Even though he'd known that his Boss was good at thinking and working under pressure, even though he'd known that she had defeated a Hamon Master without being forced to resort to lethal measures – though, in the end, his grandfather had still died; he'd confronted Dio about that, only to learn that his grandfather had died making a last attack on his sister while she and Jojo's grandfather had been taking a cruise to the Americas for their honeymoon – and even though he'd known that his Boss wouldn't have been happy to find him trying to face off with the remaining Pillar Men on his own, Caesar had still felt the need to try.

"Where were you planning to meet up with the others?" his Boss asked, turning to look at him from behind those inscrutable sunglasses she sometimes wore.

"Sorry, Boss, I know I shouldn't have run off like that," he said.

"Oh, I expect we'll be having words about that when we get back, Agent," his Boss said, lowering her sunglasses just enough to flash him a stern glare from her bright, slitted, crimson eyes. "However, all of that can keep. We need to meet up with the others, if we're going to have any chance of dealing with Wham and Kars."

"Yes, Boss," he said, nodding. "Follow me."

The pair of them made their way back through San Moritz, following the trail that he'd previously left on the snowy sidewalks, and Caesar quickly found that he couldn't help sneaking glances back at his Boss as she tagged along with him on their way back. He'd seen her dressed in a lot of different suits and other clothes, and the occasional costume when she was in the mood or else there was a holiday when she could dress up for fun, but there had always been something at least reasonably recognizable about her.

Seeing her like this… Well, Caesar could begin to see at least some truth to the old stories that Jonathan had told about her.

=BT=

When he had returned to the palatial dwelling that his clever pet had made her own, Kars was surprised to find Wham waiting at the entranceway for him.

"Wham," he said, narrowing his eyes as he studied the last of his remaining companions.

"Forgive me, Lord Kars," Wham said, kneeling before him and bowing his head in submission and contrition both. "It seems that I underestimated your vampire once again."

"She escaped?" he asked, not entirely certain how to feel about what he was hearing.

However, as Wham began to describe the events that had led up to their present situation, Kars found himself smiling; it seemed that his clever pet had not quite shown him everything she was capable of.

"You've nothing to apologize for, Wham," he said, smiling contentedly as he reflected on the new facets that his clever pet had inadvertently revealed to him.

It seemed that his little hawk could sing like a nightingale when the mood took her; clearly something he and Wham would do well to remember, and him in particular since he'd yet to properly cage that little hawk of his. It was a rather interesting situation, to be sure.

=BT=

"So, what'd I miss?" Alice's familiar voice nearly caused Jonathan to leap straight from his chair.

Dio, on the other hand, showed no such restraint. "Alice!"

Alice laughed gaily, as Dio spun her around in the air, seeming none the worse for wear after being forced to spend so much time as Kars' captive.

"So, the transmitter's been planted," Alice said, moving to stand with him and Stroheim, narrowing her eyes as she looked down upon the map that had been laid out before them. "But, I'll need to make some preparations of my own before we start anything else. Special K is bound to have noticed I'm gone by now."

There it was again: the irreverent names that his and Dio's sister would invent when she was forced to deal with those who aggravated her. Jonathan was glad to know that she would be all right, after such an ordeal as she must have faced at the hands of Kars and his remaining ally, Wham. He knew that Alice was not the type to simply allow others to fight what she considered her own battles, but he still couldn't help being concerned for her.

Yes, he knew that Alice was far more apt than Dio to consult others when she found herself facing difficult situations, but Jonathan still found himself concerned for her; Alice would have doubtless said that such was in his nature, and then smile at him in that kindly-amused way she had while she went about her work. Though, I suppose there's going to be more than enough work for all of us, he reflected, looking toward Stroheim and Alice as the pair of them began making plans for the next stage of their battle against the remaining Pillar Men.

=BT=

While he listened to the Boss as she put in calls for both her dinosaur cavalry – something she couldn't seem to help smiling when she said, even though she'd been the one to form them in the first place – and a quartet of snipers drawn from the ranks of her Security Forces, Caesar found himself almost involuntarily thinking back on just how the two of them had met. It'd been long enough since his father had left him that he'd managed to establish himself as a feared presence to even the Mafia.

Of course, that had been what had attracted the Boss' attention in the first place.

She hadn't been like any woman he'd ever met before, and not just because he'd found out later that she was a vampire; not even because she'd had a sword concealed in what had seemed to be an ordinary, if ornately designed, umbrella. Not many people in her position would have actually gone out searching for people that even scared the Mafia into staying out of the territory they had claimed for themselves. Still, when he'd found himself facing her – back when he'd only known that there was a woman looking for him, not what she wanted or even who she was – Caesar was ashamed to admit that he hadn't thought much of her.

