The sight of Enya herself, just rounding the corner of the building as the footsteps that she and Dio had been tracking ever since she'd first detected them over and above the milling crowds in this part of the city, brought a tight, narrow smile to her face as she, Dio, and N'Doul continued on their way through the quarter of the city where they had been searching for either the woman herself or some of the mercenaries that N'Doul had described in his report.
"Why, Enya, how nice to see you out and about," Dio said, his tone a passable imitation of her own "you are currently knee-deep in shit; good luck extricating yourself".
"Lord Dio!" the woman exclaimed, looking almost starkly terrified to see the pair of them; or rather, probably at the sight of Dio giving her that kind of look.
"You know, I've been hearing the most troubling rumors, my dear Enya," Dio said, all but stalking his way over to where the elderly woman – the one who actually looked her age, at least – was standing, stock-still in obvious terror as the pair of them made their way over to her.
"How did your meeting go?" she asked, cold smile widening slightly at the terrified expression on Enya's face as the three of them moved in closer.
"I- I don't-"
"Don't try to lie to me," she verbally steamrolled, before Enya could work up anything more than a couple words of the no-doubt pitiful excuse she was about to hand over. "I have people everywhere; I know you were meeting with a group of mercenary Stand users, and I know you were planning to have them attempt to kill me. They'd fail, of course, but the collateral damage in a place like this would be troublesome to deal with. Now, since it's obvious that you're not going to give up on this pointless little feud you seem intent on instigating with me, we need to arrange a place for it. Somewhere away from any civilians who might otherwise find themselves caught in the crossfire of a Stand battle."
"What makes you think that I would ever agree to do anything you want?!" Enya demanded, just before she was unceremoniously pulled into the ground as Stardust grabbed her ankles and sank downward.
"Ah, you must have mistaken that for a request. One wonders how," she said, in her "explaining the obvious to stupid people" tone. "Though I suppose I can indulge you, if just this once: if you truly are so dimwitted as to refuse, I'll simply have Stardust let go. Your lungs, which you might have actually realized shouldn't be working when you're up to your eyeballs in solid concrete, will fuse permanently with the molecular structure of the sidewalk you're swimming in. In fact, so will every other one of your other organs; really, the only way anyone would actually be able to find your corpse after that is with ground-penetrating RADAR, or some other comparable system."
Stardust yanked Enya the rest of the way into the sidewalk where she, Dio, and N'Doul were all standing, giving the woman just the slightest taste of what would inevitably happen if she was so unutterably stupid as to keep pressing for a confrontation right here and now. Narrowing her eyes slightly as Stardust yanked Enya back out of the ground, tossing the other woman down and then calmly stepping through her on its way back over to where the three of them were all standing. As Enya gasped for air, shaking badly enough that even someone without the enhanced senses of a vampire would have probably been able to see it, Alice narrowed her eyes slightly.
Only time would tell how this would all go down, in the end.
=SC=
As he, Dio, watched his sweet sister forced his traitorous little Enya to submit to her will – as he'd known that she would, though not ultimately how she would do such a thing – he grinned fit to show all of his fangs. Shivering in anticipation as his dear Alice narrowed her eyes in distain at the pathetically mewling form of Enya upon the sidewalk he, Dio, folded his arms and waited to hear what his sweet sister would say next.
"This is my world, little girl; I just let you live in it."
His dear Alice would, like as not, say – as she had said so many times before, when he'd asked her that sort of question – that it was mere theatricality that prompted her to say such a thing, but he, Dio, knew that it was just one more facet of what made his undeclared empress of the world who she ultimately was. In the end, of course, Enya capitulated, and a location was chosen. He and his sweet sister, along with the forces that they would be able to bring to battle, would meet the mercenary forces that dear little Enya had been able to gather up.
It would be a rather interesting battle, though hardly a lengthy one, of course.
=SC=
"Oi, Pucci," he called, catching sight of the weird priest that hung around Uncle Dio like one of those chattering, annoying girls at high-school. "Have you seen Aunt Alice lately?"
He'd been looking around the house for a long time, and more of that weird shit had kept happening all around him: when he'd been feeling a bit thirsty, a bottle of water had appeared in his right hand; when he'd been craving something salty, it'd been neatly-sliced hunks of what had ended up being salami. And now, when he'd wanted to find Aunt Alice so he could talk to her about just what in the hell was going on, he'd found himself led to the one person who seemed to know everything that was going on in this place.
Well, the only one who he could actually stand, anyway.
