His and Dio's sister had never been the type to make use of any zombies but those of the ancient beasts she raised from bones and dust, and at the time he'd been glad for such a thing. That had, of course, been before he'd seen the results of Alice's full ingenuity unleashed; before he'd seen untiring legions of clockwork soldiers marching out of the workshop she'd established on the former site of a town that she and hers had dismantled to its very foundations after a group of innocent young men had been falsely accused of the most grievous assault on a young woman of the town and executed in the most horrible manner conceived of in the modern era. And quite before Alice had unveiled her most terrible invention, shattering the morale of both armies and forcing all of them to come to an accord.
Alice had called them Hunter-Killers; she'd only built five of them, and five was all it had taken.
They were self-propelled, for a start, and armored in the most durable alloys that Alice's facilities had been able to create. Such a thing would have been enough of a horror, but their armaments… Those had been the true horror of the Hunter-Killers: each of the five had been armed with a pair of gimbal-mounted swivel-guns, terrifying chain-fed weapons that had created an almost incomprehensible rain of death in the single battle that had seen them put to use.
There had been a single man – General Nathan Bedford Forrest – who had charged at the lead Hunter-Killer on his steed; he'd been sucked under the iron treads of the weapons platform with barely even a scream.
And, while it had been true that that man had been one of the most inhumane men that the Confederate army had ever produced, even such atrocities as he had committed merely merited a court-martial and either imprisonment or hanging, depending on what had been decided by due process of military law. Still, the horrible sound of flesh and bone being ground into the dirt as the Hunter-Killer rolled inexorably over him, spitting death at a rate that still terrified him when he chanced to think back on it, haunted Jonathan even to this day. Kars' eyes… more than anything, they reminded Jonathan of those moments when Alice's tolerance for the vagaries and foolishness of those around her would come to an end, and she would sweep them away with a terrifying finality.
More than anything, the thought terrified him, because he had also seen the way that Kars looked at Alice.
More than anything, Jonathan suspected that Kars felt his own kind of twisted kinship with Alice, and it was that side of her that attracted him. The thought horrified him on a myriad of levels, and so provided more than enough impetus for Jonathan to fight as hard as he could against the Pillar Man and whatever cruel ambitions he might have ultimately had. Because, while his and Dio's sister might very well have had a streak of ruthless pragmatism that was frankly and honestly terrifying, she could always be brought back to herself once whatever issue had been troubling her was resolved to her satisfaction.
The thought of Alice in Kars' hands horrified him, particularly in light of something he couldn't forget her saying, back when they were all children; before the Stone Mask, before zombies and dinosaurs and Pillar Men, before animal blood and Hamon and William Zeppeli. He couldn't remember who Alice had even been speaking to, or what had ultimately prompted such a reply in the first place. He could only remember her words, and the blank indifference in her eyes when she'd spoken them: I don't care about most people, what makes you special?
It was not that he thought Alice malicious; far from it, in fact. Malice, after all, required an active interest in those around oneself, twisted though such a thing might have been. Alice was incapable of malice, simply for the fact that she barely took any notice of those around her, unless they held some sort of purpose to her; even most of those in her employ barely provoked the interest that Alice naturally devoted to her many and varied projects.
Truly, even the kindness she offered to those around her was of the same, indifferent sort; merely her way of slipping the notice of most people.
Narrowing his eyes as he continued searching for the last of the Pillar Men that had set themselves against Alice, Speedwagon, and the combined forces that both of their organizations had brought into this battle – Bruford had reported sometime earlier that their initial impressions of Wham had borne out: the second-last of the surviving Pillar Men was indeed an honorable sort, and was hence being kept from such a needless battle as this one – Jonathan turned his attention to Dio, once it had become clear that he would not be able to find the Pillar Man on his own.
"Dio!" he called, turning to watch as his vampire brother whipped the Hamon-conducting scarf that he, Straizo, and Alice all wore about the neck of their armor through another group of Kars' forces. "Dio! I lost sight of Kars in this fracas! Do you think you might be able to find him?"
More than anything, that caught his brother's attention; if anyone could have been said to have the right to hate Kars, it was Dio.
"What?!" Dio demanded, the furious expression on his face plainly obvious, for all that the only part of his face actually visible was that which showed through the shatter-resistant glass of his slit-visor.
"I'm afraid that, in all this chaos, I wasn't able to keep my eyes upon him," he informed his and Alice's brother, sending a Zoom Punch into the remaining ranks of vampires surrounding them.