After all, she'd only seemed to be a woman with an ornately made umbrella.

It was only after she'd cut every one of the weapons that he and his comrades had carried with them for so long in half, leaving him staring at the bisected remains of the wrench he'd carried with him into every battle that he'd been forced to face ever since he'd left his too-empty house in order to make sure that the last of what he'd considered his true family wasn't left to starve in the gutter, that he'd realized there was something more to her; to Alice Brando, the woman whose name he hadn't even known at that point. The last thing he'd been expecting, especially after having his weapon destroyed so casually, was to be invited to have lunch with the woman who had sought them out only to be attacked by them.

Still, that had been just what had happened, and Caesar had found himself sitting with her in a restaurant that he himself had never been able to enter. It hadn't been for lack of desire, even back then, but simply because he hadn't ever been able to scrape together the kind of cash that someone would need to have even a single meal in that kind of an establishment. Suddenly finding himself in the company of someone who could get him into all the best places in Italy had made agreeing to her proposal all the more attractive.

As he continued to watch, catching snippets of the Boss' plans as she gathered all of the pieces she would need to play on this particular board and against these particular opponents, Caesar found himself reflecting back on the last time he'd seen his father; the last time that anyone had. And the first time that he'd laid eyes on those damned Pillar Men.

The Boss had been generous enough to allow him to chase after the man, that dark night when the pair of them had caught their first joint glimpse of Mario Zeppeli – though he'd learned later that the Boss had already had at least a passing acquaintance with the man, if only through Coach Elizabeth – and at first he'd been fully intending to beat some remorse into the man he'd seen so briefly. Still, once the three of them had arrived before the slumbering forms of the Pillar Men – not that he or the Boss had quite known what they were dealing with back then – Caesar had been entirely too ready to attack the man he'd thought had abandoned his family, so long ago.

That was when he'd learned the sad story of Mario Zeppeli, and just what his father had sacrificed to save the world from the threat of the Pillar Men.

It was only after that moment, when his father had asked the Boss to look out for him if she ever had the chance to meet him, that Caesar had been able to truly understand the depths of his father's love for him; and just what the man had been willing to sacrifice for the sake of the world. It was kind of embarrassing, or at least he still thought so, but when the Boss had offered him her support, he'd all but collapsed into her arms sobbing. To this day, neither of them had spoken about it.

It was just one more thing he owed to the Boss; she knew how to be discreet, when someone asked her to.

=BT=

When his sweet sister had called for her magnificent army of dinosaur zombies, assembling them within the confines of one of the larger warehouses that she owned, he, Dio, found himself face to face with Tarkus for the first time in a great long while. It was a rather interesting experience, considering that he had merely revived the knight to act as an aide to his sweet sister while she was working, but he was admittedly rather more focused on his dear Alice's plans for this next engagement of theirs.

If anything could be said about this plan of hers, it was bound to come off with quite the proverbial bang; possibly even a literal one, depending on what kind of other tools that his sweet sister had brought with her.

=BT=

"You're sure you're going to be able to handle this?" she asked, as Caesar picked up the UV sniper-rifle from its carrying case and slung it over his right shoulder.

"Yes, Boss," Caesar said, clicking his heels sharply together and seeming to have to almost physically restrain himself from rushing off to the designated sniper-post.

"No jumping the gun, you understand?" she said, knowing that Caesar's thoughts would inevitably be straying back to their initial encounter with Kars and all of the upheavals that that had brought up. "If you're going to be a part of the sniper fireteam supporting us, I need you to keep a level head when you're out there."

"I promise, Boss," Caesar said, nodding sharply.

"All right," she said, as the distant sound of transport helicopters drew steadily closer to their position; the convoy of trucks was almost upon them, close enough for even a human to hear. "Meet up with the others. I expect you'll want to be part of the group hunting Kars?"

"Yes. Thank you, Boss."

"It's not a problem," she said, knowing that she was better served at this point by simply letting Caesar do what he wanted, rather than wasting time they might not have very much of rehashing an argument that was pretty pointless in the first place.

Yes, Caesar could be impulsive at times, but he respected her enough to keep a lid on it when she told him to be professional.

The pair of them parted ways, and she headed for the convoy of trucks making their way through the swiftly-falling dusk. Settling into her seat inside the lead truck of the convoy, Alice narrowed her eyes as the ground began to roll by underneath them. Their group was on the move, heading steadily back to what had once been her summer chalet; about to be engaged in battle with Kars and Wham.