"Alice and Dio informed me that they would be out of the house for some time, while they resolve a matter of some import," Pucci said, studying him with that same, assessing look that Aunt Alice would turn on him whenever she saw that there was something out of place about him. "However, if there is something troubling you, Jotaro, you may feel free to speak to me about such matters."
"I guess," he said, flicking his own eyes over Pucci; the guy had always seemed a bit weird to him, but he only really acted that way when Uncle Dio was around; not that Uncle Dio really seemed to discourage it, from either him or that pantsless weirdo Vanilla Ice, either. "I think I'm being haunted," he admitted, knowing that Pucci wasn't the kind of guy to go sharing something that he'd been told in private.
"Haunted?" Pucci asked, his expression looking curious, but not like he was about to call Jotaro a liar or anything.
"Yeah," he said, holding out his right hand and concentrating for a moment on his craving for something salty; in basically the blink of an eye, another neatly-sliced chunk of salami had appeared right there. "Something or other keeps bringing me things like this. It started late yesterday; I wanted a snack, and then there was some potato chips and a soda in my room."
"It sounds rather like this is a positive development, Jotaro," Pucci said, settling back more comfortably in the chair that he'd found the man seated in when whatever it was that was haunting him had led him into the room .
"What, like a guardian angel or something?" he asked, not quite sure how he felt about that kind of thing. "I know you're a priest, but do you really think that's what's going on?"
"Given what you've told me, that is what sounds the most likely," Pucci said, calmly as he ever did.
Really, when he wasn't fawning over Uncle Dio like one of those annoying girls back at school, Pucci was like another island of calm in all of the craziness that Jotaro found himself dealing with when he was around the rest of his bizarre family; with the clear exception of Aunt Alice, of course.
"I guess," he said, leaning back in his own chair as he contemplated the salami in his right hand for a moment, before taking a bite.
The sound of a clunk on the small end table between the two chairs that he and Pucci were sitting in drew his attention, and Jotaro looked over to see a glass of what seemed to be some kind of fruit juice with ice in it. Lifting it for a sip, he found that it was apple. The best kind of thing to have when you were eating salami, at least as far as he was concerned.
"Well, I suppose you have your answer now," Pucci said, his usual, gentle smile appearing on his face once again.
"I guess," he said, finding that he couldn't quite muster the will to get into an argument with Pucci, of all people.
He was the kind of guy who would let someone keep talking up until they realized that what he was saying actually made sense; really, it was just one more thing that reminded him of Aunt Alice. He still wanted to talk to her when she got back, of course, but it wasn't like he was panicking about things anymore, or anything.
=SC=
When she and Dio had made their way to the outskirts of Cairo, Alice made it a point to contact Straizo and have him send over Wham and Tarkus. While she honestly doubted that any of the mercenaries that Enya had hired would be capable of standing up to a pair of vampires like her and Dio, it was always better to have extra forces on and when you were confronting a mostly unknown quantity like Enya and her group of mercenary Stand users. Even N'Doul's Blackwatch contact hadn't managed to gather any more information about them than the fact that they existed, and so Alice wasn't about to go into this kind of scrap without two of her most powerful allies.
Besides, she knew very well that the pair of them would enjoy going out in the field again, after so much time just spent sparring with each other.
When she had received confirmation that the pair of them would be coming soon – delivered rather enthusiastically by Tarkus himself – she informed Dio and N'Doul, and the three of them made for the LZ that she and Tarkus had agreed on when they'd been arranging for his and Wham's arrival. The high, harsh whine of VTOL engines as the PX-22 supersonic transport plane appeared in the sky over their heads, lowering itself smoothly back to the ground as the last rays of the setting sun vanished beyond the horizon.
"I'm glad you managed to make it so promptly," she said, raising an eyebrow as she realized it wasn't Straizo behind the controls. "Though I am surprised to see you, Domenico."
"Yes," the Italian said, a calm smile on his own face. "I didn't want you facing a group of Stand users without backup."
"Yes; even considering the time I've spent working with mine, I suppose I could use someone else who has more experience with these matters," she allowed, a slight smile emerging on her own face. "Thank you for coming."
"You've gained a Stand as well, Boss?"
"Not long ago, but yes," she said, as Wham and Tarkus made their own way out of the plane and joined the rest of them on the ground.
"Stands, Milady?" Tarkus asked, turning a look of confusion on her, even as he took out the rocked-powered hammer that he'd had fabricated for himself once he'd really gotten into his sparring with Wham, and hadn't let out of his sight ever since.
