drills for just this sort of occasion, Alice latched onto a jutting corner of masonry, throwing herself around it to bleed off excess momentum so that she could land more lightly when she inevitably hit the ground – vampire hearing being what it was, and the senses of a Pillar Man clearly being more developed even than that – and then hit the ground in a low crouch to diffuse even more of the impact caused by her landing. Alice could only hope that it would be enough, in the end.

Hurrying as quickly as she could, with only a single look back to make sure that ACDC wasn't in position to catch a glimpse of her path as she made her way to the hidden launch site of the hydrofoil that she'd made a point of keeping prepped and fueled for just this sort of an occasion, Alice had soon arrived.

All of the others, including a fretting Suzie Q who stood between Joseph and Elizabeth, had gathered at that same point, and so Alice quickly made her way over to the hidden door within the hollow, artificial rock that she'd helped to build and install just to the right of the boat dock. Pushing it open, she held it just long enough for their small group to duck inside – with Jonathan giving her a one-armed hug in passing, and Dio stopping his near-constant stream of grumbled obscenities to kiss her firmly on the left cheek – and then ducked inside the small space, herself.

Inside was a space just slightly larger than the hydrofoil it concealed, leaving only enough room for the nine of them to pile in through the gull-wing doors, and then to pull them closed once the last of their group had gotten settled.

"I still don't understand why we had to do this, sister," Dio groused, and Alice could see him fidgeting in his seat. "We had several times that Pillar Man's number-"

"Which would have meant precisely nothing, given the fact that Jonathan already said that ACDC possessed an omni-directional, mid-ranged attack that's perfectly suited to dealing with large groups of attackers," she said, turning just enough so that she could glare at her often-impulsive brother without twisting her neck any farther than was humanly possible; Joseph always tended to cringe when she did something like that, so she tried not to do it around him. "Now, put your harness on; we're leaving."

Grabbing the throttle, just as the sensor-triggered outer doors of their hidden launch site snapped open, Alice engaged the thing and felt the reassuring thrum as the hydrofoil's overpowered engines kicked into gear.

=BT=

The sound that drew him out of searching the apparently empty room where the little vampire had clearly spent a great deal of time – if the lingering scents in the air and over the furniture within the room were any indication – was not one that ACDC had ever heard before in any form. In the broadest sense, he supposed that one could have said that it sounded like a drawn-out human scream, but there was something distinctly… artificial about it, in that case. Also, no human in existence – not even one who had been trained for all of their short lives in the practice – would have been able to scream in such a way for such a prolonged time. Nor would one of them be likely to bother, seeing little point in the act.

Launching himself out through the large window, ACDC landed easily on the grounds and began his search anew. It was not so long before he managed to regain his bearings and follow the trail that the little vampire had so obligingly left for him. However, when he came to the end of that very trail, ACDC found himself staring up at a large, dark-colored boulder, washed by waves from the sea and otherwise empty of anything that might have indicated just where that clever little vampire had managed to hide herself.

ACDC was just about to turn and leave, making for one of the other buildings that he'd left unsearched in his efforts to find that clever little vampire – truly, she was even starting to remind ACDC himself of his old friend, though of course a much younger version – when he spotted the subtle lines deeply scored into the face of the stone. They were far too perfectly regular to have been caused by any kind of natural cause, and so must have been the work of the clever little vampire he was pursuing. Pressing his right hand against the scored surface of the stone, however, yielded the most surprising result.

There was apparently a door set into the stone itself. Or rather a whole, if cramped, room within the very stone itself. The small room echoed with the same sounds of crashing water as the outside, if muted by the enclosure where he currently stood.

For all that it was presently empty, the small space within the thin shell of stone was rather fascinating; it was indeed something that Kars himself might have made, and just as inscrutable as one of his old friend's inventions, considering its current state. So, it looks like you managed to escape me after all, little vampire, he mused, grinning at the empty room, hidden by its shell of hollowed-out stone. If nothing else, Kars would enjoy hearing of the exploits of his little vampire.

Truly, she was every bit as interesting as his old friend had implied.