She suspected, given everything she'd previously learned about the Pillar Man and his proclivities, that Kars would be expecting her to go to ground somewhere. Or, at the very least drawing back to lick her wounds, whatever he'd expect them to be after she'd escaped from Wham and made her way back to her people. Raising her right hand, up to what anyone else who caught a glimpse of it might have just as easily dismissed as an ornate bangle that had been clipped to the right side of her hood, Alice toggled her hidden radio.

"Artillery unit, begin standard preparation," she ordered, gently stroking the neck of her armored Ankylosaur as it shifted restlessly inside the transport truck the pair of them were traveling in. "Incendiary crews, I want you keeping your scopes out for any enemy vampires we might encounter," she said, knowing that Kars had at least a small army of them, given what Cobain had seen while she'd been forced to keep her head down while Wham and Kars had been making themselves comfortable in her summer chalet.

Something they weren't likely to be for much longer, if she and hers had anything to say about it.

"Ma'am, we are oh dark-hundred," came the voice of the present commander of this particular battle group. "We're launching."

"Good to hear, Ike," she said, quickly changing frequencies. "Caesar, you should be receiving the video-feed now."

"We have it, Boss," came the voice of her Head of Security for Brando International's Italy branch, and present leader of the sniper team that had been given the task of eliminating Kars once she and her battle group had driven him out of the remains of her summer chalet. "We're safeties off, and weapons hot. He won't have a chance to escape us again."

"Good to hear, Agent," she said, intending to remind the man of just what he was doing; she knew he had a grudge against Kars, and considering what had happened between the pair of them she could fully understand it, but she was still going to need him to keep a lid on things while he was hunting for Kars. "You know what I expect."

"Yes, Boss."

Settling herself back down on the back of her Ankylosaur, Alice spread out her hairs and listened to the rumble of the engines of the trucks all around her. If it was late enough to let the Quetzalcoatlus loose, with not enough light in the sky to harm them, then it meant that they would be very close to her old summer chalet. Very close to where Kars and Wham were waiting for them.

"Artillery unit, you may fire at will."

=BT=

When he began to hear a sound like a low, sustained roar, Kars found himself wondering just what kind of beasts could be making such a sound. However, when the ground shuddered and he heard the sound of thunder – louder and more close than he'd ever heard before – and the scent of distant fires that would spread quickly through the wood, fabrics, and other materials of the house he'd claimed from his clever pet.

Wondering just what in the hell was going on, Kars signaled to Wham and the pair of them quickly made for the site of the upheaval. The sight of the fires consuming the front face of his clever pet's home infuriated him; knowing that some kind of inferior creatures were attempting to destroy what rightfully belonged to one of their betters. However, when he caught sight of some kind of strange beast, through the wall of rippling flames before him, for only a handful of moments before the beast charged through the walls.

"Kars!"

"You?!" he exclaimed, even as he was forced to leap backwards as the massive head of the magnificent beast ridden by his pet's annoying male counterpart slammed down in what was clearly an attempt to bite him in half.

"Does my presence shock you, Kars?!" the male vampire laughed – laughed! – in a way that seemed almost perfectly calculated to irritate him. "Did you foolishly think you had seen the last of Dio Brando?!" Snarling as the male vampire laughed at him again, he quickly grabbed both the upper and lower sets of the immense beast's teeth as the creature again attempted to close them over his head. "Hmm, perhaps this isn't the best venue for our battle," the male vampire sneered, chuckling even as Kars ground his teeth in sheer fury; how dare this inferior creature try to mock him! "I know! We should take this outside!"

Digging in his heels availed him nothing against the sheer size and weight of the creature he'd been set against, and all too soon Kars found himself driven out through the wall he'd been sliding inexorably towards. The infuriating laughter of the male vampire followed him out.

"What is this?!" he demanded, forcing the jaws of the beast he was fighting – it had to be some sort of zombie, since even with their close proximity he wasn't able to hear any kind of vital signs from the creature's body, magnificent as it truly was – closed even as the sheer muscle power of the beast tried to open them once again.

"Oh, I'm hardly surprised that a barbarian like you wouldn't have heard of it," the male vampire sneered, laughing in that same, infuriating way that Kars had heard entirely too many times before; truly, he would thoroughly enjoy devouring that one. "This is Tyrannosaurus Rex," the male vampire said, seemingly only just able to stop himself from pausing to relish the very name; he supposed that Tyrant Lizard King was a rather auspicious name, if nothing else. "This is what's going to grant me my victory!"

It was his turn to laugh, this time. "Magnificent as that zombie of yours is, I suspect the find wasn't originally yours, was it?"

"What do you mean?" the arrogant creature demanded, and Kars knew he had him.

"She found it for you, didn't she?" he needled, knowing that it had to be true. "You'd have never thought to look for this magnificent specimen if she hadn't been guiding you, would you?"

"So, my sister is brilliant," the male vampire snapped, sounding as though he was nearly biting off the ends of his words in his fury; it was nearly as perfect as Kars could have asked for. "I've never tried to deny it."

"She was never meant to be yours," he stated, ripping a pair of teeth free from the jaws of the zombie Tyrant Lizard who was no longer fighting him nearly so hard as it had once been, then leaping back out of range before the male vampire could think to send it after him again.

"What?!"

He chuckled, deliberately, as he drove his knife of words in all the deeper. "Come now, you and I both know that she was destined for far greater things than merely playing nursemaid to such an inferior creature as you." Looking down his nose at the male vampire was little different than doing the same to a human who happened to be riding on the back of a horse, and he'd dealt with more than his share of that kind while he and ACDC had been searching for the Red Stone of Aja.

However, it wasn't the male vampire or his Tyrant Lizard that answered him, but a thin beam from somewhere off in the distance.

=BT=

"Caesar!" he snarled, biting down in the inside of his helmet in order to activate his radio's microphone. "What the hell to you think you're doing?!"

"Shut up, Dio," the presumptuous human snapped back, as another shot from his sweet sister's UV sniper-rifle blasted down into the spot where Kars had once been standing. "I don't care what kind of claim you think you have on Kars' life, but he killed my father, so he's mine!"

Grinding his teeth, knowing that – even beyond what troubles a Hamon user could cause for him – his sweet sister would be a long time forgiving him if he did anything to disturb the perfection of the operation that she had planned so carefully, he, Dio was about to leave the field of battle, when he spotted the charging figure of the only other Pillar Man that had managed to escape his fated destruction at the hands of either his dear Alice herself or one of her elegant machines.

"Lord Kars!" the oversized brute shouted, charging into their battleground, swift and heedless enough that he, Dio, found himself wondering just what the brute thought he was doing.

That was, he found himself wondering such a thing, right up until the brute's arms began to spin in two separate directions, and he somehow managed to throw up a cloud of dust so thick that he, Dio, could all but feel the grit on his own skin, even in spite of the fact that his armor and goggles had been specifically designed to be impermeable to such mundane things as that.

"Damnit, I've lost visibility!" Caesar snarled, even as he, Dio, grinned.

"Well, Caesar, it looks like your claim was just superseded!" he, Dio, called back, laughing gleefully as he turned his mighty tyrannosaurus rex, aiming for the center of the dust cloud that the brute named Wham had thrown up with all of his ultimately futile thrashing.

"Dio, what the hell do you think you're doing?!"

"Come now, Caesar," he, Dio, said, feeling pleased and supremely amused both at once. "We both know that you wouldn't be able to make any kind of accurate shot with this much debris in the air," he said, grinning all the wider as he charged into the still-handing cloud of dust. "However: I, Dio, hardly need air!" Adjusting his eyes so that he would be better able to see through the debris and dust that would have occluded the vision of any lesser creature, he bit down on his microphone once more to deactivate it, he, Dio, laughed in triumph. "What do you think of me now, Kars?! You bastard! You'll never lay another hand on my sister!"

"You honestly believe that, vampire?"

Snapping around to face the sound of the purely infuriating voice that he'd learned to hate so very, very well during the course of the battle that his sweet sister had planned out so perfectly well, Dio yelled as he felt Kars' heels slamming into his chin. Finding himself in freefall for a few, too-long, terrifying moments, Dio tried to right himself, but felt the Pillar Man's fist battering him in the gut before he'd fallen even halfway from the lofty height he'd been all but launched to.

Slamming into the ground feet-first, Dio screamed as pain – sharper and more sudden than he'd ever felt in either his short life as a human, or his eternal life as a vampire – tore through his back, even as he tipped forward to sprawl inelegantly in the dirt. Feeling his arms leave the ground as he was picked up like some hapless plush toy, Dio realized with a sickening sinking feeling that he was completely unaware of a single physical sensation from below the mutilated remains of him back.

Feeling his armor – the only thing that would serve to protect him from sunlight, or else the blasts from his sweet sister's UV sniper-rifles – torn away from his insensate form was almost a secondary thing, in light of that. As was, he couldn't help but admit, the calls for a response that he could hear from his earpiece…