Dio growled, freezing a pair of nearby vampires and then shattering them utterly with a heel-kick that propelled him over the heads of those that had once stood between the pair of them with its residual momentum. "Clever bastard," he said, sounding as though such a sentiment physically pained him, though Jonathan knew that pain of that sort was limited to humans. "Did you happen to catch sight of where he might have gone, at least?"
"No, unfortunately I was too preoccupied with those in front of us to look for where he might have been going," he admitted, as Dio landed beside him, freezing a trio of vampires who had thought to attack him while he and his brother had been speaking.
"I suppose there's nothing for it, then," Dio grumbled, even as he wrapped his armored arms around Jonathan's waist and leaped with power that even Jonathan, with his mastery of Hamon, couldn't manage. "We'll simply have to search for him!"
Breathing slowly and deeply to channel the remaining Hamon that remained to him with his strength waning as the night wore on, Jonathan turned his attention back to the search for the Pillar Man who had made his escape in the same way that Alice herself would have done, had she been faced with the same circumstances as this. Searching as hard as he could, while he and Dio hovered in the air in the wake of another leap that took them over the battlefield once more, Jonathan spotted someone else they needed to speak to. When the pair of them landed next to Speedwagon, Jonathan allowed himself to rest for a moment.
"Jojo!" Speedwagon called, hurrying over with a smile upon his weathered face. "It seems that you'll be done with this battle soon! I'm glad to see you're both doing so well, though."
"It's good to see you again as well, Speedwagon, but I'm afraid that this battle is just a ruse," he said, steadying himself as he stepped away from the comforting circle of Dio's arms. "Kars is merely using these vampires as a cover for his own ambitions. It's clear to me that he's seeking the Red Stone of Aja."
"The Red Stone?!" Speedwagon's expression twisted into one of horror. "Elizabeth managed to convince Alice to bring it here! It's stored in the lead truck!"
"I know," he said, thoughts involuntarily returning to the expression of annoyance that had crossed Alice's face at the mention of the prophecy Elizabeth had cited as her reasoning for bringing the Red Stone along with them; he knew that, if his and Dio's sister had been given her way, the Red Stone would have never left the safe it had been stored in ever since he'd taken possession of it from Master Tonpetty. "I suspect that Kars is under the same impression; these vampires are meant to be a distraction for us, I know it!"
"You'd best go on, then! Both of ya!" Speedwagon exclaimed. "If Kars gets his hands on that Stone, the world is done for!"
"I know," he said, nodding firmly. "Inform the others as soon as you can! Dio and I will delay him as long as we're able!"
Feeling the armored arms of his and Alice's brother wrapping around him once more, in just such a way that he could still maintain the deep, rhythmic breathing that would allow him to channel Hamon when he would inevitably need it, Jonathan steeled himself for the battle he and Dio were about to engage in. There would be little recourse for them, alone with the Pillar Man – a predator that fed even upon vampires themselves – until and unless Speedwagon was able to summon the remaining forces that had come to support them in this battle of theirs. Even Caesar and Stroheim had ultimately been driven off by some means that Kars had employed.
While Dio's high leaping carried them steadily closer to the three transports that had carried the bulk of their forces to this battleground, Jonathan found himself reflecting back upon the prophesy that Master Tonpetty had given to him. Kars was clearly the wicked old tree that he'd mentioned, and Dio's habitual nickname for Alice told him plainly who the owl was, but he'd still not managed to parse the phrase that referred to the twisted branches of that selfsame tree. However, with the ground falling away beneath him as Dio's leap carried them the remaining distance that had formerly stood between them and the transport trucks that had been all but abandoned in the wake of the attacks that Kars' vampire forces had been so persistently making upon them all, Jonathan knew that he'd no more time to think upon such a thing.
There was little time for anything but the Pillar Man he could now see; who was, even as he watched, turning to look up at the pair of them with an amused sort of malice in the bloody crimson eyes that every vampiric being seemed to have inherited from him.
"Well, it seems I've drawn your attention."
"Kars!" he snarled, his own voice almost blending with Dio's as the pair of them faced the Pillar Man who had been the ultimate author of so much suffering; even that of Dio and Alice themselves, when the Stone Mask that he created had pierced their brains and transformed them into creatures that could never truly stand under the light of the sun ever again. "For everything that you've done to our family – no, to the world as a whole! – I swear that the both of us will end you this very night!"
His pronouncement was met with only a coldly amused chuckle from the hooded Pillar Man standing before them. "Really? Just the pair of you? Human and vampire?"
Something in the way Kars' tone twisted would have made the word an insult, if Jonathan had been the type to count the words of a creature such as Kars for anything.
A pair of strange, glistening blades – even longer than the Pillar Man's own forearms themselves – emerged, shimmering in the remaining light from the transport trucks the three of them were currently gathered around. Even through his armor, Jonathan could see the way that Dio tensed.
"Jojo, I can hear those blades humming from here," his brother muttered in his left ear, as the pair of them drew steadily closer to the Pillar Man as he prowled around the three lead transports. "They sound like some kind of chainsaws."
"So, you do know how to use those senses of yours," Kars said, grinning in that same, arrogant way that Jonathan had seen so many times on the Pillar Man's face. "I'd been wondering."
The almost feral growl that forced its way out of Dio's throat prompted Jonathan to bar his and Alice's brother's way, before Dio could leap at Kars; that had to be what the Pillar Man had been planning, to bait Dio into a confrontation, and then trap him or devour him outright.
=BT=
Breathing heavily, Caesar raised his UV rifle and checked the charge on the power-cell: half depleted. It seemed that both his Hamon and his energy was steadily coming to its end, though in the case of his rifle he did have a spare power-cell. A trio of Stroheim's robotic dinosaurs prowled around him, their metallic finish scuffed and a pair of them showing dents from the battle that had raged all around them. The battle itself had begun to wind down, with most of the vampires that Kars had thrown at them reduced to puffs of ash after the barrages of Hamon, volleys of UV rifle fire, and the glare of the lights that had been installed on the robotic dinosaurs that the Boss had collaborated with Stroheim and his people to create.
Still, there was something off about the whole thing; he couldn't have said what it was, even if the Boss herself had been the one asking him, but it gnawed at him all the same. Shouldering his way through the gathering crowd of soldiers, forming up in ranks according to the training they had been receiving for so long. Caesar was pleased to see it, but didn't allow himself to be distracted by that kind of thing.
The sight of Stroheim, hurrying toward them at a pace that only just missed being a run, prompted Caesar to narrow his eyes even as he turned; there wasn't much doubt that he was reporting on a bad turn in the battle.
"I just received a report from Speedwagon!" the Nazi reported, coming to a stop just short of where Caesar and his gathered forces were reassembling their ranks. "This was all a ruse! Kars was making for the transports just as soon as he managed to drive us off!"
So, it wasn't just me; there was something rotten here, he mused, narrowing his eyes even as he gave the order to his forces to form up on him once more. "Right! We'll be right behind you."
There was the expected rounds of salutes and acknowledgements from the soldiers all around him, and Caesar quickly fell into step with the Nazi who had been supporting them in all of their battles against the Pillar Men. All of them except one, given what I heard from the Boss, he mused, as they all began moving out.
=BT=
"Get out of my way," he said, kicking the left transport at the foolish, male vampire who had dared to challenge him; even with the protection of the brilliantly-made armor that could only have been designed and built by his clever pet, such a thing was the height of foolishness.
He knew that the only true place for the Red Stone to have been placed was in the transport that his pet had been riding in; soft she might have been, but no one who'd watched her so long as he had could ever call his pet a fool. So he didn't bother concerning himself with either of those transports where the scent of humans emanated from most strongly. Glancing over at the male vampire, as the foolish creature actually caught the transport as opposed to doing something sensible such as dodge before such a heavy thing could have fallen upon him, Kars dodged in turn as the vampire tried to throw the transport at him.
It was a futile effort, of course, but it seemed that the male vampire had actually learned something from his clever pet's influence.
"Dio!" the Hamon user called to him, actual concern in his tone.
He still thought it rather odd, that a Hamon user would find himself in the company of two vampires – perhaps even three, depending on what the relationship between the Hamon user and his pet truly was – but this particular Hamon user seemed to have been tamed quite well by his pet during the course of her work. It was fascinating, the kind of holds his pet seemed to have developed over her inferiors. Still, everything else he'd seen of his pet's handling of them indicated that she would need the training only he could provide for her.
Once he had completed her transformation into the glorious Pillar Woman that she deserved to be, Kars would see to it that his pet was made to understand how to properly deal with her inferiors.
=BT=
Fuck; fuckity fuck fucking fuck fuck, Alice groused, running at top speed back to the trio of transports that she and hers had traveled out to this battleground of theirs in. She probably should have been expecting Kars to be using these vampires of his as some kind of cover for his actual objective; both since the Pillar Man didn't seem to have much regard for anyone besides himself, and because it was something that she herself would have done, if in a rather different way. Really, Kars did seem to have an uncomfortably large amount in common with her.
It was weird, and troublesome in a lot of ways, but the fact that she could at least make some guesses as to Kars' next course of action by thinking about what she herself would have done under similar circumstances had its uses; she just had to remember to actually do it.
Grabbing a flying transport just before it could have gone over her head, Alice quickly righted the thing, setting it back down on its wheels before she turned her attention to the place where Jonathan and Dio were fighting Kars. It seemed that the Pillar Man had realized just where she'd put the Red Stone. Running her tongue over her top left fang in annoyance, both for the fact that she'd let Elizabeth convince her to bring the stupid thing in the first place – prophesies were nothing but trouble, really – and for the fact that Kars was either the recipient of one hell of a windfall of blind luck, or else he was starting to be able to predict her moves just as well as she could predict him.
Either one would be troublesome, but it was the second that would be slightly more difficult to adapt to.
Kars, clearly having heard her approach from where he was – having torn the passenger-side door free from the lead transport, and clearly ready to fling it at Dio and Jonathan with the next move that either of the two made – whipped around as she took her first steps onto this new battlefield of theirs.
"Pet," he said, that same annoyingly arrogant grin on his face as every other time he'd seen her; it was getting old, but Alice knew that there was no point in letting herself get riled up by that kind of crap. "I'm glad to see you made it so quickly, but do allow me to take care of these pests for you."
Sighing in a resigned sort of annoyance, as Jonathan and Dio shouted the Pillar Man's name in what sounded a fair bit more like blind rage – and a nigh-homicidal amount of it, in Dio's case – than would be good for any of them, Alice dodged around the door that the Pillar Man had flung at her brothers, yanked the flying door out of the air, and sent it blasting right back at Kars. Just as she'd been expecting, Kars back-handed it out of the air, but it did delay him long enough for her to make it over to where Jonathan and Dio were standing.
She and Dio moved close enough to lean their cheeks against one another, communicating in the way that the pair of them had spent such a long time developing; one that allowed them to speak privately, even in the presence of other vampires.
"What kind of an alarm did you place on that Stone of ours, sister dear?"
"Sonic alarm; if he manages to get that compartment open, you're going to want to have your eardrums detached."
"Well then, we should see about preventing such a thing, sister dear."
The pair of them separated quickly, moving to reinforce Jonathan before Kars could make another move against them. Jonathan quickly gathered his Hamon, recharging their storage matrices before gathering Hamon to himself so he would be able to fight Kars, as well. The feel of charging feet, carried up through the ground through both of her armored sabatons, obviously drew Kars' attention as well. Before she, Dio, or Jonathan could make another move – faster than even she or Dio were able to react – Kars leaped through the newly-opened cab of the lead truck.
The brain-shattering, shrieking wail of the alarm she'd set on the glove compartment, for the few moments it took for her to neatly disassemble her eardrums, brought an almost involuntary growl from deep in Alice's throat. Leaping to the top of the transport, Hamon crackling through the scarf still wrapped around her neck, Alice whipped the charged scarf forward, aiming for Kars' right hand, where the Pillar Man had the Stone. However, Kars was even faster than she'd been expecting, dodging backwards as her Hamon-charged scarf slammed into the rocky ground at his feet.
Leaping down from the transport that she had been standing on, Alice caught sight of Dio leaping down right beside her, and the pair of them dashed after Kars. She'd caught a flash of that same, annoyingly cocky grin on the Pillar Man's face, and as she reassembled her eardrums after having gotten far enough away from the transport that she didn't have to worry so much about sensory overload anymore, she heard Dio's sustained, furious wrryy. The sound of Stroheim's voice, calling out to his robot dinosaurs to command them to attack Kars as the Pillar Man sprinted away from them all, drew her attention back to the fact that it wasn't just on her, Jonathan, and Dio to fight against Kars.
It was a rather pleasant thought, that; still, it wasn't as though many of them had a chance against Kars, considering just how overmatched she and Dio seemed to be.
When Stroheim's robot dinosaurs dashed off after Kars, their group splitting around her and Dio as they continued on their way, Alice shifted aside to allow them to pass, and then followed swiftly in their wake. If nothing else, they would make good cover for her and Dio to move under. The sound of Jonathan's familiar footfalls behind her brought the slightest of smiles to her face, and as she heard the crackle of Hamon within the crystal matrix of her armor, Alice signaled to Dio, and the pair of them leaped lightly up onto the back of the robot dinosaurs in front of them.
As Stroheim gave the order for his ranks of robotic dinosaurs to fire the UV-lasers that Alice had installed in their mouths, Alice prepared herself to fight again. Once Kars had been frozen in place by the UV beams, she and Dio would be able to smash his stone form to gravel; something Dio was clearly going to revel in, of course. Narrowing her eyes as she watched Kars trying to shield himself from what was coming for him, Alice wondered what Kars' next move was going to be.
He had to have one planned; it was what she would do, after all.