=BT=

Settling back into his seat, just behind Auntie Alice and right next to Caesar, Joseph sighed as he felt the hydro-foil they'd all been riding in come bobbing to a stop.

"Signal's been sent," Auntie Alice said, and he turned to see her looking up from the control panel. "It should only take a couple hours or so for my people to pick us up."

"That's good to hear," Gramps said, sighing softly as he leaned back in his own seat.

There was a certain air of unwinding tension from nearly every member of their odd family, and even Uncle Dio opening one of the gull-wing doors so that he could climb up atop the hydro-foil served to add to that. The soft sound of stealth-helicopter rotors brought his attention to the sharply angular, matte-black form of Spooky – or 59004-3, if one wanted to be pedantic about things – as it sliced smoothly through the air towards them. Good old Spooky, he mused, joining up with the others as the nine of them all piled into the helicopter.

"Thanks for being so prompt, Straizo," Auntie Alice said, prompting a short round of acknowledgements that Auntie Alice's retainer accepted with good grace.

As the small, dark form of the hydro-foil slowly slipped out of sight behind them, Joseph turned his attention back toward the matter of the Pillar Men. This whole debacle was simply more proof, as though any of them had needed it, that all of them would need both more training and better weapons if they were going to be able to deal with those three Pillar Men.

Leaning against the left-side window as the sea passed by beneath them, slowly tapering off into whichever nearby city they were currently flying over, before petering out into the large car-park and well-groomed grounds of Auntie Alice's Triestina branch of Brando International. There were no cars in the park, not at an hour so late that it may just as well have been early, and as Spooky settled neatly down toward the tarmac far beneath them, Joseph found that he could only be grateful for such a thing. A feeling that was only reinforced as he watched a circular section of that same tarmac split neatly into quarters, the wedges seeming to resemble nothing so much as the near sections of a pie, just before they all retracted neatly into the roof of the underground hangar that now stood neatly opened to them.

As Straizo settled Spooky down on the landing-pad that had once been concealed by the tarmac, Joseph stood up and made his way out of the stealth helicopter alongside the other members of his small, bizarre family.

=BT=

Once she made it back up to her office, the last thing that Alice had been expecting was for the phone to start ringing; particularly since it was still early enough in the morning that the sun hadn't risen yet.

"Who is this?" she asked, pressing the phone to her right ear before it could start ringing again.

"It's good to hear from you again, Frau Brando."

"Stroheim," she said, rather unimpressed with the man's penchant for appearing in just the places and times when he was least wanted.

"I think it would be in our best interests if we were to meet again, Frau Brando," the man said, sounding as certain of himself and his motives as he ever did.

"What possible reason do you think I'd accept for working with a Nazi?" she asked, settling down in her plush swivel-chair – one of the first things she'd invented/re-invented once she'd truly gotten herself settled into the corporate lifestyle. "You are fully aware that I find your ideals personally abhorrent, right?"

"Yes," Stroheim said, seeming to be amused by the particular turn that their conversation had taken. "I also recall that when one of our own men came to request that you begin producing those bulletproof uniforms of yours for our Wehrmacht, you laughed in his face, then told him to fuck off," the man chuckled. "I truly admire one who is willing to stand by their principles, even in such trying times as ours, Frau Brando. However, this is no longer simply a matter of principles," the man sobered, becoming serious. "Those Pillar Men are a danger to every living thing on this planet. Only one of them was a match for both you and Jonathan Joestar, and I received the same reports that you likely did concerning events in Rome. For the sake of all humanity, we can't allow ourselves to be divided by matters of state. And, I can't deny that, for all the advances that German science has made, we could do so much more if we had access to the resources of your company, Frau Brando."

"You want to collaborate?"

"I think that would be in both of our best interests," Stroheim said. "My people have been able to come up with a rather innovative idea for combating the Pillar Men, but the materials they would need to implement them have been diverted toward the war effort. If we had access to your materials and fabrication-"

"Yes, it is starting to sound like both of us have something that the other can use," she said, curious enough about the man's idea to give him at least some time to explain it. "All right, I'll take a look at your proposal," she said, debating for a moment whether or not to instruct him on where to meet her.

Then again, if he'd known where to call, then he probably knew where to find her, anyway.