"It's too long a story to get into here, but I'll try to cover as much as I can while we make our way," she said, smirking slightly as Tarkus stowed his rocket-hammer on the specially-designed sheath that he'd commissioned once he'd gotten hold of his hammer.
=SC=
It'd been more than three hours since he'd last seen Aunt Alice, and Jotaro couldn't make himself wait any longer. Sure, Pucci had said that she and Uncle Dio were out taking care of something or other, but not even calling to tell everyone how long they were going to be out? Something about that just didn't sit right with him; Aunt Alice wasn't the type to stay silent for so long, particularly since she knew that people worried about her when she was out. Even with the vampire thing and all, there was no way in hell that Aunt Alice would be out so long without making contact with them, even if Uncle Dio didn't think that that kind of thing was important.
Making his way out of his room and down through the wide hallways, Jotaro continued on his way down to the main room of the mansion; he could hear the Old Man talking to someone who sounded like that Egyptian guy he'd met on one of the other trips down here he'd made, some time or other before.
"Oi, Old Man!" he called, once he'd made his way fully into the main room, catching sight of the pair of them sitting on a pair of couches surrounding a low table. "Do you know where Aunt Alice is?"
"No," the old man said, shaking his head; he looked about as worried as Jotaro was starting to feel, so he knew that he wasn't the only one who hadn't been contacted by Aunt Alice when she had left the mansion on whatever errand it was that she'd figured that she and Uncle Dio needed to do on their own. "That's why I called Avdol here: he's a fortune teller, so he should be able to tell where she went and what she's doing."
"There's also something else," said the Egyptian man who'd come to the mansion to meet up with the Old Man for whatever other reason. "Mr. Joestar has told me that the Stand you possess has no name; he has asked me to help you to choose one for it."
"Stand?" he asked, narrowing his eyes as he wondered just what in the hell this guy was getting at.
"I asked Pucci about what was going on with you," the Old Man said, a slight smile on his face. "He was a bit evasive, considering the whole priest-in-training thing and all, but I got to know at least enough to figure out what was really going on with you."
"All right," he said, letting himself slump down onto the couch beside the Old Man, though far enough away that the Old Man couldn't grab him and hug him or anything stupid like that.
"First, I wish for you to draw a card," Avdol said, holding out the deck of oversized cards. "These are Tarot cards; the cards of fate will aid your efforts in finding the name that best suits the Stand you have been granted."
Looking down at the cards that Avdol was holding out to him, Jotaro narrowed his eyes as he reached out with his right hand to take the deck as the Egyptian handed it over to him. He was about to start flipping through the cards themselves, wondering just what kind of cards there actually were in a Tarot deck, since he hadn't seen any cards that he'd been able to recognize from any of the other kinds of decks that he'd seen before, but Avdol took them back before he could get a look at anything more than the first card at either the top or bottom of the deck.
"That will be enough, young man," Avdol said, smiling kindly at him as he began shuffling the deck again.
Jotaro didn't know just what in the hell the man was doing, but he'd wait and see what was going to happen before he started demanding answers; who knew, he might just end up getting his answers without actually having to do anything.
=SC=
The scent of old stone and dry sand permeated the air, as she, Dio, Domenico, Wham, Tarkus, and N'Doul all made their way into the abandoned, forgotten cityscape beyond the outskirts of Cairo. Narrowing her eyes as she studied their current surroundings, Alice wondered for a moment what kind of people had been responsible for building this place, back when it had been an actual city rather than just the remains of one. Still, that kind of thing was a concern for later; now, she and her comrades had work to do.
Still, Alice made a mental note to let the Speedwagon Foundation know about it, after all of this had been concluded.
Scenting the air for any nearby people, Alice signaled for the benefit of the pair of non-vampiric members of their party, and Dio chuckled deep in his throat, grinning widely as the six of them began to move in.
"It's pretty obvious that she's going to try to split us up," she said, speaking just loudly enough that Domenico – the only one of them whose lack of experience with these kinds of operations was likely to cause him any kind of problems in the battle they were all about to be heading into – would be able to hear her without difficulties. "Still, she doesn't really know what she's dealing with, and it didn't sound like any of her hired goons would be prepared to deal with anyone but ordinary Stand users or humans."
"Yes," Dio said, grinning in an amusedly conspiratorial sort of way. "I never did get around to telling dear little Enya just what it was that you and I actually were, sister dear."
"Good; that's something we have over her," she said, nodding as the six of them began to draw within sight of what seemed to have been the main square of the empty, abandoned city they were all making their way deeper into. "Everybody ready?" there was a brief chorus of affirmations, after which Alice nodded sharply.
=SC=
When she caught sight of Lord Dio, along with that hateful woman and what seemed to be some sort of entourage that followed in their wake, Enya found herself smiling for the first time since she had borne witness to the unsettling power of that hateful woman's Stand. And yes, it had rattled her when she had found herself trapped within lightless stone, but the simple fact that she had not been left to rot within the street where she had suddenly found herself buried proved that the hateful woman's threats had been little more than empty words, in the end. The simple fact that she hadn't even been able to find it in herself to kill Enya's poor, innocent son said everything Enya needed to know about her.
Hateful as she was, the woman was too pitiful to pose any kind of true threat.
=SC=
As the Commander had ordered, N'Doul had allowed himself to be separated from the main force of their group by the efforts of what seemed to be a fellow Stand user. The man was clearly nowhere near as versed in Stands as he had clearly come to think, considering the way that he'd not seemed to be taking account of his surroundings, as well as the fact that N'Doul could feel his approaching footfalls – hasty and ill-considered as his approach clearly was, even against a man he'd seen was blind – and the way that he didn't even pause to check his approach when he summoned his own Stand.
Clearly, this man was not about to survive the lesson that he would soon be given.
The Stand that his soon-to-be-dead opponent had brought out seemed to be taller than the man himself – if the length of the stride and the weight of the steps that he could detect were any sort of indication – and N'Doul took brief note of such a fact, even as he prepared his own Geb to strike as soon as the man had come within his range. When the man had come within the lethal range of his Geb, N'Doul drove his blade of water through the man's head before he had time for more than a surprised sort of breath. The thud of an empty body falling to the ground, as well as the sudden absence of the Stand that the man had summoned to fight for him brought a slight, pleased smile to N'Doul's face.
The Commander is going to want to know about this, he mused. Even beyond the fact that first blood had seemingly gone to him, she would want to know that the enemy's forces had been cut down in strength. Only four of the five brought here remained, aside from Enya herself.
=SC=
She'd tagged the man as soon as his eyes had fallen upon her; he was a short man, with an almost excessively stupid-looking hairstyle, even for the world where she'd presently found herself. Really, it looked like someone had taken Dr. Robotnik's mustache, put a bunch of bells in it, and was trying to pass it off as hair. It had almost been enough to distract her for a moment from the sick, possessive lust in his eyes when he'd looked at her that first time that their respective groups of six had encountered one another.
She'd sent Stardust to wait underground as soon as he'd turned his full attention toward her, and allowed him to think he'd been chasing her while she'd separated him from what allies he could claim among the ranks of Enya's hired goons.
"Hello," she said calmly, smirking ever so slightly, as Stardust leaped out of the ground, wrapping its arms around the man's waist and hurling him to the dusty ground, dragging him under until his desperately waving arms were the only visible parts that remained; the sudden way they stopped, frozenly clawing at the open air, was the first indication that Stardust had let go. "And goodbye."
Turning to nod at her Stand as it rose back out of the ground, flourishing a cheerful bow, Alice chuckled as she felt Stardust retreating back to wherever it was that Stands rested when they weren't called upon to fight in one battle or another. She sometimes wondered just where that was, but she had more than enough time to think about that kind of thing when she wasn't in the middle of an operation.
=SC=
In the end, Avdol and the Old Man had both needed to work together to find out just where it was that Aunt Alice had gone. And, when it had turned out to be that she, Uncle Dio, and a group of her people had gone out to fight some crazy group of what seemed to be Stand users, he'd insisted on going out to help. According to everything that Avdol had been saying, his own Stand was one of the most powerful that the man had ever seen, and only a Stand user could come out on top in a fight against another of their own kind.
Sure, Aunt Alice and Uncle Dio might have been vampires, but even the Old Man had admitted that there was no way of telling how that kind of thing would help them in a battle against people who possessed the same kind of weird-assed powers that he, the Old Man, and Avdol all had right now.
In the end, the Old Man had managed to make a map leading them to just where it was that Aunt Alice and Uncle Dio, along with whatever other people had been drawn into the battle with them. The three of them had hopped into one of Aunt Alice's rugged dune buggies, and set off as quickly as they could. About the only thing that Jotaro could find it in himself to be grateful for was the fact that the sun had set awhile